Is that OK or is it just that nobody has noticed?

The other night I went out for a drink in Oxford. The restaurant I had chosen happened to be hosting the annual dinner of the 'Oxford Labour Students' and their key note speaker was none other than Alistair Campbell. Perhaps I am getting old (which indeed I am!) but it occured to me that what made for a labour student seems to have changed rather. The assembled company seemed be southern public school types who you would more expect to see at Henley Regatta than at the TUC conference. How the tide has turned.

Richard Ely wrote "We have among us a class of mammon worshippers, whose one test of conservatism or radicalism is the attitude one takes with respect to accumulated wealth. Whatever tends to preserve the wealth of the wealthy is called conservatism, and whatever favors anything else, no matter what is called socialism." But what happened to that radicalism and idealistic belief in change and in a society that is not yet? Now, I am far from a socialist and have only ever voted Tory, think it philosphically misguided but there is something nonetheless that I admire.

I attended a northern red brick university in the 80's and witnessed the last throws of what one might call 'socialism'. The 'socialist worker' students were daily found outside the union selling their newspapers and calling for the defence of students, miners, ethic minorities, the poor and whoever else was deemed the underdog of the day. As the buses left for London filled with hope and zeal for the poll tax march people power and socialist/student passion set out to defeat the establishment and its wicked tax bill. Of course, let's not forget there was a riot to boot but the principle of managing to muster enough enthusiasm to compell people to spend 6 hours on a coach seems to have been lost somewhere.

Twenty years later, I am listening to Radio 4 as I awaken to a new day to hear the proposal that the Labour Party are proposing to spend £21 billion on Trident. I'll say that again. The Labour Party is commissioning a Trident nuclear arsenal and are going to spend your money and my money to buy it. Would anyone have ever have foreseen that in 1987? And where may I ask are the voices of protest? Is that OK? Was it in their manifesto? Who's organising the rally and when are the coaches for Trafalgar Square leaving? I'm not organising it because I am no longer 18 and surely it's not my job to call out for this apathetic generation. Where are those passionate students enduring the rain selling the socialist worker when we really need them and where are the women of Greenham Common to show us an alternative view? The irony is that when Labour politician's were wrong in the 80's in their unilateralsm in the face of a Soviet threat and now when that threat is gone or certainly more difficult to define they are in favour of it. They are in danger being wrong on both counts. Is a missile system designed for Moscow really the same things need to defend us against terrorism and rogue states with bombs? Where is anybody, really anybody, who gives even a modicum of a hoolly.

I'll tell you where they are. They are in a wine bar in Oxford getting drunk on expensive chardonnay listening to Alistair Campbell learning how to write a good press release- so don't hold your breath. The rest are probably on Facebook and wouldn't recognise a protest march if it hit them over the head. So who will fill the vacuum? Perhaps, just maybe, it's the job of the people of God, the Church, to rise up and pray and proclaim and stand and question and ask and be passionate for a different world and a Kingdom that has not yet come. One that doesn't have as it's solution a bomb with the capacity blow us all the smithereens. The Kingsdom beats socialism and do you know what I think- it might just have the capacity to change the world.

For the first time in my life I think I might write to my MP.

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