Christian Socialists…have they left the building?
By Keith Harvey
[This article was first published in The Southern Highlands Newsletter №239 and is republished with permission of the Editor and the author.]
In recent times, discussion of the voting tendencies of Christians, especially evangelical Christians, usually concludes that they are most likely to vote for conservative political parties. Commentary along these lines was found in the ALP’s review of the 2019 Federal election result, although it was muted and hardly conclusive. In the USA, the Republican Party appears to have captured the religious vote and even Donald Trump, who displays no obvious Christian virtues, attracts evangelical fervour. The current attraction of Christians to political parties on the right is based largely on perceptions of where the parties stand on so-called moral and ‘family values’ policies, rather than on economic and other social justice concerns. Moreover, Christians are said to shun parties tainted with the ‘socialism’ tag. It was not always thus.
Hanging on the wall in the Ballarat Trades Hall Council Chamber is a painting that the unprepared visitor may not expect. It is a portrait of the English Catholic Cardinal Henry Manning. Why is there an image of an English Cardinal in this working-class space? The connection was made during the London Dockworkers strike of 1889. This strike aroused great interest in Australia and strong financial support was forthcoming from trade unions and other Australians. This support enabled the continuation of the dispute which was eventually settled with the assistance of Cardinal Manning who acted as a mediator as the dispute dragged on.
The London dockworkers had struck on the 12th August 1889 but within a month the strike was on the verge of collapse. Union leaders issued an appeal for assistance, which was responded to most strongly in the Australian colonies: of the 48,700 pounds sterling raised, 30,000 pounds came from Australia. Thirty thousand pounds is today worth about 3.8 million pounds, or about $AUD 6.6 million — a massive sum.
Ballarat unions made their first payment of 168 pounds on the 6th September, the first of 21 payments from then until the 22nd November by which time their total contribution amounted to 1,971 pounds. Manning’s prominent role in the successful resolution of the dispute was widely known.
After the dock strike, Manning wrote to the Archbishop of Dublin saying: “We have been under the despotism of capitalism. The union of laborers is their only shelter”. [Mathews, Race, Of Labour and Liberty, p 72]. Manning died in January 1892 and he was later described as both a ‘Catholic Socialist’ and an adherent of ‘social Catholicism’ [Mathews, pp 78–79].
The Cardinal is also credited with a significant role in the development of the first great social encyclical issued by the Catholic Church — Rerum Novarum — also known as ‘The Workers Charter’ given by Pope Leo X111 in May 1891. Germany’s Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler has also been noted for his role in promoting ‘Social Catholicism’ and laying down the principles which found their way into the 1891 Encyclical. Rerum Novarum was an important influence on Sydney’s Cardinal Moran who was also a supporter of the ‘rights of labour’.
Manning’s death was noted at the Ballarat Trades Hall and a motion of condolences passed. A subscription was later taken up to obtain a picture of Manning but later a portrait was commissioned. Some sources say that the portrait was presented to the Ballarat Trades Hall Council by London Dockworkers but in fact it seems to have been painted by a local artist after Manning’s death and presented to the Council in April 1893. The delegate who first moved the motion to seek subscriptions to meet the cost of commissioning the picture, noted that the ‘late Cardinal’s assistance to John Burns, Ben Tillett and Tom Mann [the main leaders of the London dockworkers] was of the greatest service’. The portrait still hangs today.
I will return to the question of whether a prince of the Catholic Church could properly be called a ‘Christian Socialist’. But many early union and ALP figures in Australia had little trouble in describing themselves in this manner, in particular, several prominent union and labor figures who identified as members of evangelical protestant churches.
About 20 kilometres from the centre of Ballarat is Creswick, for a time the epicentre of Australia’s ‘bush unionism’ and ‘new unionism’ [and the birthplace of John Curtin]. Creswick was the headquarters of the Amalgamated Miners Association headed by William Guthrie Spence. In 1886 the Australasian Shearers Union was established, and Spence was invited to become President of this organisation as well. Creswick housed the head office of both unions for some time. The Australian Workers Union later emerged from these beginnings as the unions sought to encompass a wider range of rural workers.
The Scottish-born Spence was, for his whole life, a member of the Presbyterian Church in Australia, but was also known to preach with ‘Primitive Methodists’ [as they were called] and other Bible Christians as lay preacher. In 1892 he gave a lecture in Sydney under the auspices of the Australian Socialist League on ‘The Ethics of new Unionism’. This ‘new’ unionism had several dimensions, not the least of which an interest in the promotion of social change both through unionism and the involvement of workers organisations in the political process through what ultimately became the ALP. Spence became a Labor member in the first Federal parliament elected in 1901.
