Where should you place the cross on May 6?

Catholic MPs from the three main parties make a pitch for your vote as Britain counts down to a cliffhanger general election next month

16 April 2010

Labour Party leader Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007 (PA Photos)

LABOUR
By Jon Cruddas

The Labour Party and the Catholic Church were probably the two most important institutions in the lives of working people over the past century. Across the north of England and in all the major cities down to London, where the link between the Catholic Church and organised Labour was forged by Cardinal Manning in the dock strike of 1889, the two institutions upheld, in harsh conditions, the dignity of labour, the holiness of association, an ethic of reciprocity and the hope of solidarity. It is an indication of the esteem that both Labour and the Catholic Church have lost in recent times that, although this is true, it sounds like an exaggerated claim. The redemption of both, and the renewal of their covenant with the people of England, is dependent on returning to that tradition which is shared between them.

Catholic Social Thought, initiated by Pope Leo XIII in 1871, had a far greater influence on the Labour tradition in England than Marxism could ever dream of. It was the stress Catholic thought placed on reciprocity, on workers associating with each other and resisting their exploitation, on the necessity of finding a common good between conflicting interests that gave it a distinctive voice. Unlike state socialists, Catholic social thought did not believe that greater state provision and power was the exclusive answer. Subsidiarity, co-determination, vocational status and a living wage were part of the Catholic response to the threat of a market society in which people and nature were turned into commodities. This was expressed in a common sense of responsibility for improving each others lives. This is where the affinity between the Labour and the Catholic traditions is expressed most deeply.

Catholic teaching has the most relevant and compelling account of the present crisis. There has never been a greater need for Catholic social thought in the mainstream of our politics and yet its voice is not as strong as it should be. In its commitment to family life, the locality and vocation, to work and association, the Catholic Church has tried to steer a robust middle way between greed and nationalism. Catholicism in England has been a consistent defender of the integrity of society from the individualism of the market and the collectivism of the state.

The financial crisis and banking bail-out of the autumn of 2008 revealed with the clarity of a lightning bolt in the dark how difficult and dangerous is the predicament we face. The City of London was identified by all governments in the last 30 years as the foundation of our wealth and economic growth. The return on making money was far greater than the return on making things. Finance subordinated manufacture, and consequently, the formal economy laid down the law to the substantive economy in which people have to feed, clothe and house each other. There has been an explosion of personal and public debt, a decline in solidarity and virtue. The two are linked.

It cannot be the case that firms that are giving their managers large bonuses are not paying their cleaners, cooks and security guards a living wage. It is also unacceptable that with banks borrowing at half a per cent, the interest rates on money loans, particularly for credit cards, store cards and mobile phone bills, should begin in the high 20s and go higher from there. Usury, the charging of excessive interest on money loans, should be limited. Debt is like cancer: it destroys family life, trust between people and hope in the future.

And this brings me to Labour and why it is vital that Catholics engage with the Labour tradition once more. There has been much that has been worthy of criticism in the past 13 years. We have been too pro-City, too managerial and too bureaucratic. That said, we have a record that bears comparison with any other country when it comes to health, education and a redistribution to the poor. There are signs, and Ed Miliband has indicated the direction with the manifesto, that we are connecting again with our own tradition and with Catholicism on the political economy. The manifesto will include a Peoples' Bank to recapitalise local areas, a living wage in public procurement and a cap on interest rates. Above all, when it comes to the bailout and the public debt, it should not be the case that the terms of recovery should be set by those who caused the debt in the first place.

This contrasts with the Conservative agenda, where poor families would be the first to feel the consequences of not building new homes, in a reduction of human contact hours with adults in schools, of an agenda that favours the bankers that they bailed out 18 months ago.

But it goes deeper than that, and it goes to the heart of the matter. As a Labour Catholic I believe that we are fallen and capable of grace, that we find redemption in the love we show to each other, in the ethic of reciprocity, where we build a common life together. From tax cuts to debt the Conservatives still make a virtue of greed and self-interest. They make nice noises about the big society but do not deliver where it matters. The living wage is a Catholic idea that used to be called a family wage, whereby you strengthen family life through paying people enough to live. The Conservatives rejected it; we're running on it. The Conservatives won't put a limit on usury, we will. The goodness of our life is dependent upon the quality of the relationships we have. Debt undermines that and we will do something about it. The Murdoch media will say this is a left turn, but they do not understand. It is a Catholic turn, a turn back to family life, community, reciprocity and solidarity in which the dignity of each human life is what matters. On public and private debt, on family and neighbourliness, on justice and solidarity, there are real dividing lines and we are on the right side of them.

