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The Spirit of Brotherhood: Foundations of British Christian Socialism
The first socialist organisation in Britain was not a trade union or a political party. Rather, it was a society founded to promote Eucharistic observance at St Matthew’s Church in Bethnal Green. The Guild of St Matthew (GSM), founded in 1877, was the child of Stewart Headlam (1847–1924), an eccentric Anglican priest with a dual commitment to Anglo-Catholic sacramentalism and socialism. The GSM had among its aims both the promotion of ‘frequent and reverent worship in the Holy Communion’ and the promotion of ‘the study of social and political questions in the light of the Incarnation’. Headlam’s view of politics was stark: he declared as the leader of the GSM that the ‘contrast between the great body of workers who produce much and consume little, and those classes which produce little and consume much, is contrary to the Christian doctrines of brotherhood and justice’, and that all Christians should seek to ‘bring about a better distribution of the wealth created by labour’.1 The connection between a high-church sacramentalism and socialism may not be immediately obvious, but for Headlam and others like him the two were intrinsically linked.
British Christian Socialism arguably has its origins in 1848 when Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–72), Charles Kingsley (1819–75) and John Malcolm Forbes Ludlow (1821–1911) joined forces to offer a Christian view of social questions as a response to the Chartist campaign for voting rights and parliamentary reform in the UK and the radical forces at work across the continent of Europe. Question marks remain, however, over whether these men, Maurice in particular, were fully committed to socialism. Nevertheless, they did bequeath a theology of God’s Fatherhood and human brotherhood, which was to become the keystone of the socialism espoused so clearly by Headlam. Headlam was followed by other Anglican clergy who took up the message of Christian Socialism, among them Henry Scott Holland, Charles Gore, Conrad Noel and William Temple, as well as Nonconformists such as the Wesleyan Methodist Samuel E. Keeble and the Baptist John Clifford. These men established a vibrant tradition of church socialism, which has lasted until the present day.
Christian Socialism did not remain purely the concern of the church. Unlike continental Europe, where mutual distrust characterised the relationship between the church and the political Left, the ethics of Christianity became part of the very DNA of the nascent Labour movement. James Keir Hardie was the key figure in the founding of the Scottish and the Independent Labour parties before he helped to form the Labour Representation Committee – later the Labour Party – in 1900. Hardie did not disavow the theories of Karl Marx – whether the orthodox doctrine enshrined by Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky, or the revisionist version offered by Eduard Bernstein – but, nevertheless, declared unambiguously that ‘the impetus which drove me first of all into the Labour movement, and the inspiration which has carried me on in it, has been derived more from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, than from all other sources combined’.2 In this Hardie was followed by George Lansbury, Arthur Henderson, Margaret Bondfield, John Wheatley, R.H. Tawney, and many others. The Christian Socialist principles first declared by Headlam on behalf of the GSM fundamentally shaped the Labour Party and had their ultimate triumph in the social democratic agenda enacted by the post-war Labour government.
Origins
It was the social and political turmoil of 1848 which proved to be the catalyst for Maurice, Kingsley and Ludlow to join forces. The three men met at Maurice’s house after the mass Chartist demonstration at Kennington Common in London, spending much of the night discussing how Christianity might respond to socialism. The immediate response was a leaflet, most probably written by Kingsley, seeking to dissuade the Chartist protestors from turning to violence and highlighting for them the necessity of seeking morality and virtue.3 Consider, the ‘Workmen of England’ were urged, the ‘men who are drudging and sacrificing themselves to get you your rights, men who know what your rights are better than you know yourselves’. ‘[T]urn back from the precipice of riot [for] there will be no true freedom without virtue.’4 This unblushingly paternalistic, moral-force argument hardly represents a thoroughgoing radicalism. Kingsley, according to historian of Christian Socialism Chris Bryant, had the instincts of a ‘Tory paternalist’ who was concerned less with economic or political reform than with the moral standing of the working class.5 Nevertheless, Kingsley would go on to draw attention to the ways in which the capitalist system exploited workers in novels such as Yeast and Cheap Clothes and Nasty, which stirred the consciences of his readers and garnered support for the co-operative ventures of himself, Maurice and Ludlow.6 Kingsley also condemned a hypocritical Christianity that sought to quash complaints about such an exploitative system, arguing: ‘We have used the Bible as if it were a special constable’s handbook – an opium-dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they were being overloaded – a mere book to keep the poor in order.’7 The Bible, Kingsley pointed out, speaks far more of the rights of workers and the duties of those who own property than contemporary preaching reflected.
After the initial leaflet the three men set up a journal, Politics for the People, ‘a rag-bag fusion of radical politics, liberal churchmanship and social conservatism’, which tended to lack concrete proposals and attracted criticism from the Chartists and other radical movements as much as it did from the conservative elements within the Church of England.8 This was followed by a series of Tracts on Christian Socialism, a name approved by Maurice, who had quickly emerged as the dominant figure within the group: ‘Christian Socialism [is] the only title which will define our object, and will commit us at once to the conflict we must engage in sooner or later with the unsocial Christians and the unchristian Socialists.’9 The fact that Maurice predicted such a conflict indicates that he saw himself or his colleagues as having to battle with secular socialists no less than with Christians who opposed socialism; by contrast, Christian Socialists in Britain, from the late nineteenth century onwards, would often work within, or at least alongside, the main current of left-wing and labour politics, even while they emphasised the unique religious reasoning for their socialism.
Maurice contributed the first Tract, in which his commitment to socialism was as ambiguous as that of Kingsley. In the opening paragraphs he declared that ‘I seriously believe that Christianity is the only foundation of Socialism, and that a true Socialism is the necessary result of a sound Christianity’; yet, in what followed, he remained vague on what that socialism actually entailed.10 Robert Owen and Charles Fourier were advanced as examples of socialism, yet Maurice argued that the co-operative schemes ...
