Bob Holman (1936–2016): Christian Socialism and the Quest for Equality

Introduction

Bob Holman (1936–2016) was first a Christian and secondly a socialist. The two came together for most of his life. Christian socialism is not a term we much encounter these days, but I want to describe what it meant to Holman in thought and practice and why it still matters.

Holman was born in 1936 in the East End of London (Ilford) to working class parents. As a child, he experienced the terrors of the blitz, coming near to death (his house was bombed) as well as the unsettling effect of being an evacuee. I think these early years are not to be overlooked in their effect on his character. He later wrote: ‘…knowing neighbours who were killed, I sometimes pondered what happened after death. My mother told me not to worry about such things. Yet I have always considered that this earthly life is not the full story. A belief in family unity, sympathy for those who felt alienated, a longing for some sort of spirituality. These themes have remained with me’ ²

Holman’s first contact with the Christian faith, since his parents were not church-goers, was with the Covenanters, an evangelical group who worked among young people. This offered opportunities for sport and outdoor activities, and he recorded the influence of individual people on him at that time and which was to inform his later views on the importance of personal relations in community projects. His own faith was that of a conservative evangelical. However, as a result of his University training at the London School of Economics, where he trained as a social worker, under such luminaries as Professors Richard Titmuss and Peter Townsend, he became a socialist and joined the Labour Party. His relationship to the institutional church and the Labour party was sometimes ambivalent.

Alienation from the Church

Holman described his experience of being in a lively ‘Bible-based’ church in Handsworth, when he was a lecturer at the university of Birmingham. He received hate mail from racists, when he spoke against racism and the arguments of Enoch Powell, then an MP for Wolverhampton. To his dismay, he found that such views were present in his church. He commented: ‘I spoke on this issue at a meeting there and I recall an elderly man jumping to his feet declaring that he had been all over the world that Britain was the best country and we should keep it that way. He was loudly applauded. I felt alienated from the church’. ³ This led to a drifting away from the church but not, I think, from his faith. He described how, while still at Birmingham, he began to study the Bible: ‘I studied the “minor prophets” and believe that Christianity is about loving God and loving our neighbours.’ ⁴ It is not difficult to see how reading the likes of Micah and Amos would stir the hearts of any reader. It was this motivating principle that led him subsequently to resign his Bath University chair in Social Policy and choose, with his family, to live in deprived communities in Bath and later in Glasgow.

The alienation from the institutional church which he experienced is something he also documented in his studies of George Lansbury and Keir Hardie. ⁵ In the case of Lansbury, who was to become a leader of the Labour party, Holman records that between 1890 and 1900 he stopped attending church (he was an Anglican). This was because he became disillusioned with clergy men in the church who tolerated poverty, condemned strikes, and took no action to relieve unemployment. Some even attacked his proposals for spending money on the poor. He sent his children to an Ethical Sunday School in Bow. But it was through the influence of men like Charles (later Bishop) Gore and Cosmo Lang (then Bishop of Stepney and later Archbishop of Canterbury) that he returned to an active faith and participated in church work, including setting up a Bible class for boys. Holman writes: ‘From childhood, Lansbury had hated the injustices and suffering he saw all around. As he grew into manhood, he accepted socialism both as a means of critically investigating society and as a means of change. Yet it should be appreciated that much of his socialism stemmed from his understanding of Christianity.’ ⁶

Keir Hardie, was described by Tony Benn as ‘Labour’s first, and in many ways, greatest leader’. He was involved in a local dispute at Cumnock Congregational church, where he opposed the sacking of a minister. He helped form a breakaway church there and also encountered hard line Calvinism that did not sit well with his faith, which was democratic and egalitarian. His church attendance probably suffered as a result of his extensive travels but the evidence is clear that he kept the faith. This was so even when he entered into disputes with rich Christians like the industrialist Lord Overtoun.

