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Overview
Asking Around is a record of the firsthand documentary research that provided the inspiration and source material for David Hare's trilogy of plays, Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges, and The Absence of War. The trilogy examined the crises that faced three great British institutions — the Church, the Law, and the Labour Party — in the lead-up to the 1992 election that saw the Labour Party once again fail to defeat the Conservatives.
Conducted over five years, Hare's interviews are composed of informal conversations with a wide range of people — from unhappy vicars and police officers forced to put down strikes staged by their childhood fris, to judges and MPs — most of whom reveal a surprising awareness of and cynicism about the principles of their organizations. Priests admit to essentially being social workers with no time for questions of faith, wardens tell of inmates who boast of surviving certain prisons, and politicians and journalists reveal what really goes on in policy meetings. These interviews constitute astute social criticism in the words of the people and, taken together, provide an insightful portrait of Britain in the early nineties.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780571170630 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 04/18/2001 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.58(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
THE CHURCH
When, in December 1987, an Oxford don named Gareth Bennett killed himself after having been identified as the anonymous author of a Crockford's preface critical of the liberal hierarchy in the Church of England, there was, for those of us who had been following the Church's affairs, an unpleasant sense of the inevitable. Even as distant and recent an observer as myself had realized that, underneath the polite Christian surface, passionate positions were being taken up in the Church which simply could not be reconciled. The Church could no longer be all things to all men. When Bennett murdered his cat, then climbed into his car and fixed a rubber hosepipe to his exhaust, he was offering the Church a death which would be interpreted by his friends as a kind of martyrdom, and by his enemies as the worst and dirtiest kind of suicide: the kind which is intended to upset everybody.
The time I was to spend researching Racing Demon involved me in meeting Christians of all denominations. At one point I made a brief and unsuccessful attempt to understand the basics of Judaism. Yet somehow, perhaps because of my own High Anglican education, it was to the Church of England I found myself constantly returning. I admit I was attracted more by the sympathetic loneliness of its clergy than by its sometimes infuriating theology.
I made my first attempt to get back in touch with the Church by attending its General Synod. I was touched to find a room full of perhaps four or five hundred people, most of whom were dressed in the same grey socks,flannel trousers and herringbone jackets that I remembered from my youth.
THE GENERAL SYNOD
The General Synod is the Church's Parliament. It is largely made up of elected representatives who are in either the House of Laity or the House of Clergy, and who, like MPs, regionally represent the whole country. In addition, bishops are automatically members of the Synod. They form the third House. All over the country there are also smaller synods which meet and debate inside each diocese.
The General Synod usually meets at Church House in London, but once a year it goes to York University. Many delegates prefer the atmosphere in York, since they get to stay on campus, and this encourages what they call 'fellowship' — one of those wonderfully distinctive words which only Christians use.
The actual government of the Church is exceedingly complicated, but the general work of Synod (which, like Labour's 'Conference', usually travels without the definite article) involves debating and voting on papers and resolutions which are submitted to it. Although there are officially no parties in what is either a circular or a semi-circular formation, the spectator quickly spots factions which group together to represent certain views within the Church.
At the risk of caricature, to which devout Christians rightly object, it is possible to isolate three dominant tendencies: the Anglo-Catholics, with their High Church emphasis on ritual and tradition; the Evangelicals, with their strong beliefs in good and evil, and personal salvation; and the Liberals, who, in the demonology of the other two groups, are held to be in a controlling ascendancy over the whole Church. Individual loyalties and alliances are actually quite complex, and votes are satisfyingly difficult to predict.
Members of the public are allowed to attend any debate. When the subject is contentious — homosexuality, say, or the ordination of women — then the national publicity is remarkably intense. For less glamorous issues, the atmosphere can be desultory. But whether the Synod is well or ill attended, the standard of debate is conspicuously higher than in the House of Commons. Although the adoption of secular, political language often gives the proceedings an absurd, even farcical air, nevertheless the courtesy speakers show each other and the respect they profess for each other's views (however viperous their private assessment of each other's personalities) does mean that ideas do get debated, and genuine convictions are allowed to shine.
I went back to Synod many times in the following months, and I never once went without hearing at least one speaker who was articulate and moving.
