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‘A Peculiarly English Institution’:1 Work, Rest, and Play in the Labour Church
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The Labour Church held its first service in Charlton Hall, Manchester, in October 1891. The well-attended event was led by Revd Harold Rylett, a Unitarian minister from Hyde, and John Trevor, a former Unitarian and the driving force behind the idea. Counting the experiment a success, Trevor organized a follow-up meeting the next Sunday, at which the congregation overflowed from the hall into the surrounding streets. A new religious movement had begun. In the decade that followed, over fifty Labour Churches formed, mainly in Northern England, around the textile districts of the West Riding of Yorkshire and East Lancashire. Their impetus lay both in the development and spread of what has been called a socialist culture in Britain in the final decades of the nineteenth century, and in the increased awareness of class attendant on this. Much of the enthusiasm for socialism was indivisible from the lifestyle and culture which surrounded it. This was a movement dedicated as much to what Chris Waters has described as ‘the politics of everyday life …. [and] of popular culture’ as to rigid economistic doctrine. This tendency has been described as ‘ethical socialism’, although a more common expression at the time was ‘the religion of socialism’.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 37: The Use and Abuse of Time in Christian History , 2002 , pp. 357 - 367
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2002
Footnotes
1
TrevorJohn, The Labour Church in England: an Unspoken Address to the Foreign Members of the International Socialist Congress, London, July 1896 (London, 1896).
References
2 For detail of these early services see Pierson, Stanley, ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church movement in England, 1891–1900’, ChH, 29 (1960), pp. 463–78.Google Scholar
3 Belchem, John, Popular Radicalism in Nineteenth Century Britain (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Waters, Chris, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture (Manchester, 1990), pp. 13–14.Google Scholar
5 On the division between ethical and economistic socialism, see, for instance, Gordon, Eleanor, Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland (Oxford, 1991), esp. p. 261 Google Scholar. Early uses of the phrase ‘religion of socialism’ include William Morris, Preface to the Manifesto of the Socialist League, (London, 1895), cited by R. A. B., ‘Studies in the religion of socialism’, The Labour Prophet (April, 1897), pp. 51–2; St John Conway, Katherine and Glasier, John Bruce, The Religion of Socialism (Manchester, 1894)Google Scholar; Blatchford, R., The New Religion (London, 1892)Google Scholar; Yeo, Stephen, ‘A new life: the religion of socialism in Britain, 1883–1896’, History Workshop Journal, 4 (1977), pp. 5–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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9 Pelling, Henry, The Origins of the Labour Party, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1965), p. 133.Google Scholar
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14 Few Labour Churches survived beyond the end of the Boer War, the main exceptions being Birmingham, Leek, and Norwich. See the ‘Readers’ Comments’ between Pelling, Henry and Inglis, K. S., International Review of Social History, 4 (1959), pp. 111–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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18 Trevor, John, ‘Preface’, The Labour Church Hymn Book (London, 1895), p. 1 Google Scholar. For a useful discussion of the Labour Church Hymn Book and its relationship to similar contemporary collections, see Waters, British Socialists, pp. 114–16.
19 Chignell, T. W., ‘Happy are they’Google Scholar; Bonar, H., ‘He liveth long who liveth well’Google Scholar; MrsPickering, M. E., ‘Helping along’Google Scholar; MrsGates, , ‘If you cannot on the ocean’ Google Scholar; Anon., ‘God Save the Working Man’: Labour Church Hymn Book, nos 80, 59, 53, 45, 12.
20 See, for example, the account of the funeral of George Evans of the SDF and Labour Church, Labour Prophet (May 1893), p. 36.
21 Labour Prophet (Oct. 1892), p. 80.
22 Labour Prophet (Nov. 1892), p. 84.
23 Ibid. (Oct. 1892), p. 80. Harker, a Congregationalist minister, had moved himself, his Congregational Church, and its congregation, into a Labour Church with help from local socialists. See Pierson, ‘John Trevor and the Labour Church movement’, p. 467.
24 Labour Prophet (Nov. 1892), p. 84.
25 Pierson, British Socialists, pp. 37–8.
26 The five principles of the Labour Church can be found in each edition of The Labour Prophet. They are also repeated in Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, pp. 135–6.
27 Mann, Tom, ‘The workman’s wife’, Labour Prophet (Feb. 1892), pp. 9–10 Google Scholar.
28 Labour Prophet (March 1893), p. 22.
29 Ibid. (April 1893), p. 31.
30 Labour Prophet (March 1893), p. 22; ibid. (May 1893), p. 35.
31 Ibid. (March 1893), pp. 22–3.
32 Ibid. (May 1893), pp. 34–5.
33 Wicksteed, ‘Is the Labour Church a class church?’, p. 1.
34 Labour Prophet (May 1894), p. 63.
35 Blatchford, Robert, ‘A plea for pleasure’, ibid. (July 1894), pp. 84–5.Google Scholar
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37 Labour Prophet (fune 1895), p. 89.
38 Labour Prophet (Sept. 1894), p. 128; ibid. (Aug. 1893), p. 80. See also Inglis, ⁈The Labour Church movement’, and the account of Philip Wicksteed reprinted from the Manchester Guardian in the Labour Prophet (Jan. 1892), p. 10.
39 Inglis, The Labour Church movement’, pp. 4$ 1–2.
40 Labour Prophet (Sept. 1894), p. 128.
41 Ibid. (Dec. 1897), p. 140, cited by Inglis, ‘The Labour Church movement’, p. 452.
42 Labour Prophet (Sept. 1894), p. 128.
43 See, e.g., John Trevor’s account of the service he held for John Smith of Salford, Labour Prophet (May 1893), p. 39.
44 There were a few exceptions, noted above, but representing more what Inglis refers to as a ‘broad front political body’ than an attempt at a religious group. See Pelling and Inglis, ‘Readers’ Comments’.
45 For example, Enid Stacy, who had written regularly for The Labour Prophet. She married a minister and combined the two difficult roles of parish wife and socialist propagandist, but rarely attempted to do both simultaneously. See her letters in Salford, Working Class Movement Library, Angela Tuckett papers.
46 Inglis, The Labour Church movement’; Pelling and Inglis, ‘Readers’ Comments’.