Principle and politics have gone together for Baroness Williams throughout her 50 years as a leading politician. This article is an adapted and shortened version of the address she gave at the recent Liverpool conference on Catholics in public life. MY relationship to the Catholic Church is like a rather good, but battered, old marriage. At times in the past, my experiences with Catholic clergy have been a little difficult. There was the occasion when I was appointed by the then London County Council to be a governor of the Oratory School in London, rather a distinguished post to be promoted to at the age of 23. When I arrived at the door of the Oratory for my first governors? meeting, I was greeted by the formidable porter. I know where you are going, he said, and put me in a small cell.

I waited while time passed. Finally, after about 20 minutes, I got called into the governors? meeting, where they were all sitting round a table chaired by a very distinguished monsignor. I discovered, to my considerable surprise, that I was being interviewed for a post as assistant domestic science teacher. Another time I was a member of a delegation of young Catholic politicians to the Continent of Europe and I was doing my usual thing of holding forth about everything. We were sitting in a monastery in Ghent having dinner. The abbot took extreme exception to the way in which I kept getting into political discussions and finally, down the middle of the long polished table, he sent whizzing a whole large bottle of claret. He glared at me and said: Those who try to speak like men, have to learn to drink like men.

Now for a different sort of story. A few years ago I had come back to London at one o?clock in the morning from a meeting in the Midlands, a drive of about 150 miles. It was pouring with rain, there was thunder and lightning. When I tried to get into my garage door, the key stuck. I was shaking the gate with the rain pouring on my head. Over the road I noticed three men standing, and I thought to myself, Damn it, journalists again; this is going to be a story in tomorrow?s diary: ?She can?t even get into her own garage?, and I felt deep anger welling up in me when the men came over to where I was. They were all wearing dark suits, with mackintoshes on top, and they were soaked. I noticed, to my considerable surprise, that the young man who addressed me and said, Can we help you get that garage door open?, was a priest. Then I looked up at the other two, and I thought I recognised the second one. I looked again, and it was Cardinal Hume. I said to the young priest, Excuse me, I am rather surprised to see the Cardinal here at one o?clock in the morning, and he said: We go out on many nights late at night, because the Cardinal wants to make sure that people who are in the gutter, or homeless, are cared for before he goes home to his own bed.

That brings me, strangely enough, to the profession of politics. One of the crucial things about being a politician, or a public servant, is that deep inside yourself you have to be able to say, as your constituents come to see you, And you too are divine. You have to learn to love the citizens you serve. I am not sentimental. I have been in politics a very long time and some of the people who come to me are deeply unlovable. They probably think I am pretty unlovable too. But in them are depths of experience, of understanding and of perception, which you try to plumb if you possibly can. Once politicians start listening, it is amazing how much they learn. Many politicians, not least at the present time, will tell you that it is the pastoral role, the role of caring for their constituents, that means most to them: feeling that they are actually able to do some good in the world.

But why is it, then, that politicians have such a bad reputation? Corruption, at least in Britain, is relatively rare, and people in public life, particularly in elected public life, work incredibly hard for modest pay. One of the reasons that politicians do not stand high in public esteem is the media?s interest in their private lives. It is unlikely that Lloyd George could be a Prime Minister today for, to use a lovely phrase once current in north Wales: He scattered his Maker?s image about a lot. It is equally unlikely that President Kennedy could have been elected President of the United States, though he tends to be something of an icon among Catholics. Male politicians can no longer rely on a double standard to protect them from the interest of the press. Women voters now ask much more difficult questions of male politicians than they used to do.

Another big obstacle to decent and high standards in public life is the growing power of money in politics. In the United States democracy is beginning to be destroyed by it. To be elected a senator costs between eight and ten million dollars, to be elected a congressman costs nearly half a million dollars. The pressures to raise money, and to cut corners in order to do so, are becoming intolerable. In Britain we have a fragile protection in the shape of the limit on what candidates can spend in a constituency to be elected. But that barrier is being steadily eroded by the large sums of money which are now being spent by political parties in support of their position, their manifestos, their advertisements and their leaders. The cost of such campaigning is already reaching many millions of pounds even in Britain.

Nevertheless, let me adduce some striking examples of principle in politics. One was when Iain Macleod, a prominent and successful Conservative minister, accepted the plea of some 30,000 Ugandan Asians with British passports who wanted to come to Britain when they were under threat from President Idi Amin. I gave a promise, said Macleod, I meant it and I intend to keep it. His successor as Home Secretary, Robert Carr (now Lord Carr), another Conservative for whom I have huge respect, stood up in the face of a baying party conference, and recalled that Iain Macleod had given his word and confirmed that he too was going to keep it. John Major, again, in the 1992 election flatly refused to play the race card, despite the presssure from some of his advisers. My colleague Lord Jenkins has consistently put his commitment to Europe ahead of his own political career, as other politicians of all parties have done. Many of us believe he could otherwise have become Prime Minister. And then there is Barbara Castle, bent by arthritis, who still goes to the House of Lords any time state pensions are discussed, straightens up as if she was made of fire, and denounces the present Government, as she denounced the previous Government, for its inability to see the need for elderly people to be treated with greater respect.

