In her speech to the House of Lords on Friday 6 December, the Rt Revd Vivienne Faull, Bishop of Bristol said:
My Lords, I too am grateful to the most reverend Primate for securing this debate and setting its tone. I am also very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharma, for his impressive speech, and look forward to many more contributions from him in this Chamber. I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, and realise that there is more that unites us than divides us. Indeed, there are overlaps with many of the contributions from the Benches opposite in what I am about to say, because I want to speak of a particular place and of particular people.
I begin with Liverpool, as the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, mentioned. It was David Sheppard who, as Bishop of Liverpool, ordained me deaconess in Liverpool Cathedral and helped me to understand the stresses that port cities experience as global trade and human migration patterns shift. Port cities absorb, endure or thrive on the consequent change. Bishop David and his Archbishop and Free Church colleagues were well aware that social unrest was a symptom of the impact of felt injustice and a stimulus to work to create justice and peace. “Better together” was their theme and their motto in a city divided on economic, racial and religious grounds.
By contrast, my adopted city of Bristol has a long-established tradition of riot. In 1831, as the city expanded and industrialised, there were violent protests focused on a local magistrate and the Bishop of Bristol; both men were opposed to the Great Reform Bill. The jails and the bishop’s palace were destroyed. The cathedral was set on fire. In 1980 and 1986, after years of tensions, violent unrest erupted between the police and those who had arrived after the Second World War at our invitation from the Caribbean and who were the descendants of those enslaved and traded from Africa by Bristol-registered ships. A sense of profound injustice continued to counter the peace and prosperity of the city, which remained fragile.
However, at the same time in the 1980s it was John Savage, a business leader and entrepreneur, formed by Anglicanism’s bridge-building tradition, who led the Bristol initiative to build common ground between the estranged tribes of the city council, the Society of Merchant Venturers and the entrepreneurs and industrialists of the city. John, now a lay canon of the cathedral, understood that, as with so many other places, as the psalmist puts it, a vision is essential if the people are not to get out of hand.
John’s articulated intention was to create a city which by 2050 would be a just, sustainable, healthy and hopeful environment in which all of us could live.
There are, flowing from his Bristol initiative, programmes and plans to implement that vision in conversation with the city council. That is the underpinning of Bristol’s one-city commitment, drawing together public, private, voluntary, creative and community organisations. The one-city partners meet fortnightly. They include vice-chancellors, hospital and social care leaders, the community leaders of our many communities and the whole of the not-for-profit sector.
We meet quarterly in a major gathering, sense the stresses which are emerging and look to causes and collaborative responses. Currently, our focus is on reducing knife crime and school absenteeism. The one-city approach was fundamental to our Covid response and to enabling honest debate after Colston’s statue was felled. We are seeking now to forge a new narrative which reflects the experience of all Bristolians. The one-city approach has sustained a culture which nurtures bridging and bonding links and relationships, builds trust and allows for change. My diocese, the parishes and the cathedral play their part. Last year, following prayers as the Ramadan fast ended in an adjacent building, the cathedral welcomed its Muslim neighbours for their grand iftar in the nave itself. St Mary Redcliffe, for a while the preserve of Bristol elites, has re-embedded itself in its local and often marginalised community, particularly welcoming refugees. Easton Christian family centre and Anglican church school and community hub has become, in the name of Christ, a place of prayer and service for all people in a parish that is almost entirely Muslim.
All this has buttressed the bonds of peace, so that when tensions arise around migration, faith and race do not overspill and fall apart. The Church stood in solidarity with other communities to protect the asylum seekers in the hotel in Redcliffe during the riot—the one riot—that we had. Police and demonstrators then communicated to prevent further unrest. The one-city commitment survived and was stress-tested. However, it remains fragile, dependent on healthy state, business and voluntary enterprises. The stresses are now considerable. St Mary Redcliffe and the cathedral need major works to improve accessibility and reduce their carbon impact. They await news from government about the renewal of the listed places of worship grant scheme. Without that 20% grant, projects costed at hundreds of thousands of pounds are now at risk. More seriously, it is the sense of the reduction of the impact on our outreach and our bonding and bridging capital which is crucial. Similarly, as we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, the national insurance increases have had a huge impact.
So I look for some reassurance that the Government will respond to the enterprising work that is being done in cities such as Bristol to build the bonds of peace and to renew the justice in our divided city.