POLITICAL COMMENTARY

More gas and gaiters

PETER PATERSON

The decline of the Church of England as a central element of contention in British politics may well be on the point of being reversed. If, for reasons I shall attempt to explain below, this proves to be the case, I for one will welcome it: not because of any allegiance I owe the Church, but simply and selfishly because it enables me to in- dulge in the sheer semantic luxury of legitimately being able to use the word 'anti- disestablishmentarianism' for the first time in my journalistic career.

Over the past few years, the Anglican church has been involved in an intensive period of self-scrutiny, and the result—still incomplete—is a more streamlined, up-to- date organisation whose. own increasing in- volvement in political politics (as opposed to church politics) has gone a long way towards making nonsense of the old de- scription of the church as 'the Conservative party at prayer'. Nevertheless, conservatism with a small 'c' naturally still flourishes in many a deanery, vicarage or bishop's palace, as the correspondence columns of the Times readily testify, and such conservatives, unable to halt progress, can at least slow it up. As with any other human institution, the way to do this is through the governing., bodies, and a committee-ridden church affords endless opportunities for in-fighting.

In one vital area, however, both con- servatives and progressives within the church are gravely handicapped in furthering their cause. This is in the appointment of the church's own leaders where, for well-known historical reasons, the nomination of bishops is in the gift of the Crown. And for equally well-known historical reasons, this in effect means that the Prime Minister of the day makes the bishops.

Mr Harold Wilson, a practising Congrega- tionalist, took a keen interest in this aspect of affairs during his premiership, particularly, I am told, in the appointment of bishops within the see of Liverpool where his own constituency of Huyton lies. But because the average age of the leaders of the flock was somewhat low when Mr Wilson arrived at No 10, and because, thankfully, the Great Reaper was not too busy among the bishops, he did not have to spend very much time in weighing the merits of candidates for the episcopacy: from 1964 until his recent de- parture, Mr Wilson advised the Queen on the appointment of only nine diocesan bishops. Filling vacancies for suffragan (assistant) bishops kept him a little busier, and he made twenty-six of these—seven of them to newly-created sees in the new towns and suchlike, or revivals of moribund sees, like Dorking. He also appointed ten deans, all the canons of St Paul's, except the veteran Canon Collins, and three out of the four at Westminster Abbey.

Mr Edward Heath, however, has a much more formidable task, assuming that his government lasts a reasonably full term. On my, admittedly cursory, estimate he will have to appoint more bishops than anyone since King Henry viii. Taking first of all the group that will reach the age of seventy within the next five years and are therefore almost certain to retire, we find they include

Dr Ramsey himself, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is now sixty-five; the Bishops of London, sixty-nine; Chelmsford, sixty-seven; Bradford, sixty-nine; Newcastle, sixty-six; Truro, sixty-five; Chichester, sixty- five; Peterborough, seventy-two; Sodor and Man, sixty-five; and Exeter, sixty-six.

Since the rules of the Church's super- annuation fund allow clerics who have stored up sufficient treasure for their earthly re- tirement to resign at the age of sixty-eight by serving forty years in the cloth, we may also expect Mr Heath to have to replace within five years the Bishops of Lichfield. Winchester, Carlisle, Leicester, Wakefield, Ely, Norwich, Birmingham and Salisbury. And distributed within these two groups, the approaching seventies and the pensioners at sixty-eight, are nine suffragan bishops and seven deans, plus the good and controversial Canon Collins.

Just to get his eye in, the Prime Minister will have to start thinking straight away of replacements for His Grace of Oxford and his brother at Worcester, both of whom have already announced their retirement. Just what are his criteria for bishop-making? Does Conservative government automatically imply conservative ecclesiastical appoint- ments? Is the Anglican clock going to be turned back?

The answer, I fear, is the classic political one of 'Wait and see.' Mr Heath is an Anglican, of course, but no one seems' to know precisely where he stands in that great theological coalition—known in shorthand terms as High Church, Low Church and No Church—except that his devotion to church music might arouse dark suspicions in some quarters. To say that his first appointments will be scrutinised as closely and as critically as the discovery of a set of Dead Sea scrolls under the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral would be to underestimate the interest they will arouse in church circles.

Mr Heath will have assistance in making his choice, of course. His appointments secretary, Mr John Hewitt, who also advised Mr Wilson, is the son of an Anglican parson —though his former service with the Customs and Excise evokes some ribaldry among the opponents of Prime Ministerial appointment of bishops. Sometimes it would seem that a Moslem prime minister with a Buddhist appointments secretary would he more acceptable to some clergymen than Anglicans doing the job: their suspicion is that any Anglican must be biased one way or another, and that the best bishop-makers among modern prime ministers have been Neville Chamberlain (a Unitarian) and Harold Wilson, both of whom have by definition had to listen more closely to advice from outside the 'usual channels'.

This is probably less than fair to Mr Harold Macmillan, whose passion for Trol- lope must have made this aspect of his premiership peculiarly satisfying. Thanks to Mr Macmillan's appointments, the episcopal bench now contains no ex-headmasters of

public schools, although there are two among the suffragans. In 1950 there were

five, headid by the A'rchbishop of Canter- bury (Dr Fisher of Renton), and the atmo- sphere of the headmaster's study permeated the church—Dr Fisher, a stickler for punc- tiliousness. is said once to have rebuked the Archdeacon of Croydon for failing to wear gaiters, rejecting his defence that the day happened to be a bank holiday.

But to return to Mr Heath and his her- culean (or, perhaps, Tudor-scale) task, which involves the replacement of at least half the

episcopal bench in the Lords (where seniority decides who shall occupy 'back bench'

places among the twenty four) we can look at the kind of restraints which are bound to limit . his choice. Apart from the obvious preoccupation with other matters (there was no Archdeacon Grantly reduced to despair at being robbed of a bishopric simply by the news of the fall of the Labour government) Mr Heath will be bound to listen to the advice of the Archbishops' own appointments secretary, Mr William Saumerez Smith, a former Indian civil ser- vant, who can convey the thoughts of Canterbury and York to Mr Hewitt at Downing Street. The second restraint is the fact that, since 1965, the church has itself taken the first faltering steps towards a more democratic choice of bishops with the establishment of committees of clergy and laymen in each see who can recommend two names to the Archbishops. Unless these names are simply put into the wastepaper basket, it can be assumed that they will influence the recommendations of Mr Saumerez Smith.

Outside the church, the usual pattern is that even a slight concession to democracy creates an appetite for more, and there are indications that many. churchmen are fed up with-the present system. In some instances the yearning is still for the complete dis- establishment of the Church of England, which is seen as a way of speeding up the ecumenical process and ridding the church of its reputation as purveyor of holiness to the state: hence the revolt against Armistice

Day services and the resentment over

statutory wedding, funeral and baptismal duties. Others want to retain the glamour of the church's privileged role at coronations and nuclear submarine launchings while securing the right to choose their own bishops. The sheer immensity of Mr Heath's prospective splurge of bishop-making, and the fact that he will certainly be unable to please everybody, could bring church affairs back into national politics.

How long it will stay there. I do not know. One old lady of my acquaintance can give a partial answer. She was recalling taking part in protests and demonstrations over the disestablishment of the Church of Wales in the early part of this century. 'Which side were you on?' she was asked the other day. 'I can't remember,' she replied.