Philosophy

This page includes (click to select each section): My CV:... What I stand for:... My parents set a great example

My CV

Doctor

I am 60, a medical doctor and volunteer anglican clergyman living in Birmingham and married with 2 adult sons.

I grew up in Belfast where my father was Professor of Surgery. I owe my Christian faith to my parents' kindness towards me and to the talks at a beach mission at Bude in Cornwall when I was 5. I was educated at Monkton Combe School near Bath and at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London qualifying as a doctor in 1970.

I did junior hospital jobs but left clinical work in 1974 to study theology in Nottingham because I thought the church ought to have had more of an answer to the national malaise which led to the three day working week in 1973. That troubled me a lot. The garage where I was getting my car undersealed could only get electricity to do it on three days of the week. I thought - What a shambles! I thought the church ought to have an answer to the major problems facing the country in those days which have never really been resolved.

Curate

From 1977 to 1980 as a curate in Derby, I loved the church's central message but despaired of it really reaching the heart of the nation. It was in Derby that I met my wife.

Trainee surgeon

After more orthopaedic surgical training in Derby, Bangor and Birmingham (1980 to 1985) and passing my surgical exams, I left to work freelance for the release of Christians in prison in the Soviet Union.

46 day fast in a replica punishment cell

I locked myself up in a replica cell in the back of a Birmingham city centre church for the 46 days of Lent 1986 on bread and water with my head shaved and wearing prison-type clothes to campaign for the release of the poetess Irina Ratushinskaya, whose conditions I was trying to emulate. Her vivacious delightful poetry didn't amuse the regime who sentenced her to 7 years in a labour camp in the Urals to be followed by 5 years exile in Siberia.

BBC TV national news covered my vigil. I became something of a landmark around Birmingham. Many people visited me and sent cards to the Soviet Ambassador. Simon Ward and other famous actors called to visit and to get me another piece on TV News. Comedian actor Frankie Howerd rang me and had a long supportive chat. Friends kept me company by day and at night. It was a great team effort.

Reykjavik Summit Conference

When, in October 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev announced that they were going to meet in Reykjavik for a Summit Conference, I knew I had to be there to lobby for Irina's release. The Soviet delegation had a good chuckle at my question as to whether Irina would be released as a gesture of goodwill on the eve of the Summit and I returned to my lodgings at the Salvation Army hostel.

Released!

Early next morning my wife rang from Birmingham - You've had a message: They released Irina from prison yesterday evening, unconditionally! I was over the moon and haven't recovered since! I still believe I can change the world!

Read the book about it! Irina by Dick Rodgers

Berlin Wall falls

The next five prisoners I worked for, one by one, were all released within a few months once the Soviets became aware of my commitment to their case. I then took my dwindling prisoner list round and round the diplomatic offices in Vienna and other major capitals and to the UN until there were none left and the Berlin Wall fell and I had to go out and get a proper job.

My part in Communism's downfall!

Spike Milligan wrote a book about his otherwise uncelebrated war record entitled Adolf Hitler: My part in his downfall. I could write one entitled Soviet Tyranny: how I polished it off! I'm proud to have changed the history of Europe and reshaped the world. Of course there were a few other people involved, I admit it; people like Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and vast armies and military industrial complexes etc, etc. But I was there with my mock prison cell and and then my rucsac and endless leaflets and postcards, with my shoe leather pounding the pavements of Vienna calling in at embassies till I was blue in the face! The brave people who languished in prison camps or lit candles in churches under the noses of the East German Secret Police for democracy and a fair society in the Soviet empire played a part and I tried to help them. Nobody can say exactly what led to what but it was good to be around when it all happened. If you are committed you can change things. It's better than shrugging your shoulders and walking away.

Campaigning to stop a war in Sudan

Then from 1993 to 1997 I shuttled back and forth, as a self-appointed freelance quasi-diplomat, to the Sudan meeting the government and the rebels trying to get them to agree a peace settlement based on a referendum on the political destiny of the south. I stayed in �3.50 a night hotels and wandered around with my rucsac and brief case until the ministers and rebel leaders would talk to me.

That campaign wasn't as neat as the Soviet prisoner work but the peace agreement is now signed and Southern Sudan is heading towards a happier existence, many years overdue. I kept thinking - The British government should be doing this ... not me. Of course they were, but they could and should have been more active in my view. Actually, the diplomats were OK; it was the lack of ministerial driving force behind them that was deficient.

Doctor again!

From 1997 to 2004 I worked as an assistant surgeon doing orthopaedic clinics at Birmingham Children's Hospital while I helped to care for my elderly parents in their last years.

Founded a party

In early 2004 I left medicine yet again and registered THE COMMON GOOD as a political party along with two friends. I have stood in four elections since then. The electoral high spot was when I got 8,600 votes in the European Election even though I did come last! I have not developed it into a membership movement partly because the vision was so precious to me that I did not want it hijacked by others with a different agenda. Now I see, though, that I do need to enlist the support of others if my vision is to have wider influence.

Spelling out what I stand for

My Christian world-view

My political philosophy is based on my understanding of the world from a Christian point of view.

Basically I want Britain to do a good job making the world a better place and we will enjoy to benefits of being a cohesive, purposeful society as we do so.

All of us need a purpose to our lives.

As a nation we need to share an honourable purpose that we can all feel part of. If we have no purpose, we are a purposeless society... or in other words ...an aimless society wandering through our lives with no sense of destiny and disoriented, having lost our bearings.

