Adrian Hilton: Christians will pay for Western intervention in Syria - many with their lives

Adrian Hilton is a conservative academic, theologian and educationalist. He writes a Daily Mail blog. Follow Adrian on Twitter.

"Due to the continued violence and civil unrest in Damascus and Aleppo, our Churches there have been closed down for the unforseeable future. Your prayers for the congregations and the people of Syria are sincerely requested and greatly appreciated.  Please pray for peace throughout the Middle East."

So reads the website of All Saints Episcopal Church in Damascus. While Christians here fret over issues of gender identity and sexuality, those across North Africa and the Middle East are confronted by a momentous crisis that is nothing short of existential. It is not merely that churches are shut, pews empty and pulpits silent; their schools are being bombed, homes ransacked and businesses burned down. From Algeria in the west to Iran in the east, Christians are being kidnapped, terrorised, tortured, raped and murdered. They are being systematically ‘cleansed’ from the very lands where Jesus preached of the coming kingdom, and the Apostles first carried the gospel of salvation. They have returned to the first-century era of intolerable persecution, martyrdom and the coming apocalypse.

It has been observed – though not at all widely – that our eager assistance in the ushering in of various ‘Arab Springs’ has had certain unforeseen consequences for Christians across the region. Or perhaps they were all entirely foreseen by the FCO, but simply brushed aside as acceptable collateral damage; a price worth paying for greater geo-political security, enhanced economic cooperation and the propagation of democracy, liberty and human rights – all laudable objectives of an ethical foreign policy.

Adrian Hilton: Why Number 10 is wrong to pull Ministers from the Windsor Tory Renewal Conference

Adrian Hilton is a conservative academic, theologian and educationalist. He writes a Daily Mail blog. Follow Adrian on Twitter.

 There is perhaps no more urgent a task for the Conservative Party in the present era than that of renewing democracy – to revive its foundational raison d’être; to resurrect its national framework of membership; and to reform its mode of engagement with party members. A political party that is immune to policy progression and insensitive to the beliefs of its core support-base ceases to be a movement for renewal: indeed, it rapidly becomes a fading testimony to past triumphs and a decaying monument to ancient glories. Reformation leads to enlightenment and revival – in politics as well as theology.

The Conservative Renewal conference, which is due to be held in Windsor on 14th September, has a declared mission ‘to help conservatives win elections through the strength of ideas’. They say they are independent, ‘but work in partnership with local party associations, think tanks and local people’.

Adrian Hilton: The Conservative Party will not be compassionate until its members care

Adrian Hilton is a conservative academic, theologian and educationalist. He writes a Daily Mail blog and is still agitating for Ann Widdecombe’s peerage. Follow Adrian on Twitter.

  “Please don't feel guilty about betraying the Conservative Party, they’ve already betrayed you – and without a care.”

With these parting words, David Meacock resigned his membership of the party he has loved since his childhood and served as a member of the Chiltern District Council since 1999. He also won a by-election against the Liberal Democrats to become a Buckinghamshire County councillor, which was no mean feat back in 2001 – even in ‘true blue’ leafy Bucks. Like many loyal and hard-working party members, he had dedicated months and years of his life to canvassing, door-knocking, writing ‘In Touch’, delivering leaflets, phoning, stuffing envelopes, attending hundreds of meetings and getting out the vote.

He worked so hard that he even increased his majority in 2003, and again in 2007. In the interim, he earned a place on the Approved List of Candidates, and fought the parliamentary seat of Huddersfield in the 2005 general election – as well as a county council seat back home in Amersham. God knows how much he spent on petrol and how many hours his glazed eyes whizzed up and down the M1.  

Adrian Hilton: The Conservative leadership is destroying its membership

Follow Adrian on Twitter.

The above graph shows rather starkly the decline of the "Premier League" Beaconsfield Constituency Conservative Association over the period I’ve been a member (‘Premier League’ is an epithet bestowed by CCHQ upon those associations which regularly contribute £10,000s to Party coffers – a kind of "cash for status" [with a bit of access]). Notwithstanding a few local variables (like the enforced "cash for questions" resignation of Tim Smith MP in 1997 – during which, it must be observed, association membership remained relatively stable), it is difficult not to attribute this alarming rate of decline to the policy direction and character disposition of the party leader: the less "robust" the pursuit of traditional (not to say "Thatcherite") Conservative policies, the more people are disinclined to renew their Party membership, even in the "true blue" Tory shires.

For as long as I’ve been involved – at branch level, as Deputy Chairman and a decade on the Executive – the reasons given for the decline have consistently been ignored and brushed aside by successive chairmen: no-one wants to rock the boat, especially if they’re on the Approved List. Beaconsfield rightly puts loyalty to the fore, but occasionally confuses it with fealty: there’s just no point swearing allegiance to a central strategy which is actually anaesthetising the membership and gradually euthanising it out of existence. It appears almost purposeful.

Establishing the validity of quantitative data necessarily demands some qualitative assessment: very few members have actively resigned in protest against a specific policy, and their reasons ought to be properly researched and verified. The vast majority seem passively content to permit their memberships to lapse, often citing (if asked) some generalised disillusionment with the lack of Tory ‘robustness’ – whether in government or opposition. We are contending more with incremental indifference than forthright objection, and no number of polite letters or coaxing phone calls seem to persuade them to reconsider.