After 50 years in public life, I conclude that politics remains an unending series of moral decisions. It is not about the good management of UK plc, a concept which I find degrading, but about moral choices. How far should one push taxation as an engine of greater income and wealth equality? A question with huge moral implications. Is capital punishment justified or not? An issue which, certainly, is of great moment in the United States. Abortion is a major moral issue. Genetic manipulation is coming down the track as a major moral issue. Pensions ? should they be linked to prices or earnings? This is not just an economic decision, but a decision about what is a fair share for the elderly. The relief of debt for poor countries ? how far are we morally obliged to go ahead with relieving their debt, even at some cost to ourselves? Right now I am heavily involved with the Asylum and Refugee Bill which, on page after page, confronts one with moral choices.

For another aspect of the moral challenge in politics, let us look at the nature of conflict. During the First World War and immediately before, the ratio of soldiers to civilians who died in war was 10:1. But in the wars of recent years, in Angola, Bosnia, Cambodia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Mozambique, Rwanda and others, the ratio of soldiers to civilians is precisely reversed ? 1:10. The method of much modern warfare is direct attack on civilians, including babies, children, elderly people, women.

The most recent example was Nato?s war against President Milosevic of Serbia, where Nato suffered two military casualties compared with several hundred estimated civilian casualties of its own raids. That, of course, doesn?t begin to take into account the tens of thousands of civilian casualties caused by the Serbian army and paramilitaries.

TO resolve such conflicts, we desperately need not just organs of the United Nations, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the rest, but a change in values, moving from the concept of warriors? honour to a new code of conduct, a new gospel of peace. It is one of the most difficult challenges that we face in the next decade or so, and it means introducing more of the values associated with women into society. In countries where women play, alongside men, a very large part in public life, for example in Scandinavia or Canada, there is consistently a greater interest in conflict resolution and reconciliation than in societies which are still overwhelmingly patriarchal and dominated by traditional male attitudes. Not for nothing has South Africa insisted that at least a third of ANC members of Parliament should be women. They know that lesson very well.

Personally I feel somewhat uncomfortable as a woman in the Catholic Church. I believe that we are consistently devalued, or at least undervalued. I don?t think we are taken terribly seriously. Whereas in the Gospel time and again it is Jesus Christ who speaks to women on the basis of equality and understanding. His apostles are confused by that; they resent the role of Mary Magdalene; they ask him to hurry up when he is talking to Martha at the time of the resurrection of Lazarus; they do not understand why he stopped to chat to the woman at the well. What is he doing, talking to these lesser beings? Why is he treating them in the way he would treat the apostles themselves? I don?t believe that that lesson is fully reflected in the Church?s attitude towards my sex, which is one of deep patronage.

I also confess ? it is a small grievance ? that I get cross at that point in the Nicene Creed where I have to say for us men, and for our salvation. I skip the men every time. In the United States, it is normal usage for churchgoers to say for us, and for our salvation. After all, propter nos homines should have been translated as for us human beings.

The Church also puts us women into an impossible dilemma over contraception. I spent some time in Brazil with a dear friend of mine who is a Divine Word missionary. When counselling women who had six or seven children and a husband out of work, he told me, it was almost impossible not to advise them on how to prevent the eighth child. Otherwise there could be an abortion. I am willing to share in the fight against abortion, but birth control can be essential for good family life, as tens of millions of Catholics throughout the world have decided. The Church?s teaching is now largely disregarded in the developed world, as birth rates in Italy and Spain clearly show.

As a politician, I remain an optimist. I believe we are beginning to see the emergence of an exciting new society in which we recognise the limits of sovereign state power. Many nation states are like little King Canutes sitting on sandcastles shouting at the rising sea, but they cannot recreate a world in which sovereign states can determine how they trade and with whom they trade, can prevent the warming of the global environment, can determine the flow of capital, can decide whether or not to deal with organised crime, which crossed national borders a long time ago. We live, whether we like it or not, in a world which is globalising so fast that many problems can only be dealt with at a level beyond the nation state. At the same time, in central government, we are learning that many problems can only be effectively dealt with at a level below the nation state. Hence, in Britain, the devolution of power to Scotland, Wales, and I hope one day to the regions of England as well.

That globalised world is carrying with it, I believe, the rudiments of a new moral order, based not only on human rights but also on a sense of human obligation. In response to the horrors of starvation in Somalia, or the awfulness of Kosovo, we recognise our share of responsibility for trying to deal with those terrible problems. Now at last, slowly, the politicians are beginning to catch up. That is exemplified in my view by Nato?s intervention in Kosovo. Despite being badly handled, that was a moral act. It was a just war, though I regret every civilian death. For the first time, part of the international community said, We are not going to allow a national leader casually to destroy the lives of thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians. That is very different from the genocide of Cambodia, very different from the Holocaust. I am also delighted by the establishment of an international criminal court which will begin to enforce obligations, and not just produce empty eloquence about them.

I believe that the Law Lords were right to decide that immunity could not apply to General Pinochet just because he was a head of state. When I heard them give their verdicts, I was conscious of being present when history was made ? a piece of history which will resonate for many years to come. It is high time, in my view, that heads of state and governments realise they too are part of a moral order, as they are in Britain, most of Western Europe, or the United States, where they too are impeached or convicted if they commit crimes.

All these things are streaks of light in the sky, signs that a new sort of world is dawning, one that I, at least, very much want to be part of. Long ago, Christians perceived the world as a moral universe of which we all were a part. After this desperately troubled, violent and in many ways dreadful century, we may, at long last, be embracing that concept once again, albeit expressed in a modern form.

* The full text of Shirley Williams?s original address, with the other speeches delivered at the Public Life Conference, is published in a special issue of Briefing, the official journal of the British Catholic bishops, for 11 August.

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