The Irresponsible Socialist: Birmingham

Birmingham

My application for Bradford had been speculative. I just wanted to test the water and was surprised to be offered an interview and even more surprised to be offered the job. And I would have been happy to remain in Castle Carrock or another Cumbrian parish, as indeed in retirement, we now are.

For this reason my last experience of job search in earnest was leaving Newcastle. On this occasion I applied for and was shortlisted for three jobs. In the first I had a fairly strong disagreement with the Chair of the interview panel. I cannot now remember what we disagreed about but he had followed up a question by reacting to my answer in an aggressive manner and telling me that I was wrong. As my answer had been based on personal experience and described a situation with which I was familiar and comfortable I knew that whatever I was, I was not wrong. So I responded to his challenge. We were not exactly pulled apart but a panel member had to intervene and it was clear that my response had made me unappointable at least on that day.

The interview for the second job also became a fiasco. The weather was particularly shocking and I took a train to London from Newcastle uncertain whether I would be able to complete the journey.

I arrived in London and journeyed to the accommodation where I was staying with the only other candidate and where the social events leading up to the interviews the next day were to be held. This included an evening meeting with the team members of the team I would, if appointed, lead.

The job was as an Industrial Missioner and it became immediately clear that in a field of two I was the outsider. The other candidate had worked in the field for some years and knew most if not of the team from various conferences and working parties that he had been part of.

I had been briefed by a close friend of mine that the bishop wanted to create a new vision for Industrial Mission, to see more of a structural critique of society and in particular industrial society, and to bring a more reflective theological mind to bear as an alternative to a simple workplace presence.

It was clear that I could not compete on a level playing field so I decided to emulate my hero Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise and re-programme the computer.

Unfortunately for me someone had omitted to inform one member of the interview panel of the Bishop’s desire to see radical change for Industrial Mission in London. After a particularly, in my view, scintillating, flight of fancy about how Industrial Mission could be shaped and changed to fit changing patterns of work, the structural changes in the work place, the pressures facing workers as the economy was globalised and the rise of new superpowers, the questioner cut in with a new question.

‘Do you know ANYTHING about Industrial Mission’? She asked. This time I didn’t argue. Again I was unappointable on the day. The safe pair of hands was appointed to the relief of the team members most of whom I would have moved on if I had been appointed as I set about the much needed task of restructuring the whole enterprise.

The last job I applied for was as The Director of the Centre for Applied Christian Studies at Selly Oak in Birmingham.

Selly Oak is a fascinating place. A collection of colleges all in some way associated with Church Education, ministerial development or theological reflection or preparation for working overseas with one of the mission societies. As I saw it my task was to broker the resources of the colleges to the wider Christian community in Birmingham and beyond. This also offered the opportunity to develop my own practice and pursue the wider question of what distinguishes practical theology from its counterpart which was what?

Impractical Theology?

I have had a couple of jobs where if the circumstances had been right I might have stayed until retirement. Certainly the Birmingham job was one such.

Despite the feminist critique which followed the decision to leave Newcastle and move on, I think that as a family we enjoyed living in Birmingham. Birmingham is a much under-rated City and we found it to our liking. We had managed to buy a house and so for the first time had both a mortgage and a sense of ownership. House price inflation ensured that we moved from a 100% mortgage at 11% interest in the first year to a 50% mortgage at 7.5% by year four.

Unfortunately as I began work significant external forces were beginning to impact on higher education. The consequence of this was that colleagues in the college to whose staff I was appointed queried the luxury of employing someone at Senior Lecturer level who was not bringing into the college fee paying students. And far from brokering resources I was being challenged to find ways of selling those resources to whoever would buy them.

It made for an interesting four years during which I was able to visit America twice and to continue to develop my work with Church Action on Poverty and with Church Housing, to build an excellent working relationship with The Children’s Society, to develop some new course including a course which I developed in association with the The Diocese of Sheffield.

An important part of my time at Selly Oak was to seek and be offered an opportunity to spend a day a week as an assistant Chaplain at H M Prison, Winson Green. From the moment I made contact with the Chaplain and visited the prison I recognised this as a place where the mercy and forgiveness of God meets human suffering and sinfulness. It was what the Salvation Army would call the mercy seat. It was an essential place for me to spend time working out what exactly practical theology is worth in the intense environment of the prison.

I usually covered the Chaplains day off and my day would begin like his, with visits to the hospital, the punishment cells, meeting new inmates and then move on to other activities, usually a discussion group or Bible Study.

Powerful, telling tales were rehearsed, there was acceptance of guilt, there was remorse and there was the constant hope of forgiveness. The staff would spend hours looking at individuals and the best way to provide for their needs within the system. There were bullies and those who needed protection, there were frauds and there were simply professional criminals for whom this was a way of life. There were those who had committed crimes of passion and those who had carefully planned their crimes. There were also too many young black and Asian men suggesting that on the outside, the system had failed.

