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You need to fall back on words such as evil and wicked, not much used these days, to describe the Israeli Government’s banning from Gaza of some 37 humanitarian NGOs after a re-registration process. That ban ends, and sums up, a year in which not even clever propaganda and disinformation could disguise the true purpose of IDF brutality.
But Palestinian national self determination was not the only human aspiration - perhaps - irreparably – damaged: humanitarianism itself is threatened. The great ethical tradition of humanitarianism, arising from the Calvinism of Swiss businessman Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross in 1863, had by the 21st century become a leading aspect of humanist ethics. The work of humanitarian agencies to relieve suffering and the protection given them by warring parties in exchange for a studied neutrality became in some sense a moral contract in the midst of conflict. That contract comes under particular strain during a genocide and/or in ‘asymmetric’ warfare where one combatant is totally dominant. The humanitarian contract cannot be imposed. It depends on the consent of the combatants. The Israeli government, like Putin’s, does not seem to recognise that, over the years, agreed operational principles and international legal obligations have been established and ought to be respected. One such principle is that humanitarian agencies are not obliged to divulge the names and other personal details of their employees to gain access to victims, and not obliged to divulge them to the warring parties. The assumption is that civilized combatants do allow access for humanitarian aid to victims of war. This, as the European Union would call it, is the acquis of humanitarianism. Not under Netanyahu, it isn’t. The 37 banned NGOs have refused on principle to disclose information about their staff. Perhaps this appears somewhat abstract in a desperate situation. And isn’t it understandable that the Israeli Intelligence agencies want to find out names of those working for the humanitarian NGOs if they suspect there are clandestine combatants amongst them? Yes, but their Government does not need to compromise humanitarian aid workers to find out, nor question the bona fides of their organisations. Internationally known organisations are internationally respected by governments mostly because of their bona fides. Internationally respected and trusted Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) (Doctors without Borders ) is amongst those banned. It has some 1,000 staff in Gaza, runs two field hospitals and supports six major hospitals. Suddenly the Israeli government, without presenting any evidence, asserted that two of its staff were active Hamas combatants. Even supposing this were true, it does not justify shutting down the entire organization. And if MSF doctors had evidence available of staff being combatants they would dismiss them. CARITAS JERUSALEM with its programme of mobile child clinics and some 130 staff working in Gaza is also banned. But, according to the Latin Patriarch, “Caritas Jerusalem is an Ecclesiastical Legal Person, whose status and mission have been recognized by the State of Israel through the 1993 Fundamental Agreement and the subsequent 1997 Legal Personality Agreement signed between the Holy See and the State of Israel”, so re-registration does not apply. So banning makes no sense and the Patriarch intends CARITAS' work to continue. Meanwhile, the popemobile left in Bethlehem by Pope Francis in 2014 and converted by CARITAS into a flagship mobile clinic is prevented from even entering Gaza by reason of “dual use”. Dual use covers a wide spectrum of goods including the widest range of medical equipment Some 'dual use' goods at exorbitant prices - enriching Egyptian, Israeli and Palestinian entrepreneurs- are available in markets, and allowed through. Some 1,500 health workers have already been killed by the IDF as well as hundreds of other humanitarian workers, some targeted as alleged Hamas supporters. 260 Palestinian media workers who, in the absence of foreign journalists, have been getting news out have died because of their commitment to their profession. Thousands of NGO workers have been excluded and the bans will eliminate more as the Israeli Government attempts to cow the Palestinians into total passivity and despair and force them out of Gaza. On 30th December in response to the banning the Governments of Britain ,Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan and Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, signed a joint letter. It had only passing references to internationally recognized humanitarian principles while describing the current appalling conditions facing Palestinians in Gaza and what needs to be done. They did mention “unreasonable restrictions on imports considered dual use”. "Any attempt to stem their ability to operate is unacceptable", was their limit to criticism of the Israeli Government's ban on 37 major humanitarian organisations. Presumably Trump’s possible reaction to protest weighed heavily in framing the ten Governments’ response. They made no reference to any penalties the Israeli government might incur . There was no defense of the Geneva Conventions - beginning in 1864 - which enshrine hard-won humanitarian tradition and practice. So far our own hierarchy has not issued a statement. It is as if the rules based international order which offered some protection to weaker nations and peoples is being quietly abandoned.
