Tuesday, 4 June 2019
Sunday, 14 April 2019
Sarah Hipperson who died in 2018 is most importantly remembered as arguably one of the most committed Greenham Common women peace activists who from 1983 to 2000 lived at Greenham Common Yellow Gate and watched its transformation from an RAF military base to an American nuclear cruise missile base to an open common for the public with a commemerative peace garden. She was born in 1927 in Glasgow and her early life was disrupted by the separation of her parents when she and her sisters were sent into care under the supervision of the Sisters of Charity in Glasgow. She recalls her time under the Catholic nuns’ supervision with affection and her First Communion day with special joy. There is no doubt that from an early time her faith was a most important force in her life and which gave her a sense of identity and value which was to be an important part of her self confidence in all the struggles that were to follow.
Her formal education was limited and when she applied to join the nursing school in Eastern District Hospital Duke Street Glasgow the matron initially refused her entry on the grounds that she had not completed the necessary educational requirements. Not to be put off by such obstruction from authority even at that early age she argued her case with the matron saying that she should be given a chance and was finally accepted. She repaid the matron’s trust by winning the anatomy and physiology prize in her first year. She went on to qualify as a nurse midwife and to work in some of the poorest parts of Glasgow after further training as a district nurse. She had a great respect for how her very materially deprived patients coped with the harsh conditions of life in Glasgow during this time but her desire to travel and to see more of the world led her to apply to become a nurse in the army. She was however refused entry to the army on the grounds that she failed the medical having what was to prove to be an insignificant heart murmur. One can only wonder how her life might have evolved if she had been then accepted into the army.
Her continual desire to travel led her to emigrate to Canada where she married and had five children. She returned to London in 1969 where to all appearances she had a materially secure middleclass life and was even appointed a magistrate. Her experience on the magistrates’ bench proved to be a strain as her discordant voice in support for the often poor and poorly represented defendants made her unpopular among her fellow justices of the peace. She finally resigned from the bench sensing that her presence was giving the legal process a legitimacy she could not support.
In the 80s as a parishioner of Our Lady of Lourdes Wanstead she became active in the Justice and Peace group and motivated by the Dr.Helen Caldecott film, Critical Mass, on the dangers of nuclear war she organised invitations to the local churches to a viewing of the film hoping to start discussions and social action. She noted that in fact the usual response was horror and awareness followed by social paralysis. In 1982 she noticed an invitation by Dan Martin who was then the Justice and Peace worker for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Southwark to meet in the forecourt of Westminster Cathedral to discern a Catholic response to nuclear war preparations. This was to form the beginning of Catholic Peace Action and her first introduction to non-violent antinuclear protests deemed by the authorities as illegal.
At that time the Catholic Church’s teaching on nuclear deterrence was at the least ambiguous. The then Pope John Paul II’s address to the General Assembly of the United Nations in June 1982 gave a moral acceptance to nuclear deterrence as a step towards nuclear disarmament. To many in the Church this was taken as an endorsement of the policy or as was often termed loosely the “doctrine” of nuclear deterrence. Others in the Church saw this doctrine as a kind of heresy and saw no indication of genuine nuclear disarmament. This was a time when the cold war was at its height. Mrs.Thatcher’s government dominated the political scene in the UK with her ally Mr.Reagan in the USA. Mr.Heseltine the secretary of State for Defence was telling Parliament that protesters ran the risk of being shot if they trespassed onto military bases and to be a peace activist often meant regular visits to court and sometimes jail. Greenham Common was designated to be the place where 96 nuclear cruise missiles, each with a capacity of 15 times that of the bomb at Hiroshima, would be stationed to counter the Soviet SS20 missiles threat in the East. There was a general sense of uncertainty, the cold war rhetoric was fierce and the introduction of these intermediate-range nuclear weapons made nuclear war more likely. The debate and division within the Catholic Church at this time was heated but respectful. Senior well known Catholic lay people and senior religious leaders took opposing views in public. While some developed a theology of nuclear deterrence others not only voiced and debated opposite views but advocated and took part in non-violent antinuclear protests with trespass and cutting of the fences at military bases, and obstruction to the cruise missile convoys. To sustain people through the legal process and often jail time affinity groups which could be described as base communities were set up among which Catholic Peace Action was one in London and which Sarah became a founder member, see this link to a film where she speaks to camera (CPA). Her first arrestable nonviolent antinuclear protest was carried out with this group at the Ministry of Defence London and she described it as crossing an invisible line which marked out her commitment to no longer being a bystander.