CHURCH SYNOD, YORK
Monday, 13 July 1987
The Synod takes place in a lecture hall at York University. There is a stage which has been decked in purple material for the occasion and a cross has been suspended from the ceiling. Otherwise there are no special concessions. The Synod opens with a hand-bell being rung by a small Malaysian woman. On the stage is set a bench and table, at which three people sit, one of them in full legal gear and wig. One of them works the electric light bulbs which tell the speaker how long they have to go. And next to them sits a woman who puts up the number of the current speaker on a machine similar to a cricket scoreboard on a village green.
The Synod starts with prayers. But as the Church of England cannot agree a common version of the Lord's Prayer, you are aware of everyone whispering different words. Then the man in charge of procedure makes a speech. His name is Canon Brindley (217).
Brindley: My announcement is that I am not in a position to make an announcement. By four o'clock I will be in a position to make an announcement, but I cannot at the moment predict what that announcement will be. May I ask all those of you who are attending the 'Not Strangers but Pilgrims' Conference to meet, not at one o'clock as announced, but at one-thirty?
The debate on Freemasonry
Today's first debate is to consider a paper submitted by a working party on Freemasonry. This subject presents a fairly typical problem for the Church. There is a considerable body of evidence which suggests that Freemasons acknowledge an unspecified God, who, whatever His alleged character, is plainly not named as the Christian God. Yet to make too much of this, or to insist too clearly that Masons are involved in a possible blasphemy, would have disastrous consequences. There are many Masons inside the Church of England, and they are better than other worshippers at turning up every week. It is pointless to alienate them. The implicit challenge to the working party has been to come up with some ingenious drafting which will lead to some anodyne form of consultation with the Masons, but which will not risk the loyalty of Masons in the Church.
The first speaker is Dr Margaret Hewitt, who has chaired the working party and who is plainly a great Synod favourite. She is one of a number of people here who speak in an impossibly cut-glass accent of the kind favoured by BBC announcers of the mid-fifties. She is extremely large in a bright green dress and, as she begins to present her paper to Synod, she is interrupted a number of times from the floor by people who cannot hear a word she is saying. She makes a difficult speech on the subject of the overlapping area between Christianity and Freemasonry. In her view the Church is not making an attack on Freemasonry. It is simply questioning those areas of Masonic ritual which appear to use Christian symbolism. She points out that it is impossible for Christians to allow the symbols of Christianity to be used in anything but their proper Christian context. She is concerned to explain certain ideas which are plainly familiar to a church audience, but not to anyone else. She waves around concepts like synchrotism, indifferentism, and Pelagianism, as if they were things with which we were all acquainted. These turn out to be the heresies of which the Masons are regularly accused. Her final conclusion is that Christians who belong to a Masonic lodge lend credibility to the lodge rather than gain credibility from it.
The next speaker is a Mason from Exeter, and he is a parody of every bad public speaker you ever heard. He announces in his wretched speech: 'I greatly enjoy the fellowship of men.'
As the debate continues, the words 'broad church' and 'tolerance' are much used. People are frightened to do anything decisive, or say anything contentious, for fear that they will be accused of a religious witch-hunt. Over and again you hear the formulation, 'The last thing we want in our Church is a witch-hunt.'
On the other hand, as the debate develops, there is a definite envy for Masonry. The more people talk, the more I am aware that a lot of speakers feel that the signs and symbols Masons use, and the clannishness they cultivate, somehow fulfil a need which the Church, by contrast, is failing to requite. This self-criticism marks all the proceedings of the Synod. There is not a single debate which I attend at which self-flagellation is not in order. The weakness, disorder, hypocrisy of the Church are constantly referred to. The vitality of any other organization is always taken to be an implied criticism of the weakness of the Church. Even when, at later debates, I hear Muslim fundamentalism being talked of in tones of distress, there is nevertheless an uneasy fear that perhaps such a popular religion must have got something right.
The Archbishop of York speaks, and the scorer puts up number 2. York is Dr John Habgood, and he is generally taken to be the leading spokesman for the liberal Church. He describes Masonry as a harmless eccentricity.
