Two Clerics, No Bankers - Well Done the Protestors!

Whether or not two clerics from St. Paul's Cathedral really needed to resign is an open question, but few can doubt that they have done so with the most honourable of motives. One of them - Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser - was committed on principle to opposing any use of violence, and had aligned himself with the protestors. A perfectly consistent Christian attitude. Today's resignee, Dean Graham Knowles, is less clear on his reasoning but there is no doubt that he has felt overwhelmed at having to hold the balance between maintaining St. Paul's as an open place of worship, and wanting to support the aims of the protestors. These well meaning Anglican gentlemen have shown that the snake-pit of political action is probably not the best arena for the modern clergyman.

But what about the protestors? They cut a wretchedly useless, disparate, ill-begotten group of would-be radicals. Whatever the merits of their case - and who wouldn't argue that the arch satans of the banking world should be brought to book - they have projected such an inarticulate stance that they deserve the opprobrium increasingly being heaped upon them. Most damning of all for these part time protestors must be the fact that a group aiming its ire at the financial world have settled all to happily for the soft target of St Paul's Cathedral. While the London Stock Exchange remains blissfully free of any interference from the brave souls of, er, "Occupy the London Stock Exchange", so too do the upper echelons of all the UK's banks. The protestors have secured the scalps of two well-meaning, broadly supportive clergymen. They have failed in their main objective, and seem perfectly happy in their status as radical eunuchs. Such personifications of palpable uselessness should pack up and leave in sheer shame, regardless of the aesthetic and hygienic reasons for getting rid of them.