The Labour Church: Religion and Politics in Britain 1890-1914 9781350988866, 9781784539436

Citation preview

For David and Owen

‘The Labour Church attracted a type of socialist who was not satisfied with the stark materialism of the Marxist school, desiring warmth and colour in human lives; not just bread, but bread and roses, too. Perhaps we were not quite sound on our economics as our Marxian friends took care to remind us, but we realized the injustice and ugliness of the present system. We had enough imagination to visualize the greater possibility for beauty and culture in a more justly ordered state. If our conception of Socialism owed more to Morris than to Marx, we were none the less sincere, and many found their belief strengthened by the help and inspiration of the weekly meetings held in these Northern towns.’ Hannah Mitchell, Socialist and Suffragette1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing this book would not have been possible without the help and advice of a great many people. I would especially like to show my appreciation to the AHRC for the financial assistance that has made this possible. I owe a huge debt of thanks to the University of Reading and all concerned with the School of History for their unstinting support. Thanks to my PhD supervisor, Professor Matthew Worley, for his guidance and confidence in me from the first day I was lucky enough to walk into his classroom. Thanks also to other members of staff, especially Professor David Stack, who regularly challenged my assumptions. Also thanks to Professor Miles Taylor for his time, friendship and ‘conversations of life’. Special thanks also go to my friends who have supported me, listened to me and feigned interest in Victorian socialism. They now have more expertise that they will ever know. Special thanks to my wonderful sister, Samantha Howard, who has picked up the physical and emotional slack innumerable times; and spent hours of her holiday with a large red pen and my references. And my son Owen, who had just started school as I started out as an undergraduate and is now at university himself. But there are not enough words to thank my husband. David, this is because of you.

PREFACE

This book examines the formation, decline and contribution of the Labour Church during the formative years of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and Labour Party between 1891 and 1914. It provides an analysis of the Labour Church, its religious doctrine, its socio-political function and its role in the cultural development of the early socialist arm of the labour movement. It includes a detailed examination of the Victorian morality and spirituality upon which the life of the Labour Church was built. It also challenges some of the existing historiography and previously held assumptions that the Labour Church was irreligious and merely a political tool, providing a new cultural picture of a diverse and inclusive organisation, committed to individualism and an individual relationship with God. The Labour Church was founded by the Unitarian Minister John Trevor in Manchester in 1891 and grew rapidly. Its political credentials were on display at the inaugural conference of the ILP in 1893, and the church proved a formative influence on many pioneers of British socialism. As such, the book brings together two major controversies of nineteenth-century Britain: the emergence of independent working-class politics and the decline of traditional religion. This book considers the Labour Church’s role in an era of cultural change, in increasing secularization and politicization. It examines the disagreements between John Trevor and his political allies regarding the format, purpose and morality of the Labour Church; the distinctive character of the Church’s theology and doctrine within the wider religious and political debates of the period. Beyond the labour movement, it charts links between the Labour Church and the women’s movement, children’s associations and with regard to radical literary traditions.

ABBREVIATIONS

BL CSU ILP LSE NCU NLF NUWSS PLP SDF SHL UDC WFL WSPU

British Library Christian Social Union Independent Labour Party London School of Economics Non-Conscription Union No-Conscription Federation National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies Parliamentary Labour Party Social Democratic Federation Senate House Library Union of Democratic Control Women’s Freedom League Women’s Social and Political Union

INTRODUCTION

That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted, With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; For that, O God, be it my latest word, Here, on my knees, I thank Thee. Walt Whitman, The Prayer of Columbus, 18971 The Labour Church was founded by the Unitarian minister John Trevor in Manchester in 1891 and grew rapidly. Its political credentials were on display at the inaugural conference of the ILP in 1893 and the church proved a formative influence on many pioneers of British socialism. This study brings together two major controversies of nineteenth-century Britain: the emergence of independent working-class politics and the decline of traditional religion. This book will consider the church’s role in an era of increasing secularization and politicization. It will examine the collaboration and the disagreements between John Trevor and the ILP regarding the purpose of the church. It will also consider the distinctive character of the church’s theology and doctrine within the wider religious and political debates of the period. Beyond the labour movement it will consider the previously tenuously charted links between the church and the women’s movement and its relationship to radical literary traditions, particularly John Trevor’s affinity with Edward Carpenter and Walt Whitman. The latter illustrates the enigma of the Labour Church. It was both a servant of the labour movement and by the turn of the century was a highly federated political

2

THE LABOUR CHURCH

organization; but outside of the heavily managed churches it was also a radical, inclusive organization true to John Trevor’s founding principles of a personal and individual relationship with God and the expression of the religion inherent within the labour movement. By the late 1890s, the Labour Church had irrevocably diverged and become almost two or even three organizations. First, many individual churches became members of an increasingly secular and highly politicized group managed ostensibly by the ILP and trade unions. Second, influential churches, such as Bradford, maintained their religious foundations but became increasingly dominated by an ILP membership. Last, there were groups of less federated, more spiritual and inclusive churches that remained fixed on the founding religious principles and accepted Trevor’s increasing focus on individual morality and the individual relationship with God. This last category included the Leek Labour Church, a homage to William Morris, and the Bolton Church and its spin-off organization, the Whitmanite Eagle Street College. Yet, despite its individualistic, artistic, and radical credentials, the Labour Church’s place in history has become synonymous with the foundation and development of the working-class movement and the early days of the ILP. It sits alongside the emergence of other non-conformist and socio-religious movements. Other contemporary organizations included the Ethical Church (supported by Ramsay MacDonald and establishing itself more firmly in the south of England), the Church of Humanity, the Temperance Church and the Salvation Army, established by William Booth, which, by 1890, had adopted a programme of social reform.2 All of these organizations responded to the growth of the working classes and their politicization. They tended towards an ‘ethical socialist culture’ and filled the gap created by a shift away from religious orthodoxy. By the end of the century the Labour Church found itself at the centre of labour politics and a critical vehicle for communicating the morality of the socialist message to the working classes. However, the Labour Church was not alone; it sat alongside the Ethical Socialist Movement, which later became known as the Christian Socialist Movement that is still recognized today.3 The socialism of the Fabian Society and other reformist socialist groups had a distinctly theoretical and more middle-class feel, and had limited success in communicating to the wider working class which was needed if it was to be a viable political alternative to the Liberal and Conservative parties in parliament. Radical Marxist-influenced organizations such as the Social

INTRODUCTION

3

Democratic Federation (SDF) and other revolutionary socialist groups also had limited success with the working classes, and were diametrically opposed to both Christian organizations and the burgeoning women’s movement.4 The fractured nature of socialism hindered the coherence and effectiveness of its message. From its inception, one of the primary challenges of the socialist movement was to communicate its message of social justice to the wider working classes. As a propaganda tool, the Labour Church grew into this role, providing a familiar social platform for communicating the morality and religion inherent in the labour movement. As capitalism was increasingly presented as a ‘sin’, so people required what Keir Hardie termed ‘social redemption’ or ‘social salvation’. The Labour Church was thus one of the means by which the socialist movement and the early Labour Party came to reach those who found themselves isolated from established churches and party politics. With a growing working class becoming increasingly disillusioned by the established churches, the emergence of the Labour Church arguably propped up declining orthodox congregations and non-conformist workingclass liberals.5 This was particularly true in Lancashire, which was a traditional Liberal stronghold. As P. F. Clarke states: Since the SDF most characteristically represented an appeal to Tory workingmen on secularist terms (as in London) and the ILP to Liberal workingman on Non-conformist terms (as in Yorkshire) it is not surprising to find Lancashire socialism reflecting the region’s socioreligious divisions. The Labour Church movement may have appeared to be the logical way out of this impasse, and it had some influence.6 Labour Churches often sprang up to support socialist political candidates, and in response to local churchmen expressly supporting non-socialist candidates. Though this happened in both Lancashire and Yorkshire, it was rarely the only reason for the establishment of Lancashire Labour Churches:7 they were also an antidote to both orthodox and non-conformist churches that had taken on essentially middle-class values at the expense of their working-class congregations. Through his autobiography and from the Labour Church lecterns Trevor described his own experience with the churchgoing working classes, who increasingly expressed a feeling of alienation from the middle-class culture of existing congregations.8

4

THE LABOUR CHURCH

The Labour Church attempted to replace conventional religion with the morality of socialism and endeavoured to supply a cultural and political need that essentially middle-class socialism alone could not satisfy. Finally, the book explores why the Labour Church had such a limited lifespan and suffered such a steep decline. The Labour Church waned in popularity as the political Labour Party and its influence on the trade unions grew. Trade unionism reached the height of its membership before World War I at the point where the Labour Church fell into terminal decline: ‘before the First World War over 95 per cent of Labour Party Members were affiliated through the trade unions, there being no direct individual members. The trade unions provided the bulk of the Labour Party’s finances’.9 The reasons for its decline were numerous and often differed from church to church. There remain however two consistent issues: first, its lessening importance as a political tool and, second, the aforementioned secularization of the Church, which was fundamentally against John Trevor’s principles. Ultimately these became the major, if not the only, issues that lead to the assumption that, with the emergence of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and the increase in Labour votes, the Labour Church declined because it was no longer necessary for disseminating the socialist message to the working classes. Despite its strong northern focus, the Labour Church was, sporadically, a nationwide movement that at its height counted 100 churches with congregations of between 200 and 500.10 Independent speakers were invited, or requested, to speak on their platforms, from the most influential union men and party political figures to local socialist speakers anxious to cut their political teeth. Average congregations soared when prominent speakers made guest appearances. When Hardie spoke in Dundee, the congregation spilled outside and numbered over 5,000, and a similar number reportedly accompanied Hardie at the inaugural ILP meeting.11 The church also spread abroad. As working-class emigration increased at the turn of the century, so congregations could be found in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. The Labour Church abroad had a greater longevity than that inside the UK.12

‘Cottonopolis’: Right Place, Right Time? In 1891, the Unitarian minister, John Trevor, chose Manchester as the birthplace of the Labour Church, from which point it quickly carved a place

INTRODUCTION

5

in working-class society and engendered the support and respect of many luminaries within the labour movement.13 Manchester at the end of the nineteenth century was a natural home for Trevor’s fledgling organization and Trevor himself dedicates a short chapter of his autobiography, My Quest for God, to the city. Trevor claims that his idea for the Labour Church came to him before he came to Manchester but that the City itself proved to be the right place at the right time.14 John Ruskin, the art critic and influential social thinker, painted a vivid picture of late nineteenth-century Manchester: Taken as a whole I perceive that Manchester can produce no good art, and no good literature; it is falling off even in the quality of its cotton; it has reversed and vilified in loud lies, every essential principle of Political Economy; it is cowardly in war, predatory in peace; and as a corporate body, plotting to steal, and sell, for a profit, the waters of Thirlmere and the clouds of Helvellyn.15 Ruskin’s reference here is to the flooding of Thirlmere Valley in the Lake District to provide water for the growing conurbation of Manchester.16 To Ruskin it was indicative of Manchester’s ‘laissez-faire’ or utilitarian attitudes and the consequent disregard for the soul. Ruskin was writing from a London-centric viewpoint but to many, especially those living outside of the City, Manchester was a microcosm of both the best, most forwardthinking, and the worst, excesses of the Victorian age. Manchester itself was the ‘shock city’ of nineteenth-century Britain.17 It had grown rapidly on a diet of cotton, manufacturing and immigration, which had created a massive working class and an emerging middle class with its accompanying commercial wealth. It was distinct from other major urban centres in that it represented ‘a civilisation created by traders without assistance from monarchs or territorial aristocracy’, though for all of its modernity it was ‘irredeemably ugly’.18 Manchester was distinct, even unique, compared to contemporary cities, because of its mix of rapid economic change, social tension and political innovation. Manchester’s rapid population growth had been supported by slum housing – hastily erected and largely unplanned – and local facilities that struggled to keep up with demands for sanitation, education and poor relief. Alongside the poverty, however, ‘cotton lords’ and the middle classes increasingly expressed their pretensions by constructing magnificent civic buildings and increasingly

6

THE LABOUR CHURCH

demanding autonomy from London, whose working population appeared apathetic compared with Mancunians. At the beginning of the nineteenth century Manchester appeared to be a blueprint for industrial cities, subject to economic flux and often given to outbursts of violence. The ‘Peterloo Massacre’ of 1819 passed into radical history, serving to accentuate the politicization of the northern towns.19 Chartism, the Anti-Corn Law League and the building, in 1856, of the Free Trade Hall – as a ‘theatre of political argument’ on the site of the Peterloo Massacre20 – gave Manchester a sense of pride and set it apart as a symbol of northern radicalism. Chartism, though it began with a ‘London manifesto’, was shaped by the northern experience, the Anti-Corn Law League was largely supported by non-conformists and clearly stamped ‘made in Manchester’.21 While the established churches continued to support the merchants and factory owners, generally refusing to denounce the conditions in which the workers lived and worked: the local defenders of Manchester might argue, as did the Reverend R. Parkinson, Canon of the Collegiate Church, in 1839, that there was nothing ‘unnatural’ or ‘opposed to the will of God’ in the growth of manufacturing industry, but they failed to convince everyone that the ‘civic economy’ was healthy and beneficial.22 Manchester had no single political ideology; instead it conjured up images of progressivism, ‘laissez-faire’ and collectivism.23 A. M. Thompson confirmed that: The utilitarian Manchester Gospel of laissez faire, laissez passer, of free and unrestricted competition, which Cobden hailed as ‘agreeable to the highest behests of Christianity’, had produced the traffic in pauper children and the child labour in the mines which prompted the poet Southey to protest that ‘the slave trade is mercy compared with the factory system’.24 It was into this tradition that the Labour Church was born: into a society of non-conformist Baptists, Methodists and Unitarians – self-made men, entrepreneurs and aspirational, self-educated workers – who recognized injustice and demanded more than knowing their place and waiting for their rewards in heaven.

INTRODUCTION

7

Yet the politics of Manchester were complex and historians do not agree on the dominant political force in the city. P. F. Clarke stated that, by the end of the nineteenth century, of all of the political ideologies, Liberalism was most ‘associated with Manchester’s civic pride, and Manchester in turn gained a reputation as the City of Liberalism and Free Trade’.25 Despite pockets of working-class Conservatism, similar to those in London’s East End,26 the ‘Manchester region’s dependence upon international trade in cotton rendered Conservative tariff policy especially unpopular’.27 Local studies of the region, before the turn of the century, emphasize ‘a rich socialist tradition’28 and conditions perfect for the growth of the ILP, although not initially perfect for the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). Yet, even within the region, the Manchester and Salford boroughs were distinctly different: ‘Manchester was influenced by the Independent Labour Party (ILP), Salford was home to the Social Democratic Federation (SDF)’.29 The character of the two municipalities was somewhat shaped by their differences. In Manchester, ‘the ILP had always been more amenable to the trade union movement than the more dogmatic SDF, which feared such contact could pollute the purity of its Marxist ideology’.30 During the 1880s and 1890s, however, comparisons tend to be weak, as a diversity of socialist and labour groups pitted themselves against established parties looking for a new electorate, many of whom, as a result of abject poverty, were ineligible to vote.31 Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterize the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants. And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world. If any one wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air – and such air! – he can breathe, how little of civilization he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither.32 Engels’s description of Manchester in the 1840s had changed little during the half-century before Trevor’s arrival in the city. Poverty and the living and working conditions of the people of Manchester were uppermost in Trevor’s

8

THE LABOUR CHURCH

mind when the concept of the Labour Church came to him. In an article in the Clarion on 20 August 1892 Trevor depicted Manchester as a ‘shanty town’, a view not far from the truth in many male-dominated working-class and Irish areas. The Manchester Statistical Society provides an invaluable source of surveys and information on the life of the City between 1833 and 1933, which tend to support Trevor’s view in their empirical if not editorial content.33 Not only do the surveys provide empirical data, but the subjects of the surveys indicate what issues were foremost in the minds of the great and the good of the middle classes who made up the society (initially founded for the purpose of ‘agreeable social intercourse’,34 but soon taking on a far more political function). The Condition and Occupation of the People of Manchester and Salford, a survey completed and published in May 1889, provides a stark picture of the Manchester in which John Trevor strove to establish his church, and the state of the congregation he intended to appeal to: Those whose occupations are stated number 4440. Of these, 1663, or 37.4 per cent, are very poor – that is to say, they have not the means of independent subsistence, 582, or 13.1 per cent, are poor – that is, they have the means of procuring bare necessaries only, and cannot, from their means, indulge in any recreation involving cost, or in any comforts enjoyed by those better off; 663, or 14.9 per cent, are returned as comfortable, while 1532, or 34.5 per cent, are not classified.35 This is a grim picture, considering that this was a period of economic growth, good trade and almost full employment. The men we think retrospectively of as radicals and who gave Manchester its character were not worried that ‘while the rich man was in his mansion, the poor man at the gates of Victoria Park lived in a slum’.36 In Trevor’s mind, though, Manchester personified the failure of the church in facing the world’s problems, and he expresses that his intention in going to Manchester was to build up a church equal to the issues of the world.37 Shapely maintains that charities were patronized so long as they were ‘respectable’, charities with sexual connotations were hidden and their needs were expected to be managed by hospitals.38 The churches’ attitudes to poverty were almost entirely charitable. Charity was for the ‘deserving poor’ only and beneficiaries were determined by the churches. Catholics were

INTRODUCTION

9

entirely sectarian and distributed charitable donations only to the Catholic poor via the Church. The Church of England in Manchester had been criticized for taking an income from charitable donations.39 The churches also influenced the boards of voluntary charitable organizations. For their members, charities provided a philanthropic status, especially to those holding an ‘honorary position’: it was a very visible fulfilment of their ‘Christian duty to the poor’. Social leadership in Manchester ‘meant offering proof of moral worth, of Christian care and compassion and of duty to the community’.40 Arguably this had begun to diminish by the late Victorian period, but the concept was anathema to John Trevor. Trevor and his organization set out to address these issues and ‘helped provide Manchester socialism with a strong ethical and religious dimension’.41 He recognized that charity alone was not an answer to poverty and he was clear that the churches’ shortcomings had allowed such conditions to persist. While its benefactors looked on, they increasingly alienated their working-class congregations.42 Trevor acknowledged the need for his new church and new religion to reflect the political mood of the time, the growth of socialism, the ILP and the increasing desire for representation and trade unionism. He considered the Labour Church movement ‘as having an important role in giving a central focus to the work of the SDF, trades councils, socialist societies and the ILP’.43 Trevor persisted with his Manchester focus until 1895 when he moved south, ostensibly to expand the Labour Prophet as an agent in spreading the message of the Labour Church nationwide. The ILP was also falling short of Trevor’s ideal of building an ethical socialist utopia as it focused on matters of political representation. Trevor’s vision of his socialist utopia was evident in his tendency to call the Labour Church ‘the soul of the labour movement’. As I have established, it was designed to appeal to the working class, though Trevor was at pains to promote his vision of class unification and harmony. Its overtly political nature was established with the Church’s motto, which began life as ‘God is our King’ before being revised to ‘Let Labour be the basis of civil society’, though in its dying days it eventually reverted to the original. Trevor believed in a divine spirit that was present in all humanity, hence the aspiration to identify the relationship of brotherhood, but he also believed in a personal or individual relationship with God that found its collective expression in the religion of the labour movement. The Church was socialist in nature and was built on the ethical principles of egalitarianism and

10

THE LABOUR CHURCH

freedom of conscience, principles that sat comfortably with socialism and were shared by the emerging ILP. As such, the Labour Church’s theology, doctrine and socio-political function made it fundamentally different from its contemporaries and predecessors. The church’s political credentials were on display at the foundation conference of the ILP, held in Bradford in 1893, with The Times reporting that a ‘social service of the Bradford Labour Church was held at which Keir Hardie spoke’.44 The Times report highlights the enigma of the church. The reference to a ‘social’ service indicates the confusion over the religious nature of sermons. Services were traditional in format but focused on the socialist message and often did not include any reference to the Bible or biblical scripture. The reference to the ‘church’ is at odds with a ‘social service’ and highlights the cross-pollination of the two messages. Last, Keir Hardie ‘spoke’ rather than preached or gave a sermon. Hardie’s language – in accord with the language of other socialist speakers – was secular but littered with religious imagery. Despite John Trevor’s best intentions to ensure that the Labour Church was a religious, although not necessarily a Christian, movement, its overtly political agenda continually brought it into dispute with local churches and led to questions over its status as a church at all.

‘Churchianity’: What is a Church, and is the Labour Church One? In any analysis of the Labour Church, one of the overriding questions to be addressed is its status as a church in the traditional sense. It is difficult to avoid falling into the trap of turning to diverse definitions and biblical quotations to come up with an answer. Such an answer would also be meaningless, as the definitions and choices of chapter and verse to support just about any argument for or against can be found: catholic or protestant, evangelical or high-church, non-conformist or orthodox, all have a definition and a Bible reading that says theirs is the true way. These arguments need to be taken as read, because historically their positions were already entrenched long before the lifetime of John Trevor and the Labour Church. On the surface, a Christian church is a group of believers in Jesus Christ, associated together for Christian purposes. In the New Testament the word ‘church’ usually designates a local congregation of Christians but never a building: essentially it refers to people. A church is denoted by the presence of the God, which is an expression of Christianity or the Universal Church,

INTRODUCTION

11

a principle with which non-conformist groups everywhere would be familiar (particularly Unitarians who would demand only a universal acceptance of God). Within these simplistic boundaries the Labour Church is indeed a church, albeit a reforming church that set out to reform society outside of the existing constraints of religious institutions and their creeds. A second argument is more conservative and fundamentally orthodox. Orthodoxy requires a ministry, an organization and a structure. It requires an authority through ‘elders’ as described by St Paul. The Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England require a church to be a body of people professing the same creed and acknowledging the same ecclesiastical authority, thus becoming a denomination.45 In this respect, Methodism would qualify as a church, but the Labour Church would fail as it did not have a structured priesthood, dogma, or creed. All of the established orthodox and non-conformist churches also require an element of exclusivity. This is at its most fundamental in the Roman Catholic view of the church as expressed in its liturgy: there is ‘one holy, catholic, apostolic’ universal church and salvation can only be found at the hands of its priests through the sacraments and the forgiveness of sins: it is entirely exclusive. The Labour Church did not require exclusivity: a regular attendee at the Labour Church might still worship at any other. Maintaining an individual belief in God and Christianity – while expressing the notions of God and morality through the labour movement, and acknowledging the need for a ‘social’ religion or social salvation – was acceptable. The question of the Labour Church’s status as a church can be traced back to the intentions of its founder, John Trevor and its Unitarian roots. Trevor’s intention was to create a church that combined a personal, individual relationship with God (hence its members could be members of other churches or even non-Christian) with a commitment to ‘social’ religion inherent in and expressed through the labour movement. This was Trevor’s notion of the ‘Kingdom of God’.46 Trevor’s understanding of the Kingdom of God is arguably much wider than any protestant or catholic denominations would acknowledge. It blurred the divisions between the religious and the secular being both an individual state of spirituality and spirituality experienced in everyday life. Trevor maintained that God was found in society, in the work of the miners, in the factories and on the railways: true spirituality could be found through labour and was inherent in the message of the labour movement itself.

12

THE LABOUR CHURCH

The validity of the Labour Church and its right to identify itself as a church is similar to Unitarianism. If Trevor’s roots were Unitarian, then the Labour Church was born from the same family and founded on Unitarian principles. Trevor had chosen to become a Unitarian minister because it had given him the freedom to reject the Bible and Christianity. Unitarians had an individual approach to religious freedom that was very inclusive. Even today the meaning of life is an individual journey with an individual end, there is no standard set of beliefs or scriptures, truth is not something dictated by a priest or institution and there is no official definition of God. Most Unitarians believe in a supernatural force or Supreme Being, which can intervene in human affairs, and Unitarian services tend to make little mention of God. Many, like Quakers, believe in an inner spirit or power, which they choose to call God. Many orthodox and some non-conformist religions would consider both of these to be atheistic. Unitarian belief is vested in personal experience, conscience and reason; there are ministers but no creed; their theology is, however, immanentist: their conception is of a God in continuous revelation.47 Many of these elements can be seen in the early Labour Church even though, as an established Unitarian minister, Trevor rejected the idea of continuing his work through the Unitarian Church. This was quite simply because he did not believe that Unitarians could ever become a reforming power, being too heavily focused on individuality and individual responsibility to make a cohesive impact as a church. Trevor’s vision was also, largely, a backlash against the annexation by the middle class of the established churches, which had even spread to nonconformist chapels. His principles of fairness and equality, his understanding of poverty and the causes of poverty, could not be married with the concept of a benevolent Christian God that was being preached in the established churches. Fundamentally, he could not understand how middle-class factory owners, professionals and managers could attend church while ignoring the issue of poverty around them. Trevor failed to understand how the churches’ and churchgoers’ answer to the issue of poverty could be charity rather than a fundamental redistribution of wealth. ‘Churchgoing’ may have been a byword for respectability but it was also paying lip-service to Christian principles rather than actively seeking a solution to the social deprivation that was all too evident in Victorian Manchester. In Trevor’s own words:

INTRODUCTION

13

Membership in a Church should not be held open to those who believe the most, but to those who are willing to do the most. I should want a church of workers; and if a man came along and said ‘I don’t believe much, but I want to help raise the fallen and feed the hungry’, he should be welcome.48 Trevor understood that poor and working people were not welcome in the existing churches, whose preaching was at odds with the realities of working life: an opinion that was supported by many of the early pioneers of the Labour Churches. Trevor always argued that the working classes had not turned from the existing churches because they were irreligious but because they were not welcome. How could the churches preach of a benevolent God who would allow such poverty? How could those who attended church every Sunday allow their workers to be paid so little and to live in abject poverty? This could not be considered benevolent. Yet despite Trevor’s criticism of established churches he maintained the need for a church. He had rejected freethinking because he disliked the idea of the destruction of all churches and religion without putting anything else in its place, not even a cohesive or constructive argument for why nothing was needed. Trevor’s argument was that, without changing religion, the same thing would reoccur in the same way.49 Trevor was never an atheist and with this argument can be found the first germs of the idea for the Labour Churches: an alternative religion being better than none at all. The destruction of the old churches with nothing to replace them would only lead to their resurgence. The final charge levied against the status of the Labour Church as a church was its short lifespan. A short lifespan is often symptomatic of the church being established to satisfy a local need and, consequently, the church would, by nature, be more fluid. In most cases the church hierarchy or ‘universal church’ remains long after the need for a local church has been satisfied. In the case of the Labour Church, by the turn of the century, the lack of a fundamental hierarchy or centralizing ‘universal church’ was one of the factors that heralded its demise. However, fluidity is still a dilemma for modern evangelical groups (with no buildings, chapels and a loose if effective ministry), who are often criticized for robbing the local parishes of their congregations.50 The Labour Church was no less a church as it served a purpose and its short-lived, often transitory nature should not count against it.

14

THE LABOUR CHURCH

In conclusion, from the Anglican or Catholic viewpoint there are many aspects that bring into question the Labour Church’s status as a church in the traditional sense; however, John Trevor’s vision was indeed a church – a building or regular meeting place, a congregation and a set of basic principles. The religion of the Labour Church was the religion inherent in the labour movement, which needed to be communicated to create a fairer and more equitable society. The Labour Church, its publications and its congregations were Trevor’s means to achieving this goal. After 1902, when, following disputes, Trevor left the Labour Church, it indeed lost large parts of its congregation, as the church aspect was overtaken by the political machinations of the ILP hierarchy and the Labour Church Union. Both elements in the control and increasing politicization and secularization of the church were too far from Trevor’s original vision for him to stomach. Ultimately, the New Testament, through the teachings of St Paul, had created the Christian ideal of a family and an extended Christian family or community. This community should either be made up of, or have the aspiration to include, all types of people.51 John Trevor’s early church was not dissimilar: it brought together groups of individuals who for many reasons felt alienated from the existing churches and who had a determination to make society better and fairer. Their individual beliefs were their own, their relationship with God was their own, and they simply required a commitment to improve society through the inherent religion of the labour movement. Despite his commitment to the concept of a church of labour, the spiritual and often delicate John Trevor was not a natural leader for his fledgling organization. He was focused on establishing the concept of a church though he never aspired to leadership and considered his contribution to be primarily literary. He eventually gave up his role as a Unitarian minister to focus his energies on the development of the Manchester and Salford Labour Churches, although he spent most of his time and money on editing the Labour Prophet.52 Trevor established the Labour Prophet mainly using his own funds, edited it and oversaw its publication by the Labour Church Publishing Office prominently established in Fleet Street, London. Trevor’s output, the penny papers, Labour Church tracts, hymn books and tune books that came out of the Labour Church Publishing Office provide a rich vein of information about the Labour Church and help to establish a picture of the spread and development of the organization.

INTRODUCTION

15

Bibliographical Sources and Terms of Reference In bibliographical terms, my research has focused primarily on the growth and character of the Labour Church in Lancashire and Yorkshire between 1891 and 1914. The proliferation of Labour Churches outside of the north of England has not been ignored as they provide an often stark contrast to their northern neighbours, but their influence on the labour movement is more limited. Exploration of several associated elements of the Labour Church is also beyond the scope of this book: the spread of the church through emigration, a detailed examination of the influence of the Labour Church on the early women’s suffrage movements,53 and the wider voice of the Labour Church taking into account its spin-off organizations including the Socialist Sunday Schools and Cinderella Clubs. The latter were inherent in Keir Hardie’s long-term plan for the labour movement and reflect his commitment to ‘making little socialists’ as the primary means of carrying on the message. Hardie worked with John Trevor on reaching out to children.54 Little research has been done on the Labour Church beyond a flurry of interest during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The seminal work on the Labour Church is acknowledged to be that of K. S. Inglis, who looked at the Labour Church in 1963, as part of his work on nonconformity, social reform and the working classes.55 Inglis is the most frequently quoted secondary source and appears in the bibliographies of all of the other historians I have located, even though his work on the Labour Church constituted only one chapter in Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England. Inglis’s work was limited, and invariably the Church as an independent subject was lost within writing on the generic Christian Socialist Revival (1877– 1914). There is a single thesis on the subject, by the Canadian Reverend D. F. Summers, ‘The Labour Church and Allied Movements of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’.56 I acknowledge Summers’s work and the amount of information he collected, which has provided an invaluable source of primary data and a magnificent body of empirical work. Summers’s thesis is, however, very different to mine: it is largely factual and a statement of the history of the Labour Church, in his own words ‘our main purpose in the present work has been to present as accurate and lively a picture as possible of the Labour Church’.57 It is narrative in style and less analytical. Summers had the advantage of interviewing, first-hand, members of Labour Church congregations who responded to his advertisement for memoirs in the

16

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Manchester Guardian in the early 1950s, which he meticulously reproduced in a massive volume of Appendices. The scope of Summers’s thesis is also different. He covered the Labour Church abroad and particularly in Canada, which occasionally makes some of his data appear confusing. He also includes a narrative picture of the ‘allied movements’, which I do not. Summers does not draw heavily on Trevor’s autobiography, My Quest for God, and occasionally he does not make it clear that Trevor had rejected Christianity some years before the start of his involvement with the Labour Church in 1891. This is understandable because, despite rejecting Christianity, Trevor lived within largely Christian morals. Neither did Summers have any access to the working papers now held at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, which were privately held by the Reverend Brassington until the 1960s. I have used Summers’s appendices, particularly his correspondence with A. J. Waldegrave and his work on the Birmingham Labour Church, as both resources are no longer available. I have, however, made minimal use of the body of his thesis. There are an abundance of primary materials relating to the Labour Church. The organization produced its own monthly magazine, the Labour Prophet, from January 1892 until 1898, when it was replaced by a quarterly publication, the Labour Church Record. The individual churches also kept their own records, including records of visiting speakers’ lectures, which invariably ended up being printed in the Prophet. Primary sources are readable and plentiful though they are mostly printed and available only in physical archives: they are not available online and are not easily accessible. Within archives, they are rarely kept as a collection or under the title of the Labour Church and are often scattered among collections relating to other people or organizations. The disparate nature of sources indicates that the Labour Church has never been considered a ‘subject’ in its own right. It has rarely been analysed as an individual organization, though its output has obviously been considered worthy of keeping as part of other collections. There are, in addition to the Prophet, three more invaluable sources of primary evidence: John Trevor’s aforementioned autobiography, My Quest for God, a selection of Labour Church tracts and the Labour Church Hymn Book.58 I have drawn heavily on John Trevor’s autobiography, although many historians appear to have only referenced the latter pages of his work, often missing the early religious development that shaped his later life and shaped the theology of the Labour Church. The autobiography was written and published as early as 1897 – at the height of the Church’s

INTRODUCTION

17

popularity – providing a contemporary narrative of his active approach to the early days of the Church. It lacks, however, the benefit of hindsight and the inevitable re-evaluation of circumstances and events that it would have had if he had written it after the decline of the church. My Quest for God also sheds light on Trevor’s association with contemporary poets including Gerald Massey and Walt Whitman. Trevor’s association with Walt Whitman encouraged a correspondence between the American poet and the Bolton and Manchester Labour Churches.59 There is also good access to Trevor’s working papers at the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, as well as copies of most Labour Church publications at the British Library, the Senate House Library, the London School of Economics, and the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester. The Labour Church Hymn Books and their various editions are revealing. The first edition has a preface by Trevor that has never been published elsewhere and an introductory poem with millenarian overtones by the socialist poet Gerald Massey. Trevor’s preface also has millenarian overtones and calls for ‘further emancipation from tyranny’.60 The millenarian overtones in the church’s theology are covered in later in this book. Secondary sources are scarcer. There is a mention of the Labour Church in virtually every biography of any socialist, Christian socialist, labour or trade union figure associated with the church, though surprisingly, there is very little mention of it in contemporary autobiographies. However, biographers tend to put their own, often selective, spin on the church. Consequently it is difficult to situate research in a body of secondary literature, as the Labour Church as a discrete organization has been neglected in the large body of work that surrounds the working-class movements. It has been subject to the interpretation of historians and biographers without detailed focus on its own organization and purpose. While it cannot be said that the Labour Church has been misrepresented, it has often been overlooked or glossed over by historians with other agendas. Kenneth Inglis in 1963 and Mark Bevir in the 1990s produced discrete well-researched work on the phenomenon of the Labour Church. Mark Bevir looked at it in two articles, focusing to a large extent on its theology and providing a logical and analytical approach to its ethical and theological roots and its relationship to early socialism.61 Inglis’s approach is more narrative, although he is the founder of the school of thought that suggests that the Labour Church was not a religious church but a political organization. Bevir’s theological approach presents the belief in an

18

THE LABOUR CHURCH

immanent God being compatible with Labour Church thinking and preaching. Although Inglis’s work provides a valuable narrative and bibliography I would concur with Mark Bevir’s view that John Trevor’s intention was always that this was a religious organization dedicated to God and through God to the labour movement. Stanley Pierson and Krista Cowman have also produced discrete articles but these draw heavily on Inglis’s and Bevir’s work.62 Leonard Smith, in Religion and the Rise of Labour (1993), provides an invaluable bigger picture and positions the Labour Church alongside other free and established churches. Smith concludes that there was no strong link between the Labour Church and the Methodism associated with the early labour movement. While this book goes to some lengths to contextualize nonconformity and the Labour Church, I would concur with Smith that ‘Methodists were not very involved in John Trevor’s organization and the Labour Church cannot with any usefulness be associated with an evaluation of the contribution of Methodism to the development of the independent labour movement’.63 In this book, I intend to rediscover the Labour Church. I will challenge the assumption that it was only a working-class movement for working-class men and purely a political tool for the ILP and the trade unions. I will challenge the existing school of thought, which leaves the Labour Church as a mere footnote in the history of the labour movement, often written off as purely secular meetings of working men. After all, the founder of the church was a middle-class architect who had rejected Christianity. Its many diverse members were from all arms of the labour and socialist movements and were not just ILP and trade union men. It became a primary source of propaganda for the burgeoning women’s movement through its meetings and its publications. It opened its doors to artists, poets, homosexuals and those living an alternative lifestyle. It was a forerunner of the Socialist Sunday Schools, involved in the origins of the Cinderella Club, and used to spread the message of socialism to children. It had a wide range of writers, contributors, and speakers who wrote and spoke on many varied subjects. Rediscovering the Labour Church is important. Many historians present the Labour Church as the organization that it had become by the end of the nineteenth century, after a disillusioned John Trevor had ceased all formal association with it. By the turn of the century, the churches in the midlands and north were highly federated by the Labour Church Union but its branches outside of the federation continued to express the inclusive and

INTRODUCTION

19

ethical roots of Trevor’s early organization. The Labour Church was intended to be something different: it was eclectic and reflected local communities and their needs and aspirations. They were not all the same, the congregations were different, many had their own distinct character and style and consequently some lived longer than others. This book challenges many assumptions but it also confirms some. Initially the Labour Churches were not systematically established or federated though, eventually, it cannot be denied that many of the churches did become servants of the labour movement and largely tools of the ILP. When Trevor handed over the leadership of the Labour Church Union to the ILP the writing was on the wall for the biggest and most influential Labour Churches. They slowly became akin to secular trade union meetings: this had, by 1902, effectively driven John Trevor away. A glance at the changing Labour Church Hymn Book shows an original copy produced almost entirely by John Trevor, but a second edition of 1906 is radically different. All of the original principles have gone and all mention of John Trevor has been replaced by an introduction from the Labour Church Union. The hymn book was no longer even printed by the Labour Church Publishing Office in Fleet Street, but locally in Bradford.64 The Labour Church might be considered an experiment in social history that failed: its overall plan was a failure possibly because of those features that made it unique. Its founder was never inclined to leadership and its diversity and proliferation lacked any real dynamic and central control. It claimed to be built upon a Christian ethic but without the substance or roots of a real and organized Christian faith.65 The Labour Church was concerned primarily with freedom and the desire to build a society based on ideals. This book will examine how the Labour Churches lived and died according to their founding principles and in search of their ideals.

CHAPTER 1 JOHN TREVOR RELUCTANT CHRISTIAN, RELUCTANT PREACHER, FOUNDER OF THE LABOUR CHURCH

As regards Christian doctrine, discussion of Belief, Doubt and Unbelief was in the air; it could not be escaped. A. J. Waldegrave, Labour Church Union, 18951 Any assessment of the Labour Church requires the consideration of the life and thought of John Trevor, the central figure in the creation and establishment of the Labour Church. Trevor’s ideology was the foundation on which the churches were built and a reflection of the movement that they represented. It is fair to say that the first Labour Church was the product of the mind of one man, supported by others. The ‘others’ were like-minded individuals who lived in a society that was disillusioned with the established churches and was ripe for hearing Trevor’s message of the emancipation of labour through social religion. Undoubtedly Trevor was the driving force behind the early Labour Churches, but over the decade of its heyday the Labour Church increasingly became a valuable political tool to be used by the early labour movement to develop a more secular message, while Trevor went on to explore individuality and a personal relationship with God. The diversion in thinking created a rift between the increasingly controlling political wing of the church and the ideologically inclusive element that Trevor championed.2 Trevor was anxious that his message and his struggle to find his own

JOHN TREVOR

21

relationship with God were communicated to its congregation and he wrote his autobiography, My Quest for God, in 1897. My Quest is an evaluation of his early life, his theories and his ideology.3 Much of my argument and some of the conclusions drawn are based on an understanding of Trevor, his beliefs and his intentions. Trevor at 73 had the same childlike simplicity he had at 40. In appearance he had a ‘weak mouth’, a sort of tiny twist in his mouth, which was particularly obvious when he dispensed with his beard. He had a charming personality and he carried his attitude of ‘aloofness from leadership’ to an extreme. He was no orator, though he had a charming voice, resonant and pleasant. His manner was modest and frank.4 A. J. Waldegrave’s description of John Trevor in 1930 paints a picture of a man quite different from many of his contemporaries in the early labour movement and is a rare glimpse into someone else’s assessment of Trevor as an individual.5 Much of John Trevor’s character is gleaned through his own carefully crafted words, through his writing, publications and primarily from his autobiography. There are rarely any personal descriptions of Trevor the man in the autobiographies and writings of his contemporaries. Here is a gentle, soft-spoken, middle-class man with few leadership or oratorical skills. He is a far cry from the self-educated working-class men, firebrand labour politicians, trade unionists and evangelical preachers who were his contemporaries and associates and who characterized much of the early labour movement. Waldegrave’s description of Trevor is one of several personal interviews with his family and associates collected during 1952– 3. The interviews support Trevor’s lifelong claim that he was never a leader and never had any ambition to be. They also support his own assertion that he was a poor orator, never suited to preaching sermons and primarily considered himself a writer. It does not however give any impression of the strength of character and resilience that Trevor displayed in his early life – the confidence to reject Christianity in a world where religion was a byword for respectability – or later in life – the confidence and tenacity to explore and embrace alternative lifestyles and ideologies. The primary source for how Trevor’s character was shaped, the events in his early life that he believed made him the man he was and how he came to be the founder of the Labour Church, is his own autobiography.

22

THE LABOUR CHURCH

My Quest was written in Sussex during the summer and autumn of 1897 and was published in the same year by the Labour Prophet Publishing Office in Fleet Street, London. Although Trevor was only 42 years old at the time of publication, this was a period of significant change in his private and public life. Trevor himself tells the reader that it was written in two sittings but is enigmatic about the circumstances and events that were ongoing at the time he was writing. The Labour Prophet Publishing Office was a part of the Labour Church organization that was still supportive of Trevor and enjoyed a semblance of independence from the Labour Church Union. Trevor wrote regularly for Labour Prophet Publishing until he severed all contact with the Labour Church in 1902, hence he appears to have had full editorial control over his output. Despite his editorial control Trevor does not write anything contentious about his relationship with the ILP, who effectively controlled the Labour Church Union by this time.6 By the time of his move to Sussex (away from the northern heartlands of the Labour Church and the home of the Labour Church Union in Bradford) and the subsequent publication of My Quest, there had been disagreement between Trevor and the Labour Church Union about the direction of the Labour Churches. Trevor felt that they were becoming increasingly secular and more akin to trade union meetings. The secularization of the churches and the controversy over Trevor’s personal life appear to have led him to restate his own position on the religious element of the labour movement, and his desire to maintain the religious focus of the Labour Churches.7 As founder of the Labour Church, Trevor is not explicitly critical of the organization (he does not give details) although the latter paragraphs of My Quest enigmatically reflect the fact that the publication is set against a backdrop of ideological struggle for the hearts and minds of the Labour Church and its congregation.8 Trevor’s autobiography gives the reader a picture of his personal development from the hellfire of his Johnsonian Baptist upbringing to his rejection of Christianity and the development of a deep, individual and, above all, personal relationship with God. Despite Trevor’s undoubted integrity, My Quest is to a large extent typical of Victorian autobiography and is a somewhat self-indulgent work. He identifies the major stages in his life and the role he played, and gives a modest evaluation of his thoughts and his contribution to the wider understanding of the religious life of the labour movement. Despite the positive statement that the Labour Churches were already in existence doing largely what Trevor had intended, reality suggested otherwise and My Quest must be considered a restatement of the

JOHN TREVOR

23

religious life of the Labour Church and the labour movement. My Quest was not a work intended for posterity, it was a message that intended to influence peers and contemporaries. As such it was never intended to be a commercial venture. The readership was intended to be the Labour Church congregation and, in Trevor’s own words, ‘all who had helped him’.9 It was a rallying cry to the converted. The year of 1897 was an interesting choice for Trevor to write an autobiography. This period of his life crystallizes the differences that had developed between Trevor and his contemporaries in the Labour Church hierarchy. While the Labour Church was arguably at the height of its popularity, Trevor’s relations with his political colleagues in the ILP were at an all-time low. He was beginning to move towards the exploration of alternative theories and lifestyles. He began personal correspondences with Walt Whitman and Edward Carpenter, expanding on his theories of individual morality and the personal relationship with God. An assessment of 1897 also provides clues as to Trevor’s motivation in writing his autobiography. Trevor himself indicates that My Quest was intended to be the first of at least two books. My Quest would present ‘a preliminary study in personal religion’ and the second, The Story of the Labour Church, would ‘form a study in Social Religion’.10 The first book, My Quest, is a description of Trevor’s personal development leading to his vision of the Labour Church being realized, but the second, The Story of the Labour Church, never materialized. There is no explanation for the non-appearance of a second book. Trevor certainly had the time and opportunity to write it and he was still actively involved in the Labour Church until 1902, but there is no evidence as to why it was not written. Was there controversy over the publication of My Quest? Only one published review has been uncovered to date.11 But that there is no official comment on the book may suggest that the labour leadership and the Labour Church chose to ignore Trevor at this point. My Quest does, however, have the air of being the preface to a main event that never happened. Responses to or critical evaluations of My Quest have proved elusive. Many Labour Church respondents refer casually to My Quest as being on sale in the churches or having read it, but provide no critical opinion, analysis or commentary. There is no indication as to how it was received by the congregations. It may be safe to assume that Trevor’s account of the development of his religious opinions and his outright rejection of Christianity was no surprise. First, it is unlikely that his readers would have

24

THE LABOUR CHURCH

been unaware of his religious views, since his target audience was the Labour Church congregation who read his work in the Labour Prophet and his opinions in Labour Church Tracts, and heard his lectures at their churches. Second, it is probable that it made no difference to Trevor’s reputation. C. H. Hereford, in his biography of Trevor’s mentor, Philip Henry Wicksteed, refers to My Quest as a description of the search for God that Trevor first struggled with on meeting Wicksteed in 1887: ‘Trevor had already, at thirty-two, traversed several phases of that “quest for God” which he narrated twenty years later in that remarkable volume so entitled’.12 Hereford made no other comment on the autobiography or its contents. ‘Remarkable’ may be a generous accolade, but My Quest is, in turn, highly respectful and complimentary to Wicksteed. A single, independent, contemporary review of My Quest has been located and, though it may not be typical, deserves attention: Mr Trevor has given us what is practically a journal in time of the development of his religious opinions, a record of many changes. Born and brought up in an atmosphere of uncompromising Calvinism, he went through the terror of hell and the joys of conversion natural to the school: gradually he felt the influence of broader conceptions, views that made room for the interests of the world, instead of leaving ‘on the one hand the scheme of salvation, on the other all the facts and activities of life;’ then followed, with curious abruptness, the loss of his belief in the literal inspiration of the Bible and the consequent downfall of his orthodox conviction, an intervening period of sceptical gloom, and finally a renewed and strengthened confidence in God, intimately though obscurely connected with an active belief in the ‘Labour Movement’. The book, it is evident, springs from a genuine spiritual experience, and is impressive and valuable as such, but one could wish often for greater definiteness of thought. It may be profoundly true that ‘the goal of evolution is the awakening of the consciousness of God in us’ and significant that Mr Trevor’s experiences have led him to this conclusion; but he gives no reason for the faith that is in him; where we look for an argument we find only the statement that ‘these things are personal’, ‘above rule and dogma’ and the like. It is not clear what place Mr Trevor would assign to the intellect in moral and religious life; sometimes he seems to exclude it altogether, without realising what this exclusion means. Does he really

JOHN TREVOR

25

think for example, that a man can rest in the position that these two command of the moral law. ‘Thou shalt tell no lie’, and ‘Thou shalt do no unkind deed’ can never be harmonized on earth?13 The review by classical scholar Florence Melian Stawell is a letter written in London but published in the American International Journal of Ethics (July 1898) shortly after the publication of My Quest. Stawell may not have been Trevor’s initial target audience (there is no record of her being part of any Labour Church congregation) and I have been unable to find her writing in any Labour Church Publishing publications, but Stawell’s status as a renowned Cambridge scholar and Oxford academic lends the letter credibility.14 She is critical of Trevor’s ‘crisis of faith’, which she feels My Quest handles with ‘curious abruptness’. While acknowledging that Trevor’s was a ‘genuine spiritual experience’ and, as an account of such, had value, it left Stawell requiring a ‘greater definiteness of thought’. A more coherent thought process or prescriptive religious formula from Trevor might have led to a more cohesive set of Labour Churches, but Stawell’s charge that Trevor’s answer to everything is ‘these things are personal’ and ‘above rule and dogma’ misses the core of Trevor’s religious thought. Both statements underline Trevor’s most fervently held views – his loathing of any creed or dogma and his belief in the sacrosanct nature of his personal relationship with God. There is no evidence of Stawell’s religion or religious views; her work was classical with a diversion to international ethics and, from her comments, it is possible to assume that her questions were ethical and did not indicate an entrenched religious standpoint. Stawell challenges the assumption that the world could survive without ‘lies’ or ‘unkind deeds’ and the perennial argument that the practical application of socialism is against human nature. It is unlikely then that Stawell was an ethical or utopian socialist. Finally, Stawell was living and writing in London,15 where the Labour Churches never became established as they did in the north and midlands: hence, she would have had limited access to Labour Church congregations practising Trevor’s philosophy.16 Alongside his religious journey, My Quest is also something of a homage to his first wife, probably as a result of the controversy surrounding his second marriage. He appears to separate his life into two phases, life before his first wife’s death and life after. Trevor himself stated that there was too much turmoil in the wake of her death to be commented on yet: it was ‘too fresh’.17 This might be taken two ways: first, the upheaval in his personal life

26

THE LABOUR CHURCH

caused by the death of his wife and two young sons and, second, the public turmoil caused by the perceived indecent haste of his aforementioned second marriage. Trevor’s attitude to his wives is interesting and may indicate something of his conventional approach to women in general, firmly rooted in Victorian ideals of gender.18 It is striking that throughout his writing there is little personal information about his first wife, not even her name – Eliza. He also omitted to say that he and Eliza were first cousins. His reason may either have been that he thought it was of no consequence or, more likely, that he preferred to keep his wife out of the public domain. He did, nevertheless, refer to her constantly: putting her on a pedestal and considering her his moral superior, attributing to her the most valued Victorian female characteristics of steadfastness and consistency, which he felt he lacked personally and would never be able to achieve. Although he often expressed the feeling that he was unworthy of her, he did not present her as an intellectual equal, even though she had been his chief correspondent before their marriage. I have only located one contemporary view of Eliza and Annie Higham to provide any balance to Trevor’s – often sentimental – view of Eliza as a paragon of Victorian womanhood and motherhood. Mrs Sarah Dickinson’s account provides a comparison: The second Mrs Trevor was younger than he: they were married soon after the first Mrs Trevor died. The First Mrs Trevor struck me as a woman above me, above middle class. We had not much in common. The second Mrs Trevor was younger, and a bit frivolous. He seemed to change too. He sort of became frivolous too.19 Trevor’s views on womanhood and the trials of women were expressed in some detail in My Quest where he calls for their emancipation, and claims that working women are closest to God in the burden of work that they bear.20 Yet however genuine Trevor’s opinions may have been, some of the furore at his second marriage was, without doubt, a criticism of his character and the haste with which he remarried. It may also have been a reflection that his peers had considered Eliza to be a good wife.21 Eliza Trevor’s funeral was briefly described by Enid Stacy in her ‘pocket diary’. Despite her hectic schedule she made time to attend: ‘December 15th [1894] . . . Went with Mrs P [Emmeline Pankhurst] to Mrs Trevor’s funeral. Wear red dress and jacket. Saw a host of folks. Had tea with Tom Mann. Good meeting in the evening’.22 Either Mrs Trevor was very well thought of

JOHN TREVOR

27

or they did not waste the opportunity to discuss their politics. Many of the regular congregation of the Manchester and Salford Labour Church also attended, including Kier Hardie, Robert Blatchford, Margaret McMillan and Phillip Wicksteed. Keir Hardie had been one of Trevor’s staunchest supporters and closest allies. They had worked and published together, but Hardie was very much a product of his upbringing and a great believer in the fifth principle of the Labour Church, which was a focus on personal character as ‘essential to the emancipation from social and moral bondage’.23 The ILP as an organization was sensitive to any action that might bring sexual licence under consideration. Trevor’s second marriage in particular caused Hardie some personal concern and he was scathing in his condemnation. In 1895 he wrote to Trevor on the subject of his marriage to Annie: You have given the movement such a blow as it will not recover from in a hurry, and if you really desire to serve it you can best do so by resigning all relations with the Labour Church . . . I value most, as you know, the heavy moral side of our agitation, and it is there you have smitten us heavily.24 Hardie’s attitude is indicative of the ILP’s desire to maintain a respectable image.25 By the turn of the century, in the light of John Trevor’s subsequent actions, there could be some sympathy with Hardie’s concerns. Trevor began to experiment with other organizations in the name of the Labour Church, after his expulsion from it. After moving to Sussex between 1899 and 1902, Trevor offered informal religious training in his ‘school of natural religion’; after his return to London in 1902, he briefly set up a ‘Labour Church Settlement’ as a centre of intellectual and cultural life, clinging on to what remained of his original movement. Both of these actions led to the formal severing of his ties with both the Labour Church and the Labour Church Publishing Office. Trevor continued to publish independently. Details of Trevor’s life are sketchy beyond 1902 and are not relevant to the Labour Church. Trevor’s typically Victorian presentation of his wife does not appear to be an accurate reflection of his more radical views on women. In My Quest, Trevor calls for female emancipation, yet how far Trevor’s support for women’s suffrage went in practice is difficult to establish: although many Labour Churches gave speaking time to women, Trevor did not routinely

28

THE LABOUR CHURCH

manage churches himself nor control their speakers and influences. He did, however, manage the Labour Church newspaper, the Labour Prophet, which was undoubtedly pro-suffrage and regularly gave column inches to women and their fight for the vote. He also specifically includes women in this first real political statement in My Quest, a call to raise up humanity through independence – including that of labour, and of Ireland – and selfawareness.26 He read J. S. Mill’s autobiography, much of which ‘expressed exactly my own [Trevor’s] feelings exactly’,27 and dedicates an entire chapter to his thoughts on marriage, the nature of love and human relationships.28 My Quest is populated by strong, very moral female characters, to many of whom Trevor attaches warmth and emotion, making them appear real and three-dimensional. To suggest that this was inspired by his recognition of his wife as his equal would be speculation, but he obviously had a good opinion of women and was always positive about his marriage. He acknowledged the supporting role Eliza played in his ambitions, accepting that she remained a Christian, continued to read the Bible and attended the Unitarian Church with their children in the face of her husband’s public rejection of organized Christian religion. By contrast, Trevor’s second wife Annie very much followed Trevor down the path to an alternative lifestyle. If 1897 saw a turning point in the private life of John Trevor, it was also the culmination of a contentious three years in his public life. Trevor had written My Quest against a backdrop of organizational conflict and with the feeling that his organization was losing sight of its original aims and principles. There is no doubt that, by 1897, Trevor’s views were firmly in conflict with those of much of the rest of the Labour Church. The Labour Church was, in places, becoming more and more secular and was used increasingly by the ILP and trade unions to hold political meetings.29 Trevor’s striving to imbue the labour movement with a religious spiritualism was already losing ground. In the 1950s, Stanley S. Trevor, John Trevor’s son, stated that ‘My father once told me he lost interest in the Labour Church largely because it tended to become merely a Sunday meeting of Trade Unionists and so lost its religious character’.30 Certainly by 1900 it could be argued that the missionary zeal for socialism was in decline, a trend that was typified by the demise of the Halifax Labour Church. This church found itself in competition with Sunday evening political meetings held elsewhere by the ILP, which stressed that political actions, rather than spiritualism, were what would change

JOHN TREVOR

29

society. Chris Waters wrote that the Labour Church also came under criticism for the ‘secularization of the Lord’s Day’, which contributed to the dissolution of the Halifax Labour Church in 1901. Halifax had been a Labour Church stronghold and this must have been a crushing blow to Trevor: spirituality had given way to parliamentary politics and the hunt for votes. In addition, Waters claimed that the Labour Church was overtaken by new working-class interests, ‘blaming the growth of football and the music hall for the decline of the Labour Church’.31 Whereas the Labour Church had once fulfilled a social and recreational need,32 it was now overtaken by new leisure activities.33 The Labour Church itself must also take some responsibility for failing to accommodate changes in society. Its publications, and particularly its newspapers, did not pick up on the increasing popularity and importance of new social trends and went so far as to refuse to insert ‘sports pages’ in its newspapers. It could have been accused of refusing to accommodate new working-class tastes and interests, maintaining the rather puritanical reputation of its journals. This was not just a Labour Church Publications issue. The Labour Leader suffered the same fate under the puritanical editorship of John Bruce Glasier,34 until he was forced to include sporting pages after seeing a distinct drop in circulation. These publishers were only to see their beliefs questioned again when the subject of whether to include gambling news and betting tips was raised. My Quest is a vindication of Trevor’s personal life, a restatement of his belief in the purpose of his original organization and a rallying call to return to the spirituality of the labour movement. Only the last five chapters are concerned with details of the Labour Church (which is not surprising given that he intended to write another book); the remainder are concerned with his personal development and his quest to find his own relationship with God. At the age of just 42, Trevor believed that My Quest represented a landmark in his life. He was finished with his development and was on the brink of moving on to pastures new. He abandoned the autobiography and plans for a second book but, by the turn of the century, My Quest had become more popular in America among the disciples of Walt Whitman. This gave Trevor a credible platform from which to move in another direction and explore alternative lifestyles and sexuality.35 Trevor’s interest in sex, his constant fight to suppress his own sexuality, and his rejection of the conventional creeds and dogmas of Christianity are covered sporadically in My Quest, and his life story deserves closer examination. Trevor was an orphan by the age of nine and was raised by his

30

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Johnsonian Baptist grandparents and their community. The severity of his religious upbringing left him in mortal fear of hellfire and damnation and he later stated that his ‘life was absolutely without joy and [his] young heart had no place of rest’.36 Trevor was not untypical. Doctrines of eternal punishment and ‘the fear of eternal punishment helped secure Evangelical conversions and filled up Nonconformist chapels, there were men and women within the Evangelical camp who had doubts about the morality of the concept of eternal punishment.’37 He became an evangelical Christian, but the rigours of his upbringing scarred him for life and his journey via Unitarianism to the Labour Church ‘may be understood in a large measure as a reaction against the religious fundamentalism of his childhood associated with the sexual repression of his youth’.38 Sensuality and sexuality were important to Trevor, who refers to his sexual growth throughout My Quest, from his childish mental anguish that lust and masturbation would condemn him to hell,39 to his adult conclusion that sensuality and sexual love are separable, sensuality being the ‘higher reality’ from which sex develops into ‘the highest consciousness of real being, the presence of God’.40 Trevor’s interest in sexuality and its incompatibility with the labour movement is described in The One Life: for some years I have had no practical connexion with the Labour Church. This has been due to no change of ideas on my part, but to the fact that I became increasingly convinced some day I should be compelled to deal seriously with the Sex question. When that day came I wished the Labour Church to have no share in the odium I should incur in so doing.41 There is no doubt that Trevor believed that his childhood largely prefigured the man he became, and he unequivocally stated that his autobiography was a narrative he used to present a coherent story. There is however an honesty about it and, like many who turned from religion, he was apologetic for the hardships of his upbringing at the hands of remote and distant relatives and for his harsh, patchy education. There does not appear to be any regret or sense of loss about his childhood: it appears that he is happy to leave it behind. He does not romanticize his earliest years and does not try to present an emotional picture of his parents: he did not dwell on them because he simply did not remember them. As a Johnsonian Baptist, however, his

JOHN TREVOR

31

immediate view of his childhood would have been coloured by his evangelical upbringing and the stress on the sinfulness of the child: that all are born in a sinful fallen state, an attitude that Trevor never quite lost. He struggled with God on the death of his two sons, followed quickly by the death of his first wife. Yet, despite the pain of his loss, he was determined that his family would not grow up with the same mortal fear of God. They did not need to suffer the angst that had been the original reason for him to question religion, before his reconciliation with God and his rejection of Christianity. Trevor’s rejection of the Bible and orthodox Christianity came during his long sea passage to Australia (a journey of three months). Trevor had qualified as an architect and became engaged to Eliza before ill health led him on to his voyage of discovery. It was on board ship during his long passage to Australia that he finally rejected the Bible, church and Christianity. While at sea Trevor suffered a mental breakdown, which he called his ‘collapse of faith’.42 In a moment of denial of his own belief he gave up the Bible and came to the conclusion that ‘God had to be in one’s own heart’.43 Trevor rejected religion as being ‘merely romantic’ and it became clear to him that his life task was to ‘preach the gospel of salvation and holiness through faith’.44 How he was going to do this is not now clear, though he acknowledged that he did not have the physical strength required for being a preacher and therefore, at this very early stage, established that his mission would be conducted through writing. Much has been made of Trevor’s ‘collapse of faith’, but to say that Trevor suffered a complete loss of faith at this point is not accurate. He never lost his belief in God nor in physical love through God but he absolutely rejected all dogma, creed and the evangelical faith that he had been brought up in. Away from the dogma and creed of Christianity, life aboard ship left Trevor with his all-consuming Bible and no outside influences. Trevor’s turn from faith ‘was chaos come with a crash’,45 and happened after weeks of intellectual as well as emotional analysis of the Bible. Paul’s letters to the Romans had formed the basis of Trevor’s faith until he questioned Paul’s dogmatic interpretation.46 He questioned the infallibility of the Bible. This in turn led him to question his own religious upbringing, which had largely been based on a literal interpretation.47 His emotional turmoil at the thought of giving up Christianity, and the impact on those all around him, were described in letters home to Eliza.48 To her, he wrote that he had become a ‘Realist on Religion’ and again stressed that religion had before been merely

32

THE LABOUR CHURCH

romantic.49 He understood that personal salvation was not enough to accomplish the salvation of the world. He had found a purpose in life: ‘there lay before me my life task that I had been so blindly groping after in the days of Faith now lost – to find God with a closed Bible, and then to tell others the way by which I had gone’.50 Trevor did not lose the ability to feel emotion that is often associated with mental crisis or mental breakdown. Quite the opposite: he became very emotional and slightly unhinged, very conscious of the impact of his crisis on those at home. He appears to have lost his footing and the base from which he discerned right and wrong. He consoled himself by going back to the roots of manual labour: he slept and lived with the sailors onboard, returning to the simplicity of living to escape his feelings. Trevor had very little snobbery about him: he recognized his childhood self as a ‘prig’ but his views as a travelling, middle-class young man were liberal. During his crisis of faith he found solace in the manual work of the sailors on board his ship and, on his epic land journey across Australia, he preferred to sit by the ‘coloured driver’, who Trevor described as ‘a native’ though still a ‘very agreeable companion’. He also attended ‘negro campmeetings’ and ‘a coloured church’.51 In Australia he flirted with freethinking societies but disliked their plans for the destruction of all churches without any notion of putting anything constructive in their place, not even a constructive argument as to why there should be nothing in their place.52 Here Trevor acknowledges the first stirrings of the need for the Labour Church and an alternative religion rather than nothing at all. To be rid of the old church, something would need to be put in its place, otherwise it would simply reappear. While some who subsequently attended the Labour Church may have given it a Christian or Christian Socialist flavour, as an ideal it was born out of the period in Trevor’s life when his faith in Christianity, although not in God, had collapsed and he had set himself the task of ‘finding God in life’.53 Trevor also praised Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant and their ‘free thinking’. He was an admirer of Besant and concurs that man’s true state should be open to himself, to personal experience and discovery, that life should not be determined by the church whose rules and regulations, creeds and dogmas were designed to keep the majority repressed. Trevor considered the church the ‘tyranny of the strong over the weak’,54 although – unlike Bradlaugh and Besant – he never professed to be an atheist and, at this point in his life, he was not yet a socialist.