Overtoun (John Campbell White) was the owner of the Shawfield Chemical Works in Rutherglen, Glasgow. He was celebrated by his admirers as a churchman, philanthropist, a generous giver to charities and a sponsor of the famous American evangelist D. L. Moody. What Hardie did was to draw attention to the working conditions and wages of the workers in his factory in a pamphlet entitled White Slaves. This exposed the hypocrisy of Overtoun. Employees were forced to work on the Sabbath Day, whose observance Overton championed. The polluting effects of the toxic chemicals affected the workers’ health and the local environment, which received poisonous effluent into the river. Again Hardie emphasised that he was writing as a Christian. It was the church and the hypocrites it embedded that he was prepared to attack. As Holman points out, Hardie saw Christianity as a regenerating force in the lives of people. But it was also about abolishing poverty and inequality. The attack on Overtoun, it is good to report, did produce some improvement in working conditions. ⁷

As a footnote to this discussion of alienation from the institutional church which Holman documents, it should be recognised that working-class alienation has been evident since the industrial revolution, with notable exceptions such as the Salvation Army and, more recently, the Pentecostal churches. The issues this has raised for the mainstream churches has been sensitively discussed by John Harvey in his Kerr Lectures, Bridging the Gap: Has the church failed the poor? Particularly relevant is his discussion of the Gorbals Group Ministry in Glasgow (in which he participated), since it took place only a few miles away from Easterhouse, where Holman was working. This was an ecumenical group of mainly ordained ministers who drew inspiration from the French worker-priest movement and the East Harlem shop front church project. There was some overlap in the timing of these projects, but both were concerned with being in and participating in community. Harvey argued that it achieved a measure of success citing their ‘work amongst young people, often carried out at tremendous personal cost, their experiments in what was then coming to be called Community Development, which included such things as street action groups, a community newspaper, an adventure playground, a nursery school, a youth and community association, a holiday scheme, an adventure camp in the Highlands and their involvement in local and city politics.’ ⁸ A comparative analysis of these two projects could be fruitful. That is for another day.

Intellectual Groundings

Holman’s socialism was no doubt rooted in his childhood experiences of the poverty he saw around him. But it received, as I have indicated, an intellectual grounding during his time at the London School of Economics. The significance of the LSE has been well portrayed by Dennis and Halsey in their excellent book English Ethical Socialism. ⁹ The immediate post-war period was a time of optimism for the social democratic left. The Attlee Labour government carried out wholesale reforms that amounted to a social revolution: the establishment of the welfare state, the setting up of the National Health Service, the nationalisation of major industries and the movement towards comprehensive education, the beginning of the process of de-colonisation. All of this demonstrated a move towards greater social equality. But it was an unfinished task.

One towering presence at LSE was Richard Tawney, who clearly identified himself as a Christian socialist. Dennis and Halsey comment: ‘Tawney’s socialist conviction, that equality is a morally binding value, was also derived from his socialist Christian background. Scaled against the majesty of God all human beings were equally insignificant. Against the goodness of God, all were equally sinful. In taking the outward material form of bread and wine, all equally received the life of God himself’. ¹⁰ Equality was also the basis for a good society—it provided the condition for living together in fellowship (or fraternity) for the common good. His famous book Equality makes clear that equality of opportunity without equality of condition does not lead to a more equal society. Rather, for the most part, it would lead to the reproduction of existing inequalities. Perhaps we should all re-read Equality. To this we should properly add The Acquisitive Society. ¹¹ Tawney saw contemporary British society as dominated by a preoccupation with the acquisition of wealth, which impinges upon our social values and institutions. Peter Townsend, in his Preface to the 1982 edition comments: ‘The population necessarily becomes victims of “irrational inequality”.… Wealth is squandered on “futile activities”, and lip service paid to the eradication of poverty. Without changes to institutions, proposals to ameliorate poverty would be ineffective’. ¹² Poverty, in other words, is a symptom and consequence of social disorder.

Holman would have engaged with this thinking, but in more practical ways. He saw Peter Townsend as something of a role model. Townsend, along with other colleagues in the Social Administration department at the LSE, such as Richard Titmuss, and Brian Abel-Smith, proved to be a thorn in the flesh of whichever party was in power, including the Labour party, which they supported. Townsend was a key influential in setting up the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), which had been initiated by Harriet Wilson in 1965. This group challenged the Labour government to improve its policy on family allowances and, given the sharp increase in National Insurance contributions, rising unemployment and rising prices, argued that this made life worse for the poorest members of society. Townsend wrote a number of books on poverty including Poverty in the United Kingdom, ¹³ which were to prove both influential and controversial. These were ground-breaking studies but, Holman pointed out, these studies made little impression on Thatcher governments.

