Issue 8075

THE

INQUIRER £1 | Issue 8075 | 20 January 2024

Inside this issue…

New international collaborations Welcoming incomers It’s a Funny Old World

www.inquirer.org.uk

The voice of British and Irish Unitarians and Free Christians

What makes a homeland?

Margaret Kirk on when faith and history collide

THE

INQUIRER The Unitarian and Free Christian Paper Established in 1842, The Inquirer is the oldest nonconformist religious newspaper.

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www.unitarian.org.uk Page 2 | Issue 8075 – 20 January 2024

Inquiring Words…

A Prayer for Peace For those who are fleeing: sanctuary For those who are staying: safety For those who are fighting: peace

For those whose hearts are breaking: comfort For those who see no future: hope.

Poor Clares Galway, Ireland

Roots of oppression Margaret Kirk’s excellent article on homelands made a connection for me. The Old Testament justifications she mentions for the taking of lands sounded familiar. They reminded me of the Doctrine of Discovery, created soon after Europeans reached the Americas. My friend Oren Lyons, Onondaga faithkeeper and member of the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee people, explains it this way on his nation’s website: It is based on a series of 15th-century Papal Bulls that gave Christian explorers the right to claim title to the lands they ‘discovered’ and lay claim to those lands for their Christian Monarchs. Any land that was not inhabited by Christians was available to be ‘discovered’, claimed, and exploited. If the ‘pagan’ inhabitants could be converted, they might be spared. If not, they could be enslaved or killed.

By this directive, by fiat, the European nations claimed for themselves the entire Western Hemisphere. It is a demonstration of the incredible arrogance of the time. This has resulted in the subjugation, genocide, relegating indigenous peoples to a subhuman status in international politics.

Indigenous peoples have been labouring and suffering under that status right up until the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was established in 2007, which for the first time recognised Indigenous peoples as ‘peoples’.

When I looked for information on the Doctrine, I was pleased to note that the Unitarian Universalist Association was one of the first religious organisations to repudiate it.

Adopting a resolution in 2011 which called the Doctrine of Discovery, ‘a relic of colonialism, feudalism, and of religious, cultural, and racial biases having no place in the modern day treatment of the American Indians.’ It further called on the pope and Queen Elizabeth, as heads of their churches, to work toward upholding the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Chief Lyons helped write and get passed. (See it here: http://tinyurl.com/UN-indigenous) Perhaps the Old Testament beliefs and practices which Margaret writes of informed the Bulls, leaving us to confront the fact that just as the roots of our faith reach back to the Old Testament, so too do those of oppression.

For more information see: https://doctrineofdiscovery.org MC Burns

Margaret Kirk writes of when dreams and stories run into reality

How does a place become a homeland?

Occasionally I turn to Al Jazeera when I want to get a different slant about what`s going on in the world. I did this recently to try and broaden my understanding of the war between Hamas and Israel. And, as Al Jazeera`s media network is based in Qatar, I expect to find a different bias.

But I was most drawn to an article written about the homeland of a Canadian Indigenous woman from British Columbia who had suffered an acute sense of dislocation and loss as a result of colonisation.

Her poignant memories of that action-packed because God has homeland took me some distance decreed that all the Canaanites and away from my subject of interest, all the other tribes must be put to “Home and homeland the Middle East – but not `the edge of the sword’. entirely. It was full of the same I don`t much recall being made are both notions that reverberations about cherished land aware of this wholesale act of carry a great weight of – that sense of loss when a part of slaughter, and I certainly don`t oneself and one`s identity has been recall any teacher questioning emotional baggage and irrevocably splintered, and I was whether it was morally right or not nowhere more so than back in the Middle East with all its to seize the land occupied by other anguish. people – no one considered that in the Middle East.”