I think that the next decade will be defined by our response to the financial crash. Human needs, family life and the real economy should come first. I urge all Catholics of good will not simply to vote Labour but to re-engage with the Labour movement as the political embodiment of the organised hope of the working people of this country and as the expression of Catholic social teaching in action.

We need more kindness and love, more reciprocity and mutuality, more responsibility and democracy. We need each other to build a good society which preserves the unique human status of each person.

I am committed to strengthening that agenda within the Labour Party and I ask you to join me in doing that.

Jon Cruddas is the Labour MP for Dagenham


David Cameron has been the leader of the Conservative Party since December 2005

CONSERVATIVES
By Julian Brazier

In Choosing the Common Good our bishops warned: "The growth of regulations, targets and league tables... are no substitute for actions done as a free gift because the needs of a neighbour have to be met." This profound document goes on to develop the idea of solidarity as the essential glue "without which society starts to break down and life becomes intolerable".

This is what David Cameron means when he refers to Britain's "broken society". Britain has rising crime, rising anti-social behaviour, vast numbers of teenage pregnancies and whole estates where many children are being brought up without contact with a father or indeed anyone of either sex who has ever worked. Twice in the last five years the United Nations has declared Britain the worst country in the developed world to raise children.

The phrase which the Conservative Party uses for the cure is "social responsibility", a concept which is virtually identical to solidarity. Both ideas begin in the family, what Edmund Burke called "the little platoon" and Pope John called "the little church". Before he even became leader of the Conservative party, David Cameron's first policy commitment was to restore recognition of marriage to the tax system.

Iain Duncan Smith's splendid think tank, the Centre for Social Justice, has exposed the scandal that the current elaborate system of benefits and tax credits actually rewards families for breaking up. Labour had compassionate aims in building this system but, to quote Burke again: "The way to hell is paved with good intentions." The Government has created a system that is sending a powerful signal. The message is that commitment does not matter. The consequences can be seen on estates up and down the country.

We are committed to changing it.

It has to go further, however. Between the family, and the nation, there is a whole string of important institutions, including, vitally, schools. A Conservative government will put an end to our current education gap. We are the sixth wealthiest country in the world, yet parents face a postcode lottery to get a decent education for their children.

Catholic schools consistently do well not only in academic results but also in areas like juvenile delinquency and racial integration. Conservatives have a vision to allow churches and voluntary bodies to set up schools which teach their values. We are determined to restore to teachers proper disciplinary powers, including the legal enforceability of home-school contracts and, crucially, the head teacher's power to exclude. Excluded children should not simply be dumped in another school or, worse still, left to roam the streets. Instead we would reform pupil referral units, making use of the excellent voluntary organisations which have done so much in this area.

This point can be widened across the spectrum of social provision. There is a range of organisations, many of them run by the churches, which do a much better job than any state-run body at functions from prisoner rehabilitation through to treatment of addicts. Yet the existing system works against them, rather than in favour of them. Civil servants would rather keep money in their own budgets, however unsuccessful their operations. A single office of a charity for the disabled, the Shaw Trust, one year placed more severely disabled people in jobs than all the Job Centres in London. Yet I had to fight tooth and nail to prevent the appointment of a "disability adviser" in my own local Job Centre which would have soon threatened the grant to the local office of the Shaw Trust.

The traditional Conservative vision is of a contract between the current generation, the obligations it owes the next generation and the respect it has for those who have come before. There can be no justification for this Government shackling our children by doubling the national debt - and planning to do so again over the next few years. Britain has the worst level of household indebtedness in Europe but even more important is to tackle burgeoning government debt.

