Open letter in support on UN Nuclear Ban Treaty

I was pleased to give support to the following peace initiative reflecting the General Assembly's longstanding condemnation of nuclear weapons and support for disarmament:

As the United Nations open the historic Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty for signatures, church leaders in the UK have signed an open-letter, coordinated by Christian CND, calling for the government to sign up.

The text of the letter is:

At the United Nations today a ground-breaking Treaty banning nuclear weapons opens for signature. The Treaty is the result of multilateral negotiation and is supported by more than 120 states. Unfortunately the United Kingdom is not among those set to sign the Treaty.

We believe that nuclear weapons pose a threat to the survival of humanity. History has shown us the complete devastation these weapons deliver and the human suffering they cause. The Bible teaches us that we are stewards of the earth, with a duty to protect all life. Nuclear weapons are the antithesis of this teaching.

Jesus describe peacemakers as blessed and the prophet Isaiah wrote of “beating swords into ploughshares”. The world stands closer to nuclear war now than it has done for a generation. At this time, while the world debates use of sanctions, diplomacy or military force, the Treaty represents a unique opportunity for the nuclear weapon states to walk together towards a total ban.

Successive UK governments have pledged their support for a world free of nuclear weapons. We believe that this Treaty offers a significant step towards that aim. By signing the Treaty the UK can show moral leadership. We urge the government to reconsider its position on the Treaty and join the international consensus in signing it.

Rt Rev Dr Derek Browning – Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
Bishop Stephen Cottrell – Bishop of Chelmsford
Rt Rev Dr Derek Browning
Derek McAuley – Chief Officer, General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches
Revd Loraine N. Mellor – President of the Conference of the Methodist Church
Alan Yates – Moderator of General Assembly, United Reformed Church

“Conscientious Objection 100 years on” - Richard Durning Holt’s Diary

This week I attended a Reception at the Houses of Parliament arranged by Quakers in Britain to mark the 100th Anniversary of the Military Service Act. Rev Feargus O’Connor of the Unitarian Peace Fellowship was able to join me. We were reminded of the significance of the introduction of conscription and of the conscience clause in the Act providing for conscientious objection to military service which was a fundamental shift towards individual freedoms. Conscientious objection is now recognised as a universal human right but not yet implemented across the world. 

Richard Durning Holt (1868-1941) was prominent among those Liberals who tried without success to oppose the legislation. He was a member of a famous Liverpool Unitarian family and was Liberal MP for Hexham between 1907 and 1918 and prominent in Liverpool affairs and later nationally for the first three decades of the twentieth century. Another Unitarian opponent was H G Chancellor, MP for Haggerston.  Unitarians and World War 1 is a previous blog entry of mine.

Holt’s diary records his opposition and his disappointment at the outcome. It is held at Liverpool City library and an edition was published in 1988 by “The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire” (Vol CXX1X) by David J. Dutton. With the title “Odyssey of an Edwardian Liberal: the political diary of Richard Durning Holt” it offers some interesting insights on the passage of conscription Bill in early 1916.

Dulton points out that Holt felt that” the War was demanding unacceptable measures of encroachment by the state” (page 41). He was committed to the late 19th Century Liberal, and indeed nonconformist approach, to support for peace and voluntaryism along with restricting the role of the State.

2 January “The years opens with a gale and every prospect of political disturbance for the Prime Minister has let it be known that he has adopted the policy of conscription towards which the Tories have been pressing him for the past twelve months.”

9 January “On Wednesday and Thursday we debated the Conscription Bill, Sir J. Simon, who resigned the Home Secretaryship on the question, leading the opposition. They was a good deal of excitement and I thought the opponents made out a case (I was one of them) but sentimentality and fear of defeating the Government carried the day and we were defeated by 403 to 105. I told for the minority and also spoke I had hoped for a better show but several of our friends failed us at the last moment including dear J.W. Wilson, Chas. Hobhouse who was very strong against conscription most unaccountably went back on us, made an inconclusive speech and abstained.”

