Welsh Disestablishment - 100 years on
Welsh Disestablishment: Comments and chronology. Hywel J Davies
When the Church of Ireland celebrated its 150thanniversary in November 2019, it was done with aplomb and public participation. However, it has been the misfortune of the Church in Wales that when it sought to celebrate its centenary in 2020, its plans, like so many this year, were laid low by the Covid-10 pandemic.
For the record, it is worth noting that the Church in Wales had a programme read to go. In April 2020, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was to visit Wales, as he did Ireland last year, to highlight the celebrations. On June 7thall six of the Welsh cathedrals were to host a liturgical commemoration. At the National Eisteddfod, to be held at Tregaron in August, there were plans for a panel-led discussion, which would have included the First Minister, Mark Drakeford and two bishops. More imaginatively, perhaps, was the idea of an Arts Festival Award, focusing on the plight of refugees, climate change and the role of reconciliation. All these events fell by the wayside because of the pandemic.
Others were not so adversely affected – such as the production of a number of celebratory films, now available on You Tube, including a modified version of the original enthronement ceremony of the inaugural Archbishop of Wales on June 1st1920. Similarly, a Centenary Appeal has already been launched, aimed at raising £100,000 in aid of two charities – Housing Justice Cymru, and the work of Christian Aid in South Sudan. Finally, a ‘New History of the Church in Wales’, edited by Norman Doe, has been published. To this list of church-orientated events might be added the excellent BBC Radio Wales programme, ‘All Things Considered’, broadcast in January 2020, which reflected on the disestablishment campaign and its implications for the Church in Wales today.
However, despite all this effort, it is likely that the marking of the creation of an independent Welsh province, with its own Archbishop in 1920, will pass largely un-noticed by many. This is hugely ironical given the degree of controversy and, indeed, animosity that marked the campaign for disestablishment. It was a campaign that was at least as divisive and rancorous as the Brexit debate of our own day, and lasted for considerably longer.
On the evening of 18 September 1914, Sir David Brynmor Jones, Liberal MP for Swansea District since 1895, was in a celebratory mood. Together with other Welsh members, gathered in the lobby of the House of Commons, he eagerly joined in the singing of ‘Hen Wlad fy Nhadau’. For him and many more, the enactment of the Welsh Disestablishment Bill earlier that evening had marked the end of a long and often fractious campaign. As the son of a Congregationalist minister and brother of John Viriamu Jones, the first principal of Cardiff university, David Brynmor conveniently embodies three of the most important strands in that campaign: political radicalism, the ascendancy of Welsh nonconformity and the contentious issue of public education.
From the middle of the 19thcentury, the matter of the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales was an enduring feature of Welsh life. Since 1870 as many as five disestablishment motions were tabled in the House of Commons (in 1870, 1886, 1889, 1891 and 1892) followed by four Disestablishment Bills (in April 1894, March 1895, April 1909 and April 1912). The final Bill, itself delayed by a Royal Commission 1906-1910, was assailed by amendments from friend and foe alike - and only just made it to the Statute Book in 1914. Its operation was then postponed until after the First World War. Finally, in June 1920 a new, independent Welsh province, part of the world-wide Anglican Communion, was created in Wales.
Looking back on the campaign for disestablishment, two things in particular seem remarkable. Firstly, that so much time and energy should have been spent on an issue that, today, appears arid and arcane. When last was any section of the British electorate divided and energised, to a similar degree, by a matter of religion? Secondly, that something, which, in a later age, might been called “the settled will” of the Welsh people should have received such short shrift at Westminster. Although disestablishment had its champions beyond Offa`s Dyke, its numerical strength in Wales over a consistent period of time made it a supremely Welsh affair. Not until the 1965 Tryweryn debacle would Westminster display again the same nonchalant disregard for Welsh democratic representation.
Remarkable, also - in the eyes of some - were the events of Tuesday, June 1st 1920, as Archbishop A. G. Edwards (1848-1937) and the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George (1863-1945) conducted themselves for all the word as if they had served as brothers-in-arms during the struggle of the past half-century. Indeed, earlier that day Lloyd George had received communion at the Archbishop`s hands - an “astonishing action” in the view of the ‘Church Times’.The truth is that on almost every aspect of the Welsh disestablishment debate these two men were on opposite sides - Lloyd George, the Particular (or Strict) Baptist from Cricieth, champion of nonconformist rights and, after 1890, MP for Caernarfon Boroughs; and Edwards, Bishop of St Asaph since 1889 and the moving force behind the Church Defence League. Both men were given to “serpentine manoeverings”and inspired admiration and distrust in almost equal measure. Significantly, Edwards was once described from a nonconformist platform as “the worst liar in Wales”. The audience was then reassured that “we have a man in David Lloyd George who is more than a match for him.” !
