The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 22

THE GUARDIAN Thursday January 28 1993 For more than 65 years, Donald Soper has been preaching the perfectibility of society in the streets of London. As his 90th birthday approaches, the lord of the soapbox seems all but defeated. Yet he remains convinced that only by facing the hecklers face- to face can he preach his gospel of hope The prophet in his own country INGLAND used to be a country where tolerant and rational argument could happen in public, at least in Hyde Park. Lord Soper thinks it still can. He preaches and argues with hecklers there every Sunday, as he has for 40 years.

Next Sunday he will be there again on his 90th birthday. He does the same thing every Wednesday at Tower Hill, as he has done, whatever the weather, in peace and in war, for more than 65 years. He still defends, with parliamentary elegance and schoolmasterly patience, his unshakeable belief in the perfectibility of man and society, the futility of war and every other violence, the need to transcend nationalism (even that of Europe) and the wickedness of retributive justice. But now he is all but defeated shouted down by morons, sex maniacs, verbal exhibitionists and the assorted bloody-minded. "There are two in particalar whocome every Sunday.

Both are deranged. One wants to be a speaker himself and the other has sexual problems. Both call me very obscene names. Normally I can see hecklers off by superior logic and practised style: but this is very difficult. Obscenity is illegal, but I can't call the police.

That would be the wrong way." A heckler calls him a cowardly fag. got and yells out: "I wish your mother had kept her legs crossed," which is not conducive to reasoned discussion. Yet Donald Soper remains convinced public hustings are the way to impart a message not only the Methodist way, though he considers Methodists "the preaching order of the Holy Catholic but the honest way. "It's a discipline for which I'm eternally grateful. Every church sermon should have hecklers.

So many parsons and others are never exposed to any immediate challenging of what they What's gone wrong today isn't just the thugs and maniacs: the world has become so complex that people give up. "There is widespread cynicism: people find it so difficult to begin to try to understand the complexity, and they give it up as a bad job." It was easier in the Don Camillo days when communist and Christian values faced each other across the somebody asks a question about sex you double the crowd and halve the quality of argument' impart a message not only the remember anyone in the old days WEST MISSION LONDON: OF THE METHODIST CHURCH At Hyde Park, Soper holds his corner PHOTOGRAPH: DAVID SILLITOE globe. "Now it's all got so complicated and muddled and it's produced a decline in the quality of heckling. "So many of the idols and ideals of the past are regarded with contempt, or at least derision. We need a return to some kind of idealism.

That old polarity was essentially true and I'm coming in my old age to feel more strongly about the right and the wrong." Another disaster: "The whole sex panorama has changed. I can't 1 co asking questions about abortion or of homosexuality, but now the field's wide open. If somebody asks a question in Hyde Park about sex you double the size of the crowd and halve the quality of the argument. "There's an unhealthy amount of preoccupation with sex. We know the mechanism of sex as our fathers didn't and we've got to marry our moral concepts with that.

"We've an enormous way to go be fore getting a Christian view because Jesus said nothing about it and the churches said very little except getting it wrong time and time again, as over women priests, homosexuality and the rest. 'No sex before what rubbish. Holding a girl's hand is Donald Soper's face is still ruddy and handsome, his wispy white hair well combed. His manner is modest, never claiming unique insight, even admitting there could be an element of vanity in his obession with openair preaching. "You can say I'm an addict or you can say I've a calling.

That's not a credit to me, just a condition." His Hyde Park audience is over 100, sometimes many more. At Tower was eloquent about the wicked despair behind the death penalty, cloth cap came in with quotes from Brady and Hindley's victims. It was, of course, a horribly unequal contest. The coarser the comments from cloth cap, the betterturned and more parliamentary came Soper's pained rejoinders, the more his old fans enjoyed him. There is a class undertone in this entertainment: perhaps that is why it is becoming defunct, or at least impracticable.

But Soper stands or falls on his principles particularly socialism, which he identifies with a human sketch of the Kingdon of God, and pacifism which is synonymous for him with Christianity, He is passionately convinced that you change society to make people better, not the other way round. Tortes, he says, could never make good Christians, though Ted Heath, exceptionally, "has become a lot wiser in 20 "For me Socialism is the extension of family life to the economic and po- Hill it's an intimate dozen or two, mainly old friends and old enemies, who have been going for years. "I don't think there's much point talking to you," he told a clothcapped moron affectionately after his seventh vindictive and pointless interruption. "I've dealt with you for many years and you don't seem to improve." Soper was at his most pedagogic. Of course the cloth cap kept coming back, well nourished on tabloid morality.

"Have you ever witnessed a murder done?" And just when Soper Standing up to be counted: Donald Soper addressing a lunchtime meeting in Deansgate, Manchester, in 1853 litical. When that is ignored, when in the latest manifesto of the Labour Party, Clause 4 is not mentioned and the word 'socialism' is not mentioned, that is almost a desperate situation." Soper's pacifism has developed. He now thinks it's not only right but inevitable because wars are no longer practicable. And he does admit that you may get a short-term situation in which you have to fight, but that's like one clip in a film: it means little by itself. You have to write a nonviolent script.

"I believe what's morally wrong becomes inoperable: that war turns in upon itself. In Iraq, say, you're defeated by the very processes which are available." His meetings are as topical as a TV bulletin. Asked yesterday about the appeal by the Chief Rabbi for armed intervention in Bosnia, he said the Chief Rabbi was wrong. "The history of this poor planet on which we survive is a comment on the fact that violence in the last analysis produces more violence and does not provide an answer to the problems it seeks to address." And then he was back to 1918, when believed that the terrible violence had created a new That was too much for cloth cap, who said enigmatically: "Jingoism." Which got Soper into his long suffering. headmaster mode.

"You really mustn't think that just because you recognise a word you can comment on it. I was talking about the effect on ordinary people who believed that violence had created a new beginning." Even then cloth cap did not give up. Nor did Soper, who commented: "Our friend is having a field day, but I would suggest to him that he should try to understand what I'm trying to And the moralistic topical chatshow went on. Constitutional changes after the Charles-Diana debacle? "I'm a republican, but I'm not in favour of marching on Bucking. ham Palace.

It's ridiculous to talk about scrapping monarchy unless you have some conception of what you want to put in its place. "I don't believe you could have a worthwhile alternative in a republican arena unless you got rid of the Army. Pacifism goes far beyond refusing to fight wars. Armies represent the capacity of violent action to overthrow any other form of governmental power, so somebody elected to be a president could come under the same condemnation as a Disestablishment of the Church? "I regard the establishment as a nonsense in philosophy and theology and as impracticable in every other way nothing to do with religion and everything to do with shoring up a particular concept of national They have just put up a small plaque in honour of Donald Soper's 65 years at Tower Hill. He was already in full and practised cry when Mussolini bombed Abyssinia in the thirties.

He once carried on talking while one of Hitler's rockets came droning up the Thames (his audience did not scatter)..