16 January “Came home on Thursday. We debated the Conscription bill on Tuesday and Wednesday when the Irish deserted us and some others and the division was 431 to 39. I did not speak but voted of course.

4 February “The little group who had opposed conscription formed themselves into a permanent organisation – Sir J. Simon, chairman, Whitehouse, secretary, J.H. Thomas, the railway men’s representative, Leif Jones and R.D.H. committee.”

He records that on 25 February 1918 he had attended what Dutton calls an “important” meeting at Essex Hall to support Lord Lansdowne’s proposals for peace by negotiation (17 March 1918).

He paid the price. The public did not share his views and neither did his local party and he was “forced” to seek another seat at the forthcoming General Election. 

Throughout his life Holt was active in Unitarian affairs. In 1903 he spoke at the National Triennial Conference held in Liverpool proposing a resolution condemning the Education Act. In 1918 he records that he was elected President of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association “an office I always coveted for the childish reason that I was the first whose great-grandfather (Richard Potter, MP for Wigan) had held it” (11 June 1918).  

Out of Parliament, having been defeated in 1918, he chaired a public meeting of the Liverpool District Missionary Society with Dr Estlin Carpenter and Sir Alfred Booth speaking in support of the League of Nations idea at the Royal Institution (19 January 1919). He chaired a meeting at the Unitarian Memorial Hall in Manchester which passed a resolution demanding that the Versailles Treaty be referred to the League of Nations (6 February 1923). 

An early diary entry sets out his Unitarian beliefs. Reflecting on the year end (31 December 1900) he notes:

“I trust and believe that the future will show an increase in and a strengthening of our own views of simple Christianity which I believe to be the true basis on which to establish the community.  I know I have expressed my meaning badly: I don’t want any established church – Unitarian or otherwise. What I mean is that in the main it is the belief that what God wants of man is that he do right, i.e. love his neighbour, and not that he profess particular theological opinions or requires a consecrated place or an ordained priest, which will bring with it a great improvement in our social and political conditions”.

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

Unitarians and World War One

2014 will mark the hundredth anniversary of the start of World War One. A national commemoration will involve a transformation of the Imperial War Museum, a major programme of national commemorative events and an educational programme "to create an enduring legacy for generations to come". More than £50million has been allocated and the Heritage Lottery Fund has announced an additional £6million to enable young people working in their communities to conserve and share local heritage of WWI. There is support of all the major political parties for this initiative although as the New Year dawned there has been a politicalised debate about the significance of the War.

The Unitarian and Free Christian movement marked World War One by a “Tablet to the memory of fallen soldiers and sailors”, unveiled at Essex Hall by Mrs Sydney Martineau on 12 January 1921. Believed lost in the destruction of the building in 1944 during World War Two, it was designed by Ronald P. Jones, cast in bronze and made by the Guild of Handicraft, Birmingham. The Inquirer (15 January 1921) reported that Mrs Martineau, in an impressive address, spoke with great sympathy of those whose beloved were represented among the Thousand who did not return; that they might be comforted in the thought of a noble service rendered by the Dead; and might those dear ones who survived and came back “realize more and more the price paid for our liberties, and for an ever-enduring establishment of Right as the dominant factor in the lives of nations”.

She referred to 10,000 from “our little community” who served in the armed forces. A Memorial Roll of Honour was also compiled and unveiled in 1922 which actually contained 1700 names of those who died listed in alphabetical order, including congregation. This was also thought destroyed in 1944 but was later discovered by Rev Peter Godfrey at Essex Hall, and is now at Dr Williams’s Library. We are endeavouring to locate the Roll and then to place a digital copy on the web which would give congregations and individuals an opportunity to use it for research.

