Drifting to the left
Paul Johnson
THE VICTORIAN CHRISTIAN SOCIALISTS by Edward Norman
CUP, £17.50
0 ver the past 150 years the political orientation of the Church of England has slowly changed from overwhelmingly Tory to predominantly Left-liberal. The origins of this transformation lie in the so-called Christian Socialism of the mid-Victorian Period. It was provoked, as Edward Nor- man explains, by clerical reaction to two events: the last spasm of Chartism in 1848 and the publication in 1849 of Mayhew's sensational articles about London's poor in the Morning Chronicle. Norman traces its evolution to the end of the century by the convenient method of examining the ideas of eight of its luminaries: F. D. Maurice, by common consent its creator, the novel- ists Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, the lawyer John Ludlow, Stewart Head- lam, John Ruskin, the Methodist Hugh Price Hughes, and Bishop Westcott. . They were a mixed bunch and the first thing that emerges from Norman's book is that Christian Socialism was never Social- ist. Except for Ludlow, who was brought UP in France, none of them knew anything about collective political theory as it was evolving on the Continent, or even its paler English version. They were keen on giving the poor more education, playing fields and better drains. But otherwise they had no programme. Most of them despised Political parties and recoiled with horror at one-man-one-vote democracy, at any rate n.ntil the masses were educated and up- lifted. Their inspiration came from Col- eridge's organic doctrine of the state, Which led them to stress the oneness of society and the responsibility of each for all, and Carlyle's concept of the radical evils of industrialism and the need for strong leadership to rectify them. They all had in common hatred of 'competition' and What Maurice termed 'the Manchester ascendancy'. But (like Dickens) they be- lieved in individual conversions, rather than structural reforms, a change of heart rather than a change of systems. Maurice himself was a Tory. The coun- try should be guided by the monarchy and the aristocracy, 'since they held their au- thority from God'. The idea of the sovereignty of the people was 'at once the silliest and most blasphemous of contradic- tions'. The 'worship of public opinion', he thought, was 'the great ideology of the day'. He was strongly opposed to trade unions and strikes. For him, communism was associated with the monastic life. Indeed not only was he no socialist, it is not even clear whether he was a Christian. He was a Unitarian before moving into the established church but though he accepted Christ as God he saw Christ's kingdom as a present reality rather than a plan for reform on earth or bliss in heaven. He chose the term 'Christian Socialist' because he wanted to avoid the word 'co- operative', and defended it by saying he was waging a moral campaign against 'unsocial Christians' and 'unchristian socialists'. But when he realised some of his followers identified socialism with a specific political programme, he beat a gradual retreat into adult education.
Of the followers, the most influential were the two hearties, Kingsley and Hughes, because their didactic books were widely read (Kingsley was Queen Victor- ia's favourite novelist). They were friends and corresponded mainly about fly-fishing. They despised the non-hearty wing of Christian Socialism, what Kinsley called 'the bearded young men and vegetarians'. Their aim was moral reform, to be achieved by a combination of education and sport, which Hughes, a keen cricketer believed also promoted democracy. Kings- ley occasionally preached a radical sermon and presented the bible as a history of deliverance from tyranny, but he would not have pleased today's Left. He was much under the influence of his Tractarian wife, wore hair-shirts under his hunting pink and slept on a bed of thorns. He believed in mesmerism, collected sea- shells, thought war 'honourable' because it suppressed 'evil' by 'sharp shot and cold steel' and backed 'Rajah' Brooke in mas- sacring the Dyaks of Borneo: 'One tribe exterminated, if need be, to save a whole continent'. Such natives were not 'human life' but 'beast life'. Mankind was 'clearly divided' into those who were 'unfit for self-government', mostly black, and those who were fit — though the latter did not include all white people since gypsies, for instance, were 'savages' and the Irish were 'white chimpanzees'.
At the other end of the Christian Social- ist spectrum were the aesthetes who tended to drift further to the Left as the century progressed. Some of them would fit in well with the present-day Anglican set-up. Headlam, for instance, came out with such phrases as 'It is because we are priests that we believe in Progress' and he loved to indulge in provocative public gestures, such as sending a telegram of support to the atheist Bradlaugh. His particular pas- sion was for the theatre, then frowned on by the episcopate. Another of his sayings was: 'It is because we are Communicants that we go to the Theatre'. When he gave a .public lecture on theatrical art, Bishop Jackson of London prohibited him from preaching, and his licence was withdrawn altogether when he appeared on the same platform with the Fenian Michael Davitt.
Frederick Temple, who succeeded Jack- son, maintained the prohibition, noting that Headlam 'has a tendency to encourage young men and women to be frequent spectators of ballet dancing'. Another fac- tor, no doubt, was the disintegration of Headlam's marriage and his public support for Oscar Wilde at the time of his trial. In short, Headlam had a rough time in late-Victorian England. Today Mrs Thatcher would find it hard going just preventing him from getting a bishopric.
Of Dean Norman's collection, the most sensible and useful was Bishop Westcott. As Norman points out, he generalised 'the content of Christian Socialism to the level at which imprecise objectives and com- monly held human principles enabled acceptance'. He wanted the Church of England to become socially conscious as a body, and he succeeded in this aim. As Bishop of Durham he made a sensational and effective intervention in a coal strike. He won the affection and respect of working men without alienating the posses- sing classes. But he achieved all this largely by preaching old-style conservative no- tions. Duties came before rights. Clast warfare was evil. Progress was best achieved by regard for national stability and continuity. The nation, society, the people were all organic unities. Liberty easily became licence. Equality was a delusion. `Some men should have a high place and large means'. Leadership was essential. Property was sacred — indeed, Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum of 1891 was shocking — `revolutionary and socialistic'. He was happy to play his part in resolving industrial disputes, he approved of trade unions, but he declined invitations to speak at rallies of the unem- ployed in Trafalgar Square.
This brief study should be widely read by Anglican clergy today because is makes (entirely by implication) an important con- temporary point. These generous-minded Victorians, who took big risks by publicly expressing their concern for the poor, did not pretend that they knew everything about the problem or propose specific solutions. They had no Boards of Social Responsibility or heavily-financed commis- sions producing massive studies and apeing governments. But they did understand the nature and value of moral leadership, and provided it according to their lights. As a result they were listened to and occasional- ly heeded: indeed, their collective impact was considerable and salutary. But of course they had a considerable advantage over their successors today: their belief in God was still solid and they had no need to turn to political dogma as a substitute.
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