Abstract
Across the twentieth century, Britain had a total of 20 prime ministers. Mark Vickers’ book God in Number 10 explores the personal faith of 19: those who took office during the century from Arthur Balfour’s appointment in 1902 to Tony Blair’s in 1997.
It is a book of surprising facts: that Winston Churchill had a personal astrologer, despite having once considered ordination; that James Callaghan was described as a fervent atheist by one of his colleagues and yet warmed to the sisters of a Roman Catholic religious order who cared for his wife in her final years; that Harold Macmillan, one of the most devout Anglicans of the 19 premiers, had a decidedly frosty relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury, describing Geoffrey Fisher as ‘a silly, weak, vain and muddle-headed man’ (p. 287); that Lloyd George was baptized by immersion in a cold Welsh stream; that Anthony Eden had studied the Qur’an for his Oxford degree; and that Labour prime minister Harold Wilson’s son was named Giles after a friend who was also Tory prime minister Alec Douglas-Home’s brother-in-law.
Each prime minister has a chapter that outlines the main events of the premiership and sketches a biography with special emphasis given to religious upbringing and later demonstrations of faith. The length of each chapter is determined by both the time in office and the interest taken in religious practice. There is a short, sad chapter on Bonar Law, who served the shortest time of any of the 19 and was, says Vickers, the least believing.
Significantly longer is Tony Blair’s chapter, describing the former New Labour prime minister’s personal spiritual journey. Despite being rebuked by the Alastair Campbell quote ‘We don’t do God’, he did God in a big way. He moved in his lifetime from being highly influenced in his thinking by a Quaker who had rejected institutional religion, ritual and dogma to being received into the Roman Catholic Church.
The only woman included is Margaret Thatcher. Her early life was steeped in Methodist chapel life. Later, she became a member of the Church of England and so certain was she that her idiosyncratic theology and understanding of good and evil were correct that she took it upon herself to lecture the Church of Scotland General Assembly in her ‘Sermon on the Mound’.
While Mark Vickers’ book is a rattling good read, its lightness is its failure. Many of the prime ministers bore responsibility for life or death decisions. While Churchill was not inclined to review his, often controversial, political actions from a faith perspective, both Thatcher and Blair were. Blair committed troops to the invasion of Iraq. It was a war opposed by the Pope, and yet despite that Blair attended mass during his premiership and later asked to be received into the Roman Catholic Church. Thatcher opted to use military force to regain the Falklands, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of British and Argentinian troops. A more weighty exploration of how the prime ministers squared their consciences, their faith and their deeds waits to be written.