The arguments for and against the disestablishment and disendowment the Church of England in Wales took many forms. There was a moral argumentrooted the 18thcentury Enlightenment, with its emphasis on religious toleration, public education, due process, popular representation and an emphasis on reason over privilege and tradition in public life. The creation of the Liberation Society in London in 1844, thus, called for the freeing of all churches from state control as a moral imperative. In Wales its most influential supporter was Henry Richard, MP for Merthyr and Aberdare after 1868. Other Liberals leaders - such as Lloyd George, Tom Ellis, Stuart Rendel and George Osborne Morgan - were later to champion the same ideal of untrammelled freedom in religious matters. This moral impetus, owing nothing to statistics or conditions, continued to the end, even after many nonconformist grievances had long been met. For example, Keir Hardy, ILP member for Merthyr and Aberdare after 1900, was no less zealous in supporting disestablishment. For him, however, it was a welcome step towards “a general revolution in the ownership of property”.
A second argument in favour of disestablishment has more to do with concepts of fairness and equity, focusing on the remarkable strength of nonconformity by mid-century. The religious census of 1851 discovered that only about one half of Wales` population attended a place of worship, but that almost 80% of them preferred the nonconformist option. Similarly, when the Royal Commission of 1906 issued its findings 4 years later, it found that nonconformist membership totalled 550,280 as against 193,081 communicants for the Established Church. This ascendancy, then, was no flash in the pan, and gave substance to Gladstone`s assertion at the Church Congress in Swansea in 1879 that Wales was “a nation of nonconformists”. Church people, justifiably, criticised the veracity of these statistics, while nonconformists, for their part, suspected that active church membership was, in truth, even smaller. Nevertheless such findings strengthened the argument that Anglican privilege and dominance, was untenable on any understanding of what was equitable and just.
The Church`s most effective riposte was to argue its historic role in Welsh life. It was the successor of the old Celtic Church, unsullied either by Rome or Geneva. Neither the Synod of Whitby nor the English Reformation had altered its essential character: Papal authority had simply been replaced by that of the Crown. Moreover, it was the Church that had fed and nurtured Welsh culture in previous centuries, not least in the translation of the Scriptures, to say nothing of those fondly known as ‘yr hen bersonau llengar’. Privileges and wealth, tithes and property, thus, had come to it by dint of longevity and the pious intentions of the faithful. Talk of stripping these away from the Welsh Church was tantamount to “the robbery of God”and would be an act of sacrilege. Significantly, AG Edwards, at a time in 1892 when disestablishment legislation seemed within reach, inveighed against any “hacking to pieces the ancient British Church”.
There was also a constitutional argument – that the Welsh Church had been an inherent part of the Convocation of Canterbury since Norman times. No comparison, it was argued, should be made with the Church in Ireland, disestablished in 1869. There, the union with the Church of England dated only from 1801, while Irish Anglicans had long had their own provincial framework. Besides in Ireland the situation was more clear cut as the dispute was not between 2 version of Protestantism , as in Wales. Even Gladstone, originally, could not be persuaded that disestablishment was a constitutional possibility
But perhaps the most contentious argument involved the right of Wales to be treated separately, as a nation in its own right. Since Tudor times (apart from the ill-fated Act for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1650) no distinctive Welsh legislation had been passed until the Sunday Closing Act of 1881 and the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889. Indeed, in1891, at the time of a fourth disestablishment motion the Conservative MP Joseph Bailey, arguing the indivisibility of Wales and England, provocatively declared “Wales has never been a nation.”In the same debate R C Raikes, Postmaster General in Salibury`s government, denigrated Welsh nationality as being “of interest only to students of folk-lore and archaeology”.Even, Basil Jones, Bishop of St David`s after 1874, echoing Metternich, claimed that Wales was simply “a geographical expression”. Contrast this with the words of William Abraham (Mabon), Lib-Lab MP for the Rhondda after 1885, when, in 1889, he supported an earlier disestablishment motion:
“Have we no country of our own? Have we no customs of our own?.....Have we no language that no Englishman in this House can pronounce? Have we not every single characteristic….necessary to make us a nation? If that is so, how is it possible for the English National Church to be the National Church of Wales? It never was and it never will be.”