JOHN TREVOR

33

Throughout the autobiography we can see the gradual revelation of the ideas that would become the raison d’eˆtre for the Labour Church. By setting the ‘jewish literature’55 aside, Trevor established a pattern for Labour Church services, in which the inner thoughts and beliefs of people expressed in their own words replaced the traditional use of the Bible. The acknowledgement of an individual, inner human belief opened up the Labour Church to those with less conventional lifestyles and created almost two distinct Labour Churches: the politically oriented churches such as Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester sat uneasily alongside churches such as Leek and Bolton, which were inspired by William Morris and Walt Whitman. Since Trevor was writing with some hindsight and at the height of the Labour Church’s creativity and popularity, it would be easy to assume that he had constructed an ideal persona or creed that he gradually revealed. The circumstances surrounding what we might today call Trevor’s ‘sound-bites’ are always supported by evidence. Descriptions of both his mental state and his physical surroundings were often written as letters that he had sent or sermons that he had preached at the time: a large proportion of My Quest is made up of reproduced letters and sermons. As any autobiography is written with hindsight, it is probable that Trevor wanted to make his struggles and his feelings immediate, mixed with the more mundane narrative. Using contemporary letters and even examples in his own handwriting gave some validity to his claims, though whether any of the reproductions were edited will never be known.56 Trevor travelled home from Australia via the USA and, at this point, his thoughts first turned to Unitarianism. He had not reconciled himself to the Bible or Christianity but he appreciated the Unitarian ‘tendency to free thought’,57 despite the warnings about their heretical beliefs, in which he had been indoctrinated as a child. Some of Trevor’s discomfort with the Christian creed was that Jesus’ teaching came from his experience of life not the teachings of others. He was encouraged by Unitarianism. Unitarians ‘did not believe in the divinity of Christ’ or any doctrine of atonement: they would find their place in heaven by their ‘Own Righteousness’. They tended to be very good, very moral people because they ‘only had their goodness to rely on for salvation’.58 Trevor was still searching for inclusion and chose Unitarianism because of their tendency to free thought and because he would ‘be submitted to no doctrinal test’ and could remain there ‘uncommitted on questions of faith’.59 Determined to become a Unitarian minister he went to

34

THE LABOUR CHURCH

the Meadville Seminary, Pennsylvania for instruction and his experiences at Meadville are well described. Arguably Trevor never lost his Christian morality and he lived his life with Christian morals. He lost his fear of heaven and hell and knowingly or subconsciously must have considered the compatibility of a belief in an immanent God, revealing himself in day-to-day life, while rejecting belief in the transcendent God of orthodox faiths. A belief in an immanent God is compatible with both the Unitarian and Labour Churches.60 But Trevor’s attitude to Christianity was too radical for the Unitarian College at Meadville. He wanted to preach about religion and God without any reference to Christianity, so he would eventually need to find an organization outside of Unitarianism. Trevor made clear his beliefs in My Quest, and it is with these values that Trevor returned to Britain: I believe in God, and I trust him in everything. I believe that he is working for the best, and that he expects me to co operate intelligently with his workings and live in accordance with his laws . . . I believe in prayer . . . I believe in the immortality of the soul. My chief aim however will not be to preach belief but action. The man who is doing his duty has the highest revelation of God that he can have. Membership in a Church should not be held open to those who believe the most, but to those who are willing to do the most. I should want a church of workers; and if a man came along and said ‘I don’t believe much, but I want to help raise the fallen and feed the hungry’, he should be welcome.61 On his return, unable to settle back into architecture, Trevor once again moved into the Unitarian community and through them he eventually found his way to the Manchester Unitarian College in London, and to Philip Henry Wicksteed at Little Portland Street Chapel. This was where, in 1888, he first encountered the relationship between labour politics and religion. It was where he had the opportunity to hear leading socialists such as Annie Besant, Edward Aveling and William Morris, leading to his publishing a spate of socialist and religious works, none of which were particularity ground-breaking or well-received.62 Wicksteed kept him focused and Trevor considered him ‘his saviour’.63 He valued his lifelong friendship and his support immensely and credits him with his part in the development of the

JOHN TREVOR

35

idea and the foundation of the Labour Church. In turn, Wicksteed provides a brief, contemporary portrait of Trevor and describes him as a man ‘who, otherwise frail and ineffectual, possessed something of poetic and prophetic power, in the presence of which he felt himself “commonplace and timidly compromising”’.64 Wicksteed proved to be one of the most credible early proponents of the Labour Church. While maintaining his position as a leading Unitarian Minister, he worked tirelessly with Trevor to build up his new organization, lending his credibility to early publications and supporting the entire endeavour.65 Wicksteed ‘enthralled one of the first meetings of the new church by an address, and in February 1892 [and] described the meaning and purpose of the movement’.66 The relationship between Trevor and Wicksteed was one of the most fortunate and fruitful of Trevor’s life. Wicksteed had already been exploring the practicality of Christianity and the application of Christian values.67 The two men were kindred spirits. Upon their first meeting, ‘Wicksteed was immediately drawn to Trevor, and Trevor to him. Wicksteed saw a touch of the poet and the prophet in him’ and lent Trevor his ‘immensely rich and fruitful contact with men and with affairs [as] a corrective to his own selfcentred dreams’,68 opening Trevor’s eyes to the mix of religion and politics. Wicksteed was the sounding board and mentor for Trevor’s early development of the Labour Church idea. In a letter to C. H. Hereford, Wicksteed’s biographer, on 2 August 1929, Trevor wrote that ‘The Labour Church rested on Wicksteed’s broad shoulders as long as I was connected with it’.69 Wicksteed initially gave the Labour Church its credibility. By June 1890 Trevor had stepped out of Wicksteed’s shadow and moved to his own Unitarian ministry at Upper Brook Street Free Church, Manchester. Although he had already developed the seeds of a church of labour for working men before going to Manchester, Manchester gave him the practical opportunity to branch out: it was the right place at the right time.70 Trevor’s increasing class-consciousness had begun in Australia, but, whereas his views had been liberal, he now looked at the religion he believed was inherent in the labour movement and in socialism, which was being denied by established churches and thus alienated many working people. Trevor’s thoughts on socialism are haphazard and not explained in any detail nor concentrated in any section of My Quest. His style of socialism is fluid and difficult to pin down, as was the type of socialism offered in the Labour Churches. Like many socialists, Trevor belonged to more than one socialist organization: he was a staunch supporter of the ILP, though he remained a

36

THE LABOUR CHURCH

lifelong member of the Fabian Society. The basis of his socialism, however, was largely ethical rather than Christian. In April 1891, Wicksteed and Trevor attended the National Triennial Conference of Unitarian Churches in London, where Trevor was inspired by hearing Ben Tillett deliver a harsh attack on the alienation of existing churches from the working man.71 Trevor recalled ‘Tillett’s titanic appeal’,72 and took to heart his declaration that the working classes were not irreligious but that ‘if they follow the lead of secularists and atheists, it was because these men understood and sympathized with their sorrows, and could point to a remedy beyond the knowledge of the churches’.73 Tillett’s principles were in complete accordance with those of Trevor. Trevor considered that the churches were ‘making game of God and the Poor’, they were ‘fooling with the great social Cancer [poverty] – or practising their virtues on it’.74 Trevor’s commitment to socialism and his determination to set up a church to present labour as a religion in itself put him at odds with the Unitarian Church, and he was forced to resign from Upper Brook Street in 1891.75 The Unitarians took issue with Trevor’s need to establish a new church. Again, Trevor expressed concern that Unitarianism was too focused on the individual to make an impact as a reforming church. Trevor is awkward in his description of how his opinions culminated in the idea to form a new Labour Church; it was not merely the influence of one Ben Tillett speech. He acknowledged the influence of Wicksteed, Tillett and others. He praised the work of the Salvation Army as they went out into the streets and reached out to the poor and those who had been abandoned by church and chapel. Trevor even first mooted an organization that was ‘kind of a Socialist Salvation Army’,76 though he did not sympathize with the evangelical Christianity that Booth’s organization preached to the poor who benefited from their help. Trevor also insisted that his inspiration for the Labour Church was never class-oriented but work-oriented. Trevor states this principle explicitly ‘I must not call my new organization the Working Man’s Church, but the Labour Church, I did not wish it to stand so much for class as a principle’.77 He believed firmly that the progress of society required a ‘collective consciousness’78 that was not being provided by the established churches nor the established political parties. During a restless night’s sleep: my brain turning over and over this new idea and fell asleep with the determination that a Working-Man’s Church should be formed. God

JOHN TREVOR

37

in the Labour Movement – working through it, as once he had worked through Christianity, for the further salvation of the world – that was the simple conception that I had been seeking.79 Unequivocally, Trevor required a ‘Self-conscious Labour Movement’,80 a means of finding the religion of the labour movement and a means of attracting working people back to God. Trevor’s ultimate goal was twofold: (1) a gradual evolution of individual religious self-consciousness (through tribal, national, class and universal consciousness) to the ultimate state of reality that is God consciousness; (2) the development of individual religious consciousness – transcending class – which could most immediately be applied to the labour movement. Trevor identified an opportunity to take his theories further, to a universal consciousness, or an organization of likeminded souls.81 The existing churches had neither the means nor the inclination to support Trevor’s theories and Trevor himself felt that they lacked the missionary zeal for the labour movement and the acknowledgement of the true religion inherent in labour: hence the need for the Labour Church was recognized. Trevor went so far as to acknowledge the opposition of the existing churches: ‘the Labour Party must be made conscious of the fact that God is not opposed to their high aspirations, as so many churches are preaching today’.82 On 4 October 1891 – supported by Wicksteed, but not the Unitarian Church – the first meeting of the Labour Church took place in Chorlton Town Hall, Manchester. At the first meeting Trevor set out his stall. He established the character and the purpose of the Labour Churches and set them up as an alternative to established churches. The first service was religious and was described in the Workman’s Times of 9 October 1891: after opening music and a prayer from Trevor there was a reading of James Russell Lowell’s poem, ‘On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves’. A Unitarian Minister read the fifth chapter of Isaiah, the choir sang ‘England Arise’ and Trevor gave a sermon. He spoke of the need for ‘bringing religion into the struggle’, attacked the absence of support from the traditional churches and concluded that what was required was ‘a religious movement of their own outside the churches, which should allow them to live a righteous and godly life, and yet secure the freedom from which they lived.83

38

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Trevor’s own belief in the Labour Church and what it stood for was developed in five Labour Church Principles, which were published in every Labour Church document from its hymn book to its weekly newspaper, the Labour Prophet. The Labour Church and its five principles were federated at the inauguration of the Labour Church Union in 1893.84 These were the basic tenets on which more Labour Churches would be founded. Despite being made the first Chairman of the Labour Church Union, Trevor had no taste for organization or leadership. He did not routinely set out to establish more churches: growth was organic and somewhat haphazard, depending on local needs.85 Trevor always claimed that by both character and inclination he was unsuited to become the leader of a national organization and instead set himself to founding and editing the Labour Prophet and establishing the Labour Church Publishing Office in Fleet Street, London. With the first Labour Church established, Trevor became an integral part of the labour movement. If the intervening years suggest that the establishment of the first Labour Churches were routine and relatively straightforward, the last chapters of My Quest bring the reader back to the ‘three lost years’ that Trevor refers to at the end of his autobiography. He finds it very difficult to end My Quest and he feels that an explanation of the rift within the Labour Church is beyond his power at this juncture. there is something in these last few chapters which I fear to touch, lest, with my present limited working power, I should lose the life in attempting to mend the form. These last chapters were written hastily and under compulsion.86 Chapter XXVIII has all of the typical Trevor characteristics of a final chapter, closing with a Robert Browning verse, but then another chapter, ‘Au Revoir’ appears, followed by an ‘Epilogue’ in which Trevor continually hints at the turmoil of the past three years without actually making any real statement. He tantalisingly suggests that the three unrecorded years ‘seem more sacred to me and yet have been full of difficulty and perplexity than any’ and that ‘this sense of sacredness bids me not rashly lift the veil’.87 It must be assumed that this refers to the years following his first wife’s death, the personal criticism which followed and the onset of his disillusionment with the direction of the Labour Churches. As discussed, Trevor became increasingly concerned that the Labour Churches were being used as a purely

JOHN TREVOR

39

political tool. In February 1895 Trevor gave vent in the Labour Prophet to concerns that the ILP was ignoring ‘man’s deeper needs and higher aspirations’.88 During the years 1893 and 1894, personal tragedies and Trevor’s own ill-health and unsuitability to leadership led to him hand over the chairmanship of the Labour Church Union. The chairmanship was passed to Fred Brocklehurst, an ILP man who clashed with Trevor as he had a more secular approach to the Labour Churches, bringing to the organization what Trevor termed a ‘political supremacy’. Trevor’s move to Sussex in 1897 was effectively the end of his regular active involvement in the Labour Church and, by 1902, he had severed all productive contact. My Quest is what the title states: it is Trevor’s journey to find his own religious life and relationship with God. While this culminated in his establishment of the Labour Church, it does not give much detail about the prime years of his organization nor details of individual churches, congregations and characters. He intended to write another book on the subject, ‘at what time I cannot tell’.89 At the time of writing My Quest, Trevor was clear of its purpose and audience. He was honest about his upbringing and class. While he went out of his way to create empathy with working classes, he never claimed to have been a manual worker, neither did he create a false masculinity. Trevor may not have presented himself as a working man yet his writing clearly did have class overtones. Historians who argue that radicalism was not a class phenomenon but an issue for all excluded from the political system may find an example of this in John Trevor, never working-class but still feeling keenly for those who were excluded. The persona that Trevor does adopt is one of personal misery and struggle, frailty and illness. This type of persona and his struggle might make him appear more godly: his frailty was clearly a strong element in his self identity but emphasizing it does not make him appear particularly masculine. This is incongruous, given that Trevor was reaching out to a largely working-class audience of ‘real men’ who sweated, got dirty and worked with their hands. But, with hindsight, much of the congregation of the Labour Church tended to be the more educated and aspirational working class. Still, Trevor could not credibly give himself the characteristics of his audience and so he is regularly at odds with the ILP and trade unionists around him. Trevor’s battles were not just with God and the church: ultimately he had to wage a battle almost as significant about the direction and purpose of the Labour Church, a long battle, which he inevitably lost.

40

THE LABOUR CHURCH

If Trevor’s primary aim was to reach out to the declining working-class congregations of other established churches, he sought to do so by founding a working-class religion with its own doctrine (though without the associated dogma) and creating a truly egalitarian and ethical, socialistinspired church dedicated to righting social injustice. Trevor’s initial aims were clear: the church’s purpose was religious, social and political. However, as has been acknowledged, its increasing politicization and secularization – to meet political objectives – ultimately contributed to its decline. It was increasingly at odds with Trevor’s beliefs in the spirituality of labour, and the increasing secularization led to the question of whether it was a church at all.90 Trevor acknowledges that there was some criticism of the Labour Church, and lists some of its critics, but he does not dwell on them in My Quest.91 Trevor never returned to the Christian fold, but went on to explore alternative lifestyles and sexualities. Nevertheless, in the way in which he lived his life, he never entirely lost sight of Christian morality, a desire to be ‘good’, and the Christian belief in a benevolent God. Even after his second son and his wife had died in quick succession, Trevor searched for reasons why these events might have happened and found excuses to forgive God. He also acknowledged the rituals of marriage albeit celebrated in civil ceremonies. My Quest is self-indulgent but it is an interesting document, both for its content and as a reflection of the time it was written. Trevor expresses no really contentious or unexpected opinions and in no way does he ‘name names’, but he tells the reader how he came to be in his current position. He restates his belief in the inherent religion of the labour movement at a time when criticism of him personally by the labour hierarchy and the takeover of the Labour Church by the ILP were moving the Church in a distinctly secular and trade union-managed direction. This was a far cry from Trevor’s utopian vision of a ‘social religion’ and an ‘expression of people managing their own religious life’.92 If Trevor’s purpose was to reinvigorate Labour Church supporters to claim back their Labour Church, he obviously failed, but he succeeded in clearly stating his case. Trevor himself acknowledges that My Quest is only half of what he wanted to do and why he did not complete his task and produce a second book cannot be second-guessed. Certainly by the time My Quest was published, relations with the Labour Church were beginning to sour, as were his personal relationships with Keir Hardie and his supporters within the

JOHN TREVOR

41

labour movement. But this need not have necessarily stopped him from writing his proposed second book. He either chose not to write it and establish himself in other directions, or he was persuaded not to write it and exit the labour movement altogether. It will never be known for certain. Criticism had gathered pace but not purely from the ILP. The established churches had been crafting their messages to appeal to working people and they had created their own socialist groups allied to different faiths and denominations. As has been described, they also continued to criticize the secularization of Sundays. The established churches had been criticized since the early days of the Owenites and the Chartist movement, whose ideology had appealed to Christian socialists. Robert Owen’s utopian socialist philosophy deserves some comparison with the Labour Church. His vision of socialism went hand in hand with his philosophy of ‘Rational Religion’93 his followers met in ‘Halls of Science’ to listen to lectures in place of sermons and to sing socialist inspired hymns. Where the comparison fails is that, unlike Trevor, Owen was a secularist and his philosophy required adherence to his ideals whereas the Labour Church left the individual free to follow their own religion or conscience. Chartists could never reconcile the notion of a benevolent Christian God with society’s treatment of the poor. Like the Labour Church, the Chartists failed to present a new society under Chartist principles as an alternative religion.94 There was no means of letting go of the Anglican, Catholic and non-conformist churches, and Christianity, while ‘God’ was needed for ‘respectability’. Trevor’s concurrence with the need for respectability, personal character and morality is constantly revealed throughout the autobiography and reinforced when it ultimately finds a place in the principles of the Labour Church (principle number two). In answer to the questions about his own moral character, Trevor used My Quest to establish his position and explain how he became the character he did, while outlining the virtues and struggles that made him a worthy of a place in labour society. As he did not have a working-class background, he was at pains to show that his early life had not been trouble-free and that he had had challenges of his own to face, just as his audience had had disadvantages to overcome. My Quest is a reasoning theory for turning to the light and spirituality of socialism. There is a strong element of the puritan in Trevor’s presentation of a journey out of the darkness of political and religious oppression and into the light of true individual spirituality and freedom. Trevor uses his autobiography to present this as a narrative and a coherent story. He can only

42

THE LABOUR CHURCH

present a sense of self as there are no real descriptions of major events associated with him (interestingly he does not choose to tell the reader that he and the Labour Church presented a service at the inaugural meeting of the ILP) and he cannot describe himself as a working man. In many respects, John Trevor might be considered a lonely figure: he always struggled alone while continually trying to give credit to others and protect them from the impact of his more radical religious ideas. The autobiography gives the impression that Trevor’s whole raison d’eˆtre was his obsession with finding religious truth. In presenting himself in this way he fails to provide a balanced view of his own development, which makes him difficult to identify with or relate to. Nevertheless, what Trevor presents in My Quest is what he genuinely believed was the most important duty in his life.

CHAPTER 2 `

ORGANIC GROWTH

AN ANTIDOTE TO BLACK CLOTHES, KID GLOVES, TALL SILK HATS, AND LONG FACES' 1

Is it possible, right in the heart of the Labour Movement, to build up a Church upon the conception of a ‘sweet forbidden friendship with God’ as George Dawson so beautifully expressed it? – Possible, or not this is what, three years ago, I set before me as the aim of the remainder of my days. John Trevor, Labour Church founder, 18942 The growth of the Labour Church was rapid and organic, although, initially, attempts were made to ensure that the new churches started out on a common ideological footing. Nevertheless, individual churches gradually developed their own character and congregation. Conformity was not a priority and there was no perceived need for creed or dogma beyond adherence to the five broad Labour Church principles. Yet, despite the individual and organic nature of the churches, the first church in Manchester and the earliest churches in the local environs of Lancashire were very much the product of John Trevor’s thought and the work of his small group of Labour Church Pioneers. This was Trevor’s venture and it reflected his intentions. Trevor’s objective in leaving his position as a Unitarian minister in the Upper Brook Street Free Church, Manchester was similar to William Booth’s reasons for leaving the Methodists: ‘because he could not reach the poor people in the chapel’.3 Both also came to develop a ‘deep hatred of

44

THE LABOUR CHURCH

middle-class social values’4 and the adoption and propagation of them in the established churches. Inglis, Hobsbawm and Pelling, among other historians, claim that the working classes left the regular churches in droves, as ‘the churches had been captured by the wealthy classes, who imposed in them both a social atmosphere in which the working man was kept an alien, and social policies which denied his aspirations for justice’.5 The quest for social justice would become the touchstone of the Labour Churches wherever they where and whatever their style or character. Trevor’s determination that his organization and its services should be free from any doctrine again raises the question of the Labour Church’s status as a church. As has been described, I have reached the same conclusion as both Mark Bevir, who stresses the religiosity, and D. F. Summers: ‘it was to be a “church” for it was to stimulate and express the corporate experience of a group; it was to be a church “for labouring folk and all who could see the justice of Labour’s claims” for it was intended to be an integral part of the Labour Movement’.6 In short, it was not a matter of politics versus religion but was both political and religious. Yet, despite Trevor’s best intentions, the very nature of the Labour Churches led them to their development within the political sphere rather than the religious, with their political function ultimately overwhelming their religious purpose.7 Yet, in the early days, as they grew in number, the churches provided a means of communicating an ethical socialist message wrapped up in the familiarity of a church service. In spite of its political role, Trevor’s initial intention was that the Labour Church should fundamentally be a place of worship, if not strictly Christian worship. The emergence of the Labour Church attracted declining orthodox congregations and non-conformist working-class liberals, particularly in the traditional Liberal stronghold of Lancashire. It also plugged political black spots across Yorkshire and supported the burgeoning women’s movement and the new manufacturing industries in the midlands. A handful of churches sprang up around the old industrial heartlands of Scotland. It supported Cinderella Clubs and pioneered Socialist Sunday Schools and, under the management of Paul Campbell, attempts were made to establish a small number of churches around the Labour Church Publishing Office in London.

The Proposed Venture The heart and soul of the first Labour Church however was John Trevor. The Labour Church had been ‘shaped by a single man, and he a man with little

ORGANIC GROWTH

45

physical strength, with no pretension to eloquence, with no means, and with no influence, save such as springs from absolute devotion and singleness of purpose and the passion inspired by a great idea’.8 Despite his personal limitations, he consistently made clear his aims and ambitions for the new church: The Labour Church is an organized effort to develop the religious life inherent in the Labour Movement, and to give that movement a higher inspiration and a sturdier independence in the great work of personal and social regeneration that lies before it. It appeals especially to those who have abandoned the Traditional Religion of the day without having found satisfaction in abandoning religion altogether. The message of the Labour Church is that without obedience to God’s laws there can be no Liberty. The Gospel of the Labour Church is in the Labour Movement, working through it for the further emancipation of man from the tyranny, both of his own half developed nature, and of those social conditions which are opposed to higher development. The call of the Labour Church is to men everywhere to become ‘God’s fellow workers’ in the Era of Reconstruction on which we have entered.9 Trevor’s idea was born of two fundamental beliefs. First, that the goal of evolution is the ultimate state of ‘God-consciousness’ and, second, that – in 1891 – the present point of evolution was the labour movement. Trevor understood that his goals could not be achieved within any of the existing churches and so he wrote letters to his Unitarian congregation and to the editor of the New Era expressing his feeling of restriction within the existing church and outlining his intention and his calling to take on a more missionary work: The religion I want to teach is the religion of the nineteenth century, helped by the first century, but not in any sense bound by it. The inspiration of it must form what God is doing now all around and within us. As of old, I find I must get outside existing churches to preach the new gospel. They want to do a great deal in softening the hearts of the middle classes toward the labour movement, but they cannot develop the religious heart of the labour movement, as it needs developing if we are to have true civilization.10

46

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Trevor had been working on his Labour Church project for some time before he came to the realization that his idea could not be accommodated within the established churches and that he did not have enough time or energy to carry on in his position as a paid Unitarian minister at Upper Brook Street as well as serving in his new calling.11 He left the Unitarian fold in November 1891, his six-months notice period waived by the Unitarians. Trevor’s initial plan was to hold meetings of any interested parties sympathetic to his idea. His first attempt at communicating to a wider audience was a letter published in the Inquirer on 11 July 1891: The time is ripe for a new religious movement which shall unite together the forces of the two enthusiasms of our time – the enthusiasm for social salvation – into one conquering religious energy which shall forward the world development as much as Christianity has done. Different minds must contribute to this great work. The contribution to it that I propose is to make the formation of a Labour Church here in Manchester. It is on behalf of Labour that the enthusiasm for social salvation is aroused. It is in the Labour Movement in all its varied forms that this enthusiasm is manifesting itself to the world. The fundamental principle of the new social order will be the universal obligation to Labour. This great principle is being is being advocated by a Labour Party, a Labour Press, by Labour Representatives, and a Labour Army. I believe God is at work in all these and that the time has come when we can best express this fact and deepen the world’s conviction of it by organizing a Labour Church to give new inspiration to the movement. Religion must find a place in the Labour Programme. The Labour Party must be made conscious of the fact that God is not opposed to their high aspirations, as so many churches are teaching today, but that the great work of emancipation to which they have consecrated their lives is God’s very own.12 He continues on to state what he will do in practice: The first work of the Labour Church will be to organize Sunday afternoon services to be held in some public hall in Manchester. According to the growth of the Church, various practical agencies will be added. It will thus be seen that what I propose is not merely to hold popular services, but to achieve the far more difficult task of

ORGANIC GROWTH

47

organizing the workers and their friends into a religious body which will labour earnestly for the coming of God’s Kingdom.13 Trevor’s article sets out his agenda very clearly, it expounds his belief of the religion inherent in socialism and gives an account of what he intends to do next (his reference to ‘Practical Agencies’ may be the first mention of the Labour Church Pioneers). Trevor garnered the support of local socialists and radicals and produced leaflets and handbills, using his promotional fund of £40. Hymn sheets were printed, a choir and band organized and on 4 October 1891, 400 people attended the first service at Chorlton Town Hall. The Manchester City News reported on the service, along with the Workman’s Times and other local publications. Pieced together the service appears to have gone thus: Introduction to music by a band Prayer by Trevor [there does not appear to be an exact transcription of the prayer] Solo sung by Joseph Freeman: ‘The Song that reached my Heart’ Poem read by Trevor: ‘On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves Near Washington’, by R. Lowell Lesson: Isaiah 5, Read by the Reverend Harold Rylett of Hyde Choir: ‘England Arise’ by Edward Carpenter Lecture: ‘The Programme of the Labour Church’ by Trevor. The format of the service would have been familiar to any churchgoer, but the readings, songs and lecture are distinctly secular. It is surprising then that Reverend Rylett offered a Bible reading, a part of any future services that would very quickly be ruled out.14 At the initial meeting it can only be assumed that Trevor agreed to the reading to make the occasion inclusive and to avoid alienating any of his potential congregation. The response to the first Labour Church meetings was overwhelming, and the Labour Church was quickly established in Manchester. Trevor had no problem attracting speakers of the highest order. The next three Labour Church sermons were given by Robert Blatchford, ‘Sunshine and Shadow’; John Trevor, ‘God in the Labour Movement’ (Trevor’s lecture was subsequently sold as a Labour Church Tract); and Ben Tillett, ‘The Ethics of Government’ (also becoming a Labour Church Tract).15

48

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Trevor and his followers took the Labour Church’s success as an acknowledgement that the established churches were failing to satisfy working men, and that working men alone could help themselves. The response to the first Labour Church services surprised Trevor and prompted him to issue a letter on the reverse side of a handbill advertising the 1 November meeting of 1891. It is a telling document and gives a detailed picture of the organizational steps that the Labour Church needed to make following its first meetings. It is also Trevor’s opportunity to express his gratification that he was right about the perceived irreligion of the working classes, which in turn gives him an opportunity to chastize the established churches. One of the most interesting elements of the letter is the acknowledgement that the Labour Church was collecting money from its attendees, and Trevor gives details of what needed to be done, how money might be spent and saved – including the recruitment of a full time secretary:16 FOR GOD AND LIBERTY Friends: From my first conception of the Labour Church Movement, I felt certain that it would be a success; but I was not prepared for the quick and enthusiastic response which has followed my appeal to the religious instincts of the people. I know that those who said that working men did not care for Religion, only half understood the case, that what they did not care for was a Religion which left Social Injustice supreme, or only sought to remove it by inadequate methods. But I supposed that any attempt to develop into an active force the Religion which lives at the heart of the Labour Movement would be met at first with so much mistrust, that the early steps towards organization would be slow and difficult. And now, after but three Sunday Services, the real difficulty is our overwhelming success. I am not a man of leisure. Before commenting the Labour Church Organization I was already heavily burdened, but I could not rest in the work I was doing without seeking the means of coming into closer contact with the real hearts of the people. Already contact has been made; we are in sympathetic touch; a body of aroused men and women is waiting to be organized. But some patience must be asked of you. A deal of time and work are needed to get ourselves organized into a living body, with a living head. Here is the trouble. I have so little time. But I am looking about for a good man to employ as

ORGANIC GROWTH

49

secretary who will help in this matter. This will add to our expense, but the cause is worth it, and the money will come. Last Sunday you put that beyond doubt. I that you heartily for the cry you raised when announced a collection at a future date: ‘Lets have it now!’ Such a spirit is a guarantee that we may go forward with confidence. Because of this additional expense we will cut down costs in other directions as far as possible. I have already stopped the yellow posters. If you will make good use of the ten thousand handbills printed this week we shall not need any further show. And if those of you who can play any suitable musical instrument will volunteer your services, we will soon have a voluntary band, which will save some of our present outlay. Also we want more women’s voices to strengthen our choir. Many a woman helps the long day through by singing over her toil, who could also make our services brighter by singing with the others on the platform. We want a strong choir and band to keep us in good heart for the work that lies before us. Come and give us your help in the cause of God and Liberty. Sincerely yours, John Trevor17

Labour Church Pioneers Within weeks, the enthusiasm for the Labour Church’s early services in and around Manchester, and the news of Trevor’s ‘church for working men’, had spread to neighbouring areas. With the backing of the Manchester and Salford Labour Churches, Trevor became full-time editor of the Labour Prophet and to assist with the proliferation of the Labour Churches. The Labour Prophet cost one penny and quickly gained a circulation in excess of 5,000 copies and became the primary tool for spreading the word. A ‘Form of Membership’ was developed initially for the Manchester and Salford Labour Churches, which required the member to commit to five Labour Church principles: 1. That the Labour Movement is a Religious Movement. 2. That the Religion of the Labour Movement is not a Class Religion, but unites members of all classes working for the Abolition of Commercial Slavery.

50

THE LABOUR CHURCH

3. That the Religion of the Labour Movement is not Sectarian or Dogmatic, but Free Religion, leaving each man free to develop his own relations with the Power that brought him into being. 4. That the Emancipation of Labour can only be realized so far as men learn both the Economic and Moral Laws of God and heartily endeavour to obey them. 5. That the development of Personal Character and the improvement of Social Conditions are both essential to man’s emancipation from moral bondage.18 Acknowledgement of the five principles was the only requirement necessary to become a Labour Church member. A restatement of principles would be issued and endorsed by the Labour Church Union but from the outset they would be printed on every Labour Church publication. Membership did not entail any financial commitment but was an ‘expression of sympathy with the aims of the Labour Church, and a willingness to aid their realization by becoming a Member’.19 A revised form of special external membership was developed for those outside of the Manchester and Salford congregations and a new name – the Labour Church Pioneers, ‘those are invited to become Labour Church Pioneers who live at a distance from a Labour Church, but are willing to help in the spread of the movement’.20 The Pioneer needed to agree to the same terms and make the same commitment; there was no financial commitment necessary to become a Pioneer, but the need for money was becoming more acute as the church expanded: The Labour Church movement is seriously hindered by the cost involved in each step taken, and the poverty of most who support it. We must beg you, therefore, to contribute what you can to the Pioneer Fund; but it must be distinctly understood that no money payment is necessary as a condition of being enrolled a Pioneer. Subscription however small, will be acknowledged in THE LABOUR PROPHET.21 The Labour Church Pioneers Form of Membership required only a name and address, an occupation and a note of the member’s Parliamentary Constituency.22 In return, work was suggested for Labour Church Pioneers:

ORGANIC GROWTH

51

The spread of knowledge of our Movement through conversation, public discussion and the local press. The sale and distribution of Labour Church Literature. The enrolment of other Pioneers, both men and women, and the promotion of collective work. The formation of a Labour Church when such a step is practicable. The organization of Labour, especially where wages are low and conditions intolerable. The development of an Independent Labour Party to secure the return of Independent Labour Representatives to parliament and other governing bodies. The study of economic and moral aspects of the Social Problem, so that God’s laws may be better understood and obeyed. The continual effort to live a strong, independent, and generous life, worthy of a Pioneer, and to uphold the Labour Movement as a Religious Movement. Suggestions from Pioneers will always be welcome.23 The Pioneer Programme grew steadily but enthusiastically, resulting in a conference on 24 July 1892, establishing Tom Mann as ‘resource leader’. The conference discussed the Labour Church Principles, its relationship with other churches and the future of the organization. At the first Labour Church Union Conference, held in July 1893, a ‘Pioneer Secretary’, Miss K. M. M. Scott was elected into a role that was to develop the Pioneer Programme more aggressively, bringing the pioneers into closer contact and reporting their activity in Labour Church publications. Yet, despite the push towards a Pioneer Programme, there was no real, centralized control of the pioneers or the churches, and the centralized Pioneer Programme eventually became a source of information and education. Unlike the evangelical Salvation Army, John Trevor and the early pioneers of the Labour Church did not set out to routinely establish or propagate their church. Despite the initial attempt at some continuity, Trevor ‘believed in letting new churches wait on local demand and activity’.24 In reality, after 1892, such was the rapid proliferation of the churches and the complexity of their local influences that Trevor could neither directly control their message nor physically keep up, as he acknowledged later in 1898:

52

THE LABOUR CHURCH

democratic organization in the Labour Movement means throwing together a mass of conflicting elements, in which he must struggle to maintain a place who thinks it is his mission to serve. Moreover, I could not visit the Churches systematically, such attempts as I made from time to time always failing.25 By the end of 1892, 15 new churches had been established, including Bolton, Bradford and Halifax. By the end of 1893, 31 further churches had been established over a much wider area. Trevor’s main contribution to the establishment of other churches was literary as he set up the church’s regular newspaper the Labour Prophet and became a prolific pamphleteer.26

Labour, Irreligion and Working-class Congregations For Trevor, one might assume that one the most gratifying elements of the popularity and success of the Labour Church was that it went a long way to dispelling the myth that the working classes and socialist leaders were irreligious. At the earliest opportunity Trevor defended the charges of irreligion thrown at labour leaders: I must reply that what they have rejected is a religion which has in part been employed as an instrument of repression, a religion which has been limited in its view to personal sin and personal salvation, and therefore to mere personal relations: a religion which has taught men a good deal about their individual responsibility to God and man, but which has utterly failed to enter into the more intricate question of social responsibility.27 Trevor makes clear that his vision was also a backlash against the middleclass annexation of the established churches, which had even spread to nonconformist chapels. His principles of fairness and equality, his understanding of poverty and the causes of poverty could not be reconciled with the concept of a benevolent Christian God that was being preached in the established churches. He could not fundamentally understand how middle-class factory owners, professionals and managers could attend church and simultaneously ignore the issue of the poverty around them, a poverty that was largely a result of poor pay and a lack of social conscience. Trevor failed to understand how the churches’ and churchgoers’ answer to the issue of poverty was

ORGANIC GROWTH

53

charity and not a fundamental redistribution of wealth. The social deprivation of Victorian Manchester was the consequence of sham respectability and a failure to apply true Christian values on the part of the city’s churchgoers. Trevor also understood that the poor and working people were not welcome in the existing churches. Their preaching was at odds with the realities of working life, an opinion that was supported by many of the early pioneers of the Labour Churches. Trevor always argued that the working classes had not turned from the existing churches because they were irreligious but because they were not welcome. How could the churches preach of a benevolent God who would allow such poverty? How could those who attended church every Sunday allow their workers to be paid so little and to live in abject poverty? It could not be considered benevolent. Wicksteed had similar views on the hypocrisy of the churches and churchgoers, ‘we cannot be Christians on Sunday but on no other day. We cannot be Christians at home, but not in the counting houses or the council chamber’.28 Trevor and Wicksteed were not alone in their assessment of the established churches; the attitude was common throughout the labour movement right up to its highest echelons. As leader of the ILP, while speaking to the Labour Church in Bradford, Keir Hardie professed: The Christianity of the school has had its day. Thank God it was passing away. Christianity today lay buried, bound up in the cerements of a dead of lifeless theology. It awaited a decent burial; and the labour movement had come to resuscitate the Christianity of Christ, to go back to the time when the poor should have the gospel preached to them, and the gospel should be good news of joy and happiness in this life, of God’s Kingdom on earth as a preparation for that which was to come in the world beyond the grave.29 Although Hardie would never go so far as Trevor and renounce Christianity entirely, his sympathies in regard to the attitudes of the churches were never in doubt. Despite the criticism of Hardie that ensued, he stood by his beliefs: never until the formation of the Labour Church, did I conceive it possible for me to be associated again with a ‘religious’ body; for religion has become so identified within my observation with black

54

THE LABOUR CHURCH

clothes, kid gloves, tall silk hats, and long faces that I appeared to have parted with it forever.30 Hardie supported Trevor’s evaluation of the established churches and the promotion of the Labour Church style of worship. He became one of its greatest supporters and most popular and influential speakers. The labour movement’s strong protest against the established churches gave impetus to the Labour Church as it went some way to addressing the criticism laid at their door.31 Yet the established churches, both orthodox and non-conformist, although declining, were far from dead. Where congregations gradually decreased, other religious organizations, including the Labour Church, often attracted dwindling churchgoers. How far this view can be taken as a universal or generic comment on the functions of churches as a whole can be contended by the continued role of the church in popular culture and working-class society. The regular attendance at church was part of the social aspiration of some working-class families, ‘churchgoing’ being a byword for respectability. Historiography (and more recent research since the 1980s) both supports and disagrees with this view. Hugh McLeod supports it and states that ‘between 1889 and 1930 there was a gradual weakening of the position of social influence enjoyed by the churches’.32 He cites alternative leisure activities as one cause of its decline. Kirk, McKibben and Griffiths, however, maintain the view that churches remained close to the centre of social and cultural working class life.33 Despite declining numbers in congregations, the church still supplied organized leisure, competitive sports (football teams including the ‘Northern League’) while, most significantly, Griffiths states that ‘the church provided the majority of school places across south central Lancashire’.34 Lancashire was not alone, as church schools were commonplace across England: by 1861 the Church of England was educating 76.2 per cent of children in elementary schools and touching the lives of all of their families.35 The churches still had a strong hold on communities but arguably they had lost the hearts and minds of their parishioners and lost their congregations in numbers.

Spontaneous Growth As already established, the early churches were the product of John Trevor’s inspiration and a response to the alienation of the working classes from

ORGANIC GROWTH

55

existing churches rather than an alienation from God, hence there was room for the Labour Church as an alternative. As there was no formal, centralized plan for the development of churches, new churches were invariably established by people who had attended Labour Church meetings and drawn inspiration from being part of a congregation. The ‘chief characteristic of Labour Church expansion during its first five years was its spontaneity and the relative absence of a strong central direction’.36 Consequently growth was organic but somewhat haphazard: the church could be found in pockets across the country, often established in response to local political activity. The Bradford Church was formed as a reaction to the 1892 General Election when local non-conformist ministers supported the local Liberal candidate against the socialist candidate Ben Tillett. Fred Jowett, the socialist President and founder of the Bradford Labour Church, gave a comprehensive account of the struggle between the non-conformist ministers and labour in his anniversary speech (celebrating ten years of the Bradford Labour Church in 1902): The non-conformist ministers of the Town (though one or two held aloof) forgetting the factory worker who should have been nearer to them than his wealthy master thought only of the champion of disestablishment and the risk he ran of losing his seat hence they called a meeting of non-conformists in his support. History was to repeat itself and the influence of the churches was brought to bear in support of the wealthy – even though the wealthy were engaged at this time in active resistance to the forces in society which were making for humanity and the public welfare.37 In April 1891, at the National Triennial Conference of Unitarian Churches in London; Trevor had been inspired when he had heard Tillett deliver a harsh attack on the alienation of existing churches from the working man.38 Trevor recalled the speech that has so inspired Wicksteed – ‘Tillett’s titanic appeal’39 – his claim that the working classes were not irreligious but that: if they follow the lead of secularists and atheists, it was because these men understood and sympathized with their sorrows, and could point to a remedy beyond the knowledge of the churches.40 Jowett and Tillett’s principles were in complete accordance with Trevor’s and in 1892 Trevor threw the support of his organization behind

56

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Tillett’s candidacy at the General Election.41 Jowett also enthusiastically supported Tillett’s candidacy in the local community and though Tillett lost the election Jowett predicted that the ‘initial set back would not halt the march of the Bradford Labour Union’.42 In Fenner Brockway’s 1946 biography of Jowett (a largely autobiographical set of notes made by Jowett himself and consolidated by Brockway) Jowett describes the need for the Labour Church in response to the continued non-conformist support for the Liberal Party. At an ‘Extraordinary Public Meeting’ that was held on 14 June 1892 to debate a Liberal amendment to the Factory Bill, the Liberal MP, Mr Briggs Priestly presided, supported by 12 non-conformist ministers. In the face of their intractability in joining Labour to amend the Factory Bill, Jowett wagged his finger and threatened: ‘If you persist in opposing the Labour Movement’, he said ‘there will soon be more reason than ever to complain of the working men from your chapels. We shall establish our own Labour Church’.43 Jowett’s forecast of a Labour Church was fulfilled. It was established in October 1891, meeting first in the Dyers Rooms, afterwards in the Temperance Hall and finally in the Labour Institute in Peckover Street, opened in January 1893. The Labour Church Movement became a great power in the north of England, presenting socialism as an ethical gospel and supplementing the spoken words with labour hymns sung to old chapel tunes. Socialism was a religion to these first converts, and to express it they adapted the practices of the chapels to which they were accustomed.44 It was a familiar refrain, although what is interesting here is that there is no mention of John Trevor or the work done previously in Manchester or elsewhere. On the surface the Labour Church appears to have been a product of Jowett’s frustration: the ‘seriousness of the challenge which the new young Labour Movement was making to the long-established Liberal Party was understood, and Fred Jowett was recognized as a power in the politics of the city’.45 Despite the years that they worked together, there is no other mention of the Labour Church or any mention of John Trevor. Brockway’s biography, however, was written in 1946: after Trevor’s equally evasive My Quest was published in 1897. Brockway also published in the light of Jowett’s continued parliamentary success and many years after the well-established conflicts between Trevor and Jowett had probably been forgotten or rendered unimportant.

ORGANIC GROWTH

57

The Labour Church Union As churches were independently founded, an attempt was made to federate the separate churches via the Labour Church Union. By the end of 1893, under Trevor’s auspices, churches had been formed at Bolton (April 1892), Oldham and Sheffield (May 1892), Bradford (in response the General Election) and a further ten by early 1893, including a splitting of the Manchester and Salford branch into several branches across the city. Trevor himself suggested the formation of a Labour Church Union, partly as a response to his health problems – which impeded his ability to travel – and routinely set up individual branches. It may also have been as a result of financial worries as his personal expenses mounted. A centralized Union might have been able to assist with this. The Manchester and Salford Churches had paid the salary of H. A. Atkinson, the first Secretary of the Labour Church, but, after his departure one year later, Fred Brocklehurst replaced him, with a wider brief to organize further afield. As expenses increased, it was felt that other congregations outside of Manchester should shoulder some of the financial burden. The first Labour Church Union meeting was convened on 22 and 23 July 1893. The first meeting was attended by 17 delegates from Labour Churches and some Pioneers. They heard a report on the progress of the Labour Church to date and passed a resolution describing the ‘Objects’ of the newly formed Union: The development of the Religion of the Labour Movement. The realization of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth by the establishment of a state society founded on Love and Justice.46 An executive was elected who agreed to draft a Union constitution. Four months later, a second conference was held to review the proposed Union constitution and establish a central authority. As early as this second meeting the differences between Trevor and Brocklehurst were already evident: Trevor’s mission was the development of ‘the inner life of the Labour Movement’ while Brocklehurst emphasized the need for the practical expression of one’s religious enthusiasm. There seems to be no necessary clash of ideas here, but apparently the difference in emphasis was accompanied by a difference of personalities.47

58

THE LABOUR CHURCH

In his autobiography, Pilgrim to the Left, S. G. Hobson (Bradford Labour Church lecturer and member of the Council) details his personal remembrances of the animosity between Trevor ‘the Unitarian Minister’ and Brocklehurst, ‘an ex-theological student’.48 Hobson claims that ‘my main task [at conferences and council meetings] was to keep the peace between these two men, both of whom were heavily inoculated with odium theologicum’. 49 It is not always clear how Trevor felt about the resolutions passed by the Labour Church Union. While he initially supported close relations between the ILP, trade unions and the Labour Church, it was always his refrain that they should be kept as separate but supportive entities, ensuring that the spirituality of the Labour Church did not become consumed by the needs of politics. Brocklehurst continued to push the resolution ‘that the branches of the Independent Labour Party wherever practicable, should run a Sunday meeting on the Labour Church lines’.50 Antagonism between the Labour Church founder and its new General Secretary was divisive and reached the point of no return in 1894, when Brocklehurst suggested that the five Labour Church Principles should be replaced by just two: The Labour Church movement is a union of all those who, by organized or individual effort, are emphasizing or developing the moral and ethical aspect of the Labour Movement. The Annual Conference is the outward expression of the union of spirit, purpose and work.51 Brocklehurst was narrowly defeated, but antagonism continued as the Labour Church Union began to argue its case for controlling the funds generated by the Labour Prophet. When the Labour Prophet had been struggling, the Union had declined control; as it prospered – under Trevor’s editorship and supported by his own funds – Trevor declined to relinquish control of Labour Church Publishing to the grasping Union. Wicksteed confirms that Trevor supported the Labour Prophet ‘at his own risk and incurred a heavy deficit’.52 The struggles between Brocklehurst and Trevor over the minutiae of financial affairs and increasing centralization continued until Trevor resigned from the Union in early 1895.53 Pelling provides detail of the dichotomy in ideology in his description of the formation of the Bradford Labour Church, which was an organization

ORGANIC GROWTH

59

that became synonymous with the local ILP and was run along the lines of Brocklehurst’s vision. The church was chaired by Fred Jowett and run by a local committee made up largely of Labour Union members (plus a few women) who had supported Tillett’s election candidacy. Funds were raised by the committee and, in partnership with the local Fabian Society, the Labour Church and the Labour Union rented a disused chapel as a permanent Labour Institute. At this chapel, the inaugural conference of the ILP was held, supported by a Labour Church service. From there on, after every ILP meeting in Bradford, the tradition continued.54 While it was inevitable that, in most places, many of the same speakers and the same people would have attended Labour Church services, ILP and trade union meetings, the Labour Church nevertheless succeeded in retaining its own identity. At the Annual Conference of November 1895, the post of General Secretary was abolished as a result of the inability of the Union to manage its funding. Fred Brocklehurst’s name gradually disappears from any documentation. In 1897, the Union was abolished altogether and a President put in its place to preside over annual conferences organized by individual host churches. But the spiritual vitality of the Labour Church began to gradually wane as conferences took an increasingly secular and political position.

Continued Growth Despite the machinations of the Labour Church Union, the grass roots of the Labour Church continued to grow and diversify. The most influential church continued to be Manchester. Large, influential churches were also established in Bradford (1892 – 1910), Birmingham (1892 – 1910) and Ashton-under-Lyne (1900 – 1912). Congregations were also prolific across the coalfields of Scotland, South Wales, the industrial north of England and across the midlands.55 Bevir summarizes the general criteria as ‘Labour Churches thrived, therefore, in the industrial centres of nonconformity’.56 Labour Church congregations were also found in large cities with significantly different socio-economic structures from the ‘old industrial heartlands’ of Scotland and the north of England. New industries such as ‘engineering, motor car manufacturing and boot and shoe production’57 in large factories were beginning to spring up around Wolverhampton, Birmingham, London and the south-east, as dependence on coal waned.

60

THE LABOUR CHURCH

London maintained its status as the centre for Labour Church publishing including production of the Labour Prophet (and Labour Church Record), the Labour Church Hymn Book, Labour Church Tune Book and Labour Tracts which all sold from one penny for paper covers. Estimates of the size of a typical congregation vary massively from as few as 30 to an average of between 300 and 500 (with regularly over 500 in Halifax). By 1895 there were probably around 50 churches at any one time in approximately 13 or 14 towns. Inglis states that ‘probably there were never more than thirty churches at any one time; few of them were alive twenty years after the first one was formed’.58 Pierson is more generous, in his article ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church Movement in England 1891– 1900’, he claims that there were ‘up to 120 churches many of which were established and died within months’.59 Archive records of both the Clarion and the Labour Leader between 1891 and 1910 confirm Pierson’s estimate. The disparity in numbers indicates the fluid and short-lived nature of some of the smaller churches.60 While the Labour Church grew most rapidly in Lancashire, growth around the West Riding was often directly promoted, according to local need, by the trade unions. In areas where the trade union movement was weak and where electoral success was limited ‘it was the club life, the Labour Church or the Clarion Movement which sustained the movement’.61 The moral fibre of the trade unions was underpinned by the alternative social culture of the Labour Church. Keith Laybourn underlines its importance in much of his work. While acknowledging its fragmented nature and limited life span, he cites Philip Snowden’s opinion of the Bradford Labour Church: The work done by the Labour Church is of the most invaluable kind. As an educational institution its influence cannot be overstated. Sunday after Sunday it brings to the town speakers of the first rank, and in many ways helps them to keep the good work going.62 Bradford had a membership of more than 2,000 in 1893 and Leeds more than 1,000. Snowden’s support throughout Yorkshire was invaluable. The ethical socialism expounded by the Labour Churches suited Snowden’s own firmly held beliefs and was also particularly suited to the circumstances in the north, appealing to both potential and lost congregations. Ethical socialism provided the basis for much of the church’s popularity and appeal. Snowden

ORGANIC GROWTH

61

delighted in goading local manufacturers and the political elite, he was editor of a radical local newspaper and was popular throughout Yorkshire, the north and especially in his home town of Keighley.63 He was an active committee member of the Keighley Labour Union, which was inaugurated in 1892. The Union had obviously local political aims but also a social charter: ‘it aimed at creating a socialist society in miniature, and to this end started various cultural and social institutions, forming a Labour Church, a Clarion Vocal Union, a Woman’s Labour Group and a Labour Club’.64 Snowden was instrumental in setting up the Keighley Labour Church after experiencing the successes of its neighbour in Bradford. Despite Snowden’s strong belief, the spirituality of socialism encapsulated in his statement, ‘there was little of the materialistic spirit in the Socialist movement in those days. Socialism to them was like a religion – the promise of a full spiritual life’,65 he made no mention of Trevor or the Labour Church in his autobiography. In contradiction of contemporary statements, he described the ethical socialism of Keighley as inspired not by John Trevor and the Labour Church, but by socialism and teetotalism.66 He described Keighley in detail and many of the Labour Church stalwarts but he refers to them simply as members of the ILP.67 Inevitably there was opposition to the Labour Church as a radical or alternative movement. Its strongly socialist preaching concerned local middle-class employers, and the tendency to almost ignore the Bible in its services attracted negative comment from other denominations. Where Labour Churches were formed in response to political activity and where they attracted large congregations, they inevitably provided an alternative to existing non-conformist worship, to which people migrated from other groups. Herbert Horner, a prominent Yorkshire socialist and an associate of Philip Snowden, encapsulated these attitudes: In too many cases a non-conformist minister must preach what suits the wealthy manufacturer or those golden pillars of the church will find means to get someone who will. They are also used to [promote] subservient acquiescence in their employees in the shop and factory and they expect the same from their spiritual employees on Sunday.68 Despite the criticism by the end of 1894 the Labour Union and the ILP considered the Labour Church as vital to its propaganda and it continued to

62

THE LABOUR CHURCH

attract the great and the good of the labour movement, including Tom Mann, Margaret McMillan (who was a regular in Bradford and Leeds and provided guidance in London), Katherine Glasier (who spoke regularly in and around Manchester) and Enid Stacey. In the whole of his extensive description of religion in England, Church and Society in England from 1770 to 1970, E. R. Norman gives the Labour Church only a passing reference. He describes it as ‘the secular societies for working men which John Trevor inspired in 1891, and which were closely associated with emerging labour politics’.69 Here he references Inglis’s statement that ‘the need for the Labour Church was not doctrinal but social’.70 His interpretation is characteristic of the view of those outside of the labour and socialist movements and entirely in line with later historiography of the church as a whole. His notion that the church was purely secular misses the complexities of Trevor’s thinking and the immersion of socialism in the realms of morals and religion. His claim that it was a society for working men also shows that he misunderstood one of the basic tenets of the Labour Church, the belief in the divine spirit present in all humanity and hence its aspiration to identify the relationship of brotherhood.71 While congregations were primarily working-class, its doors were always open to people from any background. The congregation of the Leek Labour Church was a case in point. The church was founded in celebration of the life of William Morris and became known as the William Morris Labour Church.72 Founded in 1896, and one of the few churches to survive World War I, Leek was formed in fellowship with J. B. Wallace’s Brotherhood Church.73 The Book of the Opening of William Morris Labour Church at Leek74 was printed in 1897 to commemorate the funeral of Morris and the opening of the Labour Church, which was formed ‘conditionally to the adoption of the memorial name of William Morris’.75 The book was printed by the Clarion Publishing Office rather than the Labour Church Publishing Office and contained memories of Morris in articles from the Saturday Review, the Leek Times and in words of condolence from prominent socialists, artists and poets. The Book of the Opening lists an eclectic mix of supporters, including Sidney Webb, Bruce and Katherine Glasier, W. M. Rossetti, Ben Tillett, Edward Carpenter, Dr A. R. Wallace, Walter Crane, Charlotte Despard and Enid Stacey. Interestingly, the British Library copy that I had access to also contained a loose slip, ‘William Morris Labour Church £100 Fund Guarantee Fund’

ORGANIC GROWTH

63

that requested ‘a DONATION towards the FUND you are raising to clear off the Liabilities and extend the work of the CHURCH: and in memory of WILLIAM MORRIS’. There was also a ‘financial expenditure’ list, detailing the cost of structural and decorative alterations made to the host chapel amongst other sundry expenses. Though the other Labour Churches were perennially short of cash, I have found no evidence of any other church needing to clear such large debts before they started.76 From the outset, the Leek Labour Church gave the impression that it had a different atmosphere from its counterparts. The church was established in a disused Quaker chapel and, after several aborted attempts to get off the ground, the Leek Times eventually described its opening: At the time of Morris’s death a band of earnest workers were in treaty with the Friends for the use of their Meeting House on Overton Bank Leek, for a Labour Church. It was felt that the time had come for a permanent embassy of humanitarian Socialism in the town, after the desultory efforts – extending over several years – of various devoted enthusiasts who had come and gone.77 The issue of buildings or meeting places was a familiar problem for the Labour Church and meetings tended to be held in functional halls shared with their political counterparts. Compared to the utilitarian interiors of the other Labour Churches, the Leek Church inevitably had a different atmosphere. The chapel was rented and was renovated, because the decoration and ambience of the building was – as might be expected – important: The walls are being lacquered a rich red with stencil ornaments in colours to designs kindly contributed by Mr Walter Crane. The ceiling and overhead beams are being finished (as also the barred sash windows) in pure white, and the woodwork painted a translucent green. The west and south upper windows will be draped with Morris blue velvet fabric, and the gas lighting is to be incandescent with pink shades etc.78 Katherine Glasier was the principal speaker, who formally opened the church, supported by the Hanley Labour Church Choir and Miss Mabel Smith, ‘medallist of the Royal Academy of Music, will give some of her charming violin solos’.79 Quite what the Hanley choir made of their surroundings is not recorded.

64

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Yet despite its somewhat more artistic tendencies, the Leek Church carried out its services and its interaction with the community in a similar manner to any other. Its internal wrangling also followed a similar pattern from the outset: Mrs Bruce Glasier gave the first address in the church proper to a packed audience. Our members understood little of the Labour Church; very few had ever attended a Labour Church service, and when the Church began there were objections raised to the manner of service. One thing was too orthodox for some, and another was not sufficiently orthodox.80 While the atmosphere at Leek had a different feel from elsewhere, it still maintained a fundamentally ethical socialist ideology, though Morris’s particular socialism had a slightly different twist. The root of Morris’s socialism was: [the] RESTORATION OF HAPPINESS TO HUMAN LIFE BY ITS RECONSTRUCTION ON THE BASIS OF FREEDOM AND JUSTICE. For without freedom and justice, he held, there could be neither beauty nor enjoyment, neither art nor comfort, nor any single one of the things that gives human life its value.81 In his biography of Morris, J. W. Mackail claims that Morris’s socialism was ‘innate’ and came as a result of ‘long struggle, the deep brooding through which he arrives at his final attitude’.82 Morris’s socialism harked back to a pre-industrial period when artisans and craftsmen were allowed artistry and pride in their work and were free from commercial slavery. The congregation at the Labour Church were told: You at Leek, however, do not need to be told how art and poetry are mixed up at every turn with the Labour Movement. It is essentially a movement not merely to free the labourer from the tyranny of capital but still sterner from tyranny of soulless machinery.83 Morris wanted ‘a profound change in the structure of society and the conduct of life’.84 Yet, despite their differences, J. W. Mackail acknowledged the compatibility of Morris’s socialism with the ethos of the Labour Church.

ORGANIC GROWTH

65

He confirmed that it encompassed ‘the principle which is the first article in the constitution of this Church [Leek Labour Church], that Socialism is no mere body of economic doctrine, but it is in the full sense of the word a religion’.85 First-hand accounts of the Leek Labour Church are more common that many others and have been collected as part of William Morris archives in a number of locations. Summers received two letters from members of the Leek congregation confirming that the Leek Church focused not just on the work of Morris but attracted a range of first-class labour speakers including Ramsay MacDonald, Philip Snowden and George Lansbury; other lectures were given by Dr Pankhurst, Mrs Pankhurst, Hillaire Belloc, Margaret McMillan and ‘many others who had messages calculated to benefit humanity’.86 Edward Carpenter also spoke regularly at Leek, continuing Morris’s conviction of socialism born from ‘longing for free and equal human relations’, which both men imagined socialism would bring, ‘enabling individuals to realise aspects of themselves denied under capitalism’.87 Leek was a very active and sociable church providing activities (including Morris study groups) on most days. It had strong links with the Clarion Cycling Club and the Clarion Glee Club. It had a strong choral and musical culture and interchanged visits and held concerts with other Labour Churches in the surrounding area. Leek was also intimately linked with the labour movement at large. In a personal testimony in 1954, Jas. Lilley, one of the founders of the church, gave an account of the Labour Church providing a stopover for the Jarrow marchers: When that grand soul, fiery little red-headed Nellie Wilkinson led the hunger marchers from Jarrow to London they came through Leek. The comrades of the Labour Church met them and put them up for the night. Bundles of straw were obtained, and covered the floor of the church. The lady members brought pots of jam, loaves of bread, and other articles from which sandwiches were made for supper and breakfast next morning; also parcels for them to take along with them on the way to Derby. Special mention must be made of our President, John Prime (a cobbler) who stayed up all night putting patches on their boots which were worn through.88 Some concern may be raised by the testimony, as the Jarrow march took place in 1936 and there is no record of their route taking in the environs of

66

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Leek. 1936 is also more than a decade after the last Labour Church records can be located. Local historians suggest that the Quaker chapel remained in the hands of the Labour Church until 1932, but there is no indication of its continued use by an active congregation.89 Lilley’s memory is so vivid that it is possible that the remnants of the Labour Church met and used the chapel to provide assistance to the Jarrow marchers or to other demonstrators. Labour Church assistance is not without precedent, the Watford Labour Church was frequently used as a stopover for members on route to demonstrations in London.90 The memory of the Jarrow marchers may be a mistaken memory of the hunger marchers of the 1920s. Leek was a stopover on the first national hunger march in 1922; when the marchers arrived at Leek they were fed and supported by the local Labour parliamentary candidate and the Trades Union Council.91 The William Morris Labour Church at Leek is an illustration of the organic growth of the church, outside of the directly political sphere. The church became established according to local need and, in this case more than many others, it developed a character of its own while still prescribing to the broad principles of the Labour Church outlined by Trevor. At its inauguration Grant Allen hoped that the William Morris Labour Church will have a prosperous and useful career, and will follow in the steps of a noble, great and good man to commemorate whom it is founded. It has always seemed to me that Morris’s work was particularly important in a country like England. Too many of our people take their ideas of what a Socialist world will be like from materialistic and wooden forecasts . . . William Morris’s unselfish life, and its beautiful outcome, are a triumphant vindication of the poetical side of the Socialist aspiration.92 The commitment to a spiritual socialism would have been music to the ears of Trevor who, by 1897 was losing his struggle with his political colleagues to keep the religious element in the churches. Yet, despite its adherence to Trevor’s principles, the Leek Church became synonymous with Morris as its founder (in spite of his death before it was established), rather than with Trevor and there is no evidence that Trevor ever visited Leek. In conclusion, it can be argued that the haphazard, organic growth of the church was the result of the lack of a centralized plan for expansion and

ORGANIC GROWTH

67

of individual responses to local political influence. John Trevor was never evangelical nor did he consider himself a missionary. The Labour Church did not conflict with other non-conformist doctrines and this allowed it to sit easily alongside them and thus attract the great and the good of the labour movement, who lent their support while still retaining their doctrinal beliefs and attachments to other churches. The fluidity and short life of the church also suggests that local need was the primary driving force. As previously mentioned, neither was Trevor ever suited to leadership. After his resignation from Upper Brook Street he spent the following year travelling extensively, assisting in the set up of Labour Churches. But the transient lifestyle did not suit him and his health suffered. His tendency to depression returned and, throughout the autumn of 1892, Trevor spent most of his time convalescing in the Welsh mountains. By the spring of 1893, Trevor’s delicate health forced him into retirement. He never explicitly explained his bouts of depression though he remained anxiously involved in the Labour Church’s growth and continued to be a prolific writer. Although one of the primary functions of the Labour Church was political, and it was designed to attract the growing and increasingly politicized working class, it had a very large and ever-increasing audience. By 1901, 85 per cent of the working population were employed by others. Of those, 75 per cent were manual workers. Between 1851 and 1921, the working class doubled in size and became increasingly urban.93 The increasing political affiliation of the church was evident. At the behest of the Labour Church Union, at meetings of the Independent Labour Party, which were often held on Sunday, a Labour Church-style of service was followed and the Labour Church Hymn Book used. The church gave expression to the religion inherent on the labour movement and made socialist principles more accessible to the working class, using the familiar format of a church service. As can be seen in Chapter 5, the Labour Church left theological questions to private individual conviction but sought the realization of universal wellbeing through the establishment of ethical socialist principles founded in ‘justice and love’. Trevor always asserted that his primary objective was to gain access to working people who appeared lost to the established churches. In the Labour Prophet of March 1893, Trevor stated that he was also committed to the ‘improvement of social conditions and the development of personal character’ and that both were ‘essential to emancipation from social and

68

THE LABOUR CHURCH

moral bondage, and to that end [socialism requires or] insists upon the duty of studying the economic and moral forces of society’.94 It was on the basis of these sentiments that the Labour Church grew. At the opening of the Leek Labour Church in 1897, Bruce Glasier declared that ‘From Devonport in the south to Aberdeen in the north there is no industrial town of any importance where a branch of the Labour Church, or other Socialist organizations, may not be found’.95

CHAPTER 3 DAILY LIFE RELIGION, SOCIALISM, RADICALS AND WOMEN

Among such folk were the early working class Socialists for whom Socialism was not so much a political policy, even less an economic inevitability, but a crusade undertaken with a fervour and belief truly religious in kind. Hannah Mitchell, socialist and suffragette, 19681 The establishment and growth of the Labour Church was diverse, and its day-to-day life also reflected the local needs of its congregation. But, despite the lack of a clergy or hierarchy, the churches maintained a consistent flavour throughout. The character and coherence of the Labour Church was kept intact by the regular flow of publications that came out of the well-established Labour Church Publishing Office in Fleet Street. Publications were ostensibly under the editorship of John Trevor and the management of Paul Campbell (editor of the Christian Socialist). The early Labour Churches were founded on John Trevor’s initial five principles;2 services and many activities were founded on and directed by the publications. From hymn books and tune books to the regular news updates and directives of the weekly newspaper, the Labour Prophet, a steady flow of information was disseminated and in return a steady flow of cash was received. Intermittently the publishing office would reinforce its message and communicate major issues or the words of influential speakers through the production of Labour Church Tracts, which sold for no more than a penny.3

70

THE LABOUR CHURCH

The diversity of the churches came from their sponsors, speakers, congregations and even localities. The general day-to-day life of the churches was reflected in their affiliations and political associations, through their buildings, services, leisure and educational activities; from the mundanity and regularity of the Sunday service to the audienceswelling visits of star speakers. The daily life of the Labour Church was as varied as its congregations. It was at times a heady mix of religion, socialism and radicalism. The diversity of the life of the church makes it difficult to define the dominant religion or the style or type of socialism preached. Similarly the wide variety of radical subjects for sermons and articles that consequently appeared in the Labour Prophet covered a range of subjects, from local trade union activity to a national campaign for birth control. To date, studies of the Labour Church have been focused largely on the men involved, but, from the articles in the Labour Prophet and the minutes of meetings, it is clear that women played a significant role in the daily life of the churches, and the Labour Church had a lasting impact on the lives of many of its women. A vast collection of letters and recollections from female members was documented by D. F. Summers, but were under-used in his presentation of the Labour Church.4 In the longer term, the character of the churches was partly shaped by its women, who brought their own female agenda to gatherings, often pressing radical feminist causes that were less welcome elsewhere. While there were occasions on which the presence of female speakers, especially female suffrage speakers, brought some disaffection, women were well-represented, often significantly better than they were elsewhere. Yet, despite their differences, congregations still had plenty in common. They were all socialists, in the beginning they were all looking for a home and a religion, and many were also disaffected by the attitudes of the existing churches. An unknown woman encapsulates the church’s appeal: ‘The Labour Church is a good idea. The Church people won’t have us because we are Labour, and Labour people won’t have us because we are religious’.5 The Labour Church felt like a church for the working classes. Hymn and tune books directed the appropriate musical tone of the songs, which in turn engendered a familiar church-like atmosphere and gave a socialist yet religious overtone to the services.6 The Labour Church provided a political and spiritual home but it also provided a social life and a variety of ‘worthy pastimes’, which often ran hand-in-hand with the social life of the Clarion.