Christmas has gone. And, gone with question. Instead, it was just taken it, is the idealisation of home: the for granted that the command from advertising which began months God to Moses and to Joshua to kill before with its relentless imagery of the occupants of the land they were cosy family togetherness creating misery for those who seizing was OK. are estranged from their families or just simply, have no I’d like to think that an RE lesson today, especially at a family to spend time with. Home and homeland are both secondary school, would invite children to consider the notions that carry a great weight of emotional baggage moral rights and wrongs of slaughtering everyone living in and nowhere more so than in the Middle East where the land that you believe you have a right to occupy. But for one ethnic group, the emotional baggage is not just I suppose the brutality of the invasion was always skirted around the notion of a homeland but a `Promised Land`. over because the purpose of the story is to demonstrate The Old Testament Exodus story tells us about the Jewish that God is on the side of these chosen people. We people in captivity in Egypt who crossed the Red Sea are not being asked to question anything that God which magically rolled back its waters to allow them to decrees, and the kind of multifaith primary school that escape their pursuers and cross into the desert of Sinai in my grandchildren attended in Middlesbrough probably search of the homeland God had promised them. It’s one avoided teaching anything so contentious. of the stories that captured my imagination in my primary At the beginning of my ministerial training I came across school RE lessons – action packed. And then the Israelites the writer, Kathy Galloway: a minister of the Church of cross the river Jordan, reach Jericho where it`s even more Scotland and a founding member of the Iona Community.

Continued on page 4 > www.inquirer.org.uk | Page 3

“As a past minister of the York Unitarian congregation, I couldn`t fail to sense the shadow cast over the town back in 1190 when Clifford`s Tower was the scene of a notorious massacre of Jewish people.”

Shown left: Clifford’s Tower with daffodils in bloom. Photo by Dave Lee © Continued from page 3 >,

She gave the Essex Hall Lecture at the Unitarian General Assembly meeting in 1996. In a publication titled Talking to the Bones there’s a piece of writing called the Exodus Experience which she describes in her introduction as writing based on work she did with a group of around 30 people from all nationalities and backgrounds who talked about and named their own experience of exodus. This she made into poetic form. She begins Promised Land 11 with an observation that when liberation theologians were studying the exodus story with Christianised Indians, they discovered they did not identify with `the chosen people’, but with the Canaanites:

(They) found their reality Mirrored in another native people Invaded, occupied, their sacred ground trampled, their convictions mocked, their promises betrayed, their history silenced, their children dispossessed

The Promised Land is the founding myth on which the religion of Judaism is based. Secular Jews do not believe that Israel was given to them apart from by the United Nations in 1948 and I think it likely that there are many Reform Jews who think the same.

So, here we are today, face to face with those raw feelings felt by both Palestinians and Israelis about their conflicting claims to the land.

On the one hand we have Jews who have been the victims of pogroms and persecution for centuries. As a past minister of the York Unitarian congregation, I couldn`t fail to sense the shadow cast over the town back in 1190 when Clifford`s Tower was the scene of a notorious massacre

of Jewish people. They were hiding in the wooden tower for protection whilst at the base, an ugly, braying mob, reinforced by troops, led to their decision to commit suicide rather than be murdered or forced to convert.

Passions inflamed against Jews This was at the height of the Crusades when passions were inflamed against non-Christians and also close to Easter when the medieval church would ignorantly proclaim the Jews’ ‘complicity’ in the death of Jesus Christ. Some who did agree to convert and leave the tower, were not given safe passage but murdered by the mob and most likely those who remained realised there was no safe route for escape with their lives. The records tell us that they decided to face death together rather than be killed by the mob. The father of each family killed his wife and his family and then took his own life. They set alight those possessions they`d taken with them and the wooden tower itself. That historical moment lives on in the consciousness of many Jewish people and I remember attending a talk by the Anglo-Jewish poet, Jon Silkin where he recited his poem The Coldness capturing his sense of a coldness permeating the city directly linked through the centuries to the present day.

Now on that earth mound there is a stone tower and the grass slope has been planted with daffodils with their sixpointed shape reminiscent of the star of David. These bloom in the springtime close to the date of the massacre – 16 March.

Cliff Reed put it well in The Inquirer (11 November) in his article called Poisoned by the Past where he says much of this persecution has stemmed from Christianity – not, he says, by the way ‘taught by Jesus and his true disciples, but of Christianity as a corrupt, intolerant institution’ and he goes on to say that medieval Christianity bears Continued on page 5 >

Page 4 | Issue 8075 – 20 January 2024

Cultures ‘torn up by the roots’ An excerpt from the 1996 Essex Hall Lecture

by Kathy Galloway A species among other species: though we may have an intellectual awareness of this in our society, it’s still somewhat difficult to take it on board. Even with a deep conviction of intrinsic worth, we still have problems of perspective, and the pressures to disconnect are acute.

