>> Julia: Welcome to Things I Wish I Knew, the podcast from

Thinking Faith, a work of the Jesuits in Britain.

I'm Julia. I'm in my early 30s and I used to live

in a Jesuit young adult community. We

all live hectic lives and often don't get time to

reflect on what's happening both to us and around us.

This podcast is meant to help you to take a moment to

stop and think about where you are, where you're going

and where your relationship with God fits into it all.

Every week I'll meet a new guest who tells me about something they've

experienced which changed their life forever. Today

I'm speaking to John Battle, a former government minister,

MP and a trustee of CSAN the

Caritas social action network. John

continues working in the community in Leeds.

Just a heads up that this conversation was recorded

remotely, so might sound a bit different, but still, still

is a great conversation. I learnt a lot about John's

heart for social justice in this conversation. But who

is John Battle?

>> John Battle: I grew up in what might be called the traditional

second, almost third generation Irish working

class family in a place called Batley Carr in Dewsbury

and Leeds was the big smoke to me.

the city where, till I was nine I thought the queen lived. And

I actually 11 went to a

seminary to train to be a priest.

And I was there from 11 till Senior

Seminary 21. And then I transferred from that college

to a seminary in the Liverpool diocese where I remained

till I was 18 and I stepped back.

I didn't go forward to be ordained. And

strangely that was fantastic training

for which I'm eternally grateful, really. And, part of the

work was to be, active in the community. You were

asked the first question when I was in a class of seven with

joiners, accountants, I was the youngest.

And in the first week when we arrived at the

senior centre, they said, why do you want to be a priest? Who do you want to

serve? And some replied, I want

to serve old people. So they said, well, we'll find you a placement in

an, older person's home. One person said he wanted to

work in a hospital. We'll find you a place in a hospital.

One person said, schools to teach children,

classic education. And I stupidly said, I want to do something about

bad housing. So they said to me, right, we've just a

place for you. Kirby Estate, the biggest,

most, intense council estate in Western Europe that

they built off the edge of Liverpool. Go there for two days a week. And

I did. And I had to go to that estate. I

Stayed at the parish and then I went back to the seminary

and we reflected on the action and the work

we did. And we studied, yes, Scripture,

philosophy, liturgy, pastoral studies,

ethics. And it was a kind of a, good

dynamic, if you like, a reiteration between the

community action and the reflection. And, of course, we

then had Mass and the, psalms in the morning, the prayer

and the rest of it as part of it. It was a monastic kind of life,

but with this blend of action. And there was a wonderful book

by a man called Thomas Merton, the Trappist

monk, called Contemplation in a World of

Action. And that, in a way, was the kind of the

guidebook. How do you have Contemplation in a World

of Action? Great, great people that I was training

with there. I left, I think, because I was getting a

bit burnt out by the action of the people. We were organising

bums and tots groups and tenants groups and tackling the council.

And I thought I needed a bit of quiet, so I said, I need a break.

And I actually went to try my

vocation at a Trappist monastery. But John Battle couldn't

keep his mouth shut, as the monks realised within about three

days. So that didn't last very long. And then quickly

passed me out into the world and said, I've been institutionalised and

could I go and reflect on other things to do? Which was brilliant.

So I went back to Leeds and went late

to university. And as a result of being at university,

I, was studying literature, and modern

poetry. But at the same time, I was involved in housing campaigns

in the city. And that took me into politics, really, and I

became a counsellor at a very young age. Then I was asked to stand

to Parliament again. Against all

expectations, I got elected both times. And then

from 87 till

2010, had the privilege of serving

as the MP for the neighbourhood where I live now. And I

retired in 2010 and I still work in the community, actually,

as my. My day job.

>> Julia: So what. What did seminary end up teaching you

about yourself?

>> John Battle: Wow. to some extent,

there was a strong. If I look back now,

it was about a resilient independence.

It was working in community. And that

is a flaw. Do you know, when I look back on it, we were

not taught, really, apart from the sport. It

wasn't really teaching you to do teamwork.

And I think that's a flaw in the whole system, especially now.

