God and Mrs Thatcher (46 page)

I
N
1941,
WILLIAM
Temple had claimed that ‘all the great political questions of our day are primarily theological’ and this still rung true forty years later as Christianity continued to be an important means and prism through which political decisions were conceived, communicated and assessed. Reformulating Temple’s statement slightly, it might be said that all the great theological questions
were primarily political given the level of partisan squabbling that surrounded much of the ecclesiastical debates of the 1980s.
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The Thatcher years were marked by a cross-fertilisation between religious and political conservatism on the one hand and liberal Anglicanism and progressive politics on the other. In the end, the New Right posed a theological challenge to liberal Anglicanism just as liberal Anglicanism posed a political challenge to the New Right. This debate may have been uniquely focused around the politics of late-twentieth-century Britain, yet these contrasting doctrinal positions had a much longer history. Emerging in embryonic form in the nineteenth century, this division had become clearly evident by the 1940s and, for this reason, it could be argued that much of the script and sentiments that would determine the conflict between the Church and the Tory government in the 1980s, had already been penned by William Temple in his
Christianity and Social Order
and preached by Alderman Roberts from the pulpit of Finkin Street Church some forty years earlier. Throughout the century the division between reformists and reactionaries within the Church loosely paralleled the progressive and conservative boundaries within politics and shaped both Christianity and politics accordingly. This dualism intensified rather than dissipated following the collapse of worship in the 1960s. The war of words between the New Right and liberal Anglicans in the 1980s represented the final breath of this theo-political tradition.

In his
Case for Conservatism,
Lord Hailsham considered that when a politician turned to religion for legitimising purposes, it was the ‘end of honest politics’.
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But as tempting as it is to dismissive Margaret Thatcher’s appeal to an individualistic Christianity as a debasement of both Scripture and politics, it is important to appreciate not only its sincere origins but also its context. Britain saw the rise of a religiously flavoured political conservatism in the 1970s, which tagged itself (somewhat clumsily) onto classical liberal economics. The mood that underscored all the anger about trade union militancy, rising inflation and national
self-doubt was a paranoia about the decline of traditional middle-class (Christian) values prompted by secularisation. It was no accident that those such as Mary Whitehouse, Maurice Cowling, Enoch Powell and John Gummer, saw
secular
liberalism as the enemy, not just liberalism or socialism.

Both Britain and the US experienced a Christian Conservative movement in the late-twentieth century, which intertwined a moralistic with a capitalistic agenda and engaged in a cultural and economic war of words with secular progressive liberals. That the Christian Right in Britain was to prove less pervasive and powerful than that in America was largely down to the fact that the British were more secular. Yet one need only to name check Maurice Cowling, Enoch Powell, Mary Whitehouse and Margaret Thatcher to realise that the Christian Conservative movement in the UK was not part of an international phenomenon but very much rooted in the ideas, prejudices and tastes of Englishness. It was inextricably tied to the religious culture of England (rather than Britain) and in particular, to the historic bond between Toryism and Anglicanism. The revision of the 1662 Prayer Book incited more anger and mobilised greater opposition than the reform of the Abortion Act, for example. While American political culture still fed off its Puritan roots, the age-old fight concerning Anglican uniformity continued to be the source of conflict within England. Contrasting religious histories and cultures, therefore, are as crucial as congregational figures in explaining the varying fortunes and character of UK and US Christian conservatism.

Thatcherism represented the casting aside of One-nation Toryism and the birth of a new brand of Conservatism, which was marked by its radical evangelical fervour and individualistic message, and which even Margaret Thatcher admitted owed more to nineteenth-century liberalism than Tory tradition. This switch was of course symbolised in the changing class make-up of the party, as the grammar-school boys seized the baton from the gentleman squires. The Thatcher years
symbolised not just the end of the post-war consensus, but, as Stephen Haseler noted, the final death nail to the culture of paternalism, which was a long-established tradition in British politics that incorporated different Christian traditions, was ingrained in the welfare state and guided all three parties and class relations.
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By destroying paternalism, Thatcher succeeded in making Britain more egalitarian in an American sense, but she also created a nation more sharply divided into winners and losers.

Paradoxically, while politics in the 1980s was characterised by conviction, polarisation and fundamental truths, Christianity on the other hand was associated with ambiguity, compassion and dialogue. To put it bluntly, politics had replaced religion as the sphere of certainty. As tempting as it is to view Anglicanism’s twentieth century as one of increasing radicalism, one need only compare the words espoused by some of the clergy in the 1880s with those in the 1980s to realise that this was not so. Its intervention and influence in the 1980s although limited was important and demonstrated that even in more secular times, the Church still retained authority as custodians of consensus and moral judgement. Paradoxically, despite its spirited defence of the welfare state, the Church actually benefited from growing disillusionment towards bureaucratic centralism as it enhanced its role and sought its legitimacy from its pastoral support within civil society. The Church’s foray into politics, however, exacerbated existing tensions within its organisation. The nature and purpose of the Church’s prophecy emerged as one of the chief dividing lines between liberals and traditionalists as prelates struggled with the difficult balancing act of leading both the Church and those outside it. At the heart of this tension was a fundamental dilemma concerning the role of the national Church in a secular age: should the Church exist for the benefit of those who are not members of it?

