Ed Davey hints that Jane Dodds should resign as leader of the Welsh Lib Dems

The language was coded, but Ed Davey appeared to call on Jane Dodds to stand down as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats when he appeared on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg this morning' .

Dodds' position was called into question when criticism of her in a 2021 report on the way the Church of England dealt with an abusive bishop was given new prominence by the resignation of Justin Welby.

The Guardian reprints the relevant passage of the interview:

Asked about the case, Davey told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuennsberg show: “I’ve spoken to Jane about this. She has apologised, and she has had a incredible career looking after children, but I’ve made it clear I think she needs to think about her responsibility on this.”

Asked if that meant she should consider resigning, Davey said: “I think she does need to reflect on this very carefully. I accept that she has apologised, but this is such a serious issue, so I think she does need to think about what else she may need to do.”

Asked if this was “code for she should resign”, the Lib Dem leader added: “I want Jane to reflect on this. I have spoken to her. I’ve made my feelings really clear to her about what I think she should do, and I think she’s reflecting. I hope she does.”

You can watch the whole interview, which is mostly about social care, on the BBC iPlayer. It begins at 19:10 and the exchange about Jane Dodds is at 27:30.

Jane Dodds was found to have committed a "grave error of judgement" by the report into the Church's handling of allegations against the late Bishop of Chester, Hubert Whitsey.

So far the Welsh Lib Dems have continued to back Jane Dodds' leadership, but Nation Cymru was able to find critical voices from within the party.

John Smyth, Mary Whitehouse and the Gay News blasphemy trial

The blurb on YouTube explains:

In 1977, Gay News, UK, was committed to trial at the Old Bailey for publication of a blasphemous poem, entitled "The Love That Dare Speak its Name" by James Kirkup, which featured a Roman centurion having sexual fantasies about Christ on the cross. Media morals campaigner, Mary Whitehouse, initiated the charge against Gay News for the publication of a blasphemous poem. The programme features re-enactments of the scenes in court as the trial progressed, as well as interviews with Mary Whitehouse and Gay News editor, Denis Lemon.

This dramatisation of the trial was formed an episode of Everyman, the BBC's religious documentary programme, which went out in a late slot on Sunday evenings between 1977 and 2000.

The prosecution counsel was John Smyth QC, who was Mary Whitehouse's favourite barrister but is now best known for posthumously bringing down an Archbishop of Canterbury.

In his piece on Justin Welby and John Smyth, David Aaronovich says of Smyth:

To me, what was clearly being repeatedly beaten and physically punished was his own repressed homosexuality.

It's hard to resist that conclusion, particularly if you add to the evidence this paragraph from p.33 of a Winchester College review of its part in the affair:

The third concern raised in 1978 was described by Euan MacAlpine in an email dated 28 January 2017, as part of the internal investigation conducted by the College. He stated that in 1978 he had confronted Smyth and accused him of inviting "only goodlooking boys" to his house. He stated that Smyth "curled into a ball and admitted he had gone too far". He said he was sitting in an armchair and then "slowly went into the foetal position, knees right up to his chest and arms holding them".

MacAlpine was a housemaster at Winchester, and I have heard him interviewed about this encounter. There he gave the impression that his tone was conversational, not confrontational, and he said he had first observed that it was good of Smyth to give up his time for the boys and that they obviously enjoyed the time they spent with him. Only then did he add the observation about Smyth only inviting good-looking boys, all of which makes Smyth's reaction seem more extreme.

Anyway, the documentary is now of historical interest, and it stands as a warning to those who seek to restore Mary Whitehouse's reputation.

Two questions raised by the John Smyth affair

The announcement that Justin Welby is to hand in his mitre was inevitable. I've formed the impression in recent years that his lack of candour and lack of action over the crimes of John Smyth have made it harder for the Church of England to act against abusers more generally.

I am left with two questions.

The first is to ask if there wasn't something unchristian about the practice of the Iwerne Trust (and of the Titus Trust that succeeded it) of holding camps only for boys from expensive public schools.