We recognise the fact that indigenous or aboriginal cultures often have highly evolved ways of living in right relationship with their habitat. These ways are highly unitive, deeply connective. They have lived in what anthropologists have termed a ‘participation mystique’ of undivided wholeness, in which even the term ‘reverence for nature’ is inaccurate because it conveys rather too much ‘over-againstness’ for a context in which such a degree of differentiation has not been conceived of.

But such cultures who have been torn up by the roots from the land on which they grew by the wonders of, what we charmingly call, ‘progress’ or ‘development’ are forced into a brutal differentiation which is almost unimaginable for us in our highly individualistic culture. Western cultures have had centuries of this brutalisation. We have been torn up by the roots so often. This is part, for example, of what it means to be Scottish. It seems to me to be one of the great gifts of being part of a religious tradition that there are scriptures, ceremonies, music and stories that remind us of our roots, of times when we were not so disconnected.

Uprooted, it is harder for us to know ourselves as a species among species. In our religious faith there may also be a strong unitive, connective concern – self-consciously so; one we strive for, whether it be in an undifferentiated

absorption into the divine or Godhead, or whether, as in Christianity, in the belief that the fullest realisation of selfhood or differentiation comes in union with God. But if one part of religion is the attempt to conceive of the universe as humanly meaningful, there is also the temptation to interpret this as meaning that humankind is what the universe is for. And thence, it is only a small step to the arrogance of believing that the universe is for us of making us the value adders to creation. So it may be a considerable struggle to affirm that, on the contrary, we are for the universe.

Both in our relationship with our own habitat, and in our relationship with God, the sociological and historical pressures running against connectedness are acute. And though a scientific spirituality may have a clearer picture of our ecological interdependence, it is still subject to the pervasive and persuasive strategy of making the end justify the means, in a value-loaded, anthropocentric way – as conflicts about everything from animal testing to nuclear power demonstrate.

And then, even if relatedness to the creation and all its complex bio-diversity is simply that of the passionate lover whose ultimate concern is the well-being of the beloved earth, there always and genuinely exists the claims of another, or other, loves. Sometimes the choices and demands seem irreconcilable. Perhaps this is seen most acutely in the dilemma of those who cut wood for fuel, in order just to survive, in the full knowledge that they are destroying part of the biological foundation of their own life on earth. Anyone who has found themselves with apparently competing loves is aware of the anguish of this struggle.

Homeland Continued from page 4 >

responsibility for the appalling lie that the Jews were to blame for the death of Jesus which he adds `I have even heard … repeated where I live in Ipswich.` The Palestinians, the occupants of the Holy Land, forced from their ancestral land, have quite legitimate reasons to feel aggrieved: there was no state of Palestine created in 1948 at the same time the state of Israel was recognised by the international community and perhaps, most shockingly at this present time, the Israeli government ignores the legal right of Palestinians to live in the West Bank, and Israelis are settling there in larger numbers whilst threatening and killing their Palestinian neighbours.

There are raw feelings on both sides and deep roots that give them succour.

We need men and women of extraordinary vision and commitment and compassion to find a path through this tragic human struggle, not based on our own self-interest as was so often the case in the past when Israeli and Palestinian self-determination was wrangled over, but on

what we believe is humanly just. It will have to begin with huge acts of forgiveness leading to reconciliation that will test the powers of any mediator. There are few political solutions but I believe there are always routes, however great the resistance, to deepen understanding of each other`s pain and in that way to make it a mission not to repeat `the poison of the past.`

Margaret Kirk The Rev Margaret Kirk is a writer and retired Unitarian minister.

www.inquirer.org.uk | Page 5

Elizabeth Slade sees new international connections after Prague leadership conference

Crossing borders on common ground ‘What is it that we have in common?’, I kept asking myself at November’s ‘Leading into the Future’ event in Prague. I met and listened to so many people, and I thought that since ours is a faith that exists in a relational position to other faiths and dominant cultures in its context, I was intrigued to see how this played out in different parts of the world.