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Rutger Bregman, the Dutch historian and author chosen for this year’s Reith lectures, gave them the title Moral Revolution, describing a wicked world, venal elites, and a degraded politics. He aims to make goodness “fashionable again” and has an enviable rhetorical and narrative style to that end. His is a message primarily directed at civil society not to our own – unfashionable -Government, telling a hopeful story with which to end a grim 2025. From the applause, the four talks went down well with the live audience.
Despite having a Protestant pastor for a father, Bregman believes goodness to be found in human nature, and following his philosophical hero, Bertrand Russell, asserts that no external transcendental agency exists to put it there. To collectively shape society, to act ethically, we need “pity for the unbearable suffering of mankind”, a “longing for love”, and a “search for knowledge” derived from the well-springs of goodness in the human heart, from a scientific naturalism. And these enduring impulsions directing a purposeful life, he claims, are what uniquely make us human. Bregman spoke of his Christian childhood, loss of faith, then discovery of an affective humanism, a history of small networks of virtuous men and women making the world a better place: the anti-slavery movement, the suffragettes, the campaign for civil rights and, yes, the twelve apostles, historical changes as a “reservoir of hope”. His is a timely message for a secular world in deep trouble. A yes-we-can for NGOs, from small beginnings a long march to critical mass and changes in government policy. And finally an agnostic nod beyond an earlier confident atheism, maybe there is more to it all. The sequence of Bregman’s four talks followed a broadly see-judge-and-act pattern, the last exploring the threats posed by AI and the unchecked power of the Silicon Valley barons. But, as you consider these lectures, some of their gloss wears off; a lack of new thinking and depth becomes apparent. The exploration of what the common good might mean and the ethical connection between the personal and the social lack coherence. Nor are the religious sources of Bregman’s thinking fully acknowledged. The requirements for Moral Revolution, compassion, love, search for understanding, would not sound out of place in a papal allocution or parochial Sunday sermon. But the continuing contribution of the Catholic Church to this theme of personal and social moral regeneration is absent: no mention of the body of Catholic social teaching, originating in the 1890s and elaborated by the Church through different historical contexts until today. For Bregman, the early Fabians at the end of the 19th century, not Leo XIII’s 1891 Rerum Novarum, committing the Church to workers’ rights, are worth discussing. Nor is there a single contemporary Christian example of his central theme, a small networked group tackling one of the ‘monsters’ of economic change. The growing international network of Religious Sisters, strong in his homeland Netherlands, confronting the dark side of globalization, human trafficking, would have been one outstanding example. Bregman’s moral revolution demands the nurturing of virtue, its application in daily life and practical politics, played out through history. A more glaring omission is his apparent lack of interest, apart from a quick genuflection to Aquinas and Aristotle, in the historical development of ethics. Like a lecture on the 19th century novel with no word of Dickens, neither is there any mention of the great Scottish Catholic philosopher of ethics, Alisdair MacIntyre – who sadly died in May this year, and his 1981 After Virtue which brings Aquinas’ virtue ethics to life for our contemporary world. MacIntyre gave “Catholic Instead of What?” as the title to a lecture at Notre Dame University in Indiana in November 2012. Instead of naturalism based on science, he proposes conformity to natural law for a humanity, fallen and separated from God. His focus and emphases are very different from Bregman’s: the nature of our humanity from womb to grave emphasizing the justice which we owe notably to the child. He tells a story about how the common good, the personal and social, and indeed the economic, might be coherently thought about and acted on. Here is a flavour. “Parents can give their children what they owe to them only if they have economic means that