DAILY LIFE

71

The Labour Churches and their functions often changed over short periods of time as they responded to local elections and local political activity. Daily life also changed over longer periods as the Labour Churches changed in character and focus. In many areas the political life of the church became all-consuming, the Labour Church becoming indistinct from the ILP. In others, secularism ousted many of Trevor’s original principles of faith and the individual relationship with God. In the south, many churches merged with other socialist organizations, became indistinct and, eventually, defunct. In the north, they lived on, though eventually they became religious Sunday meetings of the ILP. In Birmingham they took on a distinctly more secular feel. While its political focus was never in doubt, the increasingly secular nature of daily activity eventually all but erased the religious life of the church by the turn of the century.

Buildings, Congregations, Lecturers and Speakers As established in the previous chapter, the setting up of a Labour Church relied on local activity: the bringing together of buildings, congregations and speakers. As has been stated, the Labour Church had no clergy and no hierarchy beyond annual meetings of the Labour Church Union. Its policy of no-fee membership (just a voluntary collection plate at the end of services and the sale of publications) also left it perennially struggling for money. Hence, many churches were run on a shoestring and most congregations found it difficult to afford premises.7 The Labour Church had relatively few of its own buildings outside the bigger and more influential churches. Manchester had held its first meetings in Chorlton Town Hall before establishing more permanent premises on the busy, city-centre thoroughfare of Deansgate. Bradford had an established, permanent home and held services and meetings in a disused Baptist chapel it shared with the Bradford Labour Church Union; elsewhere services were regularly held in local halls, town halls or even in the open air. The first open-air meeting was associated with the Oldham Church, where a congregation in excess of 3,000 attended to listen to Katherine Conway (later Glasier) speak.8 The permanent buildings that did exist were often disused non-conformist chapels or large rented spaces sharing occupancy with other socialist or labour functions. The set-up for a Labour Church service was a simple room without any aisle, nave, altar or sacramental decoration. Instead there was a lectern at the front and occasionally banners from local trade unions, Sunday Schools and other

72

THE LABOUR CHURCH

organizations adorning the walls.9 In addition, public buildings were also rented for notable speakers. These meetings were often attended by invitation and occasionally included a cover charge: attendances at regular Labour Church meetings were always free.10 Trevor describes his inspiration for such simple surroundings, which came from his seeing a socialist speaker: ‘At the corner of a busy thoroughfare I found a small group standing in the rain around my friend, who was speaking from a broken chair . . . that broken chair seemed to me a more real thing than any pulpit’.11 The marriage of socialist politics and the Labour Church found a permanent home in Keighley, where a church was established in late 1892 or early 1893. It was founded on ethical socialist principles and under the auspices of Philip Snowden and the town’s ILP. After the success of the inaugural services, the ILP soon came to appreciate the opportunity the church might offer: The activities of the Labour Church became a focal point for [the ILP] branch’s activities. As early as January 1893, 144 Labour Hymn Books at 1d [0.5p] each and 36 at 2d [1p] each were purchased by the union. Later in the year a permanent home was found for the Labour Church, the minutes [ILP Meeting Minutes] recording significantly that it was the old Primitive Chapel that was to be ‘engaged from the Co-Op Soc at 8s [40p] per Sunday evening 6.15– 8.15 subject to no smoking being allowed’. From time to time other buildings were considered for these Sunday meetings. In March 1895 a deputation was ordered to ‘attend and view the Spiritual Temple with a view to opening it as a Lab. Ch. And Club if suitable’, and in 1899 an attempt was made to raise funds to establish a Socialist Hall. None of these proposals appears to have proceeded any further, largely because of financial difficulties. However in December a Socialist Sunday School was established.12 The experience of Keighley is typical of the northern experience and was mirrored in Bradford, although, unlike Bradford and somewhat surprisingly, Keighley’s affiliation with the ILP came two years later, delayed ostensibly by the membership cost associated with the ILP.13 The search for buildings and meeting places was a perennial issue for the Labour Churches, which appear nomadic in their search for a permanent home. The permanent home, often for financial reasons, increasingly rested

DAILY LIFE

73

with the ILP or another affiliation. More incongruously, many Labour Churches were at the heart of the plethora of Labour Clubs established before World War I.14 Whether a Labour Church was in any way affiliated to its local ILP or not, inevitably similar people made up membership of local trade unions, other socialist groups, the ILP and the congregations of the Labour Church. The congregations were predominantly working class and, while having an aspiration to similar political ideals, the socio-political and religious groups that attendees belonged to outside of the church were often conflicting. A. J. Waldegrave gives a detailed description of London congregations and identifies five different types of member: 1. Orthodox Christians who had been ‘active members of a church, usually a non-conformist one, and had found their efforts to interpret the teaching of Jesus in the Socialistic way obstructed’. They remained Christian. 2. Former Christians who had become ‘Socialists and Rationalistic Humanists’. They had a more intellectual approach to socialism and ‘wanted humanistic ethics preached and taught, uncontaminated by “superstitions”’. Although they still held a belief in ‘brotherhood’ and a love of ‘justice’, theirs was more a concern with ‘present evils than by visions of the future good’. 3. The biggest section ‘consisted of working men (and often their wives) who were class conscious members of trade unions and were concerned with improving the conditions of the workers under the present industrial system’. They were socialists who believed that life could only be improved by the eradication of Capitalism and the adoption of Socialism. However they were not purely political or materialistic they had ‘an idealism tinged by the religious conception of a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth’. They were political and believed that the only way to achieve a Socialist world was though the creation of ‘a Labour Party with a majority in the House of Commons’. 4. There were those of the Croydon Ruskin Church and Leek Church of Morris who wanted ‘“labour” to be redeemed from the degradation to which it had been reduced by machines and profit-seeking commercialism and to regain the dignity it had enjoyed when ever worker was an artist-craftsman living close to nature’. Although this was a past that had probably never existed, it was a golden age that these socialists aspired to.

74

THE LABOUR CHURCH

5. There would often be a small group of Marxists who had ‘perversely, had associated themselves with a “church”’. These were often SDF members.15 Waldegrave’s colourful and personal first-hand account of the congregation who attended the Labour Church is of the heady mix of socialists at Tottenham. He continues to describe his personal experience of the attendees: (in the winter of 1895 –96) My dear wife to be was willing to cooperate [with his founding of the Labour Church] but more from love of myself than from attraction to the people who we found engaged in the Tottenham effort. Indeed, she found the SDF element positively repellent; and I confess that I also found it difficult to fit the group’s hard materialism and narrow dogmatism into the picture of Universal Brotherhood which their socialism was to bring. However, there were congenial representatives of the other elements and there was the compensation that among those belonging to the section I have numbered [Christians] there were two people, husband and wife (with three nice children two boys and a girl) in whose home we found warm hospitality and kindness and with whom we formed a friendship which was to last to the end of our lives together.16 Unsurprisingly, by 1899 Tottenham failed, as this heady mix of people ‘did not fuse’.17 While Tottenham struggled to create a brotherhood from its component parts, Bradford provided an altogether more welcoming and unified atmosphere. S. G. Hobson and Margaret McMillan both contrasted the atmospheres in Bradford with London. It is clear that, in Bradford (and similarly among other Labour Churches), the ILP and the Labour Church were inextricably linked, sharing premises and an audience of diverse but like-minded people. Margaret McMillan described the congeniality of an early congregation in Bradford: Social Democratic Federationers were in force, and nearly all the members of the newly formed Independent Labour Party; Swedenbourgians from Bingley and the valleys near, old Chartists; Secularists and also inquirers and sympathizers. In spite of their differences, they did for one real party, united by a single hope. You could

DAILY LIFE

75

feel that hope surging through this meeting just as you might feel the moorland wind in the streets.18 McMillan went on to describe ‘the service’. She did not explicitly state that this was a Labour Church service but it was similar in style and focus and it was held at the site of the Bradford Labour Church, so it can be assumed that this was a Labour Church service. McMillan gave a colourful description of the Labour Church Union, the service and the people who attended: The service, because it was a religious service, began. It departed from all of the customs of other churches, though we tried more and more to conform and please our various fellow worshippers. The Swedenborgians repeated the Lord’s Prayer with the chairman, but the Social and Democratic Federationers did nothing of the kind. The old chapel-goers, or some of them, enjoyed the hymns, but the Secularists did not enjoy them – thought they were mere weakness and held their books anyhow. The lecture was the thing. All waited for that. Some listened intently, critically these were the Social Democratic Federationers who were critical, and the Secularists. Mr Isaac Sanctuary, a Swedenborgian, who looked like a mild and handsome reincarnation of Socrates listened in a kind of dream. Mr Roberts, an old Chartist, heard as it were the trumpet of yesterday. He had huge head, intelligent blue eyes, young eyes though he was eighty. He tramped in from Claydon every Sunday, dresses in heavy grey cloth – a stuff he sold to navvies – carrying a thick knotted stick. The closing song was unanimous – the strong voices rolling out like a sudden wave ‘When wilt thou save Thy people, O God of Mercy, when?’ The lecture over, we all went down below, to the cellars, and had tea.19 The contrast between London and Bradford is stark, but this is also the contrast between the earlier days of the Labour Church and the Labour Church by the turn of the century (Bradford c.1893– 4 and Tottenham c.1899). Congregations were often swollen and inspired by the appearance of guest speakers such as Keir Hardie, Margaret McMillan and Philip Snowden. Speakers never criticized or offered judgements on the creeds of other denominations but they did use the opportunity to criticize other churches

76

THE LABOUR CHURCH

for excluding working-class people, express political views, and rally large crowds. Keir Hardie regularly spoke at the Labour Church and he became an early proponent. During the 1890s Hardie had renewed his own religious quest in the name of political change. He used it to express classconsciousness and he began a ‘crusade against churchianity’20 claiming that the rich and middle classes had annexed Jesus. He was one of the church’s most influential speakers and most important sponsors, working alongside John Trevor in producing propaganda and literature for mass consumption.21 The speakers and lecturers at the Labour Churches, however, were not uniformly accepted. In an analysis of the minutes of the Birmingham Labour Church, D. F. Summers analysed the church’s concerns and attitudes to their visiting speakers and the problems that they brought: Some were long-winded, a motion was passed restricting them to 40 minutes. Some came from a distance and travelling expenses were high, and others charged exorbitant fees: the treasury could not stand the strain. In 1895 a system was introduced by which the suitability of lecturers could be decided. After each lecturer was heard a vote of the committee placed his name on the ‘approved’ or the ‘black’ list. Reasons for ‘blacklisting’ according to Percy Broadhurst who was a member of the committee for many years, were: excessive cost, uninteresting delivery style, or needless length of lecture. Disagreement with the opinions of the lecturer was not one of the accepted criteria: a free platform was maintained at all times.22 The Birmingham system identified favourite lecturers but also highlighted the increasing issue of cost that beset the Labour Churches.23 At Ashtonunder-Lyne a motion was passed to decline the offer of a local tea merchant, Mr Gott, who would ‘supply a lecturer free with each order of tea’.24 However the majority of the lecturers and their speeches were consistent with the message and the ambitions of the labour movement at large. Itinerant or visiting speakers were hosted at the expense of local families and the local church that paid their fee. Hannah Mitchell, during her time as Lecture Secretary at Ashton-under-Lyne, lists the most senior members of the labour movement as her guests but describes the realities of hosting some of them:

DAILY LIFE

77

I could write a book on the subject of ‘Speakers I have entertained’, but I fear it would not be appreciated by all my former guests, some of whom forgot they were in a worker’s home, where the domestic staff consisted only of the housewife herself; others, with charming manners and knightly courtesy, made their rare visits a pleasure.25 Mitchell also criticized some of the female speakers who made the ‘fatal mistake of treating their less gifted sisters with intellectual contempt’, while, in the presence of men, allowing a ‘forbidding manner [to] melt into a charming smile’.26 The relationships with the labour movement were also consistent throughout the Labour Church. At the most senior level, Fred Jowett was the influential General Secretary of the Bradford Labour Church Union while also being on the National Administrative Council of the ILP. Trade union men and women regularly stood at the Labour Church lecterns. Tom Mann and Ben Tillett were both regular contributors to the Labour Prophet and speakers at services. Tillett was a typical Labour Church speaker. He was always primarily a trade unionist rather than an ethical or Christian socialist and, though he was ‘a popular preacher in the Labour Churches, he subscribed “only superficially to the religion of socialism”, for he did not possess a complete alternate vision of society’.27 Tillett remained a Congregationalist at heart and a union man. Like Tillett, speakers often used the Labour Church as a platform though they did not join the ranks of the congregations, thus limiting their influence and support. As early as 1896, when signs of the decline of the church became apparent, John Trevor spoke out against itinerant speakers who came and went without investing in the daily life of the church: ‘Can these prominent personages, most of whom don’t belong to any Labour Church, tell us of the difficulties, trials and obstacles each church has to contend with, and the various methods adopted to make ends meet?’28 Significantly, ILP speakers rarely mention the Labour Church in their autobiographies and so it is difficult to establish their thoughts and feelings about the organization and why it did not become their primary choice for worship. Robert Blatchford, George Lansbury, Philip Snowden, Ben Tillett and Tom Mann amongst others are representative of those who do not mention the Labour Church as a distinctive element of their own politics. Though Mann was a regular speaker, an early pioneer and sat on the first committees, when he dedicates a chapter of his autobiography to

78

THE LABOUR CHURCH

‘The Labour Movement and the Churches 1890– 1894’ he makes no reference to either John Trevor or the Labour Church.29 Mann’s biographers, however, expanded on his involvement. Autobiographies and biographies have provided conflicting evidence (or lack of evidence). Hugh McLeod30 extensively used autobiographies and, as Stephen Yeo outlines: Autobiographies provide the fullest accounts. Spiritual autobiographies or Confessions in the Augustinian sense were a characteristic of the genre in late Victorian and early twentieth century culture. Some socialist ones were masterpieces, managing a high pitch of emotional intensity with details of the specific mediators of intellectual change. 31 Many of the autobiographies used in this book describe a religious or emotional conversion to socialism, not least Trevor’s own autobiography (as described in detail in Chapter 1). Trevor’s emotional conversion was to some extent typical and can be found in other autobiographies of socialists and radicals. J. S. Mill and Annie Besant describe an emotional event and a subsequent intellectual process that brings them to atheism. Similarly, many socialists describe events that bring them, via a ‘religious conversion’ to socialism. Margaret McMillan describes her sister Rachel’s conversion to socialism and the cause of underprivileged children as a response to reading W. T. Stead’s Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon: it was ‘as if a bomb had fallen on the house. It could not have caused greater upheaval. She was fully awakened now to the dark world that ringed her sheltered life’.32 S. G. Hobson, Robert Blatchford and many other socialists describe similar experiences, but they are less inclined to analyse their day-to-day activities and relationships with their contemporaries. While there may be no mention of Trevor and the Labour Church in the autobiographies of Mann, Tillett and others, there is similarly little more than a passing mention of them in Trevor’s autobiography. A conversion to socialism often went hand-in-hand with a change in lifestyle, associations, family and social habits. A worker describes the influence of converting to socialism in the Labour Prophet May 1894. The impact on his life in the workplace is that he ‘doesn’t tell lies, and swear, and push himself on, regardless of who had to be pushed off, is an oddity, and is sneered and jeered by his fellow workmen’. And, at home:

DAILY LIFE

79

When a man really becomes a Socialist; the result is to him is to make him more manly and honest, gentler and just in his dealings with his fellow man. He begins to look upon his wife as an equal, nay, as something divine, superior, to be loved and helped. He begins to like books, to read and think for himself . . . in material things he knows what he needs and how best they may be obtained.33 Adherence to socialist groups has been compared to joining a sect or a cult by both Hobsbawm (1959) and Yeo (1977). Yeo’s assertion that the Labour Church was a sect has some credence as it was a focus on the ‘whole change in way of life’.34 Hobsbawm’s view was that the Labour Church was a ‘cult’ born from its status as a ‘class sect’. He asserted that its status as a cult was built upon the principles of Primitive Methodism and the culture of dissenting religion that the working classes had been born into.35 Hobsbawm’s theory can be challenged: within the Labour Church movement, the focus on the individual is personal, the ideology is collective and membership very often went hand-in-hand with associations with other groups and societies, including relationships with existing churches, both non-conformist and orthodox. It did not require the exclusivity of a cult. As can be clearly seen in its principles, the Labour Church was, if nothing else, a stand against creeds, dogma and prescriptive, organized religion. Although it became largely working-class in the north, Trevor’s intention was a brotherhood of all classes. The Labour Church congregations were no more a sect or cult than members of the ILP, Fabian Society or SDF, no more than the Guild of St Matthew, the New Life or the Brotherhood Churches, and certainly a lot less that the Salvation Army and other socio-religious organizations.

Socialism and Radicals Many theses have been written on the emergence of British socialism at the end of the nineteenth century, its style, character, development and ultimately its failure. It may be argued that socialism came about as an emotional response to the recession and economic hardships of the 1880s. It may also be argued that in its early decades it was not necessarily affiliated to any political party, institution or legislation.36 This book does not intend to analyse or chart the development and progress of British socialism in the late nineteenth century, but acknowledges that a new style of ethical

80

THE LABOUR CHURCH

socialism developed throughout this period, a socialism that the Labour Church embraced. Ethical Socialism was a new concept to the English, it was not a neoMarxist idea, nor was it the Christian Socialism of Maurice and Kingsley; it was new. Idealistically it might be claimed that it was humanitarian or that tendency to ‘do the right thing’ but with moral overtones – ‘morality mongering’. It was also a response to utilitarianism and laissez-faire, which had materially failed in accomplishing the greatest good for the greatest number. Societies, Committees and Fellowships sprang up between 1884 and 1914– 18: the Social Democratic Federation (with its chequered history of formation and re-formation, resignations and changes of character), William Morris’s Socialist League and the Fabian Society amongst others.37 A plethora of socialist journals linked to many of the various socialist groups and edited by middle-class journalists appeared at the same time. However, the lack of a cohesive character did not engender the adoption of socialist ideologies. The SDF was revolutionary and the evolutionary Fabians were considered high-brow and moral. Many were also secular societies and, while it might be acknowledged that that the working classes had lost their affiliation and confidence in the established churches, they were not, as John Trevor said over and over again, ‘irreligious’. The working classes were slow to adopt ethical socialism, maybe in part because of its fractious nature and in part because of the distinctly middle-class intellectualization and presentation of many ideas. Yeo states that it is commonly accepted that socialism was expressed in terms of religion, but this was a distinctive phase in the history of socialism. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, the progress of the presentation of socialism as a substitute religion ran alongside the ‘more orthodox development of the labour movement in the same years’.38 Whatever the journey to its platforms, the emergence of ethical socialism forms the backdrop to the birth of the Labour Church. Ethical socialism was the Labour Church’s bedrock. It determined the political allegiances that built upon its foundations. The detail of the Labour Church’s socialism is difficult to pin down as it was as varied and multi-influenced as the socialism of many of its speakers, supporters and congregations. From town to town and region to region, various socialist groups and societies could rarely agree on a name for their various organizations, let alone pin down a constitution. But, while the inherent religion in socialism was most obviously propagated by the Labour Church, it was not alone: an ‘evangelical, preaching style of socialist propaganda sat alongside the “heaven-on-earth” writings of

DAILY LIFE

81

William Morris’.39 William Morris and the Socialist League professed single-hearted devotion to the religion of socialism in their 1885 manifesto, ‘the only religion which the Socialist League professes’.40 Trevor and Morris, along with fellow socialists Robert Blatchford, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, professed that the birth of socialism was the ‘birth of light’. The Fabian Society, ILP and even the SDF had religious overtones in the profession of their socialist principles. In his seminal work, ‘A New Life: The Religion of Socialism in Britain 1883– 1896’ (1977), Stephen Yeo recorded the 1880s and 1890s as a period where the ‘religion of socialism’ occupied a void that would become subsequently filled by the Labour Party. The last decades of the nineteenth century were the heyday of British socialism, which represented a change from an economic or political policy to a more just and natural way of life. If capitalism was increasingly seen as a sin, then the people required a religious conversion, something that the working classes were familiar with. If socialists felt that a change in society would ‘just happen’, then the obvious moral justification of socialism alone would be enough to develop naturally into a new utopian socialist existence. There would be no need for revolution or parliamentary politics (hence the ILP had to be not just materialist but emotional too). Many early middleclass followers of socialism had a lifestyle that allowed them to follow in a continual and organized manner. This may go some way to explaining the working-class enthusiasm for the Labour Church, which did not require the same intensity. Ethical socialism then may be called the religion of socialism and the religion of the mainly working-class Labour Church. Socialists themselves were often members of multiple societies, groups and trade unions. This was characteristic of English socialism. S. G. Hobson is typical and describes his own chequered socialist history thus: I joined the Fabian Society in 1891 and remained a member until 1910. I was elected to the executive in 1900, so that half my Fabian years were unofficial and half official. From 1893 to 1905 I was also a member of the Independent Labour Party, commonly known as the ILP. For some years I was also a member of the Bristol Socialist Society, probably the most vigorous local Socialist Society in the provinces, and with a Marxian bent. This brought me into touch with the Social Democratic Federation, commonly known as the SDF, and of course definitely Marxian in its economic doctrine, in consequence always stressing the class struggle.41

82

THE LABOUR CHURCH

If the Bristol Fabians ‘had a Marxian bent’, then the Cardiff Fabians ‘were in general sympathy with the Fabians but we wanted to proclaim our socialism’42 and so called themselves the Cardiff Fabian Socialist Society. Hobson himself was by birth an Irish Quaker and sometime member of the Council of the Labour Church. With such a diversity of socialist ideals it was difficult to pin down an agreed prescription. Hobson attempts to describe the common belief system of socialism, and prescribes at a minimum the adherence to the ‘Fabian Basis’ (until its revision in 1919).43 According to Hobson, this ‘became the character of Opportunist Socialism in Great Britain. Everybody except the SDF accepted it; it appealed equally to pure-blooded Fabians, ILP, and the Labour Party’.44 Despite the often-disputed compensation clause, the Fabian Basis ‘truly expressed the minds and dispositions of the young Socialist of the nineties’.45 Hobson’s words are those of a confirmed socialist and committed Labour Church man and he makes his case in his owns words in his autobiography. John Trevor’s own socialism had a Fabian foundation but, like his organization, his own socialism is difficult to pin down. As described in Chapter 1, his class-consciousness had begun during his travels in Australia. His liberalism had been crystallized into socialism by the perceived religion inherent in the labour movement coupled with his observations that socialism was being denied by established churches, causing many working people to be alienated from them. Trevor’s thoughts on socialism, however, are haphazard, and his style of socialism is fluid. Like S. G. Hobson and many socialists, Trevor was a member of more than one socialist-inspired group or society. He was a lifelong member of the Fabian Society while also being a sometime staunch supporter of the ILP. Arguably the underlying basis of Trevor’s socialism was vested in his criticism of the churches. Like Ben Tillett, Trevor believed that the existing churches were becoming increasingly alienated from the working man.46 He took to heart Tillett’s declaration that the working classes were not irreligious but that they were not welcome in the churches. Trevor wanted to create a truly egalitarian and ethical, socialist-inspired church dedicated to righting social injustice. An ethically inspired church would leave one’s personal relationship with God open to the individual and any relationship with other congregations intact. Ethical rather than Christian Socialism was the foundation of the Labour Church. Many ILP members maintained their relationships with religious organizations while still responding the appeal of ethical socialism. This was

DAILY LIFE

83

not restricted to men: women were also members of multiple groups. Caroline Martyn ‘joined everything political she could find in Reading during the late 1880s, being at the same time in the Primrose League, the Fabian Society, the Radical Club and the Women’s Liberal Association’.47 Ethical socialism was at the heart of not just the Labour Church but also the ILP. The strongest allegiance was with the ILP both nationally and at a local level, a relationship that was on display at the inaugural conference of the ILP in Bradford. With its basis in the ILP, ethical socialism often plugged a gap where trade unionism was weak. Concepts of justice, brotherhood and equality gave a moral bias to the ILP. The Labour Church became its propaganda tool and the mouthpiece with which it spoke to the working class. The symbiotic relationship between the two was confirmed by a resolution of the ILP National Administrative Council in May 1894, which stated that ‘the ILP wherever possible should run a Sunday meeting along Labour Church lines’.48 The Labour Church and the ILP both had an eclectic audience, a fact that was unremarkable considering ‘members of the ILP and the Labour Church – they were generally the same people’.49 In his autobiography Robert Blatchford describes the inception of the ILP and the diversity of its membership: The ILP was founded, or even started, by seven men. I believe that I was one of the seven; but I am not sure and it does not matter. It was obvious to the Clarion men from the beginning that there would be snags in the stream. A newly formed party, meant to be independent of other parties, must draw its recruits almost entirely from the older parties or from various sects. To the ILP came women and men from the ranks of the Tories, Liberals, Radicals, Non-conformists and Marxians. Many of these brought with them sectarian or party shibboleths which they had not outgrown. There were FreeTraders, Home Rulers, Local Optionists, Republicans, Roman Catholics, Salvationists, Church and Chapel-goers and believers in the cosmopolitan brotherhood of the workers. What was rather loosely called: ‘The Solidarity of Nations’. Despite being intimately involved with Trevor and the Labour Church, Blatchford’s autobiography does not mention John Trevor or his organization. His biography, by Laurence Thompson (1951), however, is

84

THE LABOUR CHURCH

peppered with portraits and descriptions of Blatchford’s work with the Labour Church and his professional relationship with John Trevor. Interestingly Trevor’s autobiography barely mentions Blatchford either, although he shares his opinion on the diversity of the ILP: ‘Democratic organization in the whole Labour Movement means throwing together a mass of conflicting elements, in which he must struggle to maintain a place who things it his mission to serve’.50 Socialism during the 1890s, and the ethical socialism of the ILP and the Labour Church, enabled working people to rid themselves of existing religious faiths and replace them with an alternative emotional and moral ideology. An unknown observer of a Labour Church Meeting in Manchester (spring 1894), with a congregation of more than 1,000 people, describes the emotional tension of the meeting: Every variety of type was represented, the shrewd stunted weaver, the powerful labourer, square set and heavy with toil, dapper intelligent men who might be clerks and shop-men, men with strong earnest faces – one of whom I knew to be a popular journalist – quiet, depressed men, and men with discontented burning eyes. Steady attention, riveted on the speaker, was common to all alike, and the one expression I failed to note was that of sarcastic mockery, which so often characterizes the keen-witted democrat in any sort of religious assemblage. Each man seemed as it were off his guard, and to have given his allegiance. Applause and laughter had their way freely, and every telling point was caught up. They were leaning forward in the seats below, hanging over the rails in the galleries, heads resting upon hands, brows knitted, eyes anxiously strained. Close to me one night, sat a mean, ill-grown worker with sad eyes, to which at certain words of the preacher he furtively lifted his worn hand again and again to clear away the tears.51 Similar descriptions can be found of trade unions and other meetings though arguably the intensity of the emotion aroused must have been heightened by the religious overtones of the Labour Church Service. As has been described, like ethical socialism, the Labour Church initially had no party-political affiliation, although over time it became synonymous with the development of the ILP. There was no obvious geographical, gender, age or class structure, neither was there any religious affiliation.

DAILY LIFE

85

It was an eclectic mix from the widest extremities of the socialist and labour movements. There were attempts to create a general socialist synergy: Joseph Edwards’s Labour Annual from 1885 was designed to promote unity or federation. But socialism was the prospect of a new society or a new life, which the Labour Church, the ILP and the Clarion expressed in terms of a ‘primitive democracy’ at grassroots level.52 Trevor was most concerned with socialism at a grass roots level, warning that any alternative policy would be ‘an elected aristocracy’ rather than a democracy.53 The Labour Church took this on as an article of faith, not in conventional Christianity but in God and socialism. It was a touchstone for both Trevor and Blatchford: democracy was everything to Trevor, who avoided hierarchy and leadership at all costs and despised regulation. The Labour Churches belonged to their localities and their congregations. Yeo quotes Evelyn March-Phillips in the Spectator in 1894. There was ‘a real sense of brotherhood . . . a consciousness that each one bears a part in a great moral order, and can take an active share in the management, from the organization of a labour demonstration, to the clearing of tables after a “social evening”’.54 Brotherhood had been John Trevor’s watchword from the outset. Socialists may have often disagreed on what the future looked like but they had the good morals and principles required to get there. Ultimately, the problem that the Labour Church and all Christian and ethical socialist groups had was not with the preaching of the morality and inherent religion of socialism but with describing the means of attaining their new society. Municipal socialism was necessary for achieving a socialist utopia in practice or, in Trevor’s words, for evolution towards the ‘Kingdom of Heaven on earth’. The socialism of the Labour Church and ethical socialism in general could be argued to be a set of good intentions and desires; it was emotional, a matter of feeling rather than a set of definitive beliefs. Definitions and the means to act upon them were the workplace of parliamentary politics and trade unionism. The Labour Church preached ethics rather than pure economics, peaceful and evolutionary progress rather than revolution and adhered to the writing of Morris, Blatchford and Fabianism rather than the harsh realities of Marx.

Social Life Alongside the political life of the Labour Church, many established an active social calendar. Chris Waters argues that socialists at the end of the

86

THE LABOUR CHURCH

nineteenth century and turn of the twentieth century recognized and to some extent feared the political effects of a mass working-class culture, and set out to actively develop an alternative culture. This would take British workers away from football, betting and music halls to more worthy and suitable pastimes such as the Clarion Cycling Club and the Labour Churches. Waters is not alone in identifying the alternative culture of worthy pursuits that working-class socialists were encouraged to follow.55 Yeo concurred with his view that it was inevitable that alternative pastimes would emerge as competition: ‘moreover, socialist associations, and indeed working-class associations of all kinds as users of leisure time, had not yet been faced with the competition of a fully-developed capitalist mass leisure industry, not only competing for time, but standing for diametrically opposite, passive ways of relating to society’.56 The Labour Churches became a pastime within a pastime. Although the organization itself provided a social outlet, the Labour Church recognized that it had competition for people’s time and needed to provide more than a Sunday service. Some Labour Churches even procured drinks licences that went along with dances and social functions that were organized. The question of drink was occasionally divisive and the problem of ‘Drink in Labour Clubs’ was addressed in a debate in the Labour Prophet that ran throughout the spring of 1893, the majority of responses supporting Trevor’s anti-alcohol position.57 Trevor’s stance on drink was obvious, Trevor believed that the members of his congregations were physically part of the planned ‘Kingdom of Heaven on earth’ and thus the debate had raged over the status of their physical bodies. Temperance adherents and teetotallers were in the majority and were concerned that abstainers would be ‘practically prohibited from attending if drink were served’ as would ‘sensitive and moral women’.58 The other side of the argument was that the abstinence from all alcohol would narrow the potential movement. There is no indication that this was a particularly divisive issue within the Labour Church though it was frequently debated. On the temperance issue, I have not come across any pamphlet or publication that could be directly attributed to the Labour Church. Despite the drink debate, which spread across socialist leadership beyond the Labour Church, there was no question that leisure time was a right. The adoption of social activity was part of the Labour Church’s move towards an emerging social culture, and the development of a social life was a key strategy in the appeal to the working classes: ‘ethical socialists believed that the reform of popular

DAILY LIFE

87

culture was of crucial importance in so far as it might allow workers to see what leisure could be like in a new socialist society, thereby fuelling their desire to bring that society about’.59 The Labour Church was not alone: Blatchford’s Clarion organization provided numerous social outlets including the Clarion Glee Club, the Clarionettes and the ubiquitous Clarion Cycling Club. Blatchford wrote extensively in both Merrie England and in the pages of the Clarion newspaper advocating leisure and leisure time as an integral part of the vision of an established socialist society. The Fabian society also stressed the importance of ‘municipal leisure, believing that popular culture could be provided by the community as easily as could gas and water’.60 Socialists were aware of the increasing provision of commercial or capitalist leisure activities, social culture was ‘too important, in fact, to be left to the purveyors of commercial entertainment’.61 In this environment, the Labour Church branched out in an attempt to become central to people’s social lives. The socialists of the Labour Church were well aware of the growing importance of leisure and the opportunities and relationships with class and politics.62 Workingclass socialists needed to fill their leisure time with ‘worthy’ pastimes that were both rational and educational. The Bradford Labour Church had more than a good written constitution: it led a very active social as well as political life. The church was ‘part owner’ of the Labour Institute, which provided a venue not only for services and political meetings but also for social activity. A caretaker was hired to look after the building and the church committee voted to make the social activities and responsibility for the caretaker part of the charter of a new Bradford Independent Labour Club. The Bradford Labour Club served alcohol ‘in a purer moral atmosphere than usually obtains in the public house’.63 This was a church-sponsored club and was less commercially motivated to sell drink. It was also unique, as – unlike a traditional ‘labour club’ – it admitted women. Social activity was designed to help entice people into the Labour Church and encourage participation. Church dances and socials brought in up to half of the membership. The admittance of women was the reason a set of ‘rules’ was established: The ‘gents’ to wear slippers and to refrain from dancing with each other except at dancing classes; which demanded the ladies forfeit tickets if they left the hall; which forbade smoking at all times; and which empowered any representative of the Labour Church

88

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Committee to stop the music if the MC did not prohibit noisy or improper behaviour within the hall. At another time it was required that at least one member of the Committee be in attendance at each social event. But on the whole the socials were well conducted, and of high cultural and moral standards.64 The Bradford Labour Church and its social events included providing premises for the Clarion Glee Union and the Clarion Cycling Club. Although the Labour Church and the Clarion Clubs were separate, the relationship between them was very close indeed. Members attended musical concerts and annual Clarion Club dinners and dances, often providing funds to support the Labour Church. A licence for music and dancing was procured in 1892.65 The lengths to which the Labour Church went to distinguish itself and its functions from regular dance halls should not be underestimated. In Bradford ‘undesirable individuals were kept out of Labour Church gatherings by restricting entry to church members and their guests. And in Hyde, the congregation attributed the success of its dances to the fact that the reputation of those who attended them was strictly maintained’.66 In effect this often caused a separation between Labour Church members and those who frequented regular dance halls. While a sense of community and camaraderie was engendered within the Labour Church and socialist communities it also created a barrier to those outside. An anonymous member commented: ‘I am . . . afraid to think of what my life would be without the Labour Church . . . I wonder whether it is not more to me than it ought to be’.67 The concept of social separation and attitudes towards Labour Church members is reflected even more starkly in the recollections of the women who regularly attended. It can be concluded that the social ‘aspirations of Alice Foley or George Meek or Hannah Mitchell, or indeed of most of those who rallied to the Labour Church or to the Clarion Clubs, were not shared widely in the working class’.68

Labour Church Women If the Labour Church fulfilled a cultural need that other churches could not provide, it also gave women an educational opportunity and a safe political platform that was not easily found elsewhere. All of the focus in the study of the Labour Church to date has been on its male-dominated political

DAILY LIFE

89

function, which mostly relegated women to the role of tea-makers. However in order to gain a fuller picture of the life of the Labour Church, it is important to consider the substantial female element that regularly attended, spoke at and managed the churches. To understand the Labour Church’s attitude to women, its attraction for women and its role in women’s suffrage, consideration needs to be given to the lives of the women who made up the congregation. Women’s names and voices, and the roles they played in the day-to-day life of the church, resonate in the minutes of meetings and through the pages of the Labour Prophet. They were pioneers, sat on early committees and were founders of Labour Churches. Unlike men, Labour Church women left a fuller picture of the daily life of the Labour Church in their autobiographies. They also document the responses of family, friends and people around them to the church and, significantly, their attendance at services. Where male autobiographies leave little information, it is possible either that the Labour Church was of little consequence to them or that, as men, they had far more opportunities to operate in the public sphere than respectable women. The safety and comfort of the Labour Church may have been less valuable and significant to men than the ballot boxes of Westminster and the platforms of trade unionism. There are exceptions to the rule: for example, S. G. Hobson leaves a good account of his time with the Labour Church.69 Biographers of many Labour Church men frequently mention the Labour Church; on the other hand, few biographies have been written about any of the women, other than the Pankhursts, who were speakers but were never intimately involved. Victorian autobiographies in the latter half of the century faced a struggle to ‘combine aesthetic interest and moral value with fact – in their case the facts of growing industrial activity and scientific knowledge and the consequent growing dissatisfaction with traditional creeds’,70 and there was a tendency for a Victorian autobiographer to be ‘more an artist than a historian or moralist’.71 William Bell Scott’s concerns regarding the Victorian fad for autobiographies lay in their historical accuracy and the carte blanche they gave writers, not so much to deceive, but to pick and choose their moral content. This is less an issue of memory than a natural tendency to select events with hindsight. Events, people and organizations that might have been important to an individual at the time are less important with hindsight or distance. Typically, Victorian autobiography also tended to lack a psychological interest or any personal element, leaving

90

THE LABOUR CHURCH

the Labour Church open to accusations of exclusion. The memoirs of labour leaders were no exception: useful information can sometimes be gleaned from the autobiographies of Labour Leaders, although these do have the weakness that by the time such men came to write their memoirs, they were apparently reluctant to acknowledge earlier associations with chapels and churches, even where they are known to have been particularly close.72 Neither do the autobiographies make any mention of John Trevor. The unanimous silence may suggest that there is a reason for putting a distance between themselves and the early Labour Church: possibly the deluge of criticism following Trevor’s hurried second marriage and his experimentation with alternative societies and sexualities that came later in his life. Leonard Smith also acknowledges how few autobiographies include Trevor and the Labour Church and comes to a similar, if more wide-ranging, conclusion: It is remarkable how few autobiographies of Labour leaders who were prominent speakers at Labour Church services make any mention of the Labour Church movement or of John Trevor its leader, whose role in developments which led to the formation of the ILP has received scant acknowledgement. Perhaps they did not, with hindsight, consider opportunities afforded by the Labour Church and the Nonconformist churches to have been very significant for the advance of the independent Labour cause, but their almost unanimous silence seems to suggest that for some reason they became less prepared to acknowledge the closeness of relations in the earlier period.73 Gender in Victorian autobiographies also has an impact on their content. First, there are relatively few female autobiographies other than the accounts, predominantly of women from the suffrage movement, that were for the most part published in the twentieth century. Those that were written were fundamentally different from men’s because, inevitably, the female writer had to defend her decision to enter the public sphere and write. Consequently there is a tendency to reassure their reader that they are ‘normal’, have ordinary lives, and are concerned with everyday familial duties. Often, as a premise for the book, the author claimed

DAILY LIFE

91

that the writing of an autobiography was done under ‘moral obligations’ or for the ‘benefit of other women’.74 Several female autobiographies give detailed first-hand accounts of the daily life of the Labour Church and the responses to those who attended. It is probable that the Labour Church was more important to women, as it was one of the few opportunities that they had to enter the public arena. It is generally accepted, however, that churchgoing was a respectable and accepted social outlet for women. The Labour Church provided a respectable and familiar, church-like environment where women could safely express their social and political views. In addition to involving women in the day-to-day life of the church, the Labour Church also supported the political activity of its female members. Attention particularly deserves to be paid to those socialist women who actively supported female suffrage and the support that they found in the Labour Church. It is acknowledged that socialist women held a much broader political interest and often directly opposed female suffrage, but analysis of a wider range of their concerns and issues cannot be covered in depth within the scope of this research.75 Women were routinely discouraged from entering politics and undermining their traditional attachment in the home. Those who did were presented as ‘degraded females, guilty of the worst prostitution of the sex, the prostitution of the heart, deserting their station and putting off the sacred characters of wife and mother for turbulent vices of sedition and impiety’,76 all of which was part of a harsh moral message and indicative of ‘perceptions of female sexuality as predominantly maternal’.77 Respectability dominated the presentation of socialism in the Labour Churches and the wider labour movement. In the quest for respectability it can be argued that socialists tended to ignore female-specific issues and in particular those related to sex. The Labour Church was equally careful, however, that the doors of the Labour Churches were always open to female trade unionists, suffrage campaigners and local politicians. Hannah Mitchell described the atmosphere: The Labour Church attracted a type of socialist who was not satisfied with the stark materialism of the Marxist school, desiring warmth and colour in human lives; not just bread, but bread and roses, too . . . if our conception of socialism owes more to Morris than to Marx, we were none the less sincere and many found their belief strengthened by the help and inspiration of the weekly meetings held in these Northern towns.78

92

THE LABOUR CHURCH

At the turn of the century the Labour Church provided a safe, political but ‘respectable’ outlet for wider women’s issues and engendered a more supportive, softer brand of socialism. The labour movement maintained a vested interest in supporting the early campaigns for the right to vote, especially in the north and among the female textile workers of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The well-organized mill women, when called upon to contribute to the political funds of their unions in order to make possible an independent Labour Party, must have said to themselves, with natural logic, that what was sauce for the gander was sauce for the goose. If political representation was necessary for male trade unionists, so it was for women trade unionists. Under their influence, the ILP put women’s suffrage in the forefront of its programme.79 Stressing that women’s rights were the key to social emancipation, potential female politicians found a ready welcome in the Labour Churches, although other socialist organizations remained divided on the issue of women’s suffrage. With four out of every ten men still without a vote in the 1880s,80 the older factions of the movement were either directly opposed to it, or preferred to campaign for universal suffrage and would only entertain votes for women within that framework. Direct support came from the ILP via strongly prosuffrage individuals such as Keir Hardie, Philip Snowden and Richard Pankhurst, who campaigned on a pro-suffrage ticket as early as 1885.81 The Clarion took up the cause of working women, as did the Labour Church and Socialist Sunday Schools. The Labour Church was an attractive alternative to other, socialist organizations that did not support the female vote. The Fabians were not in favour of giving women the vote and considered it ‘a minor reform that would come after the achievement of a socialist society’.82 The SDF leadership was positively anti-feminist though revisionist historians including Karen Hunt, challenge the view that the SDF as a whole was ‘narrow, dogmatic and sectarian’. She contends that in terms of the ‘woman question’ ‘as with other aspects of the SDF’s stereotype, individuals tend to be cited as representative of the party as a whole’.83 However, it is difficult to view the SDF as other than anti-feminist when evaluating the attitudes of its leadership and their idiosyncratic influences including Hyndman, Belfort Bax and vocal opposition to the WSPU by Harry Quelch who claimed that they ‘set up an analogy between women as a sex and the proletariat as a class.’84 Hunt however clearly establishes that some ambivalence is created by the lack of a cohesive statement on adult suffrage.

DAILY LIFE

93

The early suffrage movement was as much about improving the working and social condition of women as it was about the vote, and speakers found a ready audience in the increasing number of women affiliated to trade unions. Women’s suffrage histories have tended to be seen from a London-centric view: a typical, well-to-do, middle- or upper-class, elitist woman seeking the vote. In the 1970s, Jill Liddington and her colleagues expanded their research to Lancashire and the activities of ‘the relatively well-paid women who worked in the mills and had a long tradition of political and economic independence’.85 Their work subsequently moved to the less radical areas of Yorkshire, which unearthed links to the Labour Churches throughout the county and the propagation of the message of the women’s suffrage movement outside of London. The Labour Church was significant in disseminating the immorality of denying the female vote and giving women a political voice. In 1894 the Labour Prophet gave column inches to Enid Stacy’s view of ‘women who were expected to get on with the housework and take no part in political experiences while their husbands became enthusiastic, active socialists’.86 The Labour Church firmly pinned its colours to the mast in criticizing those male socialists who ignored the rights of women to political expression. The Manchester, Leeds, Ashton-under-Lyne and Bolton Labour Churches welcomed and encouraged many key members of the early women’s suffrage movement, inviting Emmeline, Christabel and, most frequently, Adela Pankhurst to speak regularly alongside Esther Roper, Eva Gore-Booth and others. By 1904 the Labour Church made up one of a list of target organizations that included branches of the ILP, Clarion Clubs, trades unions and trades councils.87 The Leeds Labour Church was sponsored by many from Alfred Orage’s Leeds Arts Club, which was also frequented by leading militant suffrage leaders, local politicians and eminent socialists.88 Feminism, labour politics and the socialist and franchise appeal to the working-class women was ideologically complex. While the NUWSS maintained a constitutional approach to universal suffrage, the Pankhursts articulated the impatience of many women at the lack of progress leading to the formation of the WSPU in 1903 and the demand for votes for women on the same terms as men. In a political environment where the labour movement were pressing for a political voice for the working class, support for the equal franchise inevitably involved making a choice between gender and politics or class.

94

THE LABOUR CHURCH

For liberal, radical and socialist feminists, the Labour Church was instrumental in reaching northern women. The Labour Church provided a safe and supportive environment for many working suffrage supporters, including Mary Gawthorpe, Alice Collinge, Alice and Cissy Foley and Hannah Mitchell, to cut their public-speaking and political teeth. Participation in public demonstrations in favour of the female vote inevitably engendered elements of personal danger, ridicule and even social ostracism. The Labour Church platform provided a comfortable base for the majority of ‘ordinary’ or ‘average’ women who ‘fitted their political activity alongside other more everyday aspects of being a woman: work, family commitments, love and friendship’.89 In their autobiographies, Mary Gawthorpe, Alice Collinge, Alice and Cissy Foley and Hannah Mitchell all left a picture of the Labour Church and how it contributed to their political awakening. For militant suffragette Mary Gawthorpe and her then fiance´e Edward Garrs, the labour movement initially meant not the ILP but the Labour Church. The Labour Church offered all the comradely fellowship of a chapel ‘but without any other world theology’90 and Mary was attracted to a more idealistic socialism encapsulated by Edward Carpenter’s hymn and the church’s anthem, ‘England Arise’: England Arise, the long, long night is over, Faint in the east behold the dawn appear; Out of your evil dream of toil and sorrow Arise, O England, for the day is here.91 Mary was from working-class, Church of England stock and had struggled to become a teacher before becoming a senior organizer for the WSPU. She was typical of that element of the working class who ‘pulled themselves up by their boot straps’, and was aspirational. Mary was one of a ‘young, articulate and vocal professional class . . . without the ties of loyalty and politically committed’.92 She was a regular at Alfred Orage’s Leeds Arts Club, which, in association with other radical groups, had ‘by the turn of the century created a cultural underground which interfused art, politics and religion’.93 The Labour Church was part of the radical culture and provided not only a religious outlet but was also an educational organization as it was very often attended by the more educated ‘upper working class’.94 Hobsbawm in Labouring Men describes

DAILY LIFE

95

similarities in the appeal of the Fabians for women and white-collar workers.95 Like Mary Gawthorpe, Alice Collinge was a teacher and a single woman who had a similar experience of the Labour Church and its speakers. She too was roused to political action by the Labour Church and in particular the ‘religious oratory of Philip Snowden’.96 She gives a vivid account of the Labour Church’s infectious enthusiasm: Coming into contact with the virile Labour Church, social proclivities which had been lying dormant wakened, and the socialism of that day claimed me. What days those were, and how privileged I was, in my humble role at the piano, to hear such people as Mrs Despard, Miss Margaret Macmillan, Mrs Bruce Glasier, Edward Carpenter, people who more or less gave time and service to the Movement and desired nothing in return but the good of the country. Idealists they were, putting their ideals into practice. Needless to say, I carried out my then political faith as far as I could, sometimes on political platforms, but mainly on orange boxes, placed in various parts of the town.97 Alice describes the awakening of her ‘religious faith’, which never faltered: she was never a trade unionist or militant suffragette, she was part of progressive women’s groups concerned with the education of girls, generic women’s rights and was a member of the Whitman Fellowship in Bolton.98 The atmosphere of the Labour Churches suited her softer style of socialism and she became the organist in the Blackburn and Bolton Labour Churches, where she undoubtedly came into contact with Alice and Cissy Foley.99 Alice and Cissy Foley were Irish Catholic sisters from poverty-stricken Bolton, whose dominating, heavy-drinking father was in and out of work. Alice described how Cissy: had become an active and reforming influence in her particular section [at the factory] of the textile trade union and had tenaciously elbowed her way into the male precincts in that executive. She was also allied with the suffragettes and, more disturbing still, a zestful member of the Local Labour Church.100 The Foley family was distressed by Cissy’s ‘new-found assumption of independence and aloofness’101 and most of all her association with the

96

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Labour Church. Alice felt that Cissy had ‘drifted apart from her factory companions’, mixing more with shop girls and office girls, ‘fusspots who overawed us with their “long curtain’ talk”’ (to replace short by long curtains was a sign of moving up the social scale).102 Cissy’s desire to join the congregation of the Labour Church presents an organization that was attractive and aspirational, thriving on information and education, but their discussion of William Morris over the Bible often made it seem ‘the height of profanity’103 to an orthodox Catholic family and more of a threat than the suffrage movement to the family status quo. With political knowledge and emancipation, Alice caught up with her older sister, Cissy, and describes how her ‘captive faith trembled and crumbled before the onslaught of a new and challenging socialist philosophy. In its complete rejection of what seemed to be religious shackles the new born idealism was healthy and intoxicating’.104 As a result, after her father’s death, Alice joined Cissy in the ‘Labour Church and the newly established Socialist Sunday Schools where we imbibed and extolled a broader ethical faith, lustily singing Carpenter’s hymn of confidence and fulfilment, “England Arise”’.105 Cissy’s picture of the response to her attendance of the Labour Church is typical. Her description also supports Yeo’s view that: following conversion, being a socialist at this time involved a whole change in way of life. It was not just a question of being entered on a party’s membership list, and paying the first instalment of a monthly subscription. A separation from older jobs, friends, places and habits was succeeded by acquisition of new ones.106 As with Mary Gawthorpe and Alice Collinge, Cissy and Alice Foley ‘were inordinately proud of our positive affirmations of faith as compared with orthodox religions’.107 Yet, they were single women and not entirely typical. Hannah Mitchell is a prominent example of suffragette, socialist, nonconformist and Labour Church stalwart. Her story to some extent symbolizes that of the working classes, and in particular married women, throughout the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her struggle was to improve the quality not only of her own life but that of her community. Hannah had only two weeks schooling and her mother was ‘aggressively antagonistic towards her daughter’s aspirations’.108 Physical violence was often used to dissuade her and impede her progress. Hannah left home at 14 in 1885 seeking ‘freedom and emancipation’,109 and ultimately made her

DAILY LIFE

97

own way in the industrial suburbs of Manchester, before finally settling in Ashton-under-Lyne. The post-Industrial Revolution conditions that faced Hannah inspired her to her two great causes, ‘the women’s cause and that of Labour’.110 Hannah was instrumental in the foundation of the Ashton-under-Lyne Labour Church in 1901 and she later responded to D. F. Summers’s article in the Manchester Guardian. She described her involvement at Ashton: At first my husband was lecture secretary for Ashton; later this office devolved on me, and I attended one or two national conferences, one at West Bromwich, one at Watford. During the summer months, the Hyde, Ashton and Stockport contingents held a joint meeting in Marple, a country village which was a favourite place for picnics etc. These three churches did a vast amount of propaganda work in the north, besides meeting the spiritual needs of those who were not attracted to the labour movement by the stark Marxian theories of the SDF school of thought.111 The Ashton-under-Lyne Labour Church provided the secure environment Hannah needed to make her first public address on ‘The Women’s Cause’. Despite her nerves, ‘during the singing of the second hymn, I felt all of my nervousness vanish and I rose to deliver the address as cool and collected as if I had been washing the dishes’.112 Hannah was well-received, especially by women, and was further invited to speak at the Hyde and Stockport Labour Churches, slowly gaining a reputation as a popular public speaker. Outside of the churches she found herself fair game for ‘woman-baiting’, ‘which I suppose was the equivalent to the bear-baiting and cockfighting of an earlier generation’.113 Her popularity spread further afield to Manchester, where she first encountered the Pankhursts and joined Christabel in returning to speak at Ashton. Hannah also found sponsorship through active members of the Labour Church who supported her move into local politics and roles as a Poor Law Guardian and a seat on the Ashton-under-Lyne Board of Guardians in 1904.114 Though the Labour Church was a safe environment in which Hannah Mitchell and other early suffrage speakers came to light, it was not without its controversies. The congregations were interactive, and speakers were often challenged on the content of their speech. In 1909 Emma Sproson, socialist and militant suffragette-turned-WFL-organizer in the Black

98

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Country, spoke at the Wolverhampton Labour Church, where her views were challenged by a male congregation member: ‘Fancy a woman carrying an axe to get the vote’, to which she quickly replied, ‘And fancy his mother carrying him to hinder her from getting the vote’.115 From this exchange it is clear that discussion and opposition was not without debate, but it was less aggressive than the protests that women faced elsewhere. While all socialists were not necessarily feminists, much of the early suffrage message was disseminated via the ILP and socialist networks. The ILP remained concerned that the franchise on equal terms would benefit only the Conservative Party. Christabel expressed the frustration of the WSPU ‘As a rule, Socialists are silent on the question of the position of women. If not actually antagonistic to the movement for women’s rights, they hold aloof from it’.116 By 1907 the WSPU were no longer affiliated to the ILP. The Labour Churches however continued to reject the ‘usual Christian practice of relegating women to a subordinate role’117 and, through the church and its offshoot, Socialist Sunday Schools, the appetites of many budding young women continued to be whetted. By 1912 the Labour Church was the key vehicle for the socialist WFL. The Labour Church was not merely a vehicle for female suffrage. Female socialists and radicals were intimately involved in management and attended the Labour Church Union Annual Conference as female delegates. The first Labour Church Union Meeting (July 1893) in Manchester appointed Miss K. M. Scott as Pioneer Secretary and at the fifteenth (February 1906) ‘a further resolution supported the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill’.118 At the eighteenth meeting (13 and 14 March 1909, at Ashton-under-Lyne), Dolly Parker became the committee member from Birmingham. Margaret McMillan describes her purpose in being invited to the Bradford Labour Institute and Bradford Labour Church in 1892–3: ‘I must join the propagandists and speak not only at various pitches in the town, but must tour the country as other young women were doing. In short, I must be one of a bevy of girl speakers who were giving new strength and hope to the Independent Labour Party’. Her colleagues included Katherine Conway, Enid Stacy and Caroline Martyn. Margaret McMillan describes their style and success: Katherine St John Conway, a member of the first National Executive of the Independent Labour Party, was a lyrical speaker and she had a wonderful reception as she passed hot-footed from one town to another. Enid Stacy carried a different influence and appeal. She was a lucid and

DAILY LIFE

99

logical speaker, who could have played a great part in the Labour and Women’s Movements had she lived. She died in 1904. The youngest of all was Carolyn Martin. She was tall, lithe, eloquent, and quite regardless of self, and she poured out her young energies so recklessly that she died at twenty one, worn out by her reckless service to the cause.119 As women with a political agenda McMillan felt ‘we lived bewildered and adrift in London, waiting till we came into this big cellar at last and knew that our wanderings were over’.120 Margaret Macmillan concurs with Hannah Mitchell regarding the importance of the Labour Church to women with political aspirations or aspirations beyond the home. She felt that the female Labour Church speakers inspired and stirred working women: Overworked mothers and wives, young girls too, and older women who were unmarried and living by their own labour at factory or workshop, wakened as from sleep and began to conceive new hope and purpose. Wherever I went, the influence of the other women lecturers seemed to be living and working. There was something more in life than the wagestruggle! The women learned something about Girton and higher education from Katherine Conway. They were impressed by the views on women’s position of those who came from another world. The clear words of Enid Stacy lived in their minds like a ferment. Mrs Pankhurst was not silent even in these early days. As for Caroline Martyn, she passed like a benediction into the heart of many a home. Women began to prop books against their looms. They dreamed new dreams. These influences, as I saw, were not diffused by mere lecturing. We lecturers lived in the homes of our new friends, shared their life, even helped a little with the housework sometimes, or tried to help. Mothers called their babies by the new friends. There was a feeling – almost a certainty – that soon the hard life of the poor would be changed, and the worker would share with the student and the wellto-do. Anything might happen, since so much had happened already.121 The presence and popularity of both feminist and female speakers was unusual. Yet despite their popularity as speakers, the same level of female participation was not always reflected in the committees and bodies that

100

THE LABOUR CHURCH

governed the day-to-day Labour Church. They were still as male-dominated as other labour bodies though they fared better than many other religious organizations that remained staunchly male. Although the Labour Church paid great regard to female emancipation, women were still not allowed to take the collection. Though members might ‘hold a solemn discussion on ‘How can we Reach the Women?’ or congratulate themselves on being the only church in the country which attracted as many men as women’,122 observers of the congregations reported that they inevitably saw a majority of men. Men also made up the organizational body of the church. Ultimately the Labour Church suffered the same fate at the hands of the suffrage campaign and the ‘Votes for Women’ campaigners as it did at the hands of other socialist and radical speakers, male or female. It was used as a platform for speakers to get across their message, rarely becoming church members or regular participants at any branch (although more women remained involved in the church than men). When suffrage became a nationwide movement, larger platforms could be commanded and the Labour Church, like the Temperance Church and other smaller organizations, had served their useful purpose. After the WSPU split from the NUWSS in 1903 and the WFL from the WSPU in 1909, there is little record of the Labour Church being used other than by socialist WFL members. The WSPU certainly did not need them as they were by this time better-funded than the Labour Party. In 1908 Labour Party subscriptions and donations were £10,000, while by early 1909 the WSPU had an annual income of £21,213 and rising,123 enabling them to employ full-time organizers and staff. No organization with the means of donating this amount of money would do so had the WSPU used the language of socialism.124 Hence, the ‘Votes for Women’ movement had gained its objectives and the Labour Church had served its propaganda purpose.

CHAPTER 4 `

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

LABORARE EST ORARE', TO WORK IS TO PRAY 1

The Labour Church! What need have we Of other Churches in the land? Already spires unnumbered rise From holy fanes on every hand. Churches varied forms and faiths, Where we, one day in every seven, May hear the different priests proclaim A hundred different roads to heaven. ‘Ours is the only perfect way’, One teacher cries, in strident voice; ‘Outside our pale may none be saved’, Says one, yet bids his flock rejoice. Strange doctrines, dogmas dark and grim. Block up each way to those who moan To every Church in turn for bread, And get from every Church a stone. Ah! Blind these leaders of the blind Deem he who to no fold belong; Not all their varied paths are right, They may not haply, all be wrong?

102

THE LABOUR CHURCH

They preach a God of love and power Yet limit both to suit some creed, Till we, who sin and suffer, find His grace less boundless than our need. The Labour Church! What hope is here? This is no temple built of stone, Where stately bishops preach and pray, And snowy-vestured choirs intone; Where worshippers, on bended knee, To God, ‘our Father’ humbly pray, Yet hold Him Father but of those Who walk along their chosen way. Ah no! Of earnest, striving souls, The Labour Church is building fair; Nor walls of stone, nor iron creeds Shut out men seeking entrance there. One article of faith have they, Which not the weakest need appal: ‘God is our father –that being so, Then surely we are brethren all!’ Ah! Blessed liberty indeed! In this faith who may not unite, And in such unity find strength To battle bravely for the right? Brethren in heart as well as name, With Labour’s sacred flag unfurled, Oh! May not such a Church do much To raise and purify the world.

L. Hird, ‘The Labour Church’2

Theology and Doctrine The theology and doctrine of the Labour Church needs to be considered in the context of the generic role of religion in the rise of the socialist and labour movements and in the doctrine that the churches followed on a daily basis.