In 1983 she moved to live at Greenham Common though continuing her discerning with and support for Catholic Peace Action and their support for her. She attended their regular meetings and while she focused her actions at Greenham Common the other members focused on non-violent protests at the Ministry of Defence London which often led to court cases and prison sentences.
The Imperial War Museum has recorded an extensive oral history of Sarah’s story, see this link, (oral history) where she describes the harsh conditions of living in the mud of Greenham Common, the brutality of some of the bailiffs and police, her over 20 imprisonments, her numerous court appearances, her fasting which on one occasion lasted 31 days in Holloway Prison when she lost over 2 stone in weight. She records the moving experience of attending Mass on Sundays in Holloway Prison with the marginalised women whose faith was an inspiration.
She describes the grassroots non-violent spirituality of the Greenham women and her confidence in the ultimate removal of the cruise missiles. She relates the women at Greenham were neither saints nor sinners but were described by the authorities as “bloody women”. Sarah was proud of that description and that they were rooted in non-violence whatever faith tradition or none they claimed. She never hid her own Christian faith and roots at Greenham and the unifying spirituality among them was the women’s non-violence and their anti-nuclear position and willingness to cross that line of protest that put them at risk of arrest and jail. Sarah’s legal struggles with the state are well documented in her book, Greenham non-violent Women-v-The Crown Prerogative a copy of which is in the Pax Christi library and also a digital copy at this link here.
Often peace activists like Sarah never see the results of their struggle and it may be another generation or even more generations that reap the benefit but in the case of the Greenham Common women history gives them a visible legacy. In 1987 the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed by Mr.Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev and soon after the cruise missiles were removed as were the SS20s from the East. The Ash Wednesday annual Pax Christi demonstration at the Ministry of Defence against nuclear weapons is a legacy that Sarah was happy to see in her lifetime and the Catholic Church is now no longer ambiguous about any “theology” of nuclear deterrence. The very possession of nuclear weapons is condemned with clarity at the highest level. Sarah was very aware that her prayer for a nuclear free world remained unanswered in her time, we still have much to do but considering one “bloody woman’s” contribution to the cause of non-violent peace building she will be to all who knew her an inspiration and a challenge.
Tuesday, 28 August 2018
Franz Jagerstatter Service 9 August 2018
1
Reflection
given by Dr Ray Towey at the Franz Jägerstätter Commemoration Service,
Westminster
Cathedral Crypt, London. 9 August 2018
Gospel reading: Luke 10: 1-6,17-21
The story is simple, a peasant farmer in Austria is conscripted to fight for Hitler,
refuses claiming being a Catholic and being a soldier in Hitler’s army is
incompatible so they kill him to preserve military morale. In 1943 German
military morale was in serious jeopardy. The battle of Stalingrad had been lost.
The
German state needed men at the eastern front. Franz was isolated in the Church,
in the village, in his country. To his knowledge then no-one had taken a stand
like this. I use the word peasant
farmer purposefully, not so often used now about Franz, to us it has negative
connotations but the Gospel writer is clear about what is a negative:
I
thank you Father Lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things
from the wise and learned and have revealed them to children. (Luke ch10: 21)
This Gospel passage is uneasy reading because ever
since I entered formal education I have strived to be someone who is both wise
and learned. To the Gospel writer that comfortable
self-image or illusion was an obstacle that Franz did not have.
In 1982 I returned from 2 years in a mission
hospital in Nigeria. The overwhelming experience of working as a doctor in
Africa is watching helplessly the premature death of scores from diseases
easily preventable by a little money or curable by modest means.
This remains the global injustice of our time, so the
injustice of the Falklands invasion at that
time was minor in comparison and I could see no need for further human
sacrifice. There was enough premature death in the world, more than enough in
Africa alone.
And so, the armada travelled to the South Atlantic
to right the wrong bringing with it a military hospital well equipped and I
thought why not just make a small detour and share a few drugs from the
pharmacy, a few bottles from the blood bank, Nigeria is close by to the east.