enable them to house, clothe, and feed those children; have the time and energy to play with those children and to tell them stories. Children deprived of such homes find it often difficult and sometimes impossible to learn from their teachers in school, no matter how good those teachers. The children who don't learn are unable to become educated citizens, and a society with a significant portion of badly educated or uneducated citizens is always a defective society, one in which it becomes difficult or even impossible to arrive at rational agreement about common goods and, therefore, about the requirements of justice and how they are to be achieved”. A far more coherent and radical story than told by Bregman. “What”, MacIntyre goes on to ask, “would it be like to live in a society where not to meet the needs of children was intolerable”. Parents would have a sufficient income, be properly paid in family-friendly jobs, to achieve excellence as parents and teachers. And education would give young people growing up the confidence to find their own voice amidst today’s multiplicity of voices. A radical manifesto for a diverse society. The Labour Government’s indecisive tactics, lack of a compelling narrative and a plausible strategy for combatting inequality and the high cost of living, tackling economic stagnation and widespread youth anxiety, will likely receive a hefty punishment in May 2026 local elections. Where will the Labour Party find the coherent big story in which their different, worthy, incremental changes could be fitted? A focus on answering the question “Labour Party Instead of What?” decisively with vision and courage will help. Rutger Bregman has a simple story to tell: one about what the little platoons of NGOs and their networks can achieve. His approach is deductive: here is the general idea and here are some examples derived from it, anti-slavery, the Fabians, the challenge of AI. It’s not that simple. Finding a way forward is complex. Government – and Bregman - need at least to acknowledge the distinctive contribution of Catholic Social Teaching and the radical Christian vision of thinkers such as MacIntyre, and in 2026 tell a better story. A concept of National Security that denies action to combat climate change, demands drastic cuts in international aid, and rejects all but narrow national interest, marked the first months of Donald Trump second Presidency. The publication of the ‘National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, November 2025, formalised this as US foreign policy.
For many Europeans, it is a shocking and sobering document. We are now entering a new epoch. This is not Presidential patter Air Force One or his off-the-cuff, shock-jock social media posts late at night. It’s a broadly coherent and detailed account of a radical change in US foreign policy, and its motivations,. For a European reader, the presentation of contemporary Europe, or rather the European Union and Putin’s war in Ukraine, stand out. “The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.” In a time when truth, justice, love and peace are in short supply, international bodies discredited for political motives and international law eroded, the Church’s voice is one of the few able to speak truth to power. The response of the Pope has been swift: “I think the role of Europe is very important. Seeking a peace agreement without including Europe in the talks is not realistic. The war is in Europe. I think in the guarantees of security that are also being sought today and in the future, Europe must be part of them”, he told the digital news service Politico” last week after meeting the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And he rejected attempts “to break apart what I think needs to be a very important alliance today and in the future”. An American Pope can say this to some effect. A European Pope could not. Parts of the Security Strategy indicate what psychologists have called ‘projection’: unconsciously attributing your own unacceptable feelings, thoughts, or traits to others, to avoid acknowledging them, and finding your hidden self in others. It is associated with borderline personality disorder and paranoid personalities. If the Trump administration looked in the mirror, they would see their own ”subversion of democracy”, their own “unstable government”, “suppression of opposition” and “unrealistic expectations for the war”. Moreover, the accusations