ALTHOUGH religious leaders had failed in spring 2003 to dissuade the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, from pursuing military motion to oust President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, they continued to lobby to curb politicians’ actions and rhetoric, documents released by the National Archives last month reveal.
The Archbishop of Canterbury on the time, Dr Rowan Williams, had long voiced concerns concerning the use of military force in Iraq, and was planning to ask whether a high-profile national service of thanksgiving might be postponed.
A briefing note to Mr Blair from the Prime Minister’s Appointments Secretary, William Chapman, dated 9 September 2003, states that “the Archbishop will probably be concerned about your views on the most recent situation [in Iraq]. He may even ask whether the St Paul’s service on 10 October ought to be postponed given the present difficulties in Iraq. Since the service shouldn’t be meant to be a flag waving celebration, but quite a serious act of thanksgiving, there seems no overwhelming reason for this.”
In underlined text, he continued: “You may need to say you’ll consider the request but should hold out no great hope of postponement.”
Mr Chapman’s briefing, before an everyday bilateral meeting with Dr Williams the subsequent day, also advised Mr Blair that Christians in Iraq weren’t being explicitly targeted within the violence that followed the collapse of the Iraqi regime.
Days later, on 15 September, The Times reported that the Dean of St Paul’s, John Moses, had forced the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, to rename the service — which Mr Hoon had announced to the House of Commons in July as a service of “remembrance and thanksgiving” — to refer only to remembrance. The Times quoted senior church sources as saying that Dr Williams had not been “involved directly in negotiating the climbdown”. Whether Dr Williams also asked for a delay shouldn’t be recorded.
At the service, held on 10 October as scheduled, the Archbishop told the congregation, which included Mr Blair, Mr Hoon, Queen Elizabeth II, and Prince Philip: “As we glance out at a still uncertain and dangerous landscape, as we recall the soldiers and civilians killed because the direct military campaign ended, as we expect of the United Nations personnel and the relief staff who’ve died, we’ve to acknowledge that moral vision is harder to convert into reality than we should always like. . . We have made ourselves accountable for peace and justice in Iraq; leaders and other people alike will probably be called to account for it.”
A Church Times article from 3 October, nevertheless, is included within the released documents, arguing that, at that stage, Chaldean Catholics in Iraq were confidently “jostling for power”.
A 12 months later, the briefing note by Mr Chapman for a gathering between Mr Blair and Dr Williams stated that the Christian community in Iraq faced “a growing sectarian threat”. Another Church Times piece was attached, concerning the bombing of 5 Baghdad churches in at some point. Mr Chapman expressed concern for the protection of Canon Andrew White, then the Chaplain of St George’s, Baghdad, saying that his convoy had been robbed at gunpoint.
“We have advised him that he would face an unacceptably high risk were he to return to Iraq nowadays. He has accepted this recommendation. . . Lambeth Palace are also concerned that Canon White’s press comments make him vulnerable to a kidnap/assassination attempt.” (In time, Canon White resumed his visits, but would, in 2014, be asked to finish them again, by Archbishop Welby, due to a resurgent jihadist threat.)
A handwritten note by Mr Chapman on the briefing says, nevertheless: “Prime Minister, this arrived too late from the foreign office to reflect it within the temporary I even have already put in your box.”
One aspect of domestic policy at about that point which was largely kept out of the general public eye was the implication for the Church of the Government’s plan to scrap the position of Lord Chancellor, which it later kept, but reduced. The priests of some 450 or so parishes and 12 cathedral canonries were, for historic reasons, appointed by the Lord Chancellor on behalf of the Crown. Mr Chapman had told Mr Blair in 2003 that he thought that the draft consultation document on the query was “unbalanced, biased towards handing this patronage to the Church”, and “might be seen or utilized by some as an enormous step towards disestablishment”, and asked Mr Blair for a steer.
Before a “purely social” dinner at Lambeth with Dr Williams and his wife, Jane, in January 2004, Mr Chapman wrote to Mr Blair and his wife, Cherie, that Dr Williams “would quite just like the Church to have the patronage”. He continued, nevertheless: “You have recently confirmed your earlier decision that this could revert to the Crown and never, as [Lord Chancellor] Charlie Falconer argued, be handed to the Church.”
Mr Chapman attached a letter from the Dean of Southwark, Colin Slee, to the short-lived Department for Constitutional Affairs, through which he argued that it was “essential that a major percentage of parish livings are seen to be filled by a co-operation between the body politic and the body spiritual”, and that independent patrons protected parishioners against “pastoral re-organisation schemes”. Slee said that he believed he also reflected the views of other deans. In the top, the patronage of the parishes and canonries was left with the Lord Chancellor.
Mr Chapman kept Mr Blair apprised of issues within the Anglican Communion, each internal wrangling over gay bishops and external matters equivalent to Zimbabwean Churches’ grappling with the human-rights abuses committed by the regime of President Robert Mugabe. In 2003, Mr Chapman described the pro-regime Bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, who was later excommunicated, as “an unashamed and high handed Mugabe apologist”, and advised Mr Blair to inform Dr Williams that fostering dialogue between pro- and anti-regime factions “is useful, but not on the expense of the Churches’ vital role as moral advocates and human rights campaigners”.
Interfaith relations were of great concern to Dr Williams. Mr Chapman’s briefing to the Blairs before a supper with the Williamses in May 2004 updated the Prime Minister on global gatherings of Muslim and Christian scholars. After mentioning two events at which biblical and Qur’anic texts were discussed, he wrote: “However, the Muslim scholars haven’t proved very concerned about exploring the Bible — thus illustrating considered one of the difficulties of dialogue with much of Islam.”
