God and Mrs Thatcher (23 page)

The process of modernising the Prayer Book dated back to the early 1960s, during which time the Church’s liturgical commission had produced three different versions under the rather uninspiring titles of Series I, II, III. Conscious that the subject was likely to arouse feeling in Parliament and with the 1927–8 Prayer Book debacle still fresh in their minds, the Anglican leadership made sure that liturgical revisions were presented as ‘alternatives’ rather than actual replacements for the Book of Common Prayer. After the Worship and Doctrine Measure passed, however, the Synod was technically free to establish a new orthodoxy. Those traditional Anglicans opposed to reform mobilised to form the Prayer Book Society (PBS) a year later in 1975 and secured the support of a number of sympathetic parliamentarians
to defend what they termed the ‘spiritual birthright of the nation’.
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To traditionalist Anglicans, the sweeping away of 1662 represented the most catastrophic decimation of the Church’s heritage in recent history. ‘When this country has lost an empire and has not found a role,’ wrote one PBS member Geoffrey Sheppard, ‘it is an entirely inappropriate time to obliterate the Book of Common Prayer by endless nervous variations and forfeit utterly any way of saying our public prayers in unison.’
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Traditionalists may have spoken of the 1662 Rite as one that united the nation both past and present but this was not strictly true. Much of the 1928 Revised Prayer Book was then widely used and there was little uniformity across the Anglican parishes, let alone across successive generations.

In a strategic attempt to put as much pressure on the Church hierarchy as possible, the Prayer Book Society amassed a petition signed by an impressive list of prominent names from Britain’s military, academic, legal and literary spheres, including a number of notable peers and twenty-nine MPs (three of whom were members of Thatcher’s shadow Cabinet). Conservative peer Lord Sudeley, who could trace his ancestral roots back to one of the knights who had murdered Thomas à Becket, performed a similar act of defiance against spiritual authority when, in 1978, he introduced a bill in the Lords to allow each parish to hold a referendum on the use of the 1662 Prayer Book.
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His bill was the first time since the 1919 Enabling Act that ecclesiastical legislation had been initiated in the Houses of Parliament. The then Bishop of London, Gerald Ellison, thought it an ‘attack upon the whole system of Church government’.
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The bill was shelved; the cause, however, was not.

In what was to be the fourth liturgical revision in twenty-five years, the Alternative Service Book was finally published in 1980. This time it was the Commons who led the fight with Conservative MP and heir to the Salisbury title, Viscount Cranborne, introducing a bill for the preservation of the 1662 Prayer Book, controversially calling for a
Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate its use in the parishes. Fearing the potential constitutional ramifications of the state examining Church practices, Margaret Thatcher decided to enforce the whip on this occasion, but it was to no avail, Cranborne still succeeded in gaining a 152/130 majority in favour of the bill progressing. In a diplomatic move, Runcie invited the group of PBS campaigners and MPs to lunch at Lambeth Palace with the hope of preventing further disruption. Runcie’s schmoozing failed, in part because he refused to make a public declaration in defence of the retention of the 1662 Prayer Book. With Runcie dithering, Lord Sudeley once again decided to push the cause in the Lords and in a bold act wrote to every diocesan bishop demanding statistics on the use of the Prayer Book in the parishes.

What the Bishop of Derby, Cyril Bowles, called Sudeley’s ‘self-appointed inquisition’ sent the bishops into a blind panic.
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And yet evidence that eventually came in from the dioceses proved what the bishops had been saying all along. There was no uniformity of worship even within dioceses, let alone across England, rather the statistics pointed to a variation of 1662, 1928, Series I, II, III and the Alternative Service Book. The liturgy used was, as had always been the case, entirely dependent on the incumbent vicar. In what many considered an inappropriate ruling from an archbishop, Runcie finally gave concrete assurances that the 1662 Prayer Book would not be phased out in the parishes and, more crucially, in the theological colleges. Parliamentary pressure on this matter had been pivotal in protecting the 1662 Rite. Parliament had put up an impressive fight over the 1662 Prayer Book although what was clearly at stake was a dogged defence of the old trinity of Englishness, Anglicanism and Toryism. Runcie’s conciliatory words would mark only a temporary truce in Church–state affairs.

