�鶹��

Available for over a year

Good morning. If you turn up at a polling station today to be handed more ballot papers than you expected, it might be that you live in one of those parts of the UK covered by a Parish Council. Until her attempts to control Handforth Council’s Zoom call made Jackie Weaver briefly one of the most famous women in UK public life, they have mostly gone about their business quietly and unobtrusively, occupying, where they exist, their time honoured place as the first tier of English local government. For several years, in the late 1990s, I served on one. Funded by a modest precept within the Council Tax, we looked after children’s play parks and ran a community bonfire each November fifth. We had a say, but not the final one, on planning applications. The nearest we ever got to controversy was when we tried to impose restrictions on how elaborately families could embellish the graves in our cemetery. St Paul, who relished his privileges as a Roman citizen, saw rulers as God’s agents, set above us to maintain good order. Others, across the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, especially victims of persecution, saw it very differently. For my part, I am drawn to the words of the prophet Jeremiah who, addressing a people tempted to retreat into private piety, writes these words: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare”. His words are a call to recognise that the public good is not something we leave to others, or even to God, to fulfil, but part of our duty. When I seek to live that out in my own life, it seems to demand of me an engagement with public life. I fell into joining my Parish Council entirely by accident, co-opted as a replacement for a member who had sadly died in office. But it felt sufficiently important that when my term ran out, I stood again. When, on the first Thursday of May, 1997, my name appeared on the ballot paper, and I was duly elected, I confess to a certain pride that my neighbours and fellow citizens had chosen to place their trust in me. So today, I will spare a thought and a prayer for all those seeking election to local government, from metro mayors to the humblest parish councillor. Men and women of diverse faith and political persuasions, seeking in this generation to serve that welfare of the city and community to which Jeremiah first called the Israelites so many centuries ago.