ALTHOUGH religious leaders had failed in spring 2003 to dissuade the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, from pursuing military action to oust President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, they continued to lobby to curb politicians’ actions and rhetoric, documents released by the National Archives last month reveal.
The Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, Dr Rowan Williams, had long voiced concerns about the use of military force in Iraq, and was planning to ask whether a high-profile national service of thanksgiving could be postponed.
A briefing note to Mr Blair from the Prime Minister’s Appointments Secretary, William Chapman, dated 9 September 2003, states that “the Archbishop will be interested in your views on the latest situation [in Iraq]. He will also ask whether the St Paul’s service on 10 October should be postponed given the current difficulties in Iraq. Since the service is not meant to be a flag waving celebration, but rather a serious act of thanksgiving, there seems no overwhelming reason for this.”
In underlined text, he continued: “You may wish to say you will consider the request but should hold out no great hope of postponement.”
Mr Chapman’s briefing, before a regular bilateral meeting with Dr Williams the next day, also advised Mr Blair that Christians in Iraq were not being explicitly targeted in the violence that followed the collapse of the Iraqi regime.
Days later, on 15 September, The Times reported that the Dean of St Paul’s, John Moses, had forced the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, to rename the service — which Mr Hoon had announced to the House of Commons in July as a service of “remembrance and thanksgiving” — to refer only to remembrance. The Times quoted senior church sources as saying that Dr Williams had not been “involved directly in negotiating the climbdown”. Whether Dr Williams also asked for a delay is not recorded.
At the service, held on 10 October as scheduled, the Archbishop told the congregation, which included Mr Blair, Mr Hoon, Queen Elizabeth II, and Prince Philip: “As we look out at a still uncertain and dangerous landscape, as we recall the soldiers and civilians killed since the direct military campaign ended, as we think of the United Nations personnel and the relief workers who have died, we have to acknowledge that moral vision is harder to convert into reality than we should like. . . We have made ourselves accountable for peace and justice in Iraq; leaders and people alike will be called to account for it.”
A Church Times article from 3 October, however, is included in the released documents, arguing that, at that stage, Chaldean Catholics in Iraq were confidently “jostling for power”.
A year later, the briefing note by Mr Chapman for a meeting between Mr Blair and Dr Williams stated that the Christian community in Iraq faced “a growing sectarian threat”. Another Church Times piece was attached, about the bombing of five Baghdad churches in one day. Mr Chapman expressed concern for the safety of Canon Andrew White, then the Chaplain of St George’s, Baghdad, saying that his convoy had been robbed at gunpoint.
“We have advised him that he would face an unacceptably high risk were he to return to Iraq at the present time. He has accepted this advice. . . Lambeth Palace are also concerned that Canon White’s press comments make him vulnerable to a kidnap/assassination attempt.” (In time, Canon White resumed his visits, but would, in 2014, be asked to end them again, by Archbishop Welby, because of a resurgent jihadist threat.)
A handwritten note by Mr Chapman on the briefing says, however: “Prime Minister, this arrived too late from the foreign office to reflect it in the brief I have already put in your box.”
One aspect of domestic policy at about that time which was largely kept out of the public eye was the implication for the Church of the Government’s plan to scrap the position of Lord Chancellor, which it later kept, but reduced. The priests of some 450 or so parishes and 12 cathedral canonries were, for historic reasons, appointed by the Lord Chancellor on behalf of the Crown. Mr Chapman had told Mr Blair in 2003 that he thought that the draft consultation document on the question was “unbalanced, biased towards handing this patronage to the Church”, and “could be seen or used by some as a big step towards disestablishment”, and asked Mr Blair for a steer.
Before a “purely social” dinner at Lambeth with Dr Williams and his wife, Jane, in January 2004, Mr Chapman wrote to Mr Blair and his wife, Cherie, that Dr Williams “would rather like the Church to have the patronage”. He continued, however: “You have recently confirmed your earlier decision that this should revert to the Crown and not, as [Lord Chancellor] Charlie Falconer argued, be handed to the Church.”
Mr Chapman attached a letter from the Dean of Southwark, Colin Slee, to the short-lived Department for Constitutional Affairs, in which he argued that it was “important that a significant percentage of parish livings are seen to be filled by a co-operation between the body politic and the body spiritual”, and that independent patrons protected parishioners against “pastoral re-organisation schemes”. Slee said that he believed he also reflected the views of other deans. In the end, the patronage of the parishes and canonries was left with the Lord Chancellor.
Mr Chapman kept Mr Blair apprised of issues in the Anglican Communion, both internal wrangling over gay bishops and external matters such as Zimbabwean Churches’ grappling with the human-rights abuses committed by the regime of President Robert Mugabe. In 2003, Mr Chapman described the pro-regime Bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, who was later excommunicated, as “an unashamed and high handed Mugabe apologist”, and advised Mr Blair to tell Dr Williams that fostering dialogue between pro- and anti-regime factions “is helpful, but not at the expense of the Churches’ vital role as moral advocates and human rights campaigners”.
Interfaith relations were of great concern to Dr Williams. Mr Chapman’s briefing to the Blairs before a supper with the Williamses in May 2004 updated the Prime Minister on global gatherings of Muslim and Christian scholars. After mentioning two events at which biblical and Qur’anic texts were discussed, he wrote: “However, the Muslim scholars have not proved very interested in exploring the Bible — thus illustrating one of the difficulties of dialogue with much of Islam.”