Onward Christian Soldiers

Kathy Galloway’s sermon to the Christian Socialist Movement in Brighton had an unfortunate resonance for one Anthony Blair:

“In Glasgow last week, a sixteen-strong immigration squad kicked down the front door of a house in Drumchapel at 6 in the morning, handcuffed the father, ransacked the home and removed a family, including children in their pyjamas, who had been living in Glasgow for five years to a detention centre hundreds of miles away, without warning or preparation. The school friends of the family are devastated. In the present political climate, the distress of some Glasgow schoolchildren cuts little ice. But they are not stupid, these schoolchildren. They are enjoined to be tolerant, welcoming, anti-racist, and they have duly been all of these. What they see, however, is that politicians are actually dancing to a much more xenophobic tune. They are not practising what they preach. What they see is moral cowardice, a failure of integrity. They realise that high ideals are not really to be taken seriously after all. Cynicism grows, and the political process loses a little more of its future.

So catastrophically unjust is our present dominant world order, so racist, so ecologically disastrous, so corrupt the global arms trade that it is almost impossible to be politically engaged without being morally compromised.”

Well indeed Kathy, all the more embarrassing given the Guardian’s story today. Good Christian Tony Blair and his God-Fearing defence secretary John Reid, have been holding secret talks with Saudi Arabia in pursuit of a huge arms deal worth up to £40bn, according to diplomatic sources, see here for full story.

Read Kathy’s full speech here.