In his 1892 speech he noted changes in economic thought and “that much credit is due to the Socialist side of the question, for their writings have undoubtedly influenced trades unionism.” Some claimed, he said, that socialism was ‘Utopian’ and ‘not so practical as one would wish’ but that these writings ‘have become practical because they have certainly aroused the unionists, who have given a practical turn to Socialism’. [Spence, Ethics of New Unionism, p 4].
Spence also said:
“If asked to give a short definition of our aim I should say that is an effort to give practical effect to the teachings of the founder of Christianity,…in taking up this new unionism we must see if it cannot get right back to the level of the founder of Christianity, imbibe some of His spirit and get rid of musty theology, for some of it is very musty” [Laughter and cheers]…Christ taught men that they could and should bring the kingdom of heaven upon earth. New unionism aims at giving practical effect to that…’. [Ethics, p 8 — the words in brackets are included in the published text]
Spence did not need to reconcile his social, union and political views with those of his religion; rather, he based the former squarely on the latter. He was not alone in this. Histories of the ALP frequently note that Methodists, in particular, were very well represented in the caucuses of the early state Labor parties. Similarly, their activism was driven by the social dimension of their religious belief — seeking to pursue the aim of creating heaven on earth, not asking workers to be patient and wait until the next life.
The first United Labour Party Premier in South Australia was Tom Price, who headed a minority Government for four years until his death in 1909. Price was Wesleyan Methodist, a lay preacher and Sunday school superintendent. One of the early Mining union leaders in SA was John Verran, who worked at Moonta Mines. Verran became the Premier of the first majority ALP government of South Australia in 1910. He famously said, “I am an MP because I am a PM”. Both Price and Verran described themselves as Christian Socialists.
Methodists were also prominent in the early Labor caucuses in NSW. Ross McMullin, in his centenary history of the ALP, records that the NSW Labor Electoral League, a precursor to the ALP, was formed in April 1891. It successfully contested its first election under the new banner in June 1891, just a few weeks after its formation and performed brilliantly, capturing 35 out of 141 members and holding the balance of power. Ross McMullin says:
“Five of the new members were English born miners who had migrated to Australia during the previous dozen years: all but one were devout Methodists”. [McMullin, R. The Light on the Hill, p 12].
Several other early ALP leaders also easily combined a Christian faith with socialist views. The family background of Australia’s first Labor Prime Minister, John Christian Watson, is obscure in places but while I have found no reference to strong religious beliefs he has been described as a Christian Socialist. [Ford, Patrick, Cardinal Moran and the ALP, p 269] The second ALP PM, Andrew Fisher, was, like Spence, a Scottish-born Presbyterian. Fisher grew up in Ayrshire where he was active in the mining unions and knew Kier Hardie well. By 1886 it is reported that Fisher had formed strong socialist views, based in part on his discussions with Hardie and his own reading. [Bastian, P, Andrew Fisher — An underestimated man, p 25]. Fisher can confidently be described as a Christian Socialist.
Kier Hardie, a founder of the Independent Labour Party in the UK, was at first an atheist, but converted to Christianity in 1897:
A lay preacher for the Evangelical Union Church, Hardie was also active in the Temperance Society. Hardie considered himself to be a Christian Socialist: “I have said, both in writing and from the platform many times, that the impetus which drove me first into the Labour movement, and the inspiration which has carried me on in it, has been derived more from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth than from all other sources combined.” [https://spartacus-educational.com/PRhardie.htm]
Christian Socialists also dominated the leadership of the UK Independent Labour Party formed in 1893. This included James Keir Hardie, Ben Tillett, Tom Mann and others. Tillett and Mann later visited Australia. Mann spent many years in Australia involved in trade union and political organising, especially in Victoria. Tom Mann has been said to be responsible for recruiting to the ranks of the labour movement two future prime Ministers — James Scullin and John Curtin — and a Victorian Premier — John Cain, Senior. [Strangio, Paul, Neither Power Nor Glory, 100 years of political labor in Victoria, 1856–1956, pp 72–74]. The AMWU’s Tom Mann Theatre in Sydney is named for him. Tom Mann ended up as a founding member of the British Communist Party.
