Morning Star ☭ 40 years ago anti-racist demonstrator Blair Peach was killed by the police while protesting against a National Front rally. Balwinder Rana. the only surviving member of the five-member committee elected by the community to organise the protests, looks back on that horrific day. Recommended by Gary Robertson.

ON April 23 1979, police killed Blair Peach in Southall while he was protesting against the fascist National Front (NF) rally.

For those of us who were there, the memories of that day will be etched upon our minds forever.

It was a couple of weeks before that we heard that the NF was being allowed, by the then Tory-run Ealing Council, to hold its election meeting right in the heart of our town, the town hall.

The news spread like a wild fire and immediately the Indian Workers Association (Southall), under the leadership of the late Vishnu Sharma, called a meeting of all the local organisations in west London and asked them to send two delegates each.

The meeting was held in the Dominion Centre and there were about 80 people present, representing a multitude of religious, cultural, political as well as trade union organisations.

Continue reading @ Morning Star.

The Day Blair Peach Died 🔴 A Personal Account

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Nine Hundred And Eighty

 

A Morning Thought @ 2130

Fra Hughes ðŸ’£ The attack on the Iranian Consulate by the Zionist apartheid regime on April 01 2024 was a blatant act of war. 

Under international law every diplomatic embassy is protected under article 51 of the Geneva Convention 1961. The Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria, is deemed to be Iranian national territory, therefore an attack on the embassy is seen to be an attack on the sovereignty of Iran. 

Now that we have that clarified, let us explore the reasons why the apartheid colonialist regime carried out this atrocious crime. There are in reality only two ways of exploring the rationale behind the Zionist attack. In scenario number one, the Israeli war criminal cabinet deliberate attack on the diplomatic mission in Damascus in order to assassinate the current leaders of the Iranian Republican Guard Corp and the Qassam Brigades was to disrupt the efforts of the Axis of Resistance to alleviate some of the inhumane suffering being experienced by the civilian population of Gaza and the occupied West Bank. 

In a further continuance of Israeli American and British targeted attacks on high ranking Iranian officials from scientists to military strategists, such as General Qassam Soleimani, these assassinations are used to inhibit the sovereign right of Iran to carry out its peaceful military and scientific programs in line with international norms. Israel may have destroyed 80 % of the infrastructure in Gaza, slaughtering 35,000 civilians and maiming 75,000 others in the process. It may have devastated hospitals, schools, water treatment plants, desalination plants, bakeries, livestock, agricultural lands and animal farms, But it has not freed one hostage nor defeated the resistance factions in Gaza, who I might remind you have the right under international law to resist foreign occupation by any and all means necessary including the right of armed resistance. 

The second scenario portrays the attack on the consulate in Syria as a trap, used to lure Iran into a regional war with Israel where the Americans, the British and others will attack Iran using the excuse of defending Israel. In 1953 Britain and America led a coup in Iran to oust the democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh who had recently nationalised the oil industry. The Anglo Iranian oil company, now BP, stood to lose millions. A coup followed, with the Shah installed and between 1953 and the Iranian peoples revolution of 1979, Western imperialism and its capitalist masters drank deeply from the trough of Iran’a natural resources. 

The day after the Iranian people's revolution succeeded, the Western backed counter revolution began and has been running in place ever since trying to destabilize Iran in the interests of Zionism and Western hegemony. If indeed the embassy was a trap, then where might we possibly go from here? The Zionist regime is already claiming that Iran will fit nuclear warheads to its long range hypersonic missiles and is trying to coalesce a regional coalition of the willing to stand against Iran. 

The leaders of Iran, recently returned to power in the country's elections, have vowed never to use nuclear weapons as they are an abomination before god, And the apartheid regime appears to be reusing the weapons of mass destruction narrative which we all know was the lie used by Blair and Bush to destroy Iraq, which they once used in a proxy war to attack Iran for over a decade in which saw 800,000 combatants on both sides perish, leaving Israel as the only winner in that conflict. The irony is that having disposed of Saddam Hussien an enemy of Iran, Iraq is now an ally of Iran, alongside Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. 

