Tag: Brexit

Laban and Jacob have their say on the folly of borders and their control

David HerbertLeave a comment
A cairn marking the boundary between Norway and Sweden in a remote area of the Arctic. Photo by Bjorn Christian Torrissen

The UK Government has announced plans to take “full control” of borders unveiling an Australian-style points system to overhaul immigration law and close our borders to unskilled workers and those who can’t speak English. When we talk about taking “full control of our borders” aren’t we just allowing fear and anxiety to take control of our borders? Are we forgetting border controls escalate and will be reciprocated? Have we given any thought to who in the end will wipe our bums?

This is all part of the deceit of government. I have been intrigued by the stories about Jacob and Laban from Genesis 29-31. Jacob is the “leg-puller”, the “supplanter”, the “deceiver”. Laban is the “white man”. Laban means white. The story of Laban and Jacob is a saga of deception – the white man deceiving the deceiver. Was Jacob the outsmarter of the two?) They come to terms with each other by building a witness heap of stones laid by their families as a commitment to peace. It marked the first bilingual place name recorded in the Bible – Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha and Jacob called it Galeed – the translations of “witness heap” in their respective languages.

Galeed, (we would perhaps call it a cairn) stood as a landmarked prayer. It provided a boundary to their hostility, an end to it. Significantly both Jacob and Laban refuse to take control of their new border. Instead they pray: “The Lord watch between you and me”. The Lord is the one they want to control their border and to watch their limits so that they never cross for harm but only cross for peace.

I wonder when we pray, when we put or hands together, whether we are building a cairn – a knuckle-boned physical structure to mark the limits of our hostility and anxiety, to say “beyond this only peace, beyond this only love”. Are our churches also cairn like landscaped prayers – places to confess our hostility, to find better ways to deal with our differences and markers within our communities beyond which we commit to “go in peace”? “This heap is a witness, and this pillar is a witness, that I will not go past this heap to your side to harm you and that you will not go past this heap and pillar to my side to harm me.” (Genesis 31:51f)

Borders are worse for our control when our export is fear. The boundaries of our Brexit mindset become brickset – walls built against others deconstructing differences, obstructing relationships, restricting trade and exchange.

Where are we building our witness heaps and our places of commitment? How are we replacing walls with cairns? How do we lament our nationalism?

Brexit – made in England, led by donkeys

David HerbertLeave a comment

Brexit shambles and uncertainty continues as the government suffers another humiliating defeat. Parliament struggles to find a way through an impasse which bears the stamp “made in England” – not made in Britain.

What was dreamed up by some in England (and set alight by papers) has drawn other nations in. Not only Scotland and Northern Ireland and, of course, Wales, but the other 27 nations of the EU. We seem to have forgotten the trouble we are putting these other nations in. What time and money this all must have cost! How distracting from other challenges facing us!

Slowly options are being narrowed down. There are very few people who want us to leave without a deal, and hopefully Parliament will take that option off the table today. And then there become two. There’s either the Withdrawal Agreement, which has been so decisively voted down in Parliament. The EU are insistent that there can be no other. But it does seem that would risk so much and there is no way of knowing what future trade deals there would be, or what manufacturing base would vote “remain” and remain, or what the effect of unravelling institutions for peace and research development. Or there is the deal which we already have as members of the EU.

Sadly Parliament has been unable to find a way through the impasse. It isn’t helped by the fact that truth is “spun” and so often not told. Parliament should be a safe container for our differences. Ideally those we elect represent our differences in that space and work to resolve them so that we can remain committed to one another. I fear what will happen if this safe space no longer works, what will happen if there is a further vote, whether that be a General Election or a second referendum. But I am beginning to see that that is what is going to happen. The people are going to be the ones with the casting vote. I dread the strife on our streets and in families. But it might have to come to this. It seems we have a choice between two:

  1. The Withdrawal agreement
  2. The deal we already have.

There is the third option of the deal which we can never have – that dreamt up by those in Never Never Land. It seems to boil down to a choice of two. The first is a vote to leave. The second is a vote to remain.

Oh no, not that again.

And where will our political parties lead us? The Conservatives are surely cornered as the Brexit party. But what about Labour? Now all options are looking exhausted, (and Parliament has been right to exhaust them), they surely now have to campaign at last on the deal we already have, which is in those two political and economic unions in which there is always room for improvement and reform – that is, the UK and the EU.

Credit to Teresa May. She voted remain but has worked tirelessly to deliver the vote of the referendum. And credit all those involved in both sides of the negotiations. They have tried to find a way – but perhaps there never was a way that would leave our nation any better off.

March 13th 2019

PS thanks to the billboard campaign @bydonkeys, as, for example, shown in the photo above.