There were folks in attendance from the UK, US, Canada, Brazil, Bolivia, Kenya, South Africa, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, India and Australia.

There were folks in attendance local culture elsewhere. from the UK, US, Canada, Our (virtual) keynote speaker was “Though it’s easy for Brazil, Bolivia, Kenya, South Bayo Akomolafe, the Nigerian Africa, the Netherlands, thinker and writer. I have been us to feel like we are Germany, the Czech Republic, following his work for a few years, but separate, independent Hungary, Romania, India this was the first time I encountered and Australia. The hosting his work in a Unitarian context – and I beings, or that humans team of Alicia Forde, Tyna felt a sense of relief in the coherence stand apart from other Ledererdova, Helen Mason (of of what had been two separate parts Unitarian College) and Kate of my life coming together. life, that is not our Lassiter, were brilliant, leading His talk centred on the need to take reality.” us seamlessly through a wella more-than-human approach to shaped programme, and giving our faith. He spoke from his Yoruba us plenty of space to connect background, but the stories he told meaningfully with our fellow felt universal. Though it’s easy for us participants. to feel like we are separate, independent beings, or that I have been holding that question – about what we have humans stand apart from other life, that is not our reality, in common – throughout my work with the Leadership & or even a story that serves us.

Design Team (LDT), which was commissioned to imagine what global collaboration might look like following the Acknowledging the world beyond our bubble International Council of Unitarians and Universalists I was also grateful for the way Bayo acknowledged the (ICUU) closure, particularly if we are to consciously atrocities happening in the Middle East while we were choose not to continue or recreate unhealthy power meeting – taking space at the start to acknowledge the dynamics. feeling that ‘we may be sleepwalking into World War III’.

It felt important to me that while we connected deeply The wish to share can be complicated with each other in the bubble of Unitarian community we The question of what we have in common becomes so formed, that we also kept our eye on the bigger picture. important here. It’s easy for power dynamics to play out in Part of this sense related to feeling the weight of the a way that assumes common practices in worship or ways aviation fuel most people used to get to Prague; how of gathering. We may wish to share what we have found do we balance the value in strengthening international useful – or sacred – but it is essential to remember that relations with the reality that flying is the single most the way these things are expressed must chime with the environmentally damaging personal act most of us will Page 6 | Issue 8075 – 20 January 2024

“Our shared practice of liberal religion and collective spiritual inquiry feels valuable while secular individualism and religious fundamentalism are such dominant forces the world over.”

Shown left: Worship leaders in Prague included British ministers Ant Howe, centre, and Winnie Gordon, right. Photo by Amanda Thomas

take? At least we must be intentional when we gather – and know that part of the value in gathering in person is the possibility of walking together, eating together, seeing new sights together, which can’t be done so richly at a distance.

Preparing ground for fruitful relationships The same was true with the leaders of other institutions with whom I spent time. I was glad to have dinner with the leaders of the other churches – Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) President Sofia Betancourt, Hungarian Bishop Istvan Kovscs, along with Vyda Ng the Director of the Canadian Unitarian Council, and Tyna Ledererdova, the Director of the Czech Unitarian Church. While part of me wished that we had solved everything for Unitarians everywhere over that dinner, I know that the ground was prepared for the long, slow, careful relationships that can be the foundation for more lasting collaboration. Likewise with the directors of Starr King and Meadville Lombard, the UU theological colleges.

The things that I learned about their lives, families and paths into their UU faith are much more valuable than ticking off tasks on an agenda.

Many reasons for uncertainty No matter our geographical location, one thing we all seem to have in common is that our future is uncertain.

For many it’s because their communities are very much smaller than a few decades ago, and a clear path of rejuvenation is not yet apparent. For others it’s because they are trying to create Unitarian community with very little infrastructure or support – often in a political context that does not make it easy for liberal religious faith. For all of us it’s because climate breakdown is bringing rapid economic and environmental changes – which, of course, are making themselves apparent at different rates in different parts of the world. (Several of my international colleagues have had their connections to

our virtual meetings disrupted by extreme weather events or electricity shutdowns – planned and unplanned.)

