Dear Sir,
For a long while I have been bemused by the continuing left-wing stance of a number of vociferous Christians who frequently vent their feelings in various Christian publications.
In fact, I used to think in the days of Harold Wilson that the Labour Party represented a threat to Christian values. This seemed fairly readily apparent during the period of 1964 to 1979 (even including the period of the Conservative Government of Edward Heath) because that was a period when the Labour movement – via the trade unions – was making the political agenda.
I want to suggest that this tendency stretches back even further. From 1966 to 1981 I was working in what is now BT, although it was then still part of the Post Office. At the beginning of 1968 I had a bad experience when I had made a stand about a moral issue, for which a colleague (a Labour activist who used to be a Labour MP at the time of the Attlee Government) reported me for making such a stand and had disciplinary action taken against me.
That effectively ruined my career as I had, by this means, acquired a certain reputation with the result that I unfairly received bad annual reports and was also periodically the subject of trumped-up disciplinary cases, one of which led to my departure from the organisation.
Admittedly I was a young Christian in 1968 and may not have made a stand in as tactful way as would have been the case in more recent times, but it does seem apparent, from the fact that it was a former Labour MP from the Attlee period who reported me in 1968, that the Labour Party’s stance on moral issues has been in place since the time of Attlee and possibly before that.
So-called ‘New Labour’ was clearly a confidence trick as, whatever the party’s stance on economic matters, its stance on moral matters remained unaltered. I should like to hope that the Labour Party leaders can be persuaded to have a rethink on issues of this kind if they expect to continue to receive support from Christians, but I am not holding my breath!
Yours faithfully,
