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Ann Robinson: A Global Theology: Tony Blair’s Real Third Way?
Conventional party politics and religion in the West are being swamped by a tsunami of international public concern about global issues.
Saving the planet for future generations, dealing with Aids and eradicating poverty in third world countries are the drivers of a resurgence in global humanitarianism, which dwarfs national politics. Geldof and Bono have shown real leadership to force the complex issue of poverty in Africa to the top of the West’s political agenda. Blair has begun, perhaps intuitively at this stage, to realise that his real third way and legacy will be to embrace this agenda, which is why the G8 conference focussed, despite terrorist outrages in London, on poverty, Aids and climate change.
There is widespread disillusionment both with politics and religion in the West. On politics we are fed up with spin and want to see a genuine moral basis for political decisions, characterised by honesty not control freakery. People are crying out for a moral framework that has resonance with their lives and which does not, for example, carry the baggage of the Roman Catholic doctrine on birth control, or the lack of direction demonstrated by the Church of England’s spectacular knot tying on women priests. True, Islam is a religion which is growing in the West, mainly because of immigration, but its prescriptive creed is unlikely, in my opinion, to appeal to many of us in the long term.
So why are people rediscovering their humanity and what does this mean? In the 1990s I gave a talk about what was meant by community. My thesis, shared with many, was that before the Thatcher years we had been a tolerant community, which accepted that not everyone could compete and be strong. One of our fundamental values, which helped the overwhelming majority of us to sign up to membership, was our responsibility to care for others who could not make it on their own. This was not just about people in poor health, it was also about understanding why some people found it difficult to stay in work, or keep out of trouble. The Thatcher years were not all bad but one of their worst aspects was the over-emphasis, almost obsession, on everyone standing on their own two feet and a consequent intolerance for those unable to do so.
Since then we have been clawing our way back to a reasonable middle ground - Blair’s so-called third way. In the UK this has been reinforced by over a decade of economic stability and, over the last five years, low levels of unemployment, which means we feel more financially secure and can afford to lift our sights. Throughout the West this middle way of capitalism has largely buried communism and extreme left wing socialism whose ideologies, in the past, replaced religion for many.
With the demise of Christianity and ideological politics there seems to be a moral vacuum for many people. So it is understandable that there is a strong hankering for a return to spiritual values, including a real yearning to do a bit more to contribute to mankind. This is both at the individual level and globally as evidenced by the public response to major catastrophes and Live 8, which struck a cord with millions of us.
When I was chief executive of cerebral palsy charity, Scope, and more latterly Chair of consumer watchdog, energywatch, many people gave up better-paid work to join us because they wanted a job which, they believed, had real meaning.
Global communication systems bring world issues into our living room and increasing numbers of us feel we could not look ourselves in the mirror if we stood by and did nothing to help prevent people suffer. It is part of what it means to belong to the human race.
Perhaps ironically, what most of us want is to help people to help themselves. The complexities of achieving this include not only reducing debt but also investment in infrastructure and start-up schemes. But the biggest challenge, in my opinion, will be the lowering of world trade barriers to enable economic advancement of the third world. It can be done. India and China illustrate the point. Admittedly in India, among the good things it inherited from the British were a civil service, a railway network, and democracy. But, as travellers to India know, there are many rural places in that huge country where government can scarcely reach. Business, self-help and enterprise are as important as government in raising the quality of life in many third world countries.
Were Benjamin Franklin alive today, he would surely argue that it is a self-evident truth that because something can be done, it must be done to help those less fortunate than us. Most Western politicians seem oblivious to the meaningless nature and pettiness of much of national party politics compared to the global issues we should also address. Blair, however, appears to have grasped this point and senses the need now for world political leadership. But can he convince Bush and other western leaders that there has been a paradigm shift towards global humanitarianism among western electorates? (And by the way, the Tories had better take note if they ever want to be in government again, because this means ditching existing narrow conservative values.)
I, for one, hope that Blair seizes this opportunity to be remembered not for the war in Iraq, but as the statesman who gave the world a new third way of global theology.
July 2005 | 
