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Religion, Politics and the Catholic Working Class

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Patrick J. Doyle
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Most studies of the British electorate agree that Catholics tend to support Labour. Indeed, Robert McKenzie and Allan Silver argue that Roman Catholics are the group least likely to vote Conservative. However, with a few notable exceptions Catholics have not made a great contribution to Labour politics. This failure can be explained by a variety of factors, primarily the insistence by Church leaders in the past that, as a minority, Catholics ought to organize defensively to protect their own interests, particularly the schools. Hence the formation of the Catholic Federations as a response to the educational policies of the Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith Governments. Some Catholics in this period were also mesmerized by the chimera of a Catholic party similar to the German Centre Party, and it is highly significant that the Salford Diocesan Federation received overtures from the right-wing British Labour Party in 1911, which had been formed ‘to promote by constitutional methods the welfare of the working class, and to secure real Labour representation’. Ecclesiastics were suspicious of state socialism and ideological politics in general and hostile to the secularists and anarchists on the fringe of the Left. Bishop Vaughan declared in 1883 that the doctrines of socialism were the outcome of Satan’s teaching, and that ‘terrorism, incendiarism, violence, and murder are lawful weapons whenever it is judged that this will advance the cause of socialism’. Finally, most of the Catholic working class were Irish, or of Irish extraction, abjectly poor, and unlikely to possess the necessary property or residential franchise qualification, so consequently Catholics were under-registered until after the implementation of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 54 , Issue 636 , May 1973 , pp. 218 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

page 218 note 1 Robert McKenzie and Allan Silver, Angels in Marble: Working‐Class Conservatives in Urban England, 1968, p. 100. See also: A. H. Birch, Small Town Politics: A Study of Political Life in Glossop, 1959, p. 87.

page 219 note 1 File 208, Salford Diocesan Curial Office, 67/68 Newton Chambers, Cannon Street, Birmingham, February 15, 1911, Arthur Beck, President of the British Labour Party, to Bishop Casartelli; Bishop's House, Salford, February 20, 1911, Thomas F. Burns to Bishop Casartelli.

page 219 note 2 Vaughan, Bishop Herbert, The True Basis of Catholic Politics, Manchester, 1883Google Scholar.

page 219 note 3 See Neal Blewitt, ‘The Franchise in the United Kingdom, 1885‐1918′, Past and Present, number 32, December 1965.

page 219 note 4 Essqys in Labour History, ed. Briggs, Asa and Saville, John, 1967, p. 331Google Scholar.

page 219 note 5 McClelland, Vincent Alan, Cardinal Manning: His Public Life and Influence, 1865‐1892, 1962Google Scholar; Francesco Nitti, Catholic Socialism, 1911, pp. 325‐330; Dudley‐Edwards, Owen, The Sins of Our Fathers: Roots of Conflict in Northern Ireland, Dublin, p. 141Google Scholar.

page 219 note 6 Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England, second edition, 1964, chapter 7Google Scholar.

page 220 note 1 Dudley‐Edwards, Owen, The Mind of an Activist—James Connolly, Dublin, 1971, pp. 59‐62Google Scholar.

page 220 note 2 Felling, Henry, The Origins of the Labour Party, 1880‐1900, second edition, Oxford, 1965, p. 121Google Scholar; Poirer, Philip, The Advent of the Labour Party, 1958CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 124 and 256; Sir James Sexton, James Sexton, Agitator, the Life of the Dockers’ M.P.: an autobiography, 1936, pp. 196‐199; Paul Thompson, Socialists, Liberals and Labour: the Struggle for London, 1885‐1914, 1967, pp. 27 and 209; The Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook, 1909, ed. Sir F. C. Burnand, pp. 163 and 357.

page 220 note 3 Thompson, op. cit., pp. 114 and 237.

page 220 note 4 Emmet Larkin, James Larkin, Irish Labour Leader, 1876‐1947, Mentor edition, 1968, pp. 19 and 174.

page 221 note 1 The Best of Connolly, ed. MacAonghusa, Proinias and O'Reagain, Liam, Cork, pp. 11, 29‐33 and 92‐1Google Scholar00.

page 221 note 2 Dudley‐Edwards, ‘Mind of an Activist’, op. cit., pp. 29 and 57.

page 221 note 3 G. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, 1961, p. 191; Middlemas, Robert Keith, The Clydesiders: A Left‐Wing Struggle for Parliamentary Power, 1965Google Scholar, pp. 36‐40.

page 221 note 4 William Gallacher, Last Memoirs, 1966, p. 200; McEntee, Georgiana Putnam, The Social Catholic Movement, New York, 1927, p. 97Google Scholar.

page 222 note 1 McEntee, op. cit., p. 109.

page 222 note 2 Catholic Times, February 5, 1909, and February 20, 1909; Hull Daily Mail, February 15, 1909.

page 222 note 3 Catholic Herald, February 13, 1909, and February 20, 1909; Letter of the Bishop of Leeds, June 10, 1909, to be read on June 20.

page 222 note 4 Yorkshire Post, August 2, 1910.

page 222 note 5 McEntee, op. cit., pp. 109 and 111.

page 223 note 1 File 208, Bishop's House, Salford, September 23, 1918, Thomas Burns to Bishop Casartelli.

page 223 note 2 File 208, Printed leaflet headed, The Centre Labour Party, H.Q. the Manchester Social Club, Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, secretary, Thomas F. Burns.

page 223 note 3 David Butler and Jennie Freeman, British Political Facts, 1900‐1967, 1968, pp. 118‐119; Trevor Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914‐1935, Fontana edition, 1968, pp. 29 and 168.

page 223 note 4 File 208, Report of the Conference of the Catholic Confederation of England and Wales held at Birmingham August 4 and 6, 1923; McEntee, op. cit., p. 141.

page 223 note 5 McEntee, op. cit., p. 142.

page 224 note 1 Ibid., pp. 133‐136.

page 224 note 2 Hobsbawn, E. F., Primitive Rebels, Manchester, 1959, pp. 141‐142Google Scholar.

page 224 note 3 Lyons, F. S. L., John Dillon, a biography, 1968, p. 279Google Scholar.

page 224 note 4 Ibid., pp. 460, 473‐475.

page 224 note 5 George Thayer, The British Political Fringe, 1965, pp. 230‐235; Reginald Bevins, The Greasy Pole, A Personal Account of British Politics, 1965, pp. 13 and 18; Noreen Branson and Margot Heineman, Britain in the Nineteen Thirties, 1971, p. 294; Who Was Who, 1929‐1940, 1941, p. 23.

page 225 note 1 J. A. Jackson, The Irish in Britain, 1963, p. 127.

page 225 note 2 Hull Daily Mail, November 25, 1907.

page 225 note 3 Who Was Who, 1941‐1950, 1952, p. 238; and K. R. Dean, Birmingham University M.A. thesis, 1969, Walsall Parliamentary Elections.

page 225 note 4 Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. I, ed. Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville, 1972, entries for Francis Ciappesioni, Patrick Gallagher and Thomas Killon.