Tuesday 10th February

(with apologies for the late posting - Wedensay afternoon before I could get to a computer!!)

A long day at Synod!! Though, on balance a good one!
Arrived in Church House in time for a bacon roll – rather a cheaper option than the full works in a hotel and I love the extra few minutes in bed having bought orange juice at Tesco yesterday!! The day began with the presentation on the Archbishops Review of Constitutions about whicht eh Prolocutor had raised questions in the debate on the Agenda yesterday. Christina Rees presented the review – in (what someone later commented to me was a girlish apologetic manner and rather unlike her usual style. She stressed that the aim of the review group was to improve the way we work together – it will (apparently) also save money. The big problem that is perceived with the way of working that the Review Group has proposed is that large groups like the Mission and Public Affairs committee will no longer have the stage in their proceedings where the leadership and staff members hear from a wide variety of Synod members all of whom have expertise in different areas of the Board’s work. Instead a review group willb e elected and each year they will have the chance (retrospectively) to monitor the work that is being done by the Council.
Everyone is invited to send in their views to the consultation and there willb e adebate in July – probably one with fireworks!

From here Synod progressed to legislative business – I took some time out to check emails from the office at Dorchester – only to discover that there was no electricity there!! A short time back in the Chamber and then a visit to the top floor of the building at the request of the Communications department to be interviewed about the Church of England web pages!! What I did discover was that you can access the Dorchester Abbey Website from the C of E website in about 4 clicks!! Good News!

The highlight of the day was the lunchtime Fringe meeting – a lunch and presentation to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of Traidcraft! Once I had crossed the ‘How can traidcraft be that old??’ hurdle it was an inspiring occasion. Remember the Jute hanging plant baskets – one of the key women making those has now died BUT she used the money she made to educate her daughter … who went to University and got a degree … and has opened a school in the village where she grew up – so as a direct result of the fair-trade wages of one woman based on those baskets (who DIDN’T have one hanging somewhere in their home in the 70’s??) 60 children are now being educated. The important message from the lunch was that Traidcraft has moved on … well, we knew it had moved on from Jute to food but many of us are stuck in ‘its better to buy fair trade good from the supermarket in order to encourage them to stock fair trade.’ But this is 90’s talk – the supermarkets – Tesco in particular are now Traidcraft’s biggest competitor – Fairtrade accounts for an increasing proportion of supermarket sales and big names increasingly have a policy of ‘fairtrade only own brands’. Obviously this is good news…. BUT …Traidcraft has always used their profits to fund new projects and take risks. Supermarkets don’t do this.
SO IT’S A NEW MESSAGE – buy TRAIDCRAFT goods – slightly more expensive biut the profits are ploughed back into development and the encouragement of new fair trade areas … and products. I’m now the proud owner of one of the first pairs of rubber gloves made from fairly traded rubber. They don’t have a Fairtrade mark yet because until there’s a demand the work won’t be done to set the standard.

Lunch over the Archbishop of Canterbury gives a Presidential Address on Lambeth, the Anglican Communion and briefly, the divisions that may be avoided over women bishops. No headline news here because all the Primates attended the recent Primates meeting, worshipped together and talked together!!

So now we get to the first of a number of Private members Motions this Synod. Vasnatha Gnanadoss, Simon Bessant and others have been campaigning for the Church to tackle the issue of racism for most of this century (nd before that). Today was a turning point – drawing attention to the fact that the BNP and parties like them are claiming to be part of the Church of England. I spoke about my experiences with that party in organising Hustings in the Abbey for the Henley by-election last year. Speaking in Synod is extraordinary – I always know what I want to say but somehow it never comes out as I hear it in my head!! Vasantha’s motion called on Synod to ask the House of Bishops to formulate a policy comparable to that of the police that would ensure that no-one working for the Church of England belongs to a political party whose principles and policies are contrary to the Christian gospel of justice and equality. Three amendments were brought, both Archbishop’s spoke and the motion was passed unamended.
Minutes pass and now we are in the world of finance. Andreas Whittam Smith who, as far back as July, warned us about the recession led a ‘seminar style’ presentation together with Lord Goldsmith and the retired Bishop of Worcester, Peter Selby. When the full transcript of this debate is available on the Website you should read it …but for now some soundbytes!
Lord Griffiths: Bankers got it desperately wrong because they were incompetent (about managing risk) and reckless (took too much risk and allowed it to be ‘off balance sheet)
The question of bonuses is a difficult one – it may seem outrageous to give bankers a bonus with public money – but if the Government wants to get the taxpayers money back then the best people must be encouraged to stay!
Peter Selby: the Church must NOT use words like greed, greedy and selfish – not only do these words make us look like ‘grumpy church’ but they also let us off the hook of acknowledging that there was a universal conviction that deregulation of the market place would benefit everyone.
Peter Selby: the ancient wisdom of our tradition is that lending and borrowing are both absolutely essential and absolutely dangerous because they create power relationships that it is very difficult to control.

You’d think that this would have been enough for one day but there was still a final item of business – an hour and half on the Chester Diocesan motion on the Church in Public life. This had begun in the Wirral Deanery (‘almost as a lament’ in the words of proposer David Felix) and as I understand it wanted to inspire the Church as an institution as well as church members to fulfil their role in the public life of the nation and act with confidence to be taken seriously. It was significantly amended (so significantly that it didn’t look like the same motion) by Peter Spiers and has become a motion that encourages us all to go and live our lives a Christians in the world…

Whew – what a day and all that was left was to go and eat in the company of the General Synod WATCH (women and the church) group – yes, it’s that debate tomorrow!