Hero of the Week: The Bishop of Willesden

The Polemicist

by Michael House

LONDON, England—(Weekly Hubris)—12/6/10—Hats, birettas, mitres, skull-caps, mantillas, wimples and turbans off to a great man: the Right Reverend Peter Broadbent, Suffragan (Assistant) Bishop of Willesden.

When the engagement was announced between William Windsor (or, to use the surname the family abandoned during the Great War, William Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) aka His Royal Highness the Prince William, Heir Presumptive to the Throne of the United Kingdom, and Katherine Middleton, “middle class” daughter of a multi-millionaire businessman, the British Establishment went into collective orgasm.

The Cabinet, the Opposition, the newspapers, and the broadcast media all joined in a massive grovelfest. For the Government, it was a chance to deflect attention from the savage cuts about to be made, of which the poor, as usual, will bear the brunt: also a good day to bury bad news.

For monarchists, it was a chance to regain ground lost when the marriage between William’s (presumably) father, serial adulterer Prince Charles (quote “why am I the only Prince of Wales not to be allowed to have a mistress”) and good-breeding-stock, upper-class bimbo, Lady Diane Spencer, went tits up. The magic of young love would redeem this family of scroungers and layabouts in the eyes of an increasingly sceptical public. And marriage to a woman not of the noblesse would democratize and humanize the monarchy, as well as introducing fresh blood into a dysfunctional family in grave need of it.

But one member of the ruling class did not join in this orgy of forelock-tugging and arse-licking—Peter Broadbent. Incredibly, he expresses on Facebook sentiments I could not have bettered, as follows:

“Need to work out what date in the spring or summer I should be looking for my republican day trip to France.”

“We need a party in Calais for all good republicans who can’t stand the nauseating tosh that surrounds this event.”

He then added, perhaps unwisely but probably accurately, “I give the marriage seven years.” He said the “Royal Family” was full of “broken marriages and philanderers.” (The word “philanderers” may have been a play on words, a reference to the present Prince Consort.)

In other postings, this wonderful man said that he had “managed to avoid the last disaster in slow motion between Big Ears (Charles) and the Porcelain Doll (Diana).”

Returning to the present engagement, he said “Their marriage is their business . . . I just wish we weren’t paying for it.” It would cost the public “an arm and a leg.”

Bishop Broadbent’s comments were reported in the Daily Mail, a lickspittle publication best known for supporting Hitler and British fascism in the 1930’s (specimen headline: “Hurrah for the Blackshirts.”) In response, Broadbent wrote “pathetic gutter press now trying to make this into a story. But watch their hypocrisy when they go for the Royals later on.”

Broadbent’s boss, Richard Chartres, “Bishop” of London, and a friend of Big Ears, was “appalled.” Broadbent was, we suspect, heavily leant on to apologize which, sadly, he did, but Chartres still suspended him from public ministry until further notice. And just in case he hadn’t fulfilled his sycophancy quotient, Chartres contacted St. James’s Palace to disassociate himself from the comments.

Others in the Establishment joined in the attack. Nicholas Soames, a globular Tory M.P., a man whose former girlfriend described sex with him as like having a wardrobe fall on you with the key still in the door (and another pal of Big Ears), said it was “extremely rude, not what one expects from a bishop.”

Canon Peter Bruinvels, a former extreme right-wing Tory M.P., called the remarks “deeply disappointing and disrespectful.” He didn’t make it clear why people should respect a young man whose only virtues were to be born of particular parents, to be born first and to be born male. (In 2010, in Royal-Land, a younger son still takes precedence over an elder daughter as heir to the throne. Also, Roman Catholics need not apply.)

Amid the predictable hysteria, calls for his resignation etc, only one other person comes out of this episode well—suprisingly, Rowan Williams, “Archbishop” of Canterbury. He has of late endured much condemnation, well-deserved, for allowing himself to be pushed around by homophobic and sexist bigots in the Anglican Church, culminating in a shameful and squalid episode when he bullied his friend, the homosexual priest Jeffrey John, into refusing a bishopric after squeals of anguish from the gay-haters. But this time, he got it right. Lambeth Palace issued a statement saying that Peter Broadbent was “entitled to his views.” A pity Chartres did not have the guts to support his junior.

So, congratulations to Bishop Peter, my candidate for the next Archbishop of Canterbury, preferably leading a disestablished church in a republican Britain.