BBC Radio 4 2015-11-12

Good morning.

Mantelpieces across the country will shortly be decorated with cards depicting various themes judged appropriate to the season – there will be more robins than I normally spot in my garden, and more snow than we ever seem to get in a British winter these days, and also, I confidently predict, more sightings of a young woman breast-feeding a child than in the chamber of the House of Commons, where breastfeeding is currently banned.

When that ban was discussed on Tuesday, one former Minister warned that to allow MPs to breastfeed in the House of Commons could risk ridicule from the tabloid press. I wouldn’t underestimate the capacity of the tabloid press to ridicule almost anything, but the opportunities to do so here aren’t very obvious to me at least. Of course there are always issues in a work place about how to accommodate the needs of mothers while maintaining a productive working environment for everyone else – but given the general levels of noise in the chamber of the House of Commons, it would be the ability of babies to concentrate on the matter in hand which would concern me, not the danger of Honourable Members being distracted by the odd snuffling noise.

But whatever worries opponents of change have, there are, I would suggest some rather compelling points on the other side. First of all, of course, the best health advice seems to be that babies should be fed exclusively on breast milk for the first six months, and continue to breastfeed up to the age of two. But I’m inclined to think that not only the babies, but the House of Commons itself might actually benefit from allowing mothers to feed their children in the chamber.

Back to the mantelpiece for a moment. I don’t mean to knock robins and snowy Christmas trees, but the image of Mary nursing her child has a rather longer pedigree, and carries rather greater cultural significance. Such images are found in the 3rd century catacombs in Rome and were immensely popular in the Middle Ages and beyond, in paintings, sculpture, in manuscript illustrations, and in every sort of decorative art. Now precisely what this scene does, along with other depictions of Mary and her child, is to direct our attention to sentiments of tenderness, care, devotion and service, as worthy of our profound regard and meditation. And it also reminds each and every one of us that our lives, like the life even of the Son of God himself, started in utter dependence.

Amidst all the noise of the House of Commons, which tends to give the impression that politics is a matter of clash and conflict, of competition and of cut and thrust, the quiet scene of a breastfeeding mother and a needy infant might serve as a sign or token of a different vision of human relations – a vision which might just challenge some of the ways in which we conduct and conceive our political and social lives.