THIS IS PETER HITCHENS'S MAIL ON SUNDAY COLUMN

I’m always a bit suspicious of the sort of person who argues by saying ‘What would Jesus have said?’ They usually mean that they are quite sure Jesus would have agreed with them.

My favourite example of this was always the Blair creature, reproved by Cardinal Basil Hume for taking Catholic communion when he wasn’t a Catholic. The then Labour leader peevishly responded: ‘I wonder what Jesus would have made of it.’

My guess is that Jesus would have told Mr Blair (who converted to Rome once he’d left Downing Street) to decide whether his faith or his political career came first. But it’s only a guess, based on Our Lord’s known retorts to one or two other uppity lawyers. And, of course, it’s what I think.

Now we’re being asked, by the Dean of Durham, what Jesus would do about the migrant camp at Calais. This is because of the BBC’s plan to broadcast in today’s Songs Of Praise sections filmed at a makeshift church in that camp.

This is not by any means the only such lecture from that direction I’ve heard recently.

I’m not bothered much by the broadcast. BBC bias is a fact of life and that’s that. And I can’t say that screening film from such a place on Songs Of Praise is a bad idea in itself. Christians ought to be thinking about such things.

But thinking is what these prelates and preachers are not doing. Is it as simple as they claim? I am far from sure. The founder of the Christian church was not actually a guerrilla fighter or a Russell Brand-type demagogue. He had nothing against people obeying laws or fulfilling their obligations. I’d say, rather the opposite.

He was himself a genuine refugee, hiding in Egypt from the real, murderous wrath of Herod. But when the danger was past, his family didn’t settle in Egypt but returned home.

Nowhere in the Beatitudes did Jesus say ‘Blessed are the queue-jumpers’, trying to gain an advantage at the expense of others. This is what the people at Calais are.

They are not prepared to apply for asylum or seek visas and work permits in the normal way. Their actions make people in this country less willing to grant any asylum, or to welcome any migration.

They force their way into lorries and trains, or break down a lawfully constructed fence, sometimes clutching drawn knives as they do so. Many destroy their passports so that the truth about their origins and claims can never be proved. Why precisely is it Christian to endorse this behaviour?

As the Left-wing media have rightly been pointing out, only quite a small share of the migrants arriving in Europe from Africa and elsewhere actually end up at Calais. They are already out of danger (if they were ever in it) and have chosen to be there.

As for the parable of the Good Samaritan, the hero of the story didn’t tell other people to be compassionate and generous. He did it himself. I am full of admiration for any individual who offers to take such migrants into his own home indefinitely, and to bear the charges (as the Good Samaritan did) of their housing, food and medical treatment.

But I have none at all for the pulpit Samaritan who tells others in our overcrowded country that they must suffer for the sake of his own peace of mind.

Amnesty's now a lost cause

After what must be at least 30 years, I’m finally going to stop being a member of Amnesty. I joined because I thought it was a good deed in a wicked world, working to free prisoners of conscience from the dungeons of Right-wing and Left-wing despots.

Prompted by Amnesty, I wrote polite letters to such despots, urging the release of people I often disagreed with, because I thought then and think now that nobody should be imprisoned for expressing an opinion.

I must admit it has been a while since I did that (or was asked to do so), but the end of the Cold War did not end the need for such a campaign. China, Asia and the Muslim world still have plenty of political prisoners. But Amnesty seems to have developed other ideas.

A few years ago, it began to campaign on behalf of convicts on death row in the USA.

It’s a perfectly reasonable cause – though I don’t happen to agree with it, being a convinced supporter of the death penalty in free countries. But it has absolutely nothing to do with prisoners of conscience. The USA, for all its faults, does not execute people for holding opinions.

What’s more, it’s politically partisan. Left-wing people tend to oppose capital punishment, Conservative people such as me tend to support it. The whole point of Amnesty was that it was a place where we could forget our divisions in the cause of liberty.

I protested, uselessly, and carried on paying my dues. But now Amnesty has decided to support decriminalisation (they mean legalisation) of prostitution. Once again, it’s a political, partisan position. Even if I agreed with it (which I don’t) I really cannot see what it has to do with prisoners of conscience. I suspect it will make it harder for Amnesty to campaign for such people, its real concern.

Like so many other once-noble charities, Amnesty has lost its way. I’m sure it’s not remotely interested in what I think of its behaviour and I’m sure it won’t make any difference. But that’s enough. I’m very sorry, but I’m off.

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An exasperated Sherlock Holmes would often scold Dr Watson with the words: ‘You see, but you do not observe.’

His point was that the clues were all there in front of us, if only we had the sense to see what mattered and what was connected.

Take the horrible stabbing of the teacher Vincent Uzomah by a teenage pupil. Much fuss has been made about the boy’s use of a racial insult.

But far more important is the fact that the knife-wielding child is, at the age of 14, a cannabis user (when arrested for the knife crime, he was also charged with cannabis possession). I more or less knew that he would be as soon as I heard of the crime.

The correlation is incredibly strong. Why is it not investigated?

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Given our recent record of pouring petrol on to the flames of war in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan, may I suggest we are very careful about training Ukrainian soldiers? There are some pretty sinister people in Ukraine’s chaotic army. We may not want to be associated with some of the things they are going to do.

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Do all the attackers of Jeremy Corbyn not see that his supporters thrive on their assaults? This is a great revolt by those who are sick of being told what to do by people like Alastair Campbell.