In March last year, when the bosses of Jesus College, Cambridge, lost their legal battle for a ‘faculty’ to take down the 17th-century memorial of the college’s benefactor, Tobias Rustat, because of slavery connections, from their college chapel, they did not appeal against the verdict of the ecclesiastical court. They knew they would not have won. But, as I mentioned at the time (26 March 2022), the Church of England high-ups, angry at their own heritage law, are not giving up. The latest biannual report of the Archbishops’ Commission for Racial Justice backs attempts to change the church’s faculty jurisdiction rules and promotes the 47 recommendations of From Lament to Action, by the commission’s anti-racism taskforce. It inveighs against ‘our faith’s monocultural capture’, as if a religion centred on what happened among Jews, Romans and many others 2,000 years ago and 3,000 miles away has not been bursting with multi-cultures ever since.
The biannual report also carries approvingly a long appendix, ‘Revisiting the Rustat case’, by Professor Mike Higton. The story of the fiasco would be well entitled ‘From Action to Lament’, but Prof. Higton is having none of it. The court judgment was ‘imbalanced’, he says. Not fully acknowledging that the faculty system’s purpose is to protect heritage, he complains that the case for chucking out Rustat had ‘little of the well-oiled, well-funded, well-recognised machinery’ of those protecting his memorial. Yet it was the well-oiled college authorities who lavished a six-figure sum of college (charitable) money on going to law, whereas it was college alumni, spending their own money, who fought back. What should prevail, he says, is ‘personal testimony’. By this he means only ‘the experience of Black people’ who say they are upset by the Rustat memorial, not those (black or white) who feel otherwise. He does not acknowledge that before this row was confected, Jesus chapel had managed to worship as a Christian community with Rustat on the wall for more than 300 years: what matters, in Prof. Higton’s view, is only the ‘impact on the worshipping community today’, and he claims to know what that impact is. One can discern the hierarchy gearing up to try to change the law. In which case, no church heritage will be safe from activists who decide to emote against it.
Looking at a news picture of Russell Brand, I noticed the tattoos on his outstretched arms. The text on his right arm read: ‘Lord, make me a channel of your peace.’ Was this Brand’s ironic postmodern take on a Christian theme, or a genuine expression of his messianic self-image? I could not be sure. Nor can I decide which interpretation would have been worse for the girls who found themselves reading it close up.
I feel a bit sad that Rupert Murdoch is (ostensibly at least) retiring. With the death of Elizabeth II, he became the only remaining person who had done essentially the same job throughout my life (I was born in 1956). I have always avoided working for him. When, in 1988, he got in touch with me, sounding out my attitude if he were to buy The Spectator, I asked for time to reflect. I then wrote back, saying it would damage the paper: readers and contributors ‘would be horrified at the idea… They believe you are autocratic and that you have a bad effect on journalism of quality – they cite the Times as the chief example.’ I think I was right to resist, but I also thought Murdoch’s behaviour in this episode showed his subtlety. Firstly, no rule compelled him to contact me about buying the paper: the editor is often the last person to know of such transactions. Second, I liked his reaction to my letter. He rang again: ‘OK, I won’t buy The Spectator. Come round and tell me why I am making a mess of the Times.’ This was prompted, I discovered when I took up this invitation, by his dissatisfaction with the Times’s then editor. Murdoch wanted me to come in as deputy, with the implication I might go higher. I refused. But of course I was flattered, and I liked the fact that this globally busy man was so interested in journalism as well as making money from it. He may be ruthless and cold-blooded, but there is ink in those veins, a rarity among media owners.
Murdoch’s skill and courage in breaking the Fleet Street print unions with his move to Wapping in the 1980s were astonishing. We journalists should have thanked him, though few did. He eventually became a much better proprietor of quality papers than most of us had feared – prepared to take losses, endure (and enjoy) controversies and advance great titles – the Times and the Wall Street Journal – which had previously lacked the necessary drive. When I edited the Daily Telegraph, Murdoch subjected us to a price war with the Times. One day, our then owner, Conrad Black, said to me, in the sort of analogy he loves: ‘Rupert reminds me of Talleyrand’s words after the treaties of Tilsit, “I begin to think that Napoleon’s only policy is one of conquest.”’ This was true, and because of that lust for conquest some good things were destroyed, and some battles were futile. In the case of the Telegraph, we stayed market leader, though at high cost, and Murdoch gained little. But his capacity to fight and fight again is extraordinary. Alexander the Great died aged 32, dreaming of new worlds to conquer. Rupert Murdoch has lasted 60 years longer than that and is still going, still dreaming (possibly even of The Spectator).
A friend who follows these things tells me that magazine reviews of cars which list top speed, power, vehicle tax etc used to include the weight of the vehicle. Now they do not. He wonders if this is because the weight of electric vehicles is so great that, if customers knew it, they would not buy them.
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