Blog

19/05/2017

Anthony Horan, Director of the Catholic Parliamentary Office, writes our latest blog in which he focuses on the message from Scotlands Bishops in their Pre-election letter urging politicians to engage in respectful dialogue.

Scotland’s Catholic Bishops have urged voters to be mindful of a number of issues ahead of next month’s General Election. They have asked the faithful to bear in mind the right to life, the need to challenge and eradicate poverty, and the plight of refugees and asylum seekers. They have also spoken of the need to challenge political candidates on their commitment to a more respectful and tolerant type of politics.

Many people are tired of the persistent squabbling and arguing being played out between politicians on a seemingly daily basis. And this always seems to be heightened around election time. Our TV screens and social media pages are full of people who seem to be more interested in scoring party political points than getting on with the job of doing what is best for our society and promoting the common good, and people are tired of it.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the Bishops feel compelled to invite politicians to take a new direction and to give greater prominence to respect and tolerance and avoid overdoing the points scoring and unnecessary insults. The Bishops have said, “Often politicians are tempted to score points or resort to insults. We need politicians who are willing to change this and to take politics in a new direction, where dialogue is respectful, and where different points of view, including those of a religious nature, are tolerated.”

This is sage advice and our political candidates and those working with them would do well to take it on board. Too many people, including politicians, fall prey to the petty and childish behaviour that has become commonplace on social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. They mistake these platforms for places of dialogue and open, honest, respectful discussion. The sad truth is, they are no such thing.
Too many people simply use social media to vent hatred and intolerance and it’s all too easy for politicians to get drawn into the mindless verbal ping pong that only seems to add further fuel to extremist views.

Argument and debate will always be a part of politics, and it needs to be. But this can never descend into insults and the type of behaviour that should be reserved for the school playground. Politicians should never lose focus of what really matters. The stakes are too high. As the Bishops have rightly said, society “will be judged on how it treats its poorest and most vulnerable citizens.” These are challenging words for all of us, political candidates and voters alike, and we must take them to the ballot box on 8th June.

12/05/2017

Migration Matters

In our latest blog Justice and Peace Commissioner Grace Buckley reflects on the valuable contribution migrants and refugees can make to world peace and understanding, as she discovered on her journey into the world of online education.

Life is full of surprises, large and small, good and bad, and I sometimes feel that the Good Lord sends some of them into our lives to move us forward out of our comfort zones or our complacency so that we can make progress on our faith journey.

I recently registered for a short online course called Migration Matters with an English university. I thought it would be useful for my work with Scottish Faiths Action for Refugees (SFAR) and the Working Group of the European Conference of Justice & Peace Commissions on Forced Migration and Human Rights. My only concerns about taking the course were centred on finding the time to do the required reading and take part in the online discussions.

I rather assumed that the other participants likely to be on the course would probably to be people like myself from faith communities with interests in migrant/refugee issues or UK students doing related courses of study. The surprise came when I accessed the website section where we were encouraged to introduce ourselves to each other.

Of the 27 participants, some were as expected: a woman priest from the Scottish Episcopal Church, a Scottish based NGO worker, a Methodist church worker. However the real surprise for me was that the majority of participants were refugees themselves, many based in the huge Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi (which houses 57,000 refugees according to UNHCR figures from March 2017, and which has been in existence since 1994).

As Pope Francis said in his tweet of 15 April 2016: “Refugees are not numbers, they are people who have faces, names, stories, and need to be treated as such.”
Well, now I had the names of some of these refugees, some of their pictures and parts of their stories. One has been in the Dzaleka camp since 2005, another since 2010.

Suddenly the course took on a whole new aspect for me and presented me with potential challenges as well. It would not be like any other course I had taken part in. The discussions were unlikely to be the comfortable academic ones about the papers we would be reading and the theories we would learning about, that I had anticipated. Many of our participants would be living daily the realities that we would be talking about.