And priests at that time would go out and be curates for 20

years and a parish priest when they were 60,

because you're two or three in a parish in a big house,

whereas now there aren't the priests. And each priest goes out alone

into the world and has to survive. And in a way, it was

taught that kind of monastics almost, not

Cistercian, but Carr fusion, cell resilience,

you know, and there was that in it. So you knew how to,

try and I, suppose live on your own resources, live

by books and reading a bit more. But I think the

downside was that you were not really practising

the practise of teamwork and working with others in a

way that perhaps parishes. One of my, great

friends tragically died. Tuyon, the priest who was

in Kirby, he. He lived in the attic room, the

top of the presbytery, while the rest of the presbytery used his

house as the community centre. He was a brilliant,

open to the community priest.

He developed that model for himself in that

context with the people, and the best do that,

but it's not really built into the training.

The other thing is to try and hold together

prayer and action. And that is a massive one.

And it relates to those questions of faith and politics and

everything else. Is your prayer just private?

How public is it? How often do you press the pause

button? And regular

habits of prayer and liturgy.

in contrast to the massive demands of meetings every hour,

which I had when I was a government minister, for example,

and I had a wonderful witness when I was a

counsellor, there was a conservative counsellor on the opposite

side of the council chamber to me. He

said the office morning,

noon and evening, and sometimes in the mornings

at lunchtime, I would joining. And he was such a

witness that he would fit in the rhythm of the psalms

into the daily life of a counsellor. A wonderful,

wonderful witness. And one of my great mentors, though,

if I turned around and said to people, one of my great mentors was the

great Patrick Crotty, who was a, top legal

solicitor and a top Tory in Leeds. People perhaps look

askance, but he brought it together really well and there are

people like that in our world that we should look to.

>> Julia: So what made you decide to leave seminary?

>> John Battle: I'm not quite sure. I think it was. I felt the rush of things

coming quickly. I mean, I'd done three years, nearly four years,

and that was when the big decisions had to be made to become a

deacon. Don't forget. Then it was for a celibate life,

a life of poverty and a life of service. But I think

at the time, ironically, I wanted a

quieter Life, because I'd been doing all these

meetings with the people, community meetings, council

meetings. I think I felt a bit burnt out by the people, if

I'm honest, and wanted to calm down and just reflect and think.

So I stepped back. And then, ironically, I

stepped back and it was with a view to going and trying

the monastic life. But I came away,

a bit lost, really, if I'm deadly honest. I had to tell my family I

hadn't got a job, I hadn't got a degree. I was

21. What would you do? And so I had to

pick up whatever jobs I could. And then someone suggested to me that I try

and get myself into university and do a bit of studying to

get a bit of calm and quiet. Someone told me

that I didn't need to go to classes. You can just sit in the library if that's what

you want to do. And that's what I did want to do.

But in fact, the cost was, worth it. And

amazingly, I got stuck into the community action

again. So, by that time, things had really moved

on, you know.

>> Julia: Yeah.

So what did draw you to that, like, life

of public service?

>> John Battle: I think burning away at me all the time was this sense of

injustice. That people lived in conditions

that they did not deserve and had not made. It was

not of their making that they were in bad houses, there were

rats and the windows were broken and the

kids were all getting coughing and chest complaints and all

the rest of it. And then the families rowing and splitting up

because of it. And I thought that something needed

to be done about the structural conditions. And

I was always thinking that poverty was about

causes as well as individual actions.

There were structures that weren't right and that we should

challenge them. And that if people organised together and

talked about them and built relationality, A, they

could support each other in working for change, which is

important, not having it done to or for them. But at the

same time they could put pressure on.

So take on, power and challenge it and don't let them ride over

you. And there was a strong feeling of that, I

suppose, the injustice, really, that needed to be

challenged. And you needed. Yes, the poor need their own

voice, but there also needs to be some voice for the voiceless.

And I was a talker.

>> Julia: Saying, being a voice for the voiceless reminds me of

Austin Romero and him standing up

for the injustice in his communities.

obviously that his experience is different to yours. But

how did you end up being an mp?

>> John Battle: Oh, let me just say, Oscar Romero. The

quotes on my Wall, I almost turned the phone to show you.

