21.05.2008

How not to win friends

Peter Manson argues for a tactical change in our attitude to the Church of England

A rare area of controversy emerged last month during the ongoing discussions of London comrades around the CPGB Draft programme. As readers will know, the CPGB has been engaged in debate as part of the process of redrafting for well over a year, and at last we have reached the end of section 3, ‘Immediate demands’.

The disagreement arose in the debate around current section 3.16, ‘Religion’, and in particular over the demands communists ought to pose in relation to the Church of England. At present the relevant bullet point reads: “Separation of the Church of England from the state. End all state subsidies for religious institutions. Confiscate all Church of England property not directly related to acts of worship.”

Nobody in the London Communist Forum which debated the section expressed any difference with the first two demands. The disagreement occurred over the question of confiscation. Not that anybody thought the C of E should be allowed to keep all its current property - in dispute was what should not be confiscated.

Reactionary

Before I go into the area of disagreement, let me explain why we think large-scale expropriation of Church of England property is very much in order. The C of E is an integral part of the British state - indeed its current privilege, power and wealth results from the fact that in feudal times it was virtually identical with state power in England, both before and after the separation from Rome in 1534. The church was directly responsible for the ruthless exploitation and oppression of the overwhelming majority of the population through the extraction of tithes and upper-class robbery in the name of god.

However, it is hardly a mere question of history. The wealth of today’s C of E accrues from the vast property accumulated over centuries and its assets are worth an estimated £4.8 billion. Annual income from investments in stocks and bonds amounts to some £200 million, and the church owns numerous mansion-like buildings and tracts of lands - each of its 114 bishops inhabits a huge palace. If this were not enough, the C of E receives subsidies and tax breaks and it is continually demanding that the state should pay for the upkeep of its listed buildings.

In parallel to this massive wealth - the proceeds of its historical ill-gotten gains - the C of E retains its privileged political power as an entrenched part of the UK constitutional monarchy state. The queen is, of course, head of the Church of England, whose bishops continue to act as legislators in the House of Lords. The established church is called upon to give its blessing at official state occasions and every state school is legally obliged to begin its day with an “act of worship” (although not necessarily under the auspices of the C of E).

We should not rule out - indeed we should expect - the Church of England playing some kind of counterrevolutionary role in the future. That is why it is essential to disempower this anti-democratic institution not only through the complete separation of church and state, but through stripping it of its financial muscle - the inheritance derived from officially sanctioned mass theft.

Comrade Jim Moody, who introduced the discussion at the London Communist Forum, wondered whether the confiscation of property should be extended to all churches and religious establishments. This was effectively answered by comrade John Bridge, who stated that it was precisely because of the C of E’s historical and current reactionary power that communists in Britain must target it in particular, just as the Bolsheviks targeted the Russian orthodox establishment.

(It should be pointed out that our ‘Immediate demands’ are what they say they are - collectively they constitute what a workers’ government would attempt to do in the initial period after a revolution, although some of those demands might well have been implemented already. In other words, we are not talking about the future communist society, when all wealth would be held in common and ‘property’ as such would be no more.)

As the reader may gather, I am in complete agreement with the thrust of our current policy on confiscation. Where I disagree is over the precise exemptions. In my opinion, it should be not only property “directly related to worship” that the church may keep, but also the property needed to maintain its local social activities, epitomised by the church hall.

Comrade Bridge strongly disagreed. He repeated the argument that the Church of England is a special case - it is protected and promoted by the state as a “junior partner in exploitation and robbery”. But he seemed to dismiss the idea that C of E parishioners do anything much by way of local fundraising to finance their activities. Perhaps because of this, for him there should be no distinction in our treatment of local churches compared to the reactionary national institution itself. A serious tactical error.

Two C of Es

It is worth pointing out that the funding for parishes’ religious and non-religious work is overwhelmingly raised locally: that is, current local activity can hardly be said to depend on the proceeds of past exploitative power relations. In fact of the approximate £1 billion spent annually by the C of E on upkeep, maintenance and salaries, three-quarters is provided by the parishes. Of course, it is not entirely a one-way street - various central grants and stipends are available to local churches - but most of the cash does indeed flow upwards.

In other words, what we are talking about is money raised locally by church activists (who in fact pay a kind of modern-day equivalent of the tithe to keep their bishops and archbishops living in the style to which they are accustomed) rather than the parish church being subsidised by the proceeds of past exploitation. Clearly this is a material factor that ought to be considered

What of those local volunteers? The C of E claims 1.2 million churchgoers every week, out of which several hundred thousand perform some voluntary activity. Its website states that some 136,000 unpaid volunteers run C of E activities for children and youth alone. As with most other denominations, the hard work is done by a relatively small number of dedicated people in each parish, and many make real sacrifices in terms of money and time for what they believe in and hold dear.

