Diocese of Liverpool

Thought for the Day, 1 November 2002

The Rt Rev. James Jones

Yesterday was the last day that George Carey served as Archbishop of Canterbury. Much has been made of his humble origins and his class-defying pilgrimage from Dagenham to Lambeth.

The fact that he left the throne of Canterbury to return to the Parish Church in Dagenham for his last service says everything about how, in spite of high office, he never lost the common touch or a pastoral heart for ordinary people.

The actual journey from Dagenham to Lambeth takes in urban sites of extreme poverty and extravagant wealth.

Most of the world now live in or on the edge of cities and know the kicks and knocks of urban life.

Yesterday the Government began holding its Urban Summit in Birmingham under the chairmanship of John Prescott who - to give credit where it is due - gave a visionary speech on the future of our cities.

But later I was in one of the seminars where community members were still pleading to be given a proper voice in the shaping of our cities.

But what differences does all this talk make? There's no end to these conferences - and you could spend your whole life going from one to the other!

Well, there's a real danger that some of our cities could fall sick with the disease of urban diabetes. That is -– the blood pumps around the heart of prestigious city-centre projects but fails to get to the extremities of the body. These parts of the city then wither and die.

When I was in Hull and now in Liverpool the picture that keeps coming to me is of Jesus weeping over the city crying "If only you knew the things that make for peace".

I know these are local people working in areas of great deprivation trying to make them better places and doing it all for nothing!

One woman, whom I've seen exhausted to the point of tears, added up that in the last year she'd been to 174 meetings!

When I told that to a Government Minister he rightly gasped "But that's a full time job!" And for this she received no reward.

But, we can pay professionals to run regeneration schemes in deprived areas. We can give companies tax breaks to invest in brownfield sites.

YET, when it comes to local people renewing their communities we expect the poor to do it all for nothing! That doesn't feel very fair!

There's a word that's not very fashionable in the regeneration speak of triggers, levers, targets and outcomes. It's a word that's even fallen out of the dictionary of many politicians!

Like peace it was a word often on the lips of Jesus.

But without it there'll never be that peace in our cities for which Jesus cried out.

It's a word by which, in the end, we are all of us judged: justice.