Many Unitarians treasure the Nightingale Centre, the Unitarian retreat and conference in Great Hucklow. The Inquirer (16 November 1918), just two months after the cessation of hostilities, carried an appeal for £10,000 for the "Florence Nightingale Home for Soldiers, Sailors and other men of our community” which had been established by the Sunday School Association as a Unitarian National War Memorial. This was designed to meet a present urgent need but no Government funding was forthcoming to erect a building, therefore Unitarians got to work.

In churches and chapels across the country will be found individual memorials to those lost. Congregations, of course, mark Remembrance Sunday in various ways. Finding out more about the individuals listed on memorial plaques could be a useful starting point to produce a local and more human story of the war.

Nationally, this will also be an opportunity to reflect upon how Unitarians and Free Christians, individually and collectively, responded to the War. Alan Ruston has written with feeling of how the nonconformist churches were forced to face large moral and spiritual issues for which they were apparently so ill prepared. This was felt particularly by liberal Christian Churches who emphasized a belief in “the goodness of man and his God”. His article on “Unitarian attitudes towards World War 1” in the Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society (April 1998) merits careful reading. He tellingly reveals that historians of Unitarianism had ignored the subject until he wrote in 1993 on two Unitarian ministers killed in action.

The denominational press shows that the majority of Unitarians supported the war effort, at least until mid-1917, with a notable minority taking a more critical stance. The views of some of the former are surprising; although we must be careful to assess the past in its own context not that of today. One legacy was the establishment of the Unitarian Peace Fellowship in 1916 (as the Liberal Christian Peace Fellowship) with its basis that “war and the preparation for war is unreconcilable with the teaching and spirit of Jesus”. The General Assembly in 2016 is an opportunity to remember their foundation and work for peace since then.

Alan also points out that his research found a quite different response to the war between Unitarian ministers and the laity, the latter being somewhat more sceptical including a few Unitarian MPs. Importantly, he suggests that World war One so seriously undermined the basis of the confidence of British Unitarianism that it “has not subsequently recovered its dynamism nor theological assurance”. 

Unitarians should mark this centenary. Nationally there has been concern that “2014 is being scheduled as another zenith of nationalist pride”, as Richard Seymour wrote in The Guardian (12 October 2012). I am sure that Unitarians will commemorate and remember with dignity drawing upon the best of what we are but guarding against the temptation to white wash the past.

This is an updated version of an article “How will we remember the fallen?” which appeared in The Inquirer on 19 January 2013 (Issue 7810).

LGBT History Month: A Unitarian Hero - Dudley Cave

I occasionally come across references in the media to people whom I know were Unitarians. This month it was in BBC History magazine 9, Vol 13, no 2 February 2012) in an article by Stephen Bourne on how, during a rare period of tolerance, homosexuals served with distinction during World War Two. One of those quoted was Dudley Cave, a well known Unitarian who died in 1999.

Dudley Cave was a pioneer for gay rights within the British Unitarian movement and much more widely as well as being an advocate for peace and reconciliation. I recall seeing him on television on one of the early “gay” programmes in the 1990’s. We should remember him in Gay History month.

In the article it explains he was conscripted into the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, in 1941, aged 20. “He later recalled a conversation he overhead between two of his comrades. One referred to him as a “nancy boy” while the other protested that Dudley couldn’t be because he was “terribly brave in action”. Dudley understood that in their minds he could not be brave and homosexual, that the two were incompatible”.

It seems that homosexuality was unofficially tolerated in the armed forces for the duration of the war. Dudley reflected “They used us when it suited them, and them victimised us when the country was no longer in danger. I am glad I served but I am angry that military homophobia was allowed to wreck so many lives for over 50 years after we gave our all for a freedom that gay people were denied”.

Cave was posted to the Far East. During the fall of Singapore in 1942, he was captured by the Japanese. Marched north in a prisoner-of-war labour detachment, his unit was put to work on the Thai-Burma railway, 10 miles beyond the bridge on the River Kwai. He ended up in Changi Prison, Singapore where be began to accept his homosexuality. A British army medical officer gave him a copy of Havelock Ellis's "enlightened, eye-opening" 1920 book Sexual Inversion. It made him feel "much better about being gay".

