One of the attractions for me of Saturday’s Lib Dem Manifesto Group One-Day Conference was the opportunity to informally debate a range of issues and their implications for policy. It is a rare opportunity and one that I think we should consider using more, both at party conferences and beyond.
So, in the morning I attended the session on Community Cohesion, organised by the perhaps unlikely bedfellows of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum (LDCF), Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats (EMLD), and Liberal Democrat Humanists and Secularists (LDHS).
The session kicked off with three short speeches from Paul Holmes, Meral Ece and Simon Hughes.
Paul, representing LDHS, focused on education, calling for an end to selection and questioning who might be the “suitable bodies” to run schools. He referred to the fact that most people consider that religion does more harm than good, and raised some of the key concerns he had about faith schools. For example, Catholic schools that teach sex is only permissible in marriage, that exclude particular books and will not support charities that go against fundamental Catholic beliefs, (eg, not participating in Red Nose Day). He was concerned about other examples, like the Exclusive Brethren Church, who dismissed a female head because of their belief that a woman should not be in a position of authority. He had concerns that we were in danger of creating a “mini-America” and needed to consider carefully before handing over control to some of these bodies.
Meral expressed her view that we needed to debate the issues. She referred to the commission on community cohesion, chaired by Ted Cantell, and the importance of recognising that faith is a social network. There was no commonality of understanding about what it means to be a citizen in our multi-faith, multi-racial society. The inequalities that existed had lead to some young people turning to their background for some value, but that sometimes those values had been hijacked by a few individuals. She questioned the notion of enforced secularism, and referred to Turkey, a wholly secular system, where faith and state are completely separate.
Simon started by saying he was an Evangelical Christian, and referred to the fact that at the last census 75% of the population had a faith. He expressed frustration that the statistics were hopeless, and what we needed was an annual count and 5-yearly census. He was in favour of disestablishment of the Church of England, and was pleased that the Prime Minister would no longer have a say in appointing bishops. On faith schools, he said that if we were starting from here we would not have them; but we are where we are, and can’t realistically abolish them. He was against selection and believed that teaching about faith should take place outside school. He also felt people should be allowed to wear signs of their faith. He was in favour of the repeal of the blasphemy law, and paid tribute to Evan Harris for the work he had done on this. Finally, he referred to the importance of housing policy, and the use of the voluntary sector to support families and communities.
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