We won’t delay you long, but don’t forget Sierra Leone, Ghana, we have friends
there too, and what harm if we do delay you long?
Even a child could see the need but the wise and
learned had other plans.
There was worse to come. The cruise missiles in
Greenham Common were an essential counter to the SS20s of the Soviets and the
Pershing 2s in Europe would give us the superiority we needed to keep our
Christian culture safe and the Church at the highest level then was ambiguous.
What was this doctrine of nuclear deterrence, a necessary
modern moral relativism for the Church or a new heresy, is that too strong a
word and who was for the burning? everyone? and so we asked, where do we stand
and we made a stand and not like Franz, alone,
but we were few. Like Dorothy Day, without seeking permission, we had the nerve
to call ourselves Catholic and thereby Catholic Peace Action. We
were non-violent but did not keep the law and counted jail time as a duty or
was it a spiritual pride in the new indulgences? Were we the orthodox or the
heterodox? Time would tell.
We added our small voice to others in and out of the
Church. We shared with a few of our own bishops but at the time like Franz were
not affirmed and learnt how to be strangers in our communities, our Church and
country which we loved. But let me not forget Bishop Gumbleton from Detroit and
Pax Christi who wrote us a good character witness letter for our bad
disobedient behaviour which we copied for the court, usually to no avail, so
unlike Franz we were not alone but
we were few.
Fr. Daniel Berrigan has a reflection on Franz written
some years before Franz’s beatification:
“As
for Franz he will not go away, he will not go away from the Church that sent
him on his way alone.
His
way, which should have been the way of the Church.
So
he lingers half unwelcome……..”
After the war Franz’s name was added to the memorial
in his parish cemetery of those who had died for Austria but it was secretly
erased. For some in his village his name was most unwelcome.
In his own diocese of Linz 40 priests were sent to
concentration camps and 11 died. In the Archdiocese of Vienna which was twice
the size of Linz 9 priests were sent to concentration camps and 1 died. There
was resistance in the Church to the Nazi regime but it was thin and patchy. One
of his parish priests had been banned from the parish by the regime for
delivering an anti-Nazi sermon and even he advised him accept the conscription,
he saw his bishop who advised the same.
When the wise and learned advised him to fight for Hitler
was he choosing the way of suicide?
This was his terrible deep spiritual anguish.
When he was
transferred to the Berlin prison he met with the prison chaplain who related to
him the case of an Austrian priest Fr.Reinisch who had refused to take the oath
to Hitler and was executed a year before. Fr.Reinisch had been conscripted to the
medical corps but still refused the oath stating that he opposed the Nazi world
view which had resulted in murder, the elimination of the mentally disabled, forced
sterilisation, the illegal annexation of Austria. The chaplain relates that
Franz breathed a sigh of relief and was greatly encouraged and said, “I can’t
be on the wrong path after all, if even a priest has decided the same and has
gone to his death for it then it’s all right for me to do it too”
I think this was the first time he had heard of
anyone refusing conscription for Christian reasons and it suggests that even at
this late stage he was still in need of more support that his stand was correct
and not a suicide.
After the war the search for justice began but there
were to be dispensations, if you had the secrets of the V1 and V2 rockets there
was an amnesty. The learned and the wise needed you, and a new and comfortable life
in the West or the East guaranteed. These wonderous Nazi indiscriminate weapons
of terror had their uses. The V1 became cruise missiles and the V2 ballistic
missiles, just add a nuclear warhead when required.
And so… Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima,
Nagasaki….we know who won the battles but who won the values?
In 1941 while doing his military service after his
second call up Franz writes, “Ybbs is a beautiful town.. there’s quite a large
mental asylum here, which used to be full of patients but now probably even the
mad have become sane, because there are no longer very many of them in the
asylum. My dear wife there must be some truth in what you told me once about
what’s happening to these people.”
In May 1943 Franziska writes to Franz of the sudden
death of a disabled child who had been put in a home for the disabled. Hundreds
of thousands of disabled children, psychiatric patients, mentally disabled
adults, Downs syndrome children were killed during the war. Bishop von Galen of
Munster was a vociferous opponent of this Action T4 euthanasia programme and was
placed under virtual house arrest in 1941.