And he said, what's the point of the Church? And

he said, tell the truth about reality

and accompany the people. And those two

watchwords, tell the truth, what's really going on,

don't make it up, or just get a story that fits

everybody, but also accompany the people. I thought they

were brilliant messages for politics as well as for

the Church. So in a way I got into

politics by, I suppose, making a bit of too much noise

in Leeds because I was campaigning against housing

conditions while I was at the university and it

appeared in the papers and, I think the Labour

Party at that time in Leeds, it was run. The city

was a divided city and divided in. It was rich

and poor. It always has been. So Conservatives

sometimes, Labour, sometimes, you know, it echoed from

one to the other, if you like. And at the time I was at university, it

was Conservative, but the Labour lot

were incredibly. I caricature them

badly, and wrongly as old men with pork pie

hats on. They were Labour people who really sat in the

Labour clubs drinking away and had given up on

championing the people. And so I'm making a noise

and I got invited into a meeting that was about

200 people with mainly men who were

the leaders of the Labour Party in Leeds. And they asked me to speak

about why I was creating such a fuss about bad

housing. And as a result of that, I was asked to

get involved in the Labour campaigns. I mean, I'd been

a member how to think of them at the Labour Party at the university,

but it was really because my father and mother were

Labour supporters, if you like. My dad was an electrician

and a trade unionist. So the theme of the Labour

Party wasn't uncommon in our family. And they asked me

to stand for the council in an area that they said, you'd never

win anyway, but if you make enough noise, it'll distract people,

so keep them off other areas. But I actually won

and got elected. And then the same happened with

Parliament in 87. To

my shock and surprise, as I watched the votes pile up in

the town, I turned to Mary, my wife, because we had small children at this time,

said, oh, my God, it looks like I'm going to go and win.

So I said to her, what do I do next? I think she

said to me, I think you're going to London, you fool. And it had never really occurred to

me that my life was going to change in a big way. But it did. And

wonderfully the people, wonderful people in Wesley's

continued to re elect me as their MP until

2010.

>> Julia: I was just thinking when you said about having three small

children and suddenly realising you're an MP, how do you

balance family life and like,

political life?

>> John Battle: badly is the honest answer. And probably Mary

is the balance because she practically

was a single parent while I went to sort out the problems of

the world, you know, if the honest truth over history be told.

And she looked after bringing up. I came home every

weekend. I still lived in Leeds, I never moved to London. And

so putting what I could, but in a way

the caricature is true. And there was a

cartoon once, an Irish cartoon, and it

had a woman pushing a vacuum

cleaner and a child under her arm,

and a babe under her, arm and another child pulling at, ah,

her skirt, saying, mummy, Mummy, where is Daddy? And

Mummy replies, I don't know, dear. He's probably out somewhere

fighting on behalf of oppressed peoples. it's a

cartoon that haunts me, frankly.

>> Julia: Well, that's obviously a challenge for you, but what were some of the

joys of being an mp?

>> John Battle: The people, without a doubt. The people. When I got,

a bad time with London, you can imagine it, you go to

the Parliamentary Labour Party and have an argument about the minimum

wage, which I did, and you don't get any

support and you think you're wasting your time down there and

you wonder why you're there. I used to come home and just go around the

houses and go around, say, the waddles and knock

on the door on a Friday and just say, look, ah, I'm your

mp, it's not election time but I've just come to, ah,

see if you're all right, because I'm not really. How are you doing? And the

response of the people was fantastic. The support

of the people and struggling and struggling, but the

resilience and their capacity

help serve and work with others is such an inspiration. And

that's where Romero's thing is so strong. Accompany

the people doesn't mean you're doing good for them, it means

them saving you.

>> Julia: That is a really challenging thought for anyone who,

does anything for social action related.

Because quite often people feel like

they're doing it to benefit others, but actually

you're being benefited from it.

>> John Battle: Oh, absolutely, Julia, I am.

when I left Parliament, there was an

area near, right on the edge of the

constitution, but right in the heart of Leedsmere Army Prison. And

there's a big gyratory and there's an estate there that was.

