The Conservative candidate for Hammersmith - Shaun Bailey - is featured in the latest edition of an American Christian weekly, World magazine. The article gives a good insight into Shaun's worldview and the faith that motivates him. The text is pasted below.
"As Shaun Bailey, the 35-year-old grandson of immigrants from Jamaica, walked through westside Ladbroke one afternoon, he regularly called out to young men, "What's happening, bro?" They all responded with a wave, and some crossed Golborne Road to talk with him, darting past sidewalk stalls where sellers hawk clothes, games, shoes, and toilet tissue.
"Street work allows me to meet them in an arena where they feel comfortable," said Bailey, a 6-foot-tall, muscular youth worker. He tried to convince a fat English bloke to enter a training course: "It's not like sitting in college." He spoke with a bearded Moroccan immigrant who wore jeans and a jean jacket, and later explained, "He's a hustler, but he wants to go straight. My job is to challenge them, and if they offer crap, to tell them it's crap."
As Bailey walked past the neighborhood's three-story buildings, which typically sported first-floor shops with flats above, he sometimes singled out individuals sitting at small outdoor cafés. He told a slightly built 17-year-old Moroccan, "I've got a job opening for you. You'll be a proper businessman. Here's my card. All day Wednesday I'll be there. . . . I'm not going to call you, you have to come see me if you're serious."
He later estimated the teen's likelihood of showing up at 50-50. "I know he's been doing some bad stuff, but if he shows up we'll have the conversation. I'll tell him this is his chance to be a big man." If the person responds, Bailey gives him a GPS navigation tool (valued at $600) that will enable him to deliver take-out food. The would-be seller has to rent a cycle and pay insurance.
Bailey gave out another card to a man who kept glancing furtively down the road. "They all know I'm not a copper," he said, and then reported that he's handed out those navigation tools about 60 times and, amazingly, has yet to lose an investment: "I'm taking a risk, but if he absconds he knows he's hurting others. Besides, he knows he's likely to bump into me again."
If the teen succeeds as a deliverer, what comes next? "That's entirely up to him," Bailey responded. "Labour Party politicians say that delivering take-out is not much of a job, but the point is to get him used to the idea of working and earning legitimate money. He's also learning a lot from paying bills, because that means he is a big man who gives money to others. The job will keep him busy, give him self-respect, and start him thinking about how he can earn more money, legit. In three or four months he'll come back to me with a new business idea."
Working with donations and funds from a charitable trust, Bailey has also paid college fees for some among the poor and has equipped others for jobs as locksmiths, bicycle repairers, and hair cutters. When he recently sent 13 people to be trained for repairing railway lines, 11 gained jobs. (The other two failed drug tests.)
Bailey knows deprivations and temptations. When he was growing up, "my dad was almost entirely absent, so my mum kept me going to church until I was 13 or 14, but I escaped from that at my first opportunity." Three years ago Bailey had been a youth worker for a dozen years and was thinking of trying another occupation where he would earn more money, until something happened: "My girlfriend said I should do Alpha," the evangelistic program that has been influential across England.
Bailey says he went "to argue with the vicar, to show him how clever I was," but found himself believing in the resurrection and other doctrines: "What got me the most is when the vicar said Christianity is not a religion, but a faith. . . . Then I started reading the Bible. It was almost like it was written for me. . . . I had been a self-control freak, so I prayed that God would take control of my life. And that's what happened. . . . When I stopped having fear of failure I had more success."
He started paying attention to what was happening not only in the streets but also in government offices: "Well-meaning white people have hurt us, and we've been self-indulgent. . . . They remove religion from schools but give out condoms, and girls end up with lone parenting their only career choice. They talk about rights but not responsibilities, as if blokes are incapable. . . . Add to that school failure. Some children are not going to be academically sharp, yet school doesn't teach them any vocational skills. . . . The government sucks in all the pounds and wastes them."
As Bailey made his opinions known, he found himself invited to Conservative Party gatherings: "First they wonder who I am, but when I talk they think, 'Bloody hell, he's making sense.'" The next step came when Conservative Party leader David Cameron, born into privilege and without inner-city experience, began consulting Bailey. A third step came earlier this year when the Conservatives nominated him for a seat in Parliament, the next election for which is likely to come in 2009 or 2010.
Black conservatives flummox U.S. liberals, and Britain's Labour Party reacts similarly. Bailey said, "Labour wants people to think that Conservatives all wear tweed jackets and have offshore bank accounts, and that blokes from my background will automatically join them. Labour actually is saying, 'You're not clever enough to think for yourself.'" But Bailey is, and he's also done the right thing personally: He married the girlfriend who pressed him to acknowledge Christ, and they had a baby earlier this year."