In Europe these days Downs syndrome is becoming a rarity.
For them we have developed our own final solution.
And what of us? The state may not need us in uniform
but it still needs our obedience or is it just our silence?
But now it will never be so hard because we have
Franz. Thank you Franz from the bottom of my heart for making my small journey
clearer, less lonely, more loyal, more forgiving and with no place for
bitterness.
Sunday, 6 May 2018
Election
Communication
Christian Peoples Alliance Party
respects the individual PERSON
use your
vote on Thursday
3 May 2018
 |
Vote for Ray Towey
Christian values work
raytowey1992@gmail.com
Published and promoted by:
Ray Towey 11 Ruskin Court 4 Champion Hill London SE5 8AH Printed by: Solopress 9 Stock Road
Southend-on-Sea SS2 5QF
I have worked in the past as both a junior and senior
medical doctor in the NHS at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital for 15 years. In
recent years I have worked as a doctor doing volunteer humanitarian work in
Tanzania and Uganda. My national and international experience has given me a
profound respect for our National Health Service and all who work in the health
and social care sectors. The current politicians of all major parties have
failed us. The unjust and immoral national austerity has divided society and put
a severe strain on how to integrate both hospital care and our social care.
Local government is now faced with making difficult choices. The Christian
Peoples Alliance will put the sick and the poor the top priority and make those
difficult decisions wisely.
The housing market in London is
broken. Social housing is being sold off, the young cannot get mortgages and
the so-called affordable housing isn’t affordable. The numbers of rough sleepers
in London and throughout the UK rises year by year. This is a growing scandal
to any civilised society let alone one of the richest cities in the world. The Council
should work with local charities to prioritise help for rough sleepers.
In the cold weather the broken road drains cause pools
of water resulting in dangerous ice rinks on our pavements. From personal
experience in Champion Hill I know this is a dangerous hazard. I would put pedestrian
safety a high priority. Friday, 30 June 2017
Dorothy Day and Abortion
I feel that,
as in the time of the Desert Fathers, the young are fleeing the
cities-wandering over the face of the land, living after a fashion in voluntary
poverty and manual labor, seeming to be inactive in the “peace movement.” I
know they are still a part of it-just as Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers’
Movement is also part of it, committed to non-violence, even while they resist,
fighting for their lives and their families’ lives. (They, together with the
blacks, feel and have stated this, that birth control and abortion are
genocide.)
I agree with
them and say-make room for children, don’t do away with them. Up and down and
on both sides of the Hudson River religious orders own thousands of acres of
land , cultivated, landscaped, but not growing food for the hungry or founding
villages for the families or schools for the children.
Dorothy
Day Open Letter to Fr.Dan
Berrigan On Pilgrimage 1972
It’s not often mentioned and perhaps not
widely known that before her conversion Dorothy Day had an abortion. In her
novel The Eleventh Virgin she describes her character having an abortion and then
being deserted by her partner afterwards. This was indeed Dorothy Day’s own
personal experience when 22 years old. She doubted that she would ever get
pregnant again and she refers to this fear in her book, The Long Loneliness.
Pelvic sepsis following this illegal and possibly unsterile procedure was not
unusual and the consequent Fallopian tube obstruction could result in sterility.
She rarely wrote about abortion but was profoundly remorseful of her lifestyle
before her conversion. In the Long Loneliness she describes how very blessed
she felt when in 1925 she realised that she had become pregnant with her
partner Forster Batterham. One can only surmise how her faith journey was
influenced by the remorse of her earlier abortion and her bliss at becoming
pregnant again.
This time
this new life would be welcomed and baptised into the Catholic Church even if
she was to lose the man she deeply loved.
Many might
say what right have I have to even raise the issue of abortion in this paper because
I am a man. We are all touched by human life but as a medical doctor and
specialist anaesthetist I was particularly involved as I was asked to anaesthetise
for abortions several times and refused.
I always
noticed who was Catholic in the anaesthetic department by seeing who were
claiming their legal right under the 1967 Abortion Act to be conscientious
objectors. One colleague even said that he wished that he was Catholic so that
he could refuse despite the fact that the legal right to refuse also applies to
any person on simply conscience grounds. In my personal experience I don’t
recall any other person refusing who wasn’t a Catholic. I should always be
grateful to Cardinal Heenan who obtained that legal concession in 1967.