Townsend also wrote succinctly about the class basis of health inequalities, which impinged upon the poor in society. Holman pointed to a significant article that Townsend wrote, ‘The Pursuit of Equality’, which argued that poverty was a result of inequality and that that was what analysis should focus on. Holman comments: ‘Peter made clear the evil nature of inequality and wrote eloquently about thoroughly unjust, undeserved and unnecessary exploitation on the one hand, and thoroughly unjust, undeserved and unnecessary assertion of power and wealth on the other. He continued that greater equality was achievable and explained “that the wealthiest 20 per cent of the population would only need to lose about a fifth of their disposable income to finance a doubling of the incomes of the poorest 20 percent”’ ¹⁴ . Following this article, he did indeed pursue his concern for greater equality in his lectures and writing.’ ¹⁵ Redistribution of wealth is indeed the key to greater equality. Without it, to quote an old proverb, fine words butter no parsnips.

Holman identified with Townsend’s views on poverty and its causes, including his distinction between relative and absolute poverty. While there are examples of absolute poverty among those in many countries whom Fanon rightly called the wretched of the earth, within a rich society like the United Kingdom, poverty may be defined in terms of the gap between rich and poor. Those who are using food banks, who are suffering the loss of benefits, through the application of sanctions, who, even if working, literally cannot make ends meet are truly poor. This of course includes many old people, children, single parents and the disabled. The socialist values that permeated Townsend’s work were endorsed and advocated by Holman.

One academic who understood these issues very well was Professor David Donnison, one-time Chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission. He was also a member of the LSE coterie. He wrote: ‘Since profoundly unequal societies recreate poverty and its hardships in new forms in every generation, the drive to lift every citizen out of poverty cannot succeed unless it becomes a drive for greater equality.’ ¹⁶ This chimes in precisely with Holman’s concern for a more equal society. He summed it up in this way: ‘I mean a society in which resources, opportunities and responsibilities are so distributed as not to place any individuals or sections of the population at severe social or material disadvantage compared with others.’ ¹⁷

The question of Marxism

One thing that may be noted in this discussion is the lack of reference to Marxism. After all, the emergence of liberation theology in Latin America, had actively seen the attempt to build bridges with Marxist thinking, although not in an uncritical way. In his book on Keir Hardie, Holman noted that Hardie had read Marx and had met and communicated with Engels, who had written so powerfully on the plight of the poor in England. Marx himself was sharply critical and dismissive of Christian socialism, seeing it as a misplaced utopianism. The concept of a classless society resonated with Hardie but the call to revolutionary violence did not, for which he was criticised by Marxist theorists. Holman pointed out that Hardie became a socialist before he encountered Marxism. ‘Seeing the needless poverty of his neighbours and the sufferings of miners in a land where some dwelt in luxury convinced him that a new economic and social system was required, a system that was called socialism.’ ¹⁸ It was the failure to distribute wealth equitably that led to great inequalities. Hardie saw the Sermon on the Mount and the communal pattern of life represented in the Acts of the Apostles as guiding principles for the kind of society for which we should work.

Holman’s own position was akin to this. He was rooted in the traditional working class and situated in a dissenting, nonconformist strand of Christianity. I think he would have identified with the Methodist Scholar R. F. Wearmouth, when he wrote that ‘Labour’s access to political influence and authority was due more to Methodism than Marxist theories, more to the prophets and the New Testament than to the Communist Manifesto, and then only if one includes all of Nonconformism under “Methodism.”’ ¹⁹

There is a sense in which this earthy tradition of dissent in the name of justice and equity can be traced back to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. It was the priest John Ball who famously commented: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ He, of course was executed for his revolutionary sentiments. Much later, in the nineteenth century, the Tolpuddle Martyrs (mostly Methodists) of the early nineteenth century, stood up for the right to combine in a trade union.

Role Models

It was this Biblical concern for righteousness and justice that infused Holman’s activity and his writings. He particularly admired those who were prepared to go face-to-face, as it were, with the poor and to know from direct knowledge what their real day-to-day problems were. This was evident not only in his books on Lansbury and Hardie, as we have seen, but also in his studies of F. B. Meyer and Studdert Kennedy. ²⁰

