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This week in our blog Duncan MacLaren gives a facinating insight into his life, having lived in many different countries, experiencing different cultures and problems including here in Scotland where he has been inspired to join his local community council to help create a just society. 

There are many ways to turn interest in Catholic Social Teaching into a loving praxis that transforms people and ultimately the world. Many people are put off by politics even though it is really the way we construct a just society – or don’t! Being involved in party politics means making compromises and occasionally going against what you regard as the common good if there is a clash between your faith-filled beliefs and the secular pragmatism of the Party. One way of being involved in a non-party political way is through working in your local community council. 

I came at this from working in the international development sphere for SCIAF and Caritas Internationalis for a quarter of a century. My work took me to communities in more than seventy countries, most of them in the global South (so-called ‘developing’ countries). Working for and among these communities in countries far from my West of Scotland roots was (and still is) my passion. The background philosophy to such work was the Catholic Social Justice Tradition, and especially the magisterial Catholic Social Teaching. But the question for me was how can you exercise this teaching in your own, pluralistic patch?

When I came back to Scotland at the end of 2013 after eighteen years overseas, I realised that I knew communities furth of our shores better than my local community. To become better acquainted with the issues in my home area, I was urged to join my local community council. That was six years ago and since then I have become the Chair of the Merchant City and Trongate Community Council (MCTCC), covering much of the Glasgow City Centre. 

Through my participation in MCTCC, I have been taught the relevance of local democracy and have seen subsidiarity in action. I and my colleagues have been involved in opposing planning which took agency away from local people and veered too much towards the interests of developers whose motives were dominated by profit to the exclusion of decent, affordable housing or a building of beauty. We have tried to remind a Council hungry for funds that ‘development’ does not necessarily mean erecting buildings but also creating green spaces and other areas where we allow people’s wellbeing to flourish.

We have worked successfully with locally elected politicians from across the parties, recognising, at least in our area, their keenness to serve the residential community, albeit with the caveats given above. We have a good relationship with our community police who have to deal with everyone from street people with addictions to more serious, violent crime and everything in between. I have taken a particular interest in the policies around begging and drug issues, knowing that these vulnerable people who may annoy the hell out of you when they approach you in the street for the ‘bus fare home’ but, in the end, require long-term public health assistance, not police enforcement to disappear off the streets for a day or two.

At one of the Community Council meetings, I said to a councillor who headed some important committees that affected people’s lives, why don’t you plan for roads, pavements, and buildings through the lens of the most vulnerable? I meant, for example, people with disabilities, the less mobile around us, young mothers with large prams, people with visual impairments, people who are strangers in the city. They are usually an afterthought on a Council checklist rather than being at the forefront of development and planning thinking. That way, we would ensure that we would develop the City for everyone, almost automatically.

The Councillor looked at me with some astonishment but perhaps a seed had been planted in his efficient mind and change might happen with solidarity, the common good and the option for the poor becoming, perhaps not the terms used, but the ethical philosophy permeating the planning and development processes. That is perhaps one small way of coming closer to achieving the Beatitudes at a very local level in our communities, and using Catholic Social Teaching principles to guide our praxis.

For more information on community councils, see
 https://www.communitycouncils.scot/. 

Dr Duncan MacLaren KCSG was Executive Director of SCIAF and Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis headquartered in the Vatican. He was a Visiting Professor at Australian Catholic University, Sydney and lectured in Catholic social ethics and international development studies. He also coordinated a programme to offer tertiary education to Burmese refugees from camps in Thailand. In Scotland, he is a member of the Bishops’ Committee on Inter-religious Dialogue, a Lay Dominican of many years’ standing and a member of the Order’s International Justice and Peace Commission. As he writes here, he is Chair of the Community Council which covers much of Glasgow City Centre.

In this week’s blog, Richard Kayumba reflects on mental health week and, in particular, the experience of being a refugee, having to flee your home in search of safety and the impacts this has on mental health.

Wars and becoming a refugee have many consequences on the physical and mental health of civilians and soldiers. ‘Death, injury, sexual violence, malnutrition, illness, and disability are some of the common physical consequences of war, while post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety are the emotional effects.

Many asylum seekers and refugees are survivors or escapee from these traumatic experiences. People escaping from such environment are convinced that when they reach their destinations, they will have a chance to live or to re-build new life and be able to heal these terrible wounds. 

