AROUND THE TIME George Carey was enthroned as the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury in 1991, John Humphrys took it upon himself to hand out some advice. “You’re far too honest in interviews,”
Today’s top interrogator told the new boy at Lambeth Palace. “You’ve got to do what politicians do — lie through your back teeth, man!” Thankfully, Lord Carey of Clifton did not take Humphrys’s counsel at the time, nor has he yet.
When we meet at the House of Lords, his views are as colourfully and candidly expressed as they are in his forthcoming memoir; as they were indeed throughout his eleven and a half years leading the Anglican Church.
I begin by asking him about his recent controversial lecture in Rome, in which he criticised Muslim leaders who failed unequivocally to condemn suicide bombers and pointed out that Muslim countries were led by people who had risen to power “at the point of a gun”. Several of Britain’s Muslim leaders, some of them friends of his, reprimanded him as, variously, “unhelpful”, “bigoted” and “Islamophobic ”.
He is unrepentant. He tells me that, in a subsequent speech, he “took it even further and was just as unapologetic, in saying that Muslims really have got to face up their responsibilities and distance themselves from the hard people who are using the good name of Islam as a weapon”. He believes, he tells me, that many young British Muslims are becoming “bitter and disaffected” with their lives, “and then someone comes along preaching, grabs their vision and excites them and before you know it these are the very people that evil people use. We can’t have segregated, closed communities because they feed animosity that is the kind of soil from which terrorism emerges.”
Nevertheless, I say, segregated, closed communities are pretty much what we have in some parts of the country. “Yes, we have,” he agrees. “There’s reason to be very worried, actually.”
He believes, he says, “in integration rather than assimilation. I don’t want Muslims and Hindus to feel they’ve got to be the same as us.” But, he adds, “people who are coming into this land, they don’t know the history, they experience difficulties and the youngsters are growing up without any real understanding of what British identity is all about. That’s why I welcome what David Blunkett is doing, saying to people, if they want to settle among us, which is wonderful . . . they’ve really got to embrace some aspects of life. We don’t want to actually say ‘you’ve got to be Christian’, but when a nation loses a dominant Christian tradition, then its identity changes.”
“Fifty years ago”, he says, “we felt naturally English. It wasn’t a question of whiteness, it was that you shared the same values.” (Among them belonging to, but not attending, the Church of England.) He has, he says “been in situations where I’ve suddenly become very conscious of my colour and you suddenly think, ‘I’m different from them’, and it can worry people, it does worry people. When we travel to Heathrow by public transport we go on a bus which takes us through Hounslow and Southall and at one point we were the only white people there, and Eileen (his wife) nudged me and said, ‘Did you notice?’ It doesn’t matter so long as people are integrated.”
I ask him to expand on his view, expressed in his book, that the Prince of Wales should make an honest woman of Camilla Parker Bowles. “He is the heir to the throne and he loves her,” says Carey. “The natural thing is that they should get married.” I point out that the Church has previously stayed neutral on this issue. “The Christian faith is all about forgiveness,” he replies. “We all make mistakes. Failure is part of the human condition and there is no doubt that there has been a strong loving relationship, probably since they were very young, that has endured over the years.” While they were both married to other people? “Yes, that’s right, and that’s part of the fallibility of the human condition.”
And should this marriage take place in a church? “Well, we have blessing services these days and I see nothing wrong in doing something of that nature,” says Lord Carey smoothly. I say that I thought the current rule was that divorced people could be married in church provided neither was instrumental in the break-up of their partner’s previous marriage. “They would come under that general rule,” he replies, “but there’s also the Royal Marriages Act that would have to be looked at. I don’t think it’s a no-go area.”
He also says in his book that Charles was “more sinned against than sinning” during his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, and after their divorce too. He admired the Princess’s charisma, energy and common touch, yet it becomes clear that he is in the Charles camp. “She was a very fallible lady and very angry about the relationship and yes, I do believe, on balance, that she was a little more cunning at using the media than Charles.”
As for Diana’s funeral, Carey was “absolutely flabbergasted” when he heard that Charles Spencer was to deliver the eulogy. “It was a funeral service, not a memorial service. It needed someone to give a message of Christian hope.” He wanted to have Spencer stopped. “I tried to dissuade the Dean (of Westminster Abbey) from offering it to him.” When that failed, he telephoned Spencer personally. “He listened politely but I had the impression that he already had clear ideas about what he wanted to say.” The actual oration confirmed the Archbishop’s worst fears. “It was vengeful and spiteful and she deserved far more than that.” He felt “very uncomfortable, and very sorry for the Royal Family”.
In contrast to the Spencers, he has only praise for Camilla, whom he befriended during his latter years at Lambeth. “She’s a very nice person, she’s very bright, able, astute, tough, very pleasant company . . . what happened was I got very concerned that she was an ogre in the eyes of the media so I went out of my way to contact her and arranged to meet up with her in my son’s house in Peckham. He didn’t even know who I was going to meet. I said, ‘Andrew, can I borrow your key?’ and my chauffeur dropped me at the end of the road and Eileen and I went to Andrew’s house and had coffee with her. We met several times like that.”
Is she a believer, I ask. He gives me what can only be described as a sidelong glance. “I think she’s an Anglican. She knows the local vicar. I don’t know what her, ahem, attendance record is like.” And did he, or has he since, formed the impression that she wants to get married? He visibly clams up. “Oh, I’ve no idea, no idea. Even if you’re an archbishop you have to go about talking (to royal consorts) in a circumspect, careful and sensitive way.”