Archbishop: It will be a sad day when there is no eccentricity in the Church of England. Men gain a certain pleasure from doing things they wouldn't do in front of their wives.
He suddenly uses the phrase 'boy scouts in the potting shed'. He gives the impression of a highly intelligent, slightly disdainful man who wishes that the problem would go away, and his speech ends with the firm statement that he is more worried by Christians who want to define their Christianity in a way that excludes other people than he is by Freemasons. This is a sharp warning that the issue is not to be pushed. His speech is a model of patrician lucidity, but flecked with the sort of humour which seeks to suggest the whole subject is fundamentally silly.
He also includes, as most speakers do, a little parable or story in his speech style:
Archbishop: God has a hundred names, man knows only ninety-nine. The camel knows the hundredth. That explains his expression of ineffable superiority.
His gags are expert.
Archbishop: I would have difficulty in worshipping an architect, with or without the Church Commissioners' approval.
His final indictment of Masonry is that 'an air of conspiracy creates the impression that a conspiracy is going on'. But he does not believe that any conspiracy genuinely exists.
Trying to define what a religion is, the Archbishop interests me by insisting on three criteria: a religion must have doctrine, it must have sacraments, and it must have a promise of salvation.
For the defence, Canon Brindley is a rotund player to the gallery who has the manner of a grand but seedy actor-manager of the pre-war touring theatre. He refers to himself as 'a strong prayer-book man'. He points out that the Duke of Kent and George VI were Masons, 'and it is unthinkable that George VI should indulge in blasphemy — or rather not consciously'. He reminds us of the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery, that He tells the woman to go on her way and to sin no more, but He also says, 'neither do I condemn you'. Brindley, in another sexually charged phrase, refers to the 'fun and the friendship of Masonry'. But the moment he begins to describe the actual rituals, in which a man is laid blindfold in a grave and re-enacts the resurrection, people begin to giggle as if finally realizing that this serious debate is about rites which are intrinsically absurd and puerile.
The next speaker is a vicar from Brixton in an African shirt. He tells a long and funny story about the bookie's funeral at which his friend the tic-tac man gets confused between the sign of the cross and the sign on a race course for 20-1 against. He is followed by my first sighting of a bearded vicar in jeans. His manner is classic polytechnic. Up till now nearly all the voices we have heard are upper or upper-middle class, and it is noticeable that when we do finally get something approaching a forthright condemnation of Masonry it comes in tones much further down the social scale. But even the bearded vicar understands that conciliation is the order of the day.
The session ends with a vote overwhelmingly in favour of accepting the report. Clergy and laity are asked to go out of separate doors, as in the House of Commons, to vote yes or no. A bitter Mason mutters, as he clambers over the railings to get to the 'no' door, 'If you want to vote contrary to the common flow, it makes for great difficulty.'
The Debate on Mission
The afternoon's debate is considerably less well attended than that on Masonry. There is not the same atmosphere of political excitement. The television cameras have departed. A document is presented on Mission, which is so wide-ranging and all-embracing that to have condemned it would have been the same as announcing yourself in favour of sin. At the end I am still rather confused about what Mission is. I knew before the debate started that it involved the taking of the Word to the world at large, but at the end it still didn't seem to me significantly different from Ministry. Again, in any discussion of how things are in Third World countries, there is a palpable yearning for the simplicities of faith the speakers thought they found there, combined with an exhilaration that the moral issues in those countries are so comparatively simple. Although such a wide-ranging and ill-defined debate seems fundamentally pointless, it leads to a number of better speeches than you might have expected.
It is introduced by Daphne Wells, who has a fruitcake voice, even plummier than Margaret Hewitt's. Bloodless, thin, grey-haired, precise. One of the points she makes in her speech is that, in what she calls the 'house' churches, each member of the congregation is a missionary, whereas in the Church of England, only the priest sees it as his responsibility to do crisis work in the parish.
A later speaker quotes a saying, 'When I give bread to the hungry they call me a saint, when I ask why the hungry are hungry, they call me a communist.' He also quotes Desmond Tutu: 'We must love the whites, whether they want us to or not.'
