Please see my letter to Archbishop Justin Welby below. If you agree with it please log on to the Lambeth Palace website and say so. Also email me at [email protected] to say you have done so
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The Most Rev. and Right Hon. Justin Welby 9 Old Station Road
Archbishop of Canterbury Weymouth
Lambeth Palace, Dorset
London, DT3 5NQ
SE1 7JU
25th July 2016 [email protected]
Dear Archbishop
Can the Church’s Voting System help cure the Divisions in Society?
Never in my 75 years has society in Britain seemed so divided. There are indications that many of those who voted for ‘Brexit’ did so not out of cold calculation, but out of anger at an out of touch political class. The latest IFS report, ‘Living standards, poverty and inequality in the UK: 2016’ published on 19th July paints a grim picture. The headline figure of income inequality may have decreased, but this is highly misleading. Remedies for this situation will not be simple, but it is surely wishful thinking to assert that simply continuing ‘austerity’ is the answer. The standard of political discourse is depressingly low. It needs to be more constructive. There is nothing wrong with honest disagreement, but it must be handled constructively. The conduct of the House of Commons is hardly a good advertisement for Britain.
Our ‘first-past-the-post’ voting system has much to answer for. It has fostered the attitude that being on the winning side is more important than doing the right thing for Britain, and in so doing has resulted in alliances of self interest rather than principle. In a booklet entitled, ‘An Ethical Case for Electoral Reform’, published soon after the 2015 general election, retired bishop Colin Buchanan exposed the manifold distortions, absurdities, and injustices of first-past-the-post, but he also pointed out that the Church of England has been using a much fairer system, the Single Transferable Vote, since 1920 – a system which has been described to me as the ‘saviour of the Church of England’. He points out that successive Lambeth conferences have affirmed for Anglicans five ‘Marks of Mission’ of which the fourth begins: ‘To seek to transform unjust structures of society’. What is first-past-the-post if it is not such an unjust structure?
When I enquired, it was confiirmed that the booklet was known about in Lambeth Palace. I failed to ask, ‘and what are you going to do about it?’ I ask that question now.
yours sincerely
David H Smith