ARCHER PROJECT
9th December 2022
When I was preparing for today’s speech, I found myself dealing with a bit of a conundrum. The Archer Project is one of the leading lights of the Sheffield’s voluntary community; but, standing here as a Labour Party politician, I am committed to building a world without the need for charity. This offers us a paradox, then: we are here to celebrate the Project’s work, while wishing that work wasn’t needed.
How do we make sense of that paradox? For the Archer Project, we find the answer in the Christian call for love, and especially the unconditional love and championing of those who our mainstream society pushes to the margins.
Even if we were able to eliminate the stain of homelessness in our society, the Archer Project would still be able to fulfil that mission by continuing to ask: who is being held back and failed by our society today? Who do those controlling the structures of power tell us is less deserving? Who is being held back from unleashing their full humanity?
When I reflect on those questions, and think about why we are here today, it is clear to me that the values of the Archer Project are the same as the values of South Yorkshire, and the values that I want to celebrate as South Yorkshire’s Mayor; kindness, leadership, inspired by the lived experience of our communities.
Each generation, we are called to champion humanity against those who seek to marginalise our communities and those at the margins of them; the downtrodden, the poor, the migrants and the misfits, those cast-aside by an ever-faster pace of change in the global economy.
The Archer Project was founded in response to the faltering steel industry here in Sheffield, and the social problems that were emerging in the 1980s. It was one expression of a wider movement of solidarity. At the same time, we had miners’ wives arguing for ‘coal not dole’; our local political leaders were challenging the national government for investment in our future rather than managing decline; and our civic institutions like our universities were expanding to give the next generation the opportunity to thrive.
Like the Archer Project, this is not driven by some sort of enlightened self-interest, or at the behest of outside forces. This loving response, from our community, was simply the right thing to do; the natural and almost inevitable response of a community, connected by more than a place of work, and reflecting an even deeper moral conviction that all humans – every single one of us – have an innate and inalienable value.
In the carols we are singing today, we are reminded about how, in the Nativity, the very son of God was born homeless. In the Christian tradition, He comes in the form of the weak; of the dispossessed; to those on the fringes of a distant state that doesn’t respond to their concerns. When we extend our love and support to each other, we show the unconditional love that is at the centre of the New Testament.
That is why Jesus said, in the Book of Matthew, that what we do for the hungry; the thirsty; a stranger needing clothes; the sick; or those in prison, we are doing for God himself.
This is about more than offering love and a helping hand in a moment of crisis. No one is asking, or offering, mere pity. Indeed charity without love risks reinforcing inequalities and hierarchies in our society. Whereas charity with love transforms those who give as well as those who receive. It is based on our mutual dependence, our shared moral worth, and our collective ascent to a better humanity – or, in the Christian tradition, the idea that we are all built in G-d’s image.
That is why, as the Archer Project has grown, it has come to offer so much more to those it serves. It offers 1-1 support for homeless people; meeting people where they are and supporting them to grow through training and accreditation programmes, new experiences and volunteering opportunities.
I come from a different faith tradition, as a Jewish man. In Hebrew, the term ‘natan’ is used to describe the act of giving, a central tenet of Jewish faith that we practise especially during festivals like Hannukah. Natan is a palindrome: it is spelt the same way backwards as forwards. That’s more than a coincidence: the deep structure of the language itself shows that giving is a two-way act, reciprocating the relationship between those who give and those who receive.
Apocryphally, Gandhi said that the measure of a society is how it treats its poorest.
But while our different faith traditions all have at their core the same ethical imperatives of love and acceptance, our shared responsibility to reach out with love and care to those most often marginalised, forgotten and ignored comes not just from our faith traditions, but from our humanity itself.
To give life to that love, to live it every day, is to express our shared humanity; to allow it to find its highest and purest form. That is why loving charity is never simply charity. It transforms both those giving and receiving.
We all have our own duties to love each other, to offer charity, and to support those who do. Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today, and please join me in giving generously to support the Archer’s Projects important work for another year.