When I hear
the many criticisms of the institutional Church I thank God how its intervention
in 1967 protected my mind and soul.
There are
probably two reasons why I could never have been a specialist in obstetrics and
gynaecology. The first is that I don’t think I could have suffered well the
severe sleep deprivation and secondly of how to negotiate the 1967 Abortion
Act. As a young doctor with no friends in high places the last thing I needed
was being a “troublesome” junior doctor with inconvenient scruples.
There are
two Lenten witnesses I do when possible in London. The first is the one that
the Catholic Worker reader would find not unusual. This is the marking of the
Ministry of Defence building as a sign of Christian opposition to nuclear war
preparations. The second is praying at an abortion clinic which this year was
in Ealing London at the Marie Stopes clinic. I encourage the reader to
experience both. Both require a commitment to non-violence. I was pleased to be
asked to not only sign an online promise of non-violence both verbal and
physical before the witness at the abortion clinic but also asked to sign a
hard copy when I arrived. The antiabortionists pray the Rosary and I saw no
intimidation of the patients going into the clinic. Their focus on the Rosary
meant that there was little eye contact with the pro-abortion demonstrators
which removed any spirit of judgement and antagonism and their prayer was
combined with practical support for those women who decide to change their
decision.
Would
Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin have approved of my witness for peace at the
Ministry of Defence? Would they have approved my witness for life at the
abortion clinic? Would they see the connection between the two at a time when
over 180,000 abortions are carried out in UK each year and when Parliament
voted against a ban on sex selective abortion in 2015? Can you make a call to choose life in one
issue and ignore the other? The first century Bethlehem massacre of the
innocents was then a gender discrimination against the male child whereas the
global gender select abortion is now a discrimination against the female child.
A topic perhaps
for a round-table discussion and clarification of thought?
Ray Towey
raytowey@btinternet.com
Tuesday, 29 November 2016
The End of the Dying Tents in the First World War
Dr. Bruce Robertson, the
Toronto doctor who brought blood transfusion to the Western Front in World War 1 transforming
triage and resuscitation, a centenary to celebrate.
July 2016 is
the centenary of the Battle of The Somme where from 1 July to 18 November 1916 over
1 million men were killed or wounded in a senseless slaughter and hopeless
attempt to break the deadlock of trench warfare at the end of which the front line
stayed virtually the same. However there is another centenary which Toronto
should recall with more hope at this time. On 8 July 1916 just a week into the
Battle of the Somme Captain Dr.Bruce Robertson, a Canadian volunteer doctor
from Toronto, had his paper published in the British Medical Journal entitled, The Transfusion of Whole Blood, A
suggestion for its more frequent employment in war surgery [1]. This was to mark a pivotal change in
the Royal Army Medical Corps, RAMC, protocol of the British Army for how
casualties were to be resuscitated on the Western Front. Blood transfusion was
now to be encouraged.
In 1914 at
the beginning of the WW1 blood transfusion was not included in the RAMC protocol
of a casualty with shock. A casualty then suffering from shock was thought to
be suffering from an over stimulation of the brain and that the best treatment
was morphine to reduce the effect of the stimulation, warm tea, warming of the
patient with hot water bottles, blankets and perhaps a small volume of
intravenous saline. The Casualty Clearing Stations situated about 6 miles
behind the Front were the closest medical facilities where surgery could be
undertaken safely from the shelling and the protocol initiated. However if the
blood pressure remained low any form of surgery was known to be poorly tolerated
and the casualty was likely to be transferred to the Moribund Ward, also known
as the Dying Tents, where they would most likely expire quietly with
compassionate but useless treatments. From our vantage of hindsight it is not
surprising that giving anaesthesia to a casualty with severe anaemia or
haemorrhagic shock would be poorly tolerated if not lethal. This would apply to
spinal anaesthesia or general anaesthesia using chloroform or ether at a time
when oxygen cylinders were not common on the Western Front. The casualties were
therefore assigned to non-surgical conservative management and transferred to
the dying tents where they quietly died.