thrown at the European Union, and anything larger than a nation-state, might best suit a description of enmity. “ The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence”. Not unlike Putin’s aims, a US policy goal is now “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”. This is all supposedly in a good cause. A key refrain of the Vance-Trump duo, reflected in the document’s conclusion about Europe, is that we face the “stark prospect of civilizational erasure”. Pope Leo has a nuanced stance on European culture, obviously supportive of its Judaeo-Christian heritage and the values it brings, but not looking backwards. “To ensure that the voice of the Church, not least through her social doctrine, continues to be heard,” he told the European Parliament last week, “is not about the restoration of a past epoch, but of guaranteeing that key resources for future cooperation and integration are not lost”. The contrasting coarseness of parts of the US text is a feature of the shift in attitude it represents. Certain words are telling. Trump, searching for a word to describe the big picture in Europe, has used “decaying”. The document speaks of “cratering” birthrates. And the “erasure” of European civilisation? Those who compiled it had to find words for the White supremacist fear, the Great Replacement Theory, in which black and brown immigrants, particularly Muslims, replace Whites. Why did the administration choose the clunky “civilisational erasure”? Could it be an unconscious recall of Erasure, a synth-pop duo whose music, according to The Washington Post, "combines synth-pop, disco, cabaret, light opera, and a bit of English choirboy sound”? No, too much diversity. Though, the titles of two Erasure hit singles from the late 1980s, Ship of Fools and A Little Respect, have an uncanny resonance. The most important give-away occurs at the end of this apocalyptic forecasting. “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation”. To that end, the document has as policy : “Building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges”. According to a leaked, more detailed, internal version of the Strategy document - denied by the White House - read ‘we will attempt to subvert member states and focus on Poland, Austria, Hungary and Italy “with the goal of pulling them away” from EU membership. Every florid phrase tells a story. Europe’s “failed focus on regulatory suffocation” presumably refers to the - mostly normal - legislation of EU social democracies applying EU regulations and directives unpopular with investors: data protection, control of AI, consumer rights and protection of customers, control of mobile roaming charges, environmental concerns such as waste shipments and prevention of pollution. For the US Government, ‘suffocation’ would describe most interventions that bridle what Popes have called “savage”, “unbridled” capitalism. As Pope Francis observed in Evangelii Gaudium (2013): "How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses 2 points?". So OK, you might say, but why shouldn’t Trump’s USA espouse one ideology and social democrats in Europe another? Well, because the document’s little throw-away line concluding the litany of EU’s sins is not really about ideology. That is the packaging. It’s about money, how much money Trump, Vance, their appointees and the Silicon Valley barons allegedly can make in the EU - which has tried not to give them a completely free rein. The overall impression from Trump’s attempts at brokering a ceasefire and possibly a peace agreement in Ukraine is that he is leaning towards becoming an ally of Putin. They seem to share an understanding of what is wrong with the EU. The question is whether this dramatic change is motivated by a grand geopolitical strategy to draw Russia away from what the US government sees as its number one enemy, China. Or whether, as is alleged by some observers, it comes from the promise for Trump of lucrative deals in Russia from Putin’s FSB war chest. You pays your money and you takes your pick. Or your legal fees. But neither bodes well for peace and goodwill in Europe. Most democracies sign up to promoting religious freedom abroad. Trump wants to go in guns-blazing. Others feel uncomfortable raising the question of Christian persecution. Why should Christians get privileged attention amongst the many victims of human rights violations and discrimination? Are they disproportionately victims of violence?
