The Labour Church

Religion and Politics in Britain 1890-1914

Jacqueline Turner

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781784539436
• eBook ISBN: 9781786724021
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: History

The Labour Church was an organisation fundamental to the British socialist movement during the formative years of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and Labour Party between 1891 and 1914. It was founded by the Unitarian Minister John Trevor in Manchester in 1891 and grew rapidly thereafter. Its political credentials were on display at the inaugural conference of the ILP in 1893, and the Labour Church proved a formative influence on many pioneers of British socialism. This book 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. Jacqui Turner challenges previously held assumptions that the Labour Church was irreligious and merely a political tool. She provides a new cultural picture of a diverse and inclusive organisation, committed to individualism and an individual relationship with God. As such, this book brings together two major controversies of late-Victorian Britain: the emergence of independent working-class politics and the decline of traditional religion in a work which will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of the labour movement.

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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 approa...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. John Trevor: Reluctant Christian, Reluctant Preacher, Founder of the Labour Church
• 2. Organic Growth: An ‘Antidote to Black Clothes, Kid Gloves, Tall Silk Hats, and Long Faces’
• 3. Daily Life: Religion, Socialism, Radicals and Women
• 4. Doctrine and Belief: ‘Laborare Est Orare’, to Work is to Pray
• 5. A Wider Voice: Socialists, Free Thinkers and Sexual Rebels
• 6. Decline and Conclusion: ‘It was Perhaps Too Brilliant to Live’
• Appendix I List of Labour Churches and Congregations
• Appendix II The Constitution of the Labour Church as Approved at the Second Conference (November 1893)
• Appendix III Transcript of a Letter from Mrs H. M. Mitchell to D. F. Summers (2 August 1953)
• Appendix IV The ‘Fabian Basis’ (pre-1919)
• Appendix V The Principles of the Labour Church
• Appendix VI The Ethical Basis of the Socialist Sunday Schools (1906)
• Appendix VII John Trevor’s Labour Prophet Article on London (1895)
• Appendix VIII Letter from Keir Hardie to John Trevor
• Notes
• Bibliography