In conclusion either the IRGC has called Israel's bluff and a new era is dawning where the apartheid regime will have to reconsider its present policy of murdering anyone, anywhere, anytime, without being held to account; or Israel has manoeuvred the West, Britain, USA, Germany, France, Italy, the G7 and others into another Iraq-type conflict where Westerners and Iranians might die while Zionists hide in their bomb shelters letting the Christians and Muslims slug it out and then resurface as the victors in another war in West Asia, engaged by the West in order to save their surrogate colonial settler state by destroying all those who oppose the abomination of fascism that is found within supremacist Israeli society and its war criminal leaders whom they elect, reelect and endorse. 

Only time will tell.

Fra Hughes is a Belfast based writer and activist.

Iran Responds, What Comes Next?

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Nine Hundred And Seventy Nine

Frankie Quinn with a poem from his book Open Gates.

Who?

If I were to die from loneliness
Who would carry my coffin?
Would my funeral be a procession of
Ghosts and haunting memories?
♞♜♝
Would I be abandoned in the
Road for cars to swerve around and
Curse at the inconvenience and never
Wonder who might lie inside the box?
♞♜♝
Would my flowers be concrete posts
Sewn together by steel wire running
In formation like stern faced guards
To honour my passing?
♞♜♝
And would above my head be placed
A stone with no words inscribed
People would stop and think
I wonder who’s buried there?

⏩ Frankie Quinn is a former republican prisoner who is now a community activist. He is the author of Open Gates, a book of poetry.   

Who?

Peter Anderson ⚽ Much too often these days VAR is having a mare. 

The latest installment saw the VAR at the Coventry v Man U FA Cup semi-final destroy one of the greatest moments in FA Cup history. I was late home on Sunday afternoon and ran in to watch the end of the Liege-Bastoyne-Liege cycling classic. I checked my phone to see the score in the semi-final and saw that Man U were 3-0 up. Game over thought I. 

After the end of the cycling I switched over to catch the end of the footy, just in time to see the ref pointing to the Man U spot. I looked at the score to see it was now 3-2 to Man U and Coventry had a penalty, which they dispatched. Extra time beckoned. And with the teams running out of energy and the game into the final minute of E.T., Coventry did the impossible and found the energy to bag the winner. But wait, VAR was checking for offside. And when the image came back the Coventry player's toe was offside. No goal. One of the greatest comebacks in modern FA Cup history was overturned because of a toe being offside.

This is not what football is about. No advantage was gained by the attacker. The game went to pens which Man U duly won. This can't go on. Something needs done. To add insult to injury, social media is awash with images of Man U's £70m flop, Anthony, goading the Coventry players when the winning pen went in. Classless in the extreme. A symptom of the depths to which the once great Red Devils have fallen.

Also, in FA Cup news, we heard that there will no longer be replays.

Personally I am happy. There are too many games and for the sake of the players the replays need to go. Don't blame the players or the clubs, blame the authorities, who have increased the number of Champions League games, World Cup games and Euro Cup games. The season is too long and there are too many games. The big losers are the small clubs, but this should be compensated by more money being taken from the big clubs and given to the small. I'm all in favour of the fair distribution of wealth, but I won't hold my breath.

Peter Anderson is a Unionist with a keen interest in sports

VAR . . . Again

A Digest of News ✊ from Ukrainian Sources ⚔ 22-April-2024.

In this week’s bulletin

 Ukrainian joint trade union appeal.
⬤ Plus could 2022 peace talks have succeeded?. 
⬤ Plus early years of Russian invasion; 
⬤ Plus evidence of Russian abduction / forced disappearances and torture and religious persecution

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Russians bring propaganda dictionaries to schools in occupied Luhansk (Ukrainska Pravda, April 21st)

Horrific sentences against Ukrainians accused of ‘international terrorism’ for opposing Russian occupation (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 19th)

Russian occupation ‘court’ convicts Jehovah’s Witness of ‘extremism’ for reading excerpts from the Bible (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 18th)

Ukrainians in occupation are under constant pressure and do not understand what awaits them after the liberation of the territories – Onysiia Syniuk (Zmina, April 17th)

Ukrainian children brainwashed in Russia’s ‘Youth Army’ into wanting to fight against Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 17th)

Crimean Tatar political prisoner diagnosed with tuberculosis, other life-threatening conditions contracted in Russian captivity (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 16th)

Solo ‘trials’ after Russia stages mass arrests claiming Ukrainian attack on Crimean occupation officials (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 16th)

Russian invaders turn Kherson oblast culture centre into torture chamber for ‘unreliable’ Ukrainians (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 15th)

Russia incriminates itself through ‘trial’ of Ukrainian abducted 7 years ago in occupied Donbas (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 15th)

News from Ukraine – general

Ukraine's Human Rights Commissioner reveals how many Ukrainians are missing under special circumstances (Ukrainska Pravda, April 16th)

Tetiana Pechonchyk presented a manual from the CJE on self-regulation of Ukrainian media during the war (Zmina, April 16th)

“Dying isn’t as bad as being a Russian POW”: Freed Ukrainian soldiers speak out about their time in Russian captivity (The Insider, April 15th)

War-related news from Russia

Russia's meat grinder soldiers - 50,000 confirmed dead (BBC, April 18th)

‘Business as usual’ How some E.U. companies are sending Russia parts for warships, sanctions be damned (Meduza, April 16th)

Russian Activist Who Helped Ukrainian Refugees Dies in Custody (Moscow Times, April 8th)

Analysis and comment

Brave New Ukraine: How the World’s Most Besieged Democracy Is Adjusting to Permanent War (Foreign Affairs, April 19th)

Quid prodest? What happened in the early years of Russian aggression against Ukraine? (Posle Media, 18 April)

The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine (Foreign Affairs, April 16th)

Anarchists should not be spreading Putinist propaganda (Autonom, February 10th)

Research of human rights abuses

‘Words cannot express what we experienced,’ — a resident of the village of Zahaltsi (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 21st)

Strategic threat in the Strategic Plan (Tribunal for Putin, April 21st)

Anniversary of the arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova for deportation of Ukrainian children: What did it bring and what happens next? (Opora, April 19th)

Forced disappearances in the Kharkiv Region: analytical review (Tribunal for Putin, April 18th)

Stories of victims of enforced disappearances were heard at the PACE session in Strasbourg (Zmina, April 18th)

Speech at the opening of the Fourth Readings in memory of Arseniy Roginsky (Tribunal for Putin, April 14th)

International solidarity

Ukrainian unions’ urgent joint appeal on amplified Russian aggression (19 April)

Support the fundraiser for Ilya Baburin’s legal defence! (Solidarity Zone, 17 April)

Upcoming solidarity events

UCU members for Ukraine webinar: Ukraine’s economy and post-war reconstruction, Thursday 25 April, 7.0pm UK time.

Freedom for Maksym Butkevych: on line campaign event, Tuesday May 14th, 7.0pm UK time

News from the territories occupied by Russia

Russian traffic police used for enforced disappearances and FSB terror in occupied Crimea (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 12th)

‘He called to set Kremlin on fire’ (Tribunal for Putin, April 12th)

Crimean Tatar imprisoned for refusal to ‘publicly repent’ protest over Russia’s war against Ukraine (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 11th)

Russia admits to holding Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khyliuk (Kharkiv HRPG, April 9th)

Russia sentences abducted Ukrainian Baptist volunteer to 20 years on insane ‘terrorism’ and ‘spying’ charges (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 8th)

How Russia cracked down on the LGBTQ+ community in Crimea (Zmina, April 7th)

The situation at the front

Ukraine could face defeat in 2024. Here's how that might look (BBC, April 13th)

Tanks but no tanks Russia makes breakthroughs along the front line in Ukraine, but its equipment losses could be a point of vulnerability (Meduza, April 9th)

News from Ukraine – general

Independent Trade Union of Mineworkers mission to the front (12 April, Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine)

Children of the Underground: How Kharkiv’s schoolchildren study in the subway amidst constant Russian shelling (The Insider, April 12th)

Over 600 civilians killed and injured by Russians in March (Ukrainska Pravda, April 10th)

Ukrainian medical students fight for their rights (Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, April 9th)

Roma also defend the country and suffer from the war – Tetiana Pechonchyk (Zmina, April 8th)

