The Christian Left. Anthony A. J. Williams

1929–31, and were joined by Margaret Bondfield (1873–1953) and George Lansbury (1859–1940). Snowden was a strict Methodist, who came to politics via the ILP and the Free Church Socialist League, of which John Clifford had been a keen member. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Snowden was committed to maintaining free trade, balancing the budget and remaining on the gold standard, enduring criticism that he did not allow for a truly socialist budget; in his defence, however, both of these Labour governments were minority administrations that relied upon the support of Liberal MPs.⁹² Henderson was brought up as a Congregationalist but later committed himself to Wesleyan Methodism along with trade unionism; he was a key figure in the creation of Labour’s 1918 constitution, including the Clause IV, which would generate so much heated discussion in the decades which followed; he went on to serve as leader of the Labour Party from 1931 to 1932, after MacDonald had formed the National Government coalition.⁹³

Wheatley, a devout Roman Catholic, was excluded from the second Labour government because – along with his fellow Red Clydesider James Maxton – he had been critical of MacDonald and Snowden for not pursing a more radical agenda.⁹⁴ Indeed Wheatley was responsible for one of the few successes of the first, short-lived Labour administration, the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act (1924), which extended more central funding to municipal governments or the building of homes. Wheatley held that it is socialism ‘which emanates from that spirit of brotherhood which is ever present in the heart of man but is so often suppressed by the struggle for existence’, arguing that the competitive environment engendered by capitalism did not allow for people to live as children of God.⁹⁵ Wheatley struggled to reconcile his political views with the opposition – both official and unofficial – of his church. The official opposition came in the 1891 papal encyclical Rerum novarum, when Pope Leo XIII, while attacking the abuses and injustice of capitalism, condemned socialism.⁹⁶ The unofficial came when Wheatley’s own parish priest incited a mob to protest outside his house; Wheatley responded to this with what, especially under the circumstance, was a highly eloquent speech attacking the capitalist class for stealing the universal God-given right to share in the beauty of creation and enjoy a flourishing life.⁹⁷ ‘The Catholic Church,’ Wheatley maintained, ‘has always leaned more to socialism or collectivism and equality, than to individualism and inequality. It has always been the church of the poor and all historical attacks on it have emanated from the rich.’⁹⁸

      Bondfield, a Congregationalist and trade-union activist, became the first female cabinet minister in 1929. Although she spent a part of her life away from the church after a deacon admonished her to choose between church and union – taking him at his word she chose the latter – it was her Nonconformist upbringing that provided the basis for her socialism and the campaigns against the exploitation of female shop workers such as she had been.⁹⁹ Bondfield’s aim was to see the Golden Rule – ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ – applied to economy and society, suggesting that this would involve state ownership of key industries and the financial sector.¹⁰⁰ Crucially for Bondfield it was not sufficient merely for industries to be nationalised, but that their priority should be service to the public rather than the pursuit of profit.¹⁰¹ Neither would state ownership go far enough if workers and consumers were not involved in the management of industry; while such a situation would be an improvement upon private ownership, it would not allow fully the spirit of co-operation to develop. Socialism, Bondfield argued, must involve ‘the reorganisation of society on the basis of both political and industrial democracy’.¹⁰² Another noteworthy figure is Ellen Wilkinson (1891–1947), distinguished by her role as co-author of the 1945 Labour Party manifesto, who declared the need to combat ‘injustice’ wherever it afflicted ‘human beings, the children of God’.¹⁰³

Lansbury remains among the best known of the British Christian Socialists. A committed Anglican, he was one of the most forceful and consistent exponents of Christian Socialism’s core concept of, as he phrased it, God’s ‘Fatherhood and the consequent Brotherhood of man’.¹⁰⁴ For Lansbury all the injustices and exploitation of capitalist society come as a result of humanity’s failure to live according to these universal principles; yet he never lost hope that people could unlearn the selfishness of capitalistic Mammon worship and live together as children of one Father.¹⁰⁵ Sadly Lansbury’s reputation has been tarnished by his unwillingness as Labour Party leader in the mid 1930s to countenance war against the Axis powers; he was ‘efficiently and brutally removed from the leadership in 1935’.¹⁰⁶ Lansbury committed himself to a peace crusade in the years leading up to the war, meeting with Adolf Hitler in 1937 in an ill-fated attempt to avert the inevitable and, as late as 1939, imploring Hitler by telegram: ‘All mankind is looking to you and Signor Mussolini for such a response as will lead all nations away from war and along the road to peace through cooperation and sharing territories, markets and resources for the service of each other.’¹⁰⁷

      It is easy from our historical vantage point to hold in contempt those such as Lansbury – a sincere and unyielding pacifist in any and all circumstances – who, even faced with such evil, sought peace at all costs. We need to remember that the Great War – the first total war, unprecedented in its bloodshed and carnage – was still fresh in the minds of those who hoped they could prevent another cataclysm. Lansbury in particular has been painted as naive, too saintly minded for the dirty world of real-life politics. This view is mistaken: it overlooks Lansbury’s hard-headed leadership of the Poplar Rates Rebellion in which many concessions were won for the residents of that impoverished borough; it cannot account for Lansbury’s achievements as the First Commissioner for Works in the 1929–31 government; nor does it give Lansbury enough credit for sustaining the Labour Party after the electoral disaster of 1931, ensuring, with Clement Attlee as his deputy, that there remained a genuine opposition to MacDonald’s Conservative-dominated National Government and an alternative vision for the country which could be put to the electorate in 1945.

We have already noted William Temple as one of the proximate architects of that vision. Another was Temple’s close friend and fellow Anglican Richard H. Tawney (1880–1962). Tawney, an economic historian and Labour Party activist, set out his view on the events of 1931 in a famous essay, ‘The Choice Before the Labour Party’, published in Political Quarterly in 1932. Tawney argued, while naming no names, that the Labour Party had been overly cautious, failing to commit itself to restructuring the social order and allowing itself to be satisfied with a few efforts to make capitalism more bearable.¹⁰⁸ Is it surprising, asked Tawney, given Labour’s lack of vision, if the electorate ‘concluded that, since capitalism was the order of the day, it had better continue to be administered by capitalists, who, at any rate – so, poor innocents, they supposed – knew how to make the thing work?’¹⁰⁹ In place of this noncommittal attitude Tawney called for ‘a serious effort […] to create organs through which the nation can control, in cooperation with other nations, its own economic destinies; plan its business as it deems most conducive to the general well-being; override, for the sake of economic efficiency, the obstruction of vested interests; and distribute the product of its labours in accordance with some generally recognised principles of justice’.¹¹⁰ Tawney was well placed to make such criticisms. He had drafted the 1929 manifesto Labour and the Nation, committing the party – at least on paper – to a socialism that he framed as a moral imperative.¹¹¹ If MacDonald’s actions in forming the National Government are a betrayal of socialism, then they are a betrayal of Tawney’s socialism.

      Tawney’s socialism was clearly and unapologetically Christian. For Tawney, the ‘essence of all morality’ is ‘to believe that every human being is of infinite importance, and that no consideration of expediency can justify the oppression of one by another’. But, he added, ‘to believe this it is necessary to believe in God’.¹¹² This remark, though, was made in Tawney’s private diary and only published posthumously. Some have suggested, on the basis of Tawney’s public writing, that he is rather more secular-minded than is often interpreted; some of Tawney’s key works – for example, most of The Acquisitive Society, published 1920 – keep rather quiet about any religious basis for socialism.¹¹³ This argument, though, is hard to square with the final chapter of The Acquisitive Society, which sets out unmistakably