In an article in The Inquirer (19 March 1994) entitled “A Gay Man in a Liberal Congregations”, based on an address to Golders Green Unitarians, he describes the reality of being gay in the 1950s; “Being gay, having a love that dare not speak its name, was disabling. I knew that I was a second-class citizen, perhaps even sub-human; my self-image was very low. I had to conceal my real feelings with every action, every word”. In 1954, Cave was dismissed as manager of the Majestic Cinema in Wembley after it was discovered he was gay. In the same year, Cave met the man who became his life partner, Bernard Williams, an RAF veteran and schoolteacher. They lived and campaigned together for 40 years.

In 1971 he decided to “have another look at the Unitarians” having been previously disappointed with their traditional worship. Things had changed and an “Integroup” was being launched as a “straight-gay integration” society at Golders Green Unitarians with Rev Keith Gilley. Within the denomination he has been described by Rev Dr Ann Peart (1.) as one of the “comparatively few people” active in promoting lesbian and gay rights and of openness and toleration in acceptance of LGBT people for ministerial training and ministry, recognition of same sex blessings in churches and support for homosexual human rights.

As secretary of Golders Green Integroup he was invited on to the launch committee of “London Gay Switchboard”. A gay bereavement support group at the church developed into the Lesbian and Gay Bereavement Project in 1980. This was the first organisation with the word “gay” in its title to win charity status, and not without a struggle. Drawing upon his bereavement skills, he was a consultant to the National Funerals College, which was important as the tide of deaths from AIDS grew. Although shy his ability as a speaker blossomed and he appeared increasingly on the media. He was also prominent as a Unitarian lay preacher and contributed to “Daring to Speak Love’s Name: a gay and lesbian prayer book”.

For 20 years, he battled against the Royal British Legion's refusal to acknowledge that lesbian and gay people served and died in wars defending Britain. He also challenged the Legion over its opposition to the participation of gay organisations in Remembrance Day ceremonies.

Dudley was a leading figure in the promotion of peace and reconciliation with Japan. "I will never forget what the Japanese did to us, but the time has come for forgiveness," he wrote to a friend. He was involved with the Buddhist Peace Temple near the River Kwai, and lectured extensively on the need for rapprochement between former adversaries.

Rev Keith Gilley summed up his life: “He embodied the Unitarian principles of Freedom, Reason and Tolerance, not only with these two issues with which he will always be associated but with so many others – equality in terms of colour, race, sex and in relation to disabled people signified almost as much with him as gay rights and peace issues” (Obituary, The Inquirer, 19 June 1999).

Peter Tatchell wrote of him as “Anti-Fascist, soldier, prisoner of war, advocate of peace and reconciliation, gay rights pioneer, Dudley Cave was above all a Humanitarian” (Obituary, The Independent, 31 May 1999).

A true Unitarian Hero in LGBT History Month

(1.) “Peart, Ann (2003) “Of warmth and love and passion: Unitarians and (homo)sexuality” in “Unitarian Perspectives on Contemporary Social Issues” (Chryssides, George D. (ed)) . Lindsey Press. Available from Unitarian Headquarters. 

Swansea General Assembly 7. - Amnesty International

Unitarians have long been active in supporting Amnesty International in word and deed. The General Assembly unanimously recognised Amnesty International's 50th Anniversary by approving the resolution put forward by the Unitarian Peace Fellowship:

That this General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches:
[1] congratulates Amnesty International on the occasion of its 50th Anniversary in July 2011. [2] notes Amnesty International’s devoted work for human rights and civil and religious liberty worldwide; its determined advocacy of all victims of injustice and political and religious persecution, in particular women, gay people and vulnerable minorities; and its campaigns against the death penalty and judicial injustices.
[3] requests the Chief Officer to write to Amnesty International expressing our warmest congratulations and encourages our Unitarian congregations to mark this occasion appropriately.