Social Justice or Political Injustice?
Social problems are never solved by trying to push them out of sight. The Government’s recent response to the problem of the so-called New Age travellers, its review of the 1968 Caravan Sites Act, is literally doing just that. Far from being a case for legislation, the solution lies instead in a complete transformation of society’s moral and social attitudes to these “free spirits”.
From Ribblehead in the Yorkshire Dales to Davidstow in Cornwall, the police have recently performed military-style operations to prevent Free Festivals going ahead. Take Romsey in Hampshire for example. In a situation of near anarchy, an invasion of 8,000 or so travellers defeated the combined police forces of Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, Wiltshire, and Dorset,and succeeded in staging their ‘music’ festival. “We have no doubt that we stopped a free festival which could have attracted 20,000 people,” a Hampshire police spokesman said. “It could have been considerably worse if we had not acted.”
Engendered with fear and anxiety, both the Christians and non-Christians of Romsey were disgruntled to witness a mass invasion of their personal liberties by people supported by their taxes. “I think the thing that sticks in the craw of most people more than anything is that they are sitting at home with their homes and property at risk,” suggested Mr Michael Colvin, MP for Romsey and Waterside. The absence of respect for property or the rights of others, the illegality of their lifestyle, and the general inconvenience caused by them, has detached society from these travellers. But established society’s opinion of them has also distanced the travellers from society.
Not all travellers are completely alienated from society. Fred Newman, a traveller who has worked on a flower farm for three years in Crowlas, Cornwall, has virtually been accepted as a member of the local community. “If I go down to the local village every one seems very nice,” he says. In a similar way, if the invasion of Romsey had resulted in a permanent existence of travellers at the Chivers Pit site, then the local Churches, with active social programmes for the ‘needy and neglected’, would have tried to achieve reconciliation. “Romsey was hit by this ‘invasion’ on a Friday night and by Monday morning everyone had left. There was no chance to come to grips with them,” explained Rev. L. Catterall of the Catholic Church.
The revelling party-going travellers, waxing and waning like the moon, place a time constraint on the local ‘host’ community, making it difficult for it to respond in an organised fashion. But Christians should consider integrating these free spirits into their social programmes to achieve true social justice and reconciliation.
It is time to stop using brute force — a method not dissimilar to that used by English society in the later Middle Ages in response to ‘sturdy beggars’, who were taken to parish boundaries, flogged, and sent packing. It is time to stop using degrading punitive legislation — a humiliating generalisation and an ineffective solution to the problem. It is time moreover, to create social justice through the use of redemptive love, an option characterized by both dialogue with the ‘oppressor’ and identification with the ‘oppressed’.
In response to the injustices of his own society Christ became angry on occasion, but more typically we find him associating with the perpetrators of injustices, eating with them, and pleading with them to return to the ways of justice. Dialogue with the ‘oppressor’ therefore involves Christians not merely in formal negotiation with the authorities, but in continuous interaction with them.
The theologian Stephen Williams once wrote “Loving my neighbour as myself, whatever else it means, involves giving my neighbour the attention I give myself in daily concerns”. Identification with the ‘oppressed’ requires an element of self sacrifice. In other words, when an army of melody-making New Age travellers arrives on your doorstep, you should be prepared to meet their needs and accommodate their wishes. As might be imagined this is not the easiest thing to do; it certainly was not for Christ. For victims of injustice, he submitted himself to the worst injustice by dying on the cross, responding with neither violence nor capitulation. This needs to be the starting point for the transformation of society’s moral and social attitudes to these travellers.
We must be prepared to reconcile these weekend revellers to society from below. Our actions, in association with dialogue with the state authorities, will influence their attitude to them and the problem will be solved from above. Social problems are always solved by meeting them face to face.