I published regularly and continued to write and publish poetry. Especially I valued my association with The Midland Arts Centre and a stand-up poetry group called On the Spike.

This particular association did get me into trouble in the college. I had written and performed a poem about hitch-hiking. As a student I had often hitch hiked from Manchester to Salisbury, partly as a practical money saving project and partly for philosophical reasons linked to my liking of the work of Jack Kerouac and the beat poets.

This poem was called F**K you Jack Kerouac. It started with the memory of a journey when I managed to get stuck on the hard shoulder at two in the morning at a place called Brownhills just outside Birmingham. The poem ended with the words

F**k you Jack Kerouac,

next time I’m getting the train back.!

When I read it at On the Spike it played well and people applauded. Encouraged I also read it at a college event. The next morning I was called to the Principals office to explain myself. Apparently there had been a complaint about an Ordained Staff Member using inappropriate language at an event where students were present.

Some of the work we did at The Centre was of a very high order and I have some excellent memories of my time in Birmingham. Practical Theology is key to understanding the word as incarnate. Again and again in seminars and in meetings, as people explored the issues arising in their work, it became clear that they were drawing on theological principles to undergird their actions.

Deep seated belief in salvation, resurrection, forgiveness, renewal, transformation and the connections between faith and works all helped people to understand in new ways how their faith was a resource to them in confronting and addressing the issues that cropped up in work, family life and personal development.

When I tendered my resignation to the Bishop of Newcastle Alec Graham had generously observed that practical theology or as the Centre was officially designated, Practical Christian Studies was an area where I had over the time that I had been his adviser demonstrated competence and knowledge.

In time I moved outside the college with a contract to undertake theological reflection in the context of the work of the East Birmingham Task Force it was here, working with young people keen to establish their own businesses, developing, in association with the local churches, a skills centre and a nursery and creating a forum The East Birmingham Theological Co-op where the ideas and engagements could be tested and worked through from the perspective of faith.

During this time I remained a staff member of the college and still had an office and a desk on the campus but seconded myself for four days a week to the Task Force. It was obvious with a change of Principal that the college was looking to save money and so eventually I decided that I should move on again. I applied to become a Prison Chaplain and was offered a job. But it would have mean’t moving again, away from Birmingham which I had no desire to do so I was pleased when eventually I was approached with a request to express an interest in a job with the Home Office.

I became team leader of the Birmingham Drugs Prevention Initiative. The initiative was part of the so called ‘War on Drugs’, the aim was to reduce drug taking in urban centres using where possible different methodologies.

In Birmingham the team introduced two strategies, peer group influence, using the undoubted power of peer group pressures in positive ways and legitimate highs, based on the proven theory that much drug use results from the safety that young people experience and their need for risk and excitement.

We had a small fund to support projects and the ear of significant people in the Police and the Local Authority. But we were in man y senses fighting a losing battle from the start. There were areas of Birmingham, where over the weekend you might have thought that drugs had been legalised. Drugs were endemic in Winson Green as I knew from my Chaplaincy there. One evening I had been attending a recording session for a record the Team had funded, Say NO to Drugs, a band of young Afro-Caribbean musicians were recording in a studio in Ladywood an inner City area. When I arrived at the session the band were almost all smoking weed, I imagine they were saying no to hard rather than recreational drugs, after I left as I was driving on to the ring road, I was overtaken by a black BMW convertible with the hood down, driven by a group of young Afro-Caribbean men wearing black leather jackets. Dealers, that’s when I knew that we were wasting both our time and the tax-payers money, these guys were the role-models for young people in the community.

So I prepared a report, it was a philosophical position and bore no relationship to my personal views for or against drugs and drug use. In the paper I argued that the UK Government had a well thought out position on drug use, misuse and abuse. Drugs, in particular Tobacco (Nicotine), Alcohol and Tea and Coffee were freely available, the quality of the product i.e. purity, strength and effects were monitored and published widely, on Cigarette packets for example and the advisory number of units which comprise sensible drinking on drinks containers and most importantly health cost/benefit calculations were factored into the taxation from which the Government drew a healthy income.

My report, submitted for an in–house Home Office Journal, was rejected and I was reminded that I had signed the official secrets act and that it would not be in my interests to publish it elsewhere.

At the end of my two years with the Drugs Prevention Unit we ran a conference as part of National Drugs Awareness week Chaired by Jonathon Dimbleby, and addressed by the then minister The Right Honorable Ian Jacks MP and an American drugs specialist from California.

Another move began to beckon and before they year was out we would be moving to Castle Carrock. But before that happened a link was re-established with Janet’s step-brother Peter and her step-mother Peg. Once the news of her illness reached them they arranged to drive up from Salisbury where they still lived, to Birmingham. We were joined by Janet’s brother Philip and the visit was a great success. It left Janet and I talking again about that wonderful City where she had spent her Childhood and where we had met.