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

103

As has been covered in some detail in previous chapters, the socialism of the Labour Churches was largely ethical socialism. Christian Socialism was accessible through the other churches and religious groups, including the Roman Catholic Socialist Society and the Anglican Christian Social Union. John Trevor’s vision for his organization is clear in its aims and in his expectations of those who joined him in his self-sacrificing quest. What is less clear is how his objectives might have been met without those political individuals who, ‘seeking power and place’, inevitably displayed the necessary drive for election. It can be argued that the Labour Church ‘became a church in its own right more by accident than design’,3 as Trevor’s initial intention was to become an independent preacher on behalf of the labour movement (when his belief was that ‘obedience to God’s law would bring real liberty and that God was behind the Labour movement’).4 But as Trevor felt that more was needed, it did become an established church that subscribed to the ‘religion of socialism’, although it inevitably attracted the politicians and trade unionists, both local and national, within the labour movement. Ultimately, by 1910, Trevor had become disillusioned by the overtly manipulative political persuasion that had engulfed his organization and that had all but elbowed out any teaching of God. Yet, under Trevor’s guidance, the Labour Church at the turn of the century had developed a doctrine of its own that allowed for personal salvation without sacrificing political aims. In order to appreciate the complexities of the Labour Church, its own doctrine and its place in the wider ethical and Christian socialist movements needs to be established. The role of the Labour Church as part of the generic Christian socialist revival is described by Peter Jones, in his seminal text, The Christian Socialist Revival, 1877– 1914: The Labour Church was a serious attempt to create or synthesize a true working class religion: thus, its history falls under that popular religion or of British working class culture. The doctrine of its founder, John Trevor, was closer to the Ethical Culture movement that to Christianity.5 Jones is not alone in his opinion, and his view highlights both the historical debate and the enigma of the Labour Church. While Jones rightly insists that the Labour Church was ‘barely Christian’,6 it must be accepted that John Trevor’s primary aim was not to preach Christianity but to reach out and attract the declining working-class congregations of other established

104

THE LABOUR CHURCH

churches. He sought to do so by establishing an alternative working-class religion with its own doctrine (though without the associated creed and dogma), to create a truly egalitarian and ethically inspired church dedicated to righting social injustice. Trevor’s initial aims were clear: the church’s purpose was religious, social and political. By the start of the new century, however, increasing secularization gave it a less religious outlook. Ultimately the changes in character and focus contributed to its decline and were increasingly at odds with the religious (although not Christian) belief of Trevor. However, at its inception it was clear that the Labour Church’s objective was religious. The Labour Church and the ethical socialist movement grew to a large extent out of the ‘Victorian crisis of faith’, which gathered pace throughout the 1860s. John Tyndall and John Stuart Mill were among those who trawled over the theology and culture of orthodox religion. Doubts were inspired by the theory of evolution, modern scientific discoveries and advances in geology, which challenged the literal reading of Genesis. The expansion of literacy and knowledge, and the production of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1874 all served to inspire a changing society. As society became increasingly literate, questions were raised about the Church’s traditionalist attitudes, particularly relating to sexual equality and the outworn nature of creeds. The contemporary historian, James Anthony Froude, called for tolerance in theological discussion. This was tempered by his assertion that theological dogma was sacrosanct. The Roman Catholic and Anglican churches were so steeped in dogma and tradition that to change them would be to deny their raison d’eˆtre.7 According to Froude, the teachings of the church appeared to have descended into ‘meaningless dogmas out of touch with the modern age’.8 In Essays and Reviews (1879), it can be seen that Froude’s continued questioning of religion spread among society: ‘those who cling most tenaciously to the faith in which they were educated yet confess themselves perplexed. They know what they believe; but why they believe it, or why they should require others to believe; they cannot tell or cannot agree’.9 Many non-conformist sects – including Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists (especially Primitive Methodists who tended towards radical labour and trade union support),10 the Salvation Army and Unitarians – grew out of such a re-evaluation of orthodox faith and, by the late nineteenth century, they had developed their own social charters. The salvation of souls was no longer enough and the contradictions in Victorian society inspired a new emphasis on social and political change.

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

105

Jones also questions the motivation of non-conformist ethical socialists: ‘were these reformers socialist because of their non-conformist faith? Or were they merely socialists who happened to go to some sort of non-conformist chapel on Sundays?’11 Jones’s question is especially pertinent to the Labour Church, as its social function and its doctrine were inspired by the ethical socialist tradition and it was an organization distinct from church or chapel. In this light its teaching, principles and stand against any form of dogma need to be reconsidered. The Labour Church was two-fold: alongside its commitment to an individual relationship with God, its objective was to deal with the ills of society. Only with the abolition of ‘commercial slavery’ and the creation of a ‘brotherhood of man’, would a charter naturally follow a path of evolution into a just human society. The former is less often recognized than the latter and has left the Labour Church open to accusations of irreligion and secularism (particularly during the spate of historical interest in the church during the late 1950s and early 1960s).

Millenarianism The principles, aims and direction of the Labour Church can be seen in all of its published ephemera. The Labour Church Hymn Books and their various editions reveal more information than expected. The first edition has a preface by Trevor that has never been published elsewhere and an introductory poem with millenarian overtones by the socialist poet, Gerald Massey: Workers, Brothers mine; work, brain and hand, To free our Labour and our Land; That Love’s Millennial morn may rise On happy hearts and blessed eyes. Hurrah! Hurrah! True Workers be In Labour’s Knightlier Chivalry!12 Millenarianism was largely a product of the Interregnum of the seventeenth century, which here has been applied to labour. Trevor’s preface also has millenarian overtones and calls for ‘further emancipation from tyranny’.13 A reawakening of interest in the millenarianism of the eighteenthcentury Romantics surfaced in a more industrial guise during the nineteenth century, with the continued social and intellectual questioning of the church. Millenarianism represented the overthrow of earthly kings and their

106

THE LABOUR CHURCH

replacement by God’s new Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.14 Adherents to Marx and the communist ideology saw the churches as ‘bulwarks of a society that must be overthrown if justice was to be secured for the working class’.15 In the same way that a transcendent God would descend to earth on judgement day and put an end to suffering (class-inflicted or not), so the establishment of communism would end the history of class struggle and exploitation and provide a secular ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ on earth. In Marx’s view such a millennial struggle would inevitably come after an Armageddon or violent revolution. Like communism, which Marx prescribed at the height of a country’s capitalist development, the millennium would come, ‘when evil had reached its height [and] the hopeless situation will be reversed. The original, true harmonious state of society, in some kind of egalitarian order, will be re-established’.16 Revolution puts Marx and the nineteenth-century millenarians at odds with the utopian socialists of the same era. The Labour Church to some extent manages to adopt a millenarian overtone without the associated Marxist revolution. Tsuzuki’s biography of Edward Carpenter also points to ‘the millenarian hope of a swift social change’.17 Despite its predominantly pacifist basis, as well as its utopian philosophy, the theology of the church and the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth fitted comfortably with millenarian thinking.

Labour Church Principles When John Trevor founded the Labour Church, he endowed it with five principles, which were published at the front of the Labour Church Hymn Book and every edition of the Labour Prophet:18 1. That the Labour Movement is a religious movement. 2. That the Religion of the Labour Movement is not a Class religion, but unites members of all classes in working for the Abolition of Commercial Slavery. 3. That the Religion of the Labour Movement is not Sectarian or Dogmatic, but Free religion, leaving each man free to develop his own relations with the Power that brought him into being. 4. That the Emancipation of Labour can only be realized so far as men learn both the Economic and Moral Laws of God, and heartily endeavour to obey them.

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

107

5. That the development of Personal Character and the improvement of Social Conditions are both essential to man’s emancipation from moral and social bonding.19 The principles are at times vague, but this reflects Trevor’s reluctance to establish anything that might appear dogmatic. He was always at pains to avoid leadership, although he was content for people to respond to his appeal. Labour Churchgoers recognized the need for personal character rather than a simple philosophy of collectivism, and Trevor’s five principles reflect this. The Labour Church faith was an independent relationship with God and a dependence on God’s moral law to gradually bring about a new society. Trevor insisted on an identity of true individual morality within the socialist concept of society. Trevor recalled ‘I am a Socialist, but with the spread of Socialism we need to insist more than ever upon the worth of the Individual Life’.20 This quotation from 1894 shows his concern for the increasing politicization of the churches but it also reflects the original feel of the principles, the contagious joy in the services described by Margaret McMillan, and Trevor’s insistence that socialism could not be relegated to pure economics. An analysis of the principles unravels the doctrine of the Labour Church though it might be argued that there was never a systematic theology and that members were not bound to it: it was more a rallying cry to spiritually unfulfilled social consciences. It is evident from the first two principles that Trevor always contended that the labour movement was a religious and not purely socialist movement, which he confirmed in his address to the International Socialist Congress in London in 1906: The attempt to bring the thought of Jesus into the life of today as a guide and standard is an anachronism, the Labour Church is not a Christian Socialist Church, but is simply based on the conception of the Labour Movement as being itself a religious movement.21 It was God’s activity, and Trevor wanted to found a new religion rather than reform another. Christian Socialist branches of other churches already existed but, for Trevor, their vision was too narrow as they ignored or tolerated the hardship and injustice endured by the working class in their everyday lives. The Labour Church was an attempt to express working-class brotherhood and the inherent solidarity of the labour movement itself. Trevor felt that

108

THE LABOUR CHURCH

orthodox churches especially, and also some non-conformist churches, denied a ‘full, rich, free life’,22 in their demand to conform, so he felt that he had to work outside them. He also advocated the individual right to belief or unbelief, a struggle that he had been through, essentially to rid himself of the religious restraint of his childhood. The Labour Church denied the doctrines of original sin and endowed men with an essential goodness, given a decent environment and a fair and reasonable chance in life. Despite his commitment to the working class, the second principle was one of Trevor’s most often-repeated mantras, that the church was open to everyone, regardless of class, who supported the quest for the ‘Abolition of Commercial Slavery’. There were never attempts to appeal to the bourgeois instincts of the working class that could often be found in other religious appeals. The concept of a classless church and a classless society was the ideal of utopian socialism rather than the scientific or prescriptive socialism of Marx. If Marx saw class conflict as inevitable in the struggle for an equitable society, then Trevor saw it as a necessary evil to be overcome. A response to the charge of class revolution was countered by Philip Wicksteed’s work, ‘Is the Labour Church a Class Church?’, which was republished as a Labour Church Tract: The mass of workers and livers [sic] are the organism they serve and on which they are dependent. The labour movement and the labour church, then, are not a class movement and a class church but a movement and a church that gives warning to all ‘classes’, that they have no right to exist except so far as they serve the masses and make their life fuller and greater.23 Wicksteed’s is a classic interpretation of socialism and he calls for the equality and fraternity of all men and freedom from slavery. In the same edition of the original Labour Prophet, Tom Mann had underlined the need for a new church for labour in order to achieve a ‘brotherhood of man’: ‘the labour movement needs its own church. Not that we want sectionalism, but we do want Realism’. Mann encapsulates the first and second principles of the Labour Church as a brotherhood of man and ‘recognition of the personal relationship [with God] and the individual responsibility; without this, the strongest of us are not safe’24 – by ‘safe’, Mann is referring to the safety that would be brought about by the ultimate abolition of all classes and the abolition of the evil of the class system itself. Informality was inherent in the nature of the Labour Church and it made a concerted effort to keep its

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

109

organization free of dogma and sectarianism. Individuals were free to develop their own personal relationship with God, which allowed many to maintain their spiritual links with other denominations. The Labour Church’s hope was pinned on the concept that – through development, progress and the evolution of inherently ‘good men’ and their co-operation – God could be found within the labour movement. The third principle, ‘that the Religion of the Labour Movement is not Sectarian or Dogmatic, but Free religion, leaving each man free to develop his own relations with the Power that brought him into being’, underlines the church’s function in organizing the best conditions for individual spiritual growth among its congregation (as has already been described in relation to the first two principles). The Labour Church was tolerant, and Trevor went out of his way to avoid imposing his radical religious beliefs on others. His perennial criticism of the Anglican and Catholic churches was their sectarianism and intolerance, which dictated a narrow way of life through their religion: I should not dream of generalising from these subjective facts. It seems to me monstrous that any man, should declare his way of following and finding God to be The Way. It is Creed and Dogma and Authority all coming back on us; and with these human tyranny too. In social matters there is some excuse for dogma – in other words, law. In spiritual life there is absolutely no excuse . . . No two lives are the same and no two religions are.25 Above all, the Labour Church practised ‘free religion’. Free religion was compatible with socialism, which maintained that churches had a vested interest in maintaining a capitalist society and that its ‘good works’ were also done out of charity rather than a desire to fundamentally change society. The last two clauses of the Church’s charter are flagrantly socialist attitudes, although they continue to reflect Trevor’s belief that the labour movement itself was a religious movement, drawing together his equation of God and morality with economic and social egalitarianism. As described in the fourth principle – ‘that the Emancipation of Labour can only be realized so far as men learn both the Economic and Moral Laws of God, and heartily endeavour to obey them’ – Trevor consistently draws a connection between the moral laws of God and the economic laws of socialism, directly challenging the traditional assumption that wealth and poverty were also in

110

THE LABOUR CHURCH

God’s plan, as they were allowed to exist and continue. For Trevor and the Labour Church, the continuance of an unjust society was the evil of men and the churches rather than of God. Trevor believed that personal belief in God was an evolutionary process or an evolving individual journey and that his message was consistent with the social and economic conditions of the day. The fifth and last principle – ‘that the development of Personal Character and the improvement of Social Conditions are both essential to man’s emancipation from moral and social bonding’ – is in many ways the principle that most connects the Labour Church to labour politics. It is at the core of the labour movement. It stresses the importance of character and respectability. Tom Mann had a genius for emphasizing both personal character and social emancipation: We have a glorious and inspiring work in hand – nothing less that the purifying of the industrial and social life of our country and the making of true individuality. For, let it be clearly understood, we Labour men are thoroughly in favour of the highest possible development of each individual.26 Like Mann, the fifth principle reflects a desire to be rid of the ills of the past and through good character and equal opportunity attain freedom and the common good. In his Labour Prophet article, ‘What the Labour Church is For?’ Mann positions the Labour Church and its fifth principle alongside labour: So it is that the Labour Church stands side by side with the Labour Party in the struggle which is going forward to set Labour free from the robbers [landlords and capitalists] and the garotters [lawyers] who attack and spoil and wound and kill him [labour] on God’s highway of life.27 Mann acknowledged that the Labour Church stood for much more than this, but he illustrates the compatibility between the two. In the majority of Labour Churches respectability was a byword, but ‘moral bondage’ was not clearly defined, and there is a feeling throughout the later life of the Labour Church, and certainly within Trevor, that individual responsibility, the individual relationship with God, and a desire for freedom from moral as well as social bondage allowed the Labour Church

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

111

to set aside traditional moral fetters. In doing so it permitted the Labour Church to step outside traditional values and open its doors to alternative lifestyles and culture. As stated earlier, in many working-class circles, it was unconventional even to belong to a Labour Church. Unconventional attitudes were pushed further with the adoption of women speakers, admittance to – and publications by – homosexuals (including Edward Carpenter), and spinoffs and associated societies such as the Eagle Street College, a homage to Walt Whitman that was born from the Bolton Labour Church.28 All were part of the same movement and stood outside traditional ‘Victorian morality’. The Labour Church’s expressions of freedom, its revolt against the established churches and its challenge to the narrow concept of respectability brought many colourful characters together. Many in the labour movement were attracted by the lack of snobbery associated with the Labour Church, as well as the freedom it gave them to continue to worship within their own faith if they so chose. The concept of ‘personal character’ appealed to the working man and arguably reflected a familiar non-conformist culture; it certainly reflected the Unitarian principles on which the church was based. All of the principles are consistent with a belief in an immanent God. Mark Bevir’s work on the Labour Church during the 1990s took a deeper look at its theology and provided an alternative view of its religion. Bevir maintained that the Labour Church was a religious movement and contested the established view of Inglis, Pierson and Jones that it was an entirely secular, political and ‘barely Christian’ organization. He also contested the views of Pierson, Hobsbawn and Pelling that it was a product of ‘the impact of the secularization and class politics on non-conformism’.29 Bevir maintained that, on deeper analysis of the beliefs of John Trevor and the early church, their form of Christianity was entirely in line with other radical and social organizations who believed in an immanent rather than a transcendent God. Bevir describes the motives of those joining: People joined the Labour Church not because they were on the road to secularism but because of sincere and stable religious beliefs. Moreover their beliefs are characteristic not only of leaders of the Labour Movement but also of other ethical socialists.30 Trevor himself frequently expressed an immanent or revelatory concept of God: ‘our first duty is to accept ourselves and trust the God within us.

112

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Then we are in the way of understanding the world, and of finding God everywhere’.31 Born out of the moral dilemmas described during the ‘Victorian crisis of faith’, ethical socialists tried to reconcile faith by adopting an immanentist theology. They argued that God inhabits the world and reveals himself gradually ‘through an evolutionary process not as a transcendent figure that intervenes in our world spontaneously’.32 God would not suddenly descend to earth at Judgement Day and consign people to heaven or hell. Thus they argued that Darwinism was an example of God using natural means to reveal his message. If the presence of an immanent God is accepted, the Bible arguably becomes a work of history and ‘represents a part of the historical unfolding of God’s will as opposed to a one-off revelation’.33 Immanentist doctrines flourished among non-conformists; there was an increased interest in Christ the man, and therefore a questioning of the Trinity and salvation. For example, the Quaker movement was ambivalent as to whether salvation was due to Christ and they rejected the belief in salvation through Christ’s atonement and therefore the Trinity. Ultimately, for the members of the Labour Church, God was present in everyday life: he was ‘not a transcendent being who conveyed his law through dogmatic revelation’.34 Such a belief challenged the orthodox view of what was sacred and what was secular. If life on earth was a religious matter, then God’s kingdom should be created within the earthly bounds of the here and now. It also suggested that God was within everyone making everyone equal before God. Both were strong factors in support of the socialist message of equality and brotherhood and entirely in line with the principles of John Trevor and the Labour Church, which proclaimed that the labour movement was the instrument for the realization of God’s kingdom on earth. Trevor’s outspoken reasoning on immanentist views and the consequent questioning of both Christ and the Bible at the International Socialist Congress in 1896 somewhat unwittingly paved the way for the secularists of the Labour Church to come to the fore. Trevor’s statement that Christ was an ‘anachronism’ by the standards of the day brought a deluge of criticism and personal attacks on Trevor for anti-Christian statements.35 Labour Church members took sides on the view, with the result that some of the congregations fell away. This allowed the church to continue in a more agnostic or even atheist direction. It also paved the way for the revision of the Labour Church principles of 1906, which cleared away any mention of Trevor and de-emphasized the religion of the labour movement.36

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

113

After John Trevor’s exit from the Labour Church in 1902, suggestions were collected regarding revisions to the Labour Church principles. Proposals were received and presented ‘mainly by the Birmingham congregation, suggesting a more secular and a more distinctly socialistic statement . . . till by 1906 the main form of the revised principles was set, with only changes in wording and name occurring in the succeeding years’:37 1. That the Labour Church exists to give expression to the religion of the Labour Movement. 2. That the religion of the Labour Movement is not theological, but respects each individual’s personal convictions upon this question. 3. That the religion of the Labour Movement seeks the realization of universal well-being by the establishment of Socialism – a Commonwealth founded on Justice and Love. 4. The religion of the Labour Movement declares that improvement of social conditions and the development of personal character are both essential to emancipation from social and moral bondage, and to that end insists upon the duty of studying the economic and moral forces of society.38 The revised principles make it clear that religion had become secondary to socialism. The labour movement was no longer an ‘inherently religious movement’ and the Labour Church’s business was now only to ‘give expression to the Religion of the Labour Movement’. The 1906 principles of the Labour Church were no longer a reflection of Trevor’s original ideals. Between 1897 and his departure in 1902 Trevor had struggled to avoid the Labour Churches becoming ‘barely Christian’39 – or, more accurately, barely religious – and ‘merely secular meetings of working men’.40 The concept of a church for working men and a classless society, encapsulated in Trevor’s second principle, had disappeared altogether. In the struggle over the principles, ‘secularists came into conflict with Christians. Birmingham supported by Hyde and Watford’ advocated secularism, ‘while another group headed by Bradford resisted all secularist tendencies’.41 Although he had never been a natural leader, without Trevor’s nurturing and journalistic input, which had largely dictated the religious feel and the character of the churches, the Labour Church became rudderless. Despite his ignominious exit from the church, Trevor’s vision had materialized and it had done its job. In the later decades of the nineteenth

114

THE LABOUR CHURCH

century, the socialist message was notoriously difficult to get across to the working classes but the familiar feel and environment of a ‘church’ provided a perfect platform. There were also elements that were distinctly unfamiliar. There was neither priest nor pulpit and often no Bible and there were none of the rituals or sacraments associated with the Anglican and Catholic churches. There was a chairman, although he held no centralizing or hierarchical powers, and a congregation held together only by mutual belief. There was no room for dogma. Nevertheless, people still put on their ‘Sunday best’ to attend a Sunday service and enjoyed the Labour Church expression of the socialist message.

Services When referring to services there are two distinct categories. First, the ‘special rites’ administered by the church relating to births, deaths and marriages and, second, the everyday ‘special’ services that were held intermittently. I have already given a generic description of a Sunday Service but there was greater demand in some churches for more structure and alternatives to rites and rituals on offer in the existing churches. Services for baptism and marriage were rarely provided by the Labour Church, although burials were a different matter. For John Trevor and the early pioneers, ‘rites’ smacked of the dogma of sacraments, so any services adopted were simply ceremonies of recognition and were largely avoided by most congregations. But this was not exclusively the case. In November 1895, H. C. Rowe reported a service of ‘Dedication of Children’ at the Manchester and Salford Church, where he witnessed: the reception of several children into the fellowship of the Labour Church. The request came as a surprise and there was no announcement beforehand, so that the proceedings were decidedly informal. Mr H. V. Hereford drew up a simple but effective service, which was carried through with dignity and impressiveness. Of course, a baby cried. They always do on such occasions.42 A more detailed description of the baptism service is provided two years later by an unnamed attendee in Leeds: At the evening service there was an interesting ceremony equivalent to orthodox baptism. The parent who had been sitting near

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

115

the platform, rose at a given moment and handed the baby girl (who gazed around wonderingly) into the arms of the president, T. B. Duncan. He announced the name that had been given her, and in a few well-chosen sentences expressed the hopes which the parents cherished for their child in relation to the larger issues of the future. Unlike an ordinary baptism, the whole thing was dignified, simple and to the point.43 The claim that this was an alternative to orthodox baptism was problematic for the Labour Church. Baptism is the first rite of Christianity and its inclusion did not sit well among many of the Labour Churches. In 1902 the Labour Church Union made the following statement: The Labour Church must satisfy its relationship to Christianity; so far as he understood the situation in the Labour Churches did not accept the authority of the churches of Christ, but were Christian only in so far as they accepted the necessity of emphasising the Christ-like spirit. Thus, as free religionists, the Labour Church could not make its practices conform to Christian usage, just for conventions sake.44 It is acknowledged that by 1902 the Labour Church was well along the path towards secularization. But there can be no doubt that both secularist and more religious Labour Churches would have agreed that the creeds and sacraments of the other churches could not be allowed for the sake of convention. Nevertheless, when the Labour Church Hymn book was revised, it included hymn 164, to be used for Baptism. Though decisions were left to the local churches, the ‘welcoming and naming of a child’ became the remit of the Socialist Sunday Schools, equivalent to conventional Christian baptism within the established churches.45 In his correspondence with Summers, R. W. Sorenson MP reported that, in the Socialist Sunday Schools, ‘this was a solemn occasion. Often a silver spoon, engraved with the child’s name was presented. This naming service was often in place of Baptism, but it did not necessarily conflict with or displace the Christian rite as administered by Church or Chapel’.46 The adoption of marriage was less popular. There are no documented reasons why this was so. Possibly it was because marriage required a legal contract while baptism did not. Or perhaps the ceremony of a church marriage service remained popular with less committed Christians and

116

THE LABOUR CHURCH

non-churchgoers, as it does today. The Labour Prophet rarely mentions marriage. In September 1894, the Halifax Labour Church was reported to be considering incorporating a marriage ceremony. But only the Leeds Labour Church, in December 1897, was legally registered for the ‘solemnization of marriage’.47 Again, the Socialist Sunday School developed a socialist ritual for marriage.48 The most acceptable and widely adopted service was burial. In its earliest days, the Labour Church was called upon to comfort grieving relatives, and a hymn used at Labour Church funeral services, number 70, by John W. Chadwick, is included in the Labour Church Hymn Book. The first recorded burial service was conducted by John Trevor and was recorded in the Labour Prophet as early as May 1893. On that occasion we did not go to the cemetery or the chapel, but the body was carried at once to the grave and lowered into it. Then I said a few words and called on Comrades Settle and Horrocks to speak, as arranged beforehand. A few more words from myself, ending with some lines from Whittier’s poem ‘The Eternal Goodness’, and then a short prayer completed the service. From what was said to me afterwards, I believe the simplicity of the whole thing was appreciated by those present. Surely, we can scarcely go too far on these solemn occasions in the avoidance of all professionalism and conventionality and in being simple, brief and natural in our utterances.49 Trevor’s commitment to the burial ceremony extended to the burial of his first wife at Manchester Crematorium yet his views on death and burial were not universally accepted in all Labour Churches. The Labour Churches were nothing if not fanatically democratic and fervent in their rejection of doctrine. If any conventional ritual succeeded in the Labour Churches, it was the burial of its members and the printing of their obituaries in the Labour Church press. By the turn of the century, as the influence of the Labour Churches waned, once again the Socialist Sunday Schools took over this function.50 Alongside the rituals described, the Labour Church also expressed its ideology in a series of services that deviated slightly from the regular format. The deviation was often in terms of expression rather than function. The detail of the services remained as already described but the subject matter was modified to accommodate the needs of speakers and congregations.

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

117

The Labour Church services were, in effect, an expression of socialist morals and desires rather than the definition of a new morality. On this front the Labour Church developed several services to stimulate working people, and to express and develop the concept of the inherent religion of the labour movement. The Propaganda Service allowed for those socialist speakers and congregations who wished to observe the Sabbath by hearing a political message. The organization, not being a religious church, allowed the speakers’ consciences to remain clear.51 Labour hymns were sung and the format of a church service was maintained, although the message of the speaker was often political and secular. By the following decade many Propaganda Services became merely meetings of the ILP, trade unions or even the SDF and the word ‘church’ was dismissed. However their importance should not be underestimated as the Labour Church would have felt that its work was incomplete if a deeper spiritual awareness had not been stimulated. The Propaganda Service was not merely the provision of a political platform made respectable for a Sunday, but a platform for the continued development of the ‘religion of socialism’. The Recruiting Service was largely, though not exclusively, a service designed to encourage more women into active membership of the Labour Church and into labour politics. In a letter to D. F. Summers, Mrs Miriam Senior of Bradford explained how women were enlisted to contribute beyond the scope of making teas, sales of work, Cinderella Clubs and Sunday Schools. Mrs Senior described the formation of Women’s ILP groups in Bradford and Barrow-in-Furness, under the auspices of the Labour Church.52 As has been described in previous chapters, many women found the Labour Church a safe environment on which to cut their public-speaking teeth and contribute to study and practical political work. The Labour Church provided education and opportunity, not just for women. Many were encouraged to write papers, become readers or address a public meeting. As described by Hannah Mitchell, a man or woman running for local office would find help and support in their local Labour Church.53 They might also find a congregation willing to vote for them. The Humanizing Service was an expression of the personal needs and desires of the ordinary congregation rather than the scientific, prescriptive or intellectual expressions of socialism found in other groups. Similarly, the Fellowship Service dwelt on the mutually beneficial nature of a new socialist society or the Labour Church’s oft-repeated mantra, the

118

THE LABOUR CHURCH

‘brotherhood of all humanity’. Continuing its theme of togetherness, the Harmonizing Service endowed the Labour Church with the virtue of being a socialist group at a local level, with no specific political affiliation (it was not always directly associated with the individual political theories of a single group – the ILP, the SDF or the Fabians). The Labour Church celebrated its potential as a source of the local harmony of socialism, and the Labour Prophet blew this particular trumpet in 1897 when it declared that ‘The Labour Church is the place where the SDF lion can lie down with the ILP lamb and receive the benediction of the Fabian’.54 The Labour Church’s claims were supported by Dan Irving of the SDF. Another phase of the Labour Church work is that it provides a free platform wheron all sections of the socialist party may meet on neutral ground, to discuss and consider the truths of Socialism from every standpoint, and so by bringing together men and women of diverse moods, tend to increase the points of agreement and promote the ultimate union of all Socialist forces. In this work the Labour Church has no rivals.55 The Gadfly Service acknowledged the influence of the Labour Churches on other established churches in their locality, purely by virtue of their existence. The Labour Church represented a challenge to rethink the local churches’ existing position. Without getting the claims of the Labour Church and their influence on the existing churches out of proportion, it could be agreed that the Labour Churches irritated the local churches to the extent that they began to unbend to the message of the working classes. The existence of the Labour Church prompted other local activities and groups such as ‘Adult Schools’ and the ‘Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Movement’ which, taken together, created a demand for the socialization of the existing churches: Then there is a larger and much more decidedly religious movement, the ‘Adult Schools’. These have been taken up by the Workers of the Midlands and elsewhere in their thousands. Wonderful tales are told of the new life this movement is making. Then there is the ‘Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Movement’. It counts some hundred thousand enrolled members, and it is steadily advancing. This is a form of religious service which seems to fit the

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

119

wants of the British working men. The Adult Schools Movement, the Labour Church and the P.S.A. movement are signs of the beginning of the great Labour Movement in religion.56 As the new century dawned it was clear that the rights and demands of the working man were not going to go away. In 1908 a ‘Church Congress on Socialism’ saw 113 attendees (of whom 83 belonged to the Church of England) sign up to a Socialist Manifesto. The manifesto does not go so far as to adopt the beliefs of the Labour Church but to declare that ‘our socialism is not less earnest because it is inspired by our Christianity. The Central teaching of Socialism is a matter of economics, and may therefore be advocated by all men, whether they be Christians or unbelievers’.57 As individual Labour Churches closed down, job done, the Disappearing Service was used to bid them goodbye. By their very existence, change had been brought about either in the established churches or the political landscape of an area and merciful thanks was given as they closed their doors.58 While the daily religious activity of the Labour Churches was celebrated in a series of services and rites of passage, the social activity tended to have a less religious – certainly a less Christian – feel. Whether Keir Hardie was a Christian in the orthodox sense is debatable, but he supported the less prescriptive Labour Church-style of philosophy, ‘the more a man knows about theology the less he is likely to know about Christianity’.59 Hardie supported Trevor’s view that the religion of the labour movement needed to be more conscious and the activities supported by the Labour Church and its members reflected their commitment to improving society. While it has been established that the primary social objective of the church was education, it also supported diverse philanthropic projects (what Bevir calls the ‘cultural basis for socialism’), such as shelter for the homeless, slum clearance, campaigns against lead poisoning and support for the Cinderella Club. As Bevir states, ‘the emphasis on a new life of the spirit explains why Labour Churches so often provided platforms for speakers advocating new humanitarian causes, including anti-vivisection, ethical culture, theosophy, Tolstoysim and vegetarianism’.60 Ultimately, most of the support for the Labour Church came from Hardie and the considerable overlap of membership between the ILP and the Labour Church. At the most senior level, Fred Brocklehurst was the General Secretary of the Labour Church Union while also being on the National Administrative Council of the ILP. Among others, Hardie, Mann, Snowden,

120

THE LABOUR CHURCH

McMillan and Tillett were all regular contributors to the Labour Prophet and speakers at Labour Church services. Mann’s aforementioned conclusion, that ‘the Labour Movement needs its own church, not that we want sectionalism but we do want realism’, is arguably a statement of his belief in trade unions.61 Mann’s religious upbringing was essentially orthodox: he was a devout Anglican, and his focus primarily political. While the attention of speakers accounted for the popularity of some meetings, the church ‘was simply a congenial and useful platform for them on Sundays’,62 and their contribution to the church could not be considered key to sustained growth. The idea of Christian or ethical socialism also proved to be ambiguous. Ethical socialists expressed concern that their organization was either too doctrinal or, at the other extreme, that it was too secular. The marriage of radical religion and working-class politics produced the ILP–Labour Church alliance, although ultimately the secularization and politicization of the church resulted in it expressing little theology. Though the Labour Church was non-denominational, and has often been condemned to history as a political group, credence needs to be given to Bevir’s assertion that it was indeed a religious movement. Dogma was an anathema to the Labour Church and its status as a free church encouraged its growth, because it attracted both the working classes who had deserted the existing churches and those from other denominations with a political conscience. One could follow the principles of the Labour Church but still get married in the Anglican faith. Despite its struggles with the existing traditions of the established churches, the labour movement was successful in keeping on board many working-class traditions, of which the radical churches and particularly the Labour Church were examples. Though the debate surrounding the popularity of the church at this time remains, the churches as organizations were still valuable, as ordinary people made judgements of what was wrong with society through their church commitment. The inherent weakness of Christian Socialists ‘was one they shared with other types of socialist: their middle-classness’,63 or what John Trevor more generously termed their ‘pardonable self-righteousness’.64 A significant factor in the success of the Labour Church was its ability to break away from the middle-class values of other churches, although its ability to sustain its growth without middleclass organization, education and support proved to be limited. Trevor’s outspoken reasoning on immanentist views and the consequent questioning of both Christ and the Bible encouraged secularism.

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

121

His persistent anti-Christian statements brought further personal criticism.65 He continued to divide Labour Church congregations, and the Christian or religious members departed. The churches became increasingly influenced by agnostics and atheists, which was reflected in the revised Labour Church principles of 1906.66

Orthodox and Non-conformist Responses Most of them had been favourably impressed by the young clergyman’s appearance and manner in the morning: but that might have arisen from a prepossession and force of habit, for they were accustomed, as a matter of course, to think well of any minister. There were however one or two members of the congregation who were not without some misgivings and doubts as to the soundness of his doctrines.67 Robert Tressell, Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, 1914 This depiction of the Reverend Starr illustrates a working-class view of the middle-class nature of the church and its values. The Reverend Starr looks middle-class and he is accepted by the congregation without question. The ‘one or two doubters’ in the audience indicate those averse to any type of change or a ‘new-fangled’ approach to worship. They were likely to be the most intolerant and vociferous opponents of any other denomination. Tressell’s novel has often been seen as a direct attack on religion by a working-class author. His caricatures of the Reverend Belcher, as a martyr to excess, and the Reverend Starr, with the air of glamour and local celebrity, are coupled with his depiction of aspirational working men associating with their middle-class masters at church. Further reading of the novel reveals the congregation’s actions outside of the church to be examples of religious hypocrisy at its worst, and socialism is presented as a fairer, alternative moral ideology. In a letter requesting publication, Tressell pre-empted the furore of the religious in society: If the book is published I think it will appeal to a very large number of readers. Because it is true it will probably be denounced as a libel on the working classes and their employers, and upon the religiousprofessing section of the community. But I believe it will be

122

THE LABOUR CHURCH

acknowledged as true by most of those who are compelled to spend their lives amid the surroundings it describes, and it will be evident that no attack is made upon sincere religion.68 While Tressell’s novel illustrates the religious hypocrisy of the day it is also a first-hand account of the challenges of getting the socialist message across to the working classes. Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is not only a story of class struggle but also the struggle to make the working classes understand their own role in the social and economic world. It is a story of the struggle for the hearts and minds of working men and a push for socialism as the only just ideology. It is an effort to change the ‘not for the likes of us’ mindset and to present those in power as anything but ‘their betters’. It is unlikely that Tressell would have been published before 1914, largely because of the antireligious tone of his work; it is equally unlikely that Tressell would have written it before the 1880s and the widespread questioning of orthodox faith and values. The Labour Church was an antidote to the increasingly middleclass domination of the existing churches and a familiar means of expressing radical socialist values, normally the preserve of the middle classes. The Labour Church grew up during a period when the mindset described by Tressell was prevalent. In his autobiography, My Quest, Trevor details that one of his key reasons for founding the Labour Church was that, in the environment described, he ‘could not breathe’.69 Trevor frequently talked about his own experience with the churchgoing working classes who found themselves increasingly alienated by the middle-class culture of existing congregations and their social conservatism. Cheryl Walsh describes the decline of the Anglican Church and the hostility towards the establishment in the Victorian cities: ‘not only did typical urban workers not go to church they were generally rather hostile to organized religion and particularly to the Anglican Church’.70 The evangelicals of the orthodox Anglican Church considered the individual responsible for his own suffering. While it was a sin to inflict pain directly, to demand unhealthily long working hours in savage working conditions was not deemed ‘unchristian’. Good business was beneficial to the nation.71 While evangelical Christians made up a small group, their influence was pervasive. Trevor believed that the orthodox churches saw the slums as a sign of God’s anger and of working-class irreligion: ‘the working classes who knew better left the churches’.72 The Labour Prophet encouraged them to quit the church with ‘their bishops and clergy, their sects and systems . . . they must get outside the existing

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

123

institutions that are so much under the power of the capitalistic Pharaohs of this day’.73 The quotation refers to converts who were ripe for joining the Labour Church: those at odds with the capitalism and conservatism of the existing churches. Trevor and Wicksteed were among those who founded the Labour Church because they ‘deplored antipathy in the churches towards ideas now filling the minds of class conscious working men’.74 Wicksteed declared that it was the social attitudes of denominational churches that made a Labour Church necessary. Wicksteed understood the hostility and suspicion that Trevor’s Labour Church was bound to encounter: and the special virulence to which he himself, the minister of a middle-class church, was exposed as their advocate. He had to face the opposite criticisms of his fellow-bourgeois who saw him making religion an organ of revolutionary Labour, in whose eyes he was ‘drawing a red-herring across their path’, to divert dangerous social upheaval into innocuous devotion. He knew that it was vital for the Labour church movement to be, and to be recognized as being, a working-class creation.75 The Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England and even some of the larger non-conformist denominations were dependant on middle-class support. No other church was prepared to reorganize society in the interests of the working class; nor were any prepared to make the more radical working class welcome. Wicksteed’s essay ‘What does the Labour Church Stand For?’ was one of the most influential Labour Church tracts. In it, Wicksteed addresses the attitude of orthodox congregations to working-class people, which gave rise to the need for the Labour Church: What workman can walk in to a middle-class congregation with the consciousness that the underlying assumptions, both in pew and in the pulpit, as to the proper organization of active industrial life and the justification of social and industrial institutions are in a militant sense his own? And he cannot do that, then in asking him to join in worship you are not asking him to express and nourish the religious aspects of his own higher life, but to suppress or suspend that life in order that he may share in the devotions of others, who cheerfully accept, and in many cases would stubbornly defend the things it is his mission to fight.76

124

THE LABOUR CHURCH

The Labour Church provided an oasis. It disseminated the message of the labour movement in the familiar surroundings, through services, Socialist Sunday Schools, social functions and ‘walking days’. Though Trevor was always at pains to reach the poorest in society, the congregations were invariably upper-working-class. Congregations across the country were reported to be made up of ‘workmen’ or well-to-do members of the working class, mechanics, artisans and shopkeepers, well-dressed in their Sunday clothes.77 It would however be a disservice to Anglican churches to suggest that all were ignorant of the issues of class and suggest that they took no responsibility for the defection of their congregations. There was some awareness of their failings as an organization. Socialist members and sympathizers within the Anglican Church recognized what constituted a divorce between themselves and the labour movement. While sympathetic to some of their defectors, they did not accept that the poor were naturally irreligious, confirmed atheists or agnostics. They did not have any great antipathy towards the Christian faith; rather, they recognized that the Anglican Church itself had abandoned the poor, the very people whom the scriptures instructed them to nurture: ‘the workers have left the church because the Church first left them’.78 Socialist Anglicans considered this to be apostasy, a failure in the fundamentals of the church towards the poor and working classes. It was often preached that ‘the Church has neglected her duties to the poor; she has not seen that those in need have necessity and right’.79 ‘Necessity and right’ were increasingly under the ownership of the middle classes as were almost all of the offices within the church hierarchy. Offices of the church were filled with the middle and upper classes to the exclusion all others. Socialist sympathizers acknowledged the fact that ‘class, has monopolized the Church’80 As E. R. Norman surmised, the working class was not irreligious but ‘middle class churchmen did not usually appreciate this, not having the adequate tests by which to identify the nature of working-class religiosity . . . The propaganda reformers had depicted the poor as so sunk in appalling conditions that the practice of morality and religion was scarcely possible’.81 By the turn of the century, the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church were not immune from socialist or labour sympathies. Since the earlier days of Christian socialism, the churches had ‘tried to move away from a narrow evangelicalism of individual salvation to a broader engagement with contemporary social conditions’.82 William Temple, the

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

125

future Archbishop of Canterbury (1942–4), was the Anglican Church’s highest-ranking supporter of socialism,83 and arguably ‘the outstanding religious figure in Britain in the twentieth century’.84 It was his belief that ‘the state church could do what no other social institution could do: it could bind together in a common faith, shared values, and in doing so perform a vital religious and political service’.85 In 1906, Temple’s socialist thought extended to criticism of the short-sightedness of the orthodox churches and their congregations regarding the situation of the working man: Why – why did there exist, side by side, extremes of misery and luxury, of sweated labour and wild extravagance, of squalor and the ordered comforts of a decent home? Could the answer be, merely because a few of his fellow countrymen were too ignorant, too idle, and too selfish to put an end to it – to a state of things which could have no place in decent human order, still less in the divine order of eternal justice called the Kingdom of God – and to set another up in its place? There was nothing in the present system or the lack of one – fixed unalterably by the laws of nature or economics, or sacrosanct by any law of God. Good will, good sense, and good work were all that were needed to change it. And what of the few who knew, and cared, and tried? At least he could throw his lot in with them and share their task of destroying and rebuilding.86 Victorian individualism and the attitudes of laissez-faire had made too many ‘comfortably-off people indifferent to the effects of industrialization on society’87 and ‘local clergy reflected laissez-faire attitudes’.88 In 1907, when still a layman in Leicester, Temple came across a Labour Church: I then sped away to the other end of town, to the Labour Church, where I took the chair and Mrs. Bruce Glasier (wife of the Editor of the Labour Leader) spoke very finely. Then to tea with Wilford – one of the men Mansbridge brought to Oxford in August – and then again to the Labour Church. I had meant to repeat my Extension Lecture on ‘Socialism and Education’ but they had been getting a deal of abuse from some clergy at that end of town, and were keen for me to talk on ‘Socialism and Christianity’. So I did; and began by exhorting them to set a Christian example to the church folk who abused them by not ‘reviling again’. They are not all Christians (in metaphysics) at that

126

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Labour Church, but I have seldom felt so near the presence of pure religion. To-night I talk to the Church Socialist League.89 It is interesting that Temple recalls that the local clergy were giving the Labour Church a ‘great deal of abuse’, though he does not indicate explicitly why. Temple also recognizes that, despite the encouragement he received to give his lecture on ‘Socialism and Christianity’, his audience were ‘not all Christians’. Nevertheless, he acknowledged the religious feel of the church, and recognized the mixture of moralism, socialism and religion that is so often ignored in the historiography of the later Labour Church. Temple ultimately joined the Workers Educational Association and became president from 1908 to 1924. He joined the Labour Party in 1918,90 claiming that ‘the Labour Movement is essentially an effort to organize society on the basis of freedom and fellowship. As such it has a right to claim the sympathy of the Church’.91 In 1908, Temple wrote in the Christian Socialist Union Economic Review, ‘the alternative stands before us – Socialism or Heresy!’92 Temple is ‘warning that to ignore Labour would be to incur the guilt of final and complete apostasy, of renunciation of Christ, and of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit’.93 Temple was offering the sympathy of the church, as would be expected, but stopped a long way short of abandoning Christianity for the religion of socialism that he had experienced in Leicester. Temple recognized the inequalities and injustices in society and, though his practical thoughts were in step with Trevor and other critics of the established churches, Temple was a lifelong, committed Christian and senior clergyman of the Anglican Church.94 For Temple, the Kingdom of God was ‘eternal justice’ and the Kingdom of God on earth could be achieved only through the laws of God not by the imposition of a new socialist religion.95 Despite this acknowledgement, Anglican churches at large still resented the existence of the Labour Church; Temple was something of a useful anomaly. Anglican understanding was that it had come into existence for two reasons only: first, ‘as a protest against the apostasy of the Church’ and second, ‘as an outward expression of the inward realities of the labour movement’.96 In 1906, Anglican opinion was that the Labour Church exploited the schism between the labour movement and themselves, and that it ‘exists first of all as a protest against the indifference of the official church to the tragedies of and suffering to which Labour is exposed’,97 although it was also recognized that the Labour Church expressed not only the mood of

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

127

the labour movement but the belief in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. The Church of England may have understood the surface appeal of the Labour Church. The Labour Church attracted ‘those who have abandoned the traditional religion of the day without having found satisfaction in abandoning its religion altogether’.98 The Labour Church also expressed the religion or morality of the labour movement but did not preach against the Anglican ‘gospel or creed’. In this respect, the Church of England failed to understand the Labour Church altogether and regularly took it to task in sermons and literature, questioning the need for its existence when all of its doctrine could be covered by Anglican doctrine, claiming that, as an organization, the Church of England had far more to offer: Do the Labour Churches ‘welcome all sections under their broad wings’? How can they stand apart then from that Church of the divine humanity which is in Christ Jesus, Who redeemed us to God by His blood ‘out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation’. Do the Labour ‘Churches’ seek the Fatherhood of God? Then they can know it only through Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, except by Whom no man cometh to the Father. Do they affirm the brotherhood of man? Then must it not be finally in Him in Whom alone all men are united, in Whom there is neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus? Do they essay the service of man? Then shall it not be effected in serving Him Who is the Head of every man, the second Adam, the Saviour ‘Who redeemed me and all mankind?’ Do the Labour ‘Churches’ seek practical reform? Then shall they not repossess themselves of that mighty and universal power which covers the world in the Catholic Church? If the practical aim of the Labour movement is to possess itself of the sources of power – the legislature, the great instruments of production and the land – how can its movement’, says one of its leaders, ‘need the spirit of Christianity to give it increased life and strength.99 As has been discussed, the question of the Labour Church’s status as a church was continually under discussion. Anglicans accused the Labour Church of taking on the principles of Catholicism – no liberty without obedience and emancipation from the tyranny of man’s ‘half-developed nature’.100 This is difficult to understand as there was neither a formal creed associated with the

128

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Labour Church, nor any notion of confession and forgiveness, only the preaching of earthly, rather than heavenly salvation. The attitude of the Catholic Church towards the poor still tended to be that of charity, which the Labour Church vociferously opposed. It can only be assumed that repentance by the church for its apostasy and its subsequent forgiveness by the poor was the only route back to orthodoxy for the working classes. The Labour Church, however, never considered itself a pressure group to force Anglicans to look at themselves, nor did they consider their organization to be an interim measure. The Church of England failed to understand the social and increasingly political function of the Labour Church and its value to the labour hierarchy. The underlying fear of socialism and of its expression in Labour Churches was also shared by Catholics, who saw socialism as a political ideology with religious overtures. But, like the Church of England, they failed to accept its social implications. For Catholics, socialism signified collective ownership and revolution and they were concerned about its expression in the Communist Manifesto;101 the ideology of devotion and childlike faith that bore no slight resemblance to religious propaganda. Socialism held three major threats: to the function of the church itself, to the family and to private ownership. The materialistic concerns of socialism were seen as the politics of collectivism and redistribution and as such could have no ‘raison d’eˆtre for a spiritual power’.102 The rhetoric of socialists, though secular, presented their morality as superior but without that moral responsibility that came with religion. Second the socialist focus on the family had children trapped between two authorities: parents and the state. Catholics considered the family as ‘an organic thing with an organic life of its own’,103 with which socialism interfered, depriving the family of religious and domestic freedom. The same argument applied to private property and ownership: here the church harked back to the medieval ideas of Thomas Aquinas and the intrinsic right to own property. Consequently, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Catholic Church was openly hostile towards socialism. It was denounced by three popes: Pius IX, Leo XIII and Pius X.104 In Britain, socialists and Labour Church activists endeavoured to reconcile their Catholicism with their politics. John Wheatley formed the Catholic Socialist Society in 1909 while still speaking at Labour Churches throughout Scotland. Wheatley was aware of the Catholic condemnation of

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

129

socialism and, though conciliatory to the concerns of the church, defended his version of British socialism: It was the duty of Catholics to oppose the revolutionary confiscatory anti-religious methods of the early, modern continental socialists. But the methods and aims of the legal evolutionary socialism of Great Britain do not merit opposition. Socialism in Great Britain means substitution of the public – the municipality or the State-ownership for private ownership.105 The Catholic Socialist Society, however, was not free from the hostility of the Church, which needed to find a doctrinal answer to the issues of poverty and the wealth gap as their congregations included an increasing number of poor, Irish and immigrant workers. In his autobiography, Wheatley’s fellow socialist David Kirkwood described the hostility Wheatley faced from fellow Catholics: When I first met John Wheatley, he was in trouble. He had declared himself a Socialist and founded the Catholic Socialist Society. This was too much for his co-religionists and their spiritual leaders. There was little they could do. They decided to do the little. They could not burn the heretic, so they made an effigy of him, which they carried through the streets and burnt amid much pious rejoicing at John Wheatley’s front gate. He had been warned of the danger of being in the house, for an Irishman under the influence of religious mania, like one under the influence of alcoholic drink, is reckless. To the consternation of the inquisitors, John Wheatley stood with his wife at his open door, smiling at the fanaticism as if it had been fun.106 Despite Wheatley’s efforts, the Catholic Church would never sanction the socialist agenda. For Wheatley and his fellow Catholic socialists there was never any forgiveness from the Church: ‘there were some who thought that the best means of combating Socialism was to imitate it; and they encouraged ideas, attitudes, and expressions of a socialistic type, which resulted in a distorted viewpoint and an undisciplined activity, to the great injury of genuine popular Catholic action’.107 Henry Pelling, in The Origins of the Labour Party, echoes to some extent the Anglican and Catholic view of the Labour Churches as a protest or pressure

130

THE LABOUR CHURCH

group. Pelling describes their function as ‘merely a short-lived protest against the link which the non-conformist churches had established with the middle class, and in particular against the alliance with the Liberal Party’.108 The Labour Church was not merely a revolt against orthodoxy nor was it a revolt against nonconformity, though it was invariably used as an alternative to the politics of non-conformist liberalism. Pierson describes the acceptance of liberal ideals: ‘working class non-conformists accepted the liberal ideal of self reliance and shared the view that economic life was best governed by its own natural laws’.109 But there were many non-conformists among the Labour Church’s members and preachers. Wicksteed remained a Unitarian minister and the Labour Church stalwart, Fred Brocklehurst, had almost taken holy orders. There was no specific attack on any non-conformist denomination, and the church was always at pains never to criticize their creeds. While it is possible that Labour Church members felt more bitterly let down by non-conformism (which purported to be the friend of the common people) than by orthodox attitudes, criticism was levelled at organized Christianity as a whole. Keir Hardie wrote for the Labour Prophet in 1892 that ‘the church worships respectability and puts its ban on poverty . . . I speak of no particular sect or denomination. I discern little to choose from in any of them’.110 The Labour Church attracted its share of criticism from non-conformists. Its status as a church was continually brought into dispute by its immanentist doctrine, its apparent social exclusivity (due to the dominance of the working class in its congregation and despite the claim that it would welcome all classes), and its secular nature. Some ministers could not conceive of a church ‘which makes no recognition of His Deity, of His atoning sacrifice, of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit; which has no place in it for the sacraments, and none for the authority of the word of God’.111 Similarly, criticism for the church’s overtly political nature brought criticism even from those non-conformists who had initially supported it. ‘In his Congregational Union address in 1894, the Revd G. S. Barrett challenged Christians to take a prominent role in the struggle for economic welfare, but criticized the Labour Church for its lack of theology and its social divisiveness.’112 Revd Barrett went on to protest that ‘a Labour Church has no more right to be than a Capitalist’s Church, or an educated man’s church’.113 Barrett’s assumptions about the Labour Church congregation are quite clear: ‘his opponents might have replied that the “Capitalist’s Church” was not unknown’.114 Many non-conformists

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

131

considered the Labour Church a reaction to despair, a rebellion against organized churches, and a warning to other denominations. The Labour Church was not the only focus of non-conformist concern. Non-conformists created the Anti-Socialist Union of Great Britain in 1909 to counteract the increasing politicization of the churches and chapels as well as the growth of political ‘free churches’ such as the Labour Church.115 The Anti-Socialist Union was founded in London in 1909 and spread internationally, finding particular favour in the USA. Its organizational objectives were printed in the New York Times of 26 December 1909: 1. To fight socialism in all its forms. 2. To withstand the encroachments among the members of the Nonconformist Church. 3. To protest against the use of the pulpit for political ends. 4. To watch the movement of other bodies established to further the ends of Socialism or other political propaganda in Non-conformist churches and to take such steps as may be advisable to counteract the same. 5. To hold meeting and lectures, appoint officers and agents, print and circulate literature and do all such things as the executive may determine in furtherance of the above objects. 6. To band together all men and women who approve the objects of the society. 7. To check and prevent the use of the Free Churches as party political instruments. 8. To preserve the preaching of the Word of God from loss of power by the introduction therein of Socialistic and other party political utterances. 9. To discourage chapels and chapel schoolrooms for political meetings. 10. To free pastorates of Non-conformist churches from all the political tests and to establish a rule in the churches that ministers under consideration for the call shall not be subjected to inquiries as to their political opinions.116 It is clear that the Anti-Socialist Union was a backlash against the utilization of the churches by all political parties. It is also clear that the Labour Church would be the encapsulation of all that the Anti-Socialist Union distrusted. In a tirade against the effect of socialism on the working man, the Labour Church became the ultimate moral downfall of the socialist as he was systematically indoctrinated into the socialist mire:

132

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Whatever the man’s disposition, the organization has a place for him. There is no institution in the world except the Roman Church, which makes so much use of the willing convert. It should be remembered that the Socialist parties are missionary organizations: their business is to train leaders, not to bring the working-class as a whole into their system. They consist of the ‘active citizens’ of the proletarian movement – the officers and non-commissioned officers of the people’s army. Therefore every member of a Socialist organization is expected to be a worker. The rule ‘From every man according to his ability’ is strictly observed. Every member may act as canvasser, scout, speaker, heckler, organizer, secretary, delegate, emissary or bill-distributor, according to his taste and talent, but act in some capacity he must. Whatever ambition the man may have is fired and developed by the opportunities laid open to him. The system absorbs him, if not body and soul, at least heart and pocket. Socialism becomes his religion, his hobby, his exercise, his recreation – the be-all and end-all of his existence. Let us assume that he joins a branch of the Independent Labour Party and that he is a Trade Unionist of fair talent. Having been led into the fold by the words of some street-corner speaker, and strengthened in his early groping towards conviction by the reasoning of other Socialist workers, his first step when inside the movement is to study some standard works in Socialism, together with the literature of the party. In a few months he finds himself easily able to worst his nonSocialist fellow-workmen in the economic discussion of the dinnerhour, and begins to feel the delight and triumph of a man with a panacea. Victory brings confidence, and confidence fluency. The new recruit comes out as a street-corner speaker, and received generous applause which working men are always ready to bestow on a man of talent. He is now a public character, and may gratify his taste for eloquence by acting as a working-men’s delegate on some small occasion, such as deputation to the local Council requiring that all its printing shall be done by forms paying ‘society’ rates. He becomes secretary or organizer of the branch or founds a new branch and becomes organizer of that; and thereafter there is no social height he may not aspire to. By virtue of being a Socialist and a working man he has a ten times better chance of becoming a member of parliament or a Councillor than any householder of the middle class

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

133

or, for that matter, than any able man or brilliant speaker in London. He finds himself courted on accession buy local Liberal – and even local Conservatives. It is not surprising, in the circumstances, that the movement should attract so many active men. By this time, Socialism has become part of the individual’s life. He has, with some initial difficulty, brought his wife and children into the movement, and this working man who counts as only one vote on the register, is in fact the nucleus of Socialism, the leader of a group of other working men ready to vote as he advised, urges and persuades them. He spends every hour of his spare time, every spare shilling, on the cause. Besides attending to the work of his own branch, he goes to public meetings, arranges visits of Socialist vans, takes part in public debates. On Sunday morning he and his wife attend the Labour Church; in the afternoon his children go to the Socialist Sunday-school. When he reads, he reads Socialist books and pamphlets, and the Socialist press. When he takes a week-end outing, he goes with a band of Clarion cyclists and exchanges Socialist passwords, ‘Boots’ and ‘Spurs’ with other such bands on the road. His summer holiday is passes with his family in a Socialist camp. If he has any other time for recreation, he spends it at the local Labour Club, where he meets Radical working men and helps to sway them for Socialism.117 The all-consuming nature of socialism, the ideology that encompassed working life, family life and ultimately religion was either not supported within the wider Christian community or dismissed as reactionary. The Labour Church was the vehicle that expounded the ‘blasphemy of socialism’ and preached ‘a gospel of destruction’ through the ‘creed of fanatics’ that would ultimately ‘destroy freedom’.118

Responses Beyond the Churches There is plenty of evidence of socialist attitudes to the existing churches, but responses by the Christian churches to Labour are more difficult to find. Leonard Smith, in Religion and the Rise of Labour, also states that ‘on the Church’s side, the evidence of attitudes towards Labour is diffuse and difficult to find’.119 Even less evidence exists of responses to the Labour Church from outside the religious sphere. Other churches were not alone in

134

THE LABOUR CHURCH

their opinions of the Labour Church. Outside of the religious community, the response from within sections of the labour movement was not always unanimously supportive. E. J. Hart states unequivocally ‘that many of the most ardent workers for the Labour Movement looked upon the Labour Church as a means of diluting and sentimentalizing the Socialist Message’.120 Some of the later responses to the Labour Church are often difficult to distinguish between opposition to the Labour Church itself and opposition to John Trevor. Some of the first records of opposition come from the wealthy members of the Upper Brook Street Unitarian Church who stated that, though they did not have any personal opposition to John Trevor himself, there was opposition to the Labour Church. After Trevor resigned from Upper Brook Street, the church saw an immediate and sustained financial improvement, alongside an increase in its congregation, leading to a suspicion that middle-class patronage had been to some extent alienated by having Trevor as their minister.121 Setting aside opposition to Trevor’s politics, his continued preaching of immanentist views and his questioning of Christianity – both of Christ and the Bible – continued to bring personal criticism and personal attacks on Trevor for anti-Christian statements.122 By 1906, his second marriage and his increasing interest in the individual’s relationship with God and his experimentation with alternative lifestyles and sexuality left him alienated from the church. Nevertheless, Hart’s view of ‘sentimentalizing the socialist message’ should not be lost in the criticism of Trevor. John Burns, speaking at Lavender Hill, Battersea on 15 January 1889, deprecated as wrong what he termed ‘the drifting of the Labour movement into the Labour Churches’.123 To his mind, it ‘was a waste of time and tissue, and calculated to lead to the disintegration of powerful forces’.124 It was reported in the Labour Prophet that Burns had never spoken in a Labour Church and he did not intend to do so. Burns was never going to be a natural Labour Churchman though it is not clear exactly why he reacted so vociferously against the Labour Church at this time. It is impossible to say whether it was religion or bad timing, coming as it did at the end of the London Dock Strike (though the Labour Church had actively collected money to distribute to striking dockers and their families.) Despite his interest in the labour movement and his sometime membership of the SDF, Burns had a well-documented, tempestuous relationship with the labour and socialist leadership. Burns also had a troubled relationship with Jowett,125 though his direct opposition could possibly have been a

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

135

response to Trevor’s criticism of the trade unions in his autobiography (which criticized the ILP and the trade unions for spending money on strikes rather than parliament).126 Burns was one of several trade unionists and labour men who objected to the principle of the Labour Church.127 Trevor refers to the trade union attitude as the ‘Heresy of Socialism’. The Labour Church’s continual call was not just for a change in economics or working conditions but in religious life. The trade union focus was practical and may be indicative of Burns’s protestation that socialism and the Labour Church was a waste of money: This appears to me to be the grand heresy of Socialism – the teaching that a man can be made better merely by being made more comfortable . . . The saying that the Devil is a well dressed gentleman seems to me a profound satire on those who strive only for improvement in the external conditions of living.128 Other influential members of society also spoke out against Trevor and his organization. Trevor himself acknowledged opposition, as revealed here: One of the principal opponents, as of the kindest, was warden of the Church – perhaps the greatest man I have ever known – Edward Vansittart Neal. In the gentlest yet warmest manner, the veteran Cooperator – so near his end – told me I was wholly wrong. I feel the pathos of it now as I did then.129 Edward Vansittart Neale was an eminent Christian Socialist and a founder of the Co-operative Wholesale Association. Like other Christian Socialists, he believed that Christianity and socialism were symbiotic and that the principles of Christianity should be incorporated into everyday life.130 While Neale and Trevor shared a utopian vision of a socialist society, their attitudes to Christianity as an integral and inseparable moral code were a long way apart. Neale died in 1892, before the height of Labour Church popularity. Other political parties, specifically the Conservative and Liberal Parties, tended to ignore the Labour Church. The second principle of the Labour Church was ‘That the Religion of the Labour Movement is not a Class religion, but unites members of all classes in working for the Abolition of

136

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Commercial Slavery’. This was the clause that laid the Labour Church open to most criticism from the other churches and political opposition: It was this question of class consciousness which received most frequent criticism from the churches and chapels: ‘How could any group taking for its own name the name of one class of society seriously claim to unite all classes? If it took sides with one class then it automatically opposed others! If it supported the cause of labour against the claims of the middle and upper classes then it denied the truth of its second principle, and it was a class church!’131 The Labour Church gave the labour movement a cultural and political platform that essentially middle-class socialism could not satisfy. Mark Bevir states that, ‘although British socialism owes a debt to Marxism and Fabianism, its leading characteristics derive from an ethical socialism exemplified by the Labour Churches’.132 The ‘religion of socialism’ goes a long way to explaining the attraction of the Labour Church. Socialism was presented as a substitute religion: the working-class version of socialism born out of it was significant in attracting members to the Labour Church. Socialism was supported by many radical, non-conformist ideals and many early socialists were very religious, interpreting their beliefs within a secular context. Stephen Yeo identified three key strands of thought: first, that socialism became a substitute religion attracting congregations away from Anglican and Catholic churches and appealing to non-conformist working-class liberals (using religious terminology and language); second, that socialism was the ‘dressing up’ of the morals of middle-class culture, which Yeo questioned as ‘morality mongering’; and, third, that socialism provided society with a cultural element, which Marxism or revolutionary socialism did not.133 During 1880s and 1890s, capitalism was increasingly seen as a sin and so the ‘religious conversion’ of the people to socialism was required. As already stated, society required what Keir Hardie referred to as ‘social redemption’ or ‘social salvation’; it was not enough to change economics alone. Yeo questions whether socialism required not only an individual change but also a family or societal change. Such a change could be effected through offshoots like the Clarion Cycling Club and the Labour Church. It could also be seen in the quasi-religious images in its propaganda, pamphlets and newspapers. In SDF and Marxist terms, one could not be a true socialist

DOCTRINE AND BELIEF

137

without demanding the abolition of organized religion.134 This highlighted further social divisions within British socialism. Opinion spanned the political spectrum, from revolution to political evolution. The strongly middle-class culture and moralism often propagated by the socialist movement failed to find a foothold in the working-class psyche. Middle-class socialists had a lifestyle that allowed them the time and opportunity to practise their socialism in a more organized and leisurely manner, which may explain the working-class preference for the Labour Church. Yeo states that ‘it would be difficult to be part of anyone’s following in a continuous and organized way while remaining working class’.135 Socialism and its principles required education and time, which many working people did not have. The doctrine of socialism was also at odds with the emergent working-class culture. Ultimately it was the prevailing mood of the working classes that prevented socialism from succeeding. Socialism pinned its hopes on the trade unions, the ILP and the Labour Church. A working class preoccupied with survival had little room to fight for political change. The socialist ideology of shorter working hours and leisure time was worlds away from barely educated working men, who were working for pennies to fend off starvation. Robert Tressell, as a working-class socialist, presents a vivid and detailed picture of working-class politics, socialism and survival: As Owen thought of his child’s future, there sprang up within him a feeling of hatred and fury against his fellow workmen. They were the enemy – those ragged-trousered philanthropists, who not only quietly submitted like so many cattle to their miserable slavery for the benefit of others, but defended it and opposed and ridiculed any suggestion of reform. They were the real oppressors – the men who spoke of themselves as ‘the likes of us’ who, having lived in poverty all their lives, considered that what had been good enough for them was good enough for their children.136 Socialist ideology was fractured, diffused and characterized by organizational division, ‘due to the intractable problem of bringing together socialists of distinctly different persuasions’.137 Socialism failed to infiltrate many working-class movements and ‘there was little real prospect of sociality unity being achieved in Britain after the mid-1890s, as the reason for the failure of socialist unity campaigns is to be found in the diverse and

138

THE LABOUR CHURCH

compromising nature of the ILP and the continued intransigence of the SDF’.138 Many working-class movements were characterized by their aversion to doctrine, which ultimately led to political counter-attacks that could not be countered by socialist theory alone. There needed to be an organized response in parliament. It has been argued that, during the new unionist era, working-class socialists concentrated upon ‘knife and fork questions’ and put theoretical concerns to one side, the result of which was the impoverishment of the working-class socialist tradition. An alternative view suggests that the impact of the religion of socialism during the 1880s and 1890s was so substantial that it permanently shaped the ideology of the British working class. Prominent labour leaders came to believe, with religious intensity, in the imminence of the socialist transformation of society. As a prominent trade unionist and labour leader, Ben Tillett’s view was that: it would be accomplished by the people in order to annihilate the irrationality of the world that is the world’s present uneven distribution of life’s cultural and material goods . . . they shared with William Morris the conviction that socialism was a ‘complete theory of human life founded indeed on the visible necessities of animal life, but included a distinct system of religion, ethics and conduct’.139 The working classes practised their leaders’ theories. These theories were explained and their praises sung in the Labour Churches, their unions and the various socialist organizations by those who could no longer find spiritual solace in the established churches. To understand the appeal of the Labour Church and its political function, it is important to consider how far it satisfied a cultural need that essentially middle-class socialism could not. The history of socialism is characterized by division and hostility, which fractured the socialist movement and its message and thus limited its influence in Britain. Issues of ideological and organizational division between the various groups; a strongly middle class culture and moralism which failed to find a foothold in the working-class psyche; manipulative, divisive politics on the part of successive governments; and the relative prosperity of the economy between 1880 and 1914 all contributed to the limited acceptance of socialist culture by a wider audience, and thus to the limited lifespan of the Labour Church.