Much of life in Britain today has no long-term aim in any profound sense. We need to embrace a sense of national purpose so that we can see that our individual life's work is contributing to a team effort towards a goal that really matters.

Britain's Wartime team-spirit

Britain's wartime generation had a shared goal. It was to safeguard our nation and the world from tyrannical dictatorship.

That generation looks back with pride at those tough times when they chipped in and did their bit in their team effort to defend our nation. We rightly honour them on Poppy Day each year but that is not enough. We should honour them also by using the freedom they won for us to devote our lives to a worthy goal and to work for it together.

Going to work to pay the bills

Many people go to work to pay the bills to survive. You have to. But survival alone doesn't satisfy us and, in any case, if survival is our only goal we are doomed to failure because we die eventually.

Other people go to work to pay the bills to care for their family. That's good as far as it goes, but eventually they all die too. If that is our limit we have done our bit to perpetuate a cycle of life from the cradle of one generation to that of the next. That's good but limited. It is just the cycle of life going round in circles, not necessarily going towards a goal.

Doing a good job but keeping your head down

Yet others go to work to do a good job for their customers and for society as a whole. Again, this is good but even more satisfying would be to be able to see such work as part of a team effort towards an honourable goal to the attainment of which our whole society is devoted.

Say, for instance, a surgeon works hard to get someone back to health but that the patient uses his new found energies purely for his own advantage; then the surgeon has helped the patient and nobody else. If, however, the patient uses his restored health and strength to serve others and to contribute to the life and calling of the nation,then the surgeon's work benefits people far and wide and helps the nation to be effective in the world.

Banging your head against a brick wall

There seem to be lots of professional people and others trying to a good job in their own field, and who yet lament that it does not change things at the root cause of the ills of British life. Their valued contribution helps preserve the good things about life in Britain but is undermined by bigger, fundamental problems in British society which make so many people feel that they are banging their head against a brick wall, struggling to make a decisive contribution but never quite managing it.

We need each other and we are at our best when we are all involved in a team effort towards something really honourable.

The obligation to have a great time!

Lack of a purpose in life leaves many to the futility of just feeling they've got to have a great time but it can all get a bit hollow and trivial. Having a great time, in such a trivial sense, wastes lives and does a lot of damage especially if it involves drink, drugs, sex and gambling or just wasting what could be achieved in the prime years of a person's life.

Christians avoid political issues

I'm a Christian but sadly, many Christians, avoid political issues, burying themselves, either in the spiritual side of worshipping God or just in despair and timidity. Others think the whole thing is too complicated so they get on with some limited area of work that they feel they can understand and never put their life in the context of the bigger picture. I sympathise, but it is not the right way forward. The direction of our society is the responsibility of us all.

We have really good news for the world and our God came into world affairs as a human being. He cares about people's bodies and their economic and political affairs as well as their souls. Indeed he sees people as a whole and has no pleasure in us if we wilfully ignore our neighbours needs. We need to take time to try to understand the big picture and how we fit into it.

God as both king and father

God, as described by Jesus in the Bible, is both a king and a father. He wants earthly kings to be like him in being fathers to their people. In other words he wants rulers to take good care of the people for whom they are responsible. He wants us to stand up for such values on earth.

All Britain does should exalt the style of leadership which cares for the human needs of ordinary people and enables them to live a full and abundant life as God intends. All Britain does politically and commercially, must be true to this principle. It must be our consistent message. We must earn a reputation as a nation that cares about basic human need.

Britain's behaviour on the world stage and in the world marketplace must always promote a fair and truthful world order where all can live in peace and prosperity. We must work towards physical realities of eternal value that will stand us in good stead on Judgement Day.

Now is the time to join in on this team effort. How great if we can look back in future years and see that Britain in the early 21st century enjoyed a period of unity and purposefulness that did us good and that helped to make the world a fairer place. How great to be able to look back and feel proud to have been part of it.

Saving NHS: British Rail: NO to PFI: Inspiring the young people

I want to save the NHS as a simple innocent public service ethos instead of a the secrecy, complexity, ruthlessness and expense of a profit-driven commercial enterprise.

I want to renationalise the railway and not impose crippling inflationary road tolls as the government wants to do.

I want to stop PFI (the Private Finance Initiative) whereby the costs of our own generation's debt-funded infrastructure projects are deceitfully postponed for our children and grandchildren to have to pay for.

I want to enthuse our young people to get stuck into the maths and sciences upon which our future economy depends.

Prof Harold and
Mrs Margaret Rodgers,
my late parents.

My parents set a great example.

I had loving parents. I was born after my father's return from service as a military surgeon in the Second World War.

My Dad a war hero and surgeon

During the retreat across northern France in 1940 he took the place of a Jewish surgeon who had been ordered to remain with the wounded and be captured with them.

At the last moment, my father's superiors changed their minds and sent an ambulance to rescue him. Later, in Tunisia and Italy he continued surgical operations under bombardment, saving many lives. The citation for his military OBE reads, "This officer has been outstanding."

As Professor of Surgery in Belfast for 26 years, he devoted himself to the public service and to the welfare of his trainees whose portraits he treasured. Even during the "Troubles" he continued to turn out at night to care for the injured, sometimes driving through gunfire to get to the hospital.

My Mum and Dad's loving home

He and my mother made a loving home for my sisters and me. He died of cancer aged 93 in 2001, retaining a spark of boyishness to the end of his life.

I want the justice and kindness of God to be the model for our dealings with each other in Britain and throughout the world and to foster the ideal of public service for the Common Good which my father wonderfully exemplified. I hope to work with many others to bring it about.

The Common Good