2 February 2006

Dear Friends,

Colin Hart from the UK Christian Institute phoned me at a quarter to midnight London time on Tuesday 31 January (10.15 am Wednesday here) with some great news.

A little earlier in the House of Commons, MPs had voted by a majority of one (283:282) to reject Tony Blair’s Racial and Religious Hatred Bill and support a greatly amended version from the House of Lords. We are praising the Lord!

The full significance of this great victory – and great defeat for Tony Blair’s Cabinet – gradually dawned on me. You may remember that Mr Blair was re-elected in May last year with a very comfortable 66 seat majority. The legislation to ban incitement to religious hatred (ie religious vilification) had been dropped last April, two months after Pastor Daniel Scot and I flew to London to explain the Victorian experience to British peers and MPs. However the bill was back on the UK Labour government’s agenda after the election. The bill was specifically mentioned in the Queen’s speech when she opened the new parliament on 17 May.

Humanly speaking, there was no hope of defeating the new bill. Labour MPs in the House of Commons generally have strong party discipline and do not cross the floor – certainly not on a key measure which is party policy. Labour peers in the House of Lords are more independent thinkers, but peers no longer have the power to reject legislation – they can only hope to amend and persuade.

The House of Lords did indeed reject key parts of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill that would seriously undermine the cherished British right of free speech. Last October the peers passed an amendment backed by Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, to delete the bill’s most offensive aspects. The new version, presented to the Commons on Tuesday, required prosecutors to prove intention to incite religious hatred. The House of Lords amendment also made it clear that exposing a religion to ridicule, insult or abuse should not on its own constitute an offence.

Tony Blair and his ministers opposed this peer-amended bill, and tried to persuade the Commons to accept a watered-down version. But 26 Labour MPs crossed the floor to support the Lords amendment and a larger number were simply absent. On the final, crucial division, the Blair government lost by one vote – that of Tony Blair himself. He apparently believed the debate was effectively over after an earlier division and he was free to go home. God works in mysterious ways!

During the debate, hundreds of Christians, flanked by some cartoonists, comedians and atheists – all of whom opposed the religious vilification legislation – rallied in front of the houses of parliament and prayed and sang their hearts out. Attending police said they enjoyed keeping the peace that day – and in the end, the prayers of the crowd were wonderfully answered.

Our prayers were answered too. Our home fellowship group was praying on Tuesday night, a few hours before the Commons debate began in London. In our global village, what happens in Westminster can send ripples right around the world – even as far as Victoria.

The Bracks government is still clinging to its unjust Racial and Religious Tolerance Act (RRTA) which has caused pastors Daniel Scot and Danny Nalliah so much stress. Their conviction for religious vilification, after Pastor Scot told the truth about verses in the Quran at a Melbourne church seminar in March 2002, has already cost the pastors hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs, while their Supreme Court appeal is yet to come in mid 2006.

But we pray that Steve Bracks may learn from Tony Blair’s experience. Amending the RRTA in line with the legislation passed by the UK parliament on 31 January 2006 would go a long way towards easing inter-faith tension in Victoria, where Christians are now fearful of saying publicly what they believe, even if it is true. When Rev Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity, spoke at Church Missionary Society conferences in Melbourne and other capitals in January, conference organisers felt constrained to restrict registration to genuine Christian believers only (see the coming February edition of LIGHT magazine for the dramatic Sookhdeo story).

Colin Hart told me yesterday that never before has he seen so many UK Christians – and non-Christians – united in their efforts to contact peers and local members of parliament. Clearly, the public is strongly opposed to laws against religious vilification.

We pray that the same spirit of unity and action will prevail here in Australia.

God bless!

ROS

Mrs Roslyn Phillips, B Sc Dip Ed

Research Officer, Festival of Light Australia

http://www.fol.org.au