Imagine that they drew a Map, a boundary map around it and put

it in Hillary Ben's central Leeds

constituency, miles away. And so the people

were cut off. And Hillary didn't go there, the councillors

didn't go there. They felt. And the harmony, my side didn't go

to see them either. So these people were really unrepresentative.

Four massive tower blocks. And in them were

men, single men, among others. And, some had

been tipped out of the prison when released. it had the

highest suicide rate in the country in

the last few years that I was an mp. So I went in there with

a friend of mine who was a community worker, and we dragged them out

and we said, come to a tin or to the community centre and we'll give

you a free cup of tea or coffee and a big bacon

sandwich on a Friday morning. And we met twice with about

eight or 10 men. And it was a lovely

daylight, sunny day these days of July. And I said,

well, why don't we go for a walk? Because I'm not a therapist, let's go for a walk out

on the canal. And one of them said, where's the canal? And it's about

quarter of a mile away. Beautiful suede of

green, as Patrick Kavanagh might say, the poet

that flows through Leeds. So we started

the walking group for men and then we got money from

the health clinic to say, don't give them tablets for

depression, give us money to feed them. So we have a

walking group. We meet,

we walk, we stop in a coffee shop and we come back

and we share a meal and we do it every Friday. And we get between,

I would say between 10 and 25 men every Friday.

And that's been going now for 15 years. And

I kind of lead that group in a way. Internal most now,

I've only missed about a handful of the sessions, but

I would say that group's for me, not for them.

I need them more than they need me. I really do.

And it was quite funny,

to turn up and to listen to their stories

and what they're up against and their challenges and their questions

to me. And, their

treatment of me as an equal is quite wonderful,

really. And yet they would come from walks of life with all

kinds of challenges. Drug, alcohol problems,

been in prison. We went to,

visit to one of the university

centres in Leeds for the Leeds Trinity Catholic University.

And what happened was that,

we were going around the room to say who we were and one of the men

who'd come for the first time, and we didn't Normally

open up in a formal way, like you're asking me questions. Just let it

go. And just. If you sit down for a coffee in fours, you

have to talk to her. You sit in silence if you want. But people learn

to know each other. And one man had been twice.

And he turned around and said, and what do you do? And he said, well, actually,

I'm a neurosurgeon that had a breakdown.

And he kind of thought, so. The range of people

and what I learned from that is mix up the

wrong people. You don't know who you are talking to

and what their background is most of the time.

But the more that you learn about a person. There was

a, lovely remark that one of the labs made. He said, what we

need, John, you're all right about saying hello to people, but

what we really need is consistent care.

And how does that apply to everybody? And just

wonderful insights come out of that group that keep me going.

So I need that Friday group more than they need me.

>> Julia: Oh, I feel like we all need that sense of community as well. And

you built that community together with those men, which

is beautiful.

So my big question that I want to ask and get into with

you is, how do faith and politics

fit together?

>> John Battle: I think it's about values and about the big picture.

and I think, my mother, when we were

children, used to, you know, this is in the

age of black and white telly, when there are only two channels, you know, so.

But what she used to do was get us to sit around the table and

cooperate in making jigsaws. So you get a

jigsaw, and you would, try and find the

corners and then the blue sky and the green grass and the

edges, and you'd have a go at it. Now, the

only problem was, it was a heck of a job because

she got the jigsaws from different places, which

we now know as recycling secondhand shops. And if

they put the wrong lid on the box, you had no

chance. So the whole thing is, you might have the pieces, but

you need a box lid. And it's. What is the box

lid? What's the overview? What's the big

picture of your worldview, if

you like? And that does refer to your, your

politics, your relationships, your

spirituality and your values. And it's

how we keep that. We negotiate that big

picture all the time and keep that in the forefront. And I think that

means that if you think, well, I'm too busy to ever

bother thinking about faith and prayer.

