This is what we are up against. It cannot be beaten except by confronting it, symptoms and causes, head-on. Without compromise and without delusion. Their cause is not founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such it can’t be moderated. It can’t be remedied. It has to be stood up to. And, of course, they will use any issue that is a matter of dissent within our democracy.
But we should lay bare the almost devilish logic behind such manipulation. We must pull this up by its roots …
Thirty-seven Muslim organisations signed a statement protesting about this speech, saying, ‘To equate “extremism” with the aspirations of Muslims for Sharia laws in the Muslim world or the desire to see unification towards a Caliphate in the Muslim lands, as seemed to be misrepresented by the prime minister, is inaccurate and disingenuous.’
Hizb ut-Tahrir said, ‘He was propagating a narrative that was born out of right-wing US think tanks that certain orthodox ideas from Islam are somehow a precursor to terrorist violence.’ Dr Abdul Wahid, chairman of Hizb ut-Tahrir UK, told us, ‘Tony Blair conflates the bombing of 7/7 with orthodox and peaceful things. The TBFF just wants to find like-minded people. He has a certain narrative on Islam.’ Blair has a long way to go before his Faith Foundation will have credibility among Muslims.
Even odder than the absence of a credible Muslim was the complete absence of a Catholic representative, even though Blair was received into the Catholic Church in 2007 shortly after leaving office, as we predicted in our 2005 book Tony Blair in Peace and War – a prediction widely dismissed at the time. In June 2009, three months after Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor resigned as Archbishop of Westminster and leader of Catholics in England and Wales, the TBFF announced that he had agreed to be a member of its Religious Advisory Council – and the Cardinal then rather pointedly said that he had not agreed to this, and had no intention of agreeing to it.
This is because neither the Foundation nor the Blairs have gone down well in Rome following the former PM’s demands for wholesale changes in Catholic belief and practice. The Blairs managed to annoy Pope Benedict by disagreeing with the Vatican’s hard line on homosexuality and abortion, while acting as ambassadors for Catholicism.18
But this is unlikely to be the full story. We know that the Catholic Church, which only a few years ago was proud and excited about its high-profile recruit and was telling us Blair intended to convert long before Blair himself admitted it, has gone distinctly cold on the man. The Blairs have always been mystics, which is why Blair did so badly in his debate against the late Christopher Hitchens on theism versus atheism. He has never believed his religion requires arguing for: it’s just true, and that’s all there is to it.
So far, so good: the Catholic Church is based on authority, on a set of beliefs laid down by Christ and by popes who are infallible in matters of faith and dogma, beliefs that are simply true, and that’s that. The trouble is that Blair wants the bulwark of the authority, but does not always want to accept the authority of the Pope.
As long ago as 2001, the Blairs were introduced to spiritualism by Carole Caplin’s spiritualist mother Sylvia. Cherie took to wearing a ‘magic pendant’ known as a bio-electric shield. Catholics purse their lips in disapproval at this sort of behaviour.
It’s also suggested in Catholic circles that Blair’s current activities may bring discredit on the Church if it is too closely associated with him. The relentless moneymaking does not accord well with Christ’s teaching, they say, though there are, of course, many very wealthy Catholics.
Whatever the reason, the Church has moved to distance itself from the Blairs, which is why Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor pointedly contradicted the TBFF statement that he had agreed to join the Religious Advisory Council. This was an acute embarrassment for the TBFF. Worse was to follow. The Blairs were equally pointedly not invited to the installation of the new Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev. Vincent Nichols, who said Catholic thinking was ‘rather different’ from the kind promoted by Blair.
Nichols was furious because, among other things, Blair had used an interview with the gay publication Attitude to criticise the approach of the Pope towards gay rights. He argued that religious leaders must start ‘rethinking’ the issue.