The Archdeacon of Northolt refers to 'our total inability to talk about our faith or be inspired by it, or to have any interest in the deprived'. This is the most forthright example of all the persistent self-deprecation that goes on at Synod.
A later speaker tells the story of an early Cory Aquino supporter — she came to power mainly thanks to Christians — who went round knocking on doors and asking, 'Do you believe in the resurrection? Well then, let's rise up and rebuild our town.'
Throughout the debate on Mission it is clear that the Church of England is very much influenced by both the old Commonwealth and the emergent countries, where the clergy have a much more direct relationship with their parishes than in England. There is a generally satisfying feeling that it is much more fun, and much more rewarding, to spread the gospel abroad than it is in your own country. Someone testifies that in Nepal and Kashmir people were immediately attracted by the Sermon on the Mount and by the idea of 'a God with wounds'.
A speaker points out that although church attendances are steadily declining, birth, marriage and death offer access points for the Holy Spirit. There are 50,000 visitors a day in Canterbury Cathedral, probably more than those attending worship in a week in the whole diocese. This is one of a number of statistics which I distrust.
Next speaker: I was voted in on a Mission-Not-Maintenance ticket in a by-election for the General Synod.
Next speaker: God is prodding us to join in his initiatives.
Personal anecdote is essential to all Synod speeches: 'I want to tell you a short personal story.' Mrs Page of Norwich tells an excruciating story about the whole family doing a jigsaw, in which she points out that everybody contributed something different, including one person who brought 'the gift of humour, funny puns and quips'.
Mrs Page: In doing the jigsaw I was being shown how we work in the Church. Each of us had something different to contribute, but we could only contribute it if we had the top of the jigsaw box in front of us so we knew what picture we were trying to make. We needed a common picture, we needed a vision, we needed the picture on the jigsaw box.
I notice how many people put their hands on each other, guiding them through the Synod. It is a priestly thing constantly to put your hand on someone's back, even on their bottoms. As they walk along the rows, hands are put on arms and wrists.
A speaker is shocked by having listened to Robert Robinson's Brain of Britain. None of the contestants knew the answers to these two questions: What is the name given to the feast of the coming of the Holy Spirit? What are the three Christian virtues?
There is a great deal of reference to England being a multiracial community and how the Church is to respond to that. Statistics are quoted about there being more Indians in Southall than anywhere outside India, except Durban. Similarly, there were said to be more Jews in somewhere (I think Redbridge, but it seems unlikely) than in Israel.
The Debate on Housing
In the early evening, another fairly aimless debate, in which everybody is against homelessness. Not particularly well attended, but remarkable for the fact that one of the speakers is a delegate who carries out evictions for his local council. This is not seen as any contradiction. Nobody would suggest that he was in an un-Christian profession. He describes what it is like to arrive at six o'clock in the morning and evict people from their houses. He claims that they arrive early, not to catch people unawares, but in order to make sure that 'the man of the house has not yet gone out to work'. This speaker's presence, and the absence of any challenge to it, seems to me to raise another fundamental problem. Any church worth the name would take him aside and ask him if he isn't ashamed of himself. But the Church now has a terror of finding sin anywhere, least of all among its own members.
The Dean of St Paul's, in an excellent speech, tries to turn Synod's attention from homelessness in the UK to homelessness internationally. He refers to the poisonous philosophy of the government in San Salvador: 'Drain the reservoir and the fish will die.' He also speaks of some squatters who were living in his house when he arrived to be Dean of St Paul's, and who, before they were evicted, left a crayoned message on his floor: 'This house is full of beautiful vibes.' He uses a striking phrase about the impossibility of an understanding between 'the people who keep order and the people who are kept in order'.
The Archbishop of Canterbury — and number 1 comes up on the scoreboard. It is an odd decision for Robert Runcie to choose to speak now. He has said nothing all day. Now, like a star batsman, he drops himself down the order and comes in when rain threatens and most of the crowd have gone home. He makes an entirely bland speech saying homelessness is a bad thing. He says he is particularly concerned about it because the last action of Terry Waite, before he was kidnapped in the Lebanon, was to attend a function for the International Year of the Homeless. I am very interested in his use of Terry Waite, as if it were taken for granted that Waite were more saintly than he. Canterbury exploits Waite, using him as a way of corroborating and lending dignity to his own ideas. It is assumed that anything which Terry Waite is in favour of must automatically be holy and worthwhile. Understandably, an instantly serious and attentive air comes down the moment Waite's name is mentioned.
