Blog

02/08/2019

Drastic situations call for drastic remedies, says Marian Pallister, vice chair of Justice & Peace Scotland. Weekly blog.

They tell me that sweetie rationing was still in force when I was a toddler. It had been part of the wartime strategy to use less and beat shipping blockades aimed at preventing importation of 20 million tons of food that had hitherto kept the UK going. Sugar was rationed until 1953.

In the course of the Second World War, coal and petrol were also rationed, and in a war situation, people accepted restrictions because they were imposed for the common good. Better to put on another sweater than run out of coal. Better to restrict movement than bring the country to its knees because the armed forces didn’t have enough vehicle fuel. In the 1940s, the vehicle fuel restrictions became so tough that only the emergency services, bus companies and farmers were able to get supplies – and the petrol was dyed so that anyone who wasn’t an authorised user could be prosecuted.

The Suez crisis in the 1950s saw petrol rationing re-introduced for a few months when it looked as if the UK wouldn’t get supplies through the Suez Canal.

In the early 1970s, I lived in Perthshire. I was working as a journalist in Glasgow and the 28 miles journey seemed worth the effort – the rewards of evenings and weekends in a rural setting far outweighed paying £1 for three gallons of petrol (no good at maths, but Google tells me that’s 13.6 litres). There were great restaurants on the doorstep – Kippen and Thornhill became destination musts for Glasgow and Stirling folk looking for good food experiences.

Then in 1973, there was another oil crisis. We were given petrol coupons against the possibility of rationing. The restrictions didn’t happen – but petrol prices rocketed to £1 a gallon. The knock on effect was that few could afford to play at The Good Life (the TV comedy about a hand-knitted couple growing their own) and we all sold up. The posh restaurants closed. The next year we had Ted Heath’s three-day week when electricity was limited and we walked to work on those days we were allowed to operate, often working in the gloom of camping lights.

Why am I writing this? Who cares almost four decades later?

Because rationing may well be our only answer to beat climate chaos. Drastic situations call for drastic remedies and we are in a drastic situation. We have a decade to sort it.

Our reckless use of fossil fuels – oil, petrol, coal, gas – not only means we’re running out of these commodities, but we’re poisoning the very atmosphere that keeps us alive.

Four years ago, Pope Francis gave us some guidelines in his Laudato Si document. We were asked to act as individuals and as a voice to make governments act. I hope our Scottish Bishops’ Conference will add its collective voice as it did against nuclear weapons 40 years ago. We’re not facing wartime blockades or a nuclear holocaust. We are fighting self-destruction - and it’s time to print the ration books.

26/07/2019

Regaining Childhood

This week in our blog, Danny, Social Justice Co-ordinator with Justice and Peace Scotland is looking forward to volunteering at summer camps again and a new project responding to the Pope's call to welcome the stranger.

Whatever the weather, this is ‘summer’, and for children that should mean six weeks of fun and friendships. But for many, no school means no school lunch – and across the country many will go hungry. A few days holiday away from home just doesn’t happen in families caught in the poverty trap after a decade of austerity.

There are, of course, schools, parishes and organisations that step into the gap to offer a ‘summer holiday’ experience. Since 2012, my summers have always included fun, games, and trips to Blackpool as a volunteer with the Salesian Youth Ministry. Camp Phoenix gives groups of 11 year olds from Salesian networked schools a break.

Our theme is medieval: young people are ‘in training’ to become knights; kayaking is going off on a quest, water balloons are for fighting dragons.

Many of our participants come from challenging personal circumstances, but still buy into our nonsense when they see the team in costume, playing our parts (for me, a week wearing very Game of Thrones cloak). But more important than the silliness of the theme is a week that reflects the wisdom of St John Bosco, founder of the Salesians: that young people need to know that they are loved. To know that this team of teachers and volunteers care about their welfare and want them to have the best holiday possible. A holiday in all its fullness, to paraphrase John the Evangelist.

After last year’s camp, I spoke with others about an idea to do something new - a camp specifically for young asylum seekers and refugees. The idea had been rekindled each time I visited refugees in Calais in my Justice and Peace role, or spoke with young refugees who have had their childhoods disrupted by persecution and conflict.

Both Pope Francis and Fr. Artime, the Salesian Rector Major, have issued calls to look for ways to welcome migrants. A summer camp can’t change the politics, but it can give some young people a space to be young again.