One of the stipulations of the synodical government in 1970 was that Church Measures would require vetting by the Ecclesiastical Committee (a cross-party group comprised of MPs and peers) and ratification by Parliament. The expectation, by those in the Church at least, was
that this process was a mere formality. In July 1984, the Appointments of Bishops Measure, a relatively minor piece of legislation on election procedure, reached the House. As the last piece of business of the day, the debate was sparsely attended (not one Labour MP was present), however an important cluster of aggrieved Anglican Conservatives had shown up determined to use the occasion to vent their frustrations on the newly Bishop-elect of Durham, David Jenkins, who in a recent television interview had uttered some clumsy remarks implying that the Virgin Birth, Resurrection and the miracles of Jesus had not
actually
happened. Days after the broadcast, York Minster was struck by lightning, which many took as a sign of God exhibiting his wrath on the ‘unbelieving bishop’ Jenkins. At 12.21 a.m. the vote was taken and lost in what was the first time that Westminster had thrown out a Church Measure since the Synod’s formation. Not content, Conservative Anglicans appealed to Thatcher for Jenkins to be deselected and urged for increasing temporal influence on the Crown Appointments Commission.

Canon Colin Buchanan considered the parliamentary intrusion a ‘declaration of war’ on the Church, but while the bishops did not quite see it in these terms, they were certainly worried (not to mention extremely irritated) by this challenge to synodical autonomy by a handful of Conservative MPs.
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Conservative Anglican MP William Powell took a different view, judging that parliamentary intervention was necessary in order to save Anglicanism from its ‘narrow paths’ and ‘unwanted reforms’. Writing to a sympathetic Bishop of Peterborough, Powell insisted that the Church needed to drop its obsession with political concerns and rediscover the meaning of ‘Royal Supremacy’.
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Some Conservatives, both inside and outside the House, increasingly came to see synodical government as the source of problems within the Church. Writing in 1986, Charles Moore thought that the separate chamber completely undermined the fact that ‘the Church of England is the property of the English people
(and therefore looked after them by their elected representatives)’.
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That the Church’s identity and authority derived from its relationship with Parliament was a concept that few clergy took seriously, nor did they accept the argument frequently articulated by Conservative Anglican MPs that they, rather than synod representatives, spoke for the ‘ordinary man in the pew’. The truth was that parliamentary prerogative assumed new relevance at a time when the Synod was increasingly divided between traditionalists and liberals. Needless to say, Anglican traditionalists certainly welcomed the MPs’ intervention: ‘If Parliament does not protect them no one will from those awful ecclesiastical sectarians and their trendy ways,’ wrote lay Synod member Gervase Duffield in a letter of thanks to Enoch Powell.
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The traditionalist cause was beginning to find its voice in Parliament as Synod members turned to Conservative MPs to help stem the liberal tide in the Church. In 1986 lay Synod member Kathleen Griffiths wrote to Enoch Powell suggesting a meeting between ‘conservative Synod members’ and MPs in order to coordinate a ‘common policy’ against ‘ecclesiasticism’.
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When, in 1986, Conservative Anglican MPs demanded regular meetings with the bishops to discuss forthcoming Measures, the Bishop of Southwark refused point-blank. ‘To you, who do not relish democratic argument,’ wrote Conservative MP Ivor Stanbrook in a somewhat curt reply, ‘it appears we are a nuisance.’
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Labour Anglican MP Frank Field, who sat on the Ecclesiastical Committee, was convinced that the tensions between Church and Parliament were not the fault of disgruntled MPs but the result of the dismissive attitude of the Anglican leadership who, he believed, enjoyed the privileges of establishment and seats in the House of Lords, but were unwilling to countenance that this relationship should be a reciprocal one.
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Field was right, the bishops were not prepared to allow Westminster an opinion in its affairs; this was not out of spite, but because they genuinely believed that the Church of England was not beholden to Parliament, which
admittedly, was a somewhat strange position for the bishops of an Established Church.

On the surface, the parliamentary fight over ecclesiastical Measures seems like an irrelevant sideshow given the more pressing issues that the country and government faced; this is certainly how Thatcher saw it at the time. Yet the constitutional tussle between Synod and Parliament had exposed two things: firstly, the level of discontent within the Church itself between the predominant conservative (both evangelical and High Anglican) laity and its liberal leadership, which was only exacerbated by Anglican Conservative MPs in Parliament. Secondly, it revealed the increasingly bitter relationship between the Tory Party and the Church leadership on the changing character of Anglicanism. As Alfred Sherman pointedly remarked, Conservatives always considered Anglicanism as an institution rather than a system of belief; it was therefore a matter of identity and one that many Conservatives felt increasingly alienated from.
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All talk of a constitutional gulf between the Synod and Parliament disguised their true concern: the widening cultural gulf between the Conservative Party and Anglicanism. With the Church entering the political fray on matters of social and economic concern, these tensions would only intensify.