CHAPTER 5 A WIDER VOICE SOCIALISTS, FREE THINKERS AND SEXUAL REBELS

They always wore a red cap, and were sometimes called ‘the little red caps’. I wonder were the fairies Socialists, for Socialists believe in the ‘red cap of liberty’ as they call it. Charles Allen Clark, Labour Leader children’s column, 18961 John Trevor frequently called the Labour Church the ‘soul of the labour movement’ and the churches provided support across all factions of their communities. As has been established, many of the churches were founded directly in response to a political need and provided, for both men and women, sponsorship and support for their causes and in their bids for election. Nevertheless – to gain a broader appeal beyond political candidacy and provision of local platforms for various speakers in the north – as an advocate of ethical socialism and partner to the ILP, the Labour Church required a wider voice. To this end, the Labour Church Publishing Office was established in London in 1892. It produced a multitude of publications, including the Labour Prophet and the Labour Church Hymn Book, as well as providing a vehicle for John Trevor’s work as a journalist and his collaborations with Keir Hardie and Robert Blatchford. The Labour Prophet was one of many radical newspapers, journals and pamphlets that saturated socialist communities. These also included, most prominently, Robert Blatchford’s Clarion and Keir Hardie’s Labour Leader.

140

THE LABOUR CHURCH

The circulation of these penny papers was vastly different: the Clarion published 30,000 copies per week, or 120,000 per month; the Labour Leader, 50,000 copies per month; the Labour Prophet, only 6000 per month. But they were ideological soul mates and often shared contributors, although Keir Hardie ‘often thought The Clarion frivolous’.2 The Labour Leader had a regular column dedicated to Labour Church news and the Labour Prophet kept its readers informed on the activities of the ILP. Though it is acknowledged that the readership of the penny papers was dominated by working-class men, women were encouraged to submit articles to the Labour Prophet and the Labour Leader and were offered a regular ‘Lilly Bell’s Women’s Column’. Despite their differences, in the longer term, the early collaboration of Hardie and Trevor produced a much wider voice for the ILP and the Labour Church than each would have managed alone. The penny papers had a measurable impact, making available texts that would otherwise have been out of the financial reach of many of its readers. Reading and social activism were, after all, inextricably linked: several self-taught men stood as political candidates, leading directly to changes in the community.3 Trevor and his organization also made a concerted effort to spread the Labour Church word southwards and in London. The influence and powerbase of the Labour Church was spread largely across Manchester, the northwest of England and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Clusters of Labour Church activity could be found in the West Midlands or ‘Black Country’ and in isolated pockets in Scotland.4 In London and the south, however, the Labour Church struggled to make any real headway. The inclusive nature of the Labour Church brought a romantic and artistic element into some of the churches and, through its publications, opened up its congregations to the work of Edward Carpenter, Walt Whitman and the socialism of William Morris. In the more liberal churches, the inclusiveness of socialism and the individual relationship with God provided a space for those with alternative lifestyles to participate. Associated organizations such as Socialist Sunday Schools and the Cinderella Club aimed at communicating the socialist message to children while looking after their welfare. The reasons why the working-class socialists of the north – Lancashire and Yorkshire in particular – were open to the voice of the Labour Church are complex and often puzzled contemporary observers. S. G. Hobson, on the subject of Labour Church speakers in Yorkshire, commented:

A WIDER VOICE

141

They always spoke of the appeal to the heart; their speeches were a blend of religion and sentiment – sentiment which generally lapsed into sentimentalism. There must be something in Yorkshire thought and habit to account for it. I soon realized that the ILP had appeared at a moment when Yorkshire Nonconformity was in the process of disruption.5 After a century of working-class nonconformity, the appeal was faltering. Co-operative organizations and trade unions were drawing people away from the churches. As has been explored in Chapters 3 and 4, politics increasingly attracted the energies of workers, and a shift from religion to politics took place; but, while this was evident, many activists felt the lack of a moral element, a need that was filled by ethical socialism and the Labour Church. The Labour Church distributed its message through the socialist press across the north of England and through the music heard at its meetings. A local example is from Keighley in Yorkshire. In January 1893, within three months of the establishment of the Keighley Labour Union, the party purchased 180 Labour Church hymn books and a permanent home was found for the Labour Church in an old Primitive Methodist Chapel. In 1895 the branch agreed to join the Labour Church Union. The Labour Church had an immediate impact and the local ILP recognized it as one of its best means of publicity and a means of widening the appeal of its message, commenting in 1894 that ‘our most successful work has . . . been the Sunday services and the crowded audiences who have listened to the new gospel and drunk with avidity the teaching put forth by the various speakers will no doubt furnish many recruits and staunch adherents’.6 By the end of 1896, it was claimed that 400 to 500 people attended these meetings, ‘the great majority of whom are strong believers in our principles’.7 The format of individual Labour Church services was only retained for as long as people wanted them. Recitals became more Christian or more secular based upon the reaction of congregations, and the same was true of the hymn and tune books. The early socialist movement was strongly associated with music, hence the investment made in the production of songbooks and the organization of choirs. Musical groups sprang up regularly including the Clarion Glee Club and the Clarion Vocal Union organized by Montague Blatchford. The Bradford Labour Church held singing classes and most churches had a choir or, at the very least, a piano. From its inception, the Labour Church

142

THE LABOUR CHURCH

recognized the importance of choirs, songs and music.8 The Labour Church was urged to ‘provide its members with “first-class” music so that they may learn to develop a distaste for music hall fare’.9 Music could be a worthy, if less intellectual, pastime and represented the ‘main cultural thrust of the early socialist movement’.10 Music and choirs were symptomatic of the pleasures to come in a socialist society, which would provide everyone with leisure time. The Clarion movement was at the forefront of social activity and Montague Blatchford developed a wide-ranging and nationally recognized musical charter. The major Clarion-sponsored activities before World War I ‘were choral singing and rambling (the latter combined with nature-study). All the activities were, to a greater or lesser extent, connected with Socialist propaganda work’.11 By mid-1895 more than a dozen choirs had been formed, and: Montague Blatchford had become leader of the Clarion Vocal Union movement nationally. His stated object was ‘to encourage unaccompanied vocal music [performed] creditably and with understanding’. By far the biggest local group was in his hometown, Halifax, where by 1895 there were 146 members plus an ‘elementary class’ of 48, and an orchestra. The average weekly attendance for rehearsals was 120.12 John Trevor claimed that music in the Labour Church was ‘calculated to uplift all those who are capable of being moved by sweet sounds into quite a new world of beauty, romance, purity and power’.13 The Labour Church Hymn Book and Song Book were important in creating and supporting such an atmosphere. Unlike many other socialist songbooks, the contents of the Labour Church Hymn Book had a more religious tone and reflected Trevor’s belief in the inherent religion in the Labour Churches. Since Trevor chose the songs personally and produced the original hymn book, the entries also reflect his belief in individuality and social redemption. None are overtly Christian, however, and none of the entries are shared with contemporary orthodox hymn books. Songs were shared with other socialist groups. Edward Carpenter’s ‘England Arise’, the anthem of the Labour Church, was also included in nine other socialist songbooks.14 The music and the lessons of the Labour Church reflected a particular mood. Poems and songs such as ‘Christmas Day in the Workhouse’ or

A WIDER VOICE

143

‘Home Sweet Home’ were introduced and it could be argued that services often became sentimental rather than religious. Some of the most popular speeches were those with titles such as ‘Did Christ Teach Socialism?’, ‘Religion and Social Duty’ and Philip Snowden’s ‘Religion of Socialism’, while other speakers might focus on the economic policies of the ILP. Snowden used the Labour Church as a major platform: it suited his morality and his beliefs, as the Keighley Labour Journal reported on one of his early speeches: not only was it remarkable for its impassioned eloquence, but it was full of that nameless power which seizes the hearts and consciences of men and carries conviction along with it. We believe the effect of such a speech cannot be merely transitory, but must result in a larger determination in the minds of those who heard it, not to tamely sit down content with things as they are but to work earnestly for the realization of the brotherhood of man.15

Making Little Socialists Beyond ethical socialism, the socialist message had a further target audience: children. Both the Labour Leader and the Labour Prophet had regular children’s sections (The Clarion produced ‘The Bounder’ along similar lines). Hardie, in the guise of ‘Daddy Time’, interacted with children via his regular ‘Chats with Lads and Lassies Column’ and the Labour Prophet produced a ‘Cinderella Supplement’. While this image of Keir Hardie may be unfamiliar, in 1893 he: called on a generation of young people to be ‘Crusaders for Socialism’ and over the next two years, over 1,000 children joined classes for education and recreation. Most religious movements try to educate children with their values, but Hardie wanted to teach Socialism as history in a way that was never done at school.16 While, by today’s standards, the political targeting of children may seem manipulative or distasteful, both Hardie and Trevor viewed ‘children as central to the progression of the socialist enterprise’.17 In particular, they collaborated to produce socialist-inspired fairy tales, contextualizing the socialist message in folklore and fiction. Children were encouraged to learn from these papers, and

144

THE LABOUR CHURCH

books were offered as prizes, targeted to appeal to either boys or girls. In 1894, the Labour Prophet began its employment of tutors to assist with self-education and they produced questions and answers on recommended texts. At the same time, it offered a prize of 10 shillings for the best responses to questions on Blatchford’s Clarion text, ‘Merrie England’.18 By 1893, the Labour Church had become actively involved with children’s education through church members like Margaret McMillan and Paul Campbell (editor of the Christian Socialist Magazine) who established a Labour Church School in London.19 The Labour Church launched Cinderella Schools that were held on Sunday and were supported by the Cinderella Supplement. Many Cinderella Schools naturally progressed to Labour Church Sunday Schools and on to the much longer lived Socialist Sunday Schools, which were active in Scotland and the north of England into the 1960s.

Cinderella The Cinderella Schools and the Cinderella Supplement are not to be confused with Cinderella Clubs, which the Labour Church also supported. The origins of the first Cinderella Club are obscure. It was said to have been founded by Robert Blatchford in 1893, as the ‘Clarion Cinderella Club’ or ‘Clarion Glee Club’, but notices appeared in the Bradford Observer as early as 1890, inviting people to join a Cinderella Club to ‘reach and afford amusement’ to local poor children. Their first event was held on 1 February 1890 at the Bradford Coffee Tavern.20 It was non-political and was devoted to providing treats and excursions for poor children. At the behest of John Trevor, and subsequently published in the Labour Prophet, Robert Blatchford, in the guise of Numquam, tells his version of the founding of the Cinderella Clubs, in his own whimsical style: I write this for the children . . . It was one of the big children who asked me to write it, a big boy named Trevor, who plays at being editor of this paper [Labour Prophet]. And this big boy said I was to tell all the little boys and girls how Numquam ‘started the Cinderella Clubs’. I wish big boys wouldn’t be so sure about things. But big boys are like that. How does John Trevor know that Numquam started the Cinderella Clubs?

A WIDER VOICE

145

I am Numquam and I don’t know that Numquam started the Cinderella Clubs. But I will tell you about it and you will see. Blatchford goes on in the same style to describe his encounter with a match girl (street match seller), around Christmas 1888. She wanted him to buy one of her last three boxes of matches so that she could go to a party at a Catholic School. It was ‘threepence to go in’ and she had ‘never been to a party before’. Blatchford then describes a second scenario, two months later: he saw a baby girl in Ancoats (arguably the poorest slum in Manchester), playing with a peg doll. He recalled how he would ‘like to take a cart-load of dolls around Ancoats and give them to the little children of the poor’. Some months later, in October 1889, Blatchford describes a letter he received suggesting that the children of the poor ought to be sent to night-school. In his response in the Sunday Chronicle, Blatchford recalls that he said that: the children want dolls, and toys, and skipping ropes, and flowers, and friends; and if someone would form a club to amuse the children I should be glad to help. Some weeks later a lady from Liverpool wrote with a challenge ‘why don’t you start one?’ And then I thought of the Cinderella Club. Blatchford describes the process and objectives in setting up the Cinderella Club: its volunteer helpers, performers (who performed for free), and health department (which taught cleanliness), amongst others. He also describes the condition of the children: so poor, so ragged, so thin and so pale that it made our hearts ache to look at them. I have seen big fat jolly men who called to see the club, turn away with tears in their eyes . . . as for me it makes me very angry, as well as very sad, and then I say such nasty things, and people don’t like me at all. Upon their almost immediate success, Blatchford describes the spread of the Cinderella Clubs and concludes: I want to ask you little boys and girls the question which John Trevor told me to answer:

146

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Who started the Cinderella Clubs? Was it Numquam, or the match girl, or the baby with the clothes peg doll, or the Liverpool Lady? Or was it someone else who made men and women love children? Numquam decides that it does not matter for ‘it is quite plain to see – that Cinderella is a great blessing and God Bless Her!’21 The first meeting of the Cinderella Club or ‘Clarion Glee Club’ is described by F. Sykes, the temporary secretary: There was a clamour at the door long before the time fixed for tea (6.30), and many uninvited guests beseeched us for admittance to the feast. We fed the ticket-holders first [there were originally 60], and as the catering was on a somewhat liberal scale, were enabled to admit the outsiders [about another 20] to clear off all the provisions, so that nothing should be left. After tea a capital lantern entertainment was provided by Comrade Clowes of the SDF, interspersed with a few well-known comic songs, whose choruses were lustily joined in by the youngsters and didn’t they invest ’em with some lung power! We admitted all and sundry to the entertainment, and completely filled the room. At the conclusion, sweets and oranges were distributed, with specimen copies of the Clarion, etc., to take home to their parents, altogether a jolly night for the ‘guests’ and those who acted the role of ‘host’. Subscriptions required to carry on further.22 Despite lack of certainty surrounding the establishment of the clubs, John Trevor was intimately involved in Blatchford’s scheme and provided one of the first Cinderella Clubs in Deansgate, Manchester, at about the same time and with the same purpose. On the surface, the support of the clubs appears to have been charitable: a solution to the ills of society, which Blatchford and Trevor had rejected and openly criticized in the established churches. Both men convinced themselves that, despite the need to raise funds to sustain its activity, Cinderella work ‘advanced the cause of socialism, that it was important political work because it offered children food and entertainment – and lessons in socialism’.23 The Cinderella Club acknowledged the Labour Church’s support and it was, in turn, mentioned in the church’s annual report of 1893: ‘the Cinderella work is so well developed and organized that it covers the whole

A WIDER VOICE

147

area of the town, it would only be productive of mischief for the Labour Church to interfere in it’.24 It is unclear how much direct influence the Labour Church had or wanted, though John Trevor and the congregations were strong supporters and perennially concerned with children’s welfare. The Deansgate Cinderella Club provided support for local children. At the first meeting, ‘about sixty children were fed and entertained’.25 The policy was to bring in children from different neighbourhoods each night, eventually covering more than 800 children in the Deansgate locality. They provided more than 3,164 meals and the more extreme cases were given decent used clothes. Blatchford‘s ‘no teaching’ policy was observed, but the children were inevitably encouraged to sing Labour Church Hymns and listen to an address by Trevor on ‘Cinderella’.26 After the success of the Deansgate Cinderella Club, Labour Churches began to sponsor clubs where there were none. In spring 1893 Trevor added the ‘Cinderella Supplement’ as a regular more educationally oriented feature in the Labour Prophet with the full support of Robert Blatchford. Trevor introduced it in this way: Our most promising child is Cinderella. I believe she will grow up a beauty. One of our members, in a flighty mood, suggested her adoption, and she was adopted, and we are going on adopting her. Cinderella has been fed and clothed and entertained, and now she has been taken to church. Next she is to go to school – where she will be taught our principles.27 It should not be assumed that every Cinderella Club became a Labour Church, but most of the Labour Church congregations supported one. Where a Club did not exist locally, the Labour Church established one. In some areas, such as Liverpool and Chester, the Cinderella Club became the only part of the Labour Church programme that flourished. The importance that Trevor gave to his relationship with Blatchford was illustrated by the Cinderella venture. Trevor was a staunch supporter of Blatchford and his writing. In his autobiography, Here I Lie (1937), Blatchford’s colleague at the Clarion, A. M. Thompson, quoted the Manchester Guardian, ‘for every convert made by Das Kapital there were a hundred made by Merrie England’.28 Thompson also quoted Trevor in support of the statement writing in the Labour Prophet:

148

THE LABOUR CHURCH

I go to few places where I am not met with the remark: ‘It was Numquam converted me to Socialism’. And it has not been to a new economic theory, merely, that these converts have been introduced. It has been to a new life. Their eyes shine with the gladness of a new birth.29

Sunday Schools Although Trevor and the Labour Church were committed to the idea that children were the future of the labour movement, he was at pains to avoid the assumption that charitable work with children was merely to further political ends: We propose to establish a Cinderella Sunday School, not to force into the children Labour Church ideas, but, by means of interesting lessons in various subjects, to develop their thinking and imaginative faculties, so that they may grow up to be, what they were intended to be, men and women who will be able, to some extent, to take an intelligent interest in things that go on every day around them, and when the difficult problems of life confront them, of which they have no idea at present, they may be able to grapple with them, and thus mitigate some of the evils which are at present dwarfing and stunting their lives. Our idea of the school, therefore, is that it should be a place where the children can be trained to think, and not merely become Socialists or Labour Church members.30 It is clear from Trevor’s words that, while his outward expression suggested that the welfare of children was not entirely politically motivated, there was an ethical price to pay or commitment to make. In this matter he deviates from Blatchford’s simple objective for the Cinderella Clubs and moves on to the provision of Cinderella Sunday Schools. These were designed for children between the ages of eight and fourteen to be taught in small mixed-sex groups following lessons given to large open groups. In some working-class districts, the largest proportion of the attendance at any religious meeting were children regularly attending Sunday School: ‘working-class Londoners regarded church as a necessary part of childhood, but as soon as a man or woman began to earn a living the compulsion was dropped’.31

A WIDER VOICE

149

A flavour of the content and type of subject areas can be seen in the Labour Prophet, July 1893, where Miss Eleanor Keeling32 gave suggestions appropriate for Sunday School subjects in ‘Outline Addresses for Children’:

‘Outline Addresses for Children’ Union is strength i. Bees – One bee gathers a little honey. Many gather much, and store it. As winter approaches workers kill the drones. Will not support those who do not work. All Workers share honey. ii. Ants – One Ant finds ear of wheat. Many ants help him to carry it. All share the spoil. iii. Laden fruit tree (apples). Two boys. Neither can reach. One climbs on other’s back. Gathers apples. Equal shares. Free Gifts i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii.

Ship sailing on sea. No one stops it. Sea free. Man fishing on sea. May have all they catch. Flowers growing in sun. Sunshine and rain are free to all. Birds flying in air. Air free to all. Children walking in the fields. Trespassing! Ground not free to all. Shells, etc. out of the sea may be had for the getting. Coal, salt, etc. out of land should be similarly free to all.

Competition i. Cattle grazing. Enough for all. Each takes what it wants and leaves the rest for others. ii. Pigs feeding. Enough for all. But greedy pigs take more than their share. Others must, therefore go short. iii. Plenty of food in the world for everybody. Some have too much, some have too little. Enough – no more!

150

THE LABOUR CHURCH

i. Bird wants to build nest. Where may he go? Any tree not being used by other birds, ii. Sparrow builds nest. Cuckoo turns him out. Might not right. iii. Spider spins a web anywhere he likes. Takes what room he needs and no more. iv. Lion lives in a cave. Leaves other caves for other animals. v. Man wants to build a house. Cannot because no land. Other men take more than they can use. Not fair.33 Miss Keeling’s suggestions are typical socialist messages, appropriate for the ears of children and also the army of largely unmarried women who became Sunday School teachers. The Labour Church Sunday Schools, the Cinderella Sunday Schools and the Socialist Sunday Schools arose to address the perceived need for an alternative to regular Sunday Schools as a training ground for young socialists. The founder of the Socialist Sunday Schools was Mrs Mary Gray of the SDF who ‘taught causes and results of poverty’34 to the children of the workers of the London Dock Strike. They were also established as ‘a protest against, and an alternative to, the perceived middle-class bias and assumptions of the regular churches’.35 A National Council of British Sunday Socialist Sunday Schools Union was set up in 1909 by the Labour Church speaker, Caroline Martyn, and Archie McArthur in Glasgow. By 1912 there were more than 200 Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain.36 There are strong parallels to be drawn between the Socialist Sunday Schools and the Labour Churches. Both had an ethical socialist soul, and both tried to appeal to a broad section of working-class society. G. J. Mayhew, in his unpublished thesis (1981), acknowledges that: Ethical socialism overcame many former religious differences manifesting itself in such bodies and the Labour Church and the Socialist Sunday Schools. Devout Christian, non-Christian mystic and agnostic alike proclaimed a common adherence to Socialist ideals of communal ownership, co-operation and altruism. Though differing as to whether such ideals derived from man’s natural reason or were divinely inspired, each saw in Socialism the goal of the ethical and social evolution of mankind.37

A WIDER VOICE

151

The similarities do not cease with their inspiration and broad appeal. Like the Labour Church, the Socialist Sunday Schools had a list of vague principles and self-styled ‘Socialist Commandments’, which were reprinted in many of their publications.38 The ‘Socialist Commandments’ were taught . . . emphasizing to children that Socialism was the secular embodiment of Christianity’,39 and to make them aware of their social responsibilities. Under the auspices of the National Council, Sunday Schools were ‘established as a protest against, and an alternative to, the perceived middle-class bias and assumptions of the regular churches. It was the view that public education should be secular and Socialist Sunday Schools were the purely educational bodies and therefore the hymns did not have theological tendencies or the Christian dogma which was preached in religious churches of the day’.40 The Socialist Sunday Schools also suffered the same problems as the Labour Church. By 1898, ‘up to 17 Labour Churches were running Socialist Sunday Schools often in conjunction with the activities of the Independent Labour Party’.41 Like the Labour Church, particularly in London, there were continual issues with funding, high rents and the availability of premises. In 1907, London County Council evicted five branches from rented school buildings. A huge demonstration in Trafalgar Square followed, addressed by Margaret McMillan campaigning for better education and health for poor children. McMillan was a vociferous supporter of the Socialist Sunday School movement and its role in the future development of children: ‘On the free development of the child depends the future of the race. You must teach consciously and continually or you will be blighting the young minds under your charge’.42 A few years later, the Springburn branch was set up and continued to meet for many years in the Labour Party’s Unity Hall in Ayr Street.43 The Socialist Sunday Schools also met criticism from the same quarters as the Labour Church: ‘in their early days they encountered much opposition from local authorities and other official bodies, as many Conservative and Liberal politicians argued that the Socialist Sunday Schools were subversive and were poisoning the minds of young people with political and anti-religious doctrines and teachings’.44 Many of the letters to Summers from women give some details of Sunday Schools. Sunday School teacher was considered a socially acceptable role for women to play in the orthodox as well as the free churches. Hannah Mitchell was a founder member of the Labour Church (1901) and associated Sunday School (1903) in Ashton-under-Lyne. Although this was a Sunday School directly linked to the Labour Church, it had similar aims and roles, and was

152

THE LABOUR CHURCH

affiliated to the Socialist Sunday Schools. The 1903 announcement of the establishment of the Sunday School was made by the ILP, though, by 1905, the Clarion announced that the Sunday School had been fully taken over by the Labour Church (this is characteristic of the blurred lines between the ILP and Labour Church).45 Hannah Mitchell provides an overview of the general conduct of the Sunday meetings: There were forty regular scholars but 134 attended the Christmas treat. The school was divided into five classes: kindergarten, primary, junior, intermediate and adult. Every effort was made to make the school a close fellowship. Birthdays of all the scholars were observed, concerts prepared and given, parties and outings provided, and naming ceremonies or ‘Christenings’ conducted. In addition close contact with Socialist Sunday Schools was kept, with frequent exchange of speakers and occasional expeditions to visit a neighbouring school. Friendly terms were also maintained with the nearby Spiritualist Lyceum and the Unitarian Sunday Schools.46 The atmosphere of the Ashton-under-Lyne church was always more Christian, though it still maintained an aversion to the dogma of the existing churches. The Birmingham Labour Church provided a more secular contrast, although it also had a long-standing and committed children’s programme organized by the ‘Women’s Committee’. Initially there was a Children’s Church, established in 1893, which was superseded by the Socialist Sunday School in 1902. Birmingham also sponsored a Cinderella Club (1893). Summers records that a Children’s Labour Church Hymn Book was published and used in Birmingham.47 Summers also records a report to the Labour Prophet by the curmudgeonly secretary on the social and children’s activity at Birmingham On Monday evenings the Church is desecrated by the presence of nigger minstrels, their youth being the only extenuating circumstance in their favour. On Tuesday the desecration is continued by the Clarion Glee Club, composed of adults and others old enough to know better. On Wednesday’s [sic] the place is silent, a sort of lull before the Cinderella storm raised on Thursdays. On Friday there is the comparative calm of the Committee and General Meetings. On Saturday dancing class was held during the winter.

A WIDER VOICE

153

This is roughly the way we get through the week. Special arrangements, however, come as a break to the monotony. Members [sic] socials are indulged in. These socials are of two kinds; the dance social and the tea social. At the former we have dancing, songs, and readings and drink tea in the intervals. At the latter we drink tea, listen to songs and readings, and have dances in the intervals. These socials are always very enjoyable.48 Birmingham was a highly political and committed secular church, giving much of its support to political candidature. Support for the Sunday Schools and Cinderella Clubs was not uniform and often did not go handin-hand with the Labour Church as it did at the more religious Ashtonunder-Lyne. The Cinderella Sunday School at the Labour Church in Hull, a hybrid of the Cinderella Club and Labour Church Sunday School, also met with local opposition. In 1894 ‘it was reported that an average of 122 children arrived (in mid-winter, barefoot, frostbitten, and bleeding, with younger children on their backs) in time for a hearty breakfast which cost the congregation two thirds of a penny per meal per child’.49 The support – in food, donations and used clothing – was good but the project was not without its critics: ‘in the Spring of 1895 a small religious group complained that they were disturbed by the noise of the children and threatened to give up their tenancy if the Sunday School were not evicted from the remainder of the premises’. With only 12 hours notice given, the Sunday School teachers were forced to take the classes into their own homes until a new site could be found. Unlike the Socialist Sunday Schools the Labour Church Sunday Schools provided their own, less prescriptive, agenda. Hyde provided a gymnasium and orchestra; Leeds was characterized by a strong desire to provide welfare and established a Summer School alongside its strong commitment to Sunday Schools, Cinderella and the Labour Church baptism service. Salford also provided a Summer Camp, sewing classes for girls and a football team for boys. Choirs and Cycling Clubs were common. In Wolverhampton, children became the mainstay of the Labour Church congregation: The first Sunday we sang two hymns, but no adults came near us. About forty children clustered around, but of course we cultured Fabians could not stoop to speak to mere children. The next Sunday

154

THE LABOUR CHURCH

was the same – plenty of children but no adults. We were disgusted, but one of us, Tom Frost by name, was not so superior as his comrades, and, to the children’s delight, commenced reading to them the children’s story from the May number of the Labour Prophet. By and by a few adult people came round, and we had an adult meeting after all, though only about a dozen. The next Sunday was a shade better, and last Sunday we had about forty, so we are going on slowly.50 Nowhere were the differences between the Labour Churches more transparent than in the provision of benefits, education and attitudes to children. The subject of Sunday Schools was first raised at the Second Labour Church Union Conference in November 1893, though nothing was decided other than collecting more information. The subject was never raised again in this forum. Such was the success of the Sunday Schools and the importance attached to the socialist education of the young that Hannah Mitchell recalls that, through them, she came into contact with labour luminaries such as Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald and Tom Fox (who later became the first Labour Lord Mayor of Manchester). 51 The success of the Sunday Schools is borne out in their longevity, the numbers who attended, and the testimonies of former pupils. In terms of theological and political instruction, however, they received mixed testimonies. From Robert Tressell to letters received by Summers, many reflect F. Willis’s first-hand account of his Sunday School experience: It was the Sunday Schools that specialized in Treats and Teas, and it was for these joys rather than for spiritual ones that most children went to Sunday School, I am afraid. They were conducted by earnest young men and women who had little ability to maintain discipline, and children found conditions there a welcome relief from the stern realism of board schools.52

Little Red Caps Besides Cinderella and the various incarnations of Sunday Schools, there were close links with many other organizations and publications. The number of children who wrote in to ‘Daddy Time’ and commented that they were regulars at Labour Church congregations illustrates the close

A WIDER VOICE

155

relationship between the church and the ILP. The Labour Prophet regularly referenced Hardie’s Labour Leader fairy stories, occasionally changing the narrative a little, maybe substituting a word, for example ‘sword’ for ‘trumpet’, though with the same message. Hardie’s ‘Jack the Giant Killer’ slayed a giant (capitalism) with his sword (socialism) only because he was brave enough to wield it. In the Labour Prophet Trevor substitutes a sword for a trumpet: My dear children, there are giant wrongs to be slain and people to be set free from their strange spells. And brave men and women are needed to blow the trumpet at the gates of their strongholds that they may tremble and fall and the giants be slain and strong men and fair women and tender children be restored to their proper forms and made into the beautiful creatures God made them to be. But only really brave people can blow these horns.53 It is difficult to make assumptions about this interaction. There is no evidence that Hardie was concerned or angry at Trevor’s plagiarism, which suggests collaboration on the part of the two men. But there is no remaining written evidence to support any joint authorship either. In 1897 Hardie stopped editing ‘Daddy Time’ and creating fairy tales; as Socialist Sunday Schools proliferated, they provided a local source of education for children, which supplanted the children’s columns. His collaboration with Trevor also ended some time before this, as the seeds of the religious and political struggle within the Labour Church were sown.

Carpenter, Whitman and the Individual Relationship with God By mid-1895 there was some disillusionment with the Labour Churches and with John Trevor’s publications, as the Labour Church battled for direction between the propagation of the socialist message of its political allies and the increasing tendency to encompass alternative lifestyles within an eclectic and thriving socialist culture. The Labour Church promoted controversial speakers and writers: ‘Carlyle, Ruskin Walt Whitman and Morris were “teachers and prophets” along with Isaiah and Christ’.54 Two stalwarts of the production of the Labour Church Hymn Book were Gerald Massey and Edward Carpenter. Massey wrote the opening poem dedicating the Labour Church Hymn Book, but Massey was a Christian Spiritualist, a philosophy that he had

156

THE LABOUR CHURCH

arrived at via Egyptology and Druidism. Edward Carpenter – writer of the Labour Church’s much loved anthem, ‘England Arise!’ and a regular speaker – was homosexual. The fifth principle of the Labour Church was a focus on personal character, which was ‘essential to the emancipation from social and moral bondage’,55 and many labour and ILP men were sensitive to any action that might bring under consideration sexual licence. Carpenter himself is interesting in relation to the fifth principle and Trevor’s ideal of an individual and personal relationship with God. Carpenter communicated his political stance in his long poem, ‘Towards Democracy’ which was first published in 1892. The details of the ‘genesis of “Towards Democracy” were given in a short paper in the Labour Prophet for May 1894’.56 Carpenter’s thoughts obviously resonated well with Labour Church philosophy and his moralism was acceptable to those who read his work and sang his anthem, ‘England Arise!’ Later historiography surrounding Carpenter’s moral and political stance has been mixed. In his biography of Carpenter, Tsuzuki describes his socialism as ‘intensely personal’,57 though not necessarily related to his sexuality. He challenges Rowbotham’s earlier analysis of Carpenter: ‘Sheila Rowbotham does justice to this [Carpenter’s approach to politics and socialism] when she writes of this “personal politics;” although what she calls “sexual politics” was not yet possible’.58 Sexual politics was not possible in the modern sense, but Trevor’s own personal development continued along similar lines and embraced Rowbotham’s notion of Carpenter’s ‘alternative culture of sexual relations based on mutuality, tolerance and comradely love’.59 The ethos of the Labour Church was to strive for an individual relationship with God, which provided more room for personal morality such as that of Carpenter. The Bolton Labour Church’s association with the Whitmanites of the Eagle Street College is a case in point. It reflected and encompassed the radical, literary and spiritual ideas celebrated by Carpenter and the American poet Walt Whitman, which were studied in the Eagle Street College and preached at the local Labour Church. The Eagle Street College was one group in a thriving socialist community in Bolton, which was as diverse as it was enthusiastic to the cause: In Bolton every facet of this diverse socialist culture could be found. To take 1896 as a sample year, we find an active branch of the Social Democratic Federation, led by popular shoemaker Joe Shufflebottom. Bolton’s Labour Church was one of the country’s largest with James

A WIDER VOICE

157

Sims – a venerable old radical – as president; it had close ties to both the Social Democratic Federation and the new Independent Labour Party, which had opened its new premises on Bowker’s Row three years earlier. A section of the Clarion Cycling Club had recently been formed in the town, and the socialist dialect write Allen Clark had just started publish his Teddy Ashton’s Journal. There was a strong current of liberal radicalism in the town, spearheaded by Solomon Partington, and a growing feminist movement which owed much to the work of Sarah Reddish, who later became president of the national Women’s Co-operative Guild.60 The Eagle Street College formed strong links with the Labour Church and, through it, the socialist and labour movement (ILP), while ‘convincing its leaders that an ethos of comradeship would be productive, and that Whitman’s teaching would provide a spiritual energy which the movement required’.61 Eagle Street and its devotion to the openly homosexual Whitman also hinted at an acceptance of alternative sexuality and a strong sense of ‘loving comradeship’.62 They were ‘not necessarily homosexual in the modern sense . . . But an intense love existed between some of them which became a means to experience homosexual desire’.63 Even if Eagle Street was not a homosexual group, they did discuss taboo subjects such as alternative sexuality and the ‘personal politics’ and ‘personal religion’ of late Victorian socialism. It is plain to see how the deeper meaning of the labour movement was compatible between the College and Church and equally how it would appeal to Trevor’s sense of the personal relationship with God: ‘Whitman’s celebration of the common man and his demonstration of the labourer’s need for spiritual as well as material substance chimed perfectly with the spirit of socialist groups like the Labour Church’.64 Bevir concludes that there is a resonance between spiritual ideologies and theories combined with a more orthodox socialism.65 Whitman’s appeal, ‘founded on love and comradeship, democracy and nature, was irresistible to the strongly based ethical socialism of the north’.66 The ethos of socialism and the Labour Church allowed it to encompass alternative spiritual messages. Whitman was also important to the personal thought of John Trevor. Whitman’s contribution to Trevor’s personal development and to the movement was ‘far greater than that of other radical causes which shared platform space with socialism’.67 For Trevor, Whitman’s work and the feeling of camaraderie were at the heart of the labour movement and

158

THE LABOUR CHURCH

increasingly at the heart of the development of his own thought. Trevor regularly printed Whitman’s work in the Labour Prophet and Whitman’s Prayer of Columbus provided the opening and closing words of his autobiography: That Thou, O God, my life hast lighted, With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; For that, O God, be it my latest word, Here, on my knees, I thank Thee.68 Trevor admired Whitman, who knew the Bible thoroughly, and, as a poet inspired by God, shared Trevor’s desire to inaugurate a religion uniting all of humanity in bonds of friendship. Trevor’s view of Whitman was that he was ‘nearer to God than any man on earth’.69 Whitman’s poetry became Trevor’s ‘bible’, while his theories helped him in his ‘own effort to live’.70 It also underpinned Trevor’s confidence in the natural spontaneous impulses of life and the existence of an ‘unconscious religion’.71 As with many of the American romantics described by Bevir, ‘Trevor saw man, nature and God as “a new intense reality in which all life was united into one whole-souled harmony”’.72 Trevor’s devotion to Whitman was brave. In orthodox circles, by the 1890s, Whitman and his work had a reputation for immorality and were closely associated with sexuality. In his famous and sexually explicit work ‘I Sing the Body Electric’ from Song for Myself, Whitman describes ‘love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching/Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white blown and delirious juice’.73 Yet, despite the erotic and overtly sexual nature of Whitman’s poems and his reputation as a pedagogue, Trevor interpreted Whitman’s work as an expression of nature, of life and death. Trevor perceived Whitman as a force of nature, which ‘impresses us as we are impressed by the sun or the sky, or the mountains or the murmuring sea’.74 The combination of Whitman’s poetry and its celebration of comradeship that appealed so directly to many young socialists is explored in Bevir’s article ‘British Socialism and American Romanticism’ (1995). The British chose to interpret Whitman’s ‘spirituality rather than his ethos of homoerotic comradeship which provide the theme of common connection between the Labour Church, early socialism and the Eagle Street College’.75 The religiosity of the

A WIDER VOICE

159

Labour Church provided one way in which ‘questions of selfhood, comradeship, class and homosexuality could be approached’.76 Whitman was approached directly for his assistance by J. E. Holdworth (of the Eagle Street College and the Bolton Labour Church), who contacted him requesting that Whitman waive his copyright, explaining that ‘it will go to the funds of the Labour Church’.77 Funds from Whitman’s royalties went into the collection alongside those of attendees who were there to hear speakers such as Tillett, Mann, Brocklehurst and Snowden. Whitmanites Sam Hodgkinson, Fred Wild and Wentworth Dixon were all Eagle Street members who were also active members of the Bolton Labour Church. Through them, the group enjoyed the company of ‘honoured guests including Keir Hardie and Katherine and John Bruce Glasier. Alice Collinge, a Bolton poet and socialist-feminist [also] became a member of the group through the Labour Church’.78 Despite the socialist luminaries who trod the well-worn path through the doors of Eagle Street, the politics of the college were not entirely socialist: there were Liberals and Tories associated with the group who were irritated by their socialist politics or found them ‘distasteful’.79 William Broadhurst describes how he first met the Whitmanites at the Bolton Labour Church: Membership in it [the Labour Church] was not dependent on any declaration of faith. It had no set theological tenets. The service consisted of a recital of the Lord’s Prayer, the singing together of some democratic songs, called hymns, and a lecture by some man or woman who was in the vanguard of democratic thought . . . Fred Wild and Wentworth Dixon were active members and one Sunday evening lo! Wallace was there. Sims introduced me and I passed into the shelter of Wallace’s wing.80 The Bolton Church provided a platform, for other committed Whitmanites, including Katherine Glasier, Robert Blatchford (who, after a rocky start with the group, produced ‘The New Religion in the North’ along Whitmanite lines) and Carolyn Martin. But it was Edward Carpenter who, through his ceaseless campaigning and the production of Towards Democracy (1883– 5),81 ‘did more than anyone in Britain to spread Whitman’s poetry and ideals’.82 As Whitman’s champion, Carpenter recognized the role of the Bolton group, despite their eccentricities. He described them in his autobiography, My Days and Dreams (1916):

160

THE LABOUR CHURCH

I think I ought not to let this chapter pass without referring to the ardent little coterie at Bolton in Lancashire who for many years celebrated his [Whitman’s] birthday with songs and speeches and recitations, with decorations of lilac boughs and blossoms and with the passing of loving cups to his memory . . . if there was a somewhat Pickwickian note about its revels still no one could doubt the sincerity of its enthusiasm. It helped largely to spread the study and appreciation of Whitman’s work in the north of England.83 Last, and perhaps most reluctantly, in the early 1900s Keir Hardie was brought into the fold by Wallace, who pledged his support in return for his political allegiance.84 It is fruitless to speculate to what extent the Whitmanite members of the Bolton Labour Church were actively homosexual; it is enough to understand that their personal morality and their personal relationship with God were acceptable to the wider congregation. They largely accepted Carpenter’s open relationship with John Merrill, but eyebrows were raised at Wallace’s intense friendship with Katherine Conway Glasier. Ultimately socialist admirers of Whitman were drawn more to his achievement as a poet of democracy rather than to his homosexuality.85 Rather than contributing directly to political wrangling as the means of establishing socialism, Whitman provided inspiration and a vision for the future. While a high-brow, intellectual acceptance of Carpenter and Whitman was one proposition, the reputation and the respectability of the members of the wider labour movement was constantly under scrutiny. John Trevor’s second marriage in particular caused Keir Hardie some personal concern.86 Such was the desire to maintain a respectable image that the question of hypocrisy must be raised at this juncture. By 1906– 7 Hardie had developed an ‘absorption to the point of obsession’87 with 25-year-old Sylvia Pankhurst. Whether Hardie and Sylvia actually consummated their relationship is debatable: Hardie’s biographers, including Caroline Benn, tend to deny a sexual relationship, opinion amongst Pankhurst biographers is mixed though some tend toward the fact that they did; surviving letters are somewhat ambiguous. In light of John Trevor’s subsequent actions, by the turn of the century there can be some sympathy with Hardie’s concerns. After his expulsion from the Labour Church, Trevor began to experiment with other organizations in the Church’s name. After moving to Sussex between

A WIDER VOICE

161

1899 and 1902, Trevor offered informal religious training in his ‘school of natural religion’. Following his return to London in 1902, he briefly set up a ‘Labour Church Settlement’ as a centre of intellectual and cultural life, clinging on to what remained of his original movement. Both of these actions led to a formal severing of his ties with both the Labour Church and the Labour Church Publishing Office though Trevor continued to publish independently. In 1909 Trevor published an infamous pamphlet, The One Life, which explored his increasing interest in sexuality, reflecting what he had seen in the Oneida Community after a visit to New York.88 Even at a short glance, the Oneida and Shaker communities bear some parallels with John Trevor’s later direction. The Oneida community lived a truly communist lifestyle, which ‘included all property and family possessions’ within the community, who worked and lived together in shared buildings. Oneida believed in ‘Complex Marriage’, which decreed that every man was married to every woman, and vice versa, along with other different sexual practices, which led the community to be the thorn in the side of local ministers.89

The Labour Church in London Much of the research for this book has been done within the confines of the north of England and the midlands and it was here that the most influential Labour Churches thrived and where the greatest effort was invested. In order to present a wider picture of the Labour Church, its successes and failures, it is important to go beyond the heartlands of the labour movement and into London. The importance of London in the establishment and development of the Labour Church should not be overestimated. But, as the capital, London’s role in the failure of the church to become a truly national organization is significant and deserves further investigation. Failure in London proved to be the final nail in the coffin for John Trevor’s involvement in the Labour Church and his attempts to reinvigorate the organization by moving it away from the increasingly secularist Labour Church Union and the increasingly ILP-dominated northern churches. London was not an influential player in the Labour Church. The heart and soul of the movement remained staunchly northern and working-class. London had a conglomeration of small, active but often short-lived, Labour Churches established later than their provincial counterparts. The Labour Church in London was also, either by geography or by the character of the

162

THE LABOUR CHURCH

working class, different from that in other cities. The London churches retained an independence of spirit and character, they were less involved in the Labour Church Union, and many endeavoured to retain John Trevor’s original vision. It may also be argued that the more successful of the southern churches were more intellectual in character than elsewhere. They attracted a different type of speaker and more middle-class involvement. Failure to take root in London was not from want of trying. From as early as 1891, Paul Campbell, editor of the Christian Socialist and later of the Labour Prophet, worked tirelessly to try to establish Labour Churches in the capital. Trevor himself also made a significant commitment to London and spent much of his time trying to style his organization to suit a metropolitan audience, a different approach compared with his pre-1895 policy of letting churches be established in response to local demand. Information on the Labour Church in London is difficult to find and not well documented, which is surprising since it was the centre of Labour Church Publishing. However there are several first-hand accounts of the London churches, not least from Margaret McMillan, who made a valuable comparison between her time in London and Bradford. The legacy of the London Labour Churches often lived on in charitable organizations, reflecting their culture of involvement with ‘causes’. They also continued beyond the active life of the church, in many cases living on as Socialist Sunday Schools and Cinderella Clubs. In Primitive Rebels (1965), Hobsbawm gave a potted history of labour politics in London: labour agitation goes back continuously to beyond the Industrial Revolution – in which the religious or labour-sectarian labour militant has always been a curiosity. Secularism is the ideological thread which binds London labour history together, from the London Jacobins and Place, through the anti-religious Owenites and cooperators, the anti-religious journalists and book sellers, through the free thinking radicals who followed Holyoake and flocked to Bradlaugh’s Hall of Science, to the Social Democratic Federation and the London Fabians with their unconcealed distaste for chapel rhetoric. In London even so quintessential a religious rebel as George Lansbury had to make his career in the atheist and Marxist SDF, for not even the chapel tinted Independent Labour Party ever got much of a foothold there.90

A WIDER VOICE

163

Hobsbawm’s description of London’s history of distaste for any marriage of religion and labour politics may go some way to explaining the general lack of enthusiasm for any ideology like that of the Labour Church. The contrast between the working classes of the provinces and the working class in London also contributed to its limited take-up. The traditional view of the working classes of London, particularly of the East End, was a community of unemployed or casual workers, living in conditions of abject poverty. J. H. Mackay describes the East End, c.1888: ‘The East End of London is a hell of poverty. Like an enormous black, motionless, giant Kraken, the poverty of London lies there in lurking silence and encircles with its mighty tentacles the life and wealth of the city and of the West End’.91 East Enders themselves were often portrayed as apathetic to the message of working-class or labour solidarity and more motivated by populist protectionist causes or often violent anti-alien agitation. This scenario was exploited by the Conservative Party to politically dominate the East End in a way that may have appealed to but did not dominate the provincial cities. London and the East End had personalities of their own. There is no doubt, for example, that Manchester had a character and political profile separate from Liverpool or Leeds. Though it cannot be argued that each city was made up of a homogeneous group of people with the same cultural, religious and political views, it can be argued that there is a character or spirit that inhabits a city or part of a city. Manchester was relentlessly modern and proud to be so. In Manchester and many other cities, older landmarks were destroyed during the Victorian period as the old society was consumed by modernism and industrialization characterized by massive house clearances of poor areas to make way for railway stations that had occurred in the middle of the century. Yet London remained a historic centre bounded by old or ancient institutions – royalty, aristocracy, palaces and parliament. And, despite its wealth and history, the human character or spirit of London and its East End was of a city whose ‘poor were poorer and workforce more fragmented than anywhere else’.92 They were a community of ‘secluded groups of suspicious neighbours who hated intruders from outside’.93 There is a supposition that this made them less able to identify themselves as a common class with common interests and, as a consequence, they were easy prey for the sectional, racist or populist policies generally espoused by the Conservatives. Henry Pelling, Gareth Stedman Jones and Duncan Tanner agree that the poor and working classes of London, and particularly the East End – especially

164

THE LABOUR CHURCH

those who had been involved in the Dock Strike of 1889 and supported protectionist policies – were easy targets for the Conservative Party. Duncan Tanner supports the protectionist motivation but adds another stratum to the argument, that of ethnic tension. An anti-alien sentiment existed, essentially focused on the immigrant Jewish community and the Irish communities around the dockyards. Tanner stresses that ‘Tory success was built on . . . cultural affinities with working-class social activities, on attendance to ethnic tensions and, allied to this, on support for the protection of British jobs and British International prestige’.94 Pelling agrees and blames labour’s failure in London mainly on the fear of immigration. Conservatism among the poor remained, and ‘the anti-alien sentiments of those living in areas of alien [Jewish] immigration led to a long period of Conservative voting on their part . . . the independent labour movement was so weak in London’.95 Gareth Stedman Jones labels the London working class as having ‘neither allegiance to the left, nor to the right but rather a rootless volatility’,96 presenting them as reactive and without any political organization beyond becoming party fodder. Pelling is more generous and acknowledges that ‘it was the more prosperous workers who were the more politically militant and radical, while the lower ranks displayed apathy or conservatism’.97 A London of reactive, racially motivated, working-class Tories would never provide the ideal breeding ground for the Labour Church. Marc Brodie, however, challenges the traditional view of the working classes of the East End during the 1890s and through the turn of the century. Brodie asserts that the economic conditions in the East End were not as relentlessly bleak as often portrayed and the working classes who lived there no more reactionary than elsewhere.98 Brodie argues that the politics of the working classes of London were more ‘personal’: The importance given to individual character in the political judgements of the East End working class was greatly increased by a number specific local factors. These included the prevalence of particular forms of workplace structure, and the generally somewhat shorter length of time on the electoral register of voters in the area. Also important was a continuing attachment to the Church of England amongst a number of the more prosperous working class.99 By the 1890s those who had the right to vote were generally more prosperous and regularly employed, which challenges the assumption that

A WIDER VOICE

165

poverty equated to Conservative votes. Martin Pugh, Mike Savage, Jon Lawrence and Trevor Griffiths support Brodie’s picture of the East End and the wider London working class and point to working-class Conservatism outside the capital as evidence of the correlation between the conservatism of the prosperous working class and the Church of England. Conservatism represented individual politics and existed in pockets in Lancashire and the southern docks, where it canvassed support on issues rather than attempting to appeal to a broader homogeneous audience. Charles Booth’s vast study on social and economic conditions, Life and Labour of the People in London,100 dispelled the image of a homogeneous London working class. Booth’s work presented a diversity of working-class living conditions, interests and religions distinguishing the inhabitants of north and south London, the East End and the West End. Within their localities, Booth also identified groups based on religion, career (especially those who were affiliated to a guild) and politics. Booth’s work has come under criticism for its singular focus: it was a study of the poor and poverty and it can be argued that Booth under-represented the better-off working class. Nevertheless, Seebohm Rowntree’s study in York, Poverty, A Study of Town Life (1901), presented social and economic conditions not dissimilar to Booth’s findings in London but without the political leanings towards Conservatism. Religion, while often minimized in importance in London politics, still played its part in the culture of the London working class, the more affluent areas identified by Booth as ‘living in comfort were largely nonconformist’.101 In other less prosperous areas often ‘only a ‘marginal’ attachment to the Church of England was apparent’,102 though in London, Anglicanism tended to be ‘more usually Conservative in inclination’.103 While there was without doubt a decline in church congregations, Booth argued, like John Trevor, that ‘people are no more irreligious than they were but that there was a greater neglect of churchgoing’.104 The Conservatives exploited the latent religiosity of the London working class and identified Liberal or radical politicians with atheism or free-thinking. Booth’s work contains no reference to any Labour Church. The working classes, particularly of the East End, did not mirror the profile of their more earnest, collectively motivated counterparts in the north. The radicalism of the more prosperous workers in London is also typical of the aspirational working class of the north, and it was within these fertile communities that the Labour Church put down tentative roots. In the

166

THE LABOUR CHURCH

north of England, ‘the spine of Liberalism was Nonconformity . . . All through the Provinces the Non-Conformist pulpits were the most effective Liberal platforms’.105 The Labour Church provided an antidote to the politically motivated ministers and an alternative platform for trade unionists and socialists of every flavour.106 The London Dock Strike brought Labour Church-style religious-based socialism to London via Labour Church stalwarts such as Ben Tillett. Tillett argued that all he stood for ‘had come from the Bible and the personality of Christ’, and that the ‘emancipation of the people from vile conditions, from ignoble life’ lay not at the door of parliament but ‘at the door of the churches’. 107 Yet radical Londoners had a different character from their northern counterparts. S. G. Hobson describes the differences between the more bohemian south and earnest north: Life for them [London Socialists] was bounded on the East by Fleet Street and on the West by Marble Arch. Chelsea had an exotic atmosphere of its own. But all through Yorkshire and Lancashire and west Scotland young men and women were carrying what they believed to be the fiery cross. They were desperately earnest. Socialism in London was a more intellectual pursuit and, throughout the 1890s, tended towards Fabianism, the SDF and the middle classes of West London. Working-class socialism and the ILP encountered a harsh audience. Margaret McMillan always found the East End in particular a hostile place and, despite her best attempts, ‘the East End did not want me. It had no use for my feeble powers and vain offerings’.108 Yet both Margaret and Rachel McMillan were ‘greatly encouraged by Mr Paul Campbell,’ to continue to help the spread of socialism and become involved in the setting up of a Labour Church in London.109 The first attempt at the establishment of a Labour Church was at Salmon’s Lane, Limehouse during 1892–3. Paul Campbell was an associate of Trevor and had been witness to the earliest days of the Manchester Church. Unlike in other regions, Campbell and Trevor actively set out to found a London Church. In February 1892, Trevor addressed a small meeting convened at University Hall, the home of the settlement of which Philip Wicksteed was the warden. The purpose of the meeting was to introduce the Labour Church Principles and recruit Labour Church Pioneers. When Trevor returned to London a month later he found an established congregation. J. Bruce

A WIDER VOICE

167

Wallace, editor of Brotherhood, and J. Burgess, editor of the Workman’s Times, were enthusiastic supporters. Tom Mann, Ben Tillett and Keir Hardie offered their support by giving lectures, thus endorsing the new venture: The first service was held at the Dockers Union Platform at the East India Dock Gates. Here over 1000 people joined in the service and listened to Campbell, Wallace, Burgess and Holding. Campbell spent the rest of the week mixing with the working men of the district, everywhere he met an evident readiness to hear the message which the new church brought them. Succeeding services were held at the corner of Salmon’s Lane, Limehouse, and in Victoria Park. The audiences were not large, nor nearly so responsive, but this was not too discouraging for there were numerous other activities which gave considerable promise. There was the opportunity of distributing literature at the large Labour Demonstrations that were held periodically and to address open air gatherings in connection with them. For instance at the May Day celebration in Hyde Park, Margret McMillan was able to attract a specially large crowd to hear about the Labour Church.110 Yet, as early as July, Campbell reported that the development of the Salmon’s Lane Church was in trouble: lack of financial support was hampering its progress. There remained a small congregation through August but, by October, Trevor reported in the Labour Prophet, ‘An attempt was made more than a year ago to form a Labour Church in London. The effort was sustained almost entirely by one man; and when he, for private reasons, felt compelled to abandon it, the matter ended’. 111 The Labour Church was not alone in struggling to attract the working classes of the capital while in the north the labour movement was finding a more receptive audience. Margaret McMillan provides a comparison between her time in London and in Bradford, where she and her sister Rachel moved in 1892– 3. Margaret, a Labour Church stalwart and one of its most popular speakers, eagerly went to Bradford to ‘devote myself to the new party [ILP]’.112 A cohesive working-class movement was evident in Bradford in a way that it had not been in London and the working class were more receptive to socialist ideas. The Labour Institute in Peckover Street was the central meeting place for socialists of every colour and flavour. ‘[I]t was packed every Sunday and on certain week-nights’, a far cry from the reluctant

168

THE LABOUR CHURCH

gatherings in London: ‘London had nothing to offer in exchange [for life in Bradford]. A more chill atmosphere could not be encountered or imagined’.113 In her autobiographical sketch, Life of Rachel McMillan, Margaret details at some length her involvement in the Labour Church in Bradford.114 She does not mention her involvement in any of the Labour Churches in London, although she is recorded as having attended and lectured at several churches. But she never found the same sense of community or support as she had in the north.115 Despite the differences in the working classes, the Labour Churches did spring up in the south and within London itself. From Summers’s correspondence with R. W. Sorenson MP, there is an indication of the existence of short-lived congregations in Battersea, Bermondsey, Boxmoor,116 East Ham and Hemel Hempstead, all established after 1900 and inactive by 1905. Sorenson also indicated a congregation at Woolwich, which was established and closed as late as 1913. Longer-lived churches were also established. The London Children’s Church started life as a Labour Church between 1894 and 1897, though it is not clear at which point the Labour Church congregation became either a Socialist Sunday School or a junior congregation. Between 1895 and 1902 a congregation was established in North Paddington and there is evidence that this was the work of Labour Church Pioneers during 1894– 5. In 1895 Trevor moved to London to assist in assessing London for possibilities for the Labour Church117 and first became involved in Paddington. Labour Church activity continued for several years, forming an associated Sunday School and several educational and cultural classes. But rents in the area proved too expensive to sustain a meeting place. Outside of the capital, successful Labour Churches were established in Watford and Croydon. Watford was active between 1899 and 1910 and is mentioned by the late Labour Church Union and briefly in the Clarion of 1 March 1912, regarding its connection with the British Socialist Party of London. The Watford Labour Church also provided something of a stopover for Labour Church members en route to London and surfaces in at least two suffrage autobiographies – those of Hannah Mitchell and Mary Gawthorpe – in this capacity. The Croydon Church however had a character of its own and was active between 1897 and 1906, renaming itself the Ruskin Labour Church. It is another example of the individuality of those churches outside of the long reach of the Manchester– Bradford axis. It was named the Ruskin

A WIDER VOICE

169

Labour Church ‘because they felt that the memories and associations of John Ruskin would tend to diminish the popular prejudices against the terms “Labour” and “Church”’.118 Despite its more exotic name and connotations, the congregation followed the Labour Church pattern of services and activities, including the establishment of a Socialist Sunday School. In character, however, the Ruskin Church was more inclusive than some of its ILP and trade union-dominated counterparts. It was an inclusive church where socialists from any organization might go and bury their differences and it was one of the churches which advocated the renaming of the Labour Church as ‘the Socialist Church’. The Ruskin Church joined local campaigns and causes, which were fought on a common footing with other socialist groups. Yet regardless of the commonality of their socialism, the Ruskin Church struggled to bring together the Ethical Societies, ideas of ‘New Thought’ (common in the area c.1899) and the Guild of St Matthew, which struggled with the lack of doctrine and vague nature of the Labour Church Principles. The Ruskin Labour Church did not conceive its role as being at the forefront of a new and equitable society – as a spearhead of social change – and so it failed to live up to the purpose of the Labour Church as it was originally founded by John Trevor. This was perhaps true of many Labour Churches whose ultimate purpose became propaganda. Of the churches within the confines of London, the Labour Church at Tottenham was the longest lived, between 1896 and 1903, though little is known about its activity beyond Summers’s personal correspondence with A. J. Waldegrave.119 Waldegrave is interesting, as his background and attitudes makes him somewhat typical of the Labour Church and his story reflects the challenges of socialism in London. Waldegrave was a junior civil servant and arrived in London in 1891, aged 19. He worked with the Wesleyan Mission, which had been established to work in the London slums, and joined a mission at Long Lane, south of London Bridge, ‘a dismal district, with patches of as bad slums as were to be found anywhere in London. The mission brought some brightness into the neighbourhood other than that of the public-houses and did a little here and there to relieve the worst cases of poverty’.120 Waldegrave indicates that the mission was genuine and not merely patronizing in its recognition that the people who lived in the slums, and their conditions, mattered. Uptake amongst the poor however was ‘insignificant’ as, ultimately, the Methodists were there to ‘convert their souls in the old fashioned Methodist Manner’.121 Waldegrave held firm Methodist beliefs but, early on, identified that religion alone was

170

THE LABOUR CHURCH

not an answer to poverty. He began to doubt his Christianity during the course of three years in the London slums. While he saw that the churches were often genuinely attempting to do good work with the poor, they inevitably had an ulterior or higher motive to save souls. The answer to poverty was still charity in the form of missions. Fishman supports Waldegrave’s depiction: ‘armed with the Bible and the bread basket, an army of individual and institution-based philanthropists marched across the City to aid (and, as some suggested, abet) the growing armies of the poor’.122 Waldegrave describes his declining faith: ‘I had been losing my belief in the central Christian doctrines and I had been enlarging my knowledge of the economic aspect of society’, a process helped along by the local Fabian Society, which he joined in 1892. He also describes the mood of the time and of young men like himself: ‘Belief, Doubt and Unbelief was in the air, it could not be escaped’.123 Like Trevor he maintained that ‘orthodox Christian belief did not square with the realities of life as I saw it in my London slum’124 nor ‘in the light of modern science, general observation of the world, and personal experience’.125 Waldegrave’s introduction to the Labour Church – through a member of the Croydon Labour Church, soon after which he met Trevor – was also typical. Waldegrave is at pains to stress that ‘the Tottenham Group had no direct contact with any of the Labour Churches in the North or Midlands’. Knowledge of the Labour Church came from reports in the Clarion and the Labour Prophet, and ‘several tracts that Trevor had published and the one written by Philip Wicksteed’.126 Waldegrave was active in the foundation of the Tottenham Church under the auspices of John Trevor and his writing. By 1895 Trevor had already begun formulating ideas in another attempt to re-establish his original idea or vision of the Labour Church, but this time in London and out of the reach of the syndicated and increasingly political churches in the north. London was Trevor’s attempt to go back to his original ideal. He also took some steps towards the formation of another Labour Church Union, of which Waldegrave agreed to become secretary.127 By 1895– 6, this led to the Labour Churches in London having a different character. According to Pelling, Tanner, and Stedman Jones, the poorest working-class people were politically motivated by the Conservative Party and were unlikely to attend Labour Church services. It was the educated, middle class or aspirational working class who made their way to the Labour Churches, which had a more intellectual flavour and tended to be established in the north and west of the city.