No, I mean, sometimes you Might, you know, I would quite often,

especially as a minister, I was terrified as a minister

of some of the decisions I had to make. And I'm thinking of the decision,

you know, I have some sympathy,

some sympathy with the ministers that had to make those decisions about the

Afghanis. And I'd been shouting at them because I thought

the Afghanis were on a fast track. And I'd be giving talks about the

fast track. There are only two. There was one for the. Well,

there were three. One for the Ukrainians, one for the Afghanis, one for the. Then the

Syrians were allowed in, and then maybe for the Hong Kong. And

I kept thinking, I thought the fast track was there for those,

people that helped the armed services in

Afghanistan. But then I've now discovered they weren't coming

because they blocked it and it didn't work. And yet at the same

time, so the carry on over that,

as it were, the fact that they weren't brought, and then the leaking,

the job was stopped and da, da, da. And

the minister's trying to make decisions. And some of them said, well, if we

told everybody we'd leaked them, everybody's in danger. I have

a little bit of a feeling for the

ministers having to make those difficult decisions at that

time. And the reason is I

would literally go sometimes and still into

a room to give a great speech or not great m.

A speech to a great audience. I will

perhaps say a little prayer for. To the Holy Spirit. But it's not me that's

going to speak all this lot. Is he. Can you help me out? You know, and I think that

is really important. And that applies to voting and speaking.

And I think, it is. Politicians,

use their voice, and it is

refining that voice. To go back to Romero,

tell the truth about reality. But we have to work at the

truth. It's not spread on our eyeballs and immediately

evident, you know, so working at the truth is a, responsible,

serious religious duty, really. And it does

mean. And also, it links to that great

word in the Jesuit tradition of discernment. And that

is the difficult. Well, what does it mean? You don't discern it

on your own. You discern it by getting other people to

check you out, not least my wife, you know, really, Mary will

tell me much, much, much more political than me. So if you. You

need people that you would have faith

in to check you, challenge you.

>> Julia: And change you, I think everyone needs that.

But particularly, as you said, people working in

politics, what would you say to people who

were considering they Wanted to be a counsellor or an

MP or some

sort of public service. What would you say

to them now?

>> John Battle: Go for it. But go for it at the lowest level.

I'm massively keen. I encourage people that

come to me and say, john, I want to go into parts of world, stand for the

council, start at the local level, make

the local more important than the national. And I think we need to

tip the whole system up, give the power and the budgets back

to the local. It's happening a bit, but it's a bit, still a bit top down with

the mayors and things like that. But also I'm a

massive fan of the citizens

movement and it was Cardinal Hume

who really, really pushed citizens in London with

telco and it and the Catholics.

I'm thinking of Bernadette Farrell and people who really

developed citizens and Sebnau in

citizens, you know, great witnesses that see the

value in relationality which, you

know, old, Pope Francis booklet,

Fratelli Tutti Fits. Perfect template for

citizens. And it's probably read by people who are not Catholics

involved in citizens more than Catholics now. But that

notion of building up power from the base,

doing one to one conversations that are

respectful and not just chat, to learn a bit more deeply

about each other and what motivates us and what our

values are building up from the locals. So I want people

to say, you know, I once did work training

counsellors. How could say, okay,

do you need to know about the history of the Labour Party in Keir Hardy?

So no, we'll do the practical. So I'll take them to the shopping centre in

Bramley and say, right, what I want you to do is

cross the road and say hello to someone you've never met. Can you do

that? And you wouldn't believe how hard it is for someone

to go up to someone. They may have said, hello, you know, I'm so and so,

I want to be your counsellor or I'm so and so, how are you? And some said,

oh, and you would get people say, well I don't really like

people but I like the theory, you know. And what you have to

do is to try to say this is a practical

task of breaking down barriers between

people. And that means gently introducing people. So it's

an introductions business, building relationality,

Relationality and citizens with their

methodology of one to one conversations, then

widening them, widening them again, getting people together in

groups, checking people again and then challenging power

in a way that isn't just shouting and banish

waving at people, but engaging to build relations

with people in power, I think is the way of building it from

the bottom up and bringing about real change. So I would encourage people

who want to go into politics to a. Get involved in the citizens

movement because they are training the new leaders and

it does not mean everybody joins the Labour Party and that's the

only way through. There's a range of options and newer parties will

emerge, as we've seen day by day, and we need to rethink what

all parties are doing.

>> Julia: On that note, what do you say to people

who feel a bit,

disheartened by the. When they look at the political

system.