Blair’s falling-out with the Catholic Church was serious. According to the Tablet, the Catholic weekly, Stephen Pound, Labour MP for Ealing North and a Catholic, said that Blair’s ‘hubristic’ attitude was ‘extremely counterproductive. Entrance to the Vatican is only gained through a series of iron-clad, hermetically sealed, heavily padlocked and bolted doors, and I can hear them creaking shut as we speak.’ Pound warned Blair against ‘dictating to the Pope through the media.’ Meanwhile, Catholic theologians queued up to condemn the former Prime Minister and all his works. Professor Michel Schooyans of the Catholic University of Louvain spearheaded the attack with a sarcastic speech in which he said, ‘The fresh “convert” does not hesitate to explain to the Pope not only what he must do, but also what he must believe! Is he a Catholic? … So now we are back in the time of Hobbes, if not of Cromwell: it’s civil power that defines what one must believe.’19
Catholic Action UK, a ginger group that seeks to ensure that the Church does not grow lax on its fundamental beliefs, spits fury about the Blairs, and Cherie in particular. A 1,300-word ‘dossier’ on Cherie Blair accuses her of heinous crimes. She apparently ‘visited the exhibition stand of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, Population Concern and Marie Stopes International’ at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in November 1999. Not content with this wickedness, she ‘endorsed CEDAW [the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women], specifically mentioning CEDAW’s affirmation of women’s so-called “reproductive rights”’. And then, in 2004, horror of horrors, ‘in a lecture to students at Harvard university, Mrs Blair described the US Supreme Court’s striking-down of the Texas law against sodomy as “a model of judicial reasoning”.’
There was more. As a lawyer, Mrs Blair once represented a lesbian against South West Trains, who had refused to grant travel concessions to her same-sex partner. She has said that the Catholic Church is not ideal, therefore implying that it is not infallible, a dreadful heresy. She ‘accepted an invitation to the gay wedding [same-sex civil partnership ceremony] of anti-life [code for pro-abortion] MEP Michael Cashman’. She supports Human Rights Watch, which is pro-abortion. The charge sheet goes on and on.
The dossier ends: ‘Why is she still being invited to speak at Catholic institutions? This must stop.’20
It is easy to laugh – and comparatively safe, since these people no longer have the power to burn you at the stake – but the zealots of Catholic Action UK do represent something, just as the Muslim extremists Blair denounces represent something. They can make it awkward politically for the princes of the church to cooperate with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.
Nonetheless, a TBFF spokesperson told us, ‘The Foundation works side by side with anyone committed to practically supporting preventing religious prejudice, conflict and extremism. Given that context and our mission, it would be totally counterproductive to favour one religious or non-religious group, and we would never do that.’
The relationship between Blair and the Catholic Church has not been eased by Blair’s close relationship with the remarkable Father Michael Seed. Seed was the Blairs’ confessor and confidant when they were in Downing Street, as secretary for ecumenical affairs at Westminster Cathedral, and he celebrated masses for the Blairs. As late as September 2014 the Catholic newspaper The Universe was still describing him as ‘The priest who converted Tony Blair to Catholicism.’21 He proved to be very good at getting celebrities into the Roman Catholic Church: in addition to Blair, he helped in the conversion of Ann Widdecombe and John Selwyn Gummer. Seed confidently told us, while Blair was still Prime Minister, that Blair would convert to Catholicism as soon as he left Downing Street. He was right, but people who thought they were c
lose to Blair told us he was wrong.
Seed was closer to Blair than they were. Seed was very close. Close enough to become a fundraiser for Blair’s pet education project, his academy schools, introducing wealthy businessmen of his acquaintance to Blair’s people. Close enough for Cherie Blair to call him a man who turned ‘the great into the good’. Close enough to know the Blair family’s deepest secrets.
Close enough, after Cardinal Basil Hume died in 1999, for the relationship to become an irritant to Seed’s new boss, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who does not seem to have appreciated Father Seed’s talking about the famous new convert whose arrival he was expecting; nor did he think much of Father Seed’s seeming endorsement of Blair’s controversial policy of academy schools.
