Today I finally got around to reading the letter the Church of England’s House of Bishops sent to the members of the church about the upcoming general election. It is a pretty middle-of-the-road document, the main point of which is to encourage church-goers to vote. But in the middle of it is this rather dubious paragraph:
“Parties of the extreme right and extreme left have sometimes sought to rekindle the language of class – but by trying to tap into class resentments rather than speaking of the warmer virtues of mutuality and solidarity. Stirring up resentment against some identifiable “other” always dehumanises some social group or people. Ethnic minorities, immigrants, welfare claimants, bankers and oligarchs – all have been called up as threats to some fictitious “us”. They become the hated “other” without whose presence among us all would be well. It is a deep irony that the whole political class is often regarded as an alien “other” by many sectors of the population.” (p. 33)