Share this article
‘If it wasn’t for my kids, I might have killed myself. This system is just horrible.
'I waited nine weeks for universal credit. They told me they didn’t get the form they needed, so I sent it off again. Then they sent me another one to fill in, and it just carried on like that. It’s sorted now, but it took so, so long.
'For nine weeks I had to rely on my mum and some friends, just doing what I could to get by. It’s a nightmare and I’d rather be back in jail – really, I would.
Though he has been listed by The Times as one of Britain’s most powerful lawyers, human rights champion Clive Stafford Smith, has never been paid by one of his hundreds of clients. He has devoted his career to defending people who have been sentenced to death in the US and to those held in Guantanamo Bay on accusations of terrorism.
Reprieve, the organisation Mr Stafford Smith founded, provides free legal representation and investigations for those facing execution, torture and extrajudicial imprisonment. With the help of voluntary supporters, Reprieve also puts pressure on governments to tackle human rights abuses.
Reform spoke to Mr Stafford Smith at Greenbelt Festival, where he was speaking about continuing the work of Reprieve in the era of Trump.
A two-minute film calling on Christians to safeguard God’s world by working towards a future free of nuclear weapons was released this week.
The United Reformed Church along with four other Christian denominations – the Baptist Union, the Methodist Church, the Quakers, and the Church of Scotland – is distributing the film to thousands across the world in a joint call to action.
The Bible is full of rivers - and other great bodies of water - into which Bible people go with more, or less, willingness ... Will we be cleansed or drowned? Will we cross or sink? And what is waiting on the other side? Baptism into truth isn't a one-off thing. But we stand, both as souls and as churches, at the brink of much that we neither choose nor understand. Shall we trust and jump in, or linger un-washed and un-travelled on familiar shores?
