The Spectator’s Notes | 5 November 2011

It being All Saints’ Day on Tuesday, we sang ‘For all the saints’ in church: ‘Oh, may thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,/ Fight as the saints, who nobly fought of old/ And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.’ Meanwhile, the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral were falling apart because most of them thought it was wrong to nobly fight in any way at all. Most of the clergy involved in this curious situation keep referring to the danger of ‘violence’, as defined by Canon Giles Fraser in his resignation last week. ‘I feel that the Church cannot answer peaceful protest with violence,’ he said. Naturally, the clergy don’t want legal action, and the Dean lacked the wisdom of the serpent in going down this route so quickly. But the ‘violence’ against which Dr Fraser warned is surely what most people would call ‘the force of law’.