Richard George - An Armchair of Dissent

I grew up in the 1950s and those of you in your sixties or seventies will remember, every 24 May, celebrating Empire Day, learning the history of Britain via its heroes, Drake, Marlborough, Clive, Wolfe, Nelson, Wellington, Gordon, Rhodes and Churchill and imbibing and memorising the geography of the world made flat by the barely-discernible map on the wall, the most obvious feature of which was the ubiquity and dominance of its pinkness. My favourite book was Kiplings Just So Stories and my favourite poem, If, by the same author. I voraciously gobbled up stories of the all-conquering British defeating the French, Spanish, French again, Russians, Turks, Indians, Zulus, Boers and, of course, Germans. Agincourt, the Armada, the Year of Victories (1759), Trafalgar, Waterloo, Balaclava, the Somme and D-Day were my weekly ego-boosting fix. I am writing this in 2015, a date so redolent of those heady days, being the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta (15 June), the 600th of Agincourt (25 October) and the 200th of Waterloo (18 June). Until my late teens, therefore, I never doubted the rightness and justice of the British civilising mission to enlighten, modernise and educate those distant, dark continents through imperial rule.

From the age of six, I went to church every Sunday, often twice when I had been confirmed, and for some years to Sunday school in the afternoon. The power and beauty of the language in the Authorised Version of the Bible and the Anglican hymns and prayers overwhelmed me with visions, requirements and stories, the examples and demands of which I felt totally inadequate to follow and which I saw very little sign of being followed either by my fellow worshippers or the world of people outside that magical, powerful house of spiritual and moral purity and sanctity. This experience gave birth to scepticism and disillusionment rather than the intended acceptance and certainty. Over the altar were the words I stared at every Sunday: GOD IS LOVE 1 John 4:8, He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. The most powerful influence on my sense of Christian humanity, however, was this prayer (of St Ignatius Loyola):