Scottish Catholic Observer

-BY ROSS AHLFELD

“We thank you Lord for the twin pillars of civilisation: Christianity and cricket. “

– The Beach.

I have a confession to make: my mate Dave Robinson and I share a love that dares not speak its name among Scottish football fans—every year we drive down to the Riverside Ground in Durham to watch England play cricket. To be fair to Dave, he comes from the north east and so he, at least, has an excuse.

As for me, I became hooked on English cricket after being mesmerised by Phil Tufnell’s bowling master class against the Aussies at the Oval back in 1997 and I don’t care who knows it!

Fortunately, Dave likes to drive down to Durham; less fortunately for me, Dave’s jokes are awful, and I do mean awful. Think of a combination of Stan Boardman and Jim Bowen and you start to get the idea. Therefore, all I can do is look out the window at the majestic Borders and Northumberland countryside and offer up this deep suffering to our Lord as an act of penance on the journey from Glasgow to Durham.

Last May, Dave and I enjoyed a few laughs and a few pints late into a glorious spring evening watching the test match between England and Sri Lanka.

This year, it’s an early autumn 20/20 game against West Indies. Dave likes to head back down to the north east to visit friends and family at other times during the year, while I like to go back in the mid-summer for the Durham Miners’ Gala.

For those unfamiliar with the gala, it is a huge trade union meeting and parade which takes place every year in July. This annual gathering celebrates the region’s coal mining and trade union heritage and it has been taking place in the county for more than 130 years.

There is also an annual Miners’ Service at the magnificent Cathedral Church of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and St Cuthbert of Durham.

This joyful celebration includes trade union and community banners being processed into Durham Cathedral led by brass bands. The new banners are then blessed while brass bands play various well-known hymns.

This year the sermon by Bishop Paul was beautiful—‘Be renewed in Jesus. Go out and renew your communities!’ The service itself was also deeply moving and packed out. To hear the colliery bands echoing around the cathedral led by the last of the old miners, proudly marching with their banners is the perfect expression of togetherness of class, community and Faith.

Many of the banners you see around Durham depict biblical scenes such as Daniel in the lion’s den. Others depict Christian socialist leaders such as Lanarkshire’s own Keir Hardie and Robert Smillie, as well my own hero, the great Christian pacifist Labour leader George Lansbury (inset right), described by Jon Cruddas as the unsung father of Blue Labour. Mr Lansbury isn’t so well known these days, but you may be surprised to learn that there is a Lansbury Street named after him in the Gibshill area of Greenock

Perhaps somewhat controversially, some of the banners from villages such as Chopwell (once known as Little Moscow due to its Communist sympathies) include images of the Godless Lenin and Trotsky (whatever happened to him?).

Even though it’s only the new banners which are blessed nowadays, some Christians I spoke to are understandably uncomfortable with the possibility of such ‘enemies of the Faith’ occasionally making an appearance inside the cathedral.

Personally, I feel that it does dear old Lenin good to show face at chapel now and again. Perhaps I don’t get so uptight about communist images because truthfully, we all know that this particular strain of left-wing politics died off sometime back in the 1980s alongside liberation theology.

Since then, the Christian Left of all denominations have been rejecting the dehumanising communalisation of capitalism and the statist collectivisation of communism for a long time now.

We have been rediscovering the pre-Marxist politics of the British working classes, a radical politics with its origins, not in The Communist Manifesto, but in the Church. For example, Blue Labour founder Maurice Glasman points out that it was the Catholic intellectual Lamennais who first coined the term proletariat back in 1830, not Karl Marx.

Furthermore, us lay people have started to better understand the practical application of our own Catholic Social Teaching. This growth in understanding has been helped in no small part by the work of the Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice within the department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. Here in Durham, the centre works to develop Catholic social thought as widely as possible beyond the University by working directly with the community.

As well as working in partnership with Catholic Faith-based organisations in promoting the common good and human dignity, the centre has, for example, got involved in the campaign for a living wage. For me, the business of academic research into Catholic Social Teaching at Durham is very fitting since it can be argued that the miners of Durham and The Tolpuddle Martyrs came from a similar background of Faith-based labourism. These early union leaders developed their social concern and leadership skills in the chapel.

The same can be said of the great 19th century evangelical Christians social reformers such as Robert Raikes of the Sunday School movement whose efforts were responsible for improving literacy amongst working class children.

Back then, Methodism was the established religion of pit communities and every pit village had a chapel. Much like the deeply religious and politically radical weavers of my own Paisley Diocese, those working class Faith communities developed an autodidactic tradition, co-operative ideas and trade unionism through parish life and socially active preachers.

Yet, despite Durham Cathedral now being an Anglican place of worship, it remains an important place of pilgrimage for us Catholics since it houses the relics and remains of great saints such as St Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede.

Of interest to us Scottish Catholics is the altar dedicated to St Margaret of Scotland and a recently installed plaque commemorating Scottish soldiers who died in the Cathedral as prisoners of Oliver Cromwell after the Battle of Dunbar in 1650.

