Part of the Establishment?

As part of the process of candidating for ministry, I have had to read and reflect upon a non-theological book, ready for one of the small group interviews. The book I've decided to look at is called 'The Establishment And How They Get Away With It' by Owen Jones, who writes for the Guardian. It's about how we've ended up with the Britain we have, and the consequences for those not pulling the strings!

The notion of an ‘establishment’ goes back to the 1950s and was coined by the journalist Henry Fairlie. For him, this was about a group of people at the top of British society bound together by social ties – it’s all about who you know – which included the Church of England, the BBC, the monarchy and so on. Owen Jones’ take on the idea is rather different; what defines and keeps the establishment together is a shared ideological commitment, which benefits those who maintain that the neoliberal consensus (small state, minimal employment rights, low taxes for the wealthy, minimal regulation of markets, etc.) represents the only viable political approach, and who profit as a result through shared financial ties and interests. His understanding means a far more diverse collection of people fall into its net, including supposedly anti-establishment political bloggers like Guido Fawkes (Paul Staines) and Russian oligarchs, alongside traditional members such as cabinet ministers, aristocrats, the Church of England and newspaper bosses.

In the opening chapter, Jones describes the shift away from the post-war consensus, which saw public ownership of utilities, transport networks and so on, unions as equal players alongside business leaders, and a top rate of income tax as high as 75%. Think-tanks such as the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Adam Smith Institute laid the intellectual groundwork for the concrete policies of the Thatcher government, and this worldview has come to define the subsequent political landscape. For example, the Keynesian economics of the 1970s would’ve suggested using capital investment paid for by government borrowing as the solution to a sluggish economy like ours in recent years, whereas use of interest rates, lowering taxes for the better off and austerity measures in public spending characterise the monetarism and free market approach currently employed. Successors of those who influenced Thatcher still police the agenda, with organisations like the Taxpayers’ Alliance, actually made up of those who stand to benefit directly from this setup, effectively positioning themselves as the common sense voice of ordinary people, and shouting down those who challenge this neoliberal consensus. 

Having laid this groundwork, Jones goes on to talk about the “Westminster cartel” of MPs with salaries far above anything like the vast majority of their constituents could hope to earn (£67K in 2015) implementing policies that benefit both themselves and the interests of those they work or lobby for (the “revolving door” between private business and parliament), such as private healthcare companies and venture capitalists. He talks about extreme language being used in the face of alternative ideas (think of reactions to Ed Miliband’s proposals on freezing energy prices and greater rights for tenants, or the continued demonisation of unions), to create the impression that any deviation from neoliberalism is simply madness. It clearly works; I’ve had conversations with people at work who make the same arguments and talk of plain fear at the prospect of a Labour government they see as extreme lefties - oh, the irony! Anyway, Jones goes on to talk about New Labour selling out to big business, and the acceleration of the intrusion of private interests into public services, often at great cost to the taxpayer, under the Coalition in areas like prisons, immigration centres, the NHS and education.

The remaining chapters of the book deal with specific areas of life where the establishment dictates the agenda. This includes a list of the usual suspects from the ‘traditional’ establishment such as the Humphrey Appleby-types in the Civil Service, newspaper proprietors and those at the top of the financial sector, but also includes many more targets that fit with Jones' wider definition of the establishment: tabloid reporters and phone hacking, the big four accountancy firms helping government to create tax laws and then helping firms circumvent them, the police considering themselves above the Law (think Hillsborough) and helping to create the conditions that facilitate the few being enabled to exploit the many (think mass surveillance and kettling of demonstrators), and a multitude of others like arms firms, lobbyists and energy companies.

The book includes interviews with various people seeking to position themselves as outside the establishment. Reading some of these, one cannot help but feel there’s both a goodly amount of self-delusion going on (think John Prescott or Paul Dacre, for example), as well as deliberate political posturing (he’s not interviewed here, but Nigel Farage is a prime example of this in practice), and blatant hypocrisy. Jones is very good at calling out the latter, citing Andrew Mitchell’s reaction when the power he wielded was turned on him in the ‘Plebgate’ affair, or the former tabloid editor Neil Wallis’ distress when subjected to tactics he once employed against others. I got the impression that many people were covering their own backs, and that despite having become something of an establishment figure himself (he acknowledges this) and thus able to gain access to the corridors of power, Jones was unable to draw too much out of them.  

