Popes and Tea Parties
Popes and Tea Parties
Paul Thompson: Popes and Tea Parties
When the Pope visited my home city of Edinburgh this week, there was a small demonstration that included both members of the Atheist Society and followers of the Reverend Ian Paisley. It reminded me of the time I demonstrated against the then Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, on a visit to Liverpool during the 1970 general election. After a while I realized that I was shouting insults alongside members of the local Orange Lodge, a Protestant extremist group. ?Down with Papists? and ?Get out of Vietnam? are not easy bedfellows.
Outside the Catholic faithful, apathy rather than opposition was actually the dominant response to the Pope?s visit. In 1992, Pope John Paul?s visit to Glasgow pulled in 250,000 to a local park. This time it was closer to 65,000, with tickets unsold here and elsewhere. A popular explanation was the bad publicity surrounding the Catholic Church?s involvement in and cover-up of child abuse cases. Odious though this is, I doubt whether it was the main reason for the small turnout. Britain is one of the most secular societies in the world. Forty-three percent described themselves as nonreligious in the latest British Social Attitudes Survey. Other polls indicate higher numbers. Many ?believe? weakly or in name only. In another survey Christians ranked religion as the thirteenth most important factor in their identity. Recent surveys of UK Catholics show a massive disconnect with Church doctrine, with 70 percent in favor of condom use and a third in favor of abortion on demand.
Much publicity has been given to the Pope?s attacks on ?aggressive secularism.? While atheists are more confident and vocal than in the past, this judgement misses the point. Secularism in the UK is largely creeping and quiet, resting on a rejection of the Pope?s view that to live an ethical and purposeful life, one needs to be religious (and even better, Catholic).
Such trends are part of the explanation of why the kinds of culture wars that disfigure U.S. politics find no echo here. Favorite Republican ?wedge issues? such as abortion and gay marriage generally fall flat. It also means that attempts to transplant the Tea Party movement to the UK are unlikely to work. A recent conference to import that movement and its lessons was held in Brighton, financed by the usual American right-wing pressure groups and think tanks. Their anxious UK supplicants included the Freedom Association, the Taxpayers Alliance, and assorted climate change skeptics.
Of course it could be argued that the Tea Party message is less cultural than economic, and that anti-tax, anti-big government politics may also play well here. I doubt it. There is a constituency for right-wing populism and a media megaphone in the Daily Mail and Daily Express. But this is nothing new. The so-called Tax Payers Alliance may claim 55,000 supporters, but it is more a resource of quotes for lazy journalists than a basis for mass mobilization. Despite the Con-Dem coalition?s ?shrink the state? policies there is no inherent antipathy to government, large or small, in most of the British electorate. And while there has been some diminution in support for ?tax and spend? policies implemented under New Labour, in a recent survey for the BBC, 58 percent said that they were taxed at the right level.
Perhaps I?m being complacent. The key test will come in public response to the forthcoming assault on the fiscal deficit and concomitant massive spending cuts. My guess is that union and community organizations will be putting a lot more people on the streets than the Taxpayers Alliance and their assorted anti-government allies. So, to my American comrades suffering at the hands of the Tea Party movement–we feel your pain, but I doubt whether we?ll be sharing it any time soon.