Murphy-O’Connor’s irritation was reported in the Daily Telegraph just as Blair was resigning as Prime Minister, and this may have played a part in the Cardinal’s refusal to join the TBFF Religious Advisory Council the following year. But Seed continued to be a player, increasingly moving in the rarefied world of the American and Middle Eastern megarich, which Blair was getting to know so well, until the wheels conclusively fell off the Michael Seed bandwagon in 2012, when a Mail on Sunday investigation found that he was trying to sell papal honours as well as introductions to clients for arms dealers, for cash.22
Papal honours are given on the authority of the Pope, and several prominent Catholics have one, as well as a few people judged by the Catholic Church to be exceptionally deserving. Jimmy Savile was awarded a papal knighthood, and there is no procedure for withdrawing it posthumously.
Father Seed, an apparently humble little priest who seemed to us to model himself, or at least his image, on G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, was suddenly an embarrassment to the Catholic hierarchy. And, in a different way, so was Tony Blair, who had the same aura of Middle Eastern money about him. The past association between Blair and Seed, in addition to Blair’s theological unreliability, seems to have fed the Church’s desire not to be too closely associated with Blair.
So Britain’s important Catholics wanted nothing to do with the TBFF. But, from Blair’s point of view, not having any Catholic prelate on the Religious Advisory Council who could match the Chief Rabbi, or the Bishop of London, or the world’s top Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists was clearly a weakness that had to be addressed.
That may be why we have not heard much from Cherie Blair since 2009 on abortion, or homosexuality, or ordination of women, or any of those matters on which her deeply held views are heretical. She has confined herself to safe subjects, such as women entrepreneurs.
In 2013 the problem was partially resolved, aided no doubt by the arrival of a new and more liberal Pope: Francis. An important Catholic finally joined the council, though not a member of the British Catholic hierarchy. This was Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and the second most important bishop in Ireland. Martin is the leading voice for reform in the Catholic Church in Ireland. He has called for a full independent inquiry into the Irish Catholic Church’s child-sex-abuse scandal, a call resisted and resented by many of his colleagues, among whom he is therefore quite unpopular.
A not wholly successful attempt has been made to address the lack of a credible Muslim figure. In 2013 the TBFF Religious Advisory Council recruited Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, chief imam of the All India Organisation of Imams and Mosques. The website of this organisation says of Ilyasi,
He is well versed in Islamic Jurisprudence and his opinions in relevant circles are regarded as being authentic and trustworthy. He is one of the few Islamic scholars who hold very candid and vocal position [sic] on extremism and terrorism in whatever form it exists. By nature he is a rationalist and is being guided by reason and wisdom even in the most provocative situations.23
But Abdul Wahid of Hizb ut-Tahrir tells us, ‘I’m afraid I had never heard of Umer Ahmed Ilyasi or this organisation before receiving your email. I checked with a close friend of mine, an Indian Muslim, who had also never heard of him or the organisation – and was frankly stunned by the claim on his website that he is the spiritual leader of half a million imams in India. He in turn checked with friends and relatives in India, who had also never heard of him or the organisation. I further checked with an Indian Muslim businessman I know who had heard of him some years ago, but did not know much.’
The American and African evangelical Christians on the Council hold deeply conservative views, and, like the Catholics, represent another good reason for the Blairs to soft-peddle their liberal views about homosexuality, abortion and the place of women.
The Rev. Rick Warren founded Saddleback Church in Lake Forest in 1980 with one other family. Today, it is one of America’s most influential churches, with about 20,000 people attending the weekend services. He is the author of Purpose Driven Life, and built the Purpose Driven Network, a global alliance of pastors from 162 countries and hundreds of denominations who have been trained to be what he calls purpose-driven churches. He founded Pastors.com, an online interactive community that provides sermons, forums, and other practical resources for pastors.
Warren is strongly against abortion, same-sex marriage and stem-cell research, and could be expected to disapprove of any move by the TBFF to support any of these things.
