Words from Douglas Fulton

Jim Henderson sends us some notes written by Douglas Fulton, then the Lamlash minister,  in April 1965. At the time, Harold Wilson’s Labour Government was taking over from Alex Douglas-Hume and the Conservatives. Forty-six years later, the Rev Fulton’s words are strangely familiar.

The budget is a sharp reminder that we are not, after all, an affluent society. We live in a country where millions of the population exist in terrible conditions of squalor and where thousands are without homes at all.

The fierce competition for places in schools and universities, the crisis in the teaching profession, indicates the poverty under which our educational systems operate. The budget is a sharp reminder of these and many other serious situations – overcrowded hospitals, inadequate pensions, insecure employment; out of which it is clear that adequacy, far less affluence, simply does not exist.

The Budget is a statement about priorities, and while we are divided on the methods employed, we are concerned about priorities.

Let us pray that the attempt to work out an Income Policy is successful, for it is the will of God that every man should receive a due reward for his labour.

Let us pray that every effort to improve the welfare and educational services will prosper, for it is the will of God that ‘the widow, the fatherless and the stranger’ be cared for and that every man, woman and child may have a full life.

In parliamentary government under the crown we have the best political system in the world and good men of all parties are striving for the end stated by one of the great prophets. For  the day when spears will be turned into pruning hooks, uranium into industrial and domestic power and every man will sit in his own house, under his own vine and fig tree and call every man his neighbour.

Picture: Lamlash Church, a memorial window to the Late Rev. Douglas Fulton,