Scottish Catholic Observer

CHRISTMAS for me has always witnessed the annual arrival of three great men—Jesus Christ, obviously, Santa Claus and George Bailey. The latter is, of course, the hero of Frank Capra’s classic festive film It’s a Wonderful Life, set in the town of Bedford Falls.

On Christmas Eve 1946, George is given an angelic insight into what life would be like for the people of Bedford Falls if he’d never been born.

Instead of a small-town American idyll built upon the localised lending of George’s Building and Loan Association, the town has fallen into the clutches of ‘the richest and meanest man in the county,’ Henry F Potter. The result is a leviathan of seediness, slums and ruthless self-interest—welcome to Pottersville.

Last weekend, the people of Benin in West Africa were given a similarly stark socio-economic choice by Pope Benedict XVI. The Holy Father warned them to avoid ‘the pitfalls which exist on the African continent and elsewhere,’ including the ‘unconditional surrender to the law of the market or that of finance.’ It is a statement that would have had a long line of Papal predecessors nodding in agreement.

It is now 120 years since Pope Leo XIII penned his prophetic encyclical Rerum Novarum. It took the consistently held principles of the Church’s social doctrine and applied them to the modern era. For any Catholic trying to make sense of the current economic crisis it should be the first book on the reading list.

Although a native of Italy, Pope Leo had previously been nuncio to Belgium where he witnessed first-hand how the industrial revolution had created a ‘misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.’

His encyclical therefore firmly rejected the ills of unbridled capitalism but also the then-fashionable antidote of state socialism.

Unbridled capitalism, said Pope Leo, takes power, wealth and influence from the many and vests in the few thus leaving the many powerless. State socialism, he predicted, would do exactly the same albeit in the name of ‘the people.’ Remember, this was 28 years before the Russian Revolution first attempted to put such a statist theory into practice.

While ‘the Church does not propose any technical solution and does not impose any political solution,’ as Pope Benedict also reminded us in Benin, the principles laid out by Pope Leo XIII did inspire several generations of Catholics engaged in social policy to develop practical political solutions.

One such attempt emanated from the British Isles courtesy of such early 20th century Catholic intellectuals as GK Chesterton, Fr Vincent McNabb and Hilaire Belloc with his 1912 book The Servile State.

Their vision sought to empower the working class by distributing power, wealth and influence amongst the widest possible base and at the most localised level. Big government can be just as disempowering as big business they said. And so a particular emphasis was given to the widespread ownership of land, labour and capital amongst families and local communities.

With the rise of the welfare state and the multinational in the years following the Second World War, this ‘distributist’ philosophy was largely forgotten even by Catholics, many of whom fell in line with mainstream capitalist or socialist thinking—the latter being more often the case in Scotland.

But as many people now look for a new, more sustainable and humane economic model—is it time to revisit some of those distributist ideals? My friends, I give you two Scottish communities that could be intellectually twinned with Bedford Falls—Airdrie in Lanarkshire and Roystonhill in Glasgow.

It was near there in 2009, on my very first day as a by-election candidate in Glasgow North East, that I met Charlie Lunn. A father and grandfather, he was born and bred in Roystonhill and had worked all his life in the Wills Cigarette factory in nearby Dennistoun.

Thirty years ago, however, Charlie’s housing scheme on Roystonhill was so damp, dangerous and run down that it was earmarked to be demolished—and Charlie and his family earmarked to be decanted.

Charlie, though, had other ideas. He and his neighbours banded together, formed a small-scale housing co-operative and took ownership of their area.

Now they have, what has to be, one of the best neighbourhoods in the north of Glasgow. Attractive homes, well kept gardens, low rents and low arrears.

As Charlie told me at the time: “David, it’s more than just bricks and mortar. It’s about people. It’s about community.”

Next, to Airdrie in Lanarkshire, where at 56 Stirling Street you will find the main office of the Airdrie Savings Bank, the hub of the bank’s eight local branches.

In the 1970s, when nearly all local savings banks in the UK bought into the ‘big is best’ mentality and merged to form the Trustees Savings Bank, the ASB opted to remain small, local and independent.

The bank has no shareholders. Its board of trustees are drawn mainly from the local community. They give their time without remuneration and have no financial interest in the bank.

Spool on to the financial crisis of 2009 and while the now globalised Lloyds TSB teetered on the brink with toxic assets totalling £260 billion, the Airdrie Savings Bank came through the financial crisis in pretty good health. In fact, it has recently opened a new branch in Falkirk.

And while the then chief executive of Lloyds TSB, Eric Daniels, took an annual salary of £1 million for overseeing near-collapse, the chief executive of the ASB, Jim Lindsay, last year took a pay cut—along with all his staff—to help the community bank through the tough times.

The lesson of Airdrie, Roystonhill and Bedford Falls? That as we attempt to build that more sustainable, humane economic future we should be wary of presuming that the present ills of big business should once again necessitate even bigger government.

Instead, as George Bailey would recommend, life can be truly wonderful if we choose to recognise that small is beautiful.

— David Kerr is the Rome correspondent for a US-based news agency. He is also a former SNP parliamentary candidate