Like Watson, the story of the family background of Billy Hughes, the next Labor Prime Minister varies depending on when Hughes was telling it. His father was a pillar of the Welsh Baptist Church in London, but the son appears to have abandoned Christianity for a more secular and humanist philosophy. But he certainly adopted socialist views — at least before he was expelled from the Labor party during WW1. Later leaders Scullin and Lyons were Catholic, but in the case of Lyons, not particularly inclined to socialism.
In the last decade of the 19th century and the first of the 20th, some form of socialist belief was common among trade union and political labor leaders, both Christian and otherwise. William Holman, a member of the first Labor government in NSW was perhaps not strongly religious but was educated in an Anglican school in London. In his years in the labor movement in NSW, he espoused strong socialist views, although he was concerned what impact they would have on the electability of the emerging Labor party. [Nairn, Bede, ADB entry on Holman].
I mention Holman — who like so many of Labor’s early leaders — was expelled from the Party over the issue of conscription during the first world war — in part just so that I can mention [possibly to the Editor’s interest!] — that Holman came to Australia in 1888 on the same ship as both the incoming Catholic Cardinal-Archbishop of Sydney, Patrick Moran, and the Australian cricket team who had failed to defeat England in the Ashes campaign that northern summer. [Evatt, H V, Australian Labour Leader, p 5.]
Cardinal Moran was destined to play a strong role in attempting to influence the approach of the nascent Labor party in its approach to socialism as a party policy and objective. In 1895, a leader published in the Catholic Press, a Sydney newspaper was able to declare:
We cannot, of course, have any sympathy for working men who are led away from rectitude by infidels and blatant socialists, agitators and designing men, all of whom are the enemies of labour, thrift, and honesty. We are socialists within the doctrine of the Catholic Church. [Catholic Press (Sydney, NSW: 1895–1942), Saturday 23 May 1896, page 13 — emphasis added]
But what could this mean? What possible meaning could ‘socialists within the doctrine of the Catholic Church’ actually have? It was difficult to see that Cardinal Manning — or any other practicing Catholic — could be described accurately as a ‘Christian Socialist’. Rerum Novarum, the 1891 papal encyclical to which Manning had some input, condemned socialists, partly because of their opposition to private property. The encyclical argued [not particularly convincingly, in my view and in the gendered terms typical of the era] that the right to private property was embedded in the ‘natural law’.
4. To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man’s envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies…
5. It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own…it is precisely in such power of disposal [of property] that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life.
The Encyclical, however, had many positive teachings on the need for a living wage and the right to form unions for the advancement of working people. But its criticism of socialism and socialists appeared to be a stumbling block to Catholics describing themselves as socialists or supporting a political party with a socialist objective. Whether the emerging Labor parties in the Australian colonies should have such an objective was the subject of many and intense debates.
The issue of whether to include a ‘socialistic’ plank in political labor’s policy had been addressed a number of times. In 1897 the Political Labor League conference in NSW had endorsed a platform plank calling for the ‘Nationalisation of the whole of the means of Production, Distribution and Exchange’ — but rather than include it as the first plank of the ‘fighting’ platform, included it as part of the ‘general’ platform. [Nairn, Bede, Civilising capitalism, p155].
In 1905, the issue came up again. At the Political Labor Leagues conference in January 1905, following a motion moved by Broken Hill delegates:
That the Federal and State Fighting Platforms should have a permanent prelude, clearly defining the ultimate purpose of the Party thus: Objective — A Co-operative Commonwealth founded upon the socialisation of the production and distribution of wealth
the Conference resolved that this objective should be expressed as follows:
The securing of the full results of their industry to all producers by the collective ownership of monopolies and the extension of the industrial and economic functions of the State and municipality. [A E Cahill Catholicism and Socialism-The 1905 Controversy in Australia, Journal of Religious History, Vol 1, issue 2, December 1960]
This decision was attacked, even before it was officially published, by one conference delegate, H E Kelly, a Catholic, who published an account of the decision in the Catholic Press. Kelly claimed that the decision was incompatible with the teachings of the Church and in particular the 1891 Encyclical. He called on Catholics to form a new political party, untainted by socialism. It can be noted, of course, that the 1905 decision was in fact a weaker statement than that of 1897, which it replaced.
What is in a name?
