Justin Welby’s BBC interview was a very bad idea. What was he thinking? – Anglican Mainstream
by George Pitcher, Premier Christianity
Perhaps the former Archbishop of Canterbury intended to convey remorse and accountability in his conversation with Laura Kuenssberg. But that’s not how it’s been received, observes George Pitcher
Back in June 2011, I negotiated a guest editorship of the New Statesman for Dr Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury. We commissioned coalition ministers such as Iain Duncan Smith and William Hague and a piece from Gordon Brown on youth unemployment.
Then Dr Williams wrote his leader. It was a reasoned and reasonable piece on the shifting tectonic plates of British politics, which in passing noted that “Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is” around issues such as child poverty, access to education and sustainable infrastructure in poorer communities.
It was the line I lifted for the headline: “The government needs to know how afraid people are”. And I showed the page proof to a colleague who looked after the archbishop’s parliamentary affairs, a man whose judgment I much admire. I asked simply what would happen when we published.
He said the proverbial would hit the fan, Lambeth Palace would lose the government front bench and there would be real anger on the Conservative backbenches that the Archbishop had said something unsayable. Good, I replied, that’s what we’ll do then.
My friend was right. Angry and abusive letters were written, by many Conservative parliamentarians who clearly had not read the piece beyond a glance at the headline. Williams was ostracised by the Conservative Party.
Dr Williams wrote to me afterwards to say that it had been a more than worthwhile exercise and had achieved what we’d intended. We’d spoken truth to power, had given voice to “ordinary” people and spoken with a prophetic voice.
The point I want to make is that we knew what we were doing and why we were doing it. We knew what we wanted from it. We were ready for the quite predictable lines of attack and had answers to them. We had sparked a debate that we wanted.
Compare and contrast that with Dr Williams’ successor last Sunday, which has been widely denounced as yet another exercise in self-exculpation, despite Welby’s repeated assertions that he is “deeply ashamed” and “sorry” that he “got it wrong” in failing to respond actively enough to church volunteer John Smyth’s serial child abuse, failings that led to Welby’s almost unprecedented resignation.
