The Times - UK (2020-06-29)

22 2GM Monday June 29 2020 | the times

Comment

A walk in

the park has

become an

outdoor rave

U

ntil now, the worst thing

anyone could do while

you were relaxing in the

park was to play tinny

music from their mobile

phone, embark on a loud work

conversation on their phone, or

produce a pair of bongos. But in

2020 there is a greater challenge:

portable Bluetooth speakers. Sound

and battery technology has advanced

to such a degree that it is possible

now to turn any phone into a

veritable ghetto blaster, with

booming bass, screeching treble and

a sound range of a quarter of a mile.

Walking through my local London

park has, this summer, become the

outdoor equivalent of strolling

through student digs on a Saturday

evening: a nightmare of dodging

Calvin Harris remixes, Harry Styles

and Drake’s Toosie Slide turned up to

11. It’s worse than the bongos, Dua
    Lipa played directly from a phone,
    and a man having his annual

appraisal over his Samsung S10

combined. Still, with lockdown rules

having turned outdoor spaces into

every other person’s bedroom, I

suppose all the noise does serve one

useful purpose: it masks the sound

of couples shagging in bushes.

My viral envy

T

he news on Friday that

Covid-19 antibody tests are

being rolled out on the NHS

without “adequate assessment” and

may be more hassle than they’re

worth was no surprise to me. I’ve

had our household tested privately,

and the results have caused

nothing but pain. You see,

after only a short period

where they briefly lost their

sense of taste and

smell, my nieces

tested positive. But

after being horribly

sick in the same

house at the same

time for three

whole weeks, I

somehow tested

negative.

I was so

furious that

I got tested

again, only for

the second negative to

make me even more

cross. I mean, not only

was I much more ill

than my nieces, feeling like I had been

possessed by a poltergeist for nearly

a month, but I spent the illness

enduring them moan endlessly about

how they couldn’t taste their breakfast

pastries. How the hell could they end

up with immunity from this dreadful

illness, and I didn’t? After putting

them up for nearly four months, the

very least they could have done was

infect me. I envisioned a nightmare

world where they swanned about

freely with immunity, going on

holiday and seeing my parents, while

I remained in lockdown until 2024.

It has come as some relief therefore,

in terms of intra-household

point-scoring, if not for the

planet, that the science of Covid

immunity remains uncertain:

they may not be protected for

long. Some research suggests

antibodies may only shield you

for two months. So perhaps we

will, as a household, get

another chance to get

ill more fairly during

a second spike.

Off key

T

he most

trouble I’ve

got into as a

result of this

notebook, apart

from the time

some rabid

Corbynistas

Sathnam Sanghera Notebook

@sathnam

Archbishop of Canterbury’s focus on toppling statues detracts from helping today’s minorities

Welby must look to future, not fuss over past

suspect she might have once called

“left-wing communism”. I suspect the

no-nonsense Machel would instruct

the church to forget about atonement

and get its own house in order,

perhaps asking: “Did you have a sick

note on the day we read that bit in

the Sermon on the Mount about the

mote and beam?” Stop angsting

about too many pale-skinned graven

images; do something about too few

dark-skinned English priests.

Second, being a teacher, she might

cast a beady eye on the church’s

4,700 schools. Education is the surest

way out of poverty for the average

child, black or white, and places at

faith schools are coveted by

ambitious parents. But research by

Lancaster University two years ago

showed that though people of colour

are keener than average to put their

children in faith schools, they are far

less likely to gain a place. Fix that

before giving the icons a paint job.

And third, although the church

commissioners show an admirable

commitment to using the church’s

£9 billion investment fund to push

environmental causes, there is hardly

any mention in its annual report

about diversity. So why doesn’t the

church put its mouth where its

money is, and join others to force big

companies to adopt Sir John Parker’s

target of electing at least one person

of colour to every board by the end

of next year — an ambition the

commissioners themselves do not

appear to have met?

Never mind the ghosts and

statues; the appointment of some

living, breathing people of colour

will achieve more than any amount

of iconoclasm.

Madonnas, Africa’s reigning elder

stateswoman, Graça Machel, would

be Our Lady of Liberation. Born in

colonial Mozambique, she joined the

freedom movement in 1973, aged 28.

Two years later she married the

independent nation’s leader, Samora

Machel, and became minister for

education. By the time her husband

died in a plane crash, the proportion

of girls enrolled in school had risen

from under 40 per cent to more than

75 per cent. Twelve years later, when

she married the South African

president Nelson Mandela, she was

already a formidable figure; at his

passing she became the repository of

his wisdom and authority.

Last week Machel, who started life

as a teacher, ticked off the Black

Lives Matter movement. Instead of

bringing down statues, she said, we

should keep them up to “tell

generations to come, this is how it

started, and this is how it should

never continue to be”. She has a

point. Oppression should not receive

a quick absolution from its sins. The

coloniser should be forced to

confront his guilt and the

beneficiaries of slavery should never

be allowed to cloak their past in

amnesia. Sir Geoff Palmer, Scotland’s

first black professor, has campaigned

for years for explanatory plaques to

be added to statues of slave traders.

According to him, toppling

monuments will simply erase the

memory of the evil of which we are

all capable: “You remove the

evidence, you remove the deed.”

