Date published: 2005/03/31
The BBC says:
The Archbishop of Canterbury has called on political parties not to exploit people's fears in an effort to win the general election.
In an open letter to party leaders, he complained "familiar anxieties" over terror, asylum and immigration already look like featuring in campaigns.
Proposing "reactive, damage-limiting solutions" would endanger the "deeper needs" of communities, he has warned.
He called for alternatives to prisons to "address offending behaviour".
"There are things that really should make us tremble - rootlessness and alienation among some of our urban youth, the degradation of the environment, the downward spin into chaos and violence of large parts of the poorer world," he said.
"And these simply don't lend themselves to defensive and short-term solutions."
Calling for an end to existing penal policy, he urged parties to "make history" in finding alternatives.
"Building more prisons is no answer," he said. "Why not say so and propose a better way?"
He called for more public support for stable families and marriage but not, he said, in the context of "middle class, middle England nostalgia".
"The climate of chronic family instability, sexual chaos and exploitation, drug abuse and educational disadvantage is a lethal cocktail," he said.
Efforts to address "emotionally undernourished and culturally alienated" young people were a matter of "life and death".
Dr Williams challenged parties to produce policies to reverse the "collective lack of international responsibility about the environment".
He said the "disgrace" of the international arms trade which equipped child soldiers to fight and fuelled instability in poor parts of the world like Africa must be addressed.
Such complaints were not simply "religious idealism" and must be taken seriously, he warned.
"Violent instability makes both terrorists and refugees.
"Poor provision for youth and an impossibly strained prison system breed crime," he said.
Hmmm, the politicians should not exploit issues that arise from the public's fears and "familiar anxieties" but instead should exploit the issues that arise from the archbishop's own fears and familiar anxieties. It's just as well he's not running for office, he would lose. And "chronic family instability", "sexual chaos", blah, blah, blah, haven't we all heard that litany before (in the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, 1950s, 1900s, 1800s, 1700s, ... , 300 BC, ...). "The world was such a better place when I was a kid, the kids of today, they just show no respect."
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