God & I: Rt. Hon. Ann Widdecombe MP

YOU HAVE ALWAYS been interested in politics, since you were 14 years old when you joined the Young Conservatives. What is it that drew you to this particular activity?
When I was 14, I had a rather funny idea of what politicians do and I probably imagined that all politicians were like Winston Churchill and made great changes in history. By the time I was 20, I had a more realistic view of what it was all about. The big attraction always has been and still is, the attempt to solve insoluble problems which may be at a very ordinary constituent level or, of course, can be at a big national level, things like the pension system or the health service.

You are known to have considered running as a candidate in the recent Conservative party leadership election, that means you are one of those rare individuals who have seriously aspired to lead both your party and your country. How does a readiness of that kind impact on your spiritual life?
I think it’s the other way round! I think it’s the impact of the spiritual life which makes one ready. There are very big things to be done which need courage and honesty, like tackling the health service and not just pretending it’s all a question of a bit of extra money here and a few extra doctors there. It’s a very serious national issue. I think there is a huge question about quality of life for people trying to live decently on council estates and whose lives are made a daily hell. We, who live differently, have no idea what goes on in those big inner city estates, not just occasionally but night after night after night. Again it needs a lot of will power to actually tackle that, the sort of will which Giuliani bought to New York. So I believed there were big serious things that needed to be doing and I hadn’t seen much will to tackle it, either with the existing government or, indeed, I have to say, amongst some of the front ranks of my own party. That was why I wanted to do it.

In the year 2000, you published your first novel, The Clematis Tree, what inspired you to write this book?
I’ve always wanted to write and I had seven or eight things in my mind. The Clematis Tree was one I pulled out first because it has a tinier setting, so I didn’t have to do a whole stack of research. I could just concentrate on the writing which I thought was very important for a first novel. The actual theme itself is the attitude of today’s society towards the disabled, which is something we should worry about because we’ve made a god of physical perfection. So, children are aborted for as little as a club foot or a hair lip and, of course, people are marginalised if they are seriously disabled, seriously disfigured, or perhaps just even plain unlucky. So we’ve got to look again, that is why language has got so ‘correct’. You’d never say a ‘cripple’ now, you’d say a person with a disability. But, as our language has got more correct so our attitude has got more dismissive.

Do you think you will write any more novels or was this a one-off?
I hope to write novels as long as my publishers want to carry on publishing them. I have a second novel even now with the publishers, so that’s done and out of the way. I should be starting my third novel after Christmas. They are all very different: the first one was about a family coping with a severely handicapped child, the second novel is set in France during the last war and is about a young, very naive French girl falling in love with a senior married officer, and the third book is about how impossible it can be to maintain ideals once you are actually in power and have to put them into place.

Do you think that there will ever be a law allowing euthanasia in the United Kingdom?
I think there is a serious danger. I very much hope we will not do that because our consistent experience of laws is they grow legs and they walk and run away. For example, the 1967 Abortion Act; we were told we’d never have abortion on demand, and it was only for very serious cases; five million children have been aborted in this country since the passing of that Act. The 1969 Divorce Act; we were told this wouldn’t cause disrespect to the institution of marriage, it would just relieve misery in the very few cases. Now we have 40% of all marriages ending in divorce. The 1968 Homosexuality Equality Act; we were told this wouldn’t lead to open displays. Now we’ve got gay news on every street corner. The issue isn’t whether you think you should have abortion on demand or easy divorce or gay news on every street corner, the issue is were the consequences foreseen by the people who introduced those laws? I think if you introduce the euthanasia law in this country, however tightly you drew it, however good your intentions might be, in 10 years time no granny would be safe.

You support Lord David Alton in his battle against abortion. What hope of progress is there for the Pro-Life Movement?
I think we’re going through quite a dark period, a period where the conscience of the nation has been completely desensitised and I have the feeling things will get much worse before they get better. But I always remember the words of Sir Francis Drake when he turned to the Lord saying Oh God, when you give it to your servants to attempt any great work, grant us also to note that it isn’t only the beginning of the same but the continuing through until it is thoroughly finished which yieldeth the true glory. I think that is the line we’ve got to take, that by the end of our parliamentary life times David Alton and I may not see much fruits for our efforts, but it will happen. It took Wilberforce nearly forty years to abolish slavery, he could see why it was wrong, the nation around him could not. Now, of course, we look back and say, but why couldn’t they see? I think future generations will look back at what we are doing to unborn children and say, but why couldn’t they see?