It’s a bizarre twist — Welby, the

capitalist-turned-radical-priest, being

chided by Machel, the mission-school

revolutionary, for indulging in what I

W

hen Michelangelo’s

friend and fellow

poet Benedetto

Varchi delivered

a lecture on the

sculptor’s work in 1547, he

memorably described the magic of

the statue of David and The Pietà,

attributing to Michelangelo a line he

never actually said: “I saw the angel

in the marble and carved until I set

him free.” Michelangelo’s beloved

Carrara marble is blue-white but if

he had had different stone to work

with it is entirely possible that

David would have looked less

Graeco-Roman and more Ethiopian.

In fact, the tradition of Black

Madonnas — statues and paintings

that depict the Virgin and her child

as black — was at least 300 years old

in Michelangelo’s time. Some

acquired their colour over the

centuries, darkened by soot from

votive candles but many derived

from the Byzantine tradition. The

most famous is now installed at the

Salute in Venice, but there are about

180 vierges noire to be seen in

southern France alone.

Yet the colour of the Holy Infant

has managed to plunge the Church of

England into fresh navel gazing. This

week’s skirmish was triggered by the

Archbishop of Canterbury’s remark

on Radio 4’s Toda y programme that

the church may be rethinking

representations of Jesus. Some church

statues of people involved in the slave

trade will also “have to come down”

he said. This is not a trivial matter.

There are many thousands of

monuments to be examined and, so

to speak, colour corrected. Countless

parishes will have to navigate the

maze of planning law, council

bureaucracy and local indignation.

It would be easy to dismiss the

archbishop’s concern as liberal hand-

wringing but it may also be a timely

recognition that the church owes

much to immigrants from Africa and

the Caribbean. A church that claims

that we are “made in the image of

God” has some work to do if its

iconography presents the Messiah

only as a fair-haired hippy with a

halo. Today the Black Madonna of

Tindari in Sicily, which carries the

biblical inscription “Nigra sum sed

formosa” (I am black but beautiful),

might more readily inspire the faithful.

I do take the church’s good intent

seriously. But listening to the clerics, I

wonder whether the “white Jesus”

problem should really be first in the

order of service? Almost before the

archbishop had completed his radio

musings, an answer came from what

some may regard as an even higher

moral authority.

If Marxist-Leninists went in for

The church should fix

problems in its schools

before repainting icons

Our immigration

removal system

penalises families

Tim Loughton

concluded from a headline that I

owned a red Ferrari (I’ve actually

never owned a car), is when I said I

disliked pianos in railway stations. It

turns out that where I hear tuneless

tinkling or see showing off, other

people’s days are brightened and

hearts lifted by chancing across a

child banging out Chopsticks in

Preston station.

So vicious was the backlash that

I promised never to return to the

subject, but with the recent

reconfiguration of public places,

people keep sending me

piano-related news. Apparently, a

piano in Birmingham New Street

station has been removed, on the

ground it could be a breeding ground

for coronavirus. The pianos in St

Pancras have been taped off. Finally,

it seems, my dream has come true: it

is in effect illegal to play pianos in

stations. Though in this moment of

triumph, I find myself softening

towards the bloody contraptions.

Maybe, as a compromise, they

shouldn’t be removed for ever.

Perhaps they could instead be

reserved for (piano) key workers.

Er outdoors

T

weet of the week, from

@DrGABaines: “50% of

Roger Federer‘s name is ‘er’. ”

Trevor

Phillips

@trevorptweets

s have caused

ain. You see,

ortperiod

efly lost their

and

es

But

rribly

me

ame

ed

gative to

more

not only

ore ill

in terms of intra-

point-scoring,i

planet, that th

immunity rem

they may not

long. Some re

antibodies ma

for two month

will, asa

ano

ill m

a s

O

r

C

T

This year has brought

unforeseen challenges.

Being separated from loved

ones has placed additional

strain on disadvantaged

families and children in particular.

We have also been compelled again

to reflect on the racial inequities that

persist in our society. As a former

children’s minister and member of

the home affairs select committee,

both issues matter to me.

One of the least reputable aspects

of our legal system is the use of

indefinite immigration detention for

non-British citizens. Largely hidden

from public scrutiny, it too tears

families apart and disproportionally

affects ethnic minorities.

Immigration detention is intended

to help remove people who have no

right to remain, and government

policy is to use it as a last resort. But

last year our committee investigation

found the reality to be far from the

rhetoric. We uncovered a litany of

failings — detention is overused,

people are detained for years, parents

are detained with little regard for

their children, and the safety of

vulnerable adults — victims of slavery

and trafficking — is not protected.

This all has a human cost and,

shockingly, self-harm is rife in

removal centres. But it also has an

economic cost: over £34,000 per

person a year, almost £90 million in

the past year. Plus, in the year ending

March 2019, the government paid

over £8 million in compensation for

unlawful detention. Most of those

the Home Office detains are not

deported but released back into

British society. This is neither cost-

effective nor just.

Last year, the committee

recommended introducing a statutory

time limit and judicial oversight on

detention. Parliament now has the

chance to make this happen. David

Davis MP has tabled an amendment

to the Immigration Bill being debated

tomorrow. It introduces a 28-day time

limit and early judicial oversight over

decisions to detain.

I am proud to have been children’s

minister in 2010 when the coalition

government took the decision to stop

detaining children. Families with

children did not abscond. Parents

and children are still removed from

the UK when they have no legal

right to remain, but they are not

imprisoned for months or years first.

Law reform in this area is long

overdue. Justice will still be served

on those who have no place in

Britain but with these changes it will

keep families together and enable us

to control immigration while

upholding the traditions of a just and

democratic society.

Largely hidden from

scrutiny, detention

tears families apart