Article
Comment
General Election 24
Morality
Politics
3 min read

The morality of defection

Why I respect 'traitors'.
A man sits in a TV interview, below him is a captions stating 'Mark Lognan. Former Conservative MP
Mark Logan explains his move.
BBC.

Defection is a dirty word. 

It evokes feelings of treachery. Betrayal. Backstabbing. 

All in all it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. 

  

Defectors always carry with them a whiff of suspicion. 

Are they genuine, or are they just opportunists? 

Who do they really work for? 

What do they get out of it? 

Have they truly renounced their old ways? 

  

There has been a lot of defecting going on in UK Politics over the last few weeks. For good or ill, a number of political parties have members who, up until recently, wore rosettes of a different colour. 

The defections have been dramatic – and public.  

Think of the recent defections from the Conservatives to Labour. Two in a fortnight. 

First Dan Poulter and then Nathalie Elphicke crossing the Commons floor with moments to spare before Prime Minister’s Questions. Then Mark Logan last week. 

Perhaps one encouraged the other. Defections and resignations in politics always seem to arrive like buses.  

And each of these defections was accompanied by a public story about why they’ve changed their minds. A testimony, if you will.  

It was these stories which drew the most fire, from both former friends and new allies. In most cases, it hasn’t taken a lot of digging to find statements made when these people had a different allegiance which call into question the truth of their supposed conversion.  

Conversion, though, is just the right word.  

And this service to a higher power is often experienced by others as a betrayal.

Christianity knows a lot about defection.  

Right at the heart of the Jesus story is a moment of betrayal.  

Judas turns Jesus over to be crucified. 

The price to betray the saviour of the world? A few silver coins. 

 

But in Christianity, defection is not always a bad thing. 

If defection is a dirty word, repentance and conversion are a positive counterpart. 

Saying Jesus is Lord in a world where Caesar is Lord is an act of subversion. 

It is a recognition that the authority of Caesar, of any government, has its limits. 

Christians are called to serve and love their communities and nations – but they only ever have a provisional allegiance to any earthly power or government.  

And this makes Christians untrustworthy.  

 

On a deep level, to be a Christian is to have defected from an allegiance to a world which values power and money to service of the God of love. 

And this service to a higher power is often experienced by others as a betrayal. 

It is little surprise then that from time to time, governments across the world have treated Christians with that same whiff of suspicion reserved for defectors.  

But in the United Kingdom, religious freedoms afford believers with the same luxuries afforded to MPs. They can defect publicly – they can tell their stories. They can encourage others to cross the floor. 

  

Can a bird change its feathers, or a leopard change its spots? 

The Christian story says yes. 

  

As the election campaign draws on and as people defect from one party or another and as people ask those questions of defectors 

Perhaps it is time to focus less on others, and instead ask those questions of yourself. 

  

Are you genuine? 

Who do you really work for? 

What do you get out of it? 

Have you truly renounced your old ways? 

  

Defection can be a good thing. 

Will you tell your story? 

Article
Books
Culture
Morality
5 min read

Never Let Me Go: 20 years on

Ishiguro’s brilliant novel is the perfect Frankenstein story for today.

Beatrice writes on literature, religion, the arts, and the family. Her published work can be found here

Four young people peer through a window.
Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley in the 2010 film adaption.
Fox Searchlight Films.

This article contains spoilers. 

Human beings are creative. For good or for evil, making new things out of raw materials is something that we can’t help doing, whether that’s writing new books, creating new recipes, or building new houses. Why are we born this way? Christians would say it’s because of the imago Dei: because according to the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, we are made in the image of God. If God created the world and every one of us, and if we’re made in his image, then it follows that all of us have this creative impulse within us, too.  

But if creating is something natural to us, does it follow that it’s also core to our identity as human beings? In other words, is making something that we do, or something that we are? Are we different from all other living creatures in this world by being creators ourselves?  

