Think the canon who quit St Paul's is radical? You should have met his ... - The Guardian

As a baby during the blitz, I was living in a fourth-four flat in St Paul's Churchyard (the building, called Wren's View after the architect, has long since been demolished), though I was too young to notice the cathedral's brief closure to the public during the Nazi air raids. When I was old enough to be aware of what was going on outside the window, I mainly remember my joy on Thursdays when a military band would perform on the cathedral steps. There were no occupations or demonstrations in those days. Everything was formal and proper.

But the Rev Dr Giles Fraser, who resigned yesterday from the office of canon chancellor in protest at the church authorities' decision to seek the removal of the anti-capitalist campers from its doorstep, is not the first radical to occupy an important position among the cathedral clergy. In fact, he is if anything rather less radical than canon John Collins, who served for 33 years in the cathedral chapter.

Canon Collins, who was appointed to St Paul's in 1948, had served as a chaplain in the RAF during the second world war and was radicalised by the experience. Oddly, Canon Fraser, whose father was an RAF officer, also contemplated becoming an armed forces chaplain and has been a regular lecturer at military staff colleges (though I don't know what significance that might have). In any case, he has assumed the leftwing, progressive mantle of his predecessor, though in ways appropriate to the time in which he lives. Whereas Canon Collins wore a beret and smoked a pipe in public, Canon Fraser wears jeans and a T-shirt. Whereas Canon Collins campaigned against nuclear weapons and apartheid in South Africa, Canon Fraser is best known for his campaigns on behalf of gays and lesbians within the church.

The radical tradition at St Paul's, represented by these two outspoken and media-friendly clergymen, may explain the divided way in which the Dean and Chapter have dealt with the encampment in front of St Paul's of protesters who had been prevented from occupying the London Stock Exchange. This paper, in an editorial, has fiercely condemned the cathedral authorities, accusing them of wanting to put "the convenience of the heritage industry" before "morality and truth". I think that's a harsh judgement, ignoring popular expectations that a great national monument should enjoy a dignified setting, but one can be sure that Canon Collins would have shared its view.

A new guy for the bonfire

It is coming up for Guy Fawkes Day, when the people of Edenbridge in Kent are in the habit of burning modern celebrities in place of the Roman Catholic conspirator who failed so miserably to blow up King James I and the House of Lords in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. If Guy Fawkes Day is to survive at all, it seems a good idea to find new targets for the people's fury. In addition to being tortured in real life and given a travesty of a trial before his execution, Fawkes has been burnt in effigy often enough in the past 400 years. He was at least a man of principle, and many people nowadays may even feel some sympathy with his purposes.

With the exception of Anne Robinson, a woman whose sweet nature is obscured by her cruel television persona, Edenbridge has selected its targets rather well. They have included Jonathan Ross, Russell Brand, Saddam Hussein, John Prescott, Edwina Currie, Cherie Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gordon Brown and, most recently, Wayne Rooney. Who will the Edenbridge Bonfire Society pick this year? So far it isn't letting on, but I have a candidate. Why not Steve Jobs? It is time to counter the eulogies that have been showered on him since he died. Everyone from Barack Obama to Dmitry Medvedev, from Bill Gates to Rupert Murdoch, has heralded him as a "genius" and a "visionary". Gates, whom Jobs had often vilified, said it had been "an insanely great honour" to work with him. Murdoch called him "the greatest CEO of his generation".

But now comes his authorised biography by Walter Isaacson, and it turns out that Jobs was rude, cruel, abusive and neglectful of everyone, even his nearest and dearest. Isaacson, while admiring Jobs's achievements, depicts him as a man of monumental self-regard and of a thuggish nature. His critics, or anyone who argued with him, he would dismiss as "fucking dickless arseholes". Go on, Edenbridge, put him on the pyre.

The hereditary conundrum

David Cameron's plan to change the constitution so the first child of future monarchs, whether a boy or a girl, should accede to the throne sounds a sensible move in favour of equal rights for women. But the hereditary principle isn't susceptible to this kind of argument, for it is inherently inimical to the idea of equal rights for anyone. If you accept that women have the same right to reign over us as men do, why should it stop there? Why shouldn't the second-born child of a monarch, whether male or female, have the same chance as the firstborn? And what about subsequent children? What have they done to merit exclusion? The daughters of monarchs are obviously as qualified (or unqualified) to succeed them as their sons, but the only way to deal with something as illogical as a hereditary monarchy is to abolish it or to accept it in all its weirdness.