Tag Archives: urban mission

Political Will

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tollcross

I have never been political. I have never joined a party, made a donation or been on a march. My political experience has been limited to a venture in a local action group agitating for an environmental improvement in a bleak district in the east end of Glasgow more than 40 years ago. I joined the group, took on a committee role, initiated public meetings, but after serial infighting, walkouts and continual constitutional crises, I realised that it wasn’t for me. So, politics has always been little more than a spectator sport and generally a pretty dull one at that. I never got around to cheering the home team or shouting at the opposition. It is not that I was, or am, indifferent to the issues it is just that I could never connect with the mechanism or saw that particular route as being a realistic way of effecting change or making a difference.  Deep down I always felt that real power and real influence lay somewhere else. The forces to change things were not with politicians.

It was not that I despised politicians. Rather, I  held them in high regard. My sympathies were more likely to be with the government in power at any given time, because I recognised they were effectively public servants and as such, deserved some measure of respect.  It was not a position I ever envied and the job seemed an almost impossible one. I hated when people so easily rubbished, castigated and abused these civil servants.  They could be called names and insulted like no other group. I remember the abuse heaped upon Harold Wilson and upon Ted Heath in their respective terms and I felt the abuse that Margaret Thatcher suffered was sometimes nothing short of shameful. In many cases, I felt the ire was directed against her especially because she was a woman.  The fact that people held parties, sung “the witches dead” and danced on her grave,  long after she had relinquished power and had any influence, showed how low it had all become. I was astonished, too, how quickly Tony Blair took on her mantle, and became the villain almost overnight. The people who cheered him in, cursed him out in a very short time. I am almost certain that, had Alex Salmond won independence for Scotland and stayed to be the country’s leader, it would not be long before he too would have suffered the same fate. Knocking the person in power is the easiest game in the book, and we keep playing it.

So it is inevitable that I am pretty sceptical about the new body politic, the new grass root engagement, the rainbow coalition, the enthusiasm for on-line activism and the involvement of the young.  I am sure it is a good thing, maybe good will come of it, I hope so, but I have this sneaky feeling that in the long run it won’t actually make much difference. I hope I am wrong. I also wonder how long this extraordinary energy and mobilisation will last when it comes to the hard graft of working things out in practice and the nitty gritty of concessions and compromises. You only have to take a look at the diverse and contradictory interests represented by the 45 to see the mountains of concession and compromises that will be needed, to get even the most basic of changes through. Even Bevin had to make deals with the BMA to bring the NHS to birth. He had to “stuff their mouths with gold” to bring them on board. All of that takes skill and patience, determination, persistence and hard work and I am not sure if the wave of optimism will carry it through. Again I hope I am wrong.

Now, I know that making any sceptical noise or expressing any doubt or for a moment challenging  the credibility of the cause will be seen as outright disloyalty if not heresy and treason but the thing is, time alone will tell.  Time will tell if, what we have witnessed is the birth of a new body politic, when nothing will be the same again and great changes will be made that will affect the lives of our all our citizens and be a catalyst for similar changes throughout the world or, whether, it will simply be a riotous explosion of optimism that will fizzle out just as quickly as it has begun.

Crawford Mackenzie

The Great Divide

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In a recent article in Scottish Review1, Gary Hasson powerfully opens a lid on what is possibly the biggest problem threatening our society, yet is hardly ever spoken about. It is the festering wound and the major source of division in contemporary Scotland. It is the elephant in the room, the war we mustn’t talk about, the brother we never had.  It is starkly illustrated by the sharp difference between life in the peripheral housing schemes and the leafy west ends of our cities. Yet it is possible to live out your life without ever noticing it. Maybe you have to be in a prison waiting room, be searched and have your arm stamped or live in a burned out close which has become a shooting gallery, or see a gang fight explode at close quarters, or be routinely insulted and humiliated by some wearied official behind a grill, or just had to learn to accept tenth rate service from medics, educationists, and councillors just because they can get away with it.   It sounds like something that every politician should be agitating for but I do not believe it is within the gift of politicians to fix even there was the will. I don’t believe it is to do with money or a solution could be bought. I don’t think the psychology and sociology and educational theorists have the whole answer either. Neither Darwin, nor Marx nor Freud,  “Three most crashing bores of the Western world” 2come anywhere near. The problem lies much deeper. On one side is the arrogance, greed, pride and indifference or simply obliviousness of those who have the power the wealth and the wit to be sorted, on the other an almost total lack of self-esteem, self-worth and self-respect of those on the other side of the tracks. Apart from the odd outburst, the odd riot, the odd march, there is a resigned acceptance that this is just the way it is. It all became very clear to me early on in my work with the Mains of Fintry Urban Ministry Trust and it is not new. Nick Davies wrote about it in 1997 “Dark Heart, the shocking truth about hidden Britain”3. The book was, and is, a desperately depressing insight into the underbelly of urban life in the late 20c, but he was simply an investigative journalist and had no real answer.  The crippling lack of self-worth and the sense of being trapped with no way out is deeply ingrained in the psyche. It is reinforced with every attempt by those with the resources, time, skill and money to help. “You are only helping because you can and we can’t”  Even the acknowledgement of gifts, the positive strokes, the affirming comments are taken as yet another nail in the coffin “You are only saying that to make us think we are good when we know and you know we are rubbish”  It is seen as yet another patronising put-down.  Our Kosovar friend made an interesting comment on this. When volunteers and NCO’s came to her country to help rebuild the nation, after the war, they were treated with disdain and suspicion.  “They must have done something really bad to be sent to a dump like this” was what they said.  It was only later that she saw the thing differently.