The Catholic community waited to see what Cardinal Moran would say in response to Kelly’s tirade in the Catholic Press. In the meantime, Labor’s enemies sought to use the conference decision against Labor. In his response, Cardinal Moran rejected the claim that the Labor decision meant that the party was full of ‘undisguised socialists’ unfit for the support of Catholics: ‘I repudiate completely and entirely the action of those who attribute such principles to the political party to whom I refer’, he said.
Moreover, he continued:
There are some gentlemen who would call themselves socialists. Well, I do not like the name of socialism. But, then, what is in a name? … For my part, I do not like that name, for the reason that in the English speaking world today socialism and communism are partially convertible terms, and no one in his senses would look to communism…But if men in their political interests chose the name of socialists, I say again, what is in a name? [Moran, Speech to the Irish National Foresters’ Benefit Society as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, 21 February 1905
The Cardinal’s response appears to be at once almost flippant as well as Shakespearian [A rose by any other name…]. But he refused to fall for the early twentieth century ‘wedge’ that opponents of Labor were seeking to apply in an effort to drive Catholic voters from the party that best represented their economic interests as workers. In addition, while he was bound to reject ‘socialism’ in the form condemned by the 1891 encyclical, he was, in my opinion, well aware that the notion of socialism contained various tendencies and streams of thought [which the Encyclical did not recognise].
Clearly Moran did not think that the actual policy positions of the nascent labor movement in Australia amounted to anything resembling European revolutionary communism or anarchism. In practice, the policy of both unions and the emerging Labor parties was “Laborism” — a gradual, parliamentary and arbitral approach to improving the conditions of working people.
At the time, socialists, including Christian socialists, drew their inspiration and beliefs from a number of sources, including Marx and Engels, but from a range of others as well, including religious teachings. Many, while accepting a Marxist analysis of the nature of capitalism, rejected revolutionary change. Often, adopting the name of socialist simply meant an opposition to laissez-faire capitalism as experienced in industrialising economies.
It is also worth noting, of course, that these events in Australia took place 12 years before the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Socialism was more a theoretical and intellectual construct than a concrete plan of action. Although the 1897 conference platform calling for nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange was a specific and radical policy, there was little chance that the new Labor party would be able to implement anything approaching such a policy. A version of the ‘socialisation’ objective was inserted into Federal Labor’s platform in 1921 and remains there today. It has had little impact on the Party’s actual election policy platforms over the years.
Many of the ALP’s early leaders who were evangelical protestants left the Party or were expelled during the conscription crisis during the first world war. Much of the Catholic support was lost to the Party as a result of the split in the 1950s, although not, Cardinal Moran might be pleased to note, in NSW. Ever since, the Christian Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, and the ALP largely seem to have viewed each other with mutual and enduring suspicion. In my view, this is regrettable, and has assisted the transmission of natural Labor voters into the unworthy arms of conservative parties.
Christian Socialism appears never to have had formal structures and organisation — it was more a collection of people with similar but not identical views. There is no obvious Christian ‘tendency’ in the ALP today [unlike the British Labour Party in which a grouping known as ‘Christians on the Left’ exists].
There are Christians of various denominations in various factions on the Party, including in the ‘Socialist Left’. Kevin Rudd, as federal opposition leader in 2007 attempted to speak to the Christian community in 2007 and to reflect on the Party’s Christian heritage. The failure of his Prime Ministership meant that this process was not continued and his successors do not appear to have been inclined to repeat the effort. The field has been vacated and the conservative parties reap the benefit. Some, perhaps many, will say that this is a good thing, but, in my opinion, it makes the Party’s task of regaining government in Canberra much harder.
There are declining numbers of people left today who want to claim the name ‘socialist’ and probably none who would describe themselves as Christian Socialists. In part, this represents the crisis of ideology brought about by the collapse of the unfortunate Soviet experiment in totalitarian communism. Those on the left today are searching for a coherent philosophy.
As recently as 2006, even the doctrinally conservative Pope Benedict XIV was able to write:
In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness. [Benedict XVI, EUROPE AND ITS DISCONTENTS, First Things, January 2006]
In my view, it may be time for Christians to reclaim their political history. Despite its many challenges, the ALP should be the natural party of ‘Social Christians’ of all faiths, like those who founded the Party, who are interested in social and economic justice for all. No other party will offer it. Christians should recognise the social justice demands of their faith and look for a party that will offer action on these issues rather than support a party that captures their vote only by pretending to have a pro-Christian policy on ‘moral’ and ‘family’ issues.