If you believe in the sanctity of life, how do you equate this with your support for the death penalty? Don’t you think that the lives of those who have committed serious crimes are also sacred?
The only occasion on which I believe it is right to take life is to save life. So for example, I’m not a pacifist and I support the current action against bin Laden. Similarly, the one instance in which I would agree with abortion is if the mother was genuinely going to die. Then, you cannot get away from it; you’ve got a choice of lives, mother or child, and you can’t pretend you haven’t and you can’t put blinkers over your eyes. You’ve got a choice to make. I think the same is true of the death penalty. If it is a deterrent, then you have a choice to make and you can’t pretend you don’t and run away. You have to choose between the innocent lives who will be saved and the guilty. The question for me is, is it a deterrent? I’m not interested in it as a retribution, but is it a deterrent? In this country, we had a five-year period after we first abolished the death penalty in which we collected statistics on exactly the same basis we would have done if we still had the death penalty, which is to say, we divided murder into capital murder attracting the death penalty, and other murder. Capital murder went up 125% and we had at the same time a huge rise, I forget the precise percentage now, in the number of incidences of the number of firearms being taken from the scenes of robberies. In the past, of course, if you took a gun to a robbery, and it was used, it didn’t matter whether you used it or not, you could still hang. Therefore, older criminals always frisked young criminals and made very certain that there were no firearms when they went to robberies. As soon as the death penalty was abolished, there was an enormous rise, it didn’t matter anymore, you weren’t going to hang. I do very strongly believe in the death penalty for that reason, I think it is a deterrent and I think it saves innocent people.

In 1993, you converted to Catholicism, was there a particular event which made you decide to convert?
The ordination of women as priests was the last straw, but it was only the last straw, I was already carrying a huge bundle of straws. I had for years been very disillusioned with the Anglican Church, and when they decided to ordain women as priests, the nature of the debate was almost entirely sex-based. It was about making the Church acceptable to the modern world and not whether it was right or wrong to do it. What the Church of England doesn’t realise is, every time it compromises, it doesn’t fill its pews, it just empties them of a few more disillusioned folks. So as I said, it was the last straw, but it wasn’t the only event.

Who is God for you? How would you define God?
Infinite goodness!

What does God expect from us?
I think his expectations are immensely high because the true guide to what He expects are in the teachings of Christ and they were pretty severe; give everything up and follow Him. There is a phrase which I know people don’t understand these days; Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14.26) That doesn’t mean you have to hate your father or your mother, what it actually means is you must always put Him first, always, in all circumstances. The Christian life isn’t meant to be easy; we have to remember Paul was beheaded, Peter was crucified upside-down, Stephen was stoned. God did not make life easy for His saints. The demands of Christianity are enormous really and quite frightening because they are enormous. I think most of us make excuses and do not meet those demands. One example is the falling off of vocations for the religious life and to the priesthood. People don’t want to live the sacrificial lifestyle. So I think God demands a great deal, but in the end I think He demands that we try our best, not that we achieve every time. We can take huge comfort from looking at the Apostles and what an awful lot they were; Peter was a foul-mouthed liar, Philip was an awful sort and James and John argued about who’d be first in the Kingdom of Heaven and were completely vainglorious. They really were a pretty hopeless lot, but out of them, God formed His Church. We need to remember that the one thing God does not expect of us is perfection.

Many people tend to think of Christianity as a religion which restricts personal freedom and happiness, do you think this is so?
Personal happiness and the happiness of an entire society depends on the self-respect of every individual. If people are greedy or, if they are prepared to break up families for sexual indulgence or whatever it may be, then they’ll impact on everybody, nobody is a moral island. I think we have to understand that. I think Christianity is right to demand restraint, but it doesn’t take away happiness; it does the precise opposite, it gives happiness. One of the great sadnesses is that we do see this world as the be all and end all and if you’re not instantly happy here and now, than that is a terrible thing. Whereas, what in actual fact matters is the life to come: eternity. That’s what matters and the huge promise of Christianity is that you have happiness for all eternity. Beside that, a bit of self-restraint in this life pales into insignificance.

Do you consider yourself to be a happy person?
Yes! I’m a very contented person. People always talk about the pursuit of happiness but, you can’t pursue happiness in its own right, it’s something else. Happiness is a by-product, it isn’t an end in itself. It may come to some people from being happily married, for other people it may come from a lifetime of doing things for others and seeing the results. If you are a doctor, there must be a lot of happiness in some of the things you can do. Also, of course, a daily reminder of some of the things you can’t do. For other people it will just come from being at ease with themselves and doing their best which, I think, is where mine comes from.

The Former Home Office Minister and Euro Politician Tim Kirkbridge once said about you: She has such a sharp tongue, that she often risks cutting her own throat. What is your reaction to this?
By a sharp tongue, I suspect what he means is that I tell the truth. I think truth is very important particularly in the world I’m in; the political world, and it is often forgotten. I have to tell the absolute truth which involves saying it to people who don’t want to hear it. Politicians now want to pretend they’ve got all the answers and can promise the moon, the stars and everything else: they can’t! I think you should be truthful and you should say what you can and what you can’t do. Of course, occasionally you’ll tell someone you can’t do something and then you find you can and it’s absolutely wonderful! That’s much better than the other way round; promising everything and delivering nothing. Some might say I’ve already cut my own throat! In the end, you’ve got to be true to what you believe and that is something that Christ requires of us and that is something I’ve always tried to do.