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The Bishop of Dover has warned that millions of pounds handed over to France by the British government to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats are “killing people”.
Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the first black female bishop in Great Britain, temporarily takes over many of the Justin Welby’s duties when he steps down as Archbishop of Canterbury on Mondayand talked to The Independent.
Her interview comes as she publishes her autobiography, Montego Bay Girl, which traces her early beginnings in absolute poverty in Jamaica, her struggles and rise in the Church of England and as Commons chaplain in the toxic era of Brexit.
She spoke about her first-hand experience of the aftermath Brexit and the immigration he sees near the Kent coast. In a frank conversation, Bishop Hudson-Wilkin did not hold back with his views:
- Defending the “compassionate” legacy of Justin Welby and arguing that the next Archbishop of Canterbury must be like him.
- Defending former speaker John Bercow, claiming he was a “good man” who was a “victim of Brexit”.
- Discussing the “shameful” way MPs have conducted the Brexit debate and the dire consequences of leaving the EU.
- Demands “restorative justice” for slavery from the UK, but not reparations.
Speaking from his office in Canterbury’s picturesque medieval Old Court, Bishop Hudson-Wilkin is angry about the harsh reality facing those caught up in the immigration crisis not far from them.
She is particularly critical of Britain’s attempts to “stop the ships” by paying hundreds of millions to France.
“The millions of pounds we give to the gendarmerie [French military police] it actually creates more deaths,” she said. “I’m going to Calais soon. I was there in April this year and saw it first hand.
“When people say Calais is a safe place. It’s not a safe. No, France is not a safe place for those trying to find somewhere to go. Why? Because they destroy the tents. Every few days they go to these areas and destroy the refugees’ tents.
“The refugee area I went to was a BMX camp. There were children in that camp. Now, what goes through your mind when you destroy the tents that shelter those children? That’s what we give money to, though.”
She expressed her frustration with the topic of debate in the West and the way all sides focus 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 will destroy the small boat business model’, nonsense rhetoric, I want them to ask ‘why do people leave their countries of origin? Is it war? Is it hunger? Is it climate change? Is it civil unrest? Is it economical?”
She notes how the language used about slaves carried over to asylum seekers.
“What we often hear, ‘oh, they’re just economic migrants, they’re not real asylum seekers.’ Yes, I remind the British that they were economic migrants when they went all over the world [with the empire]’”.
For the bishop, the issue relates to the issue of reparations demanded by a number of Commonwealth countries from the UK for the slave trade. Under Archbishop Welby, the Church of England led the way in paying reparations, but she has a different perspective.
“Instead of reparation and the connotations that reparation has, I want to think of it as restorative justice. That is the terminology I prefer to use.
“The damage was done, the damage from the enslavement of a people, the blacks. You can’t repair the damage, but you can at some point get involved in the process to ensure that there is restorative justice.
“People here in this country, white people here in this country, don’t know why they think black people are subnormal. They don’t know why they think it’s okay for black people to sweep the office, clean the office, but not sit at the board table and be part of the decision-making process.”
Her experience in the church itself highlights a culture of “entrenched racism.” In her book, she describes in excruciating detail the process of her selection as chaplain chaplain with determined but inexplicable opposition from Westminster Abbey leading to a division of the job. The title of her autobiography comes from an article at the time in which a white man who got a job at the abbey described her as “Oxford educated” and her as a “Montego Bay girl”.
“It’s deep,” she says. “It’s not about somebody waking up one morning and saying, I’m going to be racist or I’m going to be prejudiced against black people or pink people or blue people. It’s deeply ingrained and they don’t even know it.”
As Bishop of Dover, she saw the chaos caused by Brexit and leaving the EU, with queues of traffic from the ferry port and sometimes struggling to get through lines of vehicles to get to church services.
But her most brutal experience was as Commons chaplain during and after the Brexit referendum. Bishop Hudson-Wilkin remains convinced that the Brexit debate caused the death of Labor MP Jo Cox.
By this time her friendship with Speaker John Bercow had become so strong that she said she did not want to leave Parliament while he was still there and leave him alone with his enemies. The allegations of his alleged harassment are partly related to her appointment, which clearly angers him. “I knew him as a very kind, caring, compassionate person,” she adds.
But she has little sympathy for MPs who have complained about the sharp end of his tongue in the chamber.
“The fault was the childish and bad behavior of parliamentarians. My thing was that if you act like a child, then you expect to be treated like a child and to be treated like a child.”
Bishop Hudson-Wilkin would sometimes attend the debates because it forced MPs to “behave”. Since leaving parliament, Bercow has been isolated, but the bishop sees him as a “victim of Brexit”.
It is this approach to defending others that shapes her views on Dr. Welby and how his successor should be like him despite the reasons for his departure.
“Our church leaders have to be compassionate, and that’s what we had in Justin—someone who is compassionate and caring, someone who loves the Lord and wants to speak, wants to represent, to speak truth to power, whether the powers like it or not, someone who is sure of the gospel. We had that in Justin. I want an archbishop who does not differ in terms of love for the Lord and love for the people who are called.”
Although as a bishop suffragan she has no seat in the Lords, Bishop Hudson-Wilkin is defending her seat in parliament at a time when some MPs are advocating that the 27 Lords spirituals be thrown out along with the hereditary peers.
“The Lords is a bit of a joke, because you make anyone who has given you some money sit there and they have no idea what poverty is like. Our bishops in the Lord, they know it and can talk about it. They know their dioceses. I have no problem with them sitting there.”
Book by Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin A girl from Montego Bay is on sale from January 16.