A WIDER VOICE

171

Following John Trevor’s disillusion with the established Labour Churches, London also became his projected Intellectual Centre for Labour Churches. In spring 1895 Trevor moved to London with the inspiration to go some way towards recreating the Labour Churches as he had originally intended. Trevor was optimistic when he described his experiences in a long article in the Labour Prophet in August 1895. On arriving in London, Trevor ‘found such an opening for our work that I feel compelled to go and live there’.128 Support came from unexpected quarters such as the West London Mission, Cleveland Hall and the New Fellowship among other groups who had similarly outgrown orthodox religious and social conceptions. In order to test the water, Trevor convened a meeting at Dr Williams’s Library, Gordon Square, ‘on Friday evening, July 12th and attracted over forty people despite the fact that it was the evening of the General Election’.129 Trevor gave an address on ‘The Labour Church in London’ and at the outset felt the need to: explain our free religious position. Hitherto I had been afraid to show any approach towards the historic churches because of their religious fetters. It would be fatal to our movement if these were introduced into it in any form whatsoever. I tried to show that Religion must gain all the freedom from the past that Science has won for itself, and that the Labour Church stood for that entire freedom.130 This was something that he had not initially needed to do in the north. Arguably the northern audience was more non-conformist, and more receptive to the socialist message.131 There is also the feeling that Trevor was expecting to find a more middle-class, intellectual, agnostic or even atheist audience in the capital. Trevor needed to consider the practicalities of setting up his organization in the unfamiliar territory. He settled on a propaganda centre focused not just on the working man but on all classes. For the work in hand in London Trevor recognized that though the initial appeal would be to the working man, ‘the distinctive qualities of all classes are needed. I am sure that no one wishes the Labour Church to be just a working man’s church, but a church where in the common obligation to share in the world’s work shall be the fundamental principle’.132

172

THE LABOUR CHURCH

The propaganda centre was partly for the development of well-trained speakers. Trevor had, by this time, become almost evangelical in his message. He required: men and women, full of the social fervour of the times, but to whom God is also a reality, as the source and sustainer of their being. By far the greatest need of this age is a race of Prophets, who can make God a reality in the lives of people, and insist in God’s name, in justice and righteousness in all our industrial and social relations. They will come some day. Meanwhile we must prepare the way for them.133 Though this may have been a reaction to the challenge to his religious authority elsewhere and the secularization of some of the churches in the north it is almost messianic in flavour. It was agreed that a Sunday morning service would be held at Dr Williams’s Library in the morning, leaving the new speakers free for outside work in the afternoon and evening. Trevor proposed that: From such a centre as this would give us, we could send out in time the missionaries of our new gospel of glad tidings. But I urge that we should not attempt the formation of new churches, but rather leave the people to form these spontaneously for themselves as they are now doing. I hope this democratic element in our movement will never be superseded, for whatever difficulties may go with it, I am sure it is element to be preserved with the upmost tenacity. From this point of view, I said that our friends in North Paddington and elsewhere should be left to for their own church, those of us who could do so rendering them all the assistance in our power. It is this democratic element, this spontaneity of growth, which is one of the marked features of our movement, and which distinguishes it from every other. Some years ago Ben Tillett prophesized that the people would themselves provide their own churches, and invite the wealthy to come to them. The Labour Churches are fulfilling that prophecy to the letter.134 Trevor remained true to his original Labour Church concept but with some slight shift in emphasis, probably based on his experience of the previous five years. He had stated that the Labour Church is ‘not a class movement’,

A WIDER VOICE

173

which continues his original theme of expressing a ‘brotherhood of man’. But this is unashamedly a bid for the middle classes of London. He expressly states that ‘the distinctive qualities of all of the classes are needed’ and talks of a ‘common obligation’. He also reaffirms the religious purpose of the churches, looking for speakers ‘full of social fervour of the times but to whom God is a reality’. Trevor is looking for ‘prophets’ and ‘missionaries’ to preach the Labour Church’s ‘new gospel of glad tidings’ in response to the increasingly non-religious lectures being held elsewhere. Interestingly, he falls back on his original idea of ‘spontaneity of growth’ yet many of his actions in London during the latter part of the 1890s, including the establishment of the Intellectual Centre, are born from a desire to organize or motivate the capital. The model services to be held in Dr Williams’s Library were arranged with the express understanding that the trustees of the library would undertake no responsibility for the ideas or doctrines of the Labour Church. At the last minute there was some disagreement, and use of the library was refused to the Labour Church, causing some considerable embarrassment to Trevor and his colleagues. The dream of an ‘intellectual centre’ for the Labour Church movement thus came to an untimely end.135 The Intellectual Centre for the Labour Churches had been designed to provide teaching and training for speakers to visit existing churches, reinforcing Trevor’s original message as well as promoting awareness to potential new congregations. External speakers increasingly had a purely political or radical message and there were growing concerns about the quality of speakers that the Trevorite churches were attracting. The development of the Intellectual Centre in London was an attempt to regain control and re-establish the original vision. The London churches were established later and, by nature, were often more short-lived, but they were established not so much in response to local political conditions than by design, despite Trevor’s protests to the contrary. In spite of the failure of the first Labour Church in Limehouse, Trevor and Paul Campbell continued to work for the organization in London, controlling Labour Church Publishing and taking over editorship until 1902, when publishing moved to Bradford. Attempts to merge the Labour Churches with the Ethical Societies across London failed because the Ethical Societies were less overtly political and more intellectual than the Labour Churches. Neither the Limehouse Labour Church – started by Margaret McMillan and Paul Campbell in 1892– 3 – nor Trevor’s final throw of the dice, a Labour Church settlement attempted in 1902, ever came to fruition. Paul Thompson (1967) gave an account of the

174

THE LABOUR CHURCH

failure of the Labour Churches in London and argued that their lack of success went hand-in-hand with the failure of the ILP. The smack of provincial nonconformity hampered both the Labour Church and the ILP. London had no sense of the movement that gave the ILP its strength in the north. The Labour Churches had failed. The Clarion had a relatively small circulation, leaving London ‘still the preserve of the Fabians and the Social Democrats, whose hold was stronger in 1899 than it had been a decade earlier’.136 Survival of middle-class socialism in London was ‘secured at the cost of electoral independence. The London ILP had been a complete failure’,137 and the Labour Church followed suit.138

CHAPTER 6 `

DECLINE AND CONCLUSION IT WAS PERHAPS TOO BRILLIANT TO LIVE' 1

I fancy the church continued on much its original lines but with the local political emphasis growing stronger with the putting up of candidates at the Council elections, until there came the shock of the outbreak of war in 1914. The War brought immediate friction between the Pacifist members and those who supported the war. And indirectly it introduced another rift. The trade unions grew stronger & had more friends, & some members urged the formation of a Labour Club at which alcoholic beverages, billiards etc. would be available. The Labour Church, classed as a Place of Worship and on that account escaping payment of rates, could not have been converted into such a club even if the desire for it among the members had been unanimous, which it was not. Some of the members strongly wished to preserve the religious atmosphere involved in the word ‘church’. So there was a cleavage & Club premises were acquired by the section that wanted them. The Sunday-evening audience dwindled partly of course as a direct consequence of the war & after the war there was no substantial recovery. Trouble then was caused by the growth of a Communist section & eventually the church ceased to exist as an organized body & the building itself was sold for commercial purposes. A. J. Waldegrave, 1953, on the decline of the Watford Labour Church2

176

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Failure in London Failure in London had a further-reaching impact on the Labour Church movement as a whole. It precipitated a failure to sustain a national organization. To be successful, there was no absolute requirement for an organization to be national, but the Labour Church needed money to sustain itself. As has been described, the Labour Church Union had been struggling for funds and was largely supported by profits from the Labour Prophet and other publications. Taking the ILP and trade union shilling had provided some political leverage over the Labour Churches and what they stood for, often resulting in the churches becoming indistinct from other labour societies. To sustain Trevor’s original vision for the church required selfsufficiency, which could not truly be gained unless the organization became national. If Labour Church funds had had to rely on sales of the Labour Prophet, Labour Church Hymn Books, Tracts and other publications, without a London audience – potentially a huge market – the church would struggle to expand. London ‘was by far the largest single consumer market in England’.3 Communication in such a massive conurbation was easy and it lent itself to radical publications for a wide audience who might potentially be motivated and organized into a political group. Radical printers had historically had a large market and thrived as they could not elsewhere. The Labour Church needed to take advantage of this but faced stiff competition: ‘countless political associations existed, surrounded by a wealth of heterodox and free thinking clubs’.4 Radical concerns in London could demand space in the national press and so achieve a nationwide audience. The Labour Church needed to present itself in its publications to a more middle-class London audience as well as maintaining its active, provincial audience. Despite its potential advantages London failed to become the centre of Labour Church activity, to some extent because it was London. Differences of interest between London and beyond were brought about by a resistance to London’s domination and by provincial pride. This was particularly true of Manchester:5 ‘in many towns in the north of England, religious nonconformity and industrialization had created social and economic structures that were notably different from the metropolis’.6 There were: complaints from the provinces during Queen Victoria’s reign both about the facts of London’s growth and the increasingly vociferous

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

177

claims Londoners made concerning the superiority of the metropolitan over, provincial ways of life. The most bitter complaint in the last years of the reign was that Londoners did not know anything at all about the provincial cities.7 Provincial independence or mentality was evident in radical organizations or publications that were very often locally named: the Northern Reform Union, the Bradford Labour Union, the Manchester Guardian, the Manchester Labour Church. Prejudice went both ways. Between 1861 and 1891 shipbuilding and textiles declined and London became a highly skilled, finishing and luxury trade centre. By the 1890s, ‘London trades were often crushed by provincial competition’.8 Yet throughout the 1880s, despite protests from beyond its fringes, London had increasingly gained a reputation as ‘the centre for thought and action. London was the life and soul of English thought . . . the means of information were greater in London than elsewhere, and the London press was the best supplied in the world’.9 Communication was through the printed word, production of which was centred on Fleet Street. Henry Hyndman, in A Commune for London, firmly put metropolitan London at the forefront of English radical thought: ‘London, with its enormous concentration of wealth, population and active commerce must lead England safely along the path to a new period’.10 During the 1890s the pull of London tightened. ‘Local newspapers began to lose ground to national newspapers’,11 and there was a rise in national advertising, branded goods in all shops and both politics and economics became national rather than local. Yet, despite the growing ‘national’ economic identity, London and the provinces remained emotionally stoically separate. The Labour Church in its provincial format and with its provincial feel struggled to make significant inroads in London. The style of socialism and the responses to the socialist message differed between London and the rest of the country. London was historically averse to mixing its politics and religion: The fact that the London Socialists of the 1880s and 1890s were more interested in ‘theory’ than the labour leaders of the provinces was to add both to resistances and to complications. And there were at least as many difficulties in diffusing the ‘secularism’ of many of the London Socialists in the provinces during the 1890s.12

178

THE LABOUR CHURCH

If the socialism of the provinces was founded on earnest nonconformity and ILP agitation, then London Socialism had a more middle-class and a more theoretical feel: ‘Fabian socialism was ‘London socialism’ rather than the agitation of the provinces’.13 A. M. Thompson gave a contemporary illustration of the political mismatch between London and the provinces: As compared to the towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, London remained a backward area. Lib-Labism was the dominant political creed of the working-class leaders, who, with characteristic Cockney conceit, regarded the Lights O’ London as the beacons of British Democracy, and themselves as the brilliantly shining Lights. The bumpkin yokels of ‘the provinces’ who had, in Rosebery’s phrase ‘vaunted themselves in the North’, had to be told ‘where they got off’.14 In a similar vein, some of the issues that the Labour Church had in appealing to London were a result of the character and make-up London itself: ‘rising between 1800 and 1900 from just under a million inhabitants to some 4.5 million, London was the super-city de luxe. Driven by market forces, it ‘just grew, without central command. A patchwork of dozens of autonomous districts, unevenly governed by often unrepresentative vestries’.15 Within London there existed a strong contrast between the wealth and glamour of the West End and the poverty, grime and destitution of the East End. There was no single London character: ‘to many it already seemed amorphous, not one place but a heap of bits and pieces’.16 Even within the poorer districts of the East End and south London, there were ‘sink holes’ of poverty, virtual ghettoes. The many parts of London never made a cohesive whole, an identifiable London ‘character’, though it might be argued that the difference in its make up itself moulded London’s character. Rich and poor, from the Queen to the street-dwellers, all lived cheek-by-jowl in a huge conurbation, east never visiting west and vice versa, but living together in the same urban sprawl. Multiple acts of parliament attempted to set London’s district boundaries but never satisfactorily and always with criteria that could never be entirely agreed upon. What was London and where did it end? The answer to this question varied almost year by year.17 Within London the Labour Church had competition from Bruce Wallace’s Brotherhood Churches: often the Labour Churches were alternatively known as Brotherhood Churches. Yet none of the many organizations including the Fellowship of the New Life, the Labour Church

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

179

Brotherhood nor the Tolstoyian Ethical Guild maintained any real interest in the capital. After the collapse of the Labour Church Record in 1902 ‘the movement had less contact with London . . . the Labour Churches had no trained ministry, no coherent religious movement and after 1902 no common journal’.18 The Labour Church movement lived on as Socialist Sunday Schools and Cinderella Clubs: the ethical movement also attempted with some success to digest the remains of the Labour Church Movement. There was never a complete combination, because in spite of its provincial branches the atmosphere of the ethical movement was metropolitan and sophisticated. Practically the whole of the available speakers reside in London. Their vocabulary often failed to meet those rooted in provincial Nonconformity.19

A Myriad of Problems There was no single reason why the Labour church declined. Financial hardship was key as the church failed to become established in London and so never became a self-financing, national organization. The provision of buildings and the cost of running and maintaining them was a problem that was not confined to the capital. There was fierce competition for land in London; between industry and homes, land was scarce and therefore rents were prohibitively high.20 That said, the problem of a widespread decline in attendances was also a major problem, ‘the knowledge that church growth-rates were slowing down, or even going into reverse, was a major factor in Methodist movements towards church unity.’21 Similarly, Birmingham suffered financially and was forced to give up its original chapel in 1897 and use the Town Hall. Financial problems also impacted the speakers. Nationally known speakers and their expenses were high and, increasingly, local speakers were used. Local speakers were often poorquality, so congregations, who ‘waited for the lecture’, dwindled.22 Summers’s analysis of the Birmingham Labour Church Minutes illustrates the impact of the financial burden typical of many churches. From the Minutes of the Birmingham Labour Church: As ‘Landlord’ they spent many hours in consideration of repairs, heat, renting and employing adequate caretakers. Even the cost of lighting a

180

THE LABOUR CHURCH

fire had to be stipulated. When the new stoves were installed to provide greater comfort, a charwoman was to be paid 6d. per week per stove to light them. If extra fires were required in any week, a surcharge was to be 3d. each.23 Waldegrave provides a similar picture of a church in decline at Watford. As one of the few owners of its own buildings Watford also found itself increasingly in debt until the building: naturally became the home of the local Labour Party and in the mind of the general public, no distinction was made between the church and the party. So it came that the church drifted more and more into becoming a political organization, and in the end was nothing else. How far the same development took place in churches that had no building of their own I do not know.24 First-hand accounts bear witness to the large number of issues that beset the organization and contributed to its decline. For Hannah Mitchell at Ashtonunder-Lyne, it was secularization – ‘unfortunately about that time the movement had a strong influx of secularists, whose influence played a great part in the decay of the Labour Churches, and an irreparable loss to the Labour movement, in my opinion’.25 For George Burgess at Stockport, it was a lack of leadership – ‘The LC didn’t fail because of the 1914 war. It may be that we had no HQ. Like other bodies usually have, no affiliation etc. Many Labour Christians didn’t like us because we had no creed’.26

Politicization and Secularization If national and financial issues stunted the growth of the Labour Church, at the heart of the movement, more fundamental splits of an ideological nature were occurring. The decline of the Labour Church also lay, as expressed by Hannah Mitchell, in its increasing politicization and secularization, which inevitably caused an intensification of the rift between John Trevor and the labour hierarchy. Secularization had once again led to the question as to whether it was a church at all and it was increasingly used by speakers who never themselves became members, to preach a secular, political message. Yet for some, the Labour Churches retained a purity of spirit that held out against the lure of politics or secularism. Eleanor Keeling, sometime secretary of the

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

181

Labour Church Pioneers, explained what could be gained from the Labour Church that could not be gained at a purely political meeting: Ordinary meetings where the economics of Socialism are preached and discussed, are not calculated to raise and purify thoughts. One is apt to become sordid and materialistic . . . forgetting that it is not much use nourishing and developing a body, be it never so healthy and beautiful, unless it be inhabited by an equally healthy soul.27 Yet despite Keeling’s affirmation, Trevor had already established that she may have been in a minority: ‘not many people, even within the Labour Churches were ever interested in them except as a means towards a united Labour movement; and once the Labour Party was firmly established they were anachronisms’.28 The ideological differences, combined with the progress of the political arm of the labour movement, undoubtedly took its toll. Leonard Smith agrees that the ‘one reason for the decline of the Labour Church was the difference of opinion about its purpose. Trevor insisting on the spiritual role and Fred Brocklehurst, whose supporters gradually took control, seeing it as little more than an agency for electoral success and part of the party machine’.29 Trevor’s clashes with Brocklehurst are covered within this book and can be found in contemporary accounts of the church including the already-quoted testimony of S. G. Hobson. As John Trevor took a back seat in the leadership of the churches, they became dominated by politicians and by secularists. The Labour Church Union became dominated by an internal struggle for Trevor’s initial aims and the church’s religiosity: The reason for the decline of the Labour Churches is not altogether clear; but suggestions have included the internal struggles between those, like Trevor, who regarded it as essentially concerned with the personal regeneration of labour supporters and those, like Fred Brocklehurst, who became its General Secretary. Who saw it as little more than an extension of the ILP’s electoral party machine.30 The Labour Church decreased in popularity as the political labour movement grew and there was seen to be less need for it. The decline in spirituality was noted long before 1914. As early as 1892, Trevor recognized the danger of close ties with the ILP and the temptation to use the Labour Church ‘merely

182

THE LABOUR CHURCH

as a means of drawing people into the Labour movement who would not be attracted to it by the usual methods’.31 Again, in 1895, he recognized that ‘Labour Churches are formed too often from insufficient motives and the whole movement will suffer from the thin soil in which a deal of it is rooted’.32 By 1898 other conference members were expressing concern about of the lack of religion in the movement. Hugh McLeod argues that: the movement declined because there were so many theologically incompatible elements within the socialist movement (ranging from Non-conformists, via Unitarians and William Morris socialists, to Marxists), who were initially attracted by the Labour Church idea, but soon found that they could only work together by keeping religious issues in the background.33 An inquest on how much religion was left in the churches was conducted by A. B. Forster in 1902, who concluded that he found ‘loud and persistent’ demands for economic change but little interest in the ‘development of the human soul’.34 Trevor became disillusioned, and resigned in 1898 after a long and divisive struggle with Brocklehurst over the direction of the church and Brocklehurst’s ideal of ‘political supremacy’. The increasing politicization was plain to see even from outside: Ramsay MacDonald was a critic and ‘as early as 1898 he regarded [the Labour Churches] as having become merely a cover for ordinary political propaganda’.35 The Labour Church diminished rapidly after 1900. The quarterly Labour Church Record that had succeeded the monthly Labour Prophet ceased to be published in 1902. The churches with the greatest longevity were those with an established social function. The Birmingham Church was the final church still standing beyond 1914, acting as an independent mediator between other organizations. Like the organic way in which they had grown, the decline of the churches was equally as disparate or individual. Some like Birmingham took a secular route; others like Bradford hung on to their religion despite the decline of their Labour Church. By 1898 the influence of secular thought had become an issue for Jowett and the Bradford congregation with debate generally surrounding the questioning of the place of prayer and its value in the services. Bradford opposed the Birmingham church’s initiation of secularist and leftist resolutions at the Labour Church Union Conference in 1906 and, by 1909, Bradford had withdrawn from the Labour Church Union. The Labour

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

183

Church struggled on for two years, but by 1911, leaving a deficit of £46, it ceased to be. The Bradford Labour Union held on to its principles and between 1912 and 1920 the ILP continued to hold a Labour Church-style service after their Sunday meetings.36 Bradford was not alone. The fate of the Snowden-inspired Labour Church in Keighley was symptomatic of the fate of many of the Labour Churches in other working towns: the Labour Church, the chief vehicle for their lectures [the ILP] speeches and propaganda, at least in the early years, never developed into a church in the formal sense. It remained chiefly the place where the Sunday meetings of the ILP were held. The trappings of a church service, such as hymns and recitals, tended to become secularized and sentimentalized, and were retained largely to give the audience a feeling of respectability and comradeship.37 In a final attempt to secure a religious message Trevor attempted to create a new Labour Church Ministry, an army of missionaries to spread the word, but he had no support from the Labour Church Union, which was increasingly dominated by the ILP. Throughout his writing Trevor makes it clear that he believed that secularization killed the Labour Church.

Diversity and Inclusivity Besides the increasing secularization there was a loss of direction in the later years of the church and arguably the Labour Churches became victims of their own inclusive policy. Trevor’s commitment to diversity and individuality came back to haunt him as the churches became too disparate to manage in the longer term. The seeds of decline could ironically be seen in the shoots of its growth, as descriptions of the church at its height and in its last years illustrate. Margaret McMillan’s descriptions of the Bradford Labour Church give a feel for the type of organization that it was. While she describes the attraction of the church, it is easy to see the potential problems simmering just below the surface: It departed from all the customs of the other churches, though we tried more and more to conform and please our various fellow worshippers. The Swedenborgians repeated the Lord’s Prayer with the Christians.

184

THE LABOUR CHURCH

The Social Democrats did nothing of the kind. The old chapel-goers, or some of them, enjoyed hymns but the Secularists did not enjoy them. The lecture was the thing . . . all waited for that . . . In spite of their differences they did form one real party, united by a single hope.38 McMillan described a congregation c.1895 ‘united by hope’ yet also fraught with divisions in fundamental belief and a disregard for any shared doctrine. The description illustrates the Trevor– Brocklehurst debate. While Trevor hoped that the Labour Church would bring a new religious idealism to society, Brocklehurst and the ILP increasingly detached themselves from any real doctrine, afraid that it might alienate its diverse membership. The congregation waited for the lecture, which would have been designed to suit their political aspiration, an aspiration that could soon be fulfilled outside of the chapel. In contrast to McMillan’s picture of the congregation, an inquiry into the decline of the church by a local activist in 1900 presents a very different picture: My experience of its services is that they are not conducive to worship – to the exercise of the devotional nature . . . any personal element in the service seems greatly eliminated. The hymns are rarely supplicative and the music is usually too jubilative to be impressive. The prayer – usually but one – is often treated like an irksome but necessary formula.39 Some two years after Trevor’s resignation, the feeling of a religious service had fundamentally altered and it had become more akin to a political meeting. As Mark Bevir observed ‘the decline of the Labour Church reflected the problems it had reconciling the claims of religious purity and political effectiveness . . . The conflict between religious purity and apolitical commitment to labour issues led not only to quarrels but to a sense of purposelessness’.40 Those all-inclusive elements that made the Labour Church attractive to such a diverse and broad congregation ultimately proved to be its downfall as the only uniting factor became political conscience. Even Trevor acknowledged that: ‘At present [1897] however, democratic organization in the whole Labour Movement means throwing together a mass of conflicting elements, in

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

185

which he must struggle to maintain a place who thinks it his mission to serve’.41 While the Labour Church accommodated a variety of socialists within its congregations and maintained an ethical basis, it was not plain sailing. As the heyday of ethical socialism waned, by the turn of the century, the diversity of congregations that had been the Labour Church’s success became a major contributor to their downfall.42 At the Leek Labour Church, the: extreme left wing won election to the principal offices of the Labour Church, & I with two other members resigned from it. From this point my information is hearsay. I have been told that the type of address changed towards economics; that audiences dwindled & the finish came. Certainly it is a folly to feed strong meat to babes and this may be the sort of thing that happened.43 Like S. G. Hobson, A. J. Waldegrave described the often-conflicting forms of socialism that he became aware of in Tottenham: A nucleus [of Labour Church attendees] was provided by the member of the SDF group and it was the presence of these which introduced me to a knowledge of the great gap that existed, and still exists I have no doubt, between the rigidly Marxist element in the British Socialist Movement and the less doctrinaire, more humanist element. It would be making the same mistake as the Marxists themselves to say that a rigid line can be drawn between the two (If so Tom Mann, for example, would have been found to have a foot on each side of the line, judging by the address I heard him give). But there can be no doubt that the difference of tone and temper between the two elements is a real one.44 The ‘strong meat’ at Leek and the Marxist element at Tottenham always remained critical and non-cooperative, though the non-Marxist element never became strong enough to establish the broader-based organization that the Labour Church needed to be. The Tottenham effort faded out as Marxist and Communist ideologies, incompatible with the ethical socialism of the Labour Churches, flourished.

186

THE LABOUR CHURCH

The Departure of John Trevor Trevor realized early on that the Labour Churches stood between two chasms: on the one hand they were in danger of being absorbed into the political parties, and on the other, the acknowledgement that they had done their job as a means of protest might mean that the established churches could now reclaim their congregations with a new social message. Either would have meant the abandonment of Trevor’s central idea, which had given birth to the Labour Churches.45 Certainly the labour movement was beginning to look after its own and increasingly abandoned Trevor. The reasons were manifold. Leonard Smith argues that: ‘It may have been Trevor’s own weak and ineffectual character which led to ossification’.46 Certainly it was a lack of leadership. It also coincided with Trevor’s second marriage (a recurring theme), the result of which prompted Hardie to go so far as to suggest that ‘if you really desire to serve it [the labour movement] you will now best do so by resigning all connection with the Labour Church – otherwise the organization will go to pieces’.47 Smith also argues that ILP’s disappointing show in the 1895 General Election was also a contributory factor. None of the 28 candidates was returned to a seat and Keir Hardie lost the sole Labour seat at West Ham.48 While writing on the wall may have been evident, Trevor still had two plans. First the establishment of a Labour Brotherhood, reiterating the religion in the labour movement: What I proposed, then, was the organization of a LABOUR BROTHERHOOD, which should be a group of those who, like myself, were anxious to work for the awakening into self consciousness of the religious life of the Labour Movement, and who could be trusted to do this without seeking power and place, or gratifying any ambition lower than that of service. It seemed to me that the very existence of such an organization of free and devoted personal effort in the name of the religion of the Labour Movement would be an example of inestimable value to the whole Labour world, as well as the means of rendering it the highest possible service.49 The Labour Church Brotherhood was formulated after Trevor’s move to London, during 1895 and 1896. A. J. Waldegrave describes Trevor’s activities:

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

187

At this time Trevor moved to London. He kept in touch with the churches in North and Midlands by correspondence, but he took no part in the actual running of them. He had conceived the plan which he mentions in ‘My Quest for God’ of forming a Labour Brotherhood which would devote itself to fostering the Labour Church idea, that of a new movement, both in the Labour Churches already existing & in those which he hoped would be established. He had also taken some steps in his correspondence towards the formation of a Labour Church Union.50 Waldegrave attended a meeting where Trevor outlined the terms of the new Labour Church Brotherhood: Trevor explained his conception of a Labour Brotherhood & we all agreed to become members of it, but nothing was done to give it formal shape. I amounted simply to giving him an assurance of our contributing support & assistance as we could in the efforts he would be making. As regards a Labour Church Union, I agreed to act as secretary if & when it got going but he was to take further steps himself towards getting the churches to take action.51 But the Labour Brotherhood failed and, by the time of Trevor’s final departure in 1902, he was persona non grata and had effectively been cut adrift. He was erased from the annals of the Labour Church. All reference to him, including his preface, was deleted from the new Labour Church Hymn Book published in Bradford in 1906.52 In a speech transcribed from his private papers by D. F. Summers, Fred Jowett provides evidence of the isolation and eradication of Trevor: In the first years of its existence Speakers from its platform did much to strengthen the movement in Bradford. Whether or no it has realized all that its founders hoped is another matter. Speaking for myself, I looked for the maintenance of a distinctly spiritual impulse in the congregation which is not displaying itself in long prayers and psalm singing would at least give us the power and confidence which the knowledge that we are working for the coming of the Kingdom of God on Earth is capable of granting.53

188

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Throughout the entire address, Trevor is never mentioned, only alluded to as one of ‘its founders’.54 Jowett though does make some concession to the increasing secularization of the Bradford Church ‘I sometimes think our Church has developed a little too much on the secular side only with the result that it is hardly a church in the sense I have described [a religious church along the lines of other local non-conformist churches] . . . Our church exists for the purpose of meeting this need’.55 In pursuing the political ‘need’ he refers to, he is unrepentant; the Bradford Labour Church should ‘fight the battle of progress in the interest of the poor and needy and for the establishment of an orderly society in which all men shall be economically and politically free’.56 The Labour Church Settlement became Trevor’s swansong. In 1902 Trevor moved to Clerkenwell, London in an attempt to re-establish his original organization. There is little record of the settlement and it appears that it became a virtual meeting place for small groups of members and provided some social evenings. The settlement was short-lived and made no impact, probably because London was not the ideal venue. Like other organizations, the Labour Church failed to live up to the original expectations of its founder and lost its way. The organic growth that had provided such fertile soil became barren. Wicksteed blamed ‘theistic and democratic faith [which] have a different root and a different history; they may cohere but they seldom integrate’.57 The Labour Church was no longer necessary and therefore failed to perpetuate itself after it had done its job. From a religious viewpoint, Inglis contends that the Labour Churches had done their job in rousing the established churches into action, thus relegating themselves to a mere protest group. This is not the case; the Labour Church provides an insight into an alternative side of the early socialist movement. If it failed it was because it tried to create a utopian society along Christian lines without the benefit of a Christian faith. It had no roots and, after Trevor left, no unifying and guiding hand. Laurence Thompson identified 1897 as pivotal year of change for socialism; it marked the beginning of a series of challenges in the years immediately following. Controversies were thrown up that were difficult to address. Philip Snowden highlights ILP opposition to the Boer War: ‘the ILP was the backbone of the opposition to the Boer War’,58 while Blatchford faced increasing criticism from his readers, over the Boer war stance of the Clarion: ‘You ruined the prospects of The Clarion forever when

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

189

you turned it into a Jingo Paper’.59 Readers abandoned the Clarion in droves as Blatchford continued to print pro-Boer articles reflecting the debates that would occur again at the outbreak of World War I. In ‘Labour Clubs and Labour Churches Blatchford’s portrait was taken from the wall and solemnly consigned to the outer darkness’.60 ‘God, as John Trevor was fond of remarking, does not make things easy’.61 Other issues came to the fore in the same year, ‘important controversies about whether Socialist [Edward] Fay was entitled to leave six gold sovereigns and three – extremely ragged – suits; whether the Socialist William Morris was entitled to leave £55,000; whether man of God John Trevor was entitled to marry again only a short time after his first wife’s death’.62 Blatchford began to withdraw. His association of socialism with atheism did not help the cause of the Labour Church, with which the Clarion had been so closely associated. It also brought to an end the fertile relationship that had existed between Trevor and Blatchford.63 If Blatchford had been, at best, indifferent to religion, he became actively hostile with two books, God and My Neighbour and Not Guilty, A Defence of the Bottom Dog.64 Blatchford countered the criticism that he incurred, ‘I was never more a Socialist than I am today. I regard God and My Neighbour and Not Guilty as of more importance to Socialists than Merrie England or Britain for the British’.65 Whether or not Blatchford was right, or more modern in the progression of his socialist thought, is debateable. But as a biographer, Thompson, could see, through Blatchford’s eyes: the ILP and Labour Church were set on their narrow path of self stultification. Trevor had been forced by ill health to retire from active work in the Labour Church, and without his guiding hand the congregations began to assert that they would be content with nothing less than houses fit for Socialists, specifications not given. Questions were allowed after the ‘lectures’, and heckling, and there was rejoicing at this simple and convenient method of overcoming the Englishman’s old-fashioned distaste for Sunday political meetings. In time, the first principle of the Labour Church ‘That the Labour Movement is a Religious Movement’, was altered to, ‘That the Labour Church exists to give expression to the religion of the Labour Movement’. And so, rather to the surprise of the good people who formed its congregations, the Labour Church slowly died.66

190

THE LABOUR CHURCH

In the end, it seems fitting to turn again to A. J. Waldegrave to give his final words on the subject of Trevor’s leadership and his role in the church’s decline. Waldegrave put Trevor’s resignation through ill health, the failure of the Labour Church Brotherhood, and the decline of the Labour Church Union at the heart of its failure. Waldegrave was Secretary of the reformed Labour Church Union and recalls that: I was very disappointed with the Conference [Labour Church Union Conference 1898], for it devoted its whole time to discussion of a ProBoer resolution calling on the government to end the war. I forgot whether a resolution was carried or not – there was much difference of opinion – but I came away feeling . . . that there was no cohesion among the churches represented & no vision of a great wide movement transcending current political controversies. Moreover there was no central leadership & I did not feel qualified, ignorant outsider as I was, to provide it.67 Nevertheless, it all came to nought as, soon after Trevor’s health broke down and he resigned his editorship of the Labour Prophet. According to Wicksteed, his resignation ‘was hastened by its founder’s engrained distrust of established things, even when they were his own work; by rooted individualism . . . which led him to feel all organization, even one of his own creation, as an obstacle to religious advance’.68 Trevor retired to Sussex, his retirement enforced ‘finally by his own frail physique and feeble health’.69 There, in 1897, he wrote My Quest. Some activity however must have got off the ground, as the Labour Church Union meeting that Waldegrave describes convened in Bolton in 1898 where the discussion was dominated by the aforementioned opposition to the Boer War.

War, Pacifism, Socialism and Conscription During the later years of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth century, issues surrounding war had a divisive impact on many of the Labour Churches. There was a lack of a constant directive from the centre regarding attitudes to war, which contributed to the fracture of the already declining churches.70 War, and specifically the Great War, presented several major hurdles: first, the diversity of the socialist stance on war, second, the issue of pacifism and, third, and perhaps most divisively, conscription. Arguably

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

191

pacifism and conscription were also feminist issues, feminism being a significant influence within the Labour Church by the turn of the century. Although much of the feminist and socialist controversy surrounding World War I is outside the remit of this research, it needs to be acknowledged, as it had a direct impact on the decline of the Labour Churches.71 As has already been described, the issue of pacifism and class solidarity had first been raised by Labour Church members and contributors during the Boer War, but further issues were raised during World War I. ‘Officially, the British Labour movement in 1914 was committed to the idea that wars were caused by capitalist rivalries, and could be stopped by the resistance of the working class in all the would-be combatant countries’.72 This sentiment was consistent with the Labour Church message though, in reality, ‘international working-class resistance proved a chimera’, with the vast majority of the labour movement ‘throwing its weight behind the war effort’.73 Socialist attitudes to war were equally diverse, and the congregations of the Labour Churches were a heady mixture of socialists. The diversity of opinion in the labour movement was reflected in the Labour Churches and in some of its highest-profile members. Fred Jowett and Philip Snowden, among many others, were against war and against imperial or capitalist nations attacking socialist nations.74 Not all socialists and socialist groups agreed, and among the senior contributors to the Labour Church, Ben Tillett and Robert Blatchford remained pro-war. Tillett believed that pacifists needed be punished and actively recruited workers from industry into the war effort. It was Tillett who controversially declared that ‘the only good German is a dead one’.75 For Tillett, the war had to be won, as he frequently reminded politicians, because ‘96 per cent of soldiers are working-class’.76 Tillett and Blatchford, along with Henry Hyndman went on to form the Socialist National Defence League in 1915.77 The Labour Church’s partner, the ILP, had an ethical stance against military action, which potentially damaged it in the eyes of the public.78 The ILP opposed the war but: [were reluctant to build a] mass movement of opposition. It opposed the war and yet wanted Britain to win it. It opposed advocacy of military solutions and yet had nothing but praise for the men who volunteered to fight. It opposed the war but never attempted to link up with the shop stewards’ movement or strikers in the industrial

192

THE LABOUR CHURCH

areas; indeed, it opposed the use of the strike weapon for political purposes.79 The ambiguity of attitudes could have been applied to many socialist and Labour Churchmen. Philip Snowden was one of the most influential anti-war exponents in parliament. He had been outspoken against the Boer War, considering it a brutal capitalist adventure ‘it was a mean war; the power of a mighty Empire used to crush the independence of a small farmer state’.80 Like Tom Mann, Snowden considered the war an international issue and took a moral personal stance: ‘I refuse to ask any young man to sacrifice his life for me. I am not going to eternity haunted by the ghosts of slain young men who lost their lives because of my inducing them to go into the army’.81 Though Snowden was clear in the root of his own opposition, he acknowledged that socialists had individual responses to the question of morality, politics and the war: some of them [socialists] refused military service because of their deeprooted opposition to war on humanitarian grounds. The objection of others, I am inclined to think, more political than religious or moral. They regarded the war as a capitalist war, and for that reason declined to give any support to it.82 Concerned about adverse public reaction, the labour movement was split and, ‘when conscription was introduced the opposition of the Labour Party withered away. Only thirty-six MPs, including the five members of the ILP group voted against it’.83 Among other groups, the Fabian Society was also splintered, and suffered from a similar diversity of opinion among its membership as the Labour Church. E. R. Pease, in his History of the Fabian Society (1916), illustrated the inter-organizational conflict that many organizations experienced: At the time I write, in the first days of 1916, the war is with us and the end not in sight. In accordance with the rule which forbids it to speak, unless it has something of value to say, the Society has made no pronouncement and adopted no policy. A resolution registering the opinion of the majority of a few hundred members assembled in a hall is not worth recording when the subject is one in which millions are concerned and virtually as competent as themselves.

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

193

Naturally there is a diversity of opinion amongst the members. On one hand Mr Clifford Allen, a member of the Executive, has played a leading part is organising opposition to conscription and opposing the policy of the Government. On the other hand, two other members of the Executive Committee, Mr H. J. Gillespie and Mr C. M. Lloyd have, since the beginning of the war, resigned their seats in order to take commissions in the Army.84 Many Fabians, including members of the Labour Party, took active roles in the war effort. Many also gave their lives, perhaps most prominently Rupert Brooke.85 The introduction of conscription in 1916, and the subsequent recruiting campaigns were the catalyst in forcing many socialists to declare their position on war.86 A pacifist stance was unpopular with the electorate and left individuals and groups open to abuse and calls of treason. Influential members of the Labour Churches also specifically opposed conscription; many were members of the pacifist NCF (No-Conscription Fellowship), including Edward Carpenter and Snowden, who was also a member of the UDC (Union of Democratic Control).87 The UDC had a different charter to the NCF and was the ‘the most significant coalition to end the war and promote democratic peace’.88 The UDC included Fred Jowett and Bruce Glasier. Jowett’s attitude to the war was representative of many socialists. Jowett was not a pacifist but he was anti-conscription though he was careful to praise the bravery of individual soldiers who had enlisted.89 On the declaration of World War I, Fenner Brockway and Clifford Allen, two Labour Church associates had formed the No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF), an organization that encouraged men to refuse war service.90 Martin Caedel describes the overtly pacifist function of the NCF: Though limiting itself to campaigning against conscription the NCF’s basis was explicitly pacifist rather than merely voluntarist . . . In particular, it proved an efficient information and welfare service for all objectors; although its unresolved internal dimension over whether its function was to ensure respect for the pacifist conscience or to combat conscription by any means.91 As a leading socialist absolutist Allen informed his conscientious objectors tribunal in March 1916 that:

194

THE LABOUR CHURCH

I am justified in interpreting my Socialist faith according to my own judgement. There are an increasing number of socialists who are opposing all war, and I count myself amongst that number. The same might be said of Christians who believe the churches have abandoned the teaching of Jesus Christ.92 Upon being asked if Allen thus made his application on moral grounds, he replied ‘That is so’.93 Like the NCF’s credo, his declaration defined a position that was undoubtedly both pacifist and political: it revealed that, even when inspired by political values, true pacifism springs from a ‘moral’ imperative rather than from a ‘political expediency’.94 Approximately 4000 conscientious objectors were imprisoned.95 How many regular Labour Church members were members of pacifist or non-conscription organizations is not known. Feminist attitudes to pacifism are complex and do not directly relate to this research, although arguably they contributed to the split between the female members of the Labour Church – who were active members of diverse women’s groups – and hence need to be acknowledged. Socialist feminists maintained their own stance on pacifism and conscription and, like their male counterparts, attitudes caused a split within the women’s movements.96 Of the largest women’s suffrage groups, the NUWSS gradually turned to pacifism, but the WSPU was nationalistic and patriotic, supporting the war effort and suspending militancy though not all campaigning. ‘This did not sit well with the many radical and democratic women in the WSPU, who were less supportive of the war’.97 Individual attitudes were not consistent: despite being a member of the WSPU, Labour Church stalwart, Hannah Mitchell, was also a member of the Peace Movement.98 The complexities of relationships split not just political colleagues but also families. The Pankhursts became estranged when Sylvia and Adela refused to abandon their pacifist and socialist beliefs and join Emmeline and Christabel on the increasingly right leaning WSPU war crusade.99 Writing of her mother and sister, in a letter to Adela, Sylvia exclaimed ‘She [Emmeline] takes the opposite view in everything. The most extreme jingoism is scarcely enough for her and I only look in wonder and ask “can those two really be sane?”’100 Attitudes to pacifism illustrate the contradictions of feminism. Feminism and feminist attitudes to war were never totally uniform.101 Many Labour Church members considered war, and death associated with war, as a continuation of the socialist fight against ‘death in all its various

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

195

forms: infantile mortality, poverty, disease, slums, unemployment, and war’.102 But the myriad opinions and emotionally charged, often life-anddeath, decisions made during this period were difficult to ignore and became fundamental differences among the Labour Church congregations. In 1914 Clifford Allen had expressed the wish that ‘above all let us hope for one thing from this war. The downfall of Liberalism’.103 Arguably World War I was a major catalyst in the decline of the Liberal Party and rise of the Labour Party.104 To some extent, ‘part of the story lies in the complete repudiation of it by young men like Allen who held it accountable for the failure to advance further to social reform after 1911 and for being the governing party which took Britain into the War’.105 The socialist element of the Labour Party’s pacifist stance managed to mask its emotional divisions that had run deep over the course of the war.106 Nevertheless, the Labour Churches failed to mask their differences, make the same sort of inroads as the rest of the labour movement, or even make a recovery.

Alternative Leisure By the end of the war the Labour Church was all but dead. The Labour Churches and the functions that they offered were all but redundant. Liddington and Norris are justified in their view that ‘the Bolton Labour Church encouraged young women like Cissy Foley and her friends to argue out the advanced ideas of the day in a comradely atmosphere’, though it ‘only whetted their appetite . . . for a more sustained socialist programme they turned to the Clarion’.107 Chris Waters agrees that ‘the aspirations of Alice Foley or George Meek or Hannah Mitchell, or indeed most who rallied to the Labour Church or to the Clarion Clubs were not shared widely by the working class. By the turn of the century the self-improvement culture as a model for social advance had largely declined, as people turned to their politics and trade unions.’108 Some were radicalized further in the 1920s and went left with MacDonald and Snowden.109 The same people often ‘lashed out at workers for being consumed by consumerism’.110 During the 1880s and 1890s, Blatchford and Trevor had both recognized the need for dedicated ‘rational and educational pursuits’ and this was central to the way of thinking at the Clarion and the Labour Church.111 Waters described the failure of socialist culture before World War I as a failure to move with the times. The commercialization of leisure presented the working class with alternatives to the Victorian call for ‘rational leisure’. The

196

THE LABOUR CHURCH

opinion that ‘rational leisure’ could inculcate values in the working class and could bring about ‘a desirable social change’ had not materialized. The socialist attitude had no ‘coherent ideology to untie these various piecemeal attempts at recreational reform’.112 The Labour Church struggled to provide a fresh and relevant social programme. It failed to keep up with the social atmosphere of the Clarion Clubs or the political cut and thrust of the emergent socialist and labour parties. During the 1890s, they had found a niche that a decade later was becoming increasingly marginalized. For the growing number of atheists they appeared too religious, for the religious community they appeared too secular, and for orthodox Christians the Labour Church was too un-Christian.

Last Words If socialism could be considered a religion then the question arises as to whether liberalism could be considered in a similar vein. The question was posed and answered by J. W. Mackail, founder member of the Leek Labour Church. Mackail stated that liberalism could not be a religion: ‘when I say it is not a religion, I mean it is not a faith, an aspiration, a controlling passion which actually rules men’s lives’. Mackail acknowledged that liberalism may have been considered a religion in the past but: The last fifty years have made Liberalism what it is now, inert towards reform, feeble against reaction, a mere political party held together by old habit and ready to sell most of its principles at a low figure: like a shop where you may see written across the front as you pass. ‘Premises coming down: the entire stock to be disposed of at an immediate reduction’. The fact is plain that at present day it fails to meet one of the simplest tests that can be applied to any religion, the question put to its professors, What do you give up for it, and what do you keep back? For the real meaning of religion is that to which a man subordinates and sacrifices everything else. Whatever outward religion he may profess or practise, his real religion, if he has one, is that according to which he actually lives. His life may be guided by love, by fear, by pride, by selfish habit: whichever it is that rules him, that is his religion.113

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

197

But Mackail’s answer is by no means definitive and in the grey area lies the question of the Labour Church’s historiography. I have endeavoured to analyse the historiography of the church from its contemporary accounts, through the flurry of interest in the church in the 1950s and 1960s, to the later work on the church in the 1980s and early 1990s. I fundamentally disagree with those accounts of the church that label it as secular and purely political. These conclusions are based on a snapshot of the Labour Church later in its life. Historiography on the thought of John Trevor was inevitably based on the later chapters of My Quest and often misses the complexities of his religious thinking and his original vision. It is acknowledged that some churches became increasingly secular at the turn of the century and few would have been called Christian, but all appear to have been searching for a purity of spirit and an ethical socialist utopia that could not be found elsewhere. A strong element in the success of the Labour Church also rested on its pastoral function. From extensive reading of letters, articles and speeches from Labour Church members, it is clear that early socialists were often isolated by their beliefs and the changes to their lifestyles that the adoption of socialism brought, often isolating them from their fellow workers. The warmth of the Labour Church, the service with tea afterwards, along with the associations, clubs and publications provided a camaraderie that would have been difficult to find at a solely political meeting. The supportive community often found in established churches had waned, and though the working class had not necessarily lost their religion, they failed to find solace, support or social justice in the increasingly middle-class chapels and churches. After describing the Labour Church as a ‘Labour Sect’ in Primitive Rebels (1965), Hobsbawn summarized it as: easily absorbed into the general current of left wing activity and it had the inestimable and treble advantage of clothing the social protest of the workers in the familiar and powerful language of the Bible, of doing so by methods within the reach of the least educated and qualified workers, and of providing them, as we have seen, with invaluable schooling and experience.114 Here Hobsbawn missed the point almost entirely. While I agree that the religious language was familiar to the working class, there was a fundamental belief in the religion inherent in the labour movement. To the

198

THE LABOUR CHURCH

committed members of the Labour Church it was not merely a protest against the established churches, it stemmed from a real desire for the creation of a Kingdom of Heaven on earth that did not necessarily need to be a Christian Kingdom in the orthodox sense. The claim that the congregation was ill-educated or unqualified misses the many dedicated, colourful and successful people who attended. They were the aspirational working class: women who were able to practise their skills before taking local public office or taking on the national government, the Whitmanites of Bolton, Fabians, London civil servants, Yorkshire teachers, poets, writers, Norfolk architects, or those who merely wanted an escape from the mundanity of their daily lives. Hobsbawm goes on to contend that, as the workers became more educated and influential, they inevitably ‘adopted the views of the middle classes’,115 who tended to occupy leading positions in other churches; how Jowett, Brocklehurst, Mann and Hardie might have felt about his conclusion can only be imagined. The mass of pamphlets, essays, typescripts of sermons and the work of the Anti-Socialist League have left a huge volume of information expressing, first, the attitudes of socialists to the ‘religion of socialism’ and, second, the responses of the existing churches to socialist propaganda. The tone and nature of these documents is symptomatic of the belief in a higher life. It is also symptomatic of the north of England. As Blatchford stated, ‘If you asked a London Socialist for the origin of the new movement he would refer you to Karl Marx and other German Socialists’.116 Was the Labour Church, then, a religious movement? Yes, its immanentist theology shows that it was, although its purpose was increasingly utilized to meet political ends by a diverse range of groups, from militant feminists to vegetarians. John Trevor always maintained that the Labour Church existed to proclaim the religious nature inherent in the labour movement rather than to bring religion and the religious to the labour movement. The close ties make the secularization of the church to meet political ends almost inevitable, wherein lies the contradiction between the church and its leaders. As early as 1892, Trevor recognized the dichotomy between the political and spiritual function of the church and was at pains to separate them. As Inglis states, ‘Trevor himself had initiated an Independent Labour Party in Manchester in May 1892, believing that Labour should have its own party and apprehensive that, unless a distinct political organization was created alongside it, the Labour Church might occupy itself with political action at the expense of its spirituality’.117

DECLINE

AND

CONCLUSION

199

Fundamentally, the Labour Church aspired to realize the establishment of an egalitarian socialist society. It was not entirely ‘unchristian’, an assumption that is true of Trevor himself but misses Trevor’s and much of his congregation’s belief in the religion inherent in socialism regardless of any Christian creed. The anti-religious theory has been largely discredited by Mark Bevir’s close inspection of Labour Church theology. To deny that there was any religion in the movement is to undermine John Trevor’s work. Trevor made many statements concerning the spirituality of the organization. Ultimately his autobiography was called My Quest for God, not ‘My Quest for Labour Politics’. It can be said that the Labour Church was not Christian but it cannot be said that it was not religious. The Labour Church was a product of its time, and its importance as a historical phenomenon lies in the fact that it existed at all. It grew from the turmoil of industrialization and the associated upheaval of society. Its origins can be found in the Victorian crisis of faith, which inspired the search for a new spirituality in line with the increasing political consciousness of the growing working classes. Though the worship of God took many diverse forms, by 1914 it was no longer at the heart of modern industrial society; morality was determined by secular factors rather than through religious organizations. Though the traditions of the established churches continued in marriages and baptisms, the Labour Church’s attitude to faith was inherently more modern. Morality was no longer a matter of attending church: it became a measure of the way people lived their lives and, increasingly, the way in which they cast their vote. The decline in laissezfaire economics and the slow, but gradual, advocacy of state intervention in everyday life is evidenced by the educational and social concessions meted out by the Liberal Government of 1906. Even non-conformists who had once denied that the state had any right to provide or interfere in education began to accept the need for state-sponsored compulsory schooling. The legacy of the church’s immanentist belief is reflected in the attitudes of many nonchurchgoing Christians today; the principles of right and wrong continue to apply to debates in advances in science, technology and politics. In the 1890s, the Labour Church was different in its theology, its lack of dogma and its very modern assertion of ‘the view that Christian faith and belief is all to do with personal morality and nothing to do with the needs of society as a whole is too partial a perspective. Similarly, the belief that the good of all can be achieved through the good offices of a benign state, leaves out the sense of individual responsibility which is essential if society is to function at all’.118

APPENDIX I LIST OF LABOUR CHURCHES AND CONGREGATIONS

60

50

40

Churches in other parts of England and Wales Churches in and around London

30

Churches in the Northwest and Manchester

20

10

93 18 94 18 95 18 96 18 97 18 98 18 99 19 00 19 01 19 02 19 06 19 10 19 14 19 20 s

18

91 18

18

92

0

Figure 1 Labour Church congregations. Source: D. F. Summers, ‘The Labour Church and Allied Movements of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Edinburgh, 1958–9), p. 312. Note: The graph does not indicate the longevity of each church.

APPENDIX I

201

Labour Church Locations Many Labour Churches lived and died within months. The list below indicates those that were established for over a year; approximately 42 were strong and survived over a number of years; those in bold were the most influential and active churches.

England and Wales 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Ardwick Ashton-under-Lyne Barnsley Barrow in Furness Batley Birmingham Blackburn Bolton Bordsley Boxmoor Bradford Bradshaw and District Brierfield Burton on Trent Cardiff Cleckheaton Colne Valley Croydon (Ruskin Church) Darlington Darwen Denton Derby Dewsbury Dover East Ham Eccleshill Erdington Farnworth

202

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Farsley Goreton Halifax Hanley Hemel Hempstead Huddersfield Hull Hyde Keighley Lancaster Leeds Leek (William Morris Church) Leicester Levenshulme Long Eaton Longton Longwood Manchester Manchester and Salford (later split into several smaller churches) Middlesborough Morley Newcastle-upon-Tyne Newcastle-under-Lyme North Manchester North Paddington Norwich Nottingham Oldham Openshaw Pendleton Plymouth Ramsbottom Rochdale Salford Selly Oak Sheffield Shipley Slaithwaite

APPENDIX I

67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

South Manchester Southwest Manchester Southampton Stockport Stourbridge Taunton Tottenham Tyseley and Sparkhill Wakefield Watford Wednesbury West Bromwich Wolverhampton

Scotland 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Aberdeen Arbroath Brechin Caithness Dundee Glasgow and Glasgow Socialist Church Inverness Paisley

203

APPENDIX II THE CONSTITUTION OF THE LABOUR CHURCH AS APPROVED AT THE SECOND CONFERENCE (NOVEMBER 1893)

I Basis The Labour Church Union is a union of Labour Churches and Labour Church Pioneers accepting the following as their Basis of Work: 1. That the Labour Movement is a Religious Movement. 2. That the Religion of the Labour Movement is not a Class Religion, but unites members of all classes in working for the Abolition of Commercial Slavery. 3. That the Religion of the Labour Movement is not Sectarian or Dogmatic, but Free Religion, leaving each man free to develop his own relation with the Power that brought him into being. 4. That the Emancipation of Labour can only be realized so far as men learn both the Economic and Moral laws of God, and heartily endeavour to obey them. 5. That the development of Personal Character and the improvement of Social Conditions are both essential to man’s emancipation from moral and social bondage.

APPENDIX II

205

II Objects 1. The development of the Religion of the Labour Movement. 2. The realization of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth by the establishment of a state of Society founded upon Justice and Love.

III Methods of Work 1. The consolidation and development of the Labour Church Movement by Missionary enterprise. 2. The strengthening of individual Labour Churches, and the maintenance of fraternal relations and collective work among them. 3. The sale sand free distribution of Labour Church literature. 4. The maintenance of a Labour Church Union Fund, and such other funds as may from time to time be required. 5. Hearty co-operation with other organizations in the struggle for the Emancipation of Labour and for the reconstruction of Society upon the basis of Equality and Brotherhood.

IV Organization 1. That the Labour Church Union shall leave each Church free to manage its own affairs. 2. That the congregation of the Union shall consist of a Conference and a Conference Committee.

V Annual Conferences 1. The Churches shall meet annually, to transact business and to discuss matters relative to their common work, each Church being eligible to send two delegates. Pioneers present at Conferences to have equal powers with delegates, save that they shall not vote on revision of the Constitution.

VI Special Conferences 1. The Conference Committee, or any six Churches, shall have the power of summoning a Special Conference.

206

THE LABOUR CHURCH

VII Officers 1. Honorary Chairman, Treasurer, and Secretary. They shall be elected at the Annual Conference.

VIII Conference Committee 1. The Annual Conference shall appoint a Conference Committee composed of the three offices and four church delegates. The delegates so elected to be chosen from Churches other than those to which the officers belong. 2. The duties of the Conference Committee as follows: a. To transact special business which may arise between the Conferences b. To call the next Conference and to prepare the agenda therefore. 3. The Conference Committee are empowered to propose such by-laws as may be necessary for the performance of its duties, these by-laws to be subject to revision by Conference.

IX Financial 1. Each Church shall pay an affiliation fee of 5s. Per quarter to the funds of the Union as a condition of membership thereof, such fee to be due on the first of January, April, July and October. 2. In addition to the affiliation fee each Church shall grant at least one Sunday’s collections in each year to the funds of the Union. 3. The expenses of officers and of delegates from Labour Churches attending a conference shall be pooled and shared equally by the Churches represented, these expenses to include actual loss through absence from work.

APPENDIX III TRANSCRIPT OF A LETTER FROM MRS H. M. MITCHELL TO D. F. SUMMERS (2 AUGUST 1953)

Dear Sir I saw your letter some weeks ago, in the ‘Manchester Guardian’ asking for any information about the Labour Church movement which was in existence during the early years of the century. I don’t know if I can help you at all with your researches but in [1894– 5] before my marriage I attended Labour Church meetings in Bolton Lane [Bradford], which were held on Sunday evenings, and were immediately popular. After my marriage we spent some years at Newhall near Burton-on-Trent, where we tried, without much success, to run similar meetings. In May 1900 we went to live in Ashtonunder-Lyne, and at once joined the Independent Labour Party there, who ran Sunday meetings occasionally, as speakers were available, but these were mostly political propaganda. During the following autumn my husband and I got together a committee to consider the opening of an L.C. along the same lines as the one we had attended in Bolton. We found there was already a similar organization running in the neighbouring town of Hyde, whose members, including a small choir, were willing to come along and help us. So in the new year we formed the Ashton-under-Lyne Labour Church, which for many years was very successful. Later we helped start one in Stockport which was also very popular for some half dozen years or so.

208

THE LABOUR CHURCH

At first my husband was lecture secretary for Ashton; later this office devolved on me, and I attended one or two national conferences, one at West Bromwich, one at Watford. During the summer months, the Hyde, Ashton and Stockport contingents held a joint meeting in Marple, a country village which was a favourite place for picnics etc. These three churches did a vast amount of propaganda work in the north, besides meeting the spiritual needs of those who were not attracted to the labour movement by the stark Marxian theories of the SDF school of thought. We started our meeting with a hymn; then repeated the Lord’s Prayer; then a reading which might be from the New Testament or might be from one of the classics, Poets, Novelists, Essayists etc; then a solo or recitation, as we were able to get a fair amount of talent from among our members, or from the Clarion Choirs in the north, who were pretty strong at that time; another hymn; the address which might be taken from a text of Scripture, or might be a lecture on art or literature, or might be Philip Snowden on Ruskin, Bruce Glasier or Katherine on some aspect of the growing Labour movement. In Ashton we also had quite a good Socialist Sunday School, where we also stressed the ethical side of the Labour movement (Unfortunately about this time the movement had a strong influx of secularists, whose influence played a great part in the decay of the Labour Churches, and an irreparable loss to the Labour movement in my opinion. If you have read the book on Robert Blatchford by Laurence Thompson there is information there about the rise and decay of the L.C. movement, which might help you. I think perhaps if the author has any further information, which is not included in the section on the Labour Churches, he might be willing to help you. The book is published by Gollanz, through whom you might contact the author. If there is any question you wish to ask me, or any information I have omitted or which I can obtain for you I should be glad to oblige. I am getting old myself and feel there is much information regarding the early Labour Movement which is not known to the younger members. Consequently they do not value the freedom they enjoy today, which was won for them, at bitter cost, by their forefathers. I have spoken to one or two old members, who may

APPENDIX III

209

perhaps write to you as well. Wishing you every success in your task. Kindest Regards. Yours sincerely Mrs H. M. Mitchell It is clear that D. F. Summers did not know that this was Hannah Mitchell the militant suffragette (despite the heavy hint about freedoms won at bitter cost at the close of her letter) and consequently he fails to follow up on what would have been a fascinating insight into the Labour Church and the women who inhabited it. Hannah Mitchell subsequently published her autobiography The Hard Way Up in 1963. In fact Summers fails to follow up on any of the responses from women, despite the fact that several of them went on to contact friends and ex-congregation members on his behalf. The women give a detailed and colourful picture of the daily life of the church, which Summers does not use.

APPENDIX IV `

THE FABIAN BASIS' (PRE-1919)

The Fabian Society consists of Socialists. It therefore aims at the reorganization of society by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership and the vesting of them in the community for the general benefit. In this way only can the natural and acquired advantages of the country be equitably shared by the whole people. The Society accordingly works for the extinction of private property in land and of the consequent individual appropriation, in the form of rent, of the price paid for permission to use the earth, as well as for the advantages of superior soils and sites. The Society further works for the transfer to the community of the administration of such industrial capital as can conveniently be managed socially. For, owing to the monopoly of the means of production in the past, industrial inventions and the transformation of surplus income into capital have mainly enriched the proprietary class, the worker being now dependent on that class for leave to earn his living. If these measures be carried out, without compensation (though not without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community), rent and interest will be added to the reward of labour, the idle class now living on the labour of others will necessarily disappear, and practical equality of opportunity will be maintained by the spontaneous action of economic forces with much less interference with personal liberty that the present system entails.

APPENDIX IV

211

For the attainment of these ends the Fabian Society looks to the spread of Socialist opinions and the social and political changes consequent thereon, including the establishment of equal citizenship for men and women. It seeks to achieve these ends by the general dissemination of knowledge as to the relation between the individual and society in its economic, ethical and political aspects.1

APPENDIX V THE PRINCIPLES OF THE LABOUR CHURCH

The five principles are the most commonly quoted expression of the doctrine of the Labour Church. They were written by John Trevor for inclusion in all Labour Church publications and were first published in 1892. After John Trevor left the Labour Church in 1902, the five principles became four.

STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES (1892) i. That the Labour Movement is a religious movement. ii. That the Religion of the Labour Movement is not a Class religion, but unites members of all classes in working for the Abolition of Commercial Slavery. iii. That the Religion of the Labour Movement is not Sectarian or Dogmatic, but Free religion, leaving each man free to develop his own relations with the Power that brought him into being. iv. That the Emancipation of Labour can only be realized so far as men learn both the Economic and Moral Laws of God, and heartily endeavour to obey them. v. That the development of Personal Character and the improvement of Social Conditions are both essential to man’s emancipation from moral and social bonding.1

APPENDIX V

213

STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES (1906) i. That the Labour Church exists to give expression to the religion of the Labour Movement. ii. That the religion of the Labour Movement is not theological, but respects each individual’s personal convictions upon this question. iii. That the religion of the Labour Movement seeks the realization of universal well-being by the establishment of Socialism – a Commonwealth founded on Justice and Love. iv. The religion of the Labour Movement declares that improvement of social conditions and the development of personal character are both essential to emancipation from social and moral bondage, and to that end insists upon the duty of studying the economic and moral forces of society.2

APPENDIX VI THE ETHICAL BASIS OF THE SOCIALIST SUNDAY SCHOOLS (1906) 1

The ethical basis for the Socialist Sunday Schools was often vague; however, they were broadly organized around the following principles: 1. That morality is the fulfilment of one’s duty to one’s neighbour. 2. That the present social system is devoid of the elements of love or justice, since, as an organization, it ignores the claims of the weak and distressed, and that is, therefore, immoral. 3. That society can be reorganized on a basis of love and justice, and that it is every man’s duty to use all available social forces in bringing about that reorganization. ‘Ten Commandments’ were printed in many publications: 1. Love your schoolfellows, who will be your fellow workmen in life. 2. Love learning, which is the food of the mind; be as grateful to your teacher as to your parents. 3. Make every day holy by good and useful deeds and kindly actions. 4. Honour good men, be courteous to all men, bow down to none. 5. Do not hate or speak evil of anyone. Do not be revengeful but stand up for your right and resist oppression. 6. Do not be cowardly. Be a friend to the weak and love justice.

APPENDIX VI

215

7. Remember that all good things of the earth are produced by labour. Whoever enjoys them without working for them is stealing the bread of the workers. 8. Observe and think in order to discover the truth. Do not believe what is contrary to reason and never deceive yourself or others. 9. Do not think that he who loves his own country must hate and despise other nations, or wish for war, which is a remnant of barbarism. 10. Look forward to the day when all men and women will be free citizens of one fatherland and live together as brothers and sisters in peace and righteousness. And the magazine of the Sunday School Movement, the Young Socialist printed the commandments as verses to widen the appeal to children: 1. Always love your schoolmates Make happy those in sorrow The children of today will be The citizens of tomorrow. 2. To parents and to teachers Be grateful and be kind For we should all love learning (Which nourished the mind) 3. Let every day be holy By doing some good deed; To all do kindly actions Whatever be their creed. 4. Be just and fair to all men, Bow down or worship none. Judge man by what he tried to do, Or has already done. 5. Hate not, and speak no evil, Stand up for what is right, And do not be revengeful, But ’gainst oppression fight. 6. Try not to be a coward, But always help the weak, Whatever path of life you’re in. For love and justice seek.

216

THE LABOUR CHURCH

7. All good things gathered from the earth, By toil of hand and brain, Instead of going to the few, The workers should retain. 8. Speak (the) truth at all times, And try not to deceive, And what opposes reason We ought not to believe. 9. Love all the races of mankind, Abolish war and strife; That we may reach the higher plains Of our intended life. 10. Look forward to the day when men And women will be free; As brothers and as sisters live In peace and unity.

