On 9th May 2019 the House of Lords debated a motion from Lord Harris of Haringey, “to move that this House regrets the conduct, and toxicity, of debate in public life; of the divisions in society which result from that; and calls on Her Majesty’s Government to take steps to address such divisions.” The Bishop of Leeds spoke in the debate and a transcript is below. The Bishop of Rochester also spoke in the debate and his speech can be read here:
The Lord Bishop of Leeds: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for securing this debate and for the clarity of his and other speeches. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Patten, that if such a cast were assembled, some of the people who need to be there simply would not turn up. If they did, they would see it as their job to disrupt it, so I suspect it will be more complex.
We still admire Benjamin Disraeli for telling Parliament that half the Cabinet were asses and, on being ordered to withdraw the comment, responding, “Mr Speaker, I withdraw. Half the cabinet are not asses”. Political invective is not new and it must have a place in a free society, but words matter. I speak as a former professional linguist. Language is never neutral, and the ad hominem abuse we increasingly witness now simply encourages wider public expression of violent hatred. It is incrementally corrosive.
If the conduct of debate in public life has become toxic, it is only because it has been in the interests of some people to allow it to be so. I have already spoken in this House of the corruption of the public discourse and the consequences of normalising lying and misrepresentation. I add that reducing people to categories might reinforce tribal identity, but it demonises and dehumanises everyone else. As Viktor Klemperer recognised from 1930s Germany, a million repetitions of single words, idioms, and sentence structures or slanders become unconsciously assumed to be normal. Think of Rwanda and “cockroaches”.
Jo Cox MP was murdered only 10 miles from where I live and I was there within the hour. Her attacker shouted slogans about “Britain first” while killing her. Do we think this is just unfortunate, or do we admit the link between language, motivation and action? I doubt if there was much analysis of the meaninglessness of the phrase “Britain first” and the assumptions that underlie it, but there was clearly a dynamic between language, motivation and action—language free from social inhibition and language that legitimises violence in the minds of some people.
What is going on here? Was the violent bile there already and did the referendum of 2016 simply open a valve, or has the lack of any legal or political restraint sanctioned or legitimised the sort of language we hear and read now? This is not about hand-wringing wimpishness about robust debate; rather, it now sees MPs fearing for their safety. As we have heard, Jess Phillips MP was openly spoken of in terms of when rape might be deemed okay. People are voicing violence that would have been deemed unacceptable three or four years ago, but which now is normal. This poses a danger to our democracy and corrupts the nature of our common life. It is not neutral and it is not trivial.
Classic populist language, of left or right, uses simple slogans, divisive negativity and visceral emotional pull. The accuracy, factuality or truth of what is said is irrelevant. Such language is powerful and effective: it works. It is also apparently unaccountable. What are Nigel Farage’s policies for the construction of a post-Brexit United Kingdom? Where is there even a hint of any responsibility for the future, other than a rejection of the past? It is just one simple message supported by a whole set of angry assumptions, and the language is all of betrayal. The culprits, the enemies, are those who are not them. This is viscerally emotional and not rational. Reality, truth and factuality are of no concern. Complex questions are reduced to simplistic binary choices. And it works.
We are witnessing a trading in the language of victimhood. Everybody, it seems, is now a victim. All sides of the Brexit shouting match claim to have been betrayed: hard Brexiters by soft Brexiters; remainers by leavers and leavers by remainers; “the people”—whoever they are—by the “elites” and the establishment by the people; and apparently everyone by the BBC. The ninth commandment is there for a purpose: do not bear false witness against your neighbour. Surely only satire could see old Etonian, Oxbridge-educated, senior multimillionaire politicians complaining about “establishment elites” as if this term of abuse referred to someone else. But no one laughs, and they get away with it. It is not a great leap from this to the sort of conspiracy theories that have brought anti-Semitism back into polite conversation.
When politicians speak of the Prime Minister entering “the killing zone” and taking “her own noose” to a meeting, we are in trouble. The German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, writes that the nature of our public discourse matters because,
“moral and political aberrations almost always start with linguistic neglect”.
Edmund Burke understood the powerful influence of abstract terms such as “liberty” or “equality”, which have the power to move people without enlightening them.
We might be entering a dark age in these matters, but we can put our own house in order and lead by example; for instance, by promoting a greater sense of responsibility among institutional and political figures who influence the public discourse; by making people who use such speech publicly accountable, and by offering counter-narratives that ensure that our children hear something good and witness a discourse that is respectful. We need strategies for addressing this, and we need to start here, with politicians, in Parliament.
Lord Patten (Con)…I propose to your Lordships that we should all think very hard about trying to get together a group of sensible people, who would be widely recognised as that but also as not being politicians. Broadly speaking, we politicians are thought to be the cause of the problem in the first place. I mean a bunch of people who might be chaired by some acceptable celeb—perhaps someone from the entertainment world who is instantly recognised but perhaps someone from the medical world, from environmental protection or whatever. She or he should not be readily recognised as being a politician in any way but as a free-thinking person who, with a group of other free-thinking people, would say “Enough’s enough, so let’s spend time talking in some place”. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester suggested your Lordships’ Chamber but perhaps it should be in a less partisan place than the Palace of Westminster. The group should talk for a few hours—perhaps half a day—and say, “It’s got to stop, and this is why”. They would need the advice of people who think spiritually such as the humanist associations, who have valuable insights into all this, and those in minority communities, such as the Muslims or the Jews. The Jews rightly feel threatened and afeared, just as they felt in 1939 when those vicious arguments were used.
We would certainly need someone such as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury to be there. Doubtless, the right reverend Prelates from Rochester and Leeds would have some other brother or sister bishop whom they would like to see there on the day. I will probably get into terrible trouble in the confessional, as I have not consulted him, but I would also like to propose and volunteer the services of his eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, firmly rooted as he is in Merseyside and Liverpool…
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)… Business and finance also have responsibilities to wider society and the national community, which they fail to meet. Moreover, perhaps I may say to our two bishops present that the Church shares in the responsibility to talk about the moral dimension of markets, society and government. The Church ought to be saying that more loudly and clearly. I know that it will be sharply criticised by the media for doing so, but that is what you are there for and that is what you should be doing…
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)…My Lords, I also thank my noble friend Lord Harris for tabling this timely—indeed, all too topical—debate. It is sad that we need it but, as he said, we need to detoxify political debate and to heal divisions being fostered within society. The dual contributions from our Bishops were noteworthy—I was about to say “interesting” but, having heard from my noble friend Lord Winston, I think “noteworthy” is a better word to use—but when the churches witness the depth and effect of what is going on, I think we should take heed. Acknowledging the scale of the problem is a necessary start to addressing it…
…However, of late we have witnessed, from activists seeking votes as well as from anonymous, unaccountable bloggers, in addition to the evidence-free assertions mentioned by my noble friend Lord Winston, a level of abuse, vehemence and spite that has undermined faith in politicians. That is the “danger to our democracy” in the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds….
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)…The noble Lord, Lord Harris, was quite right to raise this serious issue, and I commend the speech that he made in introducing the debate. He made some very moving references to Jo Cox, also referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds and others…
…The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, mentioned the importance of the language that we use, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds was, rightly, concerned about the normalisation of violence in our language…
…The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds developed the themes by referring to the language of betrayal that has been used by some of those currently campaigning. I deplore the language that has been used—in some cases by my party—to talk about politicians. But the whole House welcomed the two memorable thoughts for the day offered by the two right reverend Prelates…