To do this we need to rein back the proliferation of bureaucracy, in central government, in regional development agencies and in quangos. This is not just about saving money; it is also about getting the culture of targets and regulation off the backs of ordinary people and indeed hard-working doctors and nurses, teachers, police officers and others who just want to get on with their jobs. We must move from regulation, box-ticking and borrowing to economic recovery, social responsibility and public service - and central to all that are the traditional institutions we inherited from earlier generations.

While the current Government believes in top-down state control, Conservatives believe in bottom-up social responsibility and the voluntary sector is key to this. Much more social provision should be directed through them, enabling charities and volunteers to grow the communities they work in and help rebuild "broken Britain".

The saddest part of the campaign we have already started is meeting people who have become so disillusioned with politics that they say they won't vote. Some MPs have behaved very badly but the vast majority of MPs of all parties are hard-working men and women who put their constituents first. There is no excuse to stay at home and leave these matters for other people.

The choice is stark: continue central government regulation and direction or change to restoring the traditional institutions of social responsibility, the school, the voluntary organisation, the community and, above all, the family.

Julian Brazier is the Conservative MP for Canterbury. He is a Shadow Transport Minister and a member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship


Nick Clegg has led the Liberal Democrats since December 2007 (PA Photos)

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS
By Sarah Teather

I have never interpreted the words "Thy Kingdom come" as simply a Patience Strong prayer about providence. Rather, that the words require something of us too: to participate in making His Kingdom come.

This election is your opportunity to think about what kind of society you want to build, to reflect on which party and which candidates will work to realise Kingdom values. I think Catholics should feel instinctively drawn to the Liberal Democrats, because I believe it is the party that most closely represents the values of our faith.

Liberalism is fundamentally an optimistic creed. It thinks well of people - it trusts them with power, it believes in redemption, it works for human flourishing. At the heart of the Liberal Democrats is a belief in the inalienable rights of each individual human being. Every policy stems from that, from our commitment to social justice and equality of opportunity, to the fight for human rights, here and abroad.

A Liberal Democrat would agree passionately with the statement in Choosing the Common Good that the common good is not an aggregate of well-being in society, where the needs of individuals can be superseded by the good of the masses. Rather, "if anyone is left out, and deprived of what is essential then the common good is betrayed".

The Liberal Democrats' commitment to making sure no one is left out runs throughout every policy area, from our radical plans to make the tax system fairer and take the lowest paid out of paying tax altogether, to our commitment to put £2.5bn into schools serving the most deprived areas.

Just as Pope Benedict XVI argued in Caritas in Veritate, Liberal Democrats believe in free markets, but believe that these markets must be run for the service of people, and not for the service of themselves. That is why it was the Liberal Democrats alone, through Vince Cable, who argued during the boom years against the dangers of building the economy on a bubble of personal debt and poorly regulated risky banking practices.

Sometimes, like the Catholic Church, our commitment to promoting human dignity is controversial. We have always resisted the knee-jerk populism that screams for vengeance in the criminal justice system. Rather, we want a proper balance between punishment and rehabilitation, for a justice gained by reducing offending, not by appeasing headlines. We have courted controversy too with our campaign to end the detention of children in immigration centres, and for an independent, fair and efficient asylum system that provides sanctuary for those fleeing persecution and which lets people work to support themselves while they wait for a decision.

If you believe in Catholic principles of solidarity and the dignity of the person, those principles cannot stop at our shores. It was the Liberal Democrats who led the campaign in Parliament against Guantanamo Bay, who fought against British complicity with torture, and who opposed the illegal war in Iraq.

It was also the Liberal Democrats who campaigned tirelessly for Government to protect the environment, long before it became fashionable to do so, because we understand we have a duty to protect the poorest countries from the effects of climate change and to preserve our planet to hand on to our children.

Freedom of speech and conscience is a deeply held liberal principle. The Liberal Democrats would reduce the power of Government whips to dictate to MPs how to vote. We believe that life issues such as abortion, embryology and euthanasia should always be free votes.

This election could be a turning point for Britain. What is also true is that it could be one of the closest fought elections in decades.

If you want the next Parliament to reflect Catholic values for a fairer society that puts people first, you need to make sure you vote for it. I urge you to use that vote for the Liberal Democrats.

Sarah Teather is the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East