But even stronger disapproval would come from the Rt Rev. Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Bishop of Kaduna. Although the Bishop preaches an end to religious violence in his country, Nigeria, he has also said, ‘Unfortunately, some Anglican leaders do not embrace the official positions of the Church, making dumb comments such as “Muslims do not have a monopoly on violence.”’24
And, although he has said that corruption is even worse than homo-sexuality, he thinks the latter is pretty bad and ought to be punished: ‘The church in Nigeria is, however, grateful to the National Assembly for passing a law against same-sex marriage,’ he told an internet newspaper for young Nigerians.25
Legally, the TBFF is run by its trustees. For the first five years of the trust’s existence, there were just the three of them: a lawyer, an investment banker and an advertising executive.
Robert Clinton is a lawyer at Farrer and Co., and also a director of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. Farrer and Co. are TBFF’s lawyers, and this company’s Lincoln’s Inn address is the only address given out for the Foundation – its real Marble Arch address is kept as secret as possible.
Robert Coke is the co-head of absolute return and buyouts at the Wellcome Trust, chairman of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association’s advisory board and director of the Private Equity Investors’ Association.
But the advertising man is the most interesting, for Jeremy Sinclair created the infamous, but unsuccessful, ‘Demon Eyes’ advertising campaign against Blair for the Conservatives in the 1997 election. ‘It is nasty, it is vicious, it is negative. It is all the things that you would expect from the Conservative party,’ said Blair at the time.
That campaign reinforced M&C Saatchi’s reputation as the Rottweiler of political advertising. But it was far from being Sinclair’s first campaign for the Conservatives, nor his last. He was responsible for the famous, and devastatingly successful, ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ poster in 1978, which helped ensure Margaret Thatcher’s election victory the following year. He was back working for the Conservatives in 2010, scrapping the planned positive campaign about the virtues of David Cameron for a ruthlessly negative one demonising Gordon Brown, so he has a reasonable claim to being the man who won the 2010 election for the Conservatives.
He lists his interests as ‘spiritualism, architecture and Conservative politics’, which gives him a lot in common with Blair, though Blair is not thought to be especially interested in architecture.
Sinclair took a copywriting diploma from Watford School of Art and went straight on to work for Saatchi & Saatchi in 1968. He has never worked anywhere that is not owned by the Saatchi brothers. He rose rapidly within the agency, creating campaigns for major
clients such as Silk Cut cigarettes and British Airways.
He had reached the post of deputy chairman when, in 1994, a board rebellion secured the ousting of Maurice and Charles Saatchi. Sinclair opted to stay with the Saatchis, who had made his career, and to whom he was a perfect foil, adding a calmness that they lacked. So he was the founding director of the new firm created by the Saatchis, M&C Saatchi.
In 2013 Blair brought in two old friends to add to his trustees: Dame Gail Rebuck and Sir Michael Barber. Rebuck is chairwoman and chief executive of the huge publishing empire Random House, which published Blair’s autobiography. She was married to Blair’s pollster and friend, the late Philip Gould. Barber was chief adviser to the Secretary of State for Education on school standards during Blair’s first term as Prime Minister, and the real architect, along with Andrew Adonis, of Blair’s education policy. During Blair’s second term he worked as Blair’s chief adviser on delivery, reporting directly to the Prime Minister.
After Blair resigned as PM, Barber worked as global head of education for McKinsey, then chief education adviser for Pearson.
The Tony Blair Faith Foundation is also a registered charity in the USA, where its five directors, apart from Blair and the first TBFF chief executive, Ruth Turner, included Tim Collins, the billionaire businessman who accompanied Blair on a trip to Libya to meet Gaddafi. As previously discussed, Collins claimed that Blair asked him to make that trip in his capacity as a Trustee of the TBFF, though no one has established any link between the work of the TBFF and Blair’s dealings with the Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi. Gaddafi certainly saw none – he apparently thought Collins was there to advise on building beach resorts. Collins was obliged to disabuse him of this notion.
Collins is deeply involved with the Yale Divinity School. It was precisely the opportunity to meet its super-rich donors such as Collins that made the Yale Divinity School so useful for the TBFF after Blair ran a course there.
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