This brings me to the question about who exactly is anti-establishment these days. Jones’ quest to find such people brings him together with a very odd bedfellow in UKIP MP Douglas Carswell, with whom he has nothing much else in common (“UKIP is not the answer to any question Jones might be interested in” – Runciman). UKIP presents a very good example, as it happens, of why this isn't a purely academic question. Farage has recently said, in conversation with Trevor Phillips, that he would like to get rid of many anti-discrimination laws, saying they're no longer necessary, and that employers should have much more freedom to discriminate/employ who they want to, depending on how it's read. When confronted with a backlash as a result, he branded the establishment "shameful" and "racist". This is fascinating, and actually illustrates why his desire to get rid of equality legislation doesn't add up. If we take him at his word and assume he's anti-establishment, ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, then surely if he's on the side of ordinary people he should be upholding laws that protect us against them? Conversely, if he is part of the establishment, then he's at least in part responsible for a racist culture. I would argue it's the latter that rings true.

Overall, I think this is a very important book in that it diagnoses the problems faced in modern Britain as a result of the power wielded by the establishment and points out the resulting symptoms, such as overlaps between Westminster and private business interests, authoritarianism, removal of the welfare safety net, records numbers of working people needing to use food banks and so forth. What it doesn’t do is offer many solutions or avenues for change; I have to confess I came away feeling utterly dispirited and fed up! Having been on Occupy myself and of the view that as much as they were seeking a new way to be, this was doomed to fail because of a lack of imagination, I wonder increasingly if what we need is something like what I’ve tried to get at in the sermon extract I’ve posted below.

Your thoughts, ideas and challenges would be appreciated! Let’s get a discussion going…
 

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In his book ‘The Prophetic Imagination’, the American theologian Walter Brueggemann describes the task of a prophet as being to “nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to [that] of the dominant culture around us”, which he argues is both “grossly uncritical” and “wearied”. In other words, prophets are all about cultivating a radically different way to be, centred on justice and compassion and the freedom of God’s liberating love. Whereas the dominant powers insist there can be “no new beginnings”, the prophetic imagination brings about renewal that leads to societal transformation.

So this calls for honesty, honesty to identity and penetrate the numbness and apathy that allows oppressive structures to flourish, especially when income-based segregation in things like housing and schooling can easily end up sheltering middle-class people (whom statistics suggest make up the majority of church members) from the everyday struggles of the poor and vulnerable. It needs courage, courage to grieve for the death of the current way of being and to articulate hope, when those running the show are fearful of the death of that which advantages them, and protest that there is no alternative. Finally, and crucially, it requires imagination to tap into the symbols in our culture that speak of hope. We need imagination to energise people, to help us discover language of poetry and praise to express wonder and amazement at the freedom of God’s love. Imagination takes the deep wells of grief and transforms them into wellsprings, torrents, monsoons of living and life-giving water.

Brueggemann goes on to talk about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as the ultimate example of this. His death on a cruel cross acts as the ultimate criticism of all that the oppressive powers of his day and ours, religious and secular, stood and stand for. We don’t like to think too much about the reality of crucifixion, which was designed to strip its victim of their dignity and humanity, but we need to gets our heads around why the Romans did it and why it was effective. For starters, crucified people didn’t wear loincloths, but were naked and utterly vulnerable; no pandering to polite sensibilities here. It was a punishment considered too severe for Roman citizens and thus was reserved for criminals and rebels, and to avoid offending its inhabitants in this particular case, took place outside Jerusalem’s boundaries. It was a shameful death, followed normally by being dumped in a common grave.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that the cross was a stumbling block to Jews, many of whom were hoping for a military Messiah who would banish the hated Romans from their land once-and-for-all, and to Greeks, who couldn’t see the logic behind the claim that such a death brings about a new way to be. Yet, that’s exactly what Jesus Christ has brought about. This apparently foolish and crazy act, the letting go of all earthly ideas of power and wisdom, the refusing to love and live with anything other than the freedom of God, changes everything.

The cross shows us, whether we like it or not, where our selfishness, our clinging onto what we have and excluding the stranger, the poor, the vulnerable and the difficult leads us. And yet that wasn’t and isn’t the end of the story. Easter and Christ’s resurrection energise and free us to embrace and to cultivate hope. It makes a radically different way of being and doing possible. Rowan Williams once referred to the resurrection as a “second Big Bang”, a release of creative energy into the universe that opens up new possibilities we could never previously have imagined. The reality is that injustice, oppression and death do not have the last word. Through the continued energising of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome weariness and apathy to see things with honesty. We can find the courage to name our society’s demons aloud and seek out symbols of hope. We can imagine a transformed world, and express wonder as we see the freedom of God’s love at work.