Any quotes used must be attributed to Murnaghan, Sky News

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Protestors outside St Paul’s Cathedral are currently holding a debate with the Bishop of London and the Dean of St Paul’s about the reasons behind the continued occupation of the land outside the Cathedral. Well the Bishop of London spoke to the protestors personally outside St Paul’s in the last few minutes, this is some of what he said:

ARCHBISHOP OF LONDON:
Whatever happens nobody, nobody wants violence and that is absolutely clear. There is no, there is nothing that could rubbish and distract from the very important issues that you are raising passionately at a time of adjustment, there is nothing that will efface the value of what’s been done better than violence and we all want to avoid that and I believe that goes for the Cathedral, the police, the City, everybody. So I have really come, I have really come – thank you sir, thank you very much indeed, I am used in church to an interactive process, you are much more polite than many congregations I have to say, so without more ado I am here genuinely to listen.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
The Archbishop of London there. Well the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Southwark, the Most Reverend Peter Smith, joins me now, a very good morning to you Archbishop. Do you look across the River Thames from Southwark at St Paul’s and feel a great deal of sympathy for the authorities there?

ARCHBISHOP PETER SMITH:
I feel sympathy for both sides I think. I’ve just been away for a week and I’m catching up on all this now. As far as the Cathedral authorities are concerned, it is a house of prayer and they want to keep that going. Now the protestors have a good point although again I think there is too much, an overall thing – all bankers, all people in financial institutions are bad and wicked and greedy. The problem we’ve got at the moment with the economic recession and the financial crisis is in a sense we’ve all been at fault. I think back to when I was a lad and you never bought anything unless you had the money for it, then we were getting what we called hire purchase in. I remember my dad saying when my mother wanted a washing machine, we said we can’t afford and she said we can get it on the HP. He said no, we buy what we can, when we can and with the money we’ve got. We don’t go into debt. Of course in more recent years with the advent of credit cards, people have been persuaded in this very materialist society we now live in, you’ve got to have the latest this, that and the other, oh you can get it on the credit card but they don’t use the virtue of prudence which says if I buy something I’ve got to make sure I can pay it off.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Well that speaks for a lot of the protestors outside there, there are so many messages, you’re right, coming from different segments out there but a lot of them making that very point, that we need a different way of thinking there and not necessarily motivated by envy or anything like that. They’re saying we have gone wrong, let’s rethink, but is this the forum to say it in? They are outside St Paul’s, they are getting a lot of media coverage, is this the place to do it?

ARCHBISHOP PETER SMITH:
We have a long tradition in this country of free speech, we’ve also had a lot of our ordinary liberties restricted in recent years. I would say people are perfectly right and it is okay for them to protest as long as they don’t interfere with the legitimate rights and freedom of others and that’s always a difficult balance to get.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
So sending in the police, I mean you have been in America I know, in New York and one of the encampments there was rather forcibly broken up so do you think that would be the wrong way here?

ARCHBISHOP PETER SMITH:
Well I do. I think the protestors have got to be aware and be responsible too to allow people to go about their ordinary daily business rather than what appears to be with some that they condemn anybody who is working in the City. There are very good bankers, there are very moral and ethical bankers.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Do you say that as, I mean over in Southwark, I know one of the most deprived areas of the country, just looking at the Square Mile, I know a lot of charity money from the City is directed towards your borough.

ARCHBISHOP PETER SMITH:
Well that’s the thing. Good people who are earning a lot of money in my experience, more often than not are very generous in supporting charities, it’s the system that’s gone wrong and I think the underlying culture in our society which is about the pursuit of self-interest. We’ve lost that sense of the common good, choice has become the great God, I’m free to choose whatever I want. Now that’s not realistic and I don’t think it’s neither human nor Christian. We have freedom, the good God has given us freedom of will but we have to use it responsibly. There is an awful emphasis now on human rights, good in themselves but it is becoming ridiculous in the way those laws are being interpreted but what is rarely mentioned these days is that I also have a duty to my fellow men and women. We share a common humanity, we have a common dignity and we have to look to the good of others, that’s what the Christian faith tells us. God says I love you unconditionally, you must do the same for your fellow human beings and in that way we do recognise and are aware of poverty, of needs at different types, the sick, the elderly and if we don’t do that then we become very narrow and say it’s just what I want that’s important.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN:
Archbishop, thank you very much indeed for all your thoughts today, the Archbishop of Southwark there, the Most Reverend Peter Smith.