Ukraine initiates war crimes probe after Russians kill unarmed Ukrainian POWs in Kherson oblast (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 8th)

In Kyiv, human rights defenders discussed with international organisations the necessary steps for Ukraine to protect victims of the war (Zmina, April 5th)

A theatre from Mariupol is being reborn in Ukraine, the director of which ZMINA helped take out of the occupation (Zmina, April 4th)

War-related news from Russia

‘Children behind bars’ Russian minor detained for anti-war statements (Meduza, April 12th)

Volunteers (including one who helped Ukrainians cross the border) (The Russian Reader, 12 April)

A Russian soldier’s story: ‘He had no chance’ (Meduza, 10 April)

Russia’s propaganda lies to accuse Ukraine of its own terrorism (Kharkiv HRPG, April 10th)

How Russia manufactures FPV drones to kill Ukrainians (The Insider, 9 April)

Russia recruited women prisoners to fight in Ukraine. Six months later, they’re waiting to be deployed (Meduza, April 9th)

Speech from the dock by Azat Miftakhov, Russian political prisoner (The Russian Reader, 31 March)

The Russian Orthodox Church Declares “Holy War” Against Ukraine (Understanding War, March 30th)

Analysis and comment

“If we didn’t join the armed forces, the left in Ukraine would cease to exist,” says Taras Bilous (Europe Solidaire, April 13th)

Leaving Ukraine unable to defend its skies makes Russian invasion of other countries a question of time (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 12th)

Dmytro Vovk: Is it possible to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church? (Kharkiv HRPG, April 12th)

“Ukraine is much closer to those countries that undergo transformation processes” Oleksandra Romantsova speaks about event she attended in South Africa (Centre for Civil Liberties, April 10th)

«Democracies have to support each other even stronger» – Oleksandra Matviichuk at Nobel Prize Dialogue Brussels (Centre for Civil Liberties, April 9th)

Palestine, Ukraine and the crisis of empires (People and Nature, April 8th)

No path to peace in Ukraine through this fantasy world (People and Nature, April 8th)

Ukraine in the Russian imagination (Hanna Perekhoda, Ukraine Solidarity EU, April 2nd)

Ukrainian authorities’ legitimacy when elections are impossible (Opora, April 2nd)

Research of human rights abuses

‘I saw a plane drop a bomb on my house’ (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 12th)

‘240 houses were razed to the ground, and 700 were damaged’ — resident of the village of Zahaltsi (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, April 10th)

Upcoming solidarity events

UCU members for Ukraine webinar: Ukraine’s economy and post-war reconstruction, Thursday 25 April, 7.0pm UK time.

Freedom for Maksym Butkevych: on line campaign event, Tuesday May 14th, 7.0pm UK time

🔴This bulletin is put together by labour movement activists in solidarity with Ukrainian resistance. More information at Ukraine Information Group.


We are also on twitter. Our aim is to circulate information in English that to the best of our knowledge is reliable. If you have something you think we should include, please send it to 2U022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com.

We are now on Facebook and Substack! Please subscribe and tell friends. Better still, people can email us at 2022ukrainesolidarity@gmail.com, and we’ll send them the bulletin direct every Monday. The full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine is going into its third year: we’ll keep information and analysis coming, for as long as it takes.

The bulletin is also stored on line here.

To receive the bulletin regularly, send your email to:
To stop it, please reply with the word “STOP” in the subject field.

News From Ukraine 💣 Bulletin 94

 

A Morning Thought @ 2129

People And NatureThe women’s groups formed to defend embattled mining communities in the 1984-85 strike marked their 40th anniversary in Durham on Saturday.

4-March-2024

The celebration was organised by Women Against Pit Closures, which brought together the local groups that sprung up across the coalfields as the strike wore on.

Veterans of Women Against Pit Closures led Saturday’s march of 400 people through Durham

The national strike started 40 years ago this week, the culmination of a tide of anger among mineworkers and their communities at the plan to shut pits, and break the National Union of Mineworkers, devised by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government.

It ended a year later, having slowed down but not stopped the pit closure programme.

The strike was a turning-point in many ways. Paramilitary police violence had been used in response to riots in predominantly black inner-city communities in 1981, but the sheer scale of the mobilisation against mining communities was unprecedented.

