The Henson Journals

[313]

Thursday, January 6th, 1927.

I have been active all day, and have done nothing. Letters absorbed much time, and some were important. In the afternoon I went in to Durham, and presided at a meeting of the Board of Training and Maintenance. After this I transacted business with the Bishop of Jarrow, had tea with him, and then returned to Auckland, where I wrote more letters. And that is the whole of the day.

That preposterous creature, Lomax, writes to inquire whether it would be agreeable to me that a retired South African Bishop should be appointed Warden of his House of Rest. I replied that there were cogent reasons why a Warden in Episcopal Orders was undesirable. The whole business is just the spear–head of an Anglo–Catholick invasion of the diocese. A bishop would suit the fanaticks admirably. He would show how a Catholick bishop ought to dress and pontificate, and give distinction to all the little clerical shows in the Anglo–Catholick parishes! There are troubles enough in the diocese already, why should we add one of these squalid ceremonial conflicts?

The Bishop of Jarrow has been talking to Kirkup, the manager of the Joicey mines at Houghton–le–Spring, about the situation in the coal–field. Kirkup says that Ld Joicey's Company has lost £400,000 "but it was worth it". The men were "at mercy". There was to be a 10 per cent reduction in the number of men: all sorts of labour–obstructing customs would be abolished: & machinery introduced on a considerable scale. All this sounds rather alarming. The mine–owners are obsessed with the object of re–imbursing themselves for their losses during the "stoppage", and they do not look far ahead. The prospect of industrial peace is as remote as it ever was.

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