The Rev Scargill’s tirade on vicars’ low pay left the Archbishops queasy
MORE public sector trouble: Vicars are on the warpath. Yesterday at General Synod (the Anglican parliament) the C of E discovered its own Arthur Scargill.
He was the Rev Graham Kirk-Spriggs from Norwich, a frisky fellow barely more than five foot high. Add spectacles, a Lenin beard and a tone of bourgeois petulance.
Tearing into the priesthood’s pay, he called it ‘a scandal, an absolute scandal - ridiculous!’ The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, those two boobies who are forever siding with state-sector workers, were just a few yards away. They looked decidedly queasy.
The Thirty Nine Article are nowadays largely ignored and all sorts of liturgical wet- lettuce and Shine Jesus Shine horrors go through to the wicket-keeper.
But here, at last, was an issue to provoke the bombastic certitude we haven’t heard since W.P. Nicholson, ‘the Tornado of the Pulpit’, was at his peak in Edwardian Belfast.
Justin Welby (Canterbury) covered his head with his two hands and assumed a position either of prayer or of ‘someone please stop that annoying little chap from shouting’. But the Rev SpriggsLenin was only just starting. ‘Some of us are very reluctant to talk about money, he began, ‘and I am not one of those people. The terms and conditions we are suffering are a scandal.’
Synod, which had earlier been bored into a near-coma by two pensions advisers (there was a certain poetic justice in seeing a chamber of preachers being anaesthetised by a dull talk) sat bolt upright.
‘A clergy-person now earns less than a first-year teacher,’ roared Comrade Spriggs, gripping hard to his lectern.
He described ‘a clergy-people’ of his acquaintance who, on complaining about energy costs, was told ‘well, you need to go on a Christians Against Poverty budgeting course. Really! The workers deserve to be paid.’
He bellowed: ‘I AM FURIOUS!’ We rather gathered that, dear. Magnificent in its way it was, too, even if ‘a clergy-people’ is a stylistic atrocity.
A Canadian parson called the Church’s attitude to pensions ‘shocking and appalling’.
The Rev Ian Paul from Southwell and Nottingham noted that, while vicars’ pay had shrivelled, the Church’s assets have ballooned to £ 10billion. ‘Financial assets are enjoying rude health while ministerial assets feel discouraged, demoralised and devalued.’
Annual assets growth was £900million but a rise in stipends would cost a mere £25million. ‘This is not a big ask,’ said the Rev Paul. Standing just next to Archbishop Welby, he added darkly: ‘It’s remarkable how quickly we can find the money for things we consider important.’
Can he have been thinking about the £ 100million Mr Welby has pledged to spend in historic slavery reparations? Or the fortune the C of E will now likely spend on unconscious bias training and race action plans after caving in to that careerist bishop of Dover?
And don’t get me started on church-musicians’ pay. My wife, an organist, is fathoms below the minimum wage.
Round the dome of Church House’s debating chamber is an inscription which begins ‘ from Christ they inherit a home of unfading splendour’.
DON’T mention that to the poor schmucks who have to toil under Mr Welby and Stephen Cotterell, Archbishop of York. The latter is a ringer for the late trade unionist Bob Crow. He even begins his speeches with ‘bruvvers and sisters’, but there the altruism ends.
We heard of a priest who lost pension entitlements when she stopped work to care for her dying husband. A retired vicar from Chelmsford said, ‘I live adequately, just’, yet her diocese depended on her and other retired Revs to keep services running.
Will they strike? Ian Boothroyd from Nottingham suggested the picketline chant might go ‘ whadda we want? A pension which keeps up with inflation, if you don’t mind. When do we want it? If it’s not too much trouble, the year after next, please.’
But the Rev Kirk-Spriggs, with the taste of Mammon on the rim of his chalice, might demand something markedly tarter.