The time has arrived at last for a truly Christian party – Christian Democrats can finally gain ground in our electoral system, argues David Campanale
Britain’s “two-party system” is ebbing away and a space is opening up for a new Christian Democratic political party to take its place in the spectrum of electoral options. Although the scandal over election expenses hastened the process in June’s European elections, dissatisfaction with the current parties has been reflected in patterns of voting for some time now.
The share of the vote won by Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats together slumped from almost 96 per cent in the 1987 general election to 57 per cent in this year’s European poll. The 44 per cent overall vote this year for Labour and the Tories was the lowest in any national election since 1945. The advent of proportional systems of voting has helped the electorate to get into the habit of voting for parties that are either a closer expression of their own values and ideals, or which allow them to vent their anger at the ruling political system.
It’s likely that by next year, when first-past-the-post voting will be used at the general election, much of the big party vote will recover. But the underlying pattern will remain of weakening loyalty to the major parties. This is because of the cumulative impact over a decade of PR voting in elections to the London Assembly, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly of Wales, Stormont and, of course, the European Parliament. In Scotland, the adoption of single transferable vote (STV) voting in council elections has also served to transform the political landscape at local level.
As party loyalties have broken up, into the mix has come the Green Party, nationalist parties of various hues (some at the extreme Right of the spectrum) Leftist parties and a cross-denominational grouping of Christian Democrats, the Christian Peoples Alliance (CPA).
A glance across the channel to the rest of Europe will show that this same ideological spread is reflected in every parliament, as well as in coalition-style governments. It should be no surprise that as a postmodern, post-industrial society Britain too should have room for a Christian Democratic party. In northern Europe Christian Democrats have succeeded in driving through their own policies even when the junior partner in government. That kind of influence is the CPA’s goal in Britain from local to national level.
Over four elections in London, the Christian “ticket” has tested the waters by campaigning on a breadth of issues in order to promote the social teachings of the churches. Literally a handful of activists – both Catholic and from other Christian backgrounds – succeeded in winning votes from 100,000 people, entering the political marketplace with a consistent average of three per cent. A modest start, but in Scotland two Green MSPs now play a crucial role in Alex Salmond’s SNP government with a vote in their regions not far higher than that. The threshold for PR in Britain is five per cent for a party to qualify for a seat under the list system.
In Northern Ireland, where the CPA has supporters but no organisation, the kind of vote achieved in London would likely have delivered non-sectarian but distinctly Christian Democratic members into the Stormont Assembly because there is no hurdle to cross.
So what does the Christian Peoples Alliance do when elected? In the London Borough of Newham the party has three local councillors elected in the most deprived part of the capital, Canning Town. Alone against a distant Labour council, the group has fought Labour’s “redevelopment” plans for the docks that saw local people moved out of their council housing to make room for City workers, plans to demolish a section of the popular (and cheap) Green Street Market to make room for another Asda and the holding of a major Government-backed arms fair at the Excel Centre. The CPA’s stance on these issues – and traditional Christian commitments towards the poor, older people, marriage and family values in schools – has seen strong support from Newham’s large immigrant population of all faiths.
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Christian Democracy is an established and successful fact across European politics and further afield. It has taken 20 years of activity by the Movement for Christian Democracy in Britain (from which the CPA emerged) to prepare the ground here. And some of the conditions identified by the grand figure of Christian Democracy, Professor Michael Fogarty, for Christians in Britain to turn to parties of their own are increasingly apparent. Traditional anti-clericalism on the continent that forced Christian trade unions and parties into existence alongside their secular counterparts is now rampant in some sections of British public life. The ideologically driven onslaught by big teacher unions against Catholic and other faith schools is one case; the unjustified closure of Catholic adoption agencies is another.
The newspapers have been good at providing the details – whether nurses forbidden to pray with those they care for, or for wearing a cross on their uniform, or a senior Anglican bishop interviewed by police for publicly upholding church teaching on sexuality. Overt “christophobia” may be rare, but secular intolerances of all kinds are gradually closing down the public space in which the voice of the Church and Christian conscience has traditionally been heard.
The one public forum where some Christian bishops can speak freely (though not always cogently) is the House of Lords. But even that is subject to the latest proposals outlined by the Prime Minister. Lords reform has been in limbo since the plans for a predominantly elected upper chamber were approved by the Commons in March 2007. The plans then predictably became bogged down in the House of Lords, with the parties continuing discussions on how a new system would work.
Gordon Brown now wants a predominantly elected system for the Lords, again using some kind of alternative voting arrangement. No party is saying yet that the privileged position of the bench of bishops is under threat. But the secularising tendency is clear. So perhaps now is a good moment for the churches to be realistic and relinquish this political anomaly of clerics in an elected chamber. In a post-Christendom era, if the voice of church teaching is to be heard and weighed, let it compete openly with other perspectives. This requires members of the laity to submit themselves for election as Christian Democrats, themselves subject to dialogue and critique through church circles. Readers of The Catholic Herald wanting to play their part are welcome to approach the Christian Peoples Alliance.
David Campanale (press@cpaparty.org.uk) is president of the Christian Peoples Alliance (www.cpaparty.org.uk)
Tags: Christianity, Politics