Bishop speaks out against advertising of junk food on television
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The Rt Revd Christopher Herbert, Bishop of St Albans, recently spoke in the House of Lords in support during the 2nd reading of Baroness Thornton's private member's Bill on the advertising of junk food on television.
Speaking about advertising to children. the Bishop, who is one of 26 Church of England Bishops who sit in the House of Lords, said, “we bombard them in supermarkets and on billboards, the internet and TV with suggestions that what they need is to learn how to consume. ‘Open your mouth and we will fill it’, we say.”
The Bishop argued that the UK should follow the Swedish example of banning everywhere all advertising with anything aimed at the under-12s. Emphasizing the importance of spirituality for children, the Bishop said, “Surely, childhood is a place where things of the spirit need to be given room to grow, because at that stage children are spiritually delicate. If we do not enable virtues relating to truth, gentleness, compassion and care for others to take root, we treat them simply as dustbins.”
The Bishop’s comments are part of a wider debate about the effect of consumerism on children. Today the pressure group, Compass, said that a ll advertising to children under 7 should be banned, that product placement in children’s films and television programmes should also end, and is calling for a speed limit of 20 miles per hour in residential areas to encourage children to play outside.
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Notes for editors:
1. The Bishop's contribution is included below and can be seen in context at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/ldhansrd/text/70608-0002.htm#07060842000598
Television Advertising (Food) Bill [HL]
The Lord Bishop of St Albans: My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for introducing this important Bill. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, to the House, and look forward very much indeed to his contribution.
I want to set the Bill in a slightly larger context. Noble Lords may be aware that in late mediaeval society wall paintings in the aisles of churches in western Europe frequently depicted images of a story known as “The Three Living and Three Dead”. They showed three beautifully dressed, well fed and haughty young men suddenly being confronted by three rattling, grimacing skeletons with yellow teeth. Emerging from the mouths of those skeletons was the medieval equivalent of a speech bubble, which said, “As you are now, so once were we; as we are now, so you will be”. It was, I suppose, an attempt at narrative advertising, designed to remind all those who lived that one day they would die.
In the same period, there were also tombs called transi tombs. High-status individuals were portrayed at the top level of the tomb in all their glorious finery and, at the level underneath, were shown gaunt, with the flesh falling off and covered in worms, slugs and toads. Both the story of “The Three Living and Three Dead” and the transi tombs were part of a culture in which people were reminded of the dangers of vanity, their own finitude and their accountability to God for their behaviour.
Noble Lords may wonder what all this has to do with the Bill. I argue that our society is characterized, at least in much of the media and in advertising, as being obsessed by self. Vanity has become the ruling metaphor of our age and is accompanied by its first cousin, greed. I should love to know when the use of the word “consumer” first hit the public airwaves. I guess that it was in the 1950s or 1960s and, ever since, consumption has been a dominant motif in our society. We are constantly urged to consume, and I look to the skills of a 21st century Hogarth or Rowlandson to reveal us in our grossness. I suggest that he would take the image of the British Isles, lift it up somewhere around Hadrian’s Wall and show a dustbin full of garbage being emptied into the open mouth of our country. We swallow absolutely everything we can. Even worse, we now refer to children as consumers. We do not think of them having their own lives or their own imaginative needs, and, above all, we do not consider their need for places of stillness. Instead, we bombard them in supermarkets and on billboards, the internet and TV with suggestions that what they need is to learn how to consume. “Open your mouth and we will fill it”, we say.
While this relentless targeting of children goes on, we have, at the same time, developed a terrible but understandable anxiety about children’s safety and well-being. The relationship between those two things in our society needs further research.
I suggest that we spend much, much more time in society looking at the spiritual needs of children. Far from seeing the Bill as the nuclear option, I want to up the anti even more. I should love to see us following the Swedish example of banning everywhere all advertising with anything aimed at the under-12s. The Wordsworthian child trailed clouds of glory, but the 21st-century child trails crisp packets, designer-label trainers and drink cans. It is a horrible image. Surely, childhood is a place where things of the spirit need to be given room to grow, because at that stage children are spiritually delicate. If we do not enable virtues relating to truth, gentleness, compassion and care for others to take root, we treat them simply as dustbins.
On a previous occasion, I spoke of us as a society producing fat and greedy children with thin and starving souls, but at least this Bill, which I welcome, is an attempt to ensure that the fat part of that statement is taken seriously. I wish it well.
2. Report on Compass, The Times, 13 June 2007 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1923729.ece
