The poet and the archbishop

So last week after a series of hilarious disasters which involved my distinguished colleague trying to pee into a bottle rather than drive the car,  I managed to see the final few minutes of a John Cooper Clarke performance. The elder statesman of punk poetry, he ran through a list of his dislikes (undyed hair, Pete Seeger, Ewan McColl, Roger McGough, Poetry Please (it doesn't feature him enough), Radio 4) with the occasional poem thrown in. Such as the famous 'Evidently Chickentown', the famously sweary poem about provincial immuration: here's the version used on The Sopranos: evidently JCC's original language was too tough for even Tony Soprano (from 3.20):



and here's the full-fat version:



And if you're worried about ageing, JCC is clear that 'Things Are Gonna Get Worse'.

So anyway, after seeing the Elder Statesman of Poetry last week (not quite as disastrous as Simon Armitage, whose unreliability inspired me to abuse some poetry myself), this week was the turn of Rowan Williams, the Elder Statesman of Anglicanism, or as I like to think of him, the Religious Pratchett, whom he rather resembles. Despite being a Catholic Atheist myself, and finding the whole believing-in-God element a bit of a struggle, I thought I'd pop along to see what he had to say on the subject of poverty. In any case, Rowan and I go way back, by which I mean that he's an expert on RS Thomas and I've reviewed RST's poems once. I feel that makes us colleagues in spirit.

Sadly the water resolutely remained aqueous

As you'd expect, RW's oratory was pretty magnificent. He has gravitas, yet also a lightness of touch when required. Turning up the day the local council announced that it's sacking a third of its staff and reducing the terms and conditions of the rest, his theme was apt. His analysis was subtle and thoughtful: he delineated the 4 types of poverty: economic, cultural, access and security. He had a few sharp words for government (wryly recalling Cameron's claim that 'money is no object') and expounded on the far-reaching consequences of these types of poverty convincingly.

He still hasn't found what he's looking for…

He took several well-aimed swipes at capitalism and presented his pantheon of thinkers: David Goodhart, Maurice Glasman, Richard Hoggart (he called The Uses of Literacy a 'sacred text') and Karl Marx. Oh, and Jesus too. So you can see that RW's intellectual landscape is pragmatic, male, sort-of leftwing but also rather culturally conservative, which fitted into his attack on the media and entertainment industry for cheapening the human condition. With shows like Fuck Off I'm Fat and Benefits Street, it's hard not to agree with his thesis that the media present us to ourselves as nastier than we really are. I'm not entirely convinced, though his profoundly humane sensibility is genuinely inspiring. He also had a pop at the league-table obsessed school inspection system, for its damaging effect on students and teachers.

Williams called for more society, not just more state, and for more political engagement, perhaps through the churches. He certainly sees religious institutions as leaders of civil society, which does bother me: leaving aside their own internal cultural problems, the UK is a largely secular country and a polity filtered through a very marginal filter would not be representative. Sadly, Dr Williams didn't find room to mention trades unions as an important element of civil society – but at least the university's senior leaders had to listen to him attack corporate wage depression, something they've done to us for the last 5 years and intend to carry on doing.

(Rest of the pictures here)

What was missing from Dr Williams' entertaining, thoughtful, fascinating lecture was any suggestion of a solution. He knows what the social problems are, but he seems to think that niceness and calmly explaining where we've gone wrong is the solution. I asked him how we persuade the likes of Amazon that they're a part of society with responsibilities (to employ people properly, to pay taxes, to pay a living wage) and his answer is to point out to them that over the longer-term, social responsibility is economically viable. I found this a little frustrating: as far as I can see, our current political leaders plus the globalised corporations strongly believe in a low-wage, no-tax economy in which immediate shareholder and executive gratification is the only concern. They aren't going to factor in the future, or niceness, when there's money to be shifted to the Caymans.

Overall, it was a superb night. Rowan Williams doesn't swear as much as John Cooper Clarke nor dye his hair, though they are both poets so don't inhabit entirely separate universes. JC not only shares initials with the Messiah, people often treat him like one, whereas Rowan is only – for some – the Big Guy's local spokesman. But both have an oppositional, moralistic distrust for the state we're in, and I'm glad I caught them both.

Norman bastards and turbulent priests

Hi everyone. For a change, I'm not ranting about the inequities of the world today. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow, probably. No, I'm just going to mention cultural events today.

On Saturday I went down to London to see Henry V at the Noel Coward Theatre in Leicester Square with my good friend Adam, who had recently declined a ticket for Richard II for no apparent reason but can be crow-barred out of the house on special occasions. Before he turned up I wandered round the antiquarian bookshops nearby, returning a wiser and poorer Vole. I recommend the experience: every shop is crammed with books priced for rarity and condition rather than quality, and the shopkeepers have their own special brand of patronising disdain. Anyway, the going rate for an RS Thomas volume is now about 3 weeks' rent and signed copies are approaching 5 weeks'. I bought myself a collection of James Laver short stories for considerably less and mooned over the poetry and the Beverley Nichols novels.

After a fine lunch (andouillettes: offally good) we wandered off to the Noel Coward, wondering if the spirit of the play would be affected by the venue. It would certainly make for an amusing production: King Henry could wave a cigarette holder while declaiming 'Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more' in a louche manner, and leer while he discusses the 'gentlemen now abed'. The theatre itself is an Edwardian monstrosity - gilt and flourishes on every surface, and therefore rather fun. Sadly, it has the most uncomfortable seating I've ever found. Despite being only 5'8" short, I had to rest my legs on the head of the man in front of me, as there isn't any legroom between the seats.

So, the production. Minimalist set, maximalist period costume other than a Boy/Chorus dressed in jeans and a t-shirt as – I presume – a nod to contemporary theatre practice. Jude Law (for it was he) was OK, though his series of funny accents in the Crispian's Day speech was ill-advised.

The rest of the cast were impressive, particularly Jessie Buckley as the French princess, making much of the comic aspects. The coarse sub-plots weren't particularly funny, but the action was excellent, and I particularly liked the French herald and his superiors.

I wasn't sure about Fluellen, MacMorris and Jamy: their accents were truly terrible, but I wasn't sure whether this was deliberate or not. In the play, they're comedy Welsh, Irish and Scots, playing up English stereotypes of those nations. Perhaps these performances were meant to wittily send up this theatrical tradition, perhaps not. The leek-eating scene was particularly good though.

It did make me wonder why this play was put on right now. We're only a few months away from a referendum on Scottish independence, and here we are watching Henry discuss with his advisors how untrustworthy the Scots are: they're guaranteed to attack while the English are at war in France. More widely, it's a play about Britishness and territory, staged once more during a period of depressing Euroscepticism: Henry and his colleagues are of course 'bastard Normans, Norman bastards' according to the French, he himself perhaps insincerely claims to be Welsh when talking to Fluellen, and they're fighting over English claims to French territory (Henry won this battle but his son lost it all). The Norman dynasties spoke French and would not have recognised England as much more than a lucrative holiday home (I may exaggerate slightly) cut off from civilised Europe.

It's quite a jingoistic play. The Celts are blustering liars, bores or psychopaths. The French are snooty and arrogant, the English are largely doughty and bold, with the exception of the scumbags at the bottom (thieves and cowards) and a few traitors at the top. What was slightly lost in this otherwise good performance was Henry's trajectory. At the start, the bishops discuss how much he's grown into the role: in Henry IV part II, he's a carousing, dissolute, idle wastrel, yet in this play he's behaving responsibly and even morally to some extent – guilt about his father's usurpation of the throne drives him to consciously adopt kingly postures. Not all the time: he tells the mayor of Harfleur not to 'make' him let the soldiers loose to rape and murder, and he's pretty quick to tell his troops to kill all their prisoners (a line judiciously dropped in Laurence Olivier's wartime film version). But Law's receding hairline and wrinkled face do at least give the impression of a man weighed down by responsibilities.

So - well worth seeing and one I'm tempted to put on a course.

The next excitement is tonight's visit by Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Sadly he's not here to talk about Welsh literature (he's an excellent poet and critic), but about poverty…to an audience of rather well-paid members of the great and good (and me).

The pogonophobes claim another scalp

Yes, bearded Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has stepped down, and is to take up the Master's post at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't intrude on private grief, not being Christian, let alone a member of the Church of England. However, Rowan's an interesting guy, and symptomatic of the crisis of faith and more specifically of mainstream Anglicanism. Before that, of course, I knew of him through his very fine, sensitive work as a Welsh literary critic. That's why I've maintained an interest in him: he's a leftwing, cultured, Welsh-speaking intellectual who through some bizarre twist of fate found himself at the head of a church which distrusts intellectuals, left-wingers, and exists locked in a fatal embrace with government and the crown. Visit any Cathedral and you'll see monarchical symbols and the flags of various army regiments celebrating their heroic victories against - as Blackadder  put it - pygmies armed with sharpened fruit.