Whatever the circumstances of our uncertainty, the way through is by careful listening to those around us, and inside ourselves, to our forebears and our future generations, to our peers and to the more-than-human world.

There is no single global Unitarian form that works for everyone, but our shared practice of liberal religion and collective spiritual inquiry feels valuable while secular individualism and religious fundamentalism are such dominant forces the world over.

Nurturing connections online and in person The Prague gathering was the first opportunity for the LDT to meet in person, after nearly two years of virtual meetings. Although a recurring theme was ‘nothing beats getting together in person’, the quality of relationship we LDT members all felt showed just how much can be built through consistent, slow, virtual connection. What I am learning is that in-person and virtual connection have different tones and rhythms and possibilities – but richness can be developed in both.

I had imagined that the LDT – arriving a day earlier and leaving a day later than most delegates – would spend our time in intensive meetings. But I learnt that the in-person time allowed our relationships to deepen in a way that will make the next phase of remote work more effective.

The framework of collaboration that the LDT shared with participants is not about anyone holding a central global agenda for Unitarianism, but about creating the infrastructure for connection and collaboration so that the grassroots and local leaders can work together easily on shared concerns. Rather than work through formal national bodies or rigid governance structures or hierarchies, our collaboration tools mean power can be shared much more horizontally; collaboration can be led by where the energy is, not just by those with the right job Continued on page 8 > www.inquirer.org.uk | Page 7

“It was a good reminder that the way we gather and connect with each other is as much part of the work as the more explicit spaces for collaboration.”

Shown left: Elizabeth Slade, centre, participates in a discussion at the Leading into the Future event in Prague. Photo by Jon Dorsett

Support is available for international groups Continued from page 7 >

titles or money.

I am excited by what might be created through relationships forming in new ways – that a congregation member in Transylvania can connect with a minister in South Africa and a worship leader in the UK to compare notes on their faith, their practice, their buildings, their social action work, their music, their community outreach, or whatever else their passions may be.

Connections across borders and beliefs There can be many different groups and connections forming – among ministers, young adults, newcomers, emerging leaders, treasurers, musicians, LGBTQ+ folk – any form of international fellowship that may wish to grow.

The intention is that the infrastructure will be there so that it’s easy for groups to self-organise. Those who wish to organise future in-person events will have a platform to connect and coordinate. The UUA will be providing financial support for facilitation roles for the coming years – but, crucially, will not be directing the work. This is a courageous step from the largest and wealthiest Unitarian organisation – to offer their funds without determining the outcomes or ways of working, but entrusting that task to others.

I was surprised to learn in Prague that some participants were under the incorrect impression that the gathering had been led by the LDT. It was a helpful lesson to me.

Despite all the official communication clearly stating that the event was convened by Unitarian College, the Czech Unitarian Church, and the UUA international office, some people projected onto the meeting the things that were close to their hearts. The LDT heard some quite pained and impassioned feedback from some who were closely involved with the ICUU and hoped for a similar gathering.

It helped me to see that when people care deeply about Page 8 | Issue 8075 – 20 January 2024

infrastructure that has been beneficial to them, it can be hard to move on until they have been heard. I know that many people have missed international Unitarian gatherings after covid stopped them, and so the wish for them to return in previous patterns must have been strong – perhaps strong enough to see this gathering as something different to its intended purpose.

The unexpected currents around participants’ expectations showed me that there were (at least) two main reasons for people gathering in Prague. One was collaboration about the theme of theological education, and one was community and connection. I found myself feeling frustrated by this to begin with – I was there for the former (as well as meeting my LDT colleagues) and assumed that everyone was there for that ‘official’ purpose. But as the meeting went on, it was a good reminder that the way we gather and connect with each other is as much part of the work as the more explicit spaces for collaboration.

So much can arise from the spaces in which relationships are made.

Elizabeth Slade Elizabeth Slade is Chief Officer of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.

Of ministers and movements I’m not sure if Rishi Sunak will still be Prime Minister at the end of this new year, but, either way, there is one unusual thing he will be remembered for. For the oath of allegiance as an MP, he said, ‘I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and successors, according to law, so help me God,’ while placing his hand on a copy of the Gita. This is the Bhagavad Gita, which the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions defines as ‘A fundamental text for Hindus – for many, the most sublime’. Sunak is the first Hindu UK Prime Minister.