However, nothing torments asylum seekers more than being informed that after their miraculous escape from near death situations, they’re unwanted by the country in which they have sought freedom. These torments are intensified by the anxiety of not knowing the outcome of their asylum application.  This goes from anxiety to depression once they are disappointed with a declined application following countless years of waiting for the Home Office’s decision.

From this stage onwards, a nightmare begins for asylum seekers, due to the inhumane treatment received during the time  prior to their deportation. At this stage, asylum seekers are living in extreme fear of what would happen to them once they are deported. At the same time, they are forced to live on the street by not having a place to stay. Also, this is a period when asylum seekers are made to frequent detention centres without committing any crime. To me, asylum-seeking is the worst thing one would wish his enemy and an asylum seeker’s deportation is equal to being sentenced to the death penalty.

One cannot describe how seeking asylum in the UK demolishes life. The  BMC International Health and Human Rights Report   identified 29 studies on long-term mental health with a total of 16,010 war-affected refugees. It revealed significant prevalence rates of depression and anxiety even in long-settled war refugees. Countries studied included Yugoslavia, the Middle East & Africa (Liberia, Somalia, and Sudan.)  Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam). 

‘Whilst preventing war trauma inflicted on refugees may be beyond the control of recipient countries, they can influence the post-migration challenges faced by incoming refugees by improving resettlement policies’, said Marija Bogic & Stefan Priebe, of Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry.

I’m sure that deep down the UK is aware that by refusing to take in refugees, or by reducing asylum seekers to dangers associated with deportation and other inhumane treatment ,she knows it breaches the 1951 Geneva Convention of which she is a party, and that she will change and comply. 

It would be doing a disservice to the Glasgow people who united to save refugees and succeeded against immigration enforcement officials who targeted them if this article ended without applauding their bravery. 
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 1 https://bmcinthealthhumrights.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12914-015-0064-9

Danny Sweeney is the Social Justice Coordinator at Justice & Peace Scotland and in our latest blog he reflects on the UK government's policy announcements at this week's opening of parliament.

“How many gifts God has bestowed upon us!” This declaration is part of the Passover Seder and is followed by a series of statements; “Had He brought us out of Egypt and not divided the Sea for us”, “Had He divided the Sea and not permitted us to cross on dry land”, “Had He permitted us to cross on dry land and not sustained us for forty years in the desert”. The seder continues asking the same question around being fed with manna, given the Torah, built the Temple. To each act those gathered respond “Even that would have been enough!”

I was reminded of this litany whilst watching the State Opening of Parliament. Whilst the pomp and ceremony was pared down due to COVID-19 this is still the time for the Westminster government to put its’ agenda “on show”. Sadly, we have seen far too much of that agenda in recent months, briefed out to the press ahead of today’s spectacle and the acclamation is not “that would have been enough”; but “how much further can we fall?” as we see the government set itself on a course which has no regard for the poor and vulnerable, no concern for justice and peace.

The abolition of the Department for International Development and abandoning the commitment to 0.7% of Gross National Income to be spent on international aid has seen a series of programmes committed to serving the poorest and most vulnerable globally slashed. How much further can we fall?

A “Policing” Bill which targets the rights of Traveller communities, along with seeking to outlaw protest and make a single person making “too much noise” against the law. A “Borders” Bill which involved consultation on a clumsy website which required those responding to accept a series of “false premises” about migration; framing asylum seekers as criminals and those being exploited by traffickers as the guilty party. The consultation was targeted to government supporters rather than to those who work with asylum seekers and refugees and no effort made to engage with those who have lived or current experience of the asylum system. Condemned already by all, from grassroots campaigners to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. How much further can we fall?

A Justice Bill which seeks to limit the ability of the courts to hold the government to account, a stated intention to break international obligations to disarmament and increase the size of the nuclear stockpile. Seeking to put democracy behind the paywall of either a passport or a driving license; targeting disproportionately the young and the poor who don’t have such things. Voter suppression in no uncertain terms. How much further can we fall?

At the end of the Seder there is Kos Hartza-ah (the cup of acceptance) which speaks of “the preservation and affirmation of hope”. For me there is very little hope with this government, and I hope like many others; I don’t plan to just accept it!