The debate on homelessness drifts on until there is some reference to the question of mortgage tax relief. It is quite clear that everyone believes that this is a middle-class perk and flagrantly inequitable. But, again, the Church stops short of recommending a repeal because it doesn't want to offend home owners.
Somebody quotes Charles Lamb: 'There is nothing more satisfying than to do a good turn in secret and have it discovered by accident.'
Evening — the tea-room
Although I have been sitting by myself during debates in the public gallery, I am lucky enough in the tea-room afterwards to be introduced to a bishop on the evangelical wing of the Church. I am fascinated to find out if he still has fundamentalist views about heaven and hell.
Bishop: Oh, yes. I mean, I do believe that people will be separated out at Judgement Day. But I don't necessarily believe they will be separated out for ever.
DH: I was very surprised by the references in the debate to 'God's initiatives'. Does that mean God does make active interventions in the world?
Bishop: Most certainly.
DH: What about the devil? Does he make initiatives also?
Bishop: No, I think he just tries to mess God's initiatives up. To be honest, we don't talk much about the devil. We are trying to get away from that figure with the forked tail. So I just use the adjective 'demonic' and that way try to avoid the problem.
DH: So you do believe in Heaven and Hell?
Bishop: I do. But I have learnt that it's pointless to talk about them. It's part of being a bishop. I mean, actually it's the same with Freemasonry today. The fact is, privately I think the Masons are just bloody stupid. But I'm not sure it would do any good to say so. On the contrary, I was actually worried today's debate was far too condemnatory, and I spent most of it thinking about the diocesan letter I'm going to have to send round explaining that the vote wasn't anti-Masonic, it just looks that way.
DH: What's the Bishops' Bench like? When you have your debates, is the atmosphere friendly?
Bishop: Extremely. A lot of us believe different things, yet we manage to discuss them in a way which is always fair and pleasant. There has to be balance in the bishopric — you need one chap who knows about Buddhism, for instance, so that whatever theological problem comes up, there's someone to deal with it. The only real tension recently was when the Bishop of London came back from the United States after deliberately celebrating communion with a priest who had been un-Churched for his opposition to women priests. He got a real bollocking. It's quite a well-known scandal. Things really did turn nasty.
DH: One of the things which most interests me about the Church is the parallel with the Labour Party. They both seem to me organizations which can't decide whether to have rules of membership or not. Anglicanism seems to have become a party at which everyone's welcome.
Bishop: I think that is true, at least at the beginning. I think it's important not to alienate anyone straight away. Once they get in, they will learn that the Christian way is hard. It's very, very hard. But don't tell them that in advance, because it will just put them off.
Tuesday 14 July 1987
I am slightly thrown at breakfast by somebody showing me a copy of The Times, in which there is a diary-piece noting that the playwright David Hare is attending Synod. Later in the day, I ask the Church's press officer, a genial ex-naval officer who is unfailingly helpful to me, how on earth The Times knew I was there. 'Because I told them,' he replies cheerfully. When I ask him why, he looks at me without apology and says, 'Because the Church needs all the publicity it can get.'
The debate on rates
The morning debate, on the revision of the rates system and introduction of the poll tax, is extremely well attended. The press officer says to me that Synod is always very tough about money. It is quite clear from the printed correspondence between the Archbishop of York and Margaret Thatcher that her way of getting back at the Church for its attacks on her government is to make sure that the Church is not exempted from the new poll tax, which will cost the Church approximately £4 or £5 million a year. There are two schools of thought. The great majority of delegates consider that the Church of England should be exempted from this tax, but there is a tiny minority, among whom I notice the Bishop of Durham, who vote against the motion on the grounds that the Church should identify with the people, and that if the people have to suffer this poll tax, the Church has no right to ask to be exempted from it.
The Archbishop of York opens with a prayer that 'having had to concentrate on things temporal we do not lose sight of things eternal'.