APPENDIX VII JOHN TREVOR'S LABOUR PROPHET ARTICLE ON LONDON (1895)

This is the only first-hand information available from Trevor on London and is the most detailed account of activity there. Of late I have been spending a deal of time in London, and have found such an opening for our work that I feel compelled to go and live there. In quarters where I least expected it, I have met with strongest sympathy with our principles, and a desire to give practical help in their realization. This has been especially the case with some of the workers in connection with the West London Mission, who have quite outgrown the religious and social conceptions on which that large influential organization has been founded. From conversations I have has with Mr A. J. Shewall, of Clevelend Hall, and friends who are working with him, I am sure that they will be able and willing to give us most valuable assistance. Some of the members of the New Fellowship, and scattered individuals in connection with other organizations are also ready to give us their help. In order to judge more clearly of the possibilities of future development, and the best methods of procedure, a meeting of friends was called by postcard at Dr Williams’s Library, Gordon Square, on Friday evening, July 12th. There were to my surprise, some forty persons present, though many were prevented from

218

THE LABOUR CHURCH

attending on account of the General Election. Mr Sherwell took the chair and I gave an address on ‘The Labour Church in London’. Seeing that some of those present were connected with orthodox churches, I thought it necessary at the outset to explain our free religious position. Hitherto I had been afraid to show any approach towards the historic churches because of their religious fetters. It would be fatal to our movement if these were introduced into it in any form whatsoever. I tried to show that Religion must gain all the freedom from the past that Science has won for itself, and that the Labour Church stood for that entire freedom. Then came the practical consideration of the position of London, and how we make the most of it. What I have long felt our movement to need is a centre of propaganda among the educated. We must prove that ours is not a class movement by converting all classes to it. Moreover for the work we have in hand, the distinctive qualities of all classes are needed. I am sure that no one wishes the labour Church to be just a working man’s church, but a church where in the common obligation to share in the world’s work shall be the fundamental principle. With this principle inspiring us, we shall appeal more readily to the workers than to others, but we shall gladly welcome to our service all who can accept our principles. We need in London also a centre of teaching to which we can invite those who desire to know what the Labour Church really is. If such inquirers could be directed to a centre in London where our religious and social gospel was being preached Sunday by Sunday, it would be a great advantage to our movement. We need, too, a centre for the development of well trained speakers. I have said again and again that we have before us an almost infinite opportunity, but not the speakers to make adequate use of it. We want men and women, full of the social fervour of the times, but to whom God is also a reality, as the source and sustainer of their being. By far the greatest need of this age is a race of Prophets, who can make God a reality in the lives of people, and insist in God’s name, in justice and righteousness in all our industrial and social relations. They will come some day. Meanwhile we must prepare the way for them. To meet this side of our work, propose the holding of a Sunday morning service at Dr William’s Library as a very convenient centre, the idea of holding it in the morning being that we should

APPENDIX VII

219

then be left free for outside work in the afternoon and evening. This proposal was generally welcomed in the discussion that followed as one of hopefulness. A feeling was expressed, especially by Mr. J.F. Oakeshott, the secretary of the New Fellowship and also by the chairman, that it would provide and admirable and much needed centre for all these Socialists who had no hope in Socialism apart from religious development. From such a centre as this would give us, we could send out in time the missionaries of our new gospel of glad tidings. But I urge that we should not attempt the formation of new churches, but rather leave the people to form these spontaneously for themselves as they are now doing. I hope this democratic element in our movement will never be superseded, for whatever difficulties may go with it, I am sure it is element to be preserved with the upmost tenacity. From this point of view, I said that our friends in North Paddington and elsewhere should be left to for their own church, those of us who could do so rendering them all the assistance in our power. It is this democratic element, this spontaneity of growth, which is one of the marked features of our movement, and which distinguishes it from every other. Some years ago Ben Tillett prophesized that the people would themselves provide their own churches, and invite the wealthy to come to them. The Labour Churches are fulfilling that prophecy to the letter.1

APPENDIX VIII LETTER FROM KEIR HARDIE TO JOHN TREVOR

THE LABOUR LEADER

53

FLEET STREET,

LONDON, E.C.

23 April 1895

Dear Trevor I heard it whispered at Newcastle that you were married again, but refused to credit the rumour. You have given the movement such a blow as it will not recover from in a hurry, and if you really desire to serve it you can now best do so by resigning all connection with the Labour Church – otherwise that organisation will go to pieces. There may as you say have been a strange combination of circumstances which led you into taking the step, but nothing can or should justify it. Personally it is the hardest blow I have yet felt in the movement. I value most, as you know, the moral side of our agitation, & it is there that you have smitten us heavily

John Trevor

Yours truly J. Keir Hardie

NOTES

Prelims 1. Hannah Mitchell, The Hard Way Up (Faber and Faber, London, 1968), p. 116.

Introduction 1. Last words of J. Trevor’s autobiography, My Quest for God (1897). Trevor was influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. Trevor admired Whitman, who knew the Bible thoroughly, and, as poet inspired by God, shared Trevor’s desire to inaugurate a religion uniting all of humanity in bonds of friendship. Trevor’s view of Whitman was that he was ‘nearer to God than any man on earth’. In S. Pierson, ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church Movement in England, 1891– 1900’, Church Hist. 29 (1960), p. 471. 2. The Labour Church deserves greater comparison with the Salvation Army, as both Booth and Trevor shared similar backgrounds and Trevor was initially inspired by the Salvation Army. Ultimately they took opposite theological routes; Booth was evangelical, whereas Trevor went on to challenge conventional Christian doctrines. 3. A. Wilkinson, Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair (1998). Wilkinson charts the progress of the Christian Socialist Movement from the formation of the Anglican Christian Union through to the 1997 Labour government. Although his focus is on the development of socialism within the Anglican and Catholic churches, he acknowledges its non-conformist influences and the role of the Labour Church. 4. Revisionist historians, including, Karen Hunt, challenge the view that the SDF as a whole was ‘narrow, dogmatic and sectarian’ and contends that in terms of the ‘woman question’ ‘as with other aspects of the SDF’s stereotype, individuals tend to be cited as representative of the party as a whole. It is difficult to view the SDF as other than anti-feminist when evaluating the attitudes of its leadership and their idiosyncratic influences including Hyndman, Belfort Bax and

224

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

NOTES

TO PAGES

3 –6

Harry Quelch.’ Hunt, K., Equivocal Feminists: The Social Democratic Foundation and the woman question 1884– 1911 (1996) pp. 15 – 17. S. Yeo, ‘A New Life: the Religion of Socialism in Britain, 1883 – 1896’, Hist. Workshop J., 4 (1977), pp. 6 – 7. In this book, I have used similar terminology to Yeo, to refer to other churches: ‘orthodox’ is used to refer to churches with a defined clerical hierarchy, the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England; ‘established churches’ refers to Catholic, Anglican and non-conformist churches, particularly Methodist chapels, and often has a local connotation. P. F. Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism (1971), p. 41. The growth of the Labour Church and its localities are covered in detail later in this book. An empirical picture of the establishment of Labour Churches can be found in Appendix I. Liverpool is the notable exception to the Lancashire picture. ‘In Lancashire Methodism was the strongest Free Church. It was indeed the great rival of the Church of England, except in Liverpool and those other towns in the western part of the county where the main challenge to the Church came from Roman Catholicism’. Clarke, Lancashire, p. 55. This phenomenon is also one of the themes beautifully explored in Robert Tressell’s Ragged Trousered Philanthropists written at the turn of the century and eventually published in 1914. C. Wrigley, British Trade Unions since 1933 (2002), p. 2. Historians differ on the figures, but The Clarion, 11 January 1893, 20 September 1900 and 20 July 1906 contain references to church numbers. The short-lived existence of some of the churches makes it difficult to cite a firm number. See Appendix I. M. Bevir, ‘Labour Churches and Ethical Socialism’, History Today 47 (1997), p. 50. This book will not cover the Labour Church abroad. Analysis of John Trevor’s personal motivations for setting up the Labour Church will be covered in further detail in Chapter 1 of this book. Trevor, My Quest, p. 219. Ruskin quoted in T. S. Ashton, Manchester Economic and Social Investigations, 1833– 1933 (1977), p. 100. The Thirlemere Valley was flooded against intense local opposition and required an act of parliament granted in 1879 to carry out the work. It also required a 96-mile aqueduct to deliver the water into Manchester which was first connected in 1894. A. Briggs, Victorian Cities (Penguin, London, 1990), pp. 88 –138. A. J. P. Taylor, ‘Manchester’, in ‘The World’s Cities’, Encounter (March 1957), pp. 3 – 4. M. J. Turner, ‘Local Politics and the Nature of Chartism: the Case of Manchester’, Northern Hist. 45 (2008), p. 323. Briggs, Victorian Cities, p. 137. Ibid., p. 97. Ibid., pp. 96 – 7.

NOTES

TO PAGES

6 –11

225

23. M. J. Turner, Reform and Respectability Middle Class Liberalism in Early NineteenthCentury Manchester (1995), pp. 4 – 5. 24. A. M. Thompson, Here I Lie (1937), p. 68. Thompson refers to Liberal free trader, Richard Cobden (1804 – 1865), ‘Cobden inevitably stands for “Cobdenism”, which is a creed largely developed by the modern free-trader in the course of subsequent years. It becomes equivalent to economic “laisser-faire”and “Manchesterism”’. In ‘Richard Cobden’, Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edn., 1911). He also quotes the ‘lake poet’ and poet laureate, Robert Southey (1774 –1893). 25. Clarke, Lancashire, p. 56. 26. ‘Working class Conservatism was characterized by both a “xenophobic Protestant Conservatism [with] powerful roots in a religious/ethnic/economic hostility to the Catholic Irish” and an “affinity with male working class social interests, particularly a right to pleasure”, Jeffrey Hill quoted in D. McHugh, ‘The Labour party in Manchester and Salford before the First World War: A Case on Unequal Development’, Manchester Region Hist. Rev. 14 (2000), p. 16. Similarities between the North and the East End of London are covered in later chapters of this book. 27. T. Adams, ‘Labour Vanguard, Tory Bastion, or the Triumph of New Liberalism? Manchester Politics 1900– 1914 in Comparative Perspective,’ Manchester Region Hist. Rev. 14 (2000), p. 25. 28. Ibid. 29. McHugh, ‘Labour party in Manchester and Salford’, p. 15. 30. Ibid., p. 18. 31. Ineligibility was a product of poverty. Many working class men were not householders and many lodgers had itinerant working and living patterns. 32. F. Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England (1984 edn.), p. 84. 33. The repeated frequency of many of the surveys indicates how slow the City was to respond to issues. Despite the fact that there are a huge number of surveys on the conditions of the working classes the surveys of the 1830s were still being repeated in the 1870s and again in the 1890s. In many cases however the surveys reflected the issues of the day and were often in response to acts of parliament and financial fluctuations. 34. Ashton, Manchester Economic and Social Investigations, p. 13. 35. Ibid., p. 104. 36. Taylor, ‘Manchester’, Encounter (1957), p. 4. 37. Trevor, My Quest, p. 221. 38. P. Shapely, Charity and Power in Victorian Manchester (2000), p. 32. 39. Ibid., p. 52. 40. Ibid., p. 65. 41. J. R. Moore, The Transformation of Urban Liberalism (2006), p. 218. 42. The alienation of working class congregations is covered in detail in several other sections of this book. 43. Moore, Transformation of Urban Liberalism, p. 218. 44. The Times, 16 January 1893. 45. Orthodox Research Institute [www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org].

226

NOTES

TO PAGES

11 – 21

46. Trevor’s intentions, beliefs and aspirations are covered in detail in Chapter 1. 47. Unitarian Universalist Association [www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml] and General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches [www.unitarian. org.uk]. 48. Trevor, My Quest, pp. 151– 2. 49. Ibid., pp. 87 – 9. 50. Christian Union, ‘What is a Church?’ [www.uccf.org.uk/resources/what-is-achurch-what-is-a-cu.htm]. 51. This is a contentious issue today as it is often quoted as the justification for accepting a female priesthood and homosexuality in the church. 52. D. F. Summers, ‘The Labour Church and Allied Movements of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’ (PhD monograph, Edinburgh, 1958), p. 144. Trevor’s motivations are covered in detail in Chapter 1 of this book. 53. I do include information on the broader issues surrounding women and their role in the Labour Church but there is more to be gained on the use of the Labour Church by the women’s suffrage movements. 54. Socialist Sunday Schools and Cinderella Clubs and the Hardie–Trevor collaboration are covered in Chapter 5 of this book. The subject of the politicization of children during this period, however, is under-researched. 55. K. S. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (1963). 56. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, pp. 9 – 30. 57. Ibid., p. 296. 58. Labour Church Hymn Book (1892). 59. The Walt Whitman Archive, [www.whitmanarchive.org]. 60. J. Trevor’s preface to Labour Church Hymn Book (1892). 61. Bevir, ‘Labour Churches and Ethical Socialism’; id., ‘The Labour Church Movement, 1891– 1902’, J. British Studies 38 (1999). Subsequently Bevir collected his wider essays in Bevir, M., The Making of British Socialism (2011). 62. Pierson, ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church’ and K. Cowman, ‘A peculiarly English Institution: Work, Rest and Play in the Labour Church’, Studies in Church Hist. (2002). 63. L. Smith, Religion and the Rise of Labour (1993), p. 13. 64. The hymn books will be described in more detail later in this book. 65. A common creed gives a church substance, a shared history the roots and the consistent message of its hierarchy gives it a coherent organization.

Chapter 1 John Trevor: Reluctant Christian, Reluctant Preacher, Founder of the Labour Church 1. Letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 680. 2. The breach in the Labour Church will be analysed and explained later in this book. 3. My Quest for God is one of the central primary sources in the production of my book. There are few secondary resources available on this work.

NOTES

TO PAGES

21 – 26

227

4. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 50. The description of Trevor came from personal interviews that Summers conducted with Trevor’s family and associates between 1951 and 1954. 5. A. J. Waldegrave had been secretary of the Labour Church Union and responded to D. F. Summers’s letter in the Manchester Guardian requesting memories of the Labour Church, Cinderella Clubs and Socialist Sunday Schools. Letters, memoirs and interview notes collected in response to the letter are an invaluable picture of the life of the Labour Church and its offshoots and can be found in an appendix to Summers’s thesis, pp. 672– 739. 6. Trevor had been chairman from 1893 to 1895 though always felt himself totally unsuited to leadership both by ill health and latterly as he was beset by personal tragedy, the death of two of his sons soon followed by his first wife. 7. Controversy concerning the aforementioned second marriage, to Annie Higham, the woman who had nursed Trevor’s first wife through the final months of her illness until her death in 1895. 8. The topic of the ‘enigmatic ending’ to the autobiography and the ‘3 unrecorded years’ will be covered later in this chapter and the whole period in more detail Chapter 7 of this book. 9. Trevor, My Quest, p. 267. 10. Ibid., p. ii. 11. More investigation of the Labour Leader and the Clarion may ascertain whether there was any promotion of Trevor’s book or any criticism of it but I have found none to date in publications from the Labour Church Publishing Office. 12. Hereford, Philip Henry Wicksteed (1931), p. 217. 13. F. Melian Stawell, ‘Letter and review: ‘J. Trevor, My Quest for God (Labour Church Publishing Office, London, 1897)’, International J. Ethics 8 (1898), p. 534. 14. K. J. McKay, ‘Stawell, Florence Melian (1869– 1936)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography (Online Edition, [www.adbonline.anu.edu.au.biogs/A120069b.htm]) and obituary, The Times, 11 and 16 June 1936. 15. Ibid. 16. London and the Labour Church is covered in detail in Chapter 5 of this book. 17. Trevor, My Quest, p. 226. 18. There are many works on Victorian social and gender history including L. Davidoff, and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780 – 1850 (2007); R. B. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society 1650 – 1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres (1998) and A. Vickery, ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (June, 1993), pp. 383 – 414. Trevor’s attitude to his wife is typical of his time and his largely middle class upbringing; his attitude to female emancipation overall was more radical see pp. 37 – 8. 19. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 44.

228

NOTES

TO PAGES

26 –30

20. Trevor, My Quest, p. 223. 21. Marriage provided a security and bedrock to Trevor’s life that he never had as a child, though he ironically expresses the loneliness he experienced in marriage that he had never experienced before. He had never been lonely because he had never had close a personal relationship; his marriage therefore condemned him to bouts of loneliness and unhappiness when Eliza was not there. Trevor issues another warning – that ‘the comfort of marriage however could stifle radical thought and radical young men’. Trevor, My Quest, chapter XX ‘Marriage and Loneliness’ p. 165. 22. A. Tuckett, ‘Enid Stacy’, in N. Kirk, ed., ‘Women and the Labour Movement’ (North West Labour Hist. Soc. Bull. 7, 1980 – 1), p. 43. Tuckett is Enid Stacey’s niece. 23. Labour Church Hymn Book (1892). 24. ILP 4, 95/78, ILP Archive, K. Hardie to J. Trevor 23 April 1895, Francis Johnson. For full transcript see Appendix VIII. 25. There is some room here to question Hardie’s moral stand after concerns had been expressed over his relationship with Sylvia Pankhurst. See page 164 for further discussion. 26. Trevor, My Quest, p. 111. 27. Ibid., p. 141. 28. Ibid., ch. XX. 29. There is no biography of Brocklehurst and information on him is scant other than minutes of Labour Church meetings and his proposal to change the name of the ILP to the National Socialist Party in 1897. 30. Letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 682. 31. C. Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture 1884 –1914 (1990), p. 178. Chris Waters quotes ‘Waning popularity of glee-singing’, Halifax and District Labour News (27 March 1909), p. 1. 32. An overview of the type of social function carried out by the Labour Churches can be found in Cowman, ‘Peculiarly English Institution’, pp. 357– 68. 33. Waters, British Socialists, p. 178. 34. John Bruce Glasier (1859 – 1920) adhered to the precepts of self-help born from his upbringing in poverty. He rejected parliamentary politics in favour of local meetings, which suited his rhetorical style. For more on Glasier’s lecturing in the north of England and Scotland and discussion of him as a major ILP influence along with Hardie, MacDonald and Snowdon see D. G. Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party 1888– 1906 (1983). His diaries are also available in Liverpool University Special Collections [https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/library/sca/ colldescs/glasier.html]. 35. This is covered in some detail in later chapters and will not be included here as it does not directly affect the Labour Church; it comes after he severed all contact with them. 36. Trevor, My Quest, p. 12. 37. M. Watts, The Dissenters Volume III: The Crisis and Conscience of Non-Conformity (Oxford University press, Oxford, 2015), p. 49 – ‘The hateful mystery: the eclipse

NOTES

38. 39. 40.

41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

TO PAGES

30 –34

229

of eternal punishment, Part I, Chapter 7 is excellent on the power of hell fire preaching and loss of faith. J. Saville and R. Storey, ‘John Trevor (1855– 1930) Founder of the Labour Church’, J. M. Bellamy and J. Saville, eds, Dictionary of Labour Biography VI (2004), p. 249. Trevor, My Quest, pp. 16 – 17. Ibid., pp. 47 – 8. Trevor develops his theories on sex and sexuality throughout My Quest and dedicates a whole chapter to ‘Love and Destiny’ (VI) this must be considered the early stages of his interest into alternative moralities, sexualities and ‘Natural Religion’, p. 50. However as this happened after his affiliation with the Labour Church ended I will not go into it in great detail here. Trevor’s acceptance of homosexuals and homosexuality will be covered later. J. Trevor, The One Life (1909), quoted in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 47. I have been unable to locate a copy of One Life but this should not fundamentally detract from the book as it bears no direct relation to the Labour Church. It is, however, a prime source in the development of John Trevor’s moral and religious thinking after his departure from the labour movement. Trevor, My Quest, ch. VIII. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., ch. 10. Ibid., p. 64. Ibid. Ibid., p. 129. Ibid., pp. 87 – 9. Ibid., p. 89. Ibid., pp. 90 – 1. Ibid., p. 64. Only two of Trevor’s original letters survive at the Modern Records Office, these are to his nieces and do not cover the period in question. I have not found archival records of any of the letters Trevor chose to include in My Quest. As many of the letters were to his then fiance´e Eliza they may have been kept with her personal effects rather than his and subsequently lost. Trevor, My Quest, p. 99. Ibid., p. 118. Ibid., p. 119. The subject of the theology of the Labour Churches and the compatibility of an immanentest belief in God is covered in some detail in the chapter 4 of this book. Trevor, My Quest, pp. 151– 2. Ibid., pp. 211– 16. Ibid., p. 219.

230

NOTES

TO PAGES

35 –39

64. Hereford, Wicksteed, p. 99. 65. Wicksteed was responsible for the seminal pamphlet ‘What does the Labour Church Stand for?’ (Labour Prophet Publishing Office, London, 1891), which was reprinted many times over. 66. Hereford, Wicksteed, p. 99. 67. An example of Wicksteed’s work was the well-published pamphlet, P. H. Wicksteed, Christianity and the Personal Life: Christianity and Trade: Christianity and Politics: Elimination or Redemption: Being an Attempt to Answer the Question, Is Christianity Practical (1885). In this pamphlet, Wicksteed questions whether Christianity has a practical purpose or bearing on everyday life. He suggests, p. 5, that the practical application of Christianity ‘can be seen in the later Socialists belief in the ‘brotherhood of man’ and the development of the “Kingdom of Heaven” on earth’. This may have been Trevor’s first introduction to the concept or a collaboration of the ideas of the two men. 68. Hereford, Wicksteed, p. 218. 69. Ibid., p. 220. 70. The impact of Manchester, its politics and its community on Trevor, and how Manchester lent itself to the establishment of the first Labour Church has been covered in the introduction this book. 71. ‘Trevor, John (1855 –1930)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/38078]. 72. C. Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, 1856– 1941 (1991), p. 92. 73. J. Trevor, ‘Founding of the Labour Church’, Labour Prophet (March 1893). 74. Trevor, My Quest, p. 233. 75. This concept is covered in detail throughout the book. 76. Trevor, My Quest, p. 242. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid., p. 241. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid., pp. 241– 3. 82. J. Trevor, Labour Prophet, March 1893, originally published in the Inquirer, 11 July 1891, entitled ‘The Proposed Labour Church’. 83. Workman’s Times, 9 October 1891, quoted in Saville and Storey, ‘John Trevor’, Dictionary of Labour Biography, p. 250. There are several descriptions of the first Labour Church services but this is the most concise. 84. The ‘Principles of the Labour Church’ and a detailed analysis of each of them is covered in Chapter 4 of this book. 85. A detailed analysis of the growth of the Labour Churches and their geographical spread and individual characters are covered in Chapter 2 of this book. 86. Trevor, My Quest, p. 266. 87. Ibid. 88. Labour Prophet, Feburary 1895. 89. Trevor, My Quest, p. 266.

NOTES

TO PAGES

40 – 48

231

90. The debate over the Labour Churches status as a church and the criticism it received has been covered in the Introduction of this book. 91. Trevor, My Quest, pp. 244– 7. 92. Ibid., p. ii. 93. Harrison, J. F. C., Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: The Quest for the New Moral World (1969). 94. E. Yeo, ‘Christianity in Chartist Struggle, 1838– 1842’, Past & Present 91 (1981), pp. 109– 39.

Chapter 2 Organic Growth: An ‘Antidote to Black Clothes, Kid Gloves, Tall Silk Hats, and Long Faces’ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

Labour Prophet, November 1893. Labour Prophet, October 1894. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 215. Ibid., p. 216. Ibid., p. 217. Trevor, My Quest, p. 243. The development of the organization away from Trevor’s origins and its migration into the political sphere will be covered later in this book. Wicksteed in Labour Prophet, February 1892 in Hereford, Wicksteed, p. 224. Trevor, Labour Prophet, March 1894, p. 18. Quotation from a letter to the editor of the New Era, November 1892. John Trevor’s resignation letter from Upper Brook Street Chapel, November 1891, quoted in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 498. I have been unable to locate the original but this edited version appeared in the Labour Prophet, March 1893. Ibid. There is also a hint at millenarianism here, which will be covered later in this book. Reverend Rylett was a Congregational Minister from Bolton who went on to establish a Labour Church-style congregation within his existing Church, so far as his parishioners would allow. The Bolton Church went on to be one of the most successful and well-established Labour Churches, lasting over a decade. Labour Church Tracts are available at the BL, LSE and SHL. SHL Gro [G.L.] A.892, The Labour Church in Manchester and Salford, Statement of Receipts and Payments for year ending 30 September 1892: the Labour Church kept meticulous records of its finances publishing this statement in the first year of operation. It shows that the bulk of monies came from subscriptions (£192. 1s. 8d.) and collections at services (£204. 15s. 7d.), which contributed to a total £470. 13s. 11d. The deficits are dominated by the hire of halls, printing and the secretary’s salary (£68. 4s. 0d. p.a.). Although the statement shows a year-end profit of £2. 0s. 7d., unpaid bills left a deficit of about £12. SHL Gro [G.L.] A.892, Labour Church Subscription List for year ending 30 September 1892 lists approx 87 regular subscribers including John Trevor and his wife (both £1),

232

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

NOTES

TO PAGES

48 –56

Edward Carpenter (£1), the Wicksteeds (both £1) and Tom Mann’s Committee (2s. 0d). Documented by Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 14. SHL, Gro [G.L.] A.892, The Labour Church (Manchester and Salford) Form of Membership (n.d. but assumed to be 1892). The principles are analysed in detail in Chapter 4 of this book. Ibid. SHL, Gro [G.L.] B.P. [Ludlow] 14, Invitation and information to become Labour Church Pioneers (n.d. but assumed to be 1892), J. Trevor & H. Atkinson invitation. Ibid. SHL, Gro [G.L.] B.P. [Ludlow] 14, Labour Church Pioneers Form of Membership. Gro [G.L.] B.P. [Ludlow] 14, Work Suggested for Labour Church Pioneers. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 222. Trevor, My Quest, p. 257. Further comment on Trevor’s literary contribution will be covered later in this book. Resignation letter from Trevor to his Unitarian congregation July 1891, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, pp. 498– 502. Wicksteed, Christianity and the personal life, p. 5. Labour Prophet, November 1892. Ibid., November 1893. In turn, this laid the Labour Church open to criticism of class exclusivity; criticism of the Labour Church will be covered in detail in Chapter 5 of this book. H. McLeod, Religion and the Working Class in Nineteenth-Century Britan (1984) pp. 65 – 6. N. Kirk, Change, Continuity and Class: Labour in British Society, 1850– 1920 (1998); R. McKibben, Ideologies of Class Social Relations in Britian, 1880– 1950 (1990) and T. Griffiths, The Lancashire Working Classes, c.1880 – 1930 (2001). Summarized and cited in Kirk, Change, Continuity and Class, pp. 224– 5. Wilkinson, Christian Socialism, p. 5. Pierson, ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church’, p. 29. Fred Jowett, Speech (1902) transcribed from Jowett’s private papers in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, pp. 365– 6. ‘Trevor, John (1855– 1930)’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/38078]. C. Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, 1856– 1941 (1991), p. 92. Trevor, ‘Founding of the Labour Church’. J. Schneer, Ben Tillett (1982), p. 76. Ibid. F. Brockway, Socialism Over Sixty Years, The Life of Jowett of Bradford (1864 – 1944) (1946), p. 41. Ibid., pp. 40 – 1. Ibid., p. 41.

NOTES 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71. 72. 73.

TO PAGES

57 –62

233

Labour Prophet, August 1893. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 159. S. G. Hobson, Pilgrim to the Left (1938), p. 40. Ibid., p. 41. Labour Prophet, September 1894. Ibid. Hereford, Wicksteed, p. 226. As has been described in Chapter 2, this was also the period when Trevor’s son and first wife died, and his second marriage some four months later caused criticism within the Labour Movement. Much of this information was found in Summers’s comprehensive summary of the financial management of the Labour Church. H. Pelling, The Origins of the Labour Party (1965), pp. 134– 5. Wales was strongly ‘Chapel’ in the valleys, where it was a way of life, and the Labour Church was less dynamic here. Welsh nonconformity also became an integral issue within the question of Welsh Disestablishment in 1906, which was eventually passed by the Liberal government in 1914. Bevir, ‘Labour Churches and Ethical Socialism’, p. 47. Kirk, Change, Continuity and Class, p. 165. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 216. Pierson, ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church’, p. 29. See Appendix I. K. Laybourn, Philip Snowden, 1864– 1937: a Biography (1988), p. 19. Ibid., p. 23. The Colne Valley also provides a strong example and David Clark describes the similar influence of ethical socialism in Clark, D., Colne Valley: Radicalism to Socialism (1981). Ibid., p. 25. P. Snowden, An Autobiography (2 vols, 1934), I, p. 81. Ibid., p. 65. Ibid., pp. 75 – 8. Keighley Labour Journal, 14 May 1895. E. R. Norman, Church and Society in England, 1770– 1970 (1976), p. 179. Here he cites Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes. Norman’s work is typical of the work of many church historians who bypass the existence of the Labour Church at all. Historians of Labour History attach far more importance to it and give the movement far more credence. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 229. Trevor, My Quest, p. 258. Morris never lived in Leek but worked there with the weavers and material dyers for two years between 1875 and 1877. The Brotherhood Churches were established by J. B. Wallace in 1891, primarily in the south of England. A socialist congregation developed from Wallace’s existing Congregational ministry who began experimenting with co-operative business (in production and retail) in anticipation of the formation of a

234

74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

NOTES

TO PAGES

62 –69

complete co-operative community. Summers provides an interesting note that The Brotherhood Church of London welcomed a group of Russian exiles who met to plan and prepare the constitution that was the basis of the Bolshevik Party. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 739. William Morris Labour Church (Leek), The Book of the Opening of the William Morris Labour Church at Leek (1897). From the Leek Times, December 1896, in Book of the Opening, p. 5. The debts are mostly the result of the architectural overhaul and the decoration of the chapel which were carried out by local architect Larner Sugden. Detailed in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 419. From the Leek Times, December 1896 quoted in Book of the Opening, p. 5. Book of the Opening, p. 5. Ibid., p. 6. Personal memoir in Labour Prophet, October 1897. J. W. Mackail, ‘The parting of the ways’, address to William Morris Labour Church at Leek (Hammersmith Publishing Society, 5 October 1902), p. 12. J. W. Mackail, The Life of William Morris (1901), p. 336. Book of the Opening, p. 8. Mackail, ‘Parting of the ways’, p. 12. Ibid., p. 14. Letters to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, pp. 712– 13. S. Rowbotham, Edward Carpenter: a Life of Liberty and Love (2008), p. 83. Letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 714. L. Skellam, ‘Quakers in Leek’, Staffordshire Quakers, accessed online at [www.staffsquakers.org.uk/Quakers/20in/20Leek-ed.doc]. H. Mitchell, The Hard Way Up (1968), p. 158. Kingsford, P., Hunger Marchers in Britain, 1920– 1940 (1982), p. 38. Book of the Opening, p. 8. Kirk, Change, Continuity and Class, p. 143. Labour Prophet, March 1893. Book of the Opening, p. 7.

Chapter 3

Daily Life: Religion, Socialism, Radicals and Women

1. Mitchell, Hard Way Up, p. 25. 2. See Appendix VI: ‘The Principles of the Labour Church’ 1892 and 1906. An analysis of the principles will be covered in Chapter 4 of this book. 3. A more detailed analysis of the Labour Church Publications is covered in Chapter 6 of this book.

NOTES

TO PAGES

70 –78

235

4. Correspondence concerning Labour Churches, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, pp. 699– 732. 5. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 99. Reported to the author by Joseph Burgess, formerly of the Stockport Labour Church. 6. The religion of the church will be covered in part in this chapter but its theology and doctrine will be covered in Chapter 4 of this book. 7. Often money from the collection plate was used to support local communities, especially the families of striking workers. 8. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 222. 9. Observations of the buildings and their interiors come from multiple primary sources including reports and photographs in the Labour Prophet, the Clarion and John Trevor’s My Quest for God. 10. An example of a fee-paying invitation at a local town hall can be seen in the invitation to hear Dan Irving speak at Longton Labour Church, Longton Town Hall at a cost of 6d. L. Chew, ‘Dan Irving and Socialist Politics in Burnley’, North West Labour Hist. J. 20 (1985), p. 2. 11. Trevor, My Quest p. 234. 12. D. James, Class and Politics in a Northern Town, Keighley, 1880 – 1914 (Keele University Press, 1995), p. 166. 13. Ibid., p. 166. 14. The charter of the Labour Clubs and their association with the Labour Churches are covered later in this chapter. 15. A. J. Waldegrave, ‘Labour Churches: Notes for Mr Summers’, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, pp. 687– 9. 16. A. J. Waldegrave letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 689. 17. Ibid., p. 689. 18. M. McMillan, Life of Rachel McMillan (1927), pp. 75 – 6. 19. Ibid., pp. 77 – 8. 20. C. Benn, Keir Hardie (1992), p. 107. 21. Summers compiled a list of lectures and lecturers from individual Labour Church records, The Reformers’ Yearbook, the Labour Prophet, and the Clarion. Hardie’s relationship with John Trevor and his role in the publications of the Labour Church will be covered in the Chapter 6 of this book. 22. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 332. 23. The issue of cost was at its most obvious in London and is covered in detail in Chapter 6 of this book. 24. Letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 328. 25. Mitchell, Hard Way Up, p. 118. 26. Ibid., p. 119. 27. Schneer, Ben Tillett, p. 67. 28. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 243. 29. T. Mann, Memoirs (1923), pp. 85 – 97. 30. H. McLeod, Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (1974), p. xi.

236 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

NOTES

TO PAGES

78 – 85

Yeo, ‘New Life’, p. 11. McMillan, Life of Rachel, p. 27. Labour Prophet, May 1894. Yeo, ‘New Life’, p. 13. E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms in the Social Movement Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1965), pp. 126–49. K. Laybourn, The Rise of Labour: the British Labour Party, 1890– 1979 (1988), pp. 2 – 3. A. Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party (2001), pp. 12 – 15. Yeo, ‘New Life’, p. 7. Thorpe, British Labour Party, p. 15. Yeo, ‘New Life’, p. 6. Hobson, Pilgrim, p. 28. Ibid., p. 28. E. R. Pease, The History of the Fabian Society (1916), app. II, p. 269. See Appendix IV for the text of the Fabian Basis. Hobson reproduces the narrative in full in his autobiography in an attempt to describe the broad socialist values of the 1890s. This version remained the centre of Fabian Socialist thought until its revision in 1919. Hobson, Pilgrim, pp. 29 – 30. Ibid., p. 30. Ibid. ‘Trevor, John (1855 –1930)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/38078]. Yeo, ‘New Life’, p. 27. ILP National Administrative Council Minutes 28 May 1894 in Smith, Religion and the Rise of Labour, p. 81. L. Thompson, Blatchford, Portrait of an Englishman (1951), p. 99. Laurence Thompson was the son of Blatchford’s great friend and Clarion colleague, A. M. Thompson, and much of the biography is based on correspondence between Blatchford and Thompson, including family letters and private documents unavailable to the public. The Blatchford – Thompson collection is now available at the Manchester Central Library and Archive. This is also the latest published biography of Blatchford. There has also been limited research published on Blatchford and the Clarion organization: M. Sones, and L. Sones, An Introduction to Robert Blatchford and the Clarion Newspapers (1986); L. S. A. Jones, Robert Blatchford and the Clarion (1986); and L. J. W. Barrow, ‘The Socialism of Robert Blatchford and the Clarion’ (PhD, 1975). Trevor, My Quest, p. 257. This was also in relation to the growth of the Labour Churches. Yeo, ‘New Life’, p. 29. Ibid., p. 36. John Trevor, Clarion, 14 August 1894 in L. Barrow, and I. Bullock, Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, 1880– 1914 (1996), p. 48. Ibid., p. 37.

NOTES 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

TO PAGES

86 – 92

237

Waters, British Socialists. Yeo, ‘New Life’, p. 31. Labour Prophet letters and editorials from February 1893 to 31 May 1893. Labour Prophet, March 1893. Waters, British Socialists, p. 2. Ibid. Ibid. There are many references and articles relating to leisure time in the pages of the Labour Prophet; for example, the Labour Prophet of 6 December 1892. The articles were often in association with or relating to activities of Blatchford and the Clarion; some are even reprints of condensed versions of articles from the Clarion and the Labour Leader. Labour Prophet, May 1893. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 374. Ibid., pp. 374– 5. Waters, British Socialists, p. 162. Labour Church Record, January 1899. Waters, British Socialists, p. 190. Hobson, Pilgrim to the Left. K. Rhinehart, ‘The Victorian Approach to Autobiography’, Modern Philology 51 (February 1954), p. 181. William Bell Scott, Autobiographical Notes (1877), in Rhinehart, ‘Victorian Approach to Autobiography’. Smith, Religion and the Rise of Labour, p. 9. Ibid., p. 26 S. Mitchell, ‘Frances Power Cobbe’s Life and the Rules for Women’s Autobiography’, English Literature in Transition 50 (2007), pp. 131– 57. See P. M. Graves, Labour Women, Women in British Working Class Politics, 1918 – 1939 (1994) and J. Hannam, and K. Hunt, Socialist Women: Britain 1880s to 1920s (2002). G. Barnsby, Votes for Women: the Struggle for the Vote in the Black Country 1902 – 1918 (Socialist History Society, Social History Occasional Pamphlet series 3, 1994). L. A. Hall, ‘“What a Lot There Is Still to Do”: Stella Browne (1880– 1955) – Carrying the Struggle Ever Onward’, in C. Eustace et al., eds, A Suffrage Reader: Charting Directions in British Suffrage History (2000), p. 192. See also Chapter 1 supporting references in footnote 15. Mitchell, Hard Way Up, p. 116. F. Williams, Fifty Years March: the Rise of the Labour Party (1948), p. 193. M. Pugh. The Pankhursts (2001), p. 52. Ibid., p. 42. Ibid., p. 54. K. Hunt, Equivocal Feminists: The Social Democratic Foundation and the woman question 1884– 1911 (1996) pp. 15 – 17.

238

NOTES

TO PAGES

92 –98

84. H. Quelch, ‘Votes for Women’, The Social Democrat, 12 December 1906, pp. 713 – 16, [https://www.marxists.org/archive/quelch/1906/12/women.htm] last accessed 27 July 2017. 85. J. Liddington, ‘Rediscovering Suffrage History,’ Hist. Workshop J. 4 (1977), p. 4. 86. Transcript of Enid Stacey’s article, written as a dialogue between two socialist men, in J. Liddington and J. Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us (2000), pp. 127– 8. 87. Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 110. 88. T. Steele, Alfred Orage and the Leeds Arts Club, 1893– 1922 (1990), p. 13. 89. S. Stanley Holton, ‘The Suffragist and the “Average Woman”’, Women’s Hist. Rev. 1 (1992), p. 10. 90. J. Liddington, Rebel Girls, their Fight for the Vote (2006), p. 40. 91. Labour Church Hymn Book (1892), hymn no. 7, p. 6. 92. Liddington, Rebel Girls, p. 40. 93. Steele, Leeds Arts Club, p. 13. 94. Mary Gawthorpe was instrumental in organizing and writing much of the communication committing the suffrage and the socialist message to children. 95. E. Hobsbawm, Labouring Men; Studies in the History of Labour (1964), ‘The Fabians Re-considered’, pp. 250– 72. 96. Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, pp. 113– 14. Margaret McMillan’s name is mis-spelled as ‘Macmillan’ in the original quote. 97. Typed autobiographical essay, quoted in full in Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, pp. 113– 14. 98. Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, pp. 25 – 6. 99. Ibid., pp. 100– 1. 100. A. Foley, A Bolton Childhood (1973), p. 45. 101. Ibid., p. 46. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid., p. 68. 106. Yeo, ‘New Life’, p. 13. 107. Ibid., p. 68. 108. Mitchell, Hard Way Up, p. 16. 109. Ibid., p. 20. 110. Ibid. 111. It is possible that Summers did not recognise Hannah Mitchell from her letters, as her autobiography was published in 1963 some ten years after his thesis. But Summers tends not to use the information he gathered from women as thoroughly as information gathered from men, leaving a hole in his work. See Appendix III for a full transcript of Mitchell’s letter. 112. Mitchell, Hard Way Up, pp. 120– 1. 113. Ibid., p. 121. 114. Ibid., p. 122. 115. Barnsby, Votes for Women, p. 3.

NOTES

TO PAGES

98 –105

239

116. Christabel Pankhurst, ‘Women and the Independent Labour party’, ILP News, 1903 in Purvis, J., Christabel Pankhurst, A Biography (Routledge, Abingdon, 2018) p. 67. 117. Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, p. 113. 118. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, pp. 482– 91. 119. McMillan, Life of Rachel, p. 79. 120. Ibid., p. 79. 121. Ibid., pp. 83 – 4. 122. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 224. 122. Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 152. 124. Ibid., p. 164.

Chapter 4 Doctrine and Belief: ‘Laborare Est Orare’, to Work is to Pray 1. T. Carlyle, Chartism: Past and Present (1858), p. 201. 2. L. Hird, ‘The Labour Church’, quoted in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 657. 3. G. Dale, God’s Politicians: the Christian Contribution to 100 Years of Labour (2000), p. 19. 4. Ibid. 5. P. Jones, The Christian Socialist Revival, 1877 –1914 (1968), p. 29. 6. Ibid., p. 13. 7. J. A. Froude, The Nemesis of Faith (1849). 8. Id., Essays and Reviews (1879), quoted in Madden, M., ‘Curious Paradoxes: James Anthony Froude’s view of the Bible’, J. Religious Hist. 33 (2006), p. 208. 9. Ibid. The phrase quoted deserves to be included in Froude’s wider context: ‘At this moment, however, the most vigorous minds appear least to see their way to a conclusion; and notwithstanding all the school and church building, the extended episcopate, and the religious newspapers, a general doubt is coming up like a thunderstorm against the wind, and blackening the sky. Those who cling most tenaciously to the faith in which they were educated yet confess themselves perplexed. They know what they believe; but why they believe it, or why they should require others to believe; they cannot tell or cannot agree. Between the authority of the Church and the authority of the Bible, the testimony of history and the testimony of the Spirit, the ascertained facts of science and the contradictory facts which seem to be revealed, the minds of men are tossed to and fro, harassed by the changed attitude in which scientific investigation has placed us all towards accounts of supernatural occurrence.’ 10. Further comparison with the Methodist movement is useful, as it has been long established that it had a significant relationship with and influence on the ILP and Trade Unions. This book however will not cover Methodism and the labour movement in detail. 11. Jones, Christian Socialist Revival, p. 390.

240

NOTES

TO PAGES

105 –114

12. G. Massey in Labour Church Hymn Book (1892), opening page. 13. J. Trevor’s preface in Labour Church Hymn Book (1892). 14. E. R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1880– 1930 (1970). 15. E. L. Tuveson, ‘The Millenarian Structure of The Communist Manifesto’, in C. Patrides and J. Wittreich, eds, The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature (1984), pp. 326– 7. Tuveson speculates that Marx and Engels may have been influenced by the outburst of millenarianism in England during the 1840s. 16. Ibid., pp. 326– 7. 17. Tsuzuki, Edward Carpenter, p. 78. 18. The five principles are the most commonly quoted expression of the doctrine of the Labour Church. They were written by John Trevor for inclusion in all Labour Church publications and were first published in 1892. The five principles had become four by the Second Edition of the Hymn Book in 1906, after John Trevor had left the Labour Church in 1902. The changes in the Second Edition also went so far as to eradicate all mention of John Trevor. See Appendix VI. 19. This is the most commonly quoted expression of the principles of the Labour Church, written by John Trevor for inclusion in all Labour Church publications. 20. Labour Prophet, June 1894. 21. Labour Prophet in Jones, Christian Socialist Revival, p. 30. 22. J. Trevor in Labour Prophet, January 1892. 23. P. Wicksteed, ‘Is the Labour Church a Class Church?’, Labour Prophet, January 1892. The article was subsequently sold as a Second Series Labour Church Pamphlet. 24. Labour Prophet, January 1892. 25. Labour Prophet, June 1896. 26. T. Mann, A Socialist’s View of Religion and the Churches (1896). 27. Labour Prophet, October 1894. 28. The broader life of the Labour Church is covered in Chapter 6 of this book, which discusses the Whitman connection and the Eagle Street College. 29. Bevir, ‘Labour Church Movement’, pp. 217– 45. 30. Id., ‘Labour Churches and Ethical Socialism’, pp. 50 – 5. 31. Trevor, My Quest, pp. 248– 9. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Labour Prophet, January 1897. 36. See Appendix VI, ‘Principles of the Labour Church’. 37. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 261. 38. Labour Church Hymn Book (1906). 39. Jones, Christian Socialist Revival, p. 29. 40. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 243. 41. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 262. 42. Labour Prophet, November 1895.

NOTES

TO PAGES

115 –123

241

43. Labour Prophet, December 1897. 44. The Clarion, 3 October 1902. 45. A transcript of the baptism service can be found in National Council of Socialist Sunday Schools, Socialist Sunday Schools: a Manual (1923). 46. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 197. 47. No further detail of the marriage licence, form of service, or evidence of any marriages that took place could be found at the Leeds local archive. Reports of activity in Leeds come solely from the Labour Prophet. 48. A transcript of the marriage service can be found in Socialist Sunday Schools: a Manual. 49. J. Trevor, Labour Prophet, May 1893. 50. A ‘Suggested Order of Service If Conducted Entirely by the Labour Church’ (drafted in 1907 and first published in 1909) in Socialist Sunday Schools: A Manual. 51. K. S. Inglis, ‘The Labour Church Movement’, International Rev. Social Hist. 3 (1958), p. 445. 52. Letter to Summers, in ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 711. 53. Mitchell, Hard Way Up, pp. 120– 1. 54. Labour Prophet, November 1897. 55. Ibid. 56. F. H. Stead, The Labour Movement in Religion (1919), introduction. 57. E. Porritt, ‘The British Socialist Labor Party’, Political Science Quarterly 23 (1908), p. 468. 58. The ‘Disappearing Service’ and the circumstances surrounding it will be analysed in much further detail in a later chapter of this book ‘Decline’. All of the details of the services appear in several editions of the Labour Prophet. 59. Labour Leader, November 1894. 60. Bevir, ‘Labour Church Movement’, p. 237. 61. Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, p. 93. 62. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 243. 63. Ibid., p. 458. 64. Trevor, My Quest, p. 260. 65. Labour Prophet, January 1897. 66. See Appendix 6, ‘Principles of the Labour Church’. 67. R. Tressell, Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1914), pp. 168– 9. 68. Tressell’s letter is reproduced in full in R. Tressell, Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1993 edn). 69. Trevor, My Quest, p. 241. 70. C. Walsh, ‘The Incarnation and the Christian Socialist Conscience in the Victorian Church of England’, J. British Studies (1995), p. 351. 71. Ibid., p. 351. 72. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 217. 73. A. Weaver in Labour Prophet, August 1892.

242

NOTES

TO PAGES

123 –127

74. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 218. 75. Hereford, Wicksteed, pp. 221– 2. 76. P. Wicksteed, ‘What does the Labour Church Stand For?’, Labour Prophet Tracts, 1, ser. 2 (Labour Church Publishing Office London, 1981), pp. 7 – 8. First published in Labour Prophet, January 1891. 77. See the photograph on page viii. It shows part of the congregation of the Ashtonunder-Lyne Labour Church in 1901. They are well-dressed and none have shoddy clothes. This strongly supports the reported view of the upper working-class nature of the congregations 78. Unknown writer in Rev. W. Henry Hunt, ed., Churchmanship and Labour, Sermons on Social Subjects Preached at S. Stephen’s Church, Walbrook (1906). This collection of sermons is the most detailed analysis on Anglican attitudes to the Labour Church that I have found to date and it encapsulates both the questions asked of the Labour Church by Anglicans but also the answers that it is assumed would be given. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid. 81. Norman, Church and Society in England, p. 125. 82. P. Catterall, ‘The Distinctiveness of British Socialism? Religion and the Rise of Labour, c.1900 – 1939’ in M. Worley, ed., The Foundations of the British Labour Party (2009), p. 131. 83. F. A. Iremonger, William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, His Life and Letters (1948), p. 367. 84. J. Kent, William Temple: Church, State and Society in Britain, 1880– 1950 (1992), p. 1. 85. Ibid., p. 2. 86. Iremonger, William Temple, pp. 331– 2. 87. Kent, William Temple, p. 11. 88. Norman, Church and Society in England, p. 136. 89. Iremonger, William Temple, p. 332. 90. Ibid., p. 623. 91. Ibid., p. 333. 92. Temple, quoted in Wilkinson, Christian Socialism, p. 11. 93. Ibid. 94. Temple became Bishop of Manchester in 1921, Archbishop of York in 1929, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1942; Iremonger, William Temple, pp. 363 – 7. 95. Iremonger, William Temple, p. 332. 96. Rev. F. L. Donaldson, ‘Sermon X the Church and the “Labour Church”’, in Rev. W. H. Hunt, ed., Churchmanship and Labour, Sermons on Social Subjects Preached at St Stephen’s Church, Walbrook (1906). 97. Ibid. 98. Iremonger, William Temple, p. 332. 99. Donaldson, ‘Church and the “Labour Church”’.

NOTES

TO PAGES

127 –135

243

100. In 1891 Pope Leo XIII issued the Encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ on ‘The Condition of Labour’. This refuted the ‘false theories’ of socialism. Encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ (1891), in Catholic Encyclopaedia at [www.newadvent.org/cathen/ 12783a.htm]. 101. In 1931 Pope Pius XI issued a second Encyclical, ‘Quadragessimo Anno’, which endorsed ‘Rerum Novarum’ but acknowledged the poor condition of the workers. The suggestion though is that Fascism would be the ‘fatherly’ alternative. Encyclical, ‘Quadragessimo Anno,’ in Catholic Encyclopedia [www.newadvent.org/ library/docs_pi11qa.htm]. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid. 104. ‘Rerum Novarum’. 105. J. Wheatley, The Catholic Working Man (1909), p. 32. 106. D. Kirkwood, My Life of Revolt (1935), p. 215. 107. ‘Quadragessimo Anno’. 108. Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, pp. 151– 2. 109. Pierson, ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church’, p. 468. 110. Labour Prophet, November 1892. 111. Congregational Year Book (1895), in Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 230. 112. S. Mavor, The Churches and the Labour Movement (1967), p. 68. 113. Ibid., p. 68. 114. Ibid. 115. For more on the Anti-Socialist Union and similar bodies see Brown, K. D., Essays in Anti-Labour History: responses to the Rise of Labour in Britain (Macmillan, London, 1974). 116. The New York Times, December 1909. 117. L. Wilson, The Menace of Socialism (1909), pp. 256– 9. 118. J. E. Preston Muddock, Socialism Antagonistic to Christianity (1909). 119. Smith, Religion and the Rise of Labour, p. 9. 120. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 93. 121. Letters from John Trevor to the Upper Brook Street congregation in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 494. 122. Labour Prophet, January 1897. 123. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 93. 124. Labour Prophet, Feburary 1897. 125. Brockway, Socialism Over Sixty Years, pp. 81 – 2. 126. Trevor, My Quest, p. 249. 127. SHL, Burns 4279, John Burns Collection: A complete set of Labour Prophet and Labour Church Record newspapers, Labour Church Tracts and other publications can be found in this Collection. The items are acknowledged as having belonged to Burns. Burns might never have supported the Labour Church but he took an active interest in its publications. 128. Labour Prophet, February 1897.

244

NOTES

TO PAGES

135 –143

129. Trevor, My Quest, pp. 244– 6. 130. J. M. Bellamy and J. Saville, eds, ‘Edward Vansittart Neale (1810–1892), Christian socialist, Co-operator’ Dictionary of Labour Biography (1972), I, p. 253. 131. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 230. 132. Bevir, ‘Labour Churches and Ethical Socialism’, p. 47. 133. Yeo, ‘New Life’. 134. Ibid., p. 14. 135. Ibid., p. 18. 136. Tressell, Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (1997), p. 46. 137. K. Laybourn, ‘The Failure of Socialist Unity on Britain, c.1893– 1914’, Trans. Royal Historical Soc., 6th ser. 4 (1994), p. 153. 138. Ibid., p. 154. 139. Schneer, Tillett, p. 65.

Chapter 5

A Wider Voice: Socialists, Free Thinkers and Sexual Rebels

1. C. A. Clark, Labour Leader, June 1896, children’s column. Also repeated in the Labour Prophet children’s supplement of the same date. 2. Thompson, Here I Lie, p. 98. 3. Labour Prophet, January 1895. 4. See Appendix 1 for details of the Labour Churches and their localities. 5. S. G. Hobson quoted in D. Clark, Colne Valley: Radicalism to Socialism (1981), p. 146. 6. Keighley Labour Journal, 30 December 1894 and 19 December 1896, quoted in James, Keighley, p. 166. 7. Ibid. 8. The importance that the Labour Church attached to music and its function in the early days of the movement is acknowledged in Chapter 2 of this book. Chris Waters, in British Socialists, considered the role of music in the early socialist movement and covered the Labour Church in some detail. His work will not be reproduced here though attention will be paid to its reflection of the Labour Church). 9. Ibid., p. 101. Waters was keen to differentiate the music sung in socialist halls from that heard in music halls, which was of an altogether ‘less worthy’ nature. 10. Ibid., p. 97. 11. D. Pye, The Clarion, 1894– 1914: A New Way of Life (1995), p. 58. 12. Ibid. 13. Trevor is quoted in Waters, British Socialists, p. 101. I have been unable to locate this quotation in its original form. 14. Waters, British Socialists, p. 110. 15. Keighley Labour Journal, 10 2November 1895. 16. Dale, God’s Politicians, p. 38. 17. C. Sumpter, ‘Joining the “Crusade against the Giants”: Keir Hardie’s Fairy Tales and the Socialist Child Reader’, Literature and Hist. 15 (2006), pp. 34 – 49.

NOTES

TO PAGES

144 –150

245

18. Labour Prophet, April 1894. 19. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 426. Summers documents the existence of this church at Southgate Road North, though it is not clear whether this is a Junior Labour Church congregation or a Sunday School. It was formed c.1898 and had around 60 attendees. The curriculum had a socialist, educational and cultural content and, during the summer, had excursions to the countryside for natural study. 20. Bradford Cinderella Club, [www.cinderellaclub.org]. 21. Blatchford in Labour Prophet, May 1893. 22. Id., ‘The Cinderella Club’, Clarion Scout (February 1896). 23. Waters, British Socialists, p. 88. 24. Cinderella Clubs, Annual Report, 1893, Bradford Cinderella Club [www. cinderellaclub.org/history]. 25. Labour Prophet, May 1893. 26. Ibid. 27. Labour Prophet, May 1893. 28. Thompson, Here I Lie, p. 101. Merrie England sold over 1 million copies in Britain. A. M. Thompson’s autobiography received poor reviews and failed to be serialized in any newspaper. Although Thompson’s editor requested that Blatchford write an introduction, Thompson was loathe to ask his former colleague. Letters suggest that the relationship between Thompson and Blatchford was cool. University of Reading Special Collections, RKP 75/75, Letters to and from Alex Thompson. 29. Ibid., p. 101. 30. Labour Prophet, May 1893. 31. McLeod, Late Victorian City (1974), p. 29. 32. Eleanor Keeling Edwards was a prominent Liverpool Fabian who at this early point in her career also edited the Clarion Women’s Column. Keeling’s later marriage to Labour Annual editor John Edwards was a ‘socialist union’ and permitted her the freedom to continue her work and writing on the limitations and possibilities of marriage. See also K. Cowman, ‘“You Might be more Useful Together.” The Search for a Perfect Socialist Marriage in Fin De Sie`cle Britain’, Paper Published online at [www.iisg.nl.womhist/cowman.doc]. 33. Labour Prophet, October 1894. 34. Photographs and notes from the Socialist Sunday School at Unity Hall, Ayr Street, Ayr, c.1913 at Glasgow City Archives Online at [gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/springburn/ spring091.htm]. Mary Gray’s papers are deposited at the Socialist Party of Great Britain Archive, but early documents relating to her early work with the Socialist Sunday Schools are located at the Working Class Movement Library and Glasgow City Archives. 35. Songs: Socialist Sunday Schools, Working Class Movement Library [www.wcml. org.uk/Main/en/contents/creativity-and-culture/music/songbooks-and-sheets/ socialist-sunday-school-songbooks/]. 36. Ibid.

246

NOTES

TO PAGES

150 –157

37. G. J. Mayhew, ‘The Ethical and Religious Foundations of Social Politics in Britain: The First Generation and their Ideals, 1884 – 1931’ (D.Phil. book, York, 1981). 38. See Appendix VI for transcript of ‘Socialist Sunday School Commandments and Principles’. 39. Socialist Commandments (1911), Gallacher Memorial Library online at Red Clydeside [gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/redclyde/redcly079.htm]. 40. Songs: Socialist Sunday Schools. 41. Dale, God’s Politicians, p. 19. 42. Ibid., p. 40. 43. Photograph and notes from the Socialist Sunday School at Unity Hall. 44. Socialist Commandments. 45. F. Reid, ‘Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain, 1892 – 1939’, International Rev. Social Hist. 11 (1966), challenged the view presented by Hobsbawm in Primitive Rebels that suggested that the Socialist Sunday Schools also ‘constitute a “labour sect” cognate with the Labour Church but organizationally and geographically distinct from it and therefore representing an extension of the working-class sectarian tradition beyond the limits of the nineteenth century within which Hobsbawn seems to confine it’. I would agree with Reid’s view and my comment on the Labour Church as a sect is discussed in Chapter 6 of this book. 46. Letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 327. 47. I have been unable to locate a copy of the Children’s Labour Church Hymn Book. 48. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 334. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Songs: Socialist Sunday Schools. 52. F. Willis, 101 Jubilee Road (1949), p. 79. 53. Labour Prophet, October 1892. 54. C. Benn, Keir Hardie (1992), p. 107. 55. Labour Church Hymn Book (1892). 56. E. Carpenter, My Days and Dreams (1916), p. 108. 57. Tsuzuki, Edward Carpenter, p. 3. 58. Cited in Rowbotham and Weeks, New Life: the Personal and Sexual Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis (1977). 59. Rowbotham, Edward Carpenter, p. 326. 60. P. Salveson, ‘Loving Comrades: Lancashire’s Links to Walt Whitman’, Walt Whitman Quarterly Rev. 14 (1996), p. 59. 61. H. G. Cocks, Nameless Offences, Homosexual Desire in the Nineteenth Century (2003), p. 163. 62. Salveson, ‘Loving Comrades,’ p. 59. 63. Cocks, Nameless Offences, p. 161. 64. Ibid., p. 167. 65. M. Bevir, ‘British Socialism and American Romanticism’, English Hist. Rev. 110 (1995), p. 900.

NOTES TO PAGES 157 –164

247

66. Salveson, ‘Loving Comrades’, p. 61. 67. Cocks, Nameless Offences, p. 167. 68. Trevor, My Quest – last words of the autobiography. Trevor was influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. 69. Pierson, ‘John Trevor and the abour Church Movement’, p. 471. 70. Labour Prophet, 1895 in Cocks, Nameless Offences, p. 168. 71. Pierson, ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church Movement’, p. 471. 72. J. Trevor, ‘From Ethics to Religion’, Labour Church Tracts No 2. 73. W. Whitman, ‘I Sing the Body Electric’, in F. Murphy, ed., Walt Whitman Complete Poems (Penguin edn, 1996), p. 131. 74. Labour Prophet, April 1892 and, again, Labour Prophet, March 1896. 75. Cocks, Nameless Offences, p. 167. 76. Ibid., p. 167. 77. Letter to Walt Whitman from J. E. Holdworth, 15 December 1891 and response online at the Walt Whitman Archive [www.whitmanarchive.org/criticism/disciples/ traubel/WWWiC/9/med.00009.126.html]. 78. Salveson, ‘Loving Comrades’ p. 66. 79. Ibid., p. 64. 80. William Broadhurst address delivered at the Swan Hotel, 6 December 1930, in Salveson, ‘Loving Comrades’, p. 69. 81. Toward Democracy is a long prose poem written by Carpenter between 1883 and 1885. In it he ‘uses Whitman to reinvent the vocation of clerisy which to him had been betrayed by the inadequacies of traditional institutions’ in A. Elfenbein, ‘Whitman, Democracy, and the English Clerisy’, Nineteenth Century Literature, 56 (2001), p. 89. 82. Salveson, ‘Loving Comrades,’ p. 6. 83. Carpenter, Days and Dreams, p. 250. 84. Salveson, ‘Loving Comrades’, p. 6. 85. Elfenbein, ‘Whitman, Democracy’, p. 90. 86. ILP 4, 95/78, ILP Archive, Francis Johnson Correspondence, K. Hardie to J. Trevor 23 April 1895. See Appendix VIII. 87. Benn, Keir Hardie, p. 220. 88. ‘Trevor, John (1855 –1930)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/38078]. 89. R. Hillebrand, ‘The Oneida Community,’ New York History (2003) [www.nyhistory. com/central/oneida.htm]. 90. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, p. 128. 91. J. H. Mackay quoted in W. J. Fishman, East End, 1888 (1988), p. 1. Mackay was a regular contributor to the Labour Church and wrote tracts and published lectures. 92. M. Brodie, ‘Late Victorian and Edwardian “Slum Conservatism”: how different were the Politics of London Poor?’ in M. Cragoe and A. Taylor, eds, London Politics, 1770– 1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2005) p. 166. 93. Briggs, Victorian Cities, p. 15. 94. D. Tanner, Political Change and the Labour Party, 1900 – 1918 (1990), pp. 164 – 5.

248

NOTES

TO PAGES

164 –169

95. H. Pelling, The Social Geography of British Elections, 1885– 1910 (1967), quoted in M. Brodie, The Politics of the Poor: The East End of London, 1885– 1914 (2004), p. 27. 96. G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London, A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (1976), p. 363. 97. H. Pelling, Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (1968), p. 56. 98. M. Brodie, The Politics of the Poor: the East End of London, 1885–1914 (2004), preface. 99. Ibid., preface. 100. C. Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London (1902 – 3). Booth’s work was done between 1886 and 1903 before being published eventually in 1903. 101. There are exceptions to this rule. For example, Limehouse being one of the poorest areas in London. 102. Brodie, ‘Slum Conservatism’, p. 180. 103. Ibid., p. 183. 104. Booth in Brodie, ‘Slum Conservatism’, p. 181. 105. Hobson, Pilgrim to the Left, p. 24. 106. This is covered in great detail in Chapter 2 of this book. 107. East London Advertiser, 29 August 1891 and 24 October 1891 quoted in Brodie, Politics of the Poor, p. 8. 108. McMillan, Life of Rachel, p. 42. 109. Ibid., p. 38. 110. Labour Prophet, October 1892. 111. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 424. 112. McMillan, Life of Rachel, p. 73. 113. Ibid., p. 99. 114. Although McMillan’s book is titled Life of Rachel McMillan, it is an account of their lives together. Both women were single and politically active, and committed most of their adult lives to the provision of state nursery education and healthcare for poor children. 115. In an analysis of the life of the southern churches, once again, acknowledgement needs to be made to the empirical work done by D. F. Summers in 1953– 7. Summers catalogued evidence of Labour Churches and their longevity. His work is based on an exhaustive trawl through the Labour Prophet and Clarion newspapers and from personal interviews conducted with people who had first-hand memories of the Labour Churches. I do not use Summers’ conclusions but I do refer to his underused, detailed, personal correspondence, particularly the A. J. Waldegrave letters and notes. 116. Only Boxmoor is referenced in any documentation and is reported in the Clarion in 1903 as a ‘little church still at work’. 117. The work of John Trevor and this activity is covered in detail later in this chapter. 118. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 387.