In Nigeria the question is particularly contentious. Its population is c.237 million, 46% Muslim, mainly but far from exclusively in the North, and 46% Christian, ditto in the South, 250 ethnic groups, four main ones, Hausa, Yoruba, Fulani and Igbo. Secession from the Federation and the Biafran war (July 1967 to January 1970) resulted from post-Independence ethnic conflict. Nigerians emerged from military rule in 1999. Democracy entrenched Shari’a law in the 12 Northern states. If the prevalence of abductions, attacks, sexual violence, and killing of Nigerian Christians, plus bombing churches, is the yardstick, President Mohammad Buhari’s government, 2015-2023, showed a lack of capacity to arrest descent into near-anarchy in much of the country. Nor, in the Muslim-majority Northern states, was commitment to common citizenship and Christians’ civil rights advanced by denial in public institutions of employment opportunities or promotion, lack of religious education for Christian children in public schools, lack of places for worship in public institutions, and refusal by state authorities to allocate land for building a church or rebuilding churches after jihadists destroyed them. The geography of persecution is complex. In 1980, I travelled south from Chad along a short part of NE Nigeria’s, Borno state’s, long and porous border with Cameroon. You could drive an armoured division across it let alone infiltrate guerilla forces with weaponry. Originating in 2009, Borno state, a jihadist group Boko Haram demonstrated the metastasis and splits of groups recruiting young men seeking to earn a living with a gun. Led by a handful of Muslim leaders who could recite, and misinterpret, the occasional sura from the Qur’an, it got a few paragraphs in our Press, then blanket coverage when in April 2014 they abducted 276 girls from a Government school in Chibok, Borno. By 2015 Boko Haram controlled all but one – unsafe – road into Maiduguri, the closest major town in NE Nigeria to the border, with a million inhabitants. The current auxiliary bishop of Maiduguri Diocese, John Bakeni, had to care for stranded a Nigerian air-force officer and accommodate him on his mission compound , such was the disarray of the Nigerian armed forces. In 2016, a substantial part of Boko Haram broke away to form ISWAP, Islamic State West African Province, a pro-ISIS group operating across a wide area of the Chad basin into Cameroon, Niger as well as Nigeria. Based on twenty years of research experience and stringent analysis, the US non-profit ACLED (the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project) report that violence in Nigeria “in which Christians have been specifically targeted in relation to their religious identity accounts for only 5% of reported civilian targeting events”. This seems low. It represents, of course, a small percentage of the political violence in which Christians are killed. From 2009-2025, they calculate, some 53,000, Christians and Muslims, were killed – at an increased rate in the early 2020s. Attacks on churches rose from 15 per annum in 2019 to a peak of 65 in 2022, and on mosques from 7 to 15. This might give some indication of the balance between Muslims and Christians targeted in this period (not disaggregated by ACLED). Islamic extremist criminality discriminates largely on the basis of ‘those not with us are against us so should be eliminated’. Clashes with sometimes heavy casualties in Benue and Plateau states are predominantly over land, between migrating Fulani cattle herders (Muslims) and agriculturalists of several ethnic identities (mostly Christian). Criminal gangs use violence to achieve their goals in the North-West and elsewhere. ACLED’s figures are probably the best approximations available. President Trump designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern for Religious Freedom in December 2020. President Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, removed it in November 2021. Enter stage Right, on 11 September 2025, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas introducing to Congress a Nigerian Religious Freedom Accountability Act: to hold accountable Nigerian officials who ‘ignore or facilitate Islamist jihadist violence and the imposition of blasphemy laws’. “Nigerian Christians are being targeted and executed for their faith by Islamist terrorist groups, and are being forced to submit to sharia law”, Cruz warned. On 21 October, Matthew Kukah, Bishop of Sokoto, NW Nigeria, a prominent national figure, delivered a lecture in the Vatican on the release of ‘Religious Freedom in the World 2025’, a doorstop-sized report from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). Sokoto is the spiritual centre of Islam in the Northern States. The current Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Abubakar III, provided accommodation for visitors to Bishop Kukah’s inauguration and ordination. A