In the case of Studdert Kennedy, an Anglican priest, Holman, as a young man, was first attracted to him through his poetry, which is indeed very challenging. But what Holman later realised was that in the First World War he served as a military chaplain and received the Military Cross. He served the troops on the front line with great energy and bravery, gaining the affectionate accolade of ‘Woodbine Willie’. In the post war period, however, he became a tireless advocate for peace alongside his parish work. He always lived and worked in poor parishes. Holman wrote about him that he considered it wrong that some should live in luxury while others lived in penury. He spent much time visiting people in small back-to back terrace houses. ‘Some evenings he would laugh and sing in the local pub before going to sit with the sick and dying in their cold homes. He spoke or wrote about the humanity and humility of the Son of God who sought the company of fishermen, who welcomed the presence of prostitutes and accepted the approaches of aliens, that is, those from foreign countries.’ ²¹ Holman’s book on Studdert Kennedy was published in 2013 and, in an Epilogue, he pointed out that the gap between rich and poor was much the same as in Kennedy’s time. As a result of the economic crash of 2009/10 the poor and those on low incomes had suffered materially whilst the bankers and financiers, for the most part, went unpunished. Austerity, after all, did not mean that ‘we’re all in it together’. In 2011, 3.8 million children were deemed poor.

F. B. Meyer was a Baptist minister, who exercised distinguished ministries in Leicester and London and was a regular speaker at the Keswick Convention. He was a spiritually minded conservative evangelical but also a committed social activist. Holman described him as an ordinary man who became an extraordinary Christian. It was because of his ordinariness that he felt he could identify with him. ‘If he could become an extraordinary servant of God so can many other ordinary folk.’ ²² Holman lauded his work as a pastor, especially in working-class areas and also recorded his work for prison reform and the temperance movement, amongst other social welfare activities. But he also noted that Meyer had a serious understanding of the great division between rich and poor, as the following quotation illustrates:

The foreigner is amazed at Hyde Park in the height of the season: such equipages, liveries, dresses, jewels, display. He doesn’t visit the East End to see that the wealth of London is very unequal in its distribution, and that the few are rich, because uncounted thousands are compelled to exist in the most destitute and miserable poverty. ²³

Was Meyer a Christian Socialist ? Holman came to the view that he was not, ²⁴ although he did favour the use of state intervention to tackle poverty and develop social welfare provisions. ‘He was an advocate of and a practitioner of a social gospel which stemmed from his Christian beliefs.… He saw that the free market resulted in poverty and severe inequality but he believed that humane legislation, Christian practices by owners of capitalism and provision by voluntary societies could address the problems.’ ²⁵

Christian Socialism in Practice

Holman himself not only wrote about Christian socialism, but also practiced it. Having trained as a social worker, he never lost his concern for the individual or for the importance of the family. He would have encountered hundreds of people knocking on his door with many needs throughout his life. They would have provided concrete examples of the plight of the poor which he could employ in his criticisms of government policy. Yet the label with which he was most comfortable was ‘community social worker’. For most of his working life he lived in working class communities, in housing schemes where many found it hard to make ends meet. These were in Southdown, Bath, and Easterhouse, Glasgow. He found that in spite of the deprivation, these communities were able to organise themselves.

This experience put him firmly on the side of those who advocated ‘bottom-up’ action for change as opposed to ‘top-down’. So, for example, he referred to the FARE project (Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse), which was started in 1989 by local people and to this day is still run by them. It has successfully confronted issues such as gang violence. It has set up an old people’s club and worked with young people to get Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards and develop sporting activities. Yet, as he pointed out in a 2014 interview, funding from Glasgow council had been cut. He spoke of the hypocrisy of the coalition government that promotes the concept of the ‘big society’ yet knocked millions off welfare. He was also critical of the Blair government and its use of think tanks like Demos. They were mainly staffed by public school and Oxbridge graduates who had little knowledge or experience of what poverty was like. Millions of pounds were pumped into such organisations but with little benefit to the poor. It was Peter Mandelson who memorably said that he was comfortable with people being rich.

When he was interviewed in June 2014, asked why he had said these were dark days for the UK he replied: ‘I’ve lived in deprived areas for nearly forty years and I don’t think I’ve ever seen poverty or inequality as bad as it is now. And it’s made even worse by this whipping up of feeling against the poor.… There are now three loan sharks and a pawnbrokers in our row of shops in Easterhouse. This is a real indication of what life is like.… I’ve had a friend sanctioned for six months. He had absolutely no money for six months.’ ²⁶ All that we can say to this is that surely we need more Christian socialists and that the struggle must go on. Bob Holman was a Christian Socialist who was able to deal with the nitty-gritty of community life, to lobby, agitate, and speak truth to the powerful. He did this with an unquenchable faith. It is a life to be celebrated and valued. He embodied Christian values of peace and justice and lived them out with dignity and grace.