Very many of those activists are working class people. People like my father, who would often return on his bike from his shift as an engineer and head straight off to the church, where some odd job would usually be waiting for him - gardening, painting or a minor repair, either to the church itself of to the adjacent church hall. He could not afford to donate much in terms of cash, but he certainly gave freely of his time.

As it happens, the church he attended was not C of E, but it might just as well have been. He only chose the Presbyterian (later United Reformed) church because it was a little nearer and I have no reason to doubt he would have behaved in the same way if he had happened to join the local parish church.

I can assure you that he (and hundreds of thousands like him) would not take kindly to the suggestion that the church hall - which in this case hosted scouts, guides, women’s fellowship, a youth club, badminton, business meetings, social events and Sunday school (would the latter activity be sufficient to grant it exemption?) - should be confiscated. As for the suggestion made by comrade Bridge that church halls could well be rented back to the former owner, perhaps free of charge (“What’s the difference whether they own it or rent it?”), to my father that would have been to add insult to injury. He would have viewed it as all those years of hard work gone to waste.

My argument is that it is perfectly possible to win the C of E equivalents of my father away from the church establishment and to the cause of the working class. Workers like him know what exploitation and privilege are all about and they might easily recognise the justification in disestablishing the institution and expropriating its stocks and bonds, palaces and estates, while leaving in local hands what he most certainly regarded as belonging to him and the rest of the congregation.

There are in fact two C of Es: the church of the reactionary establishment and the church of the dedicated activists. We should target the former, not the latter.

What is wrong with this approach? Comrade Bridge gave no satisfactory explanation for rejecting it. In truth his main argument seemed to be that confiscation of all property “not directly related to acts of worship” was the policy of the Bolsheviks vis-à-vis the Russian orthodox church, and, if it was good enough for the Bolsheviks …

Principle or tactic?

Comrade Bridge repeated several times that C of E property relating to acts of worship should be viewed as “legitimate” - with the implication that somehow its property relating to social activity must in every case be ‘illegitimate’. He described our current policy of allowing the C of E to retain its churches and chapels, etc as a “concession”, and an “exceedingly generous” one at that.

But this was very much at odds with his assertion that the policy outlined was a “principle”. Concessions, by their very nature, are not a matter of principle, but of tactics, and our tactics usually have the aim of defeating the enemy by dividing it; and/or strengthening our side by winning over potential allies or at least neutralising those of the enemy. By contrast, it is almost as if the current CPGB policy were designed to throw potential allies, the working class local C of E activists, into the camp of the reactionary church establishment.

Comrade Phil Kent proposed that there should be no exceptions - everything belonging to the Church of England, including its churches, chapels and cathedrals, should be confiscated and rented back as necessary to allow it to continue to function. While I disagree, at least this position is more logically consistent with the view that all C of E property should be classed as “ill-gotten gains” and none of it as the product of the hard-working activists.

Our tactics in relation to the Church of England must aim to highlight its reactionary past and present and, linked to that, its enormous and undemocratic privileges and powers. But, as the Draft programme makes clear, we are “the most consistent defenders of the individual’s freedom of conscience and freedom of worship”. We are adamant that there must be “freedom for all religious cults”.

As the biggest cult of the lot, the C of E has the right to exist - and on the same basis as all the others. We should make clear that we are targeting only its special privileges, its ‘illegitimate’ fortunes and its counterrevolutionary potential. The measures we propose should reduce the C of E to the status of any other religious cult, not be seen as, at the very least, hindering its ‘legitimate’ activity.

To conclude, let me deal with some of the other points that came up during the discussion which ought to be considered when the new draft is drawn up.

Firstly some comrades expressed concern that the statement, “religion can play no progressive role for the working class in its struggle against today’s ruling class”, is too absolute. While religion is never again likely to act as a catalyst for revolutionary change, it can certainly be a factor in motivating believers to ally themselves with us. The obvious example is the mass upsurge against the war on Iraq and the fact that muslims, including thousands of working class muslims, lined up with the left against imperialism.

Secondly, I proposed that our policy on religious schools should be included in this section, not under ‘Youth’. Finally comrade Kent made the useful suggestion that the word ‘secular’ or ‘secularism’ should be specified, since it has featured so often in our propaganda work and is likely to continue to do so.