Muslim friend gave him a PRADO jeep for pastoral work in his vast diocese. The bishop travels freely wearing his episcopal gear. Not the picture painted in Trump’s Washington, though Bishop Kukah underlined how Nigerian civilians experienced intolerable violence which he attributed to the failure of the late President Buhari to curb terrorism and banditry. He once told me how a Muslim neighbour of a close – Catholic - relative in Kaduna, north of the capital Abuja, warned her that a mob was on the rampage and she should leave. He temporarily housed her furniture and belongings. The mob came and went. Before she returned home, a Christian mob retaliated by attacking her Muslim neighbour’s house stealing the contents. ”What would you call the perpetrators”, he asked”. I floundered. “Criminals”, he answered. Bishop Kukah’s Vatican speech surprised Nigerian Christians because he opposed designating Nigeria, again, as a Country of Particular Concern. It would “harm inter-religious ties and relations with government”. His reference was to the government of Bola Tinubu, educated in Chicago, many years in America, exiled under military rule after returning, a reforming Governor of Lagos state 1999-2007, and elected President in March 2023. ‘Remi’ Tinubu, his distinguished wife, an ordained pastor in a Pentecostal megachurch, represented Lagos in the Nigerian Senate. President Tinubu immediately purged 51 Army Generals, 49 Air Force officers, and 17 Naval commanders, and appointed several Christians to important Federal positions. Bishop Kukah believed he was “willing to listen” and offered real hope for dialogue and national harmony. Enter next, in early November, President Trump wading in ordering the military to prepare for action in Nigeria, “that now disgraced country”. Trump also ordered Nigeria re-designated a Country of Particular Concern for failure to insure religious freedom. Britain had been funding protective, coordinated Government action for some time. On 26 November, following two widely publicized abductions of schoolchildren, 315 from a Catholic boarding school, the other, 25 girls from their hostels after the withdrawal of military protection just before the attack.* Tinubu declared a State of Emergency, promising to appoint 20,000 additional police and military and control forests where terrorists and bandits hid. The Minister of Defense resigned last week. So what has Bishop Kukah, and Nigeria, to teach us about Christian persecution? Be wary of emotional misinformation. Try to get the facts straight. Don’t inadvertently sponsor political manipulation. Be ready to become unpopular. * Some of the abducted children thankfully are now home. Britain’s markets need the Christian ‘big reveal’ that began this week with Advent. Without the coming of the Christ-child, most town-centres would be boarded up. The emotional push and pull of Christmas sustains a prodigious expenditure on gifts and food that buffers shops and stores from the consequences of low ‘footfall’ during the rest of the year. As a prompt to start the buying, the Americans invented Black Friday, the first Friday after Thanksgiving. It is not only the herald angels who sing.
Christmas as we know it is not the result St. Francis of Assisi sought when, at Christmas 1223, he staged a live re-enactment of the Nativity story in a cave north of Rome. His fellow Franciscan Brother, Thomas of Celano, explained that he wanted to “represent the birth of that Child in Bethlehem in such a way that with our bodily eyes we may see what he suffered for lack of the necessities of a newborn babe and how he lay in manger between the ox and ass.” Thousands of school Nativity plays remain on message. Not the message of Greggs’ advertisement in 2017, a sausage roll adored in a manger. The artists of the 13th to the 17th century, employed a limited number of ways to portray the worship of the Christ-child: Mary at the centre sometimes holds the baby, sometimes doesn’t, and there are the walk-on parts for Joseph, the Magi, the shepherds and animal residents of the stable, with fly-on parts for the heavenly host. Popular art sometimes provides touching add-ons. One desolate Serbian church in Bosnia comes to mind with a mural showing a couple of women, outside the stable, cooking dinner for the Holy Family. The next episode of the Christmas story painted by the great artists is the Holy Family on the move in flight to Egypt. Joseph is leading, holding the donkey, Mary, sitting side-saddle usually uses both hands to hold the baby - though Titian has her using a sling. Such portrayals, though dignified and meant to reflect reverence, raise the question why not hands-free with baby bound safely to the mother? Do we know if babies were carried then, as they commonly are now in Africa, tightly bound with a cloth on the mother’s back? And we have watched television pictures of the Palestinian territories where mothers cradle