The first speaker is the Bishop of London (3), in gaiters, and looking as lanky and forbidding as a Ronald Searle cartoon. He is the famous High Anglican whose passionate opposition to women priests is matched only by his enthusiasm for the current government. A religious journalist tells me, 'London is very much a Maggie man but he doesn't mind knocking her.' London starts by bidding goodbye to the retiring Dean of Carlisle, who is a hugely humorous figure as far as Synod is concerned. The Dean is given a special vote of thanks, and then falls fast asleep during the subsequent speeches.
Wakefield (64) talks about how odd it will be if the people exempted from the tax are 'the pensioner, the unemployed, the disabled, the mad, and the Minister of Religion'. He finishes up, 'The world will listen to us in inverse proportion to our vested interest.' He refers to an 'eternal dimension to our work'. But London counters by saying, 'Faith does not exonerate us from doing what has to be done in a concrete situation. We must have a deeply spiritual concern and also be intensely practical.' He goes on to call the clergy the only professionals who are still giving expert care twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
The final vote is 219:28. There is then a procedural flurry which is completely incomprehensible to outsiders. The Dean of Carlisle stands up, and my notes have him saying, 'My point of order came before the point that the question be not put. There is some unclarity in standing orders and I am not sure if under 43(b) I can refer to the standing committee. If the procedural motion is put, then in my view part (b) of 36 will lapse.' Various people at once raise their hands and start shouting, 'On a point of order!' but the chairman counters by insisting, 'Under 41(b) I cannot take a point of order.'
The most referred-to figure in all the speeches, besides God, is Oscar Wilde.
The debate on women
The general feeling here is that whereas homelessness was a bad thing, women are a good thing. However, the ostensible subject of the afternoon's debate — how can women do more? — does not stop the knee-jerk self-criticism.
Speaker: My first point is that we are well on the way to spiritual ruination. My second point ...
The Bishop of Durham (4) makes an unruly and barely comprehensible speech, gabbling phrases: 'social investment', 'human resources', 'God's dream of love, joy, peace', 'deeply divided society', 'very difficult world', etc.
The next speaker is again Mrs Page from Norwich. I have noticed she misses no opportunity to make a personal contribution. She makes a rather embarrassing speech about how she expects to be 'fulfilled in her job, fulfilled as a wife and fulfilled as a mother to my children'. She then adds, with unnecessary candour, 'I want to be fulfilled as a lover.' There is a moment's uneasy silence as collectively the Synod stops to imagine the sight and sounds of Mrs Page fulfilled as a lover.
Mrs J. Kidd of Christchurch Vicarage, Virginia Water, Surrey (400), is plainly the hard-line keeper of Christian morals — white-haired, very suntanned, in the kind of dress usually seen only in Majorca. In the whole Synod there is not a single woman in trousers. All are in skirts or dresses. Mrs Kidd has the true rabble-rouser's gift of seeming only by the utmost self-control to be keeping far stronger feelings at bay.
Mrs Kidd: We have had a report written by women. Can we now have one written by the children? It's the children who suffer when a woman goes out to work. I'm being emotional, but, sorry, I'm a woman.
Barrie Etherington is a bearded vicar, in his 40s. He is one of the many people at Synod who tell us their life stories. He is a priest who has remarried. Nobody outside the Church, I think, appreciates just how contentious this issue is. Etherington's first marriage, he tells us, broke down in spite of 'guidance by a Christian psychotherapist. Two years ago, I met a woman to whom I am now married. With due respect to Mrs Kidd and Mr John Selwyn Gummer, she is my wife.' This ringing declaration is a reference to certain well-known people's opposition to the remarriage of divorced clergy.
Someone says clergy should reflect the 'is-ness' of God not the 'ought-ness' of the moralizers. But the debate's tone is best caught by one speaker who refers to 'theological undergirding' and who notes: 'My wife tells me that I have a growing reputation as a pedant, and anyone who claims, as I do, that Easter Eve is different from Easter Saturday, must plead guilty.'
Table of Contents
| Introduction | 2 | |
| Part 1 | Racing Demon | 9 |
| Part 2 | Murmuring Judges | 57 |
| Part 3 | The Absence of War | 157 |
| Afterword | 248 |