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Welcome
to UPDATE
Greeting a new Chair means, sadly, having to bid farewell to Bishop Christopher Herbert in this role, although he will maintain an interest in the Network’s activities and progress. The Network owes him an enormous debt of gratitude: without Bishop Christopher’s presence and advice, it could never have got off the ground so quickly or successfully. His early involvement in the East of England as a region, evidenced by his membership of the first EEDA working group on social exclusion, laid the foundation for the churches, and now the faiths, to play their part as key partners in regional development. As you may be aware, our office here in Cambridge handles administration for both the Churches Network and the Faiths Council. Now that the latter has been in existence for over two years, and its role is recognised by regional governance and other regional networks, it is generally the lead consultation partner on regional strategies and issues. Mark Argent, who has been closely involved in its development, writes more about its role and work in this issue of Update. Jenny Kartupelis, Chief Executive Officer Researching the Network – current perceptions and future directions East of England Faiths Council Tourism and the Church — A personal view Future
Network Meetings ‘EECN
has been essential to my understanding of EEDA and plays a vital role
in the churches’ relationship to the region…’ A questionnaire was devised, and ninety people in touch with the Network were sent a copy. From the responses I received, it was clear that its achievements were widely appreciated. In particular, respondents welcomed the chance to meet other people from across the region working on behalf of the churches to address regional issues. As one respondent phrased it: ‘EECN has been essential to my understanding of EEDA and plays a vital role in the churches’ relationship to the region…’ Respondents were asked for ideas for issues that EECN should look at in the future, and a long and varied list emerged. These included suggestions about refining ecumenical practice as well as specific projects on rural poverty and isolation. The Executive Committee of the Network will be looking at some of these suggestions in coming months. Although the questionnaire showed that there is some enthusiasm for creating an umbrella organisation that would incorporate an even wider agenda within the region, respondents also acknowledged that far greater resources of time and money would be needed to achieve this. The desirability of working with other faith communities was emphasised by many respondents, so that the work of the East of England Faiths Council was also affirmed. If you were one the many people who responded to the questionnaire, I would like to thank you for taking the time to help the network develop its future work in a truly consultative way.
East
of England Faiths Council Internally the Council has seen a number of key changes. We’ve said goodbye to two of the four co-chairs: The Revd. Paul Goodliff has moved to a senior post in the Baptist Union’s national offices, and Zia-ul Hassan has resigned on grounds of ill health. We’ve been glad to welcome The Rt. Revd. John Inge (Bishop of Huntingdon) as one new co-chair. More generally, we have been starting to take a careful look at the Faiths Council’s structure, trying to ensure that we are well-placed to represent the faith communities of the region, and beginning to think about what might be needed for the Council to become a separate legal entity. The Council has met three times so far in 2004, and taken presentations from:
In many ways these illustrate the different aspects of the Council’s work:
The ongoing work of the Council with the Regional Assembly (EERA) has seen The Revd. Ermal Kirby increasingly active on behalf of the faith communities, both in EERA itself and its executive group. The most significant development in the work of EERA has been to sign off the new Regional Planning Guidance (RPG14), which sets the framework for the major planning decisions in the region for the next 20 years. In addition to this, work continues through the involvement of members of EEFC in the different EERA panels: Employment & Skills (Jim Platts), Refugees & Asylum Seekers (Ellis Weinberger), Housing & Sustainable communities (Jenny Kartupelis). Resourcing of EEFC continues to be a major headache, as the actual work being done is well ahead of the resources available. There have been helpful and constructive conversations with EEDA and with the Government Office (GO-East), but this has not translated into core funding from EEFC. However, we have been seeking funding for a research project on the impact of the faith communities on crime reduction, to be undertaken in conjunction with the Department of Criminology at the University of Cambridge. It now seems likely that this will be able to go ahead.
Tourism
and the Church — A personal view Space
and light I looked with envy at what one or two churches have been able to do by way of prompting church tourism and at the same time getting across something of the faith these churches represent. The most successful had formed impressive partnerships with various bodies such as their region’s development agency, local authorities and others. The home-made leaflet comes a very poor second amidst the glossy brochures. I found that it was widely accepted that church tourism is an important player. In Norfolk something like 47 per cent of tourists visit our churches, and last year Norwich Cathedral was the most visited building in the region. I found locally that Tourism Officers are more than willing to help churches market themselves as tourist venues. It takes time and churches must be clear about what they need and be prepared to work with others. Our aim with Churches Together on the Broads is to enable those churches around the Broads to get their acts together in providing something worthwhile for visitors on the Rivers. But it is not all too serious! We rightly believe that is important that we get a feel for what it is like for the River based tourist. So we ‘research’ each year both the boats and the mooring places especially those near places of hospitality. One can very soon get a ‘nose’ for a genuine welcome as compared with those who are just interested in taking visitors’ cash. Hospitality is a Christian virtue; space and light have profound theological undertones. I hope that churches in partnership with their local Tourist Officers and industry will be able to use the overall theme to say something about the faith of the Christian community.
