Published letters (Daily Telegraph etc.)

Daily Telegraph

8/26/2019

Tercentenary of British Parliament leading the global development of freedom of religion by beginning repeal of the Test Acts

Charles Moore (Telegraph 24 August) rightly observes that universities should be as concerned about the Test Acts as they are about past complicity with slavery. The Test Acts excluded Catholics and Dissenters from education as well as certain professions and political office. Between 1719 and 1871 the British parliament abolished the various Test Acts beginning with the Schism Act which had excluded non-Anglicans from being school teachers and prohibited higher education establishments known as dissenting academies. In 1871 the Universities Test Act repealed laws requiring academics at Cambridge, Oxford and Durham to hold Anglican beliefs.
Although little remembered today it is hard to overstate the importance of repeal of the Test Acts as they marked the achievement of full freedom of religion in the UK and its spread across the world. Countries such as the USA and Australia, which branched off from Britain during or immediately after this period, wrote specific clauses into their constitutions prohibiting any future government from requiring assent to particular beliefs for those in public office.
This is a history that universities should carefully reflect on, not least in the light of current attempts on some campuses to censor students and outside speakers who dissent from politically correct orthodoxy or hold minority religious beliefs.
Dr Martin Parsons
Devizes, Wiltshire

Irish Times (Dublin)

12/7/2017

Brexit and Ireland
(within 24 hours of publication the Irish government removed their objections to the UK and EU progressing to to the next stage of Brexit talks)

Over the past 20 years I have seen nothing but genuine warmth by British people towards the Irish. Our distrust of the EU has never been transferred to Ireland. Indeed, EU insistence that Ireland vote again after rejecting the Lisbon Treaty created much sympathy.
That is sadly now changing and being replaced in mainland Britain by rising anger at what is seen as Leo Varadkar’s unwarranted aggression. His proposals are viewed as violating our territorial integrity and seeking to subject us after Brexit to laws created in a foreign country and a court in a foreign land.
When Ireland became an independent, sovereign nation it rejected government by the UK and laws made by our parliament. It is therefore deeply disappointing that the Irish government of all people seems unable to understand this is exactly what the UK is doing by leaving the EU.
No-one wants a hard border. However, we find it incomprehensible that Mr Varadkar is now the main obstacle to the only thing which can prevent that between two independent sovereign countries – a free-trade agreement.
It is a tragedy that peace and goodwill built up over the last 20 years is being jeopardised this way.
Dr Martin Parsons
Devizes, England

Daily Telegraph

1/3/2017

Extremism and British values

3rd January 2017
David Anderson is wrong. The only way extremism can be defined is in relation to Britain’s historic national values such as parliamentary democracy and sovereignty, one law applying equally to all people and enforced by an independent judiciary, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of the press.
These values have evolved over many centuries and become embedded in our national institutions.
The threat of those holding conservative religious views being unfairly targeted comes from attempts by social liberals to hijack British values and replace them with their own sectarian values.
Such attempts themselves undermine our national values such as freedom of religion – the existence of which has been one of the principal reasons that victims of religious persecution overseas have sought refuge in our country for the last four centuries.

Daily Telegraph

1/27/2014

Democratic deficit in sea defence
- written the month after major east coast floods and during the Somerset Levels floods

The chief executive of the Environment Agency states that he is deciding whether to repair or abandon sea defences breached by last month’s tidal surge in Suffolk and Norfolk.
Where cost is an issue coastal communities can potentially look for alternative funding streams. However, a more fundamental issue is the assumption of the Environment Agency that it will decide whether to maintain or abandon sea defences. This issue is simply too important to local communities to be decided by a non governmental body. This ‘democratic deficit’ was made significantly worse by the 2010 Flood and Water Management Act rushed through parliament without proper scrutiny in the last few days before the 2010 general election. Section 38 of this gives wide ranging powers to the Environment Agency to actually create either flooding or coastal erosion where it believes these are justified for what are in practice a wide ranging set of reasons.
There is an urgent need for the government to review both this act and the wider issue of how decisions are taken in relation to whether to maintain or abandon sea defences. It is clearly inappropriate for unelected civil servants to be taking decisions about whether to abandon large areas of the land to the sea.
Dr Martin Parsons
Kessingland, Suffolk