Rev’d Helen Burnett addressed the rally at the end of the Make Them Pay demonstration. The demonstration, on which CCA joined the Faith Bloc, was organised to create pressure ahead of the Autumn budget, pushing the government to tax the vast wealth of the super-rich and of the polluting corporations to fund climate action and a just transition to a future where all can flourish. 

This is what Helen had to say.

Two thousand years ago a Palestinian Jew named Jesus of Nazareth,  a town which now lies in the Occupied West Bank, shared a radical message for the poor, and he shared that message by telling many stories.  One of those stories tells of a rich man who dies and discovers that his riches no longer help him as he suffers the torments of hell while the poor man he ignored begging at his gate, finds himself in heaven.

A thousand years later, an unknown artist painted onto the west wall of a church in the Surrey Hills a man being  tortured – his legs akimbo  over raging flames as  coins spew  out  of  his  mouth.  This medieval man had not paid his taxes. 

Six hundred years later, in the same church, these words were carved: “the cry of the poor is extreme and very sore, God grant us to  remember”.

Today as vicar of that church, I own a t-shirt which proclaims the words of Mary,  “cast down the mighty, lift up the lowly, send the rich  away empty”. 

But my faith is not about heaven and hell it is about here and now.

The struggle we are embarked on as people of all faiths and none to  ‘Make Polluters Pay’, is an ancient and long standing struggle for justice, but today the stakes are higher than ever before.  Today the  polluters are culpable for desecration of both people and of planet and it has to stop.

Recently Christian Climate Action, of which I am a proud member, issued a vision statement, a call to the church founded on the radical message of Jesus, to be more courageous and more prophetic. 

A week later, in this wonderful mobilisation rooted in love, we have come together to call on those who hold power, who hold purse strings, to be more courageous, more prophetic about lifting up the poor and crushing the profiteers.

On the brink of climate collapse we find ourselves on a path that cannot be reversed; but that shouldn’t stop us seeking justice for those who suffer now, and for those who will suffer in the future. 

So yes, Murray  Auchincloss, CEO of BP,  Wael Sawan CEO of Shell, corporations like Equinor, Drax, Black Rock, and Barclays owe the world a debt.  They are the rich men who are enjoying their wealth now, while ignoring the poor man at the gate, the global majority. 

The extractivist corporations greedily desecrating the earth know what they are doing, this greed is not borne out of ignorance.

I’d like to introduce the CEO of Shell to my one time neighbours, whose grandfather Ken Saro Wiwa was murdered for his activism. 

I’d like to transport the mega rich to sit at the wet and wrinkled feet of Salma Khutan, a woman displaced by the floods in Southern Bangladesh. 

I want them to explain to the mother of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, whose death was caused here in London by air pollution, why they continue to exploit fossil fuels and do not pay for the damage.

But we all know that change is not coming from the top.  Today empire is not interested in people, any more than it was in time of Jesus.  So change will come from the grass roots, from those who will not turn a blind eye to the suffering of their neighbour.  It is vital that we flow like a river of love, more powerful than the sludge of soulless corporate finance, to become a growing mobilisation of people demanding justice; that we continue to draw out of the shadows those who have brought us to the brink. All eyes should be on them, not the refugees who were demonised here in Whitehall just a week ago.

Today in Whitehall Jesus would be turning over the tables of injustice.

Today we must tell stories that name the real causes of inequality, rejecting the narrative that wants us to turn against each other. 

Our story is  more  powerful than the hatred we saw here last week.

Our story places the blame  with the billionaires, and we need to tell it loud and clear.