New ministry for ex-convict Aitken as prison chaplain
Disgraced Tory politician deserves a chance at redemption, and the Church could provide it
JONATHAN AITKEN is to be ordained and plans to become a prison chaplain, he has revealed.
The former Conservative Cabinet minister, who became a Christian while serving seven months in prison for perjury, is to become a Church of England minister at St Paul’s Cathedral later this month.
The ordination will take place on June 30 and is to be carried out by Sarah Mullally, the first female Bishop of London, he told The Sunday Times.
While in prison Mr Aitken, 75, joined a prayer group which included “an armed robber, a blower (someone who cracks safes), a kiter (a cheque forger), a couple of murderers and a dipper (a pickpocket)”, he told the newspaper.
On his release in 2000 he studied theology. In his autobiography he revealed he was interviewed for entry by Dr Graham Tomlin, the Bishop of Kensington, then vice-principal of the college.
Dr Tomlin said: “I have known Jonathan Aitken for several years and this is a calling that has grown within him and been tried and tested by many others.
“His experience of the prison system, both from the inside and the outside gives him a unique perspective to offer Christian ministry in this vital area of our life as a society. He brings Christian learning from his theological studies, wide life experience, knowledge of the wider issues in criminal justice and a pastoral understanding of the needs of prisoners that will help strengthen the Church’s ministry to all.”
Mr Aitken was sentenced to 18 months at the Old Bailey in 1999 after admitting perjury and perverting the course of justice during a libel trial against The Guardian. He persuaded his then teenage daughter Victoria to give him a false alibi after the newspaper reported that while a minister in charge of defence procurement, he allowed the Saudi royal family to pay his £1,000 hotel bill at the Paris Ritz in 1993.
Jonathan Aitken has been an MP, a Cabinet minister, the chairman of a bank, a prisoner and a bankrupt. Now, at the age of 75, he is to be a clergyman. The first-ever woman Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, will make him her first-ever ordinand at the end of this month.
By way of “full disclosure”, I should declare that I have been a friend of Mr Aitken since the early 1980s. I came often to his house in Lord North Street, where he was the host of the Conservative Philosophy Group. Attendees included Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, Harold Macmillan and Henry Kissinger. Mr Aitken was excellent in the role, ensuring the right mixture of courtesy and combat, seriousness and humour, men of the world and people with ideas.
Although blessed with brains, good looks, eloquence, connections and (at the time, at least) money, Mr Aitken was always controversial. He seemed to some to be too good to be true, or not true enough to be good. Anna Ford famously threw wine over him. Mrs Thatcher denied him office during her 11-and-a-half years in Downing Street because he had been the boyfriend of her daughter, Carol, and had, Mrs T believed, dumped her unkindly.
Some mistrusted him. I was not one of these, although I could see he was a bit of a chancer. He was politically brave and, when I had journalistic dealings with him, I found he played straight. So when, as a government minister in 1994, he was accused by The Guardian of having his stay at the Ritz in Paris paid for by a rich Arab, I believed his denial and defended him in print. He brought a libel action against the paper, declaring that his “simple sword of truth” would cut out “the cancer of bent and twisted journalism”. When it turned out that he had lied, I felt as if his simple sword had struck me a glancing blow. In 1999, he went to prison for perjury.
In HMP Stamford Hill, on the Isle of Sheppey, I visited prisoner “Jono” (as he was now known). I was impressed by his cheerfulness. As often happens with educated prisoners, he had made himself useful by writing letters for illiterate inmates. He spoke sympathetically about them.
Not long after my visit to the prison, a man delivering furniture to me spotted bound volumes of Hansard (the official parliamentary report) in my study. “Oh,” he said, “I took a load of those books off that MP in Kent – Jonathan something. He was selling up. In the attic, he had piles of gold swords: he wanted them sold too.” Swords again! These were the ceremonial scimitars which Arab potentates bestow as presents on favoured guests.
Now that poor “Jono” was going bankrupt, there was pathos in these relics of more prosperous times.
When Mr Aitken told me on my visit that he was a member of a prison prayer group, I did not see this as a convenient ruse to get early release or social rehabilitation. I knew from talk with him over the years that he had long been seriously – though, obviously, imperfectly – religious. In the early 1960s, he had even taken advice about getting ordained. There might be an element of self-dramatisation in this, but his interest was nevertheless real.
When he was a four-year-old in Dublin, Jonathan got TB and was forced to lie in bed for three-and-a-half years. Sister Mary Finbar, the nun who cared for him throughout, gave him a vivid example of what a life of service might mean. After leaving prison, he studied theology. He has spent the past 15 years engaged chiefly in Christian good works, especially for prisoners.
Obviously the role of any priest touches all aspects of life, but the specific purpose of Mr Aitken’s ordination is to minister (unpaid) in prisons. He will surely be good at this. He has the fellow feeling and experience required. He notices, by direct observation, particular prison problems of our time – the unmet spiritual needs of prison officers, the growth of Islam at the expense of enfeebled Christianity, and the growing number of sex criminals, desperately lonely because they are despised not only by the outside world but by other inmates.
When I asked Mr Aitken this weekend why he wanted to minister in prisons, he quoted the once-famous cricketer and missionary, CT Studd:
“Some like to live within the sound Of church and chapel bell. I want to run a rescue shop
Within a yard of hell”
Given his history, some might doubt whether he can maintain that yard’s distance without tumbling into the pit. I cannot prove them wrong, but he is aware of the danger of his besetting sin – pride. He has written a life of John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace, whose “turning-point” led to a great ministry. One day, he tells me, Newton preached at St Mary Woolnoth, and a member of the congregation rushed up to congratulate him on his brilliance. “Thank you,” Newton replied, “but the Devil himself told me that a few seconds ago.” Mr Aitken tries to bear that in mind. I admit I got it wrong once before, but I feel that, as he follows “the Call”, he deserves the benefit of the doubt.
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