Their ambition was to change society by changing its future leaders. But their actions look like a parody of Christ, who included fishermen and a thief among his companions. 

Did they imagine there was a separate heaven for those who'd been to the same schools as them?

My second questions is why Evangelicals are so unhealthily keen on corporal punishment. They continued to fight the ban on it when even the teaching unions had given up:

John Friel, acting for the claimants, told Mr Justice Patrick Elias that the group "believe as part of their religious worship and part of their religious belief, that corporal punishment is part of their Christian doctrine".

Meanwhile, students of human nature will not be surprised to learn that Smyth was an admirer and confidant of Mary Whitehouse.

Do wealthy evangelicals think there's a separate heaven for the privately educated?

You may know the story of Mary Whitehouse's fellow campaigner John Smyth QC. The new Private Eye reminds us:

In a purpose-built garden shed at his home in Winchester, Smyth administered sadistic beatings to his victims until they bled. When his criminal abuse was first revealed to church leaders in 1982, Smyth was hustled out of the country to Zimbabwe there he is set up his own network of Christian camps were at least 90 children were abused and one died.

And the Eye reveals that Justin Welby, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of those who funded Smyth's religious camps in Zimbabwe, even though "he had been warned he was up to no good".

As a young man, Welby helped at the Iwerne Trust's camps in the UK, and Smyth was a leading light of the organisation.

This link between them appears to have stymied the Church of England's efforts to investigate Smyth's activities. The church has now apologised 15 times for delays to the inquiry.

Four of Christ's disciples were fishermen, but to get invited to a Iwerne Trust camp you had to be a pupil at an exclusive public school. It makes you wonder if wealthy evangelicals hope there will be a separate heaven for the privately educated.

Anyway, the best guide to the Smyth affair is Bleeding For Jesus: John Smyth and the cult of the Iwerne Camps by Andrew Graystone.

Archbishop of Canterbury said to have supported Paula Vennells's candidacy for Bishop of London

Scan the Wikipedia entry for Paula Vennells and you find a paragraph on her involvement with the Church of England:

From 2002 to 2005, Vennells trained for Holy Orders on the St Albans and Oxford Ministry Course. She was ordained in the Church of England as a deacon in 2005 and as a priest in 2006. She has served as a non-stipendiary minister at the Church of St Owen, Bromham, in the Diocese of St Albans. She was reported to have 'stepped back' from duties in 2021. Her membership of the Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group was also terminated.

But it's become clear today that her involvement has been far deeper than that.

This afternoon BBC News revealed that in 2017 Vennells was on a shortlist of only three names to be the next Bishop of London. The authors of its report, Henry Zeffman and Harry Farley, say two sources told them that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, pushed her application and was seen as a supporter of hers.

On Twitter, Communard turned Northamptonshire parish priest turned cosy-crime novelist Richard Coles asked:

Why did the Crown Nominations Commission shortlist Paula Vennells, a priest with no experience of running a parish and not even on the payroll, for the CofE’s third most senior position?

A possible clue is to be found in a quote from Welby's book Reimagining Britain flagged up by Gilo, again on Twitter. There Welby writes:

Conversations with Sam Wells, Paula Vennells, Tim Cross, former colleagues in the oil industry and Sir Graham Hearne and many others have shaped my thinking over the years.

It's not clear whether he  is talking about his thinking on a particular topic or his thinking in general, but this does support the idea that the Archbishop held Vennells in high regard. The Church of England, incidentally, declined to comment on the BBC's story about the appointment of the Bishop of London.

As to Vennells herself, Andrew Graystone (on Twitter) quotes from a talk of hers to the London Diocese in October 2017:

"My faith has been absolutely central to transforming the Post Office. We have developed three values: Care, Challenge, Commit. They are based on the Second Commandment: Love your neighbour as yourself."

Later. Another nugget from Twitter: Marcus Walker reveals that Vennells has been a tutor on the Church of England's leadership development programme for bishops.