The Henson Journals

[99]

Friday, August 13th, 1926.

Dear Mr Selwyn

Your letter of the 8th August was sent on to me from Auckland Castle, & I must make no delay in thanking you for it. You will easily understand that this protracted "stoppage" of the principal industry in my diocese is causing me much anxiety. The intervention of "the Bishops" has certainly in my judgment done much harm. It has prolonged the conflict: given respectability and renewed credit to Messrs Cook & Co.: gravely damaged the prestige of the Prime Minister (which was a national asset of great value): and greatly stimulated very undesirable movements & tendencies within the religious world. You add another consequence which had not occurred to me – the probability that the disgust provoked in the educated classes may tell unfavourably on our prospect (none too bright in any case) of drawing Ordination candidates from the public schools and universities. I am afraid that the "speeding up" of ecclesiastical, & notably of episcopal, activity, which has followed that unhappy Enabling Act, has brought our busier & more fashionable Bishops into such a habit of hearing their own voices in the endless meetings they attend, that they [100] hear no other, and are quite remarkably incompetent to understand the courses of the world, & quite immovably attached to their own shibboleths.

But with respect to your suggestion of some kind of joint protest, I have turned it over in my mind for a whole day, and on the whole incline to think that it would not be a wise proceeding. For (1.) such a protest almost always provokes some counter–protest, which cannot but lessen, and may destroy altogether, its impressiveness and effect. (2.) I think the "Copec" nonsense has made such headway among the clergy that multitudes who do not approve the action of "the Bishops", yet admire & sympathize with it, and might well be moved by our Protest, to some open approbation of it. (3.) The Archbishop of Canterbury can hardly be thought to stand wholly uncommitted by the action of "the Bishops", for they were his collaborators in his extraordinarily mistaken & mischievous action during the General Strike, &, though his Grace did not actually take part in the Conferences with Cook & Co., yet he was cognizant of them, and not other than "benevolent" towards them. Few bishops or leading clergy will sign anything which could be interpreted as implying a censure on the Primate. Finally, I hardly think, after the correspondence in the Times, [101] a protest is needed. So far as "the Bishops" could be rebuked and disavowed they have been so: and the nature & authority of their action are quite apparent to the newspaper–reading public. The mischief caused by their intervention has been done, & cannot now be undone. We are not yet at the end of this crisis: & we may have some disconcerting surprises in store for us. For my part, I have so completely lost confidence in politicians, that I should not be greatly surprised to see the Government execute a volte–face which would make even "the Bishops" look like good & reasonable persons.

Yours sincerely

Herbert Dunelm:

[102]

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The Times prints my letter on its front page. It reads in an interesting way, and ought to suggest lines of thinking to some people. There is a report from Chester–le–Street that the Guardians may be getting into trouble by their lavish distribution of relief to the miners. No less than £10,000 is being paid from the rates weekly in a district where the rates are already 31/6d in the £!

A letter printed in small type states that in Burmah there is a boy, now six years old, the child of ignorant working parents, who can recite long passages of the Pali Scriptures, & delivers throughout the country eloquent & learned orations. The Buddhists naturally regard him as an incarnation of some ancient Sage, but the writer offers him as an illustration of the view advocated in the recent meeting of the British Association, viz. that heredity obtains rather in the mental than in the physical characteristics.

In Uganda the Game–warden describes a plague of man–eating lions, who are not old toothless beasts, who have taken to a human diet because they have no longer the power to obtain any other, but who have the taste for man's flesh in the blood, and are in fact hereditary man–eaters. One of these born–criminals is credited with 82 victims, and another with 40.

Then I wrote the letter (copied into this journal on p. 103) to an old, retired missionary, who sends me a letter which he has addressed to "the Scotsman", belabouring me with quotations from Bishop Westcott's sermons by way of criticising an extract from my letter in the Bishoprick.

[103]

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August 13th 1926.

My dear Sir,

Your letter was sent on to me from Auckland Castle, and I take [up] my pen to assure you that I am the last man to resent any honest criticism of any utterances of mine, provided always that the critic has been at the pains of making sure that he has before him a complete and accurate statement of the views to which he takes exception.

I do not know whether the Scotsman printed the whole of what I wrote in the Bishoprick. If not, I trust that, before criticising, you obtained a copy of the last, and read for yourself the observations on "The Deadlock in the Mines", which I thought it necessary to address to my diocese.

Believe me,

Yours v. faithfully,

Herbert Dunelm:

The Revd William Marwick

[104]

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Mrs Rainbow's husband is Vicar of Shotton, a parish of about 7000 people all miners. She writes to me thus:

"Only two miners in Shotton voted in the ballot. I am sorry that the majority of men are blind admirers & followers of Mr Cook, and believe every single thing he says. A great many of them will never get back to work. Already one big seam here has been permanently closed. At present they feel no hardship as they get relief, & their children are all fed, & they have their houses and coal free. They have been very good to us, bringing me bags of coal, & helping me in the house and garden. We have some very excellent men in this parish, & they seem very fond of my husband."

Now this is a fresh, spontaneously offered, and plainly honest description of the temper & state of the Durham miners. It shows the utter unreality of these Trade Union ballots: the astonishing authority over the men which Cook has acquired: the formidable result on the mining industry which this prolonged "stoppage" is having: the lack of any real suffering among the idling miners: the good relations which obtain between the miners & the clergy: and the complete negation of any moral influence which Christianity might be thought competent to exercise in an economic context.

[105]

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After tea Miles motored me to visit some churches, among them the church [at] Wangford in which Mr Mallish the V. C. holds office, and the ever wonderful Blythborough. The good lady who "shows" the Church was very outspoken in her complaints of the new Vicar's Anglo–Catholicism. The parishioners would have none of it, and simply kept away from church. I enquired whether, apart from his Anglo–Catholicism, he was a good fellow, whom the people could like and respect; but she replied that he never visited, that his wife was never seen, and that, beyond writing letters in his parish magazine, he did nothing!! I could not pursue the enquiry further, but I could not but reflect on the unhappy fate of the Church of England. When, as in Bramfield, she has to economize her forces & withdraw the resident parson, she loses influence: where, as in Blythborough, she has a resident parson, he destroys her influence by his vagaries. With or without the clergyman the Church grows ever weaker!

After dinner I had some talk with Miles. He says that old Sir Peile would send none of his sons to a public school, designing to protect them thus from moral contamination. The result was in the opinion of them all that they had lost rather than gained by his solicitude. Miles gives the darkest view of the moral state of the Suffolk villagers: but how far his views are trustworthy I am not very sure.

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