Dover Bishop warns giving cash to France to deal with small boats disaster is ‘killing people’ | EUROtoday

The Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, has warned from the frontline of the so-called small boats disaster that the hundreds of thousands being handed to France by the UK to resolve unlawful immigration “is killing people.”

The UK’s first black feminine bishop, who got here to nationwide prominence because the Speaker’s chaplain within the Commons throughout John Bercow’s tenure, briefly takes over a lot of Justin Welby’s duties as he steps down as Archbishop of Canterbury on Monday.

Her wide-ranging interview comes as she publishes her eye-opening autobiography The Girl from Montego Bay, which traces her early beginnings in absolute poverty in Jamaica, her struggles and rise within the Church of England and being the Commons chaplain within the poisonous Brexit period.

She talked to The Independent about her first-hand expertise of the implications of Brexit and the immigration she sees in her present function primarily based in Canterbury close to the Kent coast. In a forthright dialog, Bishop Hudson-Wilkin didn’t maintain again along with her views:

Speaking to The Independent in her workplace within the picturesque medieval Old Palace in Canterbury, Bishop Hudson-Wilkin is angered by the cruel realities confronted by these caught up within the immigration disaster not many miles away.

In specific, she is very essential of the UK’s makes an attempt to “stop the boats” by paying a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands to France.

”The hundreds of thousands of kilos that we’re giving to the Gendarmerie (French navy police) is definitely creating extra deaths,” she stated. “I’m going out to Calais shortly. I was there in April this year, and I saw first hand.

“When people say Calais is a safe place. It is not a safe. No, France is not a safe place for those who are trying to find a place to go to. Why? Because they destroy the tents. Every few days, they go into these areas and they destroy the tents of the refugees.

“The refugee area that I went into was the BMX camp. There were children in that camp. Now, what is going through your mind when you destroy the tents that are a shelter for those children? Yet that’s what we are giving money.”

She vented her frustration over the tenor of the controversy within the west and the way in which all events are focussing on “immigration, immigration, immigration”.

“I want to see our government, Europe, the west, including America, look at this differently. Instead of saying, ‘We don’t want these people’, building walls, saying ‘we’re going to break the business model of the small boats’, nonsense rhetoric, I want them to ask ‘why are people leaving their countries of origin? Is it war? Is it famine? Is it climate change? Is it civil unrest? Is it economic?’”

She notes how the language used about slaves has transferred to asylum seekers.

“This thing that we hear often, ‘oh, they’re just economic migrants, they’re not real asylum seekers.’ Yeah, I remind the British that they were economic migrants when they went all over the world [with the empire]’”.

For the bishop, the problem is said to the query of reparations demanded by quite a lot of Commonwealth nations from the UK for the slave commerce. Under Archbishop Welby, the Church of England has led the way in which in paying reparations however she has a unique perspective.

“Instead of reparation and the connotations that reparation has, I want to think of it as restorative justice. That’s the terminology I would prefer to use.

“The damage has been done, the damage of the enslavement of a people, of black people. You cannot repair the damage, but you can at some point become engaged with the process to ensure that there is there is restorative justice.

“People here in this country, white people here in this country, do not know why they think black people are subnormal. They do not know why they think it’s okay for black people to sweep the office, clean the office, but not to sit around the board table and be part of the decision-making process.”

Her expertise within the Church itself highlights a tradition of “ingrained racism”. In her guide, she describes in painful element the method of her choice because the Speaker’s chaplain with the resolute however unexplained opposition of Westminster Abbey resulting in the job being cut up. The title of her autobiography comes from an article on the time that described the white male who bought the Abbey job as “Oxford-educated” and her as “the girl from Montego Bay.”

“It is deep,” she says. “It’s not that somebody wakes up one morning and says, I’m going to be racist or I’m going to be prejudiced against black people or pink people or blue people. It is deeply ingrained and they don’t even know it.”

As Bishop of Dover she has seen the chaos wrought by Brexit and the departure from the EU, with the queues of site visitors from the ferry port and typically struggling to get by the traces of autos to get to a church service.

But her most brutal expertise was as Commons chaplain in the course of the Brexit referendum and in its aftermath. Bishop Hudson-Wilkin remains to be satisfied that the Brexit debate brought on the loss of life of the Labour MP Jo Cox.

It was throughout this time that her friendship with Speaker John Bercow turned so robust she says she didn’t need to transfer on from Parliament whereas he was nonetheless there and go away him alone along with his enemies. The accusations about his alleged bullying have been partly linked to her appointment, one thing that clearly angers her. “I knew him to be a very kind, caring, compassionate individual,” she provides.

But she feels little sympathy for the MPs who complained of the sharp finish of his tongue within the chamber.

“The childish and bad behavior of parliamentarians was at fault. My thing was if you behave like a child, then expect to be treated like a child and to be told off like like children.”

Bishop Hudson-Wilkin would typically attend debates as a result of it compelled MPs “to behave themselves.” Since leaving parliament Bercow has been remoted however the bishop sees him as “a casualty of Brexit”.

It is that this strategy to defending others that shapes her views on Welby and the way his successor must be like him regardless of the explanations for his departure.

“Our church leaders must be compassionate, and that’s what we had in Justin – someone who is compassionate and caring, someone who loves the Lord and wants to talk, wants to represent, to speak truth to power whether power likes it or not, someone who is confident in the gospel. We had that in Justin. I want an archbishop that is not dissimilar in terms of loving the Lord and loving the people that they’re called.”

Although as a suffragan bishop, she doesn’t have a seat within the Lords, Bishop Hudson-Wilkin defends their place in parliament at a time when some MPs are pushing for the 27 Lords religious to be ejected together with hereditary friends.

“The Lords is a bit of a joke, because you get anybody who’s given you some money to sit there who has no idea about what poverty is like. Our bishops in the Lords, they know about that, and they can speak about it. They know their dioceses. I have no problem with them sitting there.”

Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin’s guide The Girl from Montego Bay is on sale from 16 January.