More recently, at the Covid inquiry, he swore ‘by the Gita’ to tell the truth. An alternative way of swearing in such circumstances is available for those who object to swearing the oath. They are permitted to say, ‘I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance…’ No scriptures need be held at all. Sunak makes no secret of his religion and presumably the oath he swore was acceptable to both the late Queen and to King Charles, the head of the Church of England. All part of our multi-faith society. *** Sunak is not quite the first non-Christian Prime Minister.

Benjamin Disraeli was born into a Jewish family, though attended an Anglican school. Does the faith of our PM matter? In 2022, Catholic priest Mark Vickers published God in Number Ten (which I haven’t read) looking at the last 19 PMs. Church Times reviewer Nick Spencer notes, ‘Vickers has a good grasp of the Established Church, but is just as comfortable writing about Roman Catholicism, Nonconformity, and Unitarianism (of which there is quite a bit before 1940).’ So, we are not included in Nonconformity.

Strange. One-time Unitarians Ramsay MacDonald and Neville Chamberlain come into this survey, which might have had some relevance when the PM has to advise the monarch on the appointment of bishops.

Spencer adds, ‘The book covers prime-ministerial beliefs, churchgoing, and habits of prayer, episcopal appointments, and church-state, ecumenical, and, latterly, interfaith relations. If there is one lacuna, it is how far and in what way the PMs’ religion shaped their politics.’ So, interesting, but we are none the wiser. *** The Sky is Crying is the title of a wailing blues lament for a lost love. It came into my mind during the seemingly relentless rains of December and January. For me, it suggests the climate’s reaction to the rising global temperature, enabling the air to absorb increasing amounts of water vapour which is then converted into rain. Rivers, fields, village streets and towns are in floods of tears as I write,

FUNNY OLD WORLD

By John Midgley

as are farmers and homeowners seeing their property devastated, as well as the homes of innumerable wildlife creatures.

Are any of our churches or chapels affected? I doubt if any Unitarians have actually been praying for the rains to cease, rather, weeping with the victims in their suffering. *** Our local Oxfam bookshop is expanding into larger premises (a disused bank, a sign of the times). I’ve handed in most of the bedtime books I have read in 2023, mainly biographies and autobiographies plus a few on current affairs.

Looking back, I enjoyed a biography of Michael Foot (19132010) former party leader and one of last great orators of the House of Commons. This skill, largely lost, emerged it is said from his former Methodist background. It was astonishing to read that this strongly left-wing career politician maintained a long, personal friendship with Enoch Powell, whose political leanings were decidedly right-wing.

This suggests a high level of tolerance, but where either of them gained that from, I don’t know. *** Altogether different was the autobiography of TV personality and entertainer, Gyles Brandreth. His act, which we saw in Buxton, included teaching the audience the exercises he uses for voice production, to improve his articulation and projection. He had us chanting, ‘Hip bath, hip bath, lavatory, lavatory, bidet, bidet, douche! douche!’ Did he use this exercise in his bathroom, I wonder?

It revived memories of my own voice production exercises during training for the ministry at Unitarian College, Manchester. Ministers of a certain age will remember the unforgettable Miss Trainor, who came along every week to work on our abilities. She taught us the intercostal diaphragmatic method of breathing(!) and for me added exercises to help me declaim, clearly and audibly. I can still recite O’Shaughnessy’s, ‘We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams’, which closes with the words, ‘But we are the movers and shakers of the world, forever, it seems.’

I used to carry out this exercise in the college bathroom, but the claim made in the last line invariably made me laugh. Going to the toilet was never the same after that.

Incomers bring good things I lived near Bedford where there were two large immigrant populations – Polish and Italian. We had so many Italians living in the town that we had – and were the only town to have – an Italian Vice-Consulate. The Italians had come for jobs in the brick works. And, when the brick works closed, they stayed and worked elsewhere. Both communities had their own church and the Italians had a nursery school. I was told that as all the Italians came from the same area of Italy, they originally had grapes sent over, by train and boat, to make their own wine.

