The Henson Journals

[91]

Tuesday, August 10th, 1926.

We left Hartlebury Castle a few minutes before 10 a.m., and motored to Bramfield in Suffolk, a distance of 198 miles, where we arrived a few minutes before 8 p.m. Our route lay through Stratford–on–Avon, Banbury, Buckingham, Bedford, Cambridge, Bury St Edmunds, Diss, Harleston and Halesworth. We lunched in Buckingham, and had tea in Cambridge. The landlord of the hotel in Buckingham, a young–looking man claimed to have seen me when I came as Canon to Westminster, and he was footman to Wilberforce. He said that the opening of Stow School had benefitted his trade. We walked to the rather impressive–looking parish church, & were disappointed to find that it was a modern building of which the foundation stone was laid by the Duke of Buckingham & Chandos in 1865.

I was surprised to read in the Morning Post of yesterday, the wholly false statement that I had given them an "exclusive interview" on the Mines problem. They reproduced from the local paper of Bishop Auckland the interview (or some part of the interview) which I gave to the editor some weeks since, and this without my knowledge!

[92]

The Dean of Worcester had a foolish letter in today's Times, which explains his manifest uneasiness when I spoke to him yesterday about the folly & mischief of the Bishops' interference in the Strike. He defends the Bishops' action against certain criticisms which it has provoked, and he appeals to his experience of successful episcopal intervention in the case of Bishop Westcott. The letter, which I read before starting, set me thinking, and the lines of a possible answer suggested themselves thus:

1. The bishops are dominated by an obsolete version of the relations between employers and employed, and ignore the change which has passed on English Society during the last generation. Industry is a law–regulated co–operation in which the limits of individual action are narrowly limited.

2. They ignore the conditions under which the mining industry proceeds, and its relation to other industries. Foreign markets are vital; they are challenged: they are being rapidly lost, because the cost of production (i.e. wages & hours) is quite excessive. The relevant facts have been ascertained by an independent authority.

3. Their conception of "the Church" is quite obsolete, being indeed the old medieval conception that the Church = the Clergy, with the difference that the circumstances which made that conception not wholly absurd in the Middle Ages have wholly passed away. The modern equivalent of the medieval clerics is not the bishops & clergy of the Established Church, even when [93] united with some sympathetic nonconformists, but the whole educated and professional classes apart from the fighting services. The P. M. is more nearly the modern equivalent of St Thomas of Canterbury, or Stephen Langton, or Dunstan in the secular sphere than his present Grace of Canterbury.

4. The precedent of Bishop Westcott's action is really quite inapplicable to the present situation. Then the conflict was local: it was really a dispute within the industry: the men were suffering the hardships without public help: they were confessedly beaten, and invited the Bishop's intervention. What could the Bishop have done today? What wd his attitude have been towards Mr Cook? Would he have approved the new Communism?

5. The effect of the Bishops' Intervention has been, and will be very mischievous. It has prolonged the crisis: obscured the true issue from the miners, & stimulated their natural but most mischievous disposition to think of themselves as the victims, not of economic law, but of social oppression: encouraged in the religious world the fatuous notion that sentiment can dominate economics: and generally weakened the hands of a Prime Minister, who was sincerely striving to bring peace into Industry.

6. The Bishops are really acting as mere individuals, & ought to have signed their proposals with their own names, & not with their official designations.

[94]

If the actual proposals of the Bishops had indicated any superior intelligence, or any larger statesmanship, or any special knowledge, few considering citizens wd have cared to raise objection to their assumption of an authority which their professional character does not obviously confer: but the episcopal recommendations are quite evidently futile. They rest on an impossible demand for a fresh subsidy to be continued for 4 months, and they promise nothing that is either equitable or secure. Thus we are compelled to look narrowly on the title to intervene which the Bishops can offer, & which must be strong indeed if it is to condone their practical failure. We find that they have no other title than that which every good citizen, and a fortiori every Christian citizen possesses viz: the title which is also the duty to do what in him lies to "seek peace and ensue it".

Would it be worth while to send something of this kind to the Times? I hesitate, not merely because there is a time to abstain even from good words, & I am half–disposed to think that this precisely is such a time, but also because I do not feel very confident that some disconcerting surrender might not be made by the Government. The Prime Minister is a good man, sincerely desirous of playing his part worthily, but he is also himself largely leavened by socialistic sentiment, & would give almost anything to escape from his present impasse.

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