Church leaders’ views on jobless toll

Press, 21 April 1984, Page 27

Church leaders’ views on jobless toll

NZPA staff correspondent London Two Church of England leaders have spoken out strongly about the problems of high unemployment The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, in an address on education at Kent University, said: “We are confronted by what is at worst a moral vacuum and at best a morally shapeless world for ourselves and our children to inhabit. “I am afraid that the problem of teen-age unemployment must be regarded as moral as well as political and I make no apology for including it among the factors which have led to a diminution of respect for traditional authority.” Of the education system, Dr Runcie criticised the tendency “to judge the value of education solely in terms of the demands of the labour market.” Changes in government

economic policies were called for by the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Rev. David Sheppard, in his 1984 Richard Dimbleby lecture on 8.8. C. television. In a text issued before the programme, he said Britain was deeply divided with a cry of pain from the “other Britain.” Free market competition was, he conceded, economically efficient “but the widening gap between governors and governed makes for a dangerous alienation and anger which could block or smash all our proud growth. “The Government is in danger of pushing people too far. The red light is flashing,” he said. To deal with Britain’s dramatic rise in teen-age unemployment he advocated universal training or education until the age of 19, and a Government public works services programme to pro-

vide jobs not supplied by free market economics. It would mean higher taxes but “politicians should renounce exploiting the grudging unwillingness of the better-off to pay more taxes.” The alternative was what he called “whistling in the dark hoping that full employment will return, and tolerating an existence on the dole which robs them of any choices and indeed imprisons the spirit” The Bishop, a former test cricketer, lives in an area of high unemployment where the city council of Liverpool faces a serious financial crisis because of Government restrictions on its spending. Severe reductions this year with proposals to abolish some local authorities, such as the Greater London Council, have caused widespread protests. The Bishop said the Church’s concern with pov-

erty was no “off-beat radical theology” but sprang from mainstream Christianity.

Cuts in education have led to the National Union of Students’ president, Neil Stewart, demanding guarantees of minimum standards for higher education to protect students from Government cuts and bad teaching.

At the union’s annual conference recently he said universities had lost 4000 staff because of spending cuts while polytechnics and colleges had taken on an extra 50,000 students in spite of being faced with a loss of 2000 staff. “Standards of education cannot take such a battering without suffering,” he said. “Our lecturers know their subjects — their Ph.D.s testify to that — but can they teach them . .. maintain the standards of teaching under such cuts without proper training?”