Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 17 December 1999
Since there's not been much going on to disturb the winter silly season – apart, of course, from the defection of Shaun Woodward to Labour, of which more later – there's not a lot for it but to ruminate on the date.
Yes, it's 2,000 years (give or take a few) since the birth of Our Lord, and 100 since the birth of Our Party. Most Tribune readers no doubt think the latter anniversary deserves more attention in these pages than the former – which is fair enough in the light of the Labour leadership's embarrassment at the antiquity of the organisation it claims to control.
Be that as it may, I'm more concerned about the celebrations of the 2,000th birthday of the man considered by Christians to be the saviour of the human race.
Of course, it's not really his 2,000th birthday. No one knows exactly when Jesus lived. Indeed, we can't be entirely sure that Jesus ever lived, though there are documentary fragments suggesting that there really was once a man vaguely answering to the descriptions in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
But even if it is his birthday, what is there to celebrate? I know I'm not alone in finding the central Christian myths of Jesus's life, from the immaculate conception through the miracles to the resurrection, utterly incredible. And ever since I first started thinking about these things, I've been unable to understand why there is still a social convention that people who believe in this nonsense deserve respect for their credulity.
Not that I'm in favour of persecution. We all have the right to believe whatever we want. The point is that we don't have the right to have our beliefs protected from ridicule or otherwise privileged by the state.
A group of people who expressed the view that little green men from Mars had brainwashed Tribune's editor and were dictating its editorial policy on Europe could expect to be greeted with derision. They would certainly not be granted money from the public purse to propagate their barmy theory.
Yet, despite the collapse of Christian observance in the past century, Christianity remains enormously privileged in our society. The blasphemy laws remain on the statute book, bishops sit in the upper house of our legislature and the state pours subsidies into denominational schooling. Even more incredibly, the fashionable liberal view is that the privileges accorded Christianity should be extended to other religions.
But I digress. The main reason for balking at the idea of celebrating 2,000 years or so of Christianity is not the absurdity of Christian beliefs or even the bizarre way they are protected and encouraged in contemporary Britain. Rather, it is the appalling historical legacy of Christianity. Over the ages, millions have suffered under the Christian yoke – most obviously the victims of holy wars and of inquisitions, but also those whose native cultures were destroyed by Christian missionaries and those today who are denied contraception by the teaching of the Roman Catholic church.
To my mind, the most fitting long-term use of the Millennium Dome would be as a memorial to the victims of Christianity – or better still, to the victims of all organised religion. There might not be as many of them as there were victims of twentieth-century totalitarianism, but as I argued in this column a few weeks ago, it's not the size of the pile of corpses that matters but the very fact that there is a pile.
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My pre-millenium blues dissipated a little the week before Xmas with the defection of Shaun Woodward, Tory MP and former Central Office spin-doctor, to Labour. For Tony Blair, I'm sure, it's rather like Luke chapter 15 verse six – "Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance" – as accurate a summary of Blair's view of his own party as it's possible to find. For me, it's just good news to see William Hague squirming.
Hague is right, though, about one thing. Woodward should resign his seat and fight a by-election. Back in the early 1980s Labour was loud in its demands that the MPs who defected from its ranks to the Social Democratic Party put their apostasy to the voters who originally elected them as Labour representatives. With one exception, they didn't. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
