Gordon Brown’s moral compass is more like a dodgy satnav
Ioften miss the glaring messages in fiction, because I am a prosaic and feeble-minded moron. Take Lyra and her altheiometer, in Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights trilogy. I read it ages ago, and it only clicked the other day. It’s basically a science-powered moral compass, isn’t it? Lyra makes her moral choices based on the readings of an instrument. The Church, her nemesis, does not.
When Gordon Brown talks about having a moral compass, I wonder if this is the sort of thing he has in mind. Him and all his little daemons, crouched in a cupboard in Downing Street, watching a little golden needle swing between pictures of, say, a man with a beard, and a bomb, and the number 42.
Maybe not. Many of our Prime Minister’s decisions appear far too complex to be compass-led. Is it more like a dodgy moral satnav, perhaps? A moral Google Maps, with the wrong postcode from the start? The 10p tax fuss, the wrangling over fuel tax, the idea of closing schools to make them better. What kind of gadget came up with those? A moral Hungry Hippo?
According to the authors of Moral, But No Compass, a new report commissioned by the Church of England, the needle is spinning madly. And why? ‘The churches,’ sighs the report, ‘simply do not register on the policymaking radar in serious terms.’ That’s right. A policy-making radar, too. No wonder our politicians are lost. Moral compass in one hand, policy-making radar in the other, pivoting at the junctions of the corridors of power. Like bats in an orienteering contest, occasionally going ‘meeeep’.
It has got to be a tough gig, producing a report for the Church of England. Whatever the question, the answer has got to be ‘the Church’. That’s the whole point. Failing marriages? The Church! Kids going feral? The Church! It’s not like you have free rein to suggest banning cheese in schools, or mandatory pet days at the London Planetarium, is it? So, what could help reset the government’s wayward moral compass? Ah yes. The Church!
Actually, the authors seem a bit irate that this ‘moral compass’ business is getting all the headlines. That’s just a snappy headline, and a dig at Gordon Brown. In truth, from reports about the report (do you need to have read a report to report on a report? Can reporters report on reports of reports? Must consult my own moral compass) it appears to be about social welfare. And can you guess the answer to sorting out social welfare? Go on, try. No, it’s not nightclubs. Mosques? Well, you’re close. Yes, that’s right, have a biscuit.
There is bad blood here, and maybe it gets in the way. Despite the personal protestations of Blair and Brown, the government view seems basically to be that worshipping anything that isn’t the Labour party is tantamount to worshipping a wooden spoon you found in the back of your kitchen drawer, or a three-headed goatman from Pluto. This should be frowned upon, they reckon, and discouraged, unless a particular batch of three-headed-goatman and/or spoon worshippers decides to start blowing themselves up. Then one needs to start being very nice to them, in the hope that the spoon and/or the big three-headed-goatman himself will notice this and, perhaps from Pluto, tell them to stop.
The emerging Tory view seems to be crucially different. As with Lyra and her altheiometer, I took a while to twig. It’s all this third-sector business, isn’t it? The spoons and three-headed goatmen from Pluto are a little embarrassing, sure enough, but Cameron and his chums have noticed that these people also run pretty decent schools, scout groups and nursing homes. The important thing is that old people get cared for, and that children grow up being able to read, write, run, and have civil conversations about their garden hedges without stabbing each other to death. If, along the way, some of them also start worshipping a three-headed goatman from Pluto or a wooden spoon, well, shit happens. It’s a small price to pay.
This makes a lot of sense. I’m a heathen sort for the most part, but it’s not from want of exposure. You don’t need to see much of churches, synagogues, temples and mosques to be aware of what they can do. The best defence of religion is community; the stuff people do when they stop harping on about God. Godless groups do this sort of stuff too, of course, but the Goddites tend to do it better. Full marks for Tory pragmatism.
Of course, the churches don’t much want to be lumped in with the cult of the spoon, or the mysteries of three-headed goatmen from Pluto. They don’t want to be mere youth clubs or social groups, either. So, they piously harp on about their blasted moral compass — in the title, no less — and then get annoyed when everybody thinks this is the point. And perhaps, if they actually studied the thing, or their radar, or their astrolabe, or whatever the hell else they carry around in place of actual, normal, common sense, they would realise that this was exactly the wrong thing to do. Meeep.
What makes 27 dolphins ground themselves on a beach in Cornwall? A dolphin Heaven’s Gate? Did they, too, have a defective compass, moral or otherwise? It is the sort of mystery that reminds you of the limitations of being human, with more than a whiff of Douglas Adams. Why does anything come out of the sea? Why did we?
During the year I lived in South Africa, there was a similar recurring problem with crayfish. The little lobsters kept wandering up on to the beach, in their thousands, and dying. People would rush down to collect them up in buckets and chuck them back in the sea, and get into fights with other, hungrier, often somewhat darker people, who had also brought buckets and fancied a spot of crayfish. Eventually, the authorities would post armed police, and the conservationists would technically win. But by then, of course, half the remaining crayfish would be dead, but the hungry folk from the townships would still be barred from picking them up. That’s South Africa for you. Bonkers.
The local papers would report the phenomenon as a ‘crayfish walkout’. A lovely phrase. These crayfish, they have had enough. No more scuttling around in the corals. They are downing tools, moving on. One thought of teams of furious crayfish, around a brazier. As opposed to how they normally ended up, which, alas, was in one.
Previous page