Then the Asians arrived. It was immediately obvious that they were incomers because of their skin colour and the difference in dress. They lived close to each other, as they had to be close to the halal butcher and the mosque.

They did not mix, but then neither did the other incoming groups. However, they did offer an enormous advantage to the native population. Used to the sound of shop doors closing on the dot of 5, we rejoiced in the shops which stayed open until late. And, if you were hanging round the door looking hopeful, would reopen after they had officially closed. And they brought food. Now the Italians had opened restaurants, but you had to look for them.

The Asians opened their takeaways and restaurants in full view. To able to eat such fascinating food – out or in – and at such low cost, was a revelation. In other areas of the country the Chinese were having a similar success.

An Afro-Caribbean colleague said to me. ‘Until we arrived, you people didn’t know how to enjoy yourselves.’ They brought us the disco, and the Notting Hill Carnival was a far cry from the genteel processions of floats advertising various local businesses. Now, many towns are imitating the carnival and using them to showcase their ethnic diversity. Bhangra dancing anyone?

I spent my teenage years on a half-gentile, half-Jewish estate. We had a synagogue and a kosher butcher, and on Friday afternoons a smart young man would walk the Jewish pupils down from the primary school to the synagogue to begin the Sabbath.

DORIS’ COLUMN

By Dorothy Haughton They brought their faith with them Maisie Mosco in her novel Almonds and Raisins relates the story of a Jewish family fleeing Russia and ending up in Britain, right next door to Bury, my home town. Many of them had, hidden away, a blue tattoo showing that they had survived being imprisoned in a concentration camp.

Their faith was enormously important to them. If it has upheld you through such an experience, it is bound to be.

And then I went to Handsworth or little Jamaica. There were so many Jamaicans that we had the ‘Weekly Gleaner’ delivered, though we were never charged for it.

The Jamaican shopkeepers were lovely. In their rich, warm accents they would explain that they were only here to make money but that they would go home to Jamaica, the most beautiful country on God’s earth, to die. ‘But what about me?’ I would cry. ‘Never mind, darling’. They would pat my hand. ‘You work hard, you too can die in Jamaica.’

I’m still waiting.

All the way to the Hebrides I bought a top from an Asian stall holder. ‘I can make

Continued on page 11 > Page 10 | Issue 8075 – 20 January 2024

Incoming Continued from page 10 >

these’, he said. ‘I used to come home from school and go down to the basement and join my mum and my aunties at a sewing machine.’ My friend Akram’s father, like so many other Pakistanis, sold socks door to door. One of their community kept on travelling until he reached the Outer Hebrides where he opened a shop. ‘He can only speak Urdu and Gaelic,’ said Akram proudly. He also claimed that two Sikhs had opened a restaurant in Edinburgh and had had a tartan made for them, the McSikh. This may be a modern myth. (Editor’s note: There is, indeed, a Sikh tartan, commissioned by a Sikh family in Edinburgh to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their arrival in Scotland, according to The Scottish Register of Tartans. The register is silent on whether it’s known as the McSikh.)

The pattern of immigration is that the men arrive first and then the sons and then the women and daughters. I had a lad in my class. Blazer, gleaming white shirts, pressed shorts. He lived in a household of men – his father and his uncles – and they were not having him come to school a scruff!

Black Britons predate the English Professor David Olusoga in his programme ‘Black and British’ pointed out how black people first arrived with the Romans – before the English! Philippa Gregory in her book Respectable Trade pointed out that many slaves escaped into the East End of London where the police were afraid to go to retrieve them. She writes, ‘It is one of the delights of history that a racist supporter of the BNP today may well have a black great-great-greatgreat grandfather.’ Professor Alice Roberts produced a wonderful programme on the TV explaining how the first recognisable humans originated in Africa and emigrated from there across the world. I have repeatedly advised people to read Peter Fryer’s Staying Power about the forgotten, once famous black people in Britain. And, for fiction lovers, Gillian Bradshaw’s novel Dark North ends with the true story of a black Roman soldier putting the wind up the Emperor Severus when he visited Britain.

And get this. ‘Cheddar Man,’ Britain’s oldest complete

Shown above: Asian immigrants introduced shops which were open past 5. Photo by Roman Rezor on Unsplash

skeleton, was discovered in 1903 in Gough’s Cave near the village of Cheddar in Somerset. He lived about 10,000 years ago in the Mesolithic period, the middle part of the Stone Age, and he had dark skin.