The divide between the Church and the Tory Party, although both political and theological, was also historical, hinging as it did
on two conflicting religious narratives of modern British history. Thatcher, on the one hand, crudely characterised the post-war years as a period of individual and national moral decay, which she unfavourably contrasted with those values which had sustained the Victorian era; that of self-help, moral restraint and laissez-faire capitalism. Anglican leaders, in contrast, tended to portray the nineteenth century as a time when the Industrial Revolution and imperialism had been borne on the backs of the nation’s powerless citizens while it was only in the mid-twentieth century with the formation of the welfare state that the nation had transformed into a compassionate Christian society.

Both Thatcherism and liberal Anglicanism were rooted in providential narratives of the political history of England, which betrayed divergent understandings of the meaning and characteristics of Englishness and of the nature of Christianity itself. But both were essentially flawed, given that they rested on an increasingly outdated idea that Britain was still a Christian country. Developments over subsequent decades would eventually render both these positions untenable and the conflict between the Church and the Tory Party largely irrelevant, as a new configuration of the relationship between religion and politics in Britain would prompt a reordering of the nation’s spiritual identity.

PUBLIC ANGLICANISM, THAT
is, an understanding of the Established Church as a moderate, non-partisan voice in the political realm, first obtained currency at the beginning of the twentieth century and was resuscitated with some success in the 1980s. Once Margaret Thatcher left office, however, much of the motivation behind this prophecy dissipated. In the 1990s, the Board for Social Responsibility was notably
more muted, the Synod became consumed by ecclesiastical affairs, and even the new generation of bishops seemed unwilling to rock the political boat as their predecessors had done. John Major’s premiership signalled an immediate change in tone from Thatcher as the affable former bank manager pledged to create a ‘nation at ease with itself’. At the 1992 election, the churches of Manchester issued yet another appeal to voters, which was distinctly anti-Tory in tone,
although the Catholic Bishop of Salford
wondered whether they had highlighted the right cause: ‘Would it have been better under Labour? …we may need to recognise that only in the Lord will there be built a kingdom of justice, love and peace.’
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If Runcie’s time at Lambeth would be remembered for the Church’s runins with the Thatcher government, then his successor’s period in office would be defined by a preoccupation with internal ecclesiastical affairs. Archbishop George Carey was to have a tough ride at Canterbury between 1991 and 2002. Some critics would say, not without a hint of snobbery, that the son of a hospital porter from the East End – the first archbishop for centuries not to have been to either Oxford or Cambridge – was not quite up to the job; his foes even joked that he was Margaret Thatcher’s revenge on the Church of England. Yet these assessments do not take into account the disastrous situation Carey was confronted with. In what was one of the most scandalous examples of financial ineptitude ever demonstrated by a leading British institution, in 1992 it was revealed that the Church Commissioners, through reckless speculation in the property market, had managed to wipe off £500 million of the Church’s assets. It turned out that the commissioners had been indulging in exactly the type of casino-capitalism that clergymen had exhausted so much energy denouncing in the 1980s. The shadowy figure behind the Church’s investment portfolio was the First Church Estates Commissioner, Sir Douglas Lovelock, whose rationale was to invest and
keep on investing
through the securement of loans, which rose from £4.7 million to £518 million in a matter of years. At one point the Church had £60 million ventured in the US and £40
million in Japan as well as a considerable amount in the UK.
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When the property recession hit in the early 1990s, the Church’s assets were doomed. What was striking is that hardly anyone seemed to be aware of what was about to unfold, not even the Second Church Estates Commissioner and parliamentary representative on the committee, Michael Alison MP. After all its warnings to the government on the dangers of the market, no one had thought to subject the Church’s finances to the same scrutiny, especially not the General Synod, which was guilty of spending most of the funds. An independent inquiry later found that ‘reckless property investments, unethical conduct, massive borrowings of hundreds of millions of pounds and a level of administrative incompetence’ had characterised the Commissioners’ dealings.
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Much to the Church’s embarrassment, the Archbishop of Canterbury was called to give evidence before a Parliamentary Select Committee, but Lovelock himself was never held to account.
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The ripples of this disaster would be felt over the next ten years as the Church effectively drew up the drawbridge and got its house in order. Archbishop Carey was accused of being a bureaucratic bore, yet he had little choice but to regain some control over an organisation facing financial ruin. Parishes were closed, the number of priests reduced from 12,000 to 8,000 and even the Commissioners’ annual £1 million donation to the Church Urban Fund ceased.
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The Archbishop’s Council formed in 1999 was essentially a centralising measure, which took power from the Synod, Commissioners and pretty much every other semi-autonomous part of the Church. Meanwhile, the Church became even more reliant on contributions from its congregations and thus ever more accountable to its loyal adherents.

A period of exhausting introspection and division plagued the Church of England, similar to that which had paralysed the Labour Party the previous decade. In earlier times, the battles for the identity of Anglicanism had centred on liturgy and worship, yet by the 1990s it had become entirely fixed on who was qualified to lead the flock. On the subject of female ordination, never was there a matter to arouse
such passions within the Church but generate so little interest amongst the public. ‘Vicars in Knickers’ was the
The Sun
’s infamous headline when the Measure finally passed in November 1992. Soon, though, the story became about the impending schism within Anglicanism rather than the decision itself, with the Church increasingly perceived not as a progressive institution, as liberals had hoped, but that of a broken family, ripping itself apart and unaware of the outside world that it was meant to serve. David Jenkins lambasted the ‘medieval’ and ‘neurotic’ opinions of those opposed to female ordination, whose arguments he thought were ‘tinged with misogyny’.
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Traditionalist Francis Brown, chairman of the Anglo-Catholic group Ecclesia, fought back with equal aggression when the vote was announced: ‘The Church of England will soon be no more than a rotting carcass.’
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