“I would be absolutely lost in my job without my faith,” said the Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, after the Catholics for Labour Conference Mass in Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral last Sunday.
A Catholic, he had done the First Reading, and declared the Mass an “inspirational” service which “shows we’ve got strength in the Labour Party”.
Anderson, who is the first directly elected Mayor of Liverpool, had given a speech earlier in the day at the March for the Many demonstration for a People’s Vote. He explained that Liverpool had voted to remain in Europe because the EU had been enabling the regeneration of the city, after some crisis years in the 1980s.
Both events took place in conjunction with the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool (23 to 26 September), at which there was a strong push from the membership for party policy to shift on Brexit.
Mike Kane, MP for Wythenshawe and Sale East, is the driving force behind Catholics for Labour, which was founded before the 2017 Party Conference. After playing his flute during the Mass, he spoke of the work of the new organisation in publicising Catholic Social Teaching and helping Catholics all over the country to get into public life. They have already lined up a team of mentors, and are ready to help those who would like advice and encouragement. “We’ve already got the speeches – in terms of Catholic Social Teaching,” he pointed out, and “participation” is a key element of that teaching.
Dawn Foster, a Guardian columnist who spoke after the Mass, said that at times media coverage seemed to align the Catholic voice with the right. She was told in the Spectator office “We’re all Catholics here”, but “the majority of Catholics still vote for Labour”.
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