NOTES

TO PAGES

169 –176

249

119. Waldegrave, ‘Notes for Mr Summers’, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 680. 120. Ibid. 121. Ibid. 122. Fishman, East End, 1888, p. 230. 123. Waldegrave, ‘Notes for Mr Summers’, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 680. 124. Ibid., p. 680. 125. Ibid., p. 681. 126. Waldegrave, ‘Notes for Mr Summers’, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 682. 127. Ibid., p. 682. 128. John Trevor in Labour Prophet, August 1895. There is a full transcript of the article in Appendix 9. Trevor’s article is the only information on London by Trevor himself and is the most detailed account of activity there. 129. Dr William’s Library was an established Congregational organization. 130. John Trevor, Labour Prophet, August 1895. 131. Both concepts will be covered in detail and when exploring London’s role in the decline of the Labour Church in last chapter of this monograph. 132. John Trevor, Labour Prophet, August 1895. 133. Ibid. 134. John Trevor in Labour Prophet, August 1895. 135. Despite efforts to gain access to this information, the Dr Williams’s Library informed me that the Trustees records are not available for research. 136. P. R. Thompson, The Struggle for London, 1885– 1914 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, University of Toronto Press, Bristol, 1967), p. 165. 137. Ibid., p. 165. 138. The failure of the Labour Churches in London matched that of the ILP and is vivid in the London ILP minute books LSE, CA1021/ILP/9, Independent Labour Party, Branch Minutes and Related Records 1892 –1967 and writings of the life of Tom Mann.

Chapter 6 Decline and Conclusion: ‘It was Perhaps Too Brilliant to Live’1 1. Wicksteed in Hereford, Wicksteed, p. 226. 2. Waldegrave, ‘Notes for Mr Summers’, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 686. The ampersands appear in the original. 3. Stedman Jones, Outcast London, p. 19. 4. D. Mares, ‘Transcending the Metropolis: London and Provincial Popular Radicalism, c.1860 – 75’ in M. Cragoe and A. Taylor, eds, London Politics, 1770– 1914 (2005), p. 123. 5. Covered in the Introduction to this book.

250 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

NOTES

TO PAGES

176 –182

Mares, ‘Transcending the Metropolis’, p. 127. Briggs, Victorian Cities, p. 361. Stedman Jones, Outcast London, p. 25. Mares, ‘Transcending the Metropolis’, p. 133. H. M. Hyndman, A Commune for London (1887), p. 1. Briggs, Victorian Cities, p. 48. Ibid., p. 330. Ibid. Thompson, Here I Lie, p. 93. The attitude that Thompson describes was c.1891 –2. ‘Rosebery’ is a reference to Lord Rosebery, Chairman of London county Council, 1889– 92, and later Liberal Foreign Secretary, 1892– 4 and Prime Minister, 1894– 5. R. Porter, London: a Social History (2001), p. 186. Ibid., p. 239. Briggs, Victorian Cities, pp. 320– 1. Thompson, Struggle for London, p. 37. Ibid., p. 36. Stedman Jones, Outcast London, p. 20. M. Watts, The Dissenters Volume III: The Crisis and Conscience of Non-Conformity (2015), p. 215. Problems with speakers, their cost, and hosting them are detailed in Chapter 3 of this monograph. As described in the London passages, plans to provide quality, home-grown speakers also failed. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 353. Ibid., p. 685. Letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 700. For a full transcript of the letter from Hannah Mitchell, see Appendix V. Letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 723. Summers’s monograph goes no further, as his research does not cover the decline of the churches. Labour Prophet, June 1895. Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p. 189. Smith, Religion and the Rise of Labour, p. 27. Ibid., p. 82. John Trevor in Pierson, ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church’; a letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, from Mrs Miriam Senior recalls MacDonald speaking at the Bolton Labour Church (c.1895), p. 709. Another letter from W. Barnett locates MacDonald speaking at Leek Labour Church (n.d. but post-1897), p. 712. Another letter from A. Jackson locates MacDonald speaking in Manchester (n.d.), p. 719. Labour Prophet, June 1895. McLeod, Religion and the Working Class, p. 49. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 247. Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p. 137.

NOTES

TO PAGES

183 –189

251

36. Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 37. 37. James, Keighley, p. 153. 38. McMillan, Life of Rachel, pp. 75 – 7. McMillan does not specify the year she describes but it is early in the church’s life, certainly before 1895. 39. The Clarion, September 1900. 40. Bevir, ‘Labour Churches and Ethical Socialism,’ p. 55. 41. Trevor, My Quest, p. 25. 42. Hugh McLeod concurs that diversity was part of the Labour Church’s downfall. In McLeod, Religion and the Working Class, p. 49. 43. W. J. B. Blake’s letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 715. The ampersands appear in the original. 44. A. J. Waldegrave’s letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 733. 45. John Trevor, Labour Prophet, July 1898. 46. Smith, Religion and the Rise of Labour, p. 82. 47. ILP, Series III, The Francis Johnson Correspondence, 1888– 1950, J. K. Hardie to J. Trevor, 23 April 1895. 48. Although the result of the 1895 election may have been a contributory factor, I have been unable to find direct evidence that this was the case. 49. Trevor, My Quest, p. 258. 50. A. J. Waldegrave’s letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 683. 51. Ibid., p. 683. 52. Labour Church Hymn Book (1906). 53. Fred Jowett, speech (1902) transcribed by Summers from Jowett’s private papers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 368. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid., pp. 368– 9. 57. Hereford, Wicksteed, p. 225. 58. Snowden, Autobiography, I, p. 94. 59. Reader quoted in Thompson, Robert Blatchford, p. 144. L. Thompson is the son of A. M. ‘Dangle’ Thompson of the Clarion. There has been no comprehensive biography of Robert Blatchford since L. Thompson, Portrait of an Englishman (1951), though there are several generic works on the Clarion and its organization. 60. Thompson, Robert Blatchford, p. 156. 61. Ibid., p. 157. 62. Ibid., p. 144. 63. The split was so severe that Trevor and the Labour Church do not appear in Blatchford’s autobiography, My Eighty Years (1931). 64. R. Blatchford, God and My Neighbour (1903) and id., Not Guilty, A Defence of the Bottom Dog (1906). 65. Blatchford quoted in Thompson, Robert Blatchford, p. 183. 66. Ibid., pp. 144– 5.

252

NOTES

TO PAGES

190 –193

67. A. J. Waldegrave’s letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 683. Waldegrave refers to the Boer War which had not yet started in 1898; I would consider this merely an error of memory considering the distance in time between the events and Waldegrave’s recollection. 68. Hereford, Wicksteed, p. 225. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. This monograph illustrates Labour Church attitudes to war, primarily focusing on its membership. It is acknowledged that it is not, and does not intend to be, a comprehensive analysis of socialism, the labour movement, and World War I. 72. A. Marwick, Clifford Allen: the Open Conspirator (1964), p. 20. 73. Ibid., p. 21. 74. ‘Socialist nations’ refers to socialist opponents of the war who felt that it was irreconcilable with their beliefs and the concept of a ‘brotherhood of man’. In particular Britain, Germany and France had socialist parties and a strong trade union movement. One of the Second International’s prime concerns was the prevention of a European War and 1912 Manifesto encouraged the working classes to unite and refuse to take up arms. 75. Schneer, Tillett, p. 3. 76. J. Bush, ‘Labour Politics in East London during and after the First World War’ in L. H Haimson and G. Sapelli, Strikes, Social Conflict, and the First World War (1992), p. 130. 77. Ibid., pp. 130 – 1. The National Socialist Defence League was formed by the right wing element of the socialist movement. They supported ‘the eternal idea of nationality’ and aimed to promote ‘socialist measures in the war effort’. 78. T. Jowitt, ‘Philip Snowden and the First World War’ in K. Laybourn and D. James, Philip Snowden. The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer (1987), p. 40. 79. Ibid. 80. Snowden quoted in Jowitt, ‘Philip Snowden and the First World War’, p. 42. 81. Ibid., p. 44. 82. Snowden, Autobiography, I, pp. 405– 6. 83. Brockway, Socialism Over Sixty Years, p. 141. 84. Pease, History of the Fabian Society, p. 234. 85. There is no evidence that Rupert Brooke was associated with the Labour Church. 86. J. M. Winter, Socialism and the Challenge of War (1974), p. 128. 87. Edward Carpenter was a pacifist and had been opposed to the Boer War. He joined the NCF before World War I. He wrote Pacifist Pamphlets, including Never Again: Project and a Warning Addressed to the Peoples of Europe (1916) and The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife (1915). 88. B. Wiesen Cook, ‘Democracy in Wartime: Antimilitarism in England and the United States’, American Studies 13 (1972), p. 62.

NOTES

TO PAGES

193 –195

253

89. Brockway, Socialism Over Sixty Years, p. 121. Jowett’s anti-war campaign had been founded as early as 1908 with his campaign against secret diplomacy – ‘Let us have light’. Jowett had believed that openness and lack of secrecy could have foiled the war. His opposition to the war also set him at odds with the pro-war Blatchford and brought an end to his work with the Clarion. 90. Clifford Allen was associated with the opening of the Leek Labour Church; and Fenner Brockway with Jowett and the Bradford Labour Church. Brockway was also editor of the Labour Leader. 91. M. Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain, 1914– 1945: Defining a Faith (1980), p. 33. 92. Marwick, Clifford Allen, p. 23. 93. Ibid., p. 22. 94. Ibid., p. 23. Allen was imprisoned after refusing both conscription and any alternative war work. He even refused to sew mailbags in prison for fear that it would be helping to fill the gap left by conscripted men. He spent the war in solitary confinement on a ration of bread and water. 95. Wiesen Cook, ‘Democracy in Wartime’, p. 61. 96. J. Vellacott, ‘Feminist Consciousness and the First World War,’ Hist. Workshop J. 23 (1987) and Wiesen Cook, ‘Democracy in Wartime’. 97. S. Steinbech, Women in England 1760– 1914: a Social History (2004), p. 295. 98. Mitchell, Hard Way Up, pp. 184– 5. Hannah Mitchell also actively supported her son’s membership of the NCF and appeared at his conscientious objector’s tribunal. 99. K. Cowman, ‘Incipient Toryism’: The Women’s Social and Political Union and the Independent Labour Party 1903– 14’, History Workshop Journal, 53 (2002), pp. 128– 48. 100. E. S. Pankhurst’s letter to A. Pankhurst (11 July 1918), Pankhurst –Walsh papers 20/16 in Pugh, Pankhursts, p. 307. Adela Pankhurst was a Labour Church speaker throughout Yorkshire and taught at Socialist Sunday Schools attached to the Labour Church at Halifax. 101. J. Vellacott, ‘Anti-War Suffragists’, History 62 (1977) and P. Summerfield, ‘Women and War in the Twentieth Century’ in J. Purvis, ed., Women’s History: Britain, 1850– 1945 (2000). 102. R. Hawkin’s letter to Summers, in Summers, ‘Labour Church and Allied Movements’, p. 724. 103. C. Allen, Is Germany Right and Britain Wrong? (1914), in Marwick, Clifford Allen, p. 22. 104. Laybourn provides a concise overview of the decline of the Liberal Party and the role played by World War I in K. Laybourn, Liberalism and the Rise of Labour, 1890– 1918 (1984). 105. Marwick, Clifford Allen, p. 22. 106. Jowitt, ‘Philip Snowden’, p. 39. 107. Liddington and Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us, pp. 17 – 18. 108. Waters, British Socialists, p. 190. 109. Salveson, ‘Loving Comrades’, p. 78. 110. Waters, British Socialists, p. 192.

254

NOTES

TO PAGES

195 –219

111. Ibid., p. 8. 112. Ibid., p. 3. 113. J. W. Mackail, ‘The parting of the ways’, address to William Morris Labour Church at Leek (Hammersmith Publishing Society, 5 October 1902), p. 16. 114. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, p. 148. 115. Ibid., p. 148. 116. R. Blatchford, The New Religion (1892). 117. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes, p. 225. 118. The Right Honorable Tony Blair MP in his foreword to Wilkinson, Christian Socialism.

Appendix IV

The ‘Fabian Basis’ (pre-1919)

1. Pease, History of the Fabian Society, app. II, p. 269. The words in italics were added after 1907 with little opposition. The ‘Basis’ was ‘the minimum of Socialism, without which no man had the right to call himself a socialist’, p. 177.

Appendix V The Principles of the Labour Church 1. Labour Church Hymn Book (1892). 2. Labour Church Hymn Book (1906).

Appendix VI The Ethical Basis of the Socialist Sunday Schools (1906) 1. All of the Appendix can be found in original manuscripts online at: Red Clydeside [www.redclyde/reegrosss.htm] and Working Class Movement Library [www.wclm. org.uk].

Appendix VII

John Trevor’s Labour Prophet Article on London (1895)

1. John Trevor, Labour Prophet, August 1895.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources Manuscripts Bolton Museum and Archive Service

Bolton Local Studies Unit, B 920 COL. ZJO/1/24, General Labour Church records (23 December 1892– 1 February 1893) plus J. W. Wallace Papers [Eagle Street College]; Women and Drink; Keir Hardie; General Booth; Visit to Annan; Horace Traubel on homosexualism. ZWN1, American Walt Whitman Fellowship Published Papers. ZWN2, Bolton Whitman Fellowship Papers. ZWN3, Papers relating to Bolton Whitman Fellowship Revival and Recent Deposits. ZWN4, Walt Whitman Correspondence. ZWN5, The Whitman Collection at Bolton Central Library. ZWN5/1, The Traubel Correspondence.

Cumbria Records Office

D/MAR 4/12, D/MAR 4/41, Collection of Catherine E. Marshall.

Lewisham Local History and Archives Centre

A94/6, Margaret McMillan Archive: A94/16, letters, 1902– 31. A94/16/A2, original documents and manuscripts, 1897– 1930. A94/16/A4, newspaper cuttings.

London School of Economics

CA1021/ILP/9, Independent Labour Party, Branch Minutes and Related Records 1892– 1967.

256

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Manchester Central Library Archives and Local Studies

GB127.MS 920.7 M65, Hannah Mitchell Typescript Autobiography. GB127.MS f920.5 B27, Papers of Robert Blatchford and Alexander M. Thompson. GB127.MS 920.5 T22, Thompson Notebook on Robert Blatchford.

Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick

GB 0394 SSS, Socialist Sunday School Collection, 1874– 1970s. MSS.143B, Records of the Labour Church. MSS.143, John Trevor Working Papers.

University of Greenwich

GB 2121, Margaret McMillan Collection.

University of Reading, Special Collections

RKP 75/5, Letters to and from Alex Thompson.

Newspapers

Birmingham Daily Post, 17 October 1891. Clarion, 1893– 1906. Labour Leader, 1891– 1914. Labour Prophet, 1892– 5. Leeds Mercury, 20 September 1892. Leeds Mercury, 31 October 1892. Manchester Times, 9 October 1891, 23 October 1891, 6 May 1892. Morning Post (Bradford), 2 August 1892. Northern Daily Gazette (Middlesborough), 2 December 1892. Northern Echo, 23 January 1894. Pall Mall Gazette, 11 January 1892. The Times, 12 October 1892, 16 January 1893, 29 November 1905. Women’s Trades Union Review (London), 1893– 1900.1

Hymn books, prayer books and supplements

The Congregational Hymn Book and Supplement (1880). Labour Church Hymn Book (Clarion Publishing Office, London, 1892). Labour Church Hymn Book (Labour Church Union, Bradford, 1906). Labour Church Hymn and Tune Book (Labour Church Publishing Office, London, sec. edn, 1896). Labour Church Hymn Book (Labour Church Union, Bradford, sec. edn, 1907). Wesley’s Hymns and New Supplement, A Collection of Hymns for the use of the people called METHODISTS by the Reverend John Wesley (Wesleyan Conference Office, London, 1881).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

257

Printed ephemera Labour History Archive and Study Centre (People’s History Museum), Manchester

MFR 3225, Archives of the Independent Labour Party, Series 3: The Francis Johnson Correspondence 1888 –1950.

Senate House Library, University of London: Special Collections

Gro [G.L.] A.892, The Labour Church (Manchester and Salford) Form of Membership (n.d. but assumed to be 1892). Gro [G.L.] B.P. [Ludlow] 14, Invitation and information to become Labour Church Pioneers: . . . . . .

J. Trevor & H. Atkinson invitation Labour Church principles Labour Church Pioneers Form of Membership ‘Pioneers! O Pioneers!’ poem by Walt Whitman Work suggested for Labour Church Pioneers ‘The Young Soldier’ poem by Lamennais

Gro [G.L.] A.892, The Labour Church in Manchester and Salford, Statement of Receipts and Payments for year ending 30 September 1892. Gro [G.L.] A.892, Labour Church Subscription List for year ending 30 September 1892. Gro [G.L.] A.892, J. Trevor et al., The Labour Church Manchester and Salford, review of completion of first year’s work, October 1892. Gro [G.L.] A.892, J. Trevor, The Labour Church, Manchester and Salford: A letter from John Trevor on the work of the Labour Church (Manchester, 1892). Gro [G.L.] B.P. [Ludlow] 14, J. Trevor, The Labour Church Brotherhood (London, 1896).

Printed primary sources and contemporary publications

Belfort Bax, E., ‘Socialism and Religion’, Justice 3 (June 1884), pp. 48 – 53. ——, ‘Socialism and the Sunday Question’, Justice 4 (August 1884), pp. 54 – 9. Besant, A., An Autobiography (Fisher Unwin, London, 1893). Blatchford, R., Numquam Papers (Edward Hulton & Co, London, 1891). ——, The New Religion (Clarion Press, London, 1892). ——, The New Religion, Passion Pamphlets 19 (Clarion Press, London, 1892). ——, God and My Neighbour (Clarion Press, London, 1903). ——, Not Guilty, A Defence of the Bottom Dog (Clarion Press, London, 1906). ——, My Eighty Years (Cassell & Company Limited, London, 1931). ——, Merrie England (Clarion Press, London, 1893, repr. Journeyman Press, London, 1976). Booth, C., Life and Labour of the People in London (Macmillan and Co., 1902– 3). Brockway, F., Socialism Over Sixty Years, The Life of Jowett of Bradford (1864 – 1944) (National Labour Press, Allen and Unwin, London, 1946). Carlyle, T., Chartism: Past and Present (Chapman and Hall, London, 1858).

258

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Carpenter, E., The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of their Strife (Allen and Unwin, London, 1915). ——, Never Again: Project and a Warning Addressed to the Peoples of Europe (National Labour Press, Manchester, 1916). ——, My Days and Dreams (Allen and Unwin, London, 1916). Conway, K. St John and Glasier, J. B., The Religion of Socialism (Labour Press Society Ltd, Manchester, 1894). Darwin, C., Charles Darwin Autobiography (Penguin, London, 2002 edn). ——, On Natural Selection (Penguin, London, 2004 edn). Engels, F., Condition of the Working Class in England (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1984 edn). Foley, A., A Bolton Childhood (Workers Educational Association, Manchester, 1973). Froude, J. A., The Nemesis of Faith (John Chapman, London, 1849). Gawthorpe, M., Up Hill to Holloway (Traversity Press, Penoscot, ME, 1962). Glasier, K. B., Margaret McMillan: Her Life and Work (Worker’s Northern Publishing Co., Manchester, c.1930). Hobson, S. G., Possibilities of the Labour Church: an Address to the Cardiff Labour Church (Cardiff, 1893). ——, Pilgrim to the Left (Edward Arnold and Co, London, 1938). Hunt, Rev. W. H., ed., Churchmanship and Labour, Sermons on Social Subjects Preached at S. Stephen’s Church, Walbrook (Skeffington and Son, London, 1906). Hyndman, H. M., A Commune for London (Justice Printery, London, 1887). Kirkwood, D., My Life of Revolt (Harrap, London, 1935). Lansbury, G., My Life (Constable and Company Ltd, London, 1928). Mackail, J. W., ‘William Morris’, The Dictionary of National Biography III (Smith, Elder and Co., London, 1901). ——, The Life of William Morris (Longmans Green and Co, London, 1901). ——, ‘The parting of the ways’, address to William Morris Labour Church at Leek (Hammersmith Publishing Society, 5 October 1902). Mann, T., A Socialist’s View of Religion and the Churches (Clarion pamphlet 10, London, 1896). ——, Memoirs (Labour Publishing Company Limited, London, 1923). ——, Tom Mann: Memoirs (MacGibbon & Kee, London, 1967). Mansbridge, A., Margaret Mcmillan: Prophet and Pioneer (Dent, London, 1932). McMillan, M., The Life of Rachel McMillan (J. M. Dent, London, 1927). Meek, G., George Meek: Bath Chair-man (Constable, London, 1910). Melian Stawell, F., ‘Letter and review: “J. Trevor, My Quest for God (Labour Church Publishing Office, London, 1897)”’, International J. Ethics 8 (1898), p. 534. Mitchell, H., The Hard Way Up (Faber, London, 1968). Morris, W., Manifesto of the Socialist League (Socialist League Office, London, 1885). ——, News from Nowhere (Reeves and Turner, London, 1891). Murphy, F., ed., Walt Whitman Complete Poems (Penguin, London, 1996 edn). National Council of Socialist Sunday Schools, Socialist Sunday Schools: a Manual (Gateshead, 1923). Owen, R., The Book of the New Moral World (Watson, London, 1849). ——, A New View of Society (London, 1927). Pankhurst, E., My Own Story (Virago, London, 1979 edn). Pease, E. R., The History of the Fabian Society (A. C. Fifield, London, 1916).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

259

Preston Muddock, J. E., Socialism Antagonistic to Christianity (Anti-Socialist Union, London, 1909). Quelch, H., ‘Votes for Women’, The Social Democrat, 12 December 1906, pp. 713– 716. ——, ‘Socialism and Sex Relations’, The Social Democrat, Vol. XI No. 8 August, 1907, pp. 456– 63. Rowntree, S., Poverty, A Study of Town Life (Macmillan and Co, London, 1901). Snowden, P., An Autobiography (2 vols, Ivor Nicholson and Watson, London, 1934). Stead, F. H., The Labour Movement in Religion (Holborn Press, London, 1919). St John Conway, K. and Glasier, J. B., The Religion of Socialism (Labour Press Society, Manchester, 1894). Tamlyn, J. A., Wine and Milk, Without Money, Without Price: Being a Labour Church Sermon (Manchester, 1895). Thompson, A. M., Here I Lie (George Routledge and Sons, London, 1937). Tillett, B., Memories and Reflections (J. Long, London, 1931). Tressell, R., Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Grant Richards, London, 1914). ——, Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Flamingo Harper Collins, London, 1993 edn). Trevor, J., God in the Labour Movement (Labour Church Tracts No. 1, 1892). ——, An Independent Labour Party (Labour Church Tracts No. 2, 1892). ——, ‘Founding of the Labour Church’, Labour Prophet (Labour Prophet Publishing Office, London, 1893). ——, ‘Theology and the Slums’, Labour Prophet Tracts (Labour Prophet Publishing Office, London, 1893). ——, ‘From Ethics to Religion, Labour Prophet Tracts (Labour Prophet Publishing Office, London, 1893). ——, ‘Our First Principle’, Labour Prophet Tracts (Labour Prophet Publishing Office, London, 1893). ——, ‘Man’s Cry for God’ (Labour Prophet Publishing Office, London, 1896). ——, The Labour Church in England, an unspoken address to the foreign members of the International Socialist Congress, London, July 1896 (Labour Prophet Tracts 4, 1896). ——, My Quest for God (Labour Prophet Publishing Office, London, 1897). Webb, S., ‘Socialism in England’, American Economic Assoc. 4 (April 1889), pp. 7 – 73. Wheatley, J., The Catholic Working Man (Catholic Socialist Society, Glasgow, 1909). Wicksteed, P. H., Christianity and the Personal Life: Christianity and Trade: Christianity and Politics: Elimination or Redemption: Being an Attempt to Answer the Question, Is Christianity Practical (William Reeves, 1885). ——, ‘What does the Labour Church Stand for?’ Labour Prophet Tracts No. 1, series 2 (Labour Church Publishing Office, London, 1893). William Morris Labour Church (Leek), The Book of the Opening of the William Morris Labour Church at Leek (Miller, Leek, 1897). Wilson, L., The Menace of Socialism (Anti Socialist Union, Richardson, London, 1909).

Secondary Sources Books

Ackroyd, P., London: the Biography (Chatto and Windus, London, 2000). Anderson, M., Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971).

260

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Ashton, T. S., Manchester Economic and Social Investigations, 1833– 1933 (Harvester Press, London, 1977). Barrow, L., Independent Spirits: Spiritualism and the English Plebeians, 1850– 1910 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, Abingdon, 1986). Barrow, L. and Bullock, I., Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, 1880– 1914 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996). Bealey, F., Labour Politics, 1900– 1906: a History of the Labour Representation Committee (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1958). Behagg, C., Labour and Reform: Working Class Movements, 1815–1914 (Hodder & Stoughton, Glamorgan, 2000). Benn, C., Keir Hardie (Hutchinson, London, 1992). Bevir, M., The Making of British Socialism (Princeton University Press, Oxford, 2011) Boos, F., ed., William Morris’ Socialist Diary (Journeyman, London, 1985). Bradburn, E., Margaret McMillan: Portrait of a Pioneer (Routledge, London, 1989). Briggs, A., Victorian Cities (Penguin, London, 1990). Briggs, J. and Sellers, I., eds, Victorian Nonconformity (Edward Arnold, London, 1973). Brivati, B. and Heffernan, R., eds, The Labour Party: a Centenary History (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2000). Brock, P., Pacifism in Britain, 1914 –1945 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980). Brodie, M., The Politics of the Poor: the East End of London, 1885– 1914 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2004). Brown, C. G., The Death of Christian Britain (Routledge, Abingdon, 2006). Brown, K. D., ed., Essays in Anti-Labour History (Macmillan, London, 1974). Ceadel, M., Pacifism in Britain, 1914– 1945: Defining a Faith (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980). Chadwick, O., The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000). Clark, D., Colne Valley: Radicalism to Socialism (Longman, London, 1981). ——, Victor Grayson: Labour’s Lost Leader (Quartet Books, London, 1985). Clarke, P. F., Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971). Cocks, H. G., Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the Nineteenth Century (I.B.Tauris, London, 2003). Cole, G. D. H., Guild Socialism Restated (L. Parsons, London, 1920). ——, British Working Class Politics, 1832– 1914 (Routledge, London, 1941). ——, A History of the Labour Party from 1914 (Routledge, London, 1948). ——, A History of Socialist Thought, III, The Second International, 1889 –1914 (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1956). Cooper, S. E., Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War in Europe, 1815– 1914 (Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1991). Cowling, M., The Impact of the Labour Party, 1920– 1924 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971). Coxhall, W. and Griggs, C., George Meek: Labouring Man: Prote´ge´ of H. G. Wells (New Millennium, London, 1996). Cragoe, M. and Taylor, A., London Politics, 1770– 1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2005). Crick, M., The History of the Social Democratic Foundation (Keele University Press, Keele, 1994).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

261

Dale, G., God’s Politicians, The Christian Contribution to 100 Years of Labour (Harper Collins, London 2000). Eustace, C., Ryan, J. and Ugolini, L., eds, A Suffrage Reader: Charting Directions in British Suffrage History (Leicester University Press, London, 2000). Evans, R. J., Comrades and Sisters: Feminism, Socialism and Pacifism in Europe, 1870– 1945 (Wheatsheaf, Manchester, 1987). Fishman, W. J., East End, 1888: a Life in a London Borough among the Labouring Poor (Duckworth, London, 1988). Fraser, H., A History of British Trade Unionism (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1999). Geary, R., ed., Labour and Socialist Movements in Europe Before 1914 (Berg, Oxford, 1992). Gleadale, K., The Early Feminists; Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women’s Rights Movement, 1831– 51 (Macmillan Press, Basingstoke, 1995). Graves, P. M., Labour Women, Women in British Working Class Politics, 1918– 1939 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994). Griffiths, T., The Lancashire Working Classes, c.1880– 1930 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001). Davidoff, L. and Hall, C., Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780– 1850, (Routledge, London 2007). Haimson L. H. and Sapelli, G., Strikes, Social Conflict, and the First World War (Feltrinelli, Milan, Italy, 1992). Hannam, J. and Hunt, K., Socialist Women: Britain 1880s to 1920s (Routledge, London 2002). Harrison, J. F. C., Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America: The Quest for the New Moral World (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1969). Hereford, C. H., Philip Henry Wicksteed (J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, London, 1931). Hobsbawm, E. J., Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1964). ——, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms in the Social Movement Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Norton & Company, USA, 1965). ——, Labour’s Turning Point, 1880– 1900: Extracts from Contemporary Sources (Harvester Press, London, 1974). ——, Worlds of Labour (Wiedenfield and Nicholson, London, 1984). Holroyd, M., Bernard Shaw: the One-Volume Definitive Edition (Random House, London, 1998). Hopkins, E., A Social History of the English Working Classes, 1815– 1945 (Edward Arnold, London, 1979). Howell, D., British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888– 1906 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1984). Hunt, E. H., British Labour History, 1815–1914 (Weidenfield and Nicholson, London, 1984). Hunt, K., Equivocal Feminists: The Social Democratic Foundation and the Woman Question 1884– 1911 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996). Hunt, T., Building Jerusalem. The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (Orion, London, 2005). Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (Routledge & K Paul, London, 1963). Iremonger, F. A., William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, His Life and Letters (Oxford University Press, London, 1948). James, D., Class and Politics in a Northern Town, Keighley, 1880– 1914 (Keele University Press, Keele, 1995).

262

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Jones, L. S. A., Robert Blatchford and the Clarion (Hyde Park Pamphlet 9, London, 1986). Jones, P., The Christian Socialist Revival, 1877– 1917 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, USA, 1968). Kent, J., From Darwin to Blatchford: the Role of Darwinism in Christian Apologetic, 1875– 1910 (Dr Williams’s Trust, London, 1966). ——, William Temple: Church, State and Society in Britain, 1880– 1950 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992). Kent, W. R. G., John Burns: Labour’s Lost Leader (William and Norgate, London, 1950). Killingsworth, M.J., The Cambridge Introduction to Walt Whitman (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007). Kingsford, P., The Hunger Marchers in Britain 1920– 1940 (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1982). Kirk, N., Change, Continuity and Class Labour in British Society, 1850 –1920 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1998). Lancaster, B., Radicalism, Cooperation and Socialism: Leicester Working-class Politics, 1860– 1906 (Leicester University Press, Leicester, 1987). Laybourn, K., Liberalism and the Rise of Labour, 1890– 1918 (Croom Helm, 1984). ——, Philip Snowden, 1864– 1937: a Biography (Temple Smith, Aldershot, 1988). ——, The Rise of Labour: the British Labour Party, 1890 –1979 (Edward Arnold, 1988). ——, A History of British Trade Unionism, c.1770 – 1990 (Sutton Publishing, Gloucester, 1992). ——, The Rise of Socialism in Britain (Sutton Publishing, Gloucester, 1997). Laybourn, K. and James, D., eds, Philip Snowden. The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer (Bradford and Libraries and Information Service, Bradford, 1987). Liddington, J., Rebel Girls, their Fight for the Vote (Virago, London, 2006). Liddington, J. and Norris, J., One Hand Tied Behind Us, the Rise of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (Rivers Oram Press, London, 2000). Lord, M., Margaret McMillan in Bradford with Reminiscences (Fourth Margaret McMillan Lecture, University of London Press, 1957). Markus, J., Anthony Froude: the Last Undiscovered Great Victorian (Scribner, New York, 2005). Marquand, D., Ramsay McDonald (Cape, London, 1977). Martin, J., Making Socialists: Mary Bridges Adams and the fight for knowledge and power, 1855– 1939 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2010). Marwick, A., Clifford Allen: the Open Conspirator (Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1964). Mayor, S., The Churches and the Labour Movement (Independent Press, London, 1967). McIlroy, J., Fishman, N. and Campbell, A., eds, British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics (Ashgate Publishing Group, Aldershot & London, 1999). McKibbin, R., Ideologies of Class Social Relations in Britain, 1880– 1950 (Clarenden Press, Oxford, 1990). ——, Classes and Cultures in England, 1918– 1951 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998). McLeod, H., Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (Croom Helm, London, 1974). ——, Religion and the Working Class in Nineteenth Century Britain (Macmillan, London, 1984). ——, Secularization in Western Europe, 1848– 1914 (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2000). Moore, J. R., The Transformation of Urban Liberalism (Ashgate Publishing Company, Aldershot, 2006).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

263

——, The Post Darwinian Controversies: a study of the Protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870– 1900 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979). Mutch, D., English Socialist Periodicals, 1880– 1900: a Reference Source (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005). Norman, E. R., Church and Society in England 1770– 1970 (Oxford University Press, London, 1976). Parsons, G., Religion in Victorian Britain (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1988). Patrides, C. and Wittreich, J., eds, The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature (Cornell University Press, New York, 1984). Pelling, H., The Origins of the Labour Party (Macmillan, Oxford, 1965). ——, The Social Geography of British Elections, 1885– 1910 (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1967). ——, Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (Clarendon Press, London, 1968). Pelling, H. and Reid, A. J., A Short History of the Labour Party (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1996). Poirier, P. P., The Advent of the Labour Party (Allen and Unwin, London, 1958). Porter, R., London: a Social History (Harvard University Press, USA, 2001). Preston, R. H., Church and Society in the Late Twentieth Century: the Economic and Political Task (SCM Press, London, 1983). Price, R., An Imperial War and the British Working Class: Working-Class Attitudes and Reactions to the Boer War, 1899– 1902 (Routledge and Paul, London, 1972). Pugh, M., The March of the Women: a Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, 1866– 1914 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000). ——, The Pankhursts (Allen Lane, London, 2001). Purvis, J., Christabel Pankhurst, A Biography, (Routledge, Abingdon, 2018). Purvis, J., ed., Women’s History: Britain, 1850– 1945 (Routledge, Abingdon, 2000). Purvis, J. and Stanley Holton, S., Votes for Women (Routledge, London, 2000). Pye, D., The Clarion, 1894– 1914: a New Way of Life (Clarion, Bolton, 1995). Reynolds, D. S., ed., A Historical Guide to Walt Whitman (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000). Robertson, M., Worshipping Walt: the Whitman Disciples (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2008). Rowbotham, S., Edward Carpenter: a Life of Liberty and Love (Verso, London, 2008). Sandeen, E. R., The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1880– 1930 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970). Savage, M., Class Analysis and Social Transformation (Open University Press, Buckingham, 2000). ——, The Dynamics of Working-Class Politics: the Labour Movement in Preston, 1880– 1940 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987). Schneer, J., Ben Tillett (Billing and Sons, Worcester, 1982). Sellers, I., Nineteenth-Century Nonconformity (Edward Arnold, London, 1977). Shapely, P., Charity and Power in Victorian Manchester (Chetham Society, Preston, 2000). Shepherd, J., George Lansbury (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002). Shoemaker, R. B., Gender in English Society 1650– 1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres (Longman, London, 1998).

264

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Smith, L., Religion and the Rise of Labour (Ryburn Publishing, an imprint of Keele University Press, Keele, 1993). Smith, W. S., The Religious Speeches of George Bernard Shaw (Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, 1963). ——, Shaw on Religion (Constable, London, 1967). Sones, M. and Sones, L., An Introduction to Robert Blatchford and the Clarion Newspapers (Clarion Workshop Press, Harrow, 1986). Stedman Jones, G., Outcast London: a Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Penguin, London, 1976). ——, Languages of Class, Studies in English Working Class History, 1832– 1982 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983). Steedman, C., Childhood, culture and class in Britain: Margaret McMillan, 1860– 1931 (Virago, London, 1990). Steele, T., Alfred Orage and the Leeds Arts Club, 1893– 1922 (Scolar, Aldershot, 1990). Steinbech, S., Women in England, 1760– 1914, A Social History (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2004). Stevinson, E., Margaret McMillan Prophet and Pioneer (Second Margaret McMillan Lecture, University of London Press, London, 1957). Tanner, D., Political Change and the Labour Party, 1900– 1918 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990). Taylor, A., Visions of Harmony: a Study in 19th Century Millenarianism (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987). Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1997). Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Victor Gollanz, London, 1965). Thompson, F. M. L., The Rise of Respectable Society: a Social History of Victorian Britain, 1830– 1900 (Fontana, London, 1988). Thompson, L., Robert Blatchford, Portrait of an Englishman (Victor Gollanz, London, 1951). Thompson, P., Socialists, Liberals and Labour: the Struggle for London 1885– 1914 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1967). Thompson, P. R., The Struggle for London, 1885– 1914 (Routledge and Kegan Paul, University of Toronto Press, Bristol, 1967). Thorpe, A., A History of the British Labour Party (Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2001). Torr, D., Tom Mann, (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1936). ——, Tom Mann and His Times, Volume One (1856 –1890) (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1956). Turner, M. J., Reform and Respectability: Middle Class Liberalism in early Nineteenth-Century Manchester (Chetham Society, Preston, 1995). Tsuzuki, C., Tom Mann, 1856– 1941 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991). ——, Edward Carpenter, 1844– 1929: Prophet of Human Fellowship (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008). Vickers, R., The Labour Party and the World, I, The Evolution of Labour’s Foreign Policy, 1900– 1951 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2003). Waters, C., British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884– 1914 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1990). Watts, M., Dissenters Volume III: The Crisis and Conscience of Non-Conformity (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

265

Weeks, J., New Life: the Personal and Sexual Politics of Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis (1977). Wilkinson, A., Christian Socialism: Scott Holland to Tony Blair (SCM Press, London, 1998). Williams, F., Fifty Years March: the Rise of the Labour Party (Odihams Press Limited, London, 1948). Willis, F., 101 Jubilee Road (Phoenix, London, 1949). Wilson, A. N., God’s Funeral (Abacus, St Ives, 2000). Winter, J. M., Socialism and the Challenge of War (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1974). Wolf, W., From Radicalism to Socialism: Men and Ideas in the Formation of Fabian Socialist Doctrines, 1881– 89 (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1975). Woodhouse, T., Nourishing the Liberty Tree, Liberals and Labour in Leeds (Keele University Press, Keele, 1996). Worley, M., ed., The Foundations of the British Labour Party (Ashgate, Farnham, 2009). Wrigley, C., ed., A History of British Industrial Relations, 1875– 1914 (Harvester, London, 1992). ——, British Trade Unions since 1933 (2002). Yeo, S., Religion and Voluntary Organizations in Crisis (Croom Helm, London, 1976). ——, A. J. P. Taylor, Radical Historian of Europe (I.B.Tauris, London, 2006)

Journal articles and book chapters

Adams, T., ‘Labour Vanguard, Tory Bastion, or the Triumph of New Liberalism? Manchester Politics 1900– 1914 in Comparative Perspective’, Manchester Region Hist. Rev. 14 (2000), pp. 25 – 37. Barnsby, G., ‘Votes for Women: Struggle for the Vote in the Black Country, 1900– 1918’, Socialist Hist. Soc. Occasional Paper, No. 3 (Lancashire Community Press, Preston, 1995). Bellamy, J. M. and Saville, J., ‘Edward Vansittart Neale (1810 –1892) Christian Socialist, Co-operator’, in Bellamy, J. M. and Saville, J., eds, Dictionary of Labour Biography (12 vols, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1972), I. Benenson, H., ‘Patriarchal Constraints on Women Workers’ Mobilization: the Lancashire Female Cotton Operatives, 1842– 1919’, British J. Sociology 4 (1993), pp. 613– 33. Bevir, M., ‘Welfarism, Socialism and Religion on T. H. Green and Others’, Rev. Politics 55 (1993), pp. 639– 61. ——, ‘British Socialism and American Romanticism’, English Historical Rev. 110 (1995), pp. 878– 901. ——, ‘Labour Churches and Ethical Socialism’, History Today 47 (1997), pp. 50 – 5. ——, ‘Annie Besant’s Quest for Truth: Christianity, Secularism and New Age Thought’, J. Ecclesiastical Hist. 50 (1999), pp. 62 –93. ——, ‘The Labour Church Movement, 1891– 1902’, J. British Studies 38 (1999), pp. 217– 45. Brodie, M., ‘Late Victorian and Edwardian “Slum Conservatism”: how different were the Politics of London Poor?’ in Cragoe, M. and Taylor, A., eds, London Politics, 1770– 1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2005). Broughton, T. L., ‘Impotence, Biography, and the Froude – Carlyle Controversy: “Revelations on Ticklish Topics”’, J. Hist. Sexuality 7 (1997), pp. 502– 36.

266

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Brown, A., ‘Edward Carpenter and the Waste Land’, Rev. English Studies 34 (1983), pp. 312– 15. Budd, S., ‘The Loss of Faith. Reasons for Unbelief Among Members of the Secular Movement in England, 1850– 1950’, Past & Present 36 (1967), pp. 106– 25. Bush, J., ‘Labour Politics in East London during and after the First World War’, in Haimson, L. H. and Sapelli, G., Strikes, social conflict, and the First World War (Feltrinelli, Milan, Italy, 1992). Catterall P., ‘Morality and Politics: the Free Churches and the Labour Party between the Wars’, Historical J. 36 (1993), pp. 667– 85. ——, ‘The Distinctiveness of British Socialism? Religion and the Rise of Labour, c.1900– 1939’ in Worley, M., ed., The Foundations of the British Labour Party (Ashgate, Farnham, 2009), pp. 131–52. Chew, L., ‘Dan Irving and Socialist Politics in Burnley’, North West Labour Hist. J. 20 (1985), pp. 2 – 12. Clarke, P. F., ‘The Progressive Movement in England’, Trans. Royal Soc. 24 (1974), pp. 159 – 81. ——, ‘Liberals, Labour and the Franchise’, English Historical Rev. 92 (1977), pp. 582– 90. Cowman, K. ‘A Peculiarly English Institution: Work, Rest and Play in the Labour Church’, Studies in Church Hist. 37 (2002), pp. 357–68. ——, ‘Incipient Toryism’? The Women’s Social and Political Union and the Independent Labour Party, 1903– 14’, History Workshop Journal, 53 (2002), pp. 128– 48. Davies, A., ‘Youth, Gangs, Masculinity and Violence in Late Victorian Manchester and Salford’, J. Social Hist. 32 (1998), pp. 349– 69. Donaldson, Rev. F. L., ‘Sermon X the Church and the “Labour Church”’, in Hunt, Rev. W.H., ed., Churchmanship and Labour, Sermons on Social Subjects Preached at St Stephen’s Church, Walbrook (Skeffington and Son, London, 1906). Elfenbein, A., ‘Whitman, Democracy, and the English Clerisy’, Nineteenth Century Literature 56 (2001), pp. 76 – 104. Fidler, G., ‘The Work of Joseph and Eleanor Edwards, Two Liverpool Enthusiasts’, International Rev. Social Hist. 24 (1979), pp. 293– 319. ——, ‘The Liverpool Labour Movement and the School Board: an Aspect of Education and the Working Class’, Hist. of Education 9 (1980), pp. 43 – 61. Geiger, H., ‘Great Reformers: Joseph Mazzini’, MANAS J. 2 (1945), pp. 1 – 12. Glaser, J. F., ‘English Nonconformity and the Decline of Liberalism’, American Historical Rev. 63 (1958), pp. 352– 63. Hall, L. A., ‘“What a Lot There Is Still to Do”: Stella Browne (1880 – 1955) – Carrying the Struggle Ever Onward’ in Eustace, C., and Ryan, J. and Ugolini, L., eds, A Suffrage Reader: Charting directions in British Suffrage History (Leicester University Press, London, 2000). Harrison, B., ‘Class and Gender in Modern British Labour History’, Past & Present 124 (1989), pp. 121– 58. Hobsbawm, E. J., ‘Methodism and the Threat of Revolution in Britain’, History Today 7 (1957), pp. 115– 24. Inglis, K. S., ‘English Nonconformity and Social Reform, 1880 –1900’, Past & Present 13 (1958), pp. 73 – 88. ——, ‘The Labour Church Movement’, International Rev. Social Hist. 3 (1958), pp. 445– 60. Johnson, G., ‘British Social Democracy and Religion, 1881–1911’, J. Ecclesiastical Hist. 51 (2000), pp. 94 – 115.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

267

Jowitt, T., ‘Philip Snowden and the First World War’ in Laybourn, K. and James, D., Philip Snowdon. The First Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer (Bradford Libraries and Information Service, Bradford, 1987). Kennedy, T. C., ‘Public Opinion and the Conscientious Objector, 1915– 1919’, J. British Studies 12 (1973), pp. 105– 19. Lawrence, J., ‘Popular Radicalism and the Socialist Revival in Britain’, J. British Studies 31 (1992), pp. 163– 86. ——, ‘Class and Gender in the making of Urban Toryism’, English Historical Rev. 108 (1993), pp. 629– 52. Laybourn, K., ‘The Failure of Socialist Unity on Britain c.1893– 1914’, Trans. Royal Historical Soc. 4 (1994), pp. 153– 75. Liddington, J., ‘Rediscovering Suffrage History’, Hist. Workshop J. 4 (1977), pp. 192– 201. Madden, M., ‘Curious Paradoxes: James Anthony Froude’s view of the Bible’, J. Religious Hist. 33 (2006), pp. 199– 216. Manton, K., ‘The Fellowship of the New Life: English Ethical Socialism Reconsidered’, Hist. Political Thought 24 (2003), pp. 282– 304. Mares, D., ‘Transcending the Metropolis: London and Provincial Popular Radicalism, c.1860– 75’ in Cragoe, M. and Taylor, A., eds, London Politics, 1770– 1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2005). McHugh, D., ‘The Labour Party in Manchester and Salford before the First World War: a Case on Unequal Development’, Manchester Region Hist. Rev. 14 (Special Issue: 100 Years of Labour, 1900 –2000, 2000), pp. 15 – 23. McKibbin, R., ‘Why Was There No Marxism in Great Britain?’ English Historical Rev. 99 (1984), pp. 297– 331. Mitchell, S., ‘Frances Power Cobbe’s Life and the Rules for Women’s Autobiography’, English Literature in Transition 50 (2007), pp. 131– 57. Moore, J. R., ‘Progressive Pioneers: Manchester Liberalism, the Independent Labour Party and Local Politics in the 1890s’, Historical J. 44 (2001), pp. 989– 1013. ——, ‘Liberalism and the politics of suburbia: electoral dynamics in late nineteenthcentury South Manchester’, Urban Hist. 30 (2003), pp. 225–50. Pearce, C., ‘“Typical” Conscientious Objectors – A Better Class of Conscience? No-Conscription Fellowship image management and the Manchester contribution, 1916– 1918’, Manchester Region Hist. Rev. 17 (2004), pp. 38 – 50. Pierson, S., ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church Movement in England, 1891– 1900’, Church Hist. 29 (1960), pp. 463– 78. Porritt, E., ‘The British Socialist Labor Party’, Political Science Quarterly 23 (1908), pp. 468– 79. Powell, D., ‘The New Liberalism and the Rise of Labour, 1866– 1906’, Historical J. 29 (1986), pp. 369– 93. Pugh, M., ‘Yorkshire and the New Liberalism?’ J. Modern Hist. 50 (1978), pp. D1139 – D1155. Reid, F., ‘Socialist Sunday Schools in Britain, 1892– 1939’, International Rev. Social Hist. 11 (1966), pp. 18 – 47. Rhinehart, K., ‘The Victorian Approach to Autobiography’, Modern Philology 51 (1954), pp. 177– 86. Robertson, M., ‘Worshipping Walt: Lancashire’s Whitman Disciples’, History Today 54 (2004), pp. 46 – 52.

268

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Sacks, B., ‘The Independent Labour Party and World War Peace Objectives’, Pacific Historical Rev. 5 (1936), pp. 161–73. Salveson, P., ‘Loving Comrades: Lancashire’s Links to Walt Whitman’, Walt Whitman Quarterly Rev. 14 (1996), pp. 57 – 84. Saville, J. and Storey R., ‘John Trevor (1855– 1930) Founder of the Labour Church’, in Bellamy, J. M. and Saville, J., eds, Dictionary of Labour Biography (12 vols, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2004), VI, p. 249. Sellers, I., ‘Unitarians and the Labour Church Movement’, Trans. Unitarian Historical Soc. 12 (1959), pp. 1 – 6. Soloway, R. A., ‘Recent Trends in Nineteenth Century Religious History’, J. British Studies 11 (1972), pp. 142– 59. Stanley Holton, S., ‘The Suffragist and the “Average Woman”’, Women’s Hist. Rev. 1 (1992), pp. 9 – 24. Stedman Jones, G., ‘Class Expression Versus Social Control? A Critique of Recent Trends in the Social History of “Leisure”’, Hist. Workshop J. 4 (1977), pp. 162– 70. Summerfield, P., ‘Women and War in the Twentieth Century’, in Purvis, J., ed., Women’s History: Britain, 1850–1945 (Routledge, Abingdon, 2000). Sumpter, C., ‘Joining the “Crusade Against the Giants”: Keir Hardie’s Fairy Tales and the Socialist Child Reader’, Literature and Hist. 15 (2006), pp. 34 – 49. Taylor, A. J. P., ‘Manchester’ in ‘The World’s Cities’, Encounter (March, 1957), pp. 3– 13. Thomas, K., ‘The Double Standard’, J. Hist. Ideas 20 (1959), pp. 195–216. Tuckett, A., ‘Enid Stacy’ in N. Kirk, ed., ‘Women and the Labour Movement’ (North West Labour Hist. Soc. Bulletin 7, 1980– 1), pp. 41 – 8. Turner, J., ‘Labour’s Lost Soul? Recovering the Labour Church’, in Worley, M., The Foundations of the British Labour Party: Identities, Cultures and Perspectives 1900– 1939 (Ashgate, Farnham, 2009), pp. 153– 70. Turner, M. J., ‘Local Politics and the Nature of Chartism: the Case of Manchester’, Northern Hist. 45 (2008), pp. 323– 45. Tuveson, E. L., ‘The Millenarian Structure of The Communist Manifesto’ in Patrides, C. and Wittreich, J., eds, The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature (Cornell University Press, New York, 1984). Vellacott, J., ‘Anti-War Suffragists’, Hist. 62 (1977), pp. 411– 25. ——, ‘Feminist Consciousness and the First World War’, Hist. Workshop J. 23 (1987), pp. 81 – 101. Vickery, A., ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (June 1993), pp. 383– 414. Walsh, C., ‘The Incarnation and the Christian Socialist Conscience in the Victorian Church of England’, J. British Studies 34 (1995), pp. 351–74. Wiesen Cook, B., ‘Democracy in Wartime: Antimilitarism in England and the United States’, American Studies 13 (1972), pp. 51 – 68. Wright, M., ‘Robert Blatchford, the Clarion Movement, and the Crucial Years of British Socialism, 1891 –1900’, Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism 13 (1990), pp. 74 – 99. Yeo, E., ‘Christianity in Chartist Struggle, 1838– 1842’, Past & Present 91 (1981), pp. 109– 39. Yeo, S., ‘A New Life: the Religion of Socialism in Britain, 1883– 1896’, Hist. Workshop J. 4 (1977), pp. 5 – 49.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

269

Theses

Barrow, L. J. W., ‘The Socialism of Robert Blatchford and the Clarion’ (PhD thesis, University of London, 1975). Bevir, M., ‘British Socialist Thought, 1880– 1900’ (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1989). Catterall, P., ‘The Free Churches and the Labour Party in England and Wales, 1918– 1939’ (PhD thesis, London Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1989). Goodfellow, I., ‘The Church Socialist League 1906– 1923, Origins Development and Disintegration’ (PhD thesis, University of Durham, 1983). Mayhew, G. J., ‘The Ethical and Religious Foundations of Social Politics in Britain: The First Generation and their Ideals, 1884– 1931’ (D.Phil thesis, York, 1981). Summers, D. F., ‘The Labour Church and Allied Movements of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’ (PhD thesis, Edinburgh, 1958).

Internet Resources Oxford dictionary of national biography

(Online edition 2008, last accessed 10 August 2010) ‘Allen (Reginald) Clifford, Baron Allen of Hurtwood (1889 – 1939)’, [www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/30390]. ‘Blatchford, Robert Glanville Peel (1851– 1943)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/ 31924]. ‘Brockway (Archibald) Fenner, Baron Brockway (1888– 1988)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/39849]. ‘Burns, John Elliot (1858 – 1943)’ [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32194]. ‘Froude, James Anthony (1818 – 1894)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10202]. ‘Glasier, John Bruce (1859– 1920)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38468]. ‘Glasier, Katharine St John Bruce (1867 – 1950)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/ 42338]. ‘Jowett, Frederick William (1864 – 1944)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/45910]. ‘MacDonald (James) Ramsay (1866 –1937)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34704]. ‘Mackail, John William (1859 – 1945)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34737]. ‘Mann, Thomas (1856 – 1941)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/34854]. ‘Rowntree (Benjamin) Seebohm (1871 – 1954)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/ 35856]. ‘Shaw, George Bernard (1856 – 1950)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36047]. ‘Trevor, John (1855 – 1930)’ [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/38078].

Other online sources

(Last accessed 10 August 2010 unless otherwise stated) Anon, ‘Richard Cobden’, Project Gutenberg [www.gutenberg.org/files/31793/31793 –8. txt]. Bradford Cinderella Club [www.cinderellaclub.org]. Charles Booth Online Archive [booth.lse.ac.uk/]. Cowman, K., ‘“You might be more useful together”. The search for a perfect socialist marriage in fin de siecle Britain’, paper published online [www.iisg.nl/womhist/ cowman.doc].

270

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Encyclical ‘Quadragessimo Anno’ (1931) Catholic Encyclopaedia at [www.newadvent.org/ library/docs_pi11qa.htm]. Encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ (1891) Catholic Encyclopaedia at [www.newadvent.org/ cathen/12783a.htm]. General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches [www.unitarian.org.uk]. Hillebrand, R., ‘The Oneida Community’, New York History (2003) at [www.nyhistory. com/central/oneida.htm]. Massey, Gerald, Minor Victorian Poets and Writers [www.gerald-massey.org.uk]. McKay, K. J., ‘Stawell, Florence Melian (1869– 1936)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography (Online Edition [www.adbonline.anu.edu.au.biogs/A120069b.htm]) Quelch, H., Harry Quelch Literary Remains, Marxist Internet Archive [https://www. marxists.org/archive/quelch/remains.htm] last accessed 21 August 2017. Skellam, L., ‘Quakers in Leek’, Staffordshire Quakers [www.staffs-quakers.org.uk/Quakers/ 20in/20Leek-ed.doc] last accessed 15 June 2010. Sylvia Pankhurst Papers [www.iisg.nl/archives/en/files/p/10765900full.php]. Unitarian Universalist Association [www.uua.org]. Walt Whitman Archive [www.whitmanarchive.org]. William Morris Internet Archive [www.marxists.org/archive/morris/index.htm].

INDEX

Anti-Socialist Union of Great Britain, 131–133 Ashton-under-Lyne Labour Church, 59, 76, 93, 97, 98, 151, 152, 153, 180 Besant, Annie, 32, 34, 78 Birmingham Labour Church, 33, 59, 76– 77, 98, 113, 152– 153, 179, 182 Blatchford, Robert, 27, 47, 77, 78, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 139, 144– 148, 159, 188, 189, 191, 195, 198, 208 Merrie England, 87, 144, 147, 189 Bolton Labour Church, 17, 52, 57, 93, 95, 195, 198 Association with Whitmanite Eagle Street College, 2, 156– 190 Whitmanite Fellowship, 156– 157, 159– 160, 198 Bradford Labour Church, 2, 10, 19, 33, 52, 53, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 74, 75, 77, 87, 88, 98, 113, 141, 173, 182, 183, 188, 187 established, 55, 57, 58, 71, inaugural conference of ILP, 83 Bradlaugh, Charles, 32, 162 Brocklehurst, Fred, 39, 57, 59, 119, 130, 159, 181, 182, 184, 198 Brockway, Fenner, 56, 193

Brotherhood Church, 79, 167, 178 Burns, John, 134–135 Campbell, Paul, 44, 69, 144, 162, 166, 167, 173 Carpenter, Edward, 1, 23, 47, 62, 65, 94– 96, 106, 111, 140, 142, 155–156, 159–160, 193 Christian Socialist Movement (Ethical Socialist Movement), 2, 103– 104, 107 Christian Socialist Revival, 15, 103 Christian Socialist, The, 126, 162 Cinderella organizations, 15, 18, 44, 117, 119, 140, 143, 144– 147, 150, 152, 153, 162, 179 Clarion movement(s), 70, 83, 88, 93, 142, 144, 195– 196 Cycling Club, 65, 86, 88, 133, 136, 157 Glee Club and Vocal Union, 65, 88, 141, 142, 144, 146, 152 Clarion, The, 8, 60, 85, 87, 92, 139– 140, 143, 144, 146, 147, 152, 168, 170, 174, 188, 189, 195 Collinge, Alice, 94 – 96, 159 Conway, Katherine St John (Glasier), 98, 99, 160 Crane, Walter, 62, 63

272

THE LABOUR CHURCH

Despard, Charlotte, 62, 95 Eagle Street College (Whitmanite), 2, 156–157, 159 Ethical Church, 2 ethical socialism, 2, 9, 44, 60, 61, 67, 72, 80–85, 86, 103, 104, 105, 111–112, 119, 120, 136, 141, 150, 157, 169, 173, 179, 185, 197 Fabian Society, 2, 36, 59, 79, 80, 81, 83, 87, 118, 170, 178, 192 ‘Fabian Basis’, 82, 220– 221 Foley, Alice, 88, 94, 95, 96, 195 Foley, Cissy, 94, 95, 96, 195 Gawthorpe, Mary, 94 – 96, 168 Glasier, John Bruce, 29, 68, 159, 193, 208 Glasier, Katherine, 62, 63, 64, 71, 95, 125, 159, 160 Gore-Booth, Eva, 93 Halifax Labour Church, 28 – 29, 52, 60, 116, 142 Hardie, Keir, 3, 4, 10, 15, 27, 40, 53–54, 75–76, 92, 119, 130, 136, 139–140, 143, 154–155, 159–160, 167, 186, 198 Hobson, S. G., 58, 74, 78, 81, 82, 89, 140, 166, 181, 185 Humanity, Church of, 2 Hyndman, Henry, 92, 177, 191 Jowett, Fred, 55, 56, 59, 77, 134, 182, 187, 188, 191, 193, 198 Keighley Labour Church, 61, 72, 141, 143, 183 Lansbury, George, 65, 77, 162 Labour Church Labour Church Hymn Book, 16, 17, 19, 60, 67, 105, 106, 115, 116, 139, 141, 142, 155, 176, 187

Labour Church Tracts, 14, 16, 123 Labour Church Union, 14, 18 – 19, 22, 38 – 39, 50, 51, 57 – 59, 67, 71, 75, 77, 98, 115, 119, 141, 154, 161, 162, 168, 170, 176, 181, 182, 183, 190 pioneers, 43, 47, 49 – 52, 166, 168, 181 publishing and office, 14, 19, 25, 27, 38, 58, 60, 161, 162, 173 settlement, 27, 161, 188, 170 Labour Church Record, 16, 60, 179, 182 Labour Leader, 29, 60, 125, 138, 139–140, 143, 155 Labour Prophet, 9, 14, 16, 22 – 24, 28, 38– 39, 49, 50, 52, 58, 60, 67, 69, 70, 77, 78, 86, 89, 93, 106, 108, 110, 116, 118, 120, 122, 130, 134, 139–140, 143– 144, 147, 149, 152, 154, 155, 156, 158, 162, 167, 170, 171, 176, 182, 190, 217– 219 Leeds Labour Church, 60, 62, 93, 114, 116, 153 Alfred Orage and Leeds Arts Club, 93 – 94 Leek Labour Church (William Morris Labour Church), 2, 33, 62 – 68, 73, 185 MacDonald, Ramsay, 2, 65, 154, 182, 195 Manchester, 4– 10, 163, 176, Manchester and Salford Labour Churches, 17, 27, 49, 57, 84, first Labour Church, 1, 4, 37, 43, 46 – 47, 49, 71, 166 Manchester Guardian, 16, 97, 147, 177 Mann, Tom, 26, 51, 62, 77, 78, 108, 110, 119, 120, 159, 167, 185, 192, 198 Martin, Caroline, 83, 98, 99, 150, 159 Massey, Gerald, 17, 105, 155 McMillan, Margaret, 27, 62, 65, 74, 75, 78, 98, 99, 107, 120, 144, 151, 162, 166–168, 173, 183, 184 Meek, George, 88, 195

INDEX Mitchell, Hannah, 69, 76, 77, 88, 91, 94, 96, 97, 99, 117, 151, 152, 154, 168, 180, 194, 195, 207– 209 Morris, William, 2, 33, 34, 62–66, 80–81, 85, 91, 96, 138, 140, 155, 182, 189 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), 98, 100, 194 Pankhurst, Adela, 93, 194 Pankhurst, Christabel, 97, 98, 194 Pankhurst, Emmeline, 26, 65, 93, 99, 194 Pankhurst, Dr Richard, 65, 92 Pankhurst, Sylvia, 160, 194 Roper, Esther, 93 Ruskin Church (Croydon Labour Church), 168–169 Ruskin, John, 5, 155, 169, 208 (letter) Salvation Army, 2, 36, 51, 79, 104 Snowden, Philip, 66, 61, 65, 72, 75, 77, 92, 95, 119, 143, 159, 183, 188, 191–193, 195, 208 Social Democratic Federation (SDF), 3, 7, 9, 74, 79, 80, 81, 82, 92, 97, 117, 118, 134, 136, 138, 146, 150, 156–157, 162, 166, 208 Socialist League, 81, 126, 198 Sproson, Emma, 97 Stacy, Enid, 26, 93, 98 – 99 Sunday Schools Socialist, 72, 116, 148–149, 150–152, 154, 168, 169, 214– 216 Cinderella, 148, 153 Labour Church, 153, 168 Unitarian, 152 Temperance Church, 2 Temple, William, 124– 126 Tillett, Ben, 36, 47, 55, 56, 59, 62, 77, 78, 82, 120, 138, 159, 166, 167, 172, 191, 219 Tolstoyian Ethical Guild, 179

273

Tottenham Labour Church, 174– 175 Tressell, Robert (Ragged Trousered Philanthropists), 121– 122, 137, 154 Trevor, John departure from Labour Church, 186– 190 first marriage, 25 – 27, 28 foundation of Labour Church, 1, 34 – 38, 123 Labour Church Brotherhood, 186– 187, 190 Labour Prophet (editorship), 9, 14, 22, 28, 38, 49, 52, 139–140, 190 My Quest for God, 20 – 42 and throughout contemporary criticism, 24 – 25 One Life, The, 30, 161 religious thought and collapse of faith, 20 – 42 second marriage, 27, 28, 90 Unitarian roots, 11, 14, 28, 33, 34, 35, 36, 46, 58 Unitarianism, 1, 12, 34, 37, 45, 152 see also Trevor, John, Unitarian roots Upper Brook Street [Church], 35, 43, 46, 67, 134 Vansittart, Neale Edward, 135 Waldegrave, A. J., 16, 20 – 21, 73 – 74, 169–170, 175, 180, 185– 187, 190 Webb, Sidney, 62, 159, 160, 167 Wheatley, John, 128– 129 Whitman, Walt, 1, 17, 23, 29, 33, 111, 140, 155– 160 Wicksteed, Philip Henry, 24, 27, 34– 37, 53, 55, 58, 108, 123, 130, 166, 170, 188, 190 Women’s Freedom League (WFL), 97, 98, 100 Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), 92, 94, 98, 100, 194