Slave-song manuscript on show in Gloucester
AN 18TH-CENTURY manuscript of a song sung by enslaved people on the sugar plantations of Barbados will feature in a new exhibition at Gloucester Cathedral in September. The manuscript, which is a UNESCO world-heritage document, will be accompanied by two projects inspired by it: works by the Gloucester-based artist Rider Shafique, who is of Bajan descent, and the British-Jamaican photographer Vanley Burke. Also featured will be a series of newly commissioned quilts exploring “the ways in which the people of Gloucester have influenced the wider world”, led by Jo Teague, the exhibition’s curator. Organised by Voices Gloucester, the exhibition is part of Threads 2024, an annual heritage-textiles programme supported by Gloucester Cathedral, The Folk of Gloucester, and the Museum of Gloucester. It will run from 6 to 30 September.
Archbishop of Canterbury takes water companies to task
THE Archbishop of Canterbury has asked the Government if it will put in place measures in the water industry “to prevent the over-return to shareholders by means of financial engineering, and limit the upside so that utilities are run basically for their customers and not simply for the short-term gain of those who have them”. He was speaking in the House of Lords on Tuesday during a debate on the financial resilience of England’s water companies. He suggested to the DEFRA minister Baroness Hayman that the shareholders of Thames Water and others had made “extraordinary returns by financial engineering, well in excess of what one would expect to make from a utility, which should be low risk and low reward”. In response, the minister said that the previous government should have taken action earlier, “so that money was spent properly on fixing the system, rather than paying dividends and bonuses to company shareholders”.
Home Secretary urged to ‘restore the right to asylum’
AN APPEAL to the Home Secretary to “restore the right to asylum” has been issued by the director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, Sarah Teather. The letter, sent last week, calls for the repeal of the Illegal Migration Act and Nationality and Borders Act and the abandonment of “all measures that punish refugees for how they arrived in the UK”, in addition to the creation of safe routes for people seeking asylum. It also demands an end to immigration detention and the Hostile Environment. Last month, the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, told the House of Commons that the Government would establish a new Border Security Command, replace the Rwanda migration partnership with a “serious returns and enforcement programme”, and “end the asylum chaos”, by “taking asylum decisions again so that we can clear the backlog and end asylum hotels”.
Imprisonment of US reporter condemned
THE Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned the imprisonment of an American journalist in Russia. “I am appalled by the news that WSJ’s Evan Gershkovich has been sentenced to 16 years in prison,” he wrote on social media last Friday. “Journalists worldwide should be free to hold power to account without fear. We pray for the hundreds of journalists currently imprisoned for their vital work.” Mr Gershkovich was first arrested in March while reporting in Yekaterinburg. Prosecutors accused him of working for the CIA — a charge that he, The Wall Street Journal, and the US government all deny. Last week, he was found guilty of espionage.
Welsh choir celebrates Eisteddfod trophy
THE Archdeacon of Meirionnydd, the Ven. Robert Townsend, is among the members of the winner of the title Choir of the World, Côr Glanaethwy. The Bangor-based choir won this year’s Llangollen International Eisteddfod, after performing four Welsh songs. The trophy was donated to the Eisteddfod in 2005 by Luciano Pavarotti in memory of his father, Fernando Pavarotti, who first sang at Llangollen with his choir from Modena, Italy, in 1955. Directed by a husband-and-wife team, Cefin and Rhian Roberts, Côr Glanaethwy is part of Ysgol Glanaethwy Performing Arts School. It earned third place in Britain’s Got Talent in 2015.