Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
No beating about the bush. I hated school. School and me never exactly fell out, but neither were we friends.
I can’t blame bullying or poor teaching. But in the end they more or less gave up and, by the time I had failed all my GCEs with the lone exception of English literature, they were quite happy to ship me off to a college to learn shorthand, more helpful than Hamlet when you are seeking employment in the reporting business.
I was the original seven stone weakling of those Charles Atlas body-building adverts in the Sunday papers. My poor eyesight ruled me out of most sport, with the exception of cross country. Always last to be picked for rugby I spent most of games sessions trying to avoid the ball and being trampled by those muscular big lads who were so attractive to the girls.
I had a lot of time off school. I had terrible migraines and if there was a rash going round I would surely catch it, so I wasn’t a healthy child. I certainly gave no indication that, as soon as I left, I would be playing football and running on the fells like a good ’un.
You would classify me as a problem using current Department for Education data which shows that 150,000 children in England are missing a half or more of their time at school. It’s much more evident in the north where rates of unauthorised absence are 34 per cent higher than in the south. Many children missing school are the product of troubled families and only a concerted effort involving the major agencies dealing with health, education and social services, can give the support that is needed,
Finding out what is keeping children away from school is one part of it. The other is discovering what they are doing while they are absent and what their family life is like.
Fining parents is not the answer to reducing absence rates. That’s one thing that seems clear.
How far back will these reparations go?
These reparations. Exactly how far back into history do they go?
My great, great, many greats….ancestor William Brewster may not have been averse to having a few slaves to do the washing and ironing aboard the Mayflower when he led the Pilgrim fathers on their great adventure to North America. But it was 1620 and I don’t think I can be held personally responsible for any reparations his 13 male and two female servants accrued on the journey.
William, it was said, was the brains, the backbone and the conscience of the religious movement. Their miserable 65-day journey finally over, he led passengers in singing the 100th Psalm as they landed at Cape Cod.
University educated, William was an extraordinary man, as anyone who named his children Wrestling, Love, Fear and Patience would most certainly be. He was a Separatist who fell out with the religious order in Britain and found himself embroiled in the unrest emerging in Scotland.
When William died in 1627 he had acquired four islands in his honour — the Great, Little, Middle and Outer Brewsters, none of which has earned any income for his present-day descendant.
Sir Keir Starmer made it plain last week. No apology and no reparations. It looks like this columnist is off the hook. A few British families did get rich on the backs of slaves, of that there is no doubt. If anyone has a moral or legal claim against them from individual descendants of slaves then there may be some justice.
Otherwise, with nearly 20 per cent of British taxpayers coming from ethnic minorities, it would take some sorting out.
I wonder if Home Secretary David Lammy recalls his rant six years ago, in opposition, when he demanded reparations and compensation. Easily said when you are not holding the purse strings. A classic case of the enormous divide between government and opposition.
In the meantime I think the 424 years that have passed since William Brewster led his band of 120 pilgrims ashore at Cape Cod, refugees from religious persecution, is time enough for old wounds to have healed.
What future for our churches?
For any business or organisation the figures would set alarm bells ringing.
Weekly church attendances have plummeted inside five years from 845,000 to 685,000. Twenty per cent of worshippers have, to quote Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, “vanished.”
Call me a hypocrite. I don’t profess any religious beliefs, yet love our churches and find them unique places of solace and peace. Many have closed, lots more will follow with nearly 5,000 empty and without a vicar.
Many churches have been handed new life as post offices, shops, food banks, day centres and even breweries. Getting local communities involved is their only realistic hope of keeping the doors open.
The question Jenkins poses is would we be willing to pay a church tax, maybe only a fiver a year, to save them from redundancy and keep them in the hands of local people.
More than 12,000 of our Anglican churches in England are listed and repurposing may be the only way these magnificent buildings can stay open.
