central instrument for determining our needs, attitudes and requirements: 'The market is neutral; it will supply what consumers want, from prayer books to communion wine to pornography and hard liquor.' Peter Broadbent, a Christian active in the London Labour Party, in an article which appeared in Third Way, in March 1989, entitled 'The Soul of the Parties', attacks the New Right for playing down the values of justice and interdependence. He says they become virtually incidental to the ordering of society:
If freedom is freedom to operate within the market place unfettered by the interference of politics and state, then there can be no question of injustice in the operation of that neutral market ... I may recognise my responsibility to my neighbours, but it is an individual responsibility and I must not be coerced into caring for my neighbours by, for example, being forced to subsidise them through taxation or other forms of redistribution.
It was thinking like this which led Mrs Thatcher to reinterpret the parable of the Good Samaritan by claiming that the real moral of the story was that the Samaritan would not have been in a position to help if he hadn't had some money in his pocket in the first place. I suppose this was a reaction against those who think the moral of the story of the Good Samaritan is that because of cuts in public expenditure there was a shortage of social workers on call that day. Neither view seems to coincide with the emphasis Jesus places on the need for each person to show charitable love to others. Lord Harris even claims it is self-interest rather than love which motivates people to do good. Another of Mrs Thatcher's key policy advisors was Professor Brian Griffiths, himself a Christian. His theological defence of the New Right seems to be based on six principles:
* God reveals His character in justice, and most obviously in the moral law. * Individuals, made in the image of God, are created for freedom. * The Fall is cataclysmic, and there is no redemption through politics, and no possibility of a utopia. * We live in two Kingdoms, and the Kingdom of God is synonymous with the Church. It does not give us a basis for social ethics.