Although he doesn’t call himself a Christian, these are precisely the kind of theological questions the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro asks time and time again in his books. And nowhere does he ask them more powerfully than in Never Let Me Go, which was published 20 years ago. 

Never Let Me Go starts off as the story of three children at a boarding school. Kathy, one of three friends, serves as our first-person narrator; it’s through her eyes that we slowly realise something sinister is taking place. As Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth grow into teenagers and then young adults, it’s finally revealed that they are clones, brought into being thanks to advancements in cloning technology in a dystopian post-World War II Britain. They are brought up for the sole purpose of being organ donors. Or, to put it more bluntly, they’ve been raised for slaughter.  

Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy have a happy childhood at their boarding school, Hailsham. Their future is hinted at by their teachers, but they’re largely shielded from the truth. All around the country, we later find out, clone children are being raised in horrific conditions. But Hailsham is different, because its Headteacher, Miss Emily, is part of a group that believes the clones deserve to be treated humanely – at least until someone needs a kidney transplant.  

But, though treated in a ‘humane’ way, society doesn’t see the Hailsham clones as ‘human’, and that’s precisely what Miss Emily is trying to prove: that they are not unlike real, normal people. So, she encourages the children to make art. ‘A lot of the time’, Kathy tells us, ‘how you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at “creating”’. The children don’t understand why they must always paint and draw, but they’re told that Madame Marie-Claude, a mysterious figure, will collect their best artworks for a seemingly important ‘gallery’.  

Years later, Tommy and Kathy have become a couple. Before dying – or ‘completing’, as they call it – after her second ‘donation’, Ruth tells them that she believes a deferral is possible for couples that are truly in love. Kathy and Tommy go to Miss Emily’s house, their former Headmistress, certain that, as children, they were encouraged to produce art precisely to be able to prove, one day, their true feelings.  

They are quickly disappointed. Miss Emily reveals that Hailsham has now closed down, but that while the school stood, it was meant as an experiment, aimed at convincing the public to improve living conditions for the clones: 

‘We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all…we demonstrated to the world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any human being.’ 

Equating creativity with human identity does make sense, to an extent at least. In The Mind of the Maker (1941), Christian novelist and critic Dorothy L. Sayers argued that the closest we can get to understanding God as our Creator is through engaging ourselves in creative acts: ‘the experience of the creative imagination in the common man or woman and in the artist is the only thing we have to go upon in entertaining and formulating the concept of creation’. In creative acts, from a Christian perspective, we partially grasp God’s creation of us.  

Ultimately, however, being creative in imitation of God, is not enough to get to the very core of what defines a human being. There are all kinds of factors, from old age to mental or physical disability, that make any form of traditionally creative act highly unlikely for some people. By that definition, someone in a coma or a newborn baby is not fully human. 

That’s exactly the definition of humanity that underpins the cruel society of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. We need a better definition, and Christianity provides a unique tradition to help us on the way. A Christian concept of the human person is one that looks both at why we were made, and what we were made for. Christians believe that God made us out of love, and for the purpose of being in communion with him. He made each one of us as a special and irreplaceable individual, and for each of us our telos – the end or aim of our life – is to join him in heaven.  

If we embrace this definition of what it means to be human, then the extent to which we are able to express our intelligence or creativity while on earth doesn’t really matter anymore. If we believe that merely to exist is good – not to exist and fulfil our potential through this or that accomplishment, but just to exist – then we can’t deny that each member of the human family is, in fact, a ‘person’ in the fullest sense of the word.  

It is precisely this God-shaped hole that makes the concept of human dignity so fragile and slippery in Never Let Me Go. Ishiguro’s brilliant novel is, ultimately, the perfect Frankenstein story for the modern day. It warns us about the consequences of what might happen if we try to treat other human beings as things we have paid, but even more powerfully it shows us the danger of valuing human life for its creativity, instead of loving it as the creation of God. 

Celebrate our 2nd birthday!

Since March 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,000 articles. All for free. This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.
If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.
Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief