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The following blog was presented some time ago. It has herein been updated to highlight the misleading recent media rush to sanitise the fundamentalist worldview of Ann Widdecombe, following her recent death.
So was she a Saint or a Bigot - read on and judge for yourself...
So was she a Saint or a Bigot - read on and judge for yourself...
Ann Widdecombe was a former British Conservative Party politician and had been a novelist since 2000. She was a Privy Councillor and the Member of Parliament for Maidstone from 1987 to 1997 and for Maidstone and The Weald from 1997 to 2010.
She was a social conservative and a member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship.
She retired from politics at the 2010 general election. Since 2002 she has also made many television and radio appearances, including as a television presenter. She is a convert from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism.
Ann Widdecombe recently defended her stance against gay marriage proposals via saying:
"Is it bigoted to recognise that the complementarity of a man and a woman in a union open to procreation is unique and cannot be replicated by other unions?"
"The real bigots, those who really deserve to be described as such, the real extremists, the real nasties, are those who believe that those who dissent from their views have no right to do so and that the state itself should silence them."
My interest however in whether or not she is (was) a bigot started some time ago, long ‘before’ this event.
Her grounds for leaving the CofE were many and varied it
seems. However, it would appear that Catholicism greatly appealed to her restricted
belief that women should ‘know their place’ as she stated:
“The
ordination of women was the last straw”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Widdecombe
It seems to me that unless one shares Ann Widdecombe’s fundamentalist Christian zeal for life then one is very likely to be perceived by her as the “Enemy”!
It seems to me that unless one shares Ann Widdecombe’s fundamentalist Christian zeal for life then one is very likely to be perceived by her as the “Enemy”!
The Satanic Ritual Abuse scare was created by evangelists, ruined whole families and cost the trusting UK tax payer millions.
Blinkered church attitudes just like Widdecombe’s helped to fuel the fires of intolerance and ignorance and have no place in a modern pluralistic, multi-faith community. No! Such ecclesiastical-based closed minds should be resigned to the Dark Ages, along with the horrors of the Inquisition, where they truly belong.
This woman may have therefore seemed like a crusading saint to some, yet a raving religious bigot to others.
Personally, as a peace-loving Pagan I find such intolerance utterly nauseating. Check out her fire and brimstone bitterness from 8 January 1995 in the Catholic press...
Paganism – a direct challenge to God
"Last week I made a passing reference to paganism in this column pointing out that it is not an endearing eccentricity but is of the Devil.
It is worrying enough that it should be taking hold of the minds of the young but that the Establishment should be making it respectable is well nigh beyond belief.
The appointment of a pagan 'chaplain' at a major university deserved all the horror which greeted it.
The fact that a Christian chaplain then refused to condemn such a move and yet himself remains in post speaks volumes for the laxity of his Church.
The growth of paganism however, is not something we can afford to be lax about. The young have always searched for spiritual fulfilment beyond the mainstream Christian Church.
In the sixties gurus and meditation were the fashion and people who never bothered to attend a service at the local church travelled thousands of miles in search of spiritual enlightenment.
At that time too, the Occult wielded a deadly fascination.
Cults continue to flourish and divide families and however extravagant their claims, can still find willing followers.
Such a preoccupation with anything but Christianity is disturbing but paganism is in a league of its own for it sets up false gods in direct opposition to Christianity.
It is possible to understand allegiance to the major religions while at the same time rejecting them but paganism cannot be reduced to a dispute about prophets and the role of the deity.
Rather it represents a direct challenge to Him.
Giving paganism any sort of official recognition is a dangerous business. Although I suppose some might hope that it might also kill it off altogether as the essence of its attraction to many young people will be its anti-establishment nature!
The only good aspect of all this searching for alternative religion is that it demonstrates a concern for spiritual fulfilment. What is it which attracts people to cults?
One feature common to a lot of cults is their authoritarianism, the insistence of absolute obedience, conformity and sacrifice.
Odd, isn't it, that these are the very characteristics which the modern Christian Church is so anxious to shed in an attempt to be attractive to today's young people?
A friend of mine recently told me about a young person who had joined a cult so strict that the leader could dictate when his followers were allowed to have children.
The irony is that the young person's father has always been a vocal opponent of Humanae Vitae.
God gives us free will and what we do with it is up to us but it is also incumbent on Church leaders to warn of the consequences of using it in ways which incur His displeasure.
To tolerate is not to promote and it is quite wrong that any Christian leader, be he bishop, priest or chaplain, should fail to call a false god a false god.
1995 should be the year the Church gives clear and terrible warnings about the dangers of the Occult, cults in general, paganism, satanism and the like and it must make it quite clear that the dangers are not to the Church itself but to the individuals' own souls.
Come to consider it, how often do we hear our leaders talk about 'souls' when addressing secular audiences?
We hear much about 'spiritual development', 'psychological balance', 'effects on character', 'brainwashing', etc. But souls? salvation? Heaven and Hell? The fear of God?
Yet I suspect that if Church leaders did talk more in those terms to the world at large, then the world at large might have a bit more respect for Christianity and not be so eager to seek spiritual solace elsewhere.
As I pointed out not long ago in this column, Mother Teresa and the Pope are regarded by those under the age of thirty five as the most suitable persons to write a new set of commandments and neither is noted for compromising the truth or speaking in secular language."
Her following diatribe was accessed from the Catholic Times, 9th October 1994, in which Widdecombe rants on about Paganism and Occultism, like some fixated Spanish Inquisition Witch Burner....
Judging by her inflammatory comments would this diatribe not indicate that she is highly prejudiced against Pagan folks, via her misleading and extremely dangerous reference to grave desecrations and the Pagan religion? Her unwarranted comments against spiritualists may also fall into the same category of fundamentalist narrow-mindedness against others.
Her following diatribe was accessed from the Catholic Times, 9th October 1994, in which Widdecombe rants on about Paganism and Occultism, like some fixated Spanish Inquisition Witch Burner....
Judging by her inflammatory comments would this diatribe not indicate that she is highly prejudiced against Pagan folks, via her misleading and extremely dangerous reference to grave desecrations and the Pagan religion? Her unwarranted comments against spiritualists may also fall into the same category of fundamentalist narrow-mindedness against others.
Ann Widdecombe liked to petrify naïve parents about imaginary dangers of minority faiths, yet conveniently fails to ever highlight the ‘real’ religious predators that reside within the confines of her own bogus belief system.
https://saff.nfshost.com/blackmus2.htm Here is the full text transcription of Ann Widdecombe's column from the Catholic Times, October 9, 1994
Know your enemy - the Prince of Darkness
"EVERY so often God does something which so patently bears His personal stamp that the forces of secularism have severe difficulty explaining it away, although that does not stop them trying, and very so often the Devil does it too.
Christians of course see God and the Devil everywhere but if a lot of people deny the existence of the former even fewer believe in the latter. It is so much more comfortable not to. Alas there is a sizeable, or at any rate a vocal, collection of theologians who deny the existence of his Satanic Majesty.
Recently the Devil manifested himself pretty unmistakably in Kent where some young men were convicted of desecrating graves under the influence of Satanic music.
I will not offend readers with too much detail but their practices included the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer backwards, inverted crucifixes and teeshierts [sic] emblazoned with blasphemy.
The lyrics of the music they followed concerned desecration of graves and the rule of Satan and paganism. The statements of the originators of some of the music and of the convicted themselves made frightening reading.
How much more evidence do we need that our young people are being subjected to some pretty dark influences? Who can forget the terrible parallels between scenes in a horror video and the real events of the murder of James Bulger?
If good art and literature can uplift and ennoble then depraved literature, videos, films, music and television programmes can corrupt and debase. Yet those who produce these things seem unable to come to terms with that very simple fact.
In a highly secular world children are allowed to play with Ouija boards as if they represented nothing more sinister than ludo. The occult is fashionable and spiritualist mediums go into action on the radio as if they were light entertainment which is exactly how rather too many perceive them. Yet those who lap up this sort of entertainment would pour scorn on orthodox Christianity.
I have written before in these columns of the decline of the concept of fearing God. I make no apology for saying that every child should be taught to fear the Devil too, not in the sense of being frightened of him but of being vigilant for his attacks.
The real responsibility however lies with those who produce the books, the games and the films. Creating a demand for that which corrupts is to create a demand for the demise of what is good. The consumer needs to be vigilant too. Nobody would produce vile work if it did not sell, therefore those who want to see the triumph of good (even if they are too secular to say God) should not buy.
PARENTS have an enormous responsibility too. Can you honestly say you have listened to all the lyrics in your children’s pop collection or do you just stick cotton wool in your ears when the awful noise breaks out?
I know that my attitude with my nephews and niece when they were younger was to flee the dreadful din rather than enquire what the alleged music was all about.
Then there is the baby sitter. Is she as strict a censor of television programmes as you are? And what do the kids watch when they are in the homes of their friends and what is the attitude of those friends’ parents?
It is all horribly difficult and a far cry from the days when children’s innocence was protected as a priority.
I have just returned from church where the priest preached an uncompromising homily about going to Hell and what we have to do to avoid going there.
Perhaps that is a message we should hear more often for if the consequence of dabbling with evil is no consequence at all then it is not surprising people are tempted to fool about with supernatural forces.
What effect did those desecrators of graves expect on their immortal souls?
None, is probably the answer because they have not grown up in a society which fears both God and the Devil.
These days I often picture them all on strike in the headquarters of perdition, the Devil’s minions camped in deck chairs by the burning lakes, because so much of their work is being done for them on earth, sometimes sadly by men of the Cloth.
THE Kent episode gives the lie to that picture. Lucifer’s working dashed hard and getting results.
When I was small one of my favourite hymns was ‘Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war’..... It is war which we have to wage against evil and it is not a war which admits any truce.
I know of no war which has been won by the generals’ refusal to acknowledge the existence of the enemy. So let’s hear rather more about the Prince of Darkness."
If this shed full of bigotry was not enough to bring in allegations of religious intolerance, Widdecombe outrageously attacked the Pagan religion, via the Catholic Times, once again in 18th June 1995.
Perjury at the font and paganism in the pulpit
"Some of my best friends are atheists but it nevertheless came as a shock when one of them recently revealed to me that she is a Godmother to the child of a mutual acquaintance. She regarded my horror first with indulgent amusement and then, faced with my persistent disapproval, with considerable indignation. She was, she insisted, fond of the child and wished to be associated with its welfare.When I pointed out that she could enter a civil undertaking to look after the child in the event of its parents’ death and that until that time she could enter a special relationship with the small girl in question which need not have a religious foundation she was affronted.
Anyway, she assured me, the parents knew that she was not a believer and did not mind. No, she had not talked to the Vicar. She had sought no such interview.The vicar may or may not have been at fault but either he did not enquire into the convictions - or lack of them - of the godparents or else the parents misled him. Either way it amounts to a sorry tale of perjury at the font. What really hurt, however, was the final defence mounted by my friend: "Well, it’s only Church of England, so it doesn’t matter."Only Church of England? Only the Established Church of England?
Only a very major part of Christendom with branches in scores of countries?Yet who can blame her for this ignorant but very understandable view? Just take a look at what has been going on over the bridge recently.First we are told that living in sin is no longer sin. Why? Has there been some revelation denied to previous generations? Some discovery of an ancient scroll? Some new interpretation of Holy Writ founded on some new discovery?
No, but the C of E has woken up to the fact that a large number of people opt to live in sin and therefore contends that that we should cease to condemn it. In other words if enough people err we should make the error credo. Admittedly this is not yet official C of E policy but can anyone imagine what Rome’s reactions would be to such a suggestion? Why is such a reaction not also automatically associated with the Church of England?
Why has the Archbishop not roundly condemned this report before it gathers its inevitable spurious respectability?Then we are told adultery is in our genes. Well, that is not too controversial as we all believe in original sin. Unfortunately the conclusion has little to do with original sin and everything to do with tolerating modern day manifestations of it.Then a vicar in Loughborough proposes to take part in a pagan rite which consists of an approximation to the Communion Service but with all references to Christ omitted.
There is also a suggestion of symbolic sex. Senior clergy in the Anglican Church express horror. In such circumstances horror is not enough: a sacking might be more appropriate.The Rev Tony Higton described the proposed service as diabolical. He is only too literally correct but he is opposed by the religious adviser to the World Wildlife Fund who regards the service as symbolic and respectful attempt to make amends for the siting of Christian Churches on previously pagan territory. Personally I think the chap would do better to stick to studying the mating habits of pandas.
Again, can anyone imagine such a story coming from Rome?The answer has to be no. It is quite impossible to imagine.I cannot believe that George Carey regards any of this with equanimity yet Canterbury is at worst silent and at best ambivalent, while the world has huge fun at his Church’s expense. It is not something from which we, as Catholics, can distance ourselves for what mocks any part of Christianity mocks us all.
Down there in perdition they clutch their tridents in helpless mirth. What need of temptation when the Christian Church propagates paganism and sexual licence?Yet this is not a lunatic fringe but the second largest denomination in the Christian world.Does anyone wonder that they cannot find a new Bishop of Winchester?Does anybody wonder that three hundred of their clergy have been received into Catholicism in the last two years?Does anybody wonder that rank atheists, like my friend, treat their ceremonies like theatrical plays and then shrug off their hypocrisy with the words "Well, it’s only Church of England"?
Does anybody wonder that ex-Anglicans like myself despaired to the point of...(Note: The main column text cuts off here at the bottom of the clipping.
Some readers believe I wage war on the Church of England out of personal animosity. If the Catholic Church produced these sorts of antics they might understand just how hurtful it is to watch them, even if from afar, for these are not the antics of circus clowns, however tempting it might be to think so, but of Hell itself."
Death and Murder Investigation (July 2026 Update)
On Friday, 10 July 2026, the news of Ann Widdecombe’s passing took a dark and shocking turn. While her management team initially announced her death at age 78, Devon and Cornwall Police subsequently confirmed they have launched a murder investigation.
Widdecombe was found on Thursday morning at her home in Haytor, Dartmoor, having suffered serious injuries, and a major police manhunt is currently underway for a male suspect.
This brutal development has thrown the public response into sharp contrast. While right-wing allies express horror at the crime and standard media profiles scramble to cover the unfolding investigation, the deeper conversation around her legacy remains fiercely divided.
For the LGBT+, secular, and Pagan communities, the tragic nature of her end does not erase the reality of her lengthy career, which was spent actively trying to use the power of the state to legislate against their fundamental right to exist safely.
Her war on Paganism and the Satanic Panic
Believing that modern Britain was surrendering its Christian heritage to secularism, she used her public platforms to launch fierce tirades against alternative spirituality.
In columns for the Catholic Times, she routinely decried Paganism as being "of the Devil," explicitly demanding that church and university leaders stop tolerating alternative belief systems.
From a conservative perspective, she viewed this as a principled defence of a foundational Christian moral order.
However, critics note that by using such aggressive "fire-and-brimstone" language in the mid-1990s, her rhetoric directly validated and fueled the broader Santnic Panic tearing through British social services at the time - a highly destructive, conspiracy-driven moral hysteria that ended up costing taxpayers millions of pounds, wasting vital police resources, and tearing innocent families apart over completely unevidenced claims of occult ritual abuse.
The Pantomime Cover-Up
The post-mortem media coverage of Widdecombe reveals a deeply frustrating AND QUITE SICKENING double standard.
By hyper-focusing on her reality TV appearances, the mainstream media effectively sanitised her legacy, packaging her as a harmless, eccentric pantomime villain. But there was nothing harmless about her divisive politics.
Behind the cozy television persona lay a bigoted dogmatist who defended chaining pregnant prisoners, advocated for the death penalty, and weaponised medieval rhetoric against anyone who didn't fit her Christian Fundamentalist moral mold.
Turning this bitter religious fanatic into a cartoon character only serves to cover up the very real malice of her fundamentalist worldview - which will certaintly not be missed by many!
When the media transforms a career dogmatist into a cozy cartoon character, it doesn't just soften her legacy - it erases the real-world harm she spent a lifetime trying to inflict.
Ultimately, we must remember that all forms of fundamentalism - regardless of the doctrine they hide behind - gradually destroy the social fabric of pluralistic societies and, when left unchecked, inevitably lead to real-world violence and ruin.
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