It’s all about the vitamin D We are only white because we need to be to absorb as much vitamin D as possible. Not enough sunshine here!

And as for asylum seekers. If soldiers raped your mother and daughter, forced your father and your son into the military or executed them, wouldn’t you want to go and live somewhere with no fighting, no bombs, no starvation?

And like every other incomer they come maybe bereft of money but rich in gifts.

I don’t think I have come across an immigrant group that hasn’t contributed hugely to the British economy and the British culture. (According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, refugees can contribute economically to the societies that welcome them in many ways: as workers, innovators, entrepreneurs, taxpayers, consumers and investors. Their efforts can help create jobs, raise the productivity and wages of local workers, lift capital returns, stimulate international trade and investment, and boost innovation, enterprise and growth.)

I have not met an immigrant who hasn’t been fun to meet and talk to. However, I suppose as one of the privileged middle class, I have never seen an incomer group as a threat to me and my security. Family legend has it that my family were incomers in the 17th Century coming over with the lace makers from Holland. My great grandmother’s maiden name was Herod. No, I can’t claim kinship with ancient Jewish royalty. It comes from the Norse and is a version of Harold. My surname is AngloSaxon and my first name is Greek. Go figure! ‘Heinz 57’ we used to say of dogs of uncertain parentage. That’s me.

Mongrel and proud. www.inquirer.org.uk | Page 11

Holocaust Memorial Day: 27 January Prayer of Those Who Remember God of our hearts, God of our understandings, God who gives us hope and inspires us to commitment, God who commands us to remember:

Shown above: Nicholas Winton with a child in Prague in 1938. AP photo in public domain

Review: ‘One Life’

By Ralph Catts ‘One Life’ – the story of Nicholas Winton and his Unitarian friends in Prague 1938 This story describes what happened, especially to Jewish children, when Germany invaded the Czech Republic in 1938, The war memorials in the Czech Republic identify the war as being from 1938 – 1945.

The movie is long (141 mins) and slow paced, as is appropriate to the theme of rescuing children in Prague from the threat of Nazi oppression. It takes time to build an understanding of the evil that spread across Europe in 1938 and 1939, and also to appreciate the hurdles that had to be cleared to achieve the rescue.

As one might expect, the focus is on the role played by Sir Nicholas, and other characters involved in the operation are not developed. This is a pity because according to Andrew Hill (Inquirer, 6 July 2013), several Unitarian ministers played an active role in the rescue. In addition, Unitarian families were among the British people who responded with funds and offers of a safe home for the refugees. If one approaches the film with this understanding, you can appreciate not only the drive of Sir Nicholas, but also the courage and commitment of the Unitarians who contributed.

While relatively few people now living have memories of the Nazi oppression, inhumane abuse of our fellow human beings is once more all too evident in many parts of the world including in Ukraine and also in Gaza, Israel, and Beirut. Once more we Unitarians can respond to the need to help refugees. The Czech Unitarians are active in their support of Ukrainian refugees. While Britain can look back to honour Sir Nicholas Winton, can we Unitarians encourage a more caring response from western governments to those in desperate need of help today?

We come together today with hearts contrite and broken; We come together with minds awake, comprehension striving against incomprehension; We come together in hope growing in the fertile soil of our dedication to prevent future atrocities; We come, remembering all those lost to past hatred and indifference.

We feel deeply the call to remember those lost in camps and ghettos, in streets and forests; Their sheer number leaves us reeling; Each one was truly a unique world of possibility forever lost to us; We also feel the call to honour the lives and legacies of those who survived.

May we learn to carry their worlds that were cut short.

May we turn from apathy and prevent the growth of hatred and inequity.

May we become worthy of the duty of remembrance that is ours.

May we never forget them.

Let us make this world a place where the cry ‘Never again!’ is not uttered in vain; And in promise let the people say: Amen.

Paul Oakley

Shown above: A stumble stone placed in memory of a Holocaust victim from Berlin. Photo by Singlespeedfahrer via Wikimedia www.inquirer.org.uk | Page 12