>> John Battle: At the moment, the men are the worst

because the men can't deal with complexity, women

can. The women are the one. What's the expression

of, handling 10 things at the same time? Multi, multi,

multitasking, you know, looking after the children, feeding the men, making

sure they don't starve, getting the kids to school, making sure everybody's got clothes and

Washington and so, I'm massively in favour

of rebalancing the gender balance in Leeds.

Wonderfully, we've more women councillors running the council than

men and it's a much calmer city under

great challenges than it was when I was a councillor.

It's not a ranting shop and it's not a great row in the paper every

night. And people in Leeds, despite the challenges in

their field, karma. Whereas at the national level,

despite the fact that for the first time we've a lot of women in the

cabinet, that's not working through and there's something to

do with the style of the politics that's going on. And

I'm not sure, I know that it's completely

marred by social media as a new element, and I'm not

sure I would cope with politics now. So it makes it more

difficult, it's faster and it's very complex. But

it's also to encourage people to say all people

can deal with complexity and complex problems and

find ways through them. And I think that is a

patience that's getting lost, really, in politics. And we need people.

it's part of that consistent care, isn't it? Being there and having

a vision for the medium and long term, not the

immediate answer. So I would

encourage people, young people and older people to go into

politics, but I'm always saying to them, don't go to be an MP

because you'll waste your time. At the present time, go to the

local authority and Become a leader in your local

neighbourhood and change the world from the bottom up.

>> Julia: So, looking back, what do you wish you knew about how

faith and public service could work together?

>> John Battle: How faith and public service could work together? I

think within, I would say that

I am disappointed within the Church. And that's where

organisations like yourself at Jesuit, ah,

Faith and ctam just. And peace commissions, but

also the Catholic Cares and the organisations in

the front line need more support

from the thinking and practise of the Church

in terms of community and engagement. And it's not

really there. There is always this fear of politics

and the withdrawal system in the Church, so not knowing

quite how to handle it. And so

that means that politicians go to church and feel isolated and

that rocks up in terms of, you know, an MP turns

up, goes to Mass, four benches from the back, and then the priest

tells him to go away, you know, because he hadn't m voted right.

Or has he asked about abortion this week? That isn't

the way to build the relationship between faith and politics.

So I think, as well as politics

needs a lot of renewal and resetting. And

it was Pope Benedict that said it. Pope Benedict's the best on

all this, actually. I know we went to the, the great, spiritual

witness, the charismatic witness of Pope

Francis. But we flash through the

Popes and their letters too quickly and everyone was

saying, oh, Benedict, he was radical. Then he became, a

Rottweiler. I don't believe that, actually. I think in some of

those encyclicals of Benedict are the

key thoughts for developing a proper relationship

between faith and politics, but also for transforming

the politics. There is some real deep wisdom in there

that we ought to get let out.

>> Julia: And finally, what are you most grateful for?

>> John Battle: Probably the support of Mary.

I wouldn't be here if she didn't feed me.

Very practical. But no, I

think I've had. I'm grateful.

What's it? Praise and thanks. Hallelujah means praise and

thanks. I'm very grateful for a

journey that is, in a way, very privileged and unique,

that's led me into. And it's a privilege to be able to say

to young people that I didn't have a back

of an envelope like Michael Esseltine. I'm going to be a, counsellor, then

an mp, then a government minister. I didn't have a track

thinking I would ever get that into those

positions, that I would be, in the Office of State at the Foreign

Office or anything like that. And I've had a fantastic

privilege to meet people as a result of that and learn things

from it. So it's been a lifelong learning journey for

which I'm very grateful and hasn't hopefully ended yet.

>> Julia: Thanks for listening to Things I Wish I Knew. I know what

challenged me is John's passion for making a difference to

people's lives, no matter what role he takes on.

How about you? We'd love to hear how John's story

resonated with you, and why not Also tell us if you're facing

an experience you wish you knew how to look at differently.

It might just be something we can help with. You

can find out more about this theme and other

themes@thinkingfaith.org thank you again

for listening, and I hope you'll join me next time on Things

I Wish I Knew.