Time to "rediscover what it is to be human."

It’s good to see religious leaders standing up to denounce immorality – especially when for once it isn’t sex they’re talking about.

It’s particularly welcome when it is a Christian leader revealing how deeply unchristian David Cameron is, despite his frequent professions of faith. In this instance, the speaker was the bishop of Dover, Trevor Willmott, commenting on the so-called crisis of migrants in Calais.

I say “so-called” because there are at most 3000 of them (compared to the 60,000 who turned up in Italy in the first six months of this year), and it isn’t even clear that all of them want to come to England. I heard one interviewed by the BBC, saying she hoped the world might hear them, and maybe someone in the world might find it in their heart to help them.

Even so, Cameron has decided to provide dogs and guards and better fences to Calais, to make sure that none of these immigrants make it to Britain. So for him the question is merely to be met with security measures, rather than to be treated as a social and political issue, that needs to be handled with compassion towards people who are fleeing some of the worst dangers on the face of the Earth.

What underlined the moral problem was Cameron’s description of the people in Calais as a “swarm of migrants.” It was that use of the word “swarm”, as though we were dealing not with humans but with locusts, that caused the worst shock.

The bishop, talking with the support of the Church of England, pointed out that “we’ve become an increasingly harsh world, and when we become harsh with each other and forget our humanity then we end up in these standoff positions. We need to rediscover what it is to be a human, and that every human being matters.”

Not an infestation, not a swarm
Just humans facing desperate hardship

A salutary reminder. And here’s another – a reminder of a previous time when we in Britain closed ranks to resist swarms of immigrants.

“The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring into this country from every port is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to the fullest.”

Thus spake a magistrate in 1938, quoted with approval by the Daily Mail, the paper which supported the Nazis in Germany at that time, and the British Union of Fascists in its own country.

Recently, the Czech Republic honoured Sir Nicholas Winton who brought 669 children out in the “Kindertransporte”, to save their lives in Britain. This was felt to be only what he deserved, including by the right wing press. They’re correct, of course, but it’s worth remembering that we’re talking about under 700.

For the first six years of the Nazi regime, the only Jews affected were in Germany, Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. These were Jews that could have been helped, in a way that when it came to Poland, rescue was impossible: the Nazis appeared in their country so rapidly, and Britain in any case declared war on Germany. But something could have been done about German Jews.

There were a little over 500,000 of them when the Nazis came to power. By 1941, around 160,000 of them were still there. They were, almost without exception, murdered. Jews who left for other European countries, like France, which later fell under Nazi control, were also mostly killed.

Britain took about 40,000 of the Jews who got out. That’s about 10% of the total. Under 10% of the whole Jewish population of Germany. About a quarter as many as those who were killed. So while it’s wonderful to recognise men like Nicholas Winton, it would be unfortunate if we allowed sentimentalism about those 669 children to blind us to the fact that we left so many to face the horror of the gas chambers.

“We need to rediscover what it is to be a human, and that every human being matters,” said the bishop of Dover. That was something we forgot in the 1930s, when powerful men decided that the arrival of German Jews in Britain was “becoming an outrage.”

Learn the bishop’s lesson and we might avoid behaving so shamefully this time round.

Disappointment and the Church of England

When Danielle first moved to this country from France, with a view to eventually becoming my wife, she went through a crash course in English culture.

A key event came during the journey back from a conference in Colchester, out in deepest Essex, one of the counties out to the East of London. We’d travelled down by train but were offered a lift back by another delegate, who happened to be Jewish and from Golders Green in North London.

As soon as he told me where he was from I felt on familiar territory. The Jewish side of my family lived not far from Golders Green, and I’d come to associate the Jewish Community of that part of the world with a series of attitudes with which I identified strongly. My view was probably sentimental and may have been out of date even then, but I saw the Jews of that area as usually left of Centre, more likely to vote Labour than anything else, certainly liberal in outlook, respectful of intellectual achievement and as likely to include among their ‘Jewish’ books works by Freud or Kafka as any commentaries on the Torah.

So I thought ‘this could be a fun trip back to London.’ And I wasn’t disappointed.

He quickly established that Danielle had started out in life as a Protestant, of the relatively gentle tendency represented by Zwingli, the main reforming influence on Basel in Switzerland, the closest city to the French village where she grew up. But then she’d converted to Catholicism, for no better – but equally no worse – reason than a desire not to be isolated from her friends at school, all of whom were Catholic. I’ve never been opposed to the idea of assimilation, and the desire to be a full member of the community in which you live strikes me as nothing that has to be excused.

Later on, she had let her Catholicism lapse but maintained as lively an interest in religious matters as any of us. That was immediate grist to our kind driver’s mill.

‘Well, if you’re not in a hurry, let’s take the back roads and I’ll stop in a few villages and show you some extraordinary churches.’

He did just that. He obviously knew Essex well and he took us to three or four village churches each of which was a jewel of its kind. While we were admiring their beauty, he explained to Danielle – and, to be honest, to me: he was much better informed than I was – all the intricacies of the low, middle and high Church within Anglicanism, the impact of Methodism, the nature of an established Church and the role of the monarch as its head.

It was fascinating, but particularly delightful because it was a Jew doing the explaining. And that’s when I understood something absolutely fundamental about the Church of England: if you’re an Englishman, it’s your Church. It doesn’t matter that you follow another religion or none at all, the Church of England is yours. Just like the Royal Navy is your navy, even if you’re a dedicated pacifist, and the Queen is your monarch even though you’re longing for the introduction of a republic.

Like it or not, the C of E is part of our common heritage.

And that’s why when it decided last week not to ordain women bishops so many more people felt it as a body blow than one might have expected. Fewer than three people in a hundred attend a Church of England service even once a month, but far more of us were deeply disappointed when that decision was taken.

It immediately made me think of that happier time all those years ago. I remember the weather as good that day, though one always does when one’s indulging in nostalgia. And I delight in the irony that a casual acquaintance from the North London Jewish community made me feel much better about Anglicanism back then, than rather too large a minority of Anglicans made me feel about the Church last week.

I don't take Communion anyway,
but I can't why anyone who does should be shocked by this picture.
Or want to block the obvious next step.