Christianity went wrong very early: when the church got into bed with the Roman Empire, and the C of E is no different - formed because a king wanted a new wife rather than for theological reasons (though those debates were bloodily raging), the C of E made its accommodation with power early on, and lost some of its raison d'être in the process. Torn between competing factions (conservatives, radicals, Low Church, High Church, homophobes and progressives, misogynists and feminists, Rowan Williams inherited a sect at war, and his 'why can't we all get along?' message was drowned out amidst the internecine bloodletting.

That's why he's interesting: he's a gentle intellectual amongst barbarians. Despite not sharing an iota of his beliefs, I respected his essential kindness and moderation: I felt his moral compass pointed in the right direction, even though he thought God was the lodestone and I think human decency is reason enough. He was a civilising influence on British society, and I suspect his retirement will be detrimental both to his church and the public sphere. The C of E will get some Tory-friendly git who will abandon Jesus's tedious social justice nonsense and concentrate on what's really important: bashing gays and grovelling to the queen. Just like the old days.

There's only one thing I object to about his retirement. He's off to a classic Establishment job, as head of a Cambridge college. It feels a bit predictable. With his interests and his radical politics (he referred to himself as a 'bearded lefty'), I'm a bit disappointed that he's taken his talents off to serve another privileged élite. If I remember correctly, Jesus ministered to the prostitutes, the sick and the outcast - not the sons and daughters of the gentry. Rowan's certainly earned a rest - but did it have to be so tediously English?

Still, if he needs some cash, he could put on a tour with his mates Philip Pullman and Richard Dawkins. LIVE! BARE KNUCKLE TAG-TEAM DEBATING! HE'S GOT GOD ON HIS SIDE! THEY'VE GOT SCIENCE AND REASON! WHO'LL PREVAIL? ONLY ON RADIO 4 AND PAY PER VIEW!

The 80s revival continues

Back in 1985, the Anglicans published Faith in the City, and caused rather a stir. After the second World War, the Church of England had again lost the radicalism which briefly stirred it up in the 1930s, embodied in the early career of Cosmo Lang.

Faith in the City surprised the Thatcher government: they'd long considered the C of E to be the Tory Party at prayer, but the report strongly attacked the Conservatives' rejection of social values in favour of Hobbesian tooth-and-claw individualism. Tory ministers were heard muttering about turbulent priests.

Henry II's words are no doubt being bandied about in Whitehall's corridors once more. That bearded Welsh lefty Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, has pointed out the plain truth: that this government is driving through a set of inhumane policies without any electoral mandate.
On the 'Big Society':

The widespread suspicion that this has been done for opportunistic or money-saving reasons allows many to dismiss what there is of a programme for "big society" initiatives; even the term has fast become painfully stale.

On democracy and government:

Managerial politics, attempting with shrinking success to negotiate life in the shadow of big finance, is not an attractive rallying point, whether it labels itself (New) Labour or Conservative. There is, in the middle of a lot of confusion, an increasingly audible plea for some basic thinking about democracy itself - and the urgency of this is underlined by what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa. 

With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted. At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context. Not many people want government by plebiscite, certainly. But, for example, the comprehensive reworking of the Education Act 1944 that is now going forward might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing in the context of election debates. The anxiety and anger have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument.

On what the Tories have done to society (with Labour's shameful connivance):

The uncomfortable truth is that, while grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation. The old syndicalist and co-operative traditions cannot be reinvented overnight and, in some areas, they have to be invented for the first time.

This is not helped by a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, nor by the steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system.

In truth, the article is balanced, thoughtful, even-handed and even slightly dull, because we're all used to reading hysterical propaganda. But Williams' intervention is important, despite his position as head of a minor and declining cult. I particularly relish the reference to syndicalism: as a Welshman, he knows the proud history of Valleys syndicalism, which produced an open-minded and independent Communist Party in strong contrast to the slavish Stalinism practised by the CPGB.

Nothing else gets through to the Tories and their Lib Dem homunculi: maybe this will at least annoy them a little.

(Sorry there's no link to the article: the New Statesman's webpage has just crashed).