However
Dr.Bruce Robertson had an experience and an insight that was to drive him to challenge
the RAMC early protocol and to work tirelessly to convert his British medical
colleagues to use blood as a resuscitating agent. His previous experience set
him in a unique position to be the pioneer at the early stages of WW1.
He qualified
in medicine from Toronto Medical School in 1909 and interned in surgery at
Toronto Hospital for Sick Children. He then moved to the Bellevue Hospital in
New York where he trained in paediatric and orthopaedic surgery and then later
at the Children’s Hospital Boston. He returned to Toronto Hospital for Sick
Children in 1913. During his time in the United States he saw at first hand the
pioneering work of the small group of American doctors who were revisiting the
value of blood transfusion which Europe had then abandoned. This was the fortuitous
experience that made him the ideal clinician to make the changes needed when he
was to see scores of war casualties suffering from haemorrhagic shock and
severe anaemia on the Western Front in 1915. New York and Boston at the
beginning of the twentieth century were the medical centres leading the
research into blood transfusion practice with Edward Lindeman at Bellevue and
Richard Lewisohn and Lester Unger at Mount Sinai. Bruce Robertson was duly
inspired and on his return to Toronto Hospital for Sick Children is reputed to
have been the first clinician to give a blood transfusion in that hospital.
When war was
declared in August 1914 Dr.Bruce Robertson, then a surgeon at the Toronto
Hospital for Sick Children and a single man, was among the first Canadians to
volunteer to join the Canadian Army Medical Corps and after some administrative
delays he was to find himself embedded into the RAMC on the Western Front and
dealing with the horrors of the war casualties in base hospitals and Casualty Clearing
Stations in 1915. It was here he was to struggle tirelessly often on a case by
case basis to demonstrate his faith in blood resuscitation to a sceptical if
not hostile military medical establishment. His preferred choice of transfusion
technique was always to use 20 ml glass syringes internally coated with sterile
paraffin wax to delay clotting and aspirate from the donor and then simply
inject into the patient through peripheral intravenous lines. During his time
in France it is recorded that he had numerous episodes of sickness for what was
described then as “flu”. In retrospect it is possible that his personal medical
history of frequent breakdowns could be interpreted as a stress response not
only to the military trauma he was dealing with but also to the burden of
knowledge that he carried of how this serious haemorrhagic shock and severe
anaemia mortality could be easily prevented. It is a testament to his
dedication, personality, and powers of persuasion that by 1916 he had won over
many senior members of the medical military establishment and with assistance
from his superiors he was able to publish his seminal paper in July 1916 in the
British Medical Journal just one week after the start of the Battle of the
Somme. It was difficult when working in Casualty Clearing Stations and base
hospitals to collect follow up data on his patients as they were quickly
referred down the line or back to England to make space for new casualties and
his unique method of data collection was to give his patients addressed
envelopes for them to post back to him details of their clinical progress. His
poor health finally resulted in him being invalided back to Canada in February
1918.
The USA
entered the war in April 1917 and when their medical teams arrived in France
they consolidated the practice of blood transfusion which by that time had been
accepted by the RAMC. It was the Canadians and especially Bruce Robertson who
had made the initial pioneering breakthrough in Europe during WW1 beginning the
transformation of the dying tents to resuscitation wards which was to lead to
the global acceptance of the value of blood transfusion. Sadly Bruce Robinson
died at the age of 37 from the Toronto flu epidemic in 1923 leaving a widow and
2 young children. In St.Andrew’s Church Simcoe Street Toronto there is a
commemorative plaque to his memory which gives him the due credit for bringing
blood transfusion to the British army and thereby to the world.
For decades after WW1 his rightful pioneering place
in the history of blood transfusion was much neglected as his personal testimony
was absent because of his untimely death but the more recent scholarly historical
research by Kim Pelis [2] has given him the credit which he justly deserves and
given us this historical publication centenary all in Toronto and beyond can celebrate
with gratitude.
Raymond Towey
References
1. Robertson L.Bruce.
The Transfusion of Whole Blood: A suggestion for its more frequent employment
in war surgery. Br Med J 1916; 2: 38-40
2. Pelis K. Taking
Credit: The Canadian Army Medical Corps and the British conversion to blood
transfusion in WW1. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
2001; 56,3: 238-277
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