Examination of Witnesses (Questions 173-179)
14 DECEMBER 2004
MR CHRISTOPHER
JONES, CANON
GUY WILKINSON,
DR DON
HORROCKS, REV
KATEI KIRBY,
MR RICHARD
ZIPFEL AND
FATHER PHILIP
SUMNER
Q173 Chairman: Good afternoon. Thank
you very much indeed for coming this afternoon and responding
to our request to give evidence to the Committee. As you will
know, I think, this is the third hearing that the Select Committee
has held on the subject of terrorism and community relations.
As you will have seen, we do have a very packed agenda this afternoon
which will almost certainly be disrupted by one or more votes
on the Mental Incapacity Bill, so we will need to keep quite strictly
to time. Although the issues are complex and important I would
be grateful, firstly, if you could keep your answers as short
as you can and, secondly, not to reinforce a point unnecessarily
which has been made already by another witness. Perhaps we can
start by each of the witnesses introducing themselves and then
I will begin the questioning.
Rev Kirby: Good
afternoon. I am Reverend Katei Kirby and I am the General Manager
for the African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance.
Dr Horrocks: My name is Don Horrocks.
I am head of Public Affairs at the Evangelical Alliance.
Mr Zipfel: I am Richard Zipfel
and I am a policy adviser for the Catholic Bishops Conference.
Father Sumner: Father Philip Sumner,
a Catholic priest from Oldham. I am on the Oldham Community Cohesion
Partnership and the Oldham Voluntary Community and Faith Sector
Partnership.
Mr Jones: I am Christopher Jones,
policy adviser for Home Affairs in the Mission and Public Affairs
division of the Church of England.
Q174 Chairman: We understand that The
Revd Wilkinson from the Church of England will be with us very
shortly. If I could start with a general question perhaps to each
of the Christian faith groups which are represented here. Are
you able, from the experience of your own part of the church,
to give specific examples in your own experience or that of your
members of the way in which the threat of terror has affected
the lives of minority groups or of social cohesion? Can we start
with the Evangelical Alliance, either of the witnesses.
Dr Horrocks: Not specific examples,
no, but I can make some more general comments on that.
Q175 Chairman: We will come back to more
general comments in just a moment but for the Catholic church,
Father Sumner?
Father Sumner: Certainly from
my experience in Oldham, every time there has been some terror
attack a number of people refer to me, whether in confidential
situations or outside confidential situations, who almost presume
that whatever happens on their television screens is happening
on a much wider basis than it actually is. So the presumption
that terrorists are everywhere, that it is very prevalent, and
the level of tension within a community does rise. There are other
things which have happened as well in our community in places
like Oldham but that has been one element. When something is put
on the television screen I hear far more comments from my own
parishioners, for example, concerning the Muslim community, the
presumption being that terrorism is everywhere and that the Muslim
communities are responsible.
Q176 Chairman: Just to press you on that
point, which is interesting, if it is television coverage then
that is not necessarily slanted or biased coverage. It is simply
people translate a factual report from somewhere else in the world
to the streets around?
Father Sumner: Except that very
often those reports are slanted and the word terrorism is associated
with Islam and they are put too closely together so often, unfortunately.
Q177 Chairman: We will come back and
explore the media issues a little later on. Mr Jones?
Mr Jones: We have some examples
of the threat of terrorism raising suspicion in the community
when people are not acquainted with the ways of different religious
groups. For instance we know about a devout Sufi in Bury who suffered
a bereavement and as is the custom quite a lot of people came
to visit the house at this time of bereavement. A neighbour seeing
these bearded men arriving telephoned the police and the police
arrested this man at night and it caused quite a lot of reverberation
in the community. In a way this was because there was insufficient
understanding of Sufi bereavement practices.
Q178 Chairman: Again to each of the groups
of witnesses, are you able to give a broad assessment of the extent
to which you think social cohesion has got worse in the years
since 9/11 in a way which might be related to the impact of terrorism?
Rev Kirby: I think I would want
to bounce back a question about the whole understanding of cohesion
actually. Certainly for Christians we did not wait necessarily
until 9/11 to pull together. Our message is not about waiting
for a crisis but responding to need anyway. In terms of whether
it is better or worse, I think that is quite subjective, it depends
on who you talk to and which area of the country you are in. For
some people it seems still quite recent and raw, if I can put
it that way, but for others it is about getting on with life and
doing the best they can in the aftermath of it.
Mr Zipfel: Our impression is that
especially among individual members of Asian communities they
feel more vulnerable and alienated. If you move up to people who
are more active in the community who meet one another across communities,
there does not seem to have been as much of a sense of things
getting worse. So vulnerability at the very grass roots level
but an attempt to keep things steady at more of an inter-community
level.
Mr Jones: I think I would agree
with what Mr Zipfel has just said and perhaps observe that there
may be a difference in the affect on people who never have contact
with other minority groups and who are reacting at second hand
to what they perceive and to what is going on in local communities
which are more mixed. I think there the picture is very patchy,
some good things are happening as well as these problems of suspicion
and vulnerability and tension.
Q179 Chairman: The final question in
this opening session—I will not come to you, Mr Jones, you
have given an example already but to the other groups of witnesses—in
relation to counter-terrorist activities, the measures that the
Government, and perhaps particularly the police, have taken to
try to protect the country from terrorism, do you have clear experience
and examples of whether that has caused problems in community
relations? It is widely reported that it has but I wonder if in
the experience of your organisation you have been able to assess
the extent to which that is true?
Father Sumner: I have an interfaith
worker for whom I am his line manager and he reports on quite
a few occasions, within his own Muslim community in Oldham, how
there are people, although they are working, doing an ordinary
job, they really have a fear that the knock on the door could
come and they could be arrested on suspicion of something and
their name be ruined overnight without any real grounds for that
to happen. That is a real fear that has happened because of the
number of people who have been arrested.
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