life amidst death, families flee for safety, their donkeys pulling carts with all their belongings. Some paintings do portray the fleeing family taking a rest, Caravaggio with a half-naked angel providing some musical entertainment – he would wouldn’t he – and a decrepit Joseph holding the score. Rembrandt and Bruegel give her a blanket. I think on balance Mary in the Gospels probably did wear a simple cloth baby-wrap in the Flight to Egypt. Fast forward to the UK where flight with babies from danger is relatively rare; though women’s shelters meet a real need. In comparison with our own children the poverty of the Christ-child is stark. Now, we require equipment to move babies around and a great variety of equipment. The baby market has grown and segmented, with products created for people sharing particular needs or interests or spending power. So, you can choose from amongst a large range of buggies, strollers and prams And, just as expensive cars can highlight their owners status, so do these vehicles for babies. . For the status conscious, the Automobil Lamborghini Reef Al Arancio Stroller Bundle, a result of collaboration with the prestigious car manufacture, sells at Harrods for £4000. Arancio (orange), an intense version of Trump’s fake complexion, is a reference to Lamborghini’s brand colour, supposedly evoking excitement and energy. Purchasers become part of the ‘Silver Cross Story’ getting tips on pregnancy and parenting – get a nanny? - while the baby gets to lie on ‘high performance automotive fabrics’ (sic). The Silver Cross brand of pram is apparently the choice of the Royal Family; status does not go much higher than that. To discover more about baby moving options I visited a John Lewis Department Store. A partner/assistant at Nursery Advice was reluctant to advise me. You were supposed to have booked an appointment. I hadn’t. The word ‘blog’ also went down badly. So I missed the demonstrations for prams and strollers I’d heard about, complete with a baby doll. But I did extract information on the cheapest stroller in the store. At the sale price of £50 it was the Joie Baby Nitro Stroller. My informant was so suspicious, and lacking in joie, I wondered if he thought the word Nitro had attracted me, and my next question would be where to plant the bomb. At John Lewis the most expensive stroller, at £1,500, is the Cybex Priam Cloud T Bundle another aspirational name, Priam King of Troy supposedly having fathered some 50 children. And the Argos range? Perhaps hoping for an improvement in our declining birth-rate, Argos advertises a double-buggy costing c. £100. The Bugaboo Donkey Duo 5 – who invents these names? – reduced from £1,500 - allows conversion from one to two baby use. The Babylist registry details gifts for the expectant mother while noting the dilemma of “affordability over long term durability or enhanced functionality”. Segmentation of the market has produced designs catering for contemporary needs. Shopping locally with family close at hand meant those heavy coach-built prams were useful. Now parents must navigate buses and, in London, the Underground. Hence narrow or even foldable strollers are a necessity. Less commonly, you want a stroller to negotiate rough ground or one that will fold to go in a plane’s overhead locker. These days you can even rent one. New saleable products constantly emerge though mainly for the affluent. Baby carriers, a development of Titian’s sling, follow more in Nature’s grain and cost less. And they are marginally less afflicted by copywriters on Speed. I went to see Hannah Wallace, who between 2018-2024 sold some 35 different baby carrier brands to 20,000 families from her shop Wear My Baby in Tooting. A consultant in safety for babies on the move, trying out 450 brands, her advice is carry “high, tight and in sight”. From baby monkeys clinging to their mother’s hair to baby-carrying coats, baby wraps and her own IZMI range of carriers, she insists, ‘babies are designed to be carried’. The NHS in Scotland agrees: a baby-wrap is in the baby-box given to all new parents. Fathers and mothers prefer different carrying styles. Fathers mostly have the baby facing outwards to take in the world, for their education, and sometimes overstimulate their child. Mothers mostly hold the baby facing inwards, warm and calm, a half-way house from knees up in the womb. OK, a stereotype, but check it out. Turning finally from the baby-moving market, to close the loop, Christmas as shopping opportunity is strikingly far from the poor Christ-child as bearer of salvation. But before retaliation in the style of the old Advent sermon on consumerism and materialism, stand back a little. Perhaps it is time to laugh at the excesses of the baby business and to learn from entrepreneurs’ creativity in perceiving and serving human needs - like how to move babies around safely. |
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