So what is the answer?

I have only one: one solution, one way, one truth, one life- Jesus. If God was prepared to become one of us and go through unbelievable pain and suffering and die for me then I must be worth it and that changes everything.

But it is also not just a theory. I have seen it happen. I have seen people find God and become Christians and find their lives being transformed. They were no longer cowed and subservient but, without turning their back on the traditions, families and cultures, they stood tall with dignity. I have seen it in both individuals and in communities in the east end of Glasgow, in the north end of Dundee, in the pueblos Jovenes in Lima and in the Quechan communities in the Sierra of Peru. It was something that even an atheist like Matthew Parris recognised, after visiting Africa in 2008 “Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good…..The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world, a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life”. 4

So, for me, the hope for our nation does not lie with politicians, civil servants and the ruling classes, nor with the educationalists, sociologists and social scientists, nor with the economists, entrepreneurs and  traders in money, nor  with the artists, poets, musicians and architects, nor with the entertainers, celebrities and comedians but, strangely as it may seem, with the humble preacher, who faithfully and carefully studies the bible and brings out its truth and majesty in words that people can understand.  In this simple act the whole of life, for the individual and the community, can be transformed and the great divide breached.

Crawford Mackenzie

1              http://www.scottishreview.net/GerryHassan145.shtml

2              William Golding: “Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.”

3              Nick Davies: Dark Heart, the shocking truth about hidden Britain, 1997, Vantage

4   http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5400568.ece

Ham bone and clouty dumpling

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This summer I made a trip to the island which was my home throughout most of my childhood. It was an inspiring suggestion by my sister and on her persistent promptings, my siblings and I with other family members made a sort of pilgrimage to “our” Island Eigg, which is part of the small isles just south of sky and off the coast of Morar.  Though I was there for less than 48 hours, the mountains of memories that resurfaced in that time, were so tightly packed in, it would take some time to unfold them, lay them out and to properly record them in words or pictures. We left the island more than 50 years ago and while much had changed over that time the surprising and startling thing was how much had stayed the same and how much was instantly recognisable. There were memories of school days and playing, of feeding hens and collecting milk, services on Sundays and boat journeys between the islands, target practice with air rifles, rabbits and fishing for trout, constant walks, heather fires, adventures and discoveries along cliffs, across beaches, through woods and in caves and each brought to the surface by a turn in the road: the wet of the bracken, the sound of the burn, the hazels under the cliff, the smell of the sea, the warm summer wind across the machair, and the ever present Squrr, a strange volcanic plug, a single rock towering and dominating the island from almost every angle. Like a cat, she would sit upright inspecting those who were arriving and leaving the peir with a slightly threatening  air, from Gruilin she would be ready to pounce while from Howlin, on the north, laid out in her full length wanting just to be left alone to purr herself to sleep.  It was and is a truly magical place.

Before the magic spell was broken and we moved to the city we had to leave the large manse for a small cottage in the north of the island.  The manse was a rambling three story house that could easily have been the house that Robert Louis Stevenson had in mind in the opening chapter of “Kidnapped” Most of it was unfurnished and empty but it did have hot and cold running water and calor gas to provide light to some rooms. The cottage by contrast was tiny with no sanitation, save for a dry toilet in a shed outside and water from a tap in a field 50 yards away, collected in a cracked enamel pail.  The change in circumstances was as stark as it was significant. The neighbours in our previous locality were the doctor, the factor, the estate manager, other significant worthies and the laird himself.  He was an absent landlord and for most of the time he was just that; absent.  Now we were living with the common folk in their crofts dotted about the glen under the lee of the cleadale cliffs. At one time we were living with the nobility in a relatively charmed existence serving the community, now were among the ordinary people. At one time we were the ones who were generously offering our help now we were the ones receiving it, as on a dismal wet November Sunday, when, having walked back the miles from church, cold and soaked to the skin we were met at the door by our nearest neighbour bringing an enormous pot of lentil soup with a large ham bone and a steaming clouty dumpling. Later our mother had said that it was the time spent in the cottage that was among the happiest spent on the island. For the first time, it was if she felt she belonged.

It took me some time to finally identify the cottage. It was just off the road with a path down to the beach at laig now refurbished and with a large extension but unmistakable, all the same. Later with the sun breaking shadows over on Rhum and the wild grass dancing across the field, I replayed the scene of 50 years ago in my mind and I realised then that it had far greater impact on me and then I could possibly have imagined.

Crawford Mackenzie