Responding to recent publicity about knife crime and its devastating consequences, British churches, Christian charities, and voluntary organisations worked jointly to host Standing Together, a public rally against knife crime and youth violence, in Trafalgar Square on 6 April. It was initiated by the Ascension Trust (creators of Street Pastors in 2003). The general secretary of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland said that we, the Church, must recognise that knife crimes and violence have been ruining lives for decades. ‘Standing Together’ is encouraging churches from all Christian traditions and denominations in Britain and Ireland to ‘begin their engagement, or redouble their efforts, to combat serious youth violence’. Churches have much to offer in terms of prayer, expertise, volunteers, and resources such as buildings and equipment. May this event launch even more faith in action on our streets.

Barnet Council has applied to the High Court for an injunction to shut down Heathside Preparatory School, which charges between £9,000 and £18,000 a year and intends expanding to a new Hampstead site. The school is currently scattered across six buildings, including a church and a synagogue, and its attempt to take over a seventh premises has prompted furious backlash from locals. Parents and ex-staff are pursuing legal claims over a string of management failures, including 15 pupils having to leave because Heathside was offering GCSEs without DofE permission. There are allegations that a staff member took Year 9 students off school premises and returned drunk, and in 2018 the head-teacher tried to block the publication of a damning Ofsted report flagging multiple safeguarding issues. Since the start of this academic year, pupils and teachers have been leaving ‘in droves’.

In June 2018 the defence secretary announced that 200 British visas would be made available to Afghan interpreters and their families. He praised their ‘unflinching courage’ in serving alongside British forces in situations ‘fraught with great difficulty and danger’. But fifty translators are yet to receive their visas; so far only one has been told they can come to the UK under the new rules. The MoD said it is working hard to identify who is eligible for relocation, while a select committee acknowledged, ‘There is a broad consensus that the UK owes them a great debt of gratitude’. Meanwhile the interpreters are being stalked and threatened by IS and Taliban terrorists. At least six of them, including one still working with UK forces in Kabul, have been directly targeted by name through social media sites. Branded 'spies' and 'infidels', they were told to save themselves and their families by joining IS, or face being hunted down. See

The Archbishop of Canterbury expressed the hope that his commission on housing, Church and community would be imaginative, thoughtful, and radical when he spoke at its launch this week. ‘This isn’t a time for safe, nice words: it’s a time for a radical look at what enables people to live in communities, to build relationships’, he said. The commission, which will meet for approximately 18 months, will examine how the Church can develop its own housing policy as well as influence the national debate.