Scottish Catholic Observer

Ann Widdecombe has called on Christians to put pressure on the UK Government to take action against persecution of Christians overseas, and to stop it developing here.

The former government minister, speaking at an event yesterday in south London, warned that today’s ‘small-scale persecution’ of UK Christians could dramatically worsen unless people began to ‘fight back.’

Her message calling on Christians to ‘be extremely vigilant’ was delivered to more than 200 people at St Mary’s Church, Croydon. The event was organised by Aid to the Church in Need, the Catholic charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians.

“It’s very easy to look at extreme cases abroad, to say thank God we don’t have that here and then to overlook what we do have here, which is an increasing intolerance and marginalisation towards, and of, Christians,” the former MP said, speaking on the 20th anniversary of her conversion to Catholicism.

Miss Widdecombe, who in 2011 was appointed ACN UK’s special envoy for religious freedom, called on the UK government to ‘attach strings’ to overseas aid to bring pressure to bear on countries where Christians are oppressed.

Stressing the need to tackle state persecution, she said: “We are not talking about odd groups of zealots who might, in contravention of their country’s law, perpetrate acts of violence against Christians or against Christians’ properties, we are talking about where a state allows its own forces and agencies of law and order, such as its police force, to actually practise and promote persecution of a particular group.”

Stating that anti-Christian ‘persecution’ was new in the UK and was far worse abroad, she said: “If the small beginnings are not resisted then they grow into something much bigger.”

She said the main causes of ‘persecution’ against Christians in the UK were equality legislation ‘and the over interpretation of it’ and the view ‘that refusing to offend other faiths somehow involves surrendering our own.’

Miss Widdecombe, Conservative MP for Maidstone and the Weald from 1987-2010, said the best way to ‘fight back’ against religious persecution was to write an individual letter about a specific country to your MP.

Her speech follows ACN UK’s Director Neville Kyrke-Smith’s recent criticism of a UK Government report that he said downplayed the extent and nature of religious persecution.

— Visit www.acnuk.org/witnesssoutheast to hear a recording of Ann Widdecombe’s talk.