New
life for church buildings Here in Suffolk one of the smallest parishes has decided to go forward by going backwards in time. Thwaite, a parish of 100 men, women, children and animals sits alongside the A140 near Eye. I last went to Thwaite about nine years ago when, as a community worker employed by the County Council, I was asked by the local councillor to look at the possibilities for doing things in the village. The village has three community assets: a playground that has been closed because the play equipment is unsafe; a parish hall (formerly a school room that can seat about 20 people) and St George’s church. The building could easily be declared redundant, and as villagers fear that it would then be developed for housing they wish to see a more imaginative solution. Having failed to gain funding via the Lottery and Europe it is now hoped that the diocese will declare the building redundant and sell it to the village for a nominal sum. Then the building will slowly be repaired, used for community activities and under licence for a small number of religious services each year, thus returning the building to its originally multi-purpose community use. Nothing has been decided yet but it is a case of ‘watch this space’ — I hope to be able to report on progress which would give others of us in the Network an example fresh thinking about this topic.
Why
regionalisation matters Much of the work of the East of England Churches Network and the East of England Faiths Council is about working with regional governance at a very practical level, enabling the churches and the faith communities generally to play their part in the shaping of the region. Given that we have a measure of regional government, there is every sense in engaging with it, but in the background is a very fundamental question: are the English regions a short-term idea which will vanish next time the political wind changes, or are they here to stay? The financial strains on all the churches sharpen this question: are we squandering resources on engaging with flashes in the pan or are we building up long-term relationships with structures that will become very important over the coming decades? The East and the South East are the most artificial of the English regions. Few people would automatically have lumped together the six counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. Few people in Hemel Hempstead look naturally to Cambridge or Norwich rather than London. Yet for all the seeming artificiality of this region, there is something very profound going on, which means that regions are here to stay. In the political sphere, the main support for the new regional structures comes from the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. Yet it was the last Conservative government, notwithstanding its doubts about devolution, which drew up the present pattern of regional boundaries when it created the regional government offices in 1995. That was primarily driven by European considerations. During the 1980s it became increasingly clear that American and Japanese businesses were scoring over those of Europe because their export activities were underpinned by a large domestic market. An EU in which each member state had different trade rules was putting European businesses at a disadvantage. The answer lay in removing those trade barriers, to create a large domestic market for the products and services of European businesses. This promised many benefits, but it also risked harming some of the weaker corners of Europe which would now be exposed to stiffer competition. Rather than wait for that to create pockets of high unemployment, which is notoriously hard to tackle, the architects of the single market proposed a set of structural funds which could divert money to those places which stood to lose out under the new arrangements. In keeping with the EU’s principal of subsidiarity — making decisions as close to the people they affect as possible — the structural funds were to be distributed at regional rather than national level. This fitted in with a trend towards regional government across most of Europe, though the centralising tendencies of the Thatcher government had made the UK a notable exception. This trend was reflected in the Treaty of Maastricht, which created a new EU institution the Committee of the Regions, which specifically gives the regions a voice in European affairs distinct from that of the national governments. This allows for situations where, for example, the needs of the East of England are closer to those of the North of Holland than to those of Wales. It’s worth looking at this in the context of globalisation. Looking beyond the loud protests against "big business", globalisation has seen power moving away from national governments in two directions. On the one hand power has moved to a variety of supra-national bodies, such as the World Trade Organisation, the North American Free Trade Area, the Association of South East Asian Nations, and the European Union. At the same time, greater stability within each of these blocks has reduced the need for "national unity" and created the scope for some decision-making to move from national to regional government. Those
two trends are particularly obvious in the EU. On the one hand, it’s the
The EU has grown out of the European Coal and Steel Community, established by the Treaty of Paris in 1951, which sought to put coal and steel, the raw materials of mid twentieth-century warfare, under pan-European control, and so prevent another World War. We have now lived through 60 years of peace in Western Europe. While peace should never be taken for granted, the reality is that the East of England finding common cause with the North of Holland rather than Wales in the Committee of the Regions is not dangerous in the way that it would be if there were any chance of the UK and Holland being on different sides in another European war. The EU also has the clear example of Germany, where the post-war constitution devolved many powers to regional government (the Länder): the plan may well have been to hobble Germany and avoid the risk of her becoming the aggressor in another European war, but the result has been to allow her to draw on the strengths of a variety of regional aspirations and identities, and to demonstrate the effectiveness of devolving decisions, as far as possible, from national to regional government. Although the UK seems to have swum against the European tide of devolution, it is interesting to look at what has been happening in the business and voluntary sectors, where many bodies have found it expedient to think in terms of regional offices, rather than national or county ones. Since the creation of the regional development agencies and assemblies, a surprising number of voluntary and business bodies have reorganised themselves along lines reflecting the new government regions. It’s hard to see all that being rolled away, and there is considerable sense in the Campaign for the English Regions’ suggestion that this creates a real need for elected government at the regional level, to which all these structures can relate. In the long term, I believe that the forces pushing towards regional government make it inevitable in this country. In the short term, I don’t know what results will be thrown up by this autumn’s referenda on elected regional assemblies in the North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber. Those votes may accelerate the whole process, but even if elected assemblies are rejected, there is enough going on to mean that it is unlikely to stop the process of regionalisation. In the East of England, there have been significant changes in the workings of the Regional Assembly (EERA), the Development Agency (EEDA) and the Office (GO-East), but the picture is one of evolving institutions, rather than bodies which are likely to lose their relevance. And for the churches? The regional agenda has posed huge challenges as we have had to learn how to respond as a single ecumenical body for the region, and how to work with people of other faiths where appropriate. The East of England Churches Network didn’t come into being to facilitate ecumenism in the region, but new energy in this area is one of the spin-offs from the regionalisation process.
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