Ideas were thrown around and the skill-sets required were discussed. We chose a name - Valdocco, the neighbourhood where Don Bosco made a home for the displaced and lost young people of Turin – in the hope that it would inspire us.

Now, as the first week of August is almost upon us and our new camp is about to open, it’s comforting that ‘things’ seem to present themselves at the right time. An encouraging sign that we may have discerned the right way to go. ‘Trusting in providence’ sounds like a great heroic virtue in the lives of others, but feels very different in the moment.

A month from now we’ll know how it went. The specifics that are top of the worry list now will become details to evaluate, but won’t be the measures of success. Will our young people have enjoyed themselves? Will they have found a sense of home, of family? Will we be successful making our Valdocco a home for the displaced young people of today?

I’ll keep you posted.

Danny Sweeney is Justice and Peace Scotland’s Co-ordinator. He is a lay volunteer with Salesian Youth Ministry and the team leader for the Valdocco summer camp. To learn more about Valdocco and other Salesian projects please follow this link: http://www.salesians.org.uk/news-articles/featured-news/valdocco-project-holidays-for-young-asylum-seekers-refugees.html

19/07/2019

Reflections of an Accidental Activist

This week, John Dornan reflects on a chance meeting which led him on a journey of discovery across continents and communities. Weekly blog.

At the start of the 1980s the choice wasn’t that difficult: there was Thatcher’s neo-liberal assault on the poor and Ronald Reagan deployed Cruise and Trident missiles in an arms race that would bankrupt the Soviet Union and fuel the debt crisis. School staffroom conversations bemoaned the trends but did little more than raise my blood pressure.

But meeting the national secretary of the recently formed Justice and Peace Commission quickly led to setting up a local J&P group, a branch of Parents for Survival as part of the peace campaign, and helping establish a credit union (still active today with several thousand members). From the start, this was a shared commitment as a married couple, ably assisted by child-minding support from wonderful grandparents.

Since my student days I had an interest in development economics, so working with SCIAF was a logical progression. I was attracted by the commitment to education written into its founding mandate, recognising that there was more to “aid” than sending money abroad. Significant effort was put into raising awareness of our responsibility in creating global inequality. Early visits to East Africa and Haiti reinforced my view that our project partners had much to teach us about community organising here in the “developed” north.

I met and worked with exceptional and courageous people – not all from other countries – whose commitment put me to shame: literacy workers and community activists from Haiti, El Salvador and the Philippines, who worked under threat from right-wing death squads; land reform workers in Brazil; anti-apartheid campaigners from South Africa, including some who had found a home in Scotland. Many - if not most - were women of incredible stamina and courage.

My education colleagues from Catholic agencies in Europe, North America and Australasia were important to me; all deeply committed and highly creative individuals. Some became lifelong friends. We lived out Paul VI’s encouragement to take up our legitimate role “without waiting passively for orders and directives, to take the initiative freely and to infuse a Christian spirit into the mentality, customs, laws and structures of the community in which they live (Populorum Progressio §33).”

At SCIAF I met and worked with amazing teachers, parish activists and priests who took the social message of the Gospel seriously. Working across denominational boundaries on community projects in Scotland also convinced me that our efforts have added value when we work alongside other people of faith and goodwill. Working with the Xaverian Missionaries, sharing a vision of one world with respect for others and acceptance of difference, was my greatest encouragement to become involved in inter-faith initiatives.

Unlike paid employment, we don’t get to retire from humanity. Forty years ago, human existence seemed more threatened by nuclear incineration. Today, we are more likely to be casseroled by the climate crisis. Meanwhile, the poor stay poor and daily the world becomes more unequal. Each generation must face its own challenges with the knowledge at its disposal.

We grew up in the sixties. We witnessed the end of the Cold War (since replaced by numerous smaller but hotter conflicts), the end of apartheid, peace (of a sort) in Northern Ireland and (some) improvement in gender equality. This generation will take on the enduring challenges of poverty, inequality, and all forms of prejudice, made more challenging by the rise of populism and the confusing interference of social media. I pray that my grandchildren don’t inherit a world where it is nothing unusual to see the bodies of migrants floating in the Mediterranean or the Rio Grande or falling from the undercarriage of aeroplanes.

Was it enough? Probably not. Maybe we should have tried more divine inspiration instead of human perspiration. Did we fail completely? Not if we have raised and enthused a new generation of committed, creative and prayerful activists prepared to put the Gospel into action.

“The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason to hope.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

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