The Tories’ vengeful assault on the mineworkers’ union, which had played a central part in unseating Edward Heath’s government a decade earlier, was the first of a series of hammer-blows against organised labour. Then came the neoliberal offensive that dismantled chunks of the welfare state and drove down living standards.

But the strike also transformed the labour movement. The women of mining communities were central to that.

It was no industrial dispute in the normal sense of the term, but more an existential struggle for survival, that gave rise to a movement which overflowed the bounds of traditional labour organisation.

Until 1984, support groups, organised by sections of the working class to support each other, were few and far between. In that year, they appeared everywhere: not only in mining villages, but in many other, geographically distant, communities.

On Saturday Women Against Pit Closures came together again to march from Durham cathedral, through the city centre, to an event in the students’ union building. Many, perhaps most, of those present had been on the front lines in 1984-85.

The overriding theme at a rally afterwards was that, while the great strike’s objective, to prevent pit closures, had not been realised, much had been gained by the movement. Women were empowered, collectively.

“The contribution of working class women to the strike can not be overstated”, Mary Foy, Labour MP for the City of Durham, said. “In the North East, women’s groups fed 5000 people a day, five days a week.”

The groups organised care for children, and ensured the supply of school uniform when the new school year began in September 1984 and Christmas presents at the end of the year.

The groups were there to provide emotional support when things got tough, which they often did. And increasingly they had a say in the politics of the strike. When the men returned to work, the women’s groups continued.

Foy said that in many communities, when the Covid-19 pandemic inflicted sudden hardship, those who had been active in 1984-85 revived old organising links to protect and unite.

She pointed out that in Durham, where Saturday’s event was held, traditions of solidarity and community born when coal was king are kept alive by the annual miners’ gala in July. (It is the UK’s largest labour movement festival, growing each year, more than 20 years after the last pit closed.)

Sarah Woolley of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, representative of a generation of activists after the 1984 veterans who led the march, said the 1984 strike could not have gone on as long as it did without the organising work by women in mining communities.

She introduced herself as the union’s first woman general secretary, and before that its first woman national officer, in its 176-year history.

Food, and access to food, is now central to the union’s activity. “In the two years after the pandemic, food bank use by our union’s members increased by 10 per cent.

“People who work in jobs feeding the nation don’t have enough money to feed themselves. They are ashamed to invite people into their homes, because they can not offer them a meal, and they don’t want people to see that there are blankets everywhere because they can not afford heating.”

Women are the ones who learn how to stretch one meal into two, and how to make the best meal out of the crappiest ingredients available from supermarkets, Woolley said.


She spoke about the emphasis now put by some trade unions on issues such as period poverty (e.g. demands for free sanitary products in the workplace), domestic violence, and the need to talk more openly about the menopause and its effects on working lives.

Woolley said that the trade union movement had to “get our own house in order”. There is no place for sexual harassment and sexual violence, she said, pointing to the “meTU” campaign, set up to respond to cases of sexual harassment and bullying that union structures have failed to deal with properly.

On a personal note, I am sceptical of attempts to establish labour movement traditions. There’s always a danger that we will crystallise an ideal version of what we think we used to do, and it ends up as a cultural millstone round our necks, instead of a valuable legacy to those who come after us. (The danger grows as we get older.)

Saturday’s event largely avoided such pitfalls. The emergence of new forms of organisation – by the women of mining communities in the first instance, but not only them by any means – was unexpected, deep-going and full of liberatory potential. These changes, not always, or everywhere, or in ideal forms, outlasted the strike and the harsh years that many communities suffered afterwards.

All that really is something to celebrate, and even 40 years later can not so easily be institutionalised, smothered with bureaucratic love or congealed into deceptive myths. The changes were achieved over long periods of years; the issues are still raw.

The more we can tell that history, and our other histories, as they really happened, the more they can become weapons in the hands of younger generations. SP, 4 March 2024.

🔴More about 1984-85: a memoir of the strike by the late John McCormack, pit delegate at Polmaise colliery in Scotland (I was John’s “ghost writer”). Terry Brotherstone and I wrote a political and historical account of the strike in Scotland, on the 20th anniversary. I wrote about the Durham miners gala, in 2011, in one of my first posts on People & Nature.


