Bishop of Durham hits out at "tragedy" of unemployment

The Right Reverend Justin Welby spoke out at a memorial service in Gateshead on the 200th anniversary of the Felling Colliery disaster, which killed 82 men and boys – some as young as eight – and caused an outcry that prompted safety improvements.

He said mining disasters in the region were a thing of the past but the attitudes that led to them – such as greed, the urge for profit and the low value placed on miners’ lives – were still present.

He warned that high unemployment caused problems equally as destructive to life as mining explosions.

Bishop Welby told the service that the country’s recession-hit economy was facing a quiet tragedy, “not of explosives, but of neglect”.

He said: “It is too easy for us to forget that unemployment, industrial decline, lack of purpose in people’s lives that comes from the absence of work and creation, are all things that destroy the opportunity for human beings to flourish.

“We, as human beings, do not exist for the economy and its benefit, it exists for the benefit of human beings, and although that is obvious when it is spoken, it is an obvious truth frequently forgotten.

“High unemployment diminishes life expectancy, increases domestic violence, results in more mental illness and worsens problems of debt and substance abuse.

“It is the means of making life worse for many, many people.

“The absence of flourishing leads to deaths, earlier and in worse circumstances than would otherwise have been the case.

“Felling was an explosion. Our economy today is resulting in a slow, scarcely-heard landslide of suffering that is equally destructive of life, but without the drama and often without the intention.”

The Bishop said that people should campaign for a better social system “that enables human flourishing and prevents this long slow slip of neglect that kills and destroys lives”.

He said it was “not mere dogoodery”

but was about following the call of God to “resist evil”.