The Way Forward

09.01.2010

Lord David Alton talks to Columban Fr Barry Maguire about his recent visit to North Korea.

For the last five years I have been the chairman of the British Parliamentary Committee on North Korea. I was invited by the Speaker of the Supreme People's Assembly to North Korea, so we had a five-day visit there consisting of high-level discussions with the Speaker and the Foreign Office Minister and other senior people in the North Korean government.

North Korea is a very sad place. Two million people died there during the famine of the 1990's. There is still terrible oppression with so many people in prisons and camps, many people denied their religious liberties, there's no press freedom etc. There are some signs of hope, for example we visited the local markets where people were trading by selling and buying things from one another.

I visited Kim Il Sung university where some wonderful young students were learning English and you could see that they were like young people anywhere in the world, with the desire for some hope in their lives.

I strongly oppose the ideology of the regime there but I also think we have to do something, both raising the human rights issues and seeing what can be done to build bridges. When I visited Panmunjom I wrote in the visitors' book 'It is better for men to build bridges than walls'. However it is much easier to build a wall! Building bridges requires a lot more creativity and sometimes you have to allow yourself to be walked over if you are a bridge! So there are a lot of challenges.

I call this approach: Constructive Critical Engagement. I think we have become obsessed with security issues and while these are important, I think on the one hand we can be strong on security issues but on the other we can show a human face when dealing with humanitarian issues. We have to do both things simultaneously and really we have been one-track rather than two-track.

There are individuals in North Korea who want change, who don't want things to go as they are. They aren't robots, they aren't all programmed. It is important to distinguish between an ideology from the Stalinist era and the human beings who live there; they are human beings who deserve a lot better than they have at this moment in time.

Building bridges is what we do; for example in the past five years we have brought over a hundred students from North Korea to England to learn English. This is a fantastic investment in the future. In this way, we should invest in relationships and building for the future. After all twenty years ago people doubted they would see the end of the Berlin Wall but now it is just a memory. Let's hope that Asia's Berlin Wall will go the same way.

Britain
When I was a young boy growing up in Liverpool city there were advertisements for accommodation in shop windows that said 'No Black People or Irish should apply'. That kind of racism was omnipresent. Britain is a different place today, it's much more multi-cultural and diverse and that is a very positive thing. On the negative side it is now a much more secular society and very antagonistic to anyone who has religious faith, to the point of intolerance.

We have to challenge that intolerance. In a democracy we have as much right as anybody to express our views along with a duty to work for the common good. We might be unpopular, especially if we challenge materialism or the lack of respect for human life. There have been seven million abortions in Britain over the last thirty years, two million embryos have been destroyed or experimented upon, legislation has been enacted permitting the creation of animal/ human hybrid embryos and also human cloning; there are moves to permit euthanasia. These are all the consequences of losing the Maker's instructions.

The immigrant communities are the new missionaries to Britain, the Africans and the Poles come with a strong faith and nowadays more people attend Catholic churches in the United Kingdom than any other denomination. There have been high-profile converts to the Catholic Church. When this happens it makes people think that the Catholic Church must have something to offer.

Politics
I joined a political party when I was seventeen. It was a small party then but I ended up representing an area of Liverpool city where half the houses had no hot water, bathrooms or indoor sanitation. It had an unemployment rate of 30%. So I used the political platform I had to raise issues of human dignity like poor social conditions, lack of employment opportunities and human rights. I have been to Darfur in Sudan where 200,000 people have died, to the Karen State in Myanmar where 300,000 have been displaced, I have been to North Korea. In this way I feel it is a great privilege to serve people in a political capacity.

It is a great tragedy for me that politics gets such a bad name at the moment: we are fortunate to live in democracies. Our privileges came at a price and we have to take them seriously. In the end a democracy is only as good as the people who elect the politicians!

Hope
In Greek mythology the one thing left in Pandora's box was hope. There is plenty of hope. When you look at the Cross you know what happens three days later, there is new life. I don't pretend we will solve all the problems facing mankind but that's not a reason for not trying. Our hope lies in eternity, not here. In the meantime each of us must use our talents to help our brothers and sisters. Every human being, regardless of their colour, creed, gender, age is of unique importance and is made in the image of God. Everyone is important to God and so should be important to us.

For 18 years David Alton was a member of the House of Commons and today is an independent crossbench Life Peer.

Fr Barry Maguire was ordained in 1993 and is editor of Columban publications in Korea.