⏩ People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitterwhatsapp and telegram. Please follow! Or email peoplenature@protonmail.com, and we’ll add you to our circulation list (2-4 messages per month).

Women Standing Up For Mining Communities, Forty Years On

Ten links to a diverse range of opinion that might be of interest to TPQ readers. They are selected not to invite agreement but curiosity. Readers can submit links to pieces they find thought provoking.


Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Nine Hundred And Seventy Eight

Dr John Coulter ✍ If you call yourself a Christian, then you can’t complain if voters elect a candidate with non-Biblical views because you didn’t bother to vote on polling day!

Ireland, north and south, is set to witness a raft of elections in the coming months - council, European in the Republic, possibly two general elections for Westminster and the Dail.

Unfortunately, many Christians - especially from the evangelical and fundamentalist traditions - take the outdated view when they misinterpret Scripture that when you become a born again believer, this means the ‘come ye out from amongst them’ states you don’t vote!

We Christians are constantly moaning about the state of the world; about the development of the secular society, and the advance of pluralism. But let’s take some of our own Biblical medicine by taking the moat out of our own eyes before we take the beam out of others’.

Put bluntly, how much of what is happening in society is down to the inactivity of the Christian Churches, either Christians burying their heads in the social sand by staying in their pews and not mixing with the public, or refusing to vote on polling day?

I have often made reference for the need for Christians to mobilise the flocks, not just to register to vote, but to actually vote. Here’s a link from February 2023: 

Imagine how the political landscape of Ireland would change if everyone who called themselves a Christian of whatever denomination voted in the forthcoming elections on the polling days.

But here’s the reality check as I warned in my recent column of the need for Christians to unite to combat the introduction of any laws on assisted dying:.

Too many Christians get bogged down in arguing over petty issues or man-made rules and they miss the big picture of how society is changing around them.

Society faces huge challenges from social injustices - hunger, the cost of living crisis, addictions, homelessness, mental health and well-being to name but a seemingly growing list.

Jesus Christ Himself gave us Christians an agenda for social action when he unveiled the Beatitudes during his famous Sermon on the Mount in the Biblical New Testament. But what practically are we Christians doing to put Christ’s sterling guidance into action in this third millennium?

Can each and every Christian place of worship say they are implementing the Sermon on the Mount to the maximum? If a drug addict or homeless person turned up at our place of worship on a Sunday morning, what would our attitude be?

While some churches are getting involved in their local communities, many Christians are quite content to be spiritual sponges; they are happy to sit in their pews on Sundays or the mid week Bible study, soak up what the speaker is saying, maybe throw a few quid into the collection plate, and then retreat to the warmth and safety of their homes.

Likewise, while many churches contribute generously to community food banks, could places of worship do more? For those who are facing challenges, pious words are meaningless; practical action is urgently required.

As well as churches providing food banks, places of worships could establish clothing and footwear banks. How many Christians when clothes or shoes no longer fit, simply throw them in the bin? Some Christians may donate them to charity shops, but many charities are themselves also facing a funding crisis.

Many families, especially the elderly, are also facing a heat or eat crisis, whereby budgeting is focused on either heating a room or cooking a meal. So could the churches combine to form energy clubs for electric, gas or home heating oil?

As for the homeless, could more of our places of worship be opened as shelters to prevent a cardboard home culture developing in our towns and cities?

Of course, many churches are themselves facing a cost of living crisis in this past pandemic society as they struggle to pay bills with dwindling numbers in the pews or folk not having enough cash to put in the collection plate as they did before Covid struck.

Churches have a lot of serious questions to ask in the coming months. One factor is certain, churches can no longer afford the luxury of being holy huddles keeping themselves distance from the communities in which they are based.

It is time for all places of worship, irrespective of denomination, to start putting the Sermon on the Mount into practical action in the communities they serve. By adopting such a pro-active approach to social injustice, the churches can maintain their relevance in society. Remaining aloof is not an option anymore.
Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter
Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online.

Churches Need More Proactive Agenda In Tackling Social Injustice