Their brief introductions make it clear that, despite their refugee status and the uncertainties of their lives, they are taking every opportunity to get an education. A number have obtained qualifications through the Jesuit-run programme Jesuit Worldwide Learning (formerly Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins) in which the Jesuit Regis University is involved. Some also act as volunteers with UNHCR in the camp, seeking to help other refugees.

So before the course even starts, I have learned much. I was not aware of the Dzaleka camp and the fact that many refugees had been there for such a significant part, if not all, of their lives. Nor had I known of the great practical work being done by the Jesuit Refugee Service to try to ensure that young refugees don’t become a lost generation in terms of tertiary education.

So far, so good, but the challenge for me as we begin is: what do or can I bring to this course when I am so conscious that so many of the participants are dealing with the issues and facing the problems of being migrants and refugees as their reality.

Perhaps in a later blog, I can answer that question.

Migration Matters, is a short online course at Catherine of Siena College, University of Roehampton.

05/05/2017

Death by Benefit Sanctions

Our latest blog is a personal view by Marian Pallister, J & P Commissioner for Argyll & the Isles on how those living in rural areas are being pushed to the edge as they struggle to comply with the criteria for claiming benefits.

If you have cause to read the UK Government website ‘nidirect’, you find a very encouraging statement:

‘The benefits system provides practical help and financial support if you are unemployed and looking for work. It also provides you with additional income when your earnings are low, if you are bringing up children, are retired, care for someone, are ill or have a disability.’

If you have seen the film I, Daniel Blake, you may have come away with a slightly different viewpoint. It is the Cathy Come Home of the 21st century and I for one would hope that it has a similar effect in changing government policies and public attitudes.

In April, our Justice and Peace group at St Margaret’s, Lochgilphead, in Argyll, invited our MP, Brendan O’Hara, to discuss how the benefits system disadvantages people living in rural areas, exacerbating poverty. Our research confirmed that too many members of our community suffer increased levels of stress and anxiety in their efforts to meet the criteria demanded by the system. Failure to meet those criteria frequently leads to individuals and families without food and living with the threat of homelessness. They become rural Daniel Blakes.

We know that it is hard enough wherever you live to be unemployed or on a low wage, but it really does get worse when there isn’t a bus to get you to the appointment on which hangs you being awarded benefits or being sanctioned instead. For the uninitiated, being sanctioned means your benefits are stopped – possibly for three weeks, possibly for more than a year.

Let me give you an example. A disabled man living outside a Mid Argyll village, two miles from a bus stop, was sanctioned because he couldn’t get to the Job Centre. By the time he was contacted, he hadn’t eaten for three days. The quickest ‘official’ food parcel, funded by the local social work department, couldn’t be delivered to him for six days. The local MS centre delivered food to him, adding fresh food items to the parcel.

That isn’t why the MS Centre exists – it’s there to care for people with multiple sclerosis and other auto-immune conditions. But it is in the local caring ‘charity’ loop and so heard about the situation and acted. It can’t act every time there’s such a crisis.

The Trussell Trust provided 145,865 3-day emergency food supplies in Scotland in 2016-17. Our nearest food banks are in Oban (a 74-mile round trip) and Campbeltown (a 100-mile round trip). Public transport is thin on the ground and costs money. The food parcels don’t contain any fresh food and people can’t afford the electricity costs to cook, so pot noodles and tinned creamed rice become staples. The idea of making your own nourishing soup is nothing more than a modern fairy story.

A local charity, MO-MA (Moving On Mid Argyll), which provides basic household and personal essentials for individuals and families moving into a new home after a crisis, now finds that they have to add food parcels to the package.

People have to go through hoops to get their benefits. Employment Support Allowance interviews may take place in Oban but PIP interviews may be carried out in Glasgow – a 190 mile round journey on buses that don’t always fit with appointment times. People already stressed and anxious become suicidal faced with these obstacles.

Our faith seeks to promote integral human development. Pope Francis has initiated a new dicastery with responsibilities that include ‘…those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed’. Our Justice and Peace group now hopes to work with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and even more closely with our friends at MO-MA. And we’re hoping to make our voices heard at Westminster, whatever the election result.

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