FORUM: Illtyd Harrington: ‘As I Please’

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Published: 16 June, 2011

MY grandmother’s judgment was calculated to strike terror into what she considered my seven-year-old black heart. 

My grandfather, unlike the rest of us, was an Irish Protestant. He suggested borrowing three ferocious dogs from Thomas, the man who ran the scrap metal yard, and giving me a three-minute start into the Welsh hills.

My sin in need of an act of atonement was to bring about a sexual congress between Hywel (prince of Brecon’s sheepdogs) and Queen Penydeadron, my black cocker spaniel. My grandmother’s injunction to my mother was: “Put the fear of God into the little sod.”

I stood, head bowed, fearing that the Lord would strike. In my excited imagination I dreamt of being the Welsh St Joan at the stake.

My mother did scare me without God’s help. She said that I was to be sent to a Christian Brothers’ school in Cardiff, oddly enough called St Illtyd’s.

Now that was a real scare; boys will talk and rumours will spread. I gave up at once my role as a canine marriage broker.

So in my old age I remembered God’s rebuke and threat. And the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams  frustrated by Labour’s inability to strike a blow against the havoc, cynical indifference and sanctimonious explanations of the government, Rowan roared like a Welsh dragon at this government and its contempt for the general electorate which did not vote for self-defeating cuts.

It used to be said that the Church of England was the Tory party at prayer. Now Christian Tories are brought out from some refrigerator to sound passionate. Rowan, the people’s champion, is reflecting the great disturbance which is sweeping the Anglican community, who are having to cope with local consequences of Cameron and Clegg policies.

His accusations were met by feeble and frantic attempts to write him off as irrelevant and of no consequence.

But the moneylenders and changers are still in the temple. The hedge fund investors and dealers in futures are stealing the commodities of the world to push prices up.

Christ has been locked out of the churches not locked in. He was the urban guerilla that came out of Galilee.

Just after the war the Archbishop of York took on a leading Marxist to claim that Christianity was putting a better case for equality than Communism. 

He thundered away from the Magnificat: He has pulled down the mighty from their seats. That he thought would see off The Communist Manifesto of 1848.

At Lord (Ted) Castle’s funeral, at his request, I read John Ball’s last sermon, a hedge priest who shared the hard life of the peasants. Now that was the stuff to get you off your behind and take to the streets. Still worth reading if not declaiming.

Perhaps those fervent, intolerant, stern-faced, born-again, people will howl as Rowan can quote the basic tenets of the Sermon on the Mount which are reconcilable with The Communist Manifesto and John Ball’s trenchant words. Rowan should continue to invoke the “fear of God” because we are still in a country where deep divsions of wealth and influence apply.

While Red Rowan stands his ground the Labour Party uncovers the stratagems, plots and feuds to remove Tony Blair six years ago.

The manipulator and head of the school for skulduggery is, of course, the new enemy Ed Balls, assisted by Ed Miliband who learnt a few dirty tricks in Haverstock School playground.

Good assassins never leave their evidence behind. Brown, almost writing a death certificate for Blair, is said to have written in large letter: “Shallow. inconsistent and muddled.” 

This is known as the party of brotherly love. The Borgias at least were honest.

Blair, I read, wrote of his personal Gethsemane about “a demonic rabble tearing at my limbs”. Tony for the time being has rediscovered his religious foundation in the boardroom of 

JP Morgan at No 3 Wall Street, the yoking together of Mammon and God. Labour for the moment has ducked the archbishop’s challenge.

God knows my faith is surely challenged on hearing that perma-tanned Peter Hain is chairman of the Labour Refounding Committee. Old Labour? New Labour Reviewed, New Labour and now Refounded Labour.

Leave all that to Vince Cable, now happy in his new role as Uriah Heap.

Those poor old dying parents let them go. Make your own teeth or see people off with a NHS box of Paracetamol and a bottle of cleaning fluid. 

Dean Swift advocated 400 years ago that the solution to the famine in Ireland was to eat the children. 

This present madness has to be stopped and that means a good scrap and not an unconditional surrender.

Take courage from Lord (Melvyn) Bragg, strangely called a Labour working peer and sybarite. His lordship holds passionately to the belief that paying £500 per night at the opera or £70 for a gallery seat in Covent Garden shows that Britain is reviving. And Melvyn has moved into a very dangerous area. He seems to think that he wrote the 1611 Bible. Unlikely as it seems, Blair is now God the Father. Neither Blair nor Bragg has reacted in support of a real Christian challenge from the battling bishop.