SOME ASPECTS OF THE FAMILY SITUATION IN GREAT BRITAIN

Update to Fiorella Nash’s Talk at Braga, in June, 2010

By Stephen de la Bédoyère, MSM Preceptor for Great Britain, January 2011

Dr. Fiorella Nash is a graduate of Cambridge University and a well-known journalist about religious and social issues. She is a dedicated member of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, a leading spear-head organisation at the forefront of the pro-life movement, hoping to repeal Britain’s very permissive abortion laws. She and her husband Edmund have three young children.

When Fiorella and Edmund, with 6 week old Nicholas, accompanied me to Braga for the International Familiaris Consortio Institute’s seminar on family life, in June, 2010, we could not have known that Britain’s new coalition government would propose positive reforms precisely in the areas about which Fiorella would be addressing us: Catholic schools and Family economic difficulties.

Historically, the collaboration between State and Church in education has been excellent in Britain, from the great mediaeval universities – Catholic – of the Middle Ages (Oxford/Cambridge) through the Tudor creation of secondary grammar school to the post World War II development of  ‘dual control’, where the Government and the Catholic Church have provided free education within the maintained State system. The arrival of ‘New Labour’ under Blair and Brown meant a government if not anti-Christian, at least indifferent to religion, and coping with the big problem of teenage pregnancy. 2010 saw the proposal to coerce Catholic schools into having to provide abortion information for their pupils. However the Coalition under Cameron and Clegg wants to decentralise education by giving greater autonomy to schools – Catholic education is safe (we hope).

While the Coalition also seems to have proposed the concept of ‘married’ as a reason for financial subsidy, there will alas probably still have to be a financial upturn before families like the Nashes can have their own home. For many middle-class professional families like the Nashes, the current economic situation remains hostile to financial security and home ownership.