Archbishop Williams

Archbishop Williams would never have been appointed to his exalted role if a Tory Government had been in power at the time. As it was it was up to that great lover of all things English, Tony Blair, to make the appointment and he was never going to appoint anyone other than a Churchman of the left to take the role. Thus it is we have the socialist Williams as Archbishop. Thus it is that we have an attack on the Coalition which makes his political persuasion clear as well as his partisanship by which I mean that he supports the Labour party approach to the deficit and misrepresents the contents of the Tory and Lib Dem manifestos saying none of the policies adopted by the Coalition were in them and by implication that it is immoral to implement those Coalition policies as no one voted for them. This is wrong as a majority did vote for reforming the NHS for example. The excuse being made that Williams is merely reflecting the views of the Church's followers is of course nonsense. Congregations are still falling and the make up of the Village congregations that I have rubbed shoulders with in Northamptonshire seem to me to be made up of a mostly conservative (with a small 'c') disposition who are all for helping the underdog but not the scrounger, for lower taxes, for good schools (including Grammar Schools), for fewer immigrants, for better health care and decent pensions that will not impoverish future generations. Perhaps I don't talk to the right kind of parishioner - perhaps the reports of what parishioners tell their priests is skewed to reflect the wishful thinking of the priests who are rather more of the sandal type than they used to be in my youth.