Unsurprisingly, there are no Cromwell Trade Union or miners banners in here.

Strangely, there is however a Cromwell banner belonging to the Sons of Conquerors Loyal Orange Lodge 162 from Glasgow, which seems odd if you consider the fact that up to 3,000 Scots Covenanters were killed by Cromwell’s regicidal Parliamentary forces at the Battle of Dunbar, with thousands more being taken prisoner. An estimated 3,000 of which were imprisoned within Durham Cathedral itself. Most died there and any survivors were transported to the colonies as slaves.

Yet, while social history and the great cathedrals are all well and good, for me the real action is always to be found in the parish. There are other interesting places of worship that are well worth visiting while in Durham.

The impressive Church of Our Lady of Mercy and St Godric is a Grade II listed church designed by EW Pugin located in the city centre.

There is also St Cuthbert’s Catholic Church which is very old, beautiful and until quite recently, was entrusted to the Dominican Friars. Since St Cuthbert’s return to the care of the diocese, it now often accommodates Durham’s growing Juventutem group for the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of Mass alongside a vibrant parish community. If you’ve not heard of Juventutem, they are groups of wonderful young Catholics who seek to grow in holiness by means of traditional liturgy, prayer, catechesis and spirituality as well as carrying out charitable works of mercy.

The good folks of St Cuthbert’s also get involved in the miners gala celebrations by opening up the Church to provide refreshments and raise money for charity. The Catholics here are proud to be involved in the Gala just as the Catholics of my own Paisley Diocese were proud to be involved in the very similar ‘Sma’ Shot’ Weavers parade in Paisley on the previous Saturday before the Miners’ Gala.

Most importantly, St Cuthbert’s offers a little oasis of peace and reflection at the heart of this gathering which manages to draw tens of thousands.

It’s estimated that the gala attracted a record crowd this year, mainly due to Corbyn-mania. When I arrived at the race course for the speeches, it felt as if we were witnessing some great rising, just as the Pilgrimage of Grace had taken place in the north of England against Henry VIII 500 years earlier.

Yet while there was certainly a Biblical feel to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn addressing the multitudes, he wasn’t my principle reason for coming here. For me, a bigger superstar associated with the north east is the Biblical scholar and former Anglican Bishop of Durham, NT Wright.

I really enjoy Bishop Wright’s writing and lectures; his highly traditional and quite conservative theology calls us to the political work of social witness. Bishop Wright asks that our lives be transformed by the literal resurrection of Jesus. For me, Bishop Wright is telling us that Christ has risen, now go out and change lives, just as the Apostles did after Pentecost, just as the nonconformist Durham Miners and Paisley weavers did. This is why Wright remains popular in Durham today.

Interestingly, Bishop Wright followed in the footsteps of an earlier Bishop of Durham called Brooke Foss ­Westcott, who was also loved by the mining population of Durham.

In 1892 he succeeded in bringing a peaceful solution to a long and bitter strike in the Durham collieries. Just as Cardinal Henry Manning (another hero of the Blue Labour movement) helped end the London Dock strike of 1889.

Two short years later, Cardinal Manning was influential in the composition of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum encyclical which explicitly supported the right of workers to form trade unions. Equally, Bishop Westcott strongly supported the co-operative movement and he also helped to found the Christian Social Union. And so, while it is vital for us to engage in the politics of common good, just as our forbearers did, it is more vital that we always recall who we truly are and to whom we belong.

Jeremy Corbyn is not the new messiah despite reports to the contrary; there’s only one JC to be glorified, there is only one gathering where we are all truly equal. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said: “At the moment of adoration, we are all equal, kneeling before the sacrament of love.”

More recently, Pope Francis reminded us that the disciple’s relationship with the master must always takes precedence over all others.

Most of all, I found in Durham two different living traditions both sustained by the power of community: the first, a flowering of interest in traditional liturgy thanks to the energetic young people of Juventenum. The second, the persistence of an older, more authentic form of Christian social action rooted in the mutualism of the nonconformist Christian miners of the 19th century, a tradition which, in my opinion, is being kept alive through the work of Blue Labour in the north east.

I’d like to thank all my friends in Durham for their hospitality, especially Blue Labour, Christians on the Left and the parishioners of St Cuthbert’s.

Thanks also to my good mate Dave, himself forged by the north east’s tradition of mining and nonconformist Christianity.

Despite the awful jokes, Dave has forgotten more about community work and social enterprise than I’ll ever know.

God bless all these good folks and may God bless the shipyard workers of the Clyde, the Lanarkshire steel workers, Ayrshire miners and the miners of Durham too. Never forget them.

“Empty trucks once filled with coal,

Lined up like men on the dole.

Will they e’er be used again,

Or left for scrap just like the men?”

—Coal Not Dole.

PIC: PAUL SIMPSON