If any one event infused the campaign for disestablishment with a national character, demanding that Wales` own needs and conditions be recognised, it was the infamous Blue Book controversy of 1847. The Report presented by the education commissioners was so odious, impugning the Welsh for being lazy, immoral and nonconformist, that it provoked a spirit of national outrage. Disestablishment became the channel for this resentment – which was periodically fuelled by the denominational press, the experience of revival, and special events such as the 1862 celebrations (in memory of the 200thanniversary of the expulsion of puritan dissenters), and the 1868 expulsions from their farms of tenant farmers at odds with Tory landlords. By 1887 disestablishment had become part of official Liberal policy, integral to the extra-parliamentary and nationalist ‘Cymru Fydd’movement, and championed by the ‘Welsh Party’ in the Commons.
At the beginning of the 19thWales lay on the threshold of a new age. Three recent revolutions, Industrial, French and Methodist, had re-set the kaleidoscope of what had been a relatively static society, comfortably controlled by an Anglican squirearchy.
By the 1800`s there was a steady migration from the poverty and over-population of the surrounding countryside to the mines and furnaces of industrial Wales. This new proletariat brought with them the language and culture of a nonconformity that had blossomed in the wake of the 18thMethodist revival. It is estimated that during the first half of the century the nonconformists built a new chapel in Wales every 8 days, unfettered by parish and diocesan structures and procedures. Increasingly, too, they developed a settled, rather than an earlier itinerant, pastorate. A minister such as Dr Thomas Price of ‘Carmel-Penpound’ and later ‘Calfaria’, Aberdare, for example, could exercise an energetic ministry in one locality over a period of time to great effect. This helps explain the remarkable results of Horace Mann`s religious census of 1851 (see above) and Gladstone`s comment at the Church Congress in 1879.
It is a temptation to view the social disturbances in Wales at this time – Merthyr Rising 1831, Rebecca Riots, Chartism - as the direct result of the challenges and ideas unleashed by the French Revolution. Certainly among the Old Dissent (Baptists and Independents) the effect is discernible in individuals such as Morgan John Rhys, Richard Price, David Rees, Llanelli; but Methodism was a harder nut to crack. The Church of England, for many, remained ‘yr hen fam’from whom they had parted company in 1811 with reluctance. Thus, at the Bala ‘Sasiwn’of 1834, John Elias, the doyen of Welsh Methodist preachers at that time, had deprecated all talk of disestablishing the Church of England in Wales. For him and others, the Church not only commanded an enduring loyalty, but also constituted a necessary line of defence against Popish infiltration. So what happened? What gave rise to the campaign for disestablishment that became, eventually, “a supreme national cause”?
Probably the single most important reason is the effect of the so called ‘Brad y Llyfrau Gleision’ – the inquiry into the state of education in Wales in 1847. (See above) The Report`s accusations were even more deeply resented when they were made by clergy such as John Griffiths, Vicar of the newly created parish of Aberdare, 1846-1859. Bishop Edward Copleston, Bishop of Llandaff 1828-1849 had even called Dissent “a sin”. The ‘Treachery of the Blue Books’has been termed “the Glencoe and the Amristar of Welsh history”and did much to stir a quiescent Methodism from its slumbers. This process of awakening was also greatly aided by a dynamic Welsh press, focused on men like Samuel Roberts (SR), Gwilym Hiraethog and, above all, the Methodist Thomas Gee (1815-1898).
In the pages of Gee`s ‘Baner ac Amserau Cymru’, nonconformist grievances were set out to great effect, and disestablishment promoted as the concomitant remedy. The Church`s historic claim to the tithe and Church Rates, its hold over education, its unfair interpretation of the Burial Act, the abuses and deficiencies of parochial and diocesan ministry, its social and linguistic distance from the populace, its privilege and status were all called to account. To these were added the need for economic reform, rural and industrial, a widening of the franchise and a secret ballot. The nonconformist press went into overdrive in 1862 at the 200th anniversary of earlier nonconformist injustices (See above). One of the main speakers at the celebration in Swansea was Henry Richard, who provided an important Welsh link with the London based Liberation Society. In 1869, when the Act disestablishing the Irish Church was passed, supporters of the Liberation Society were encouraged in their quest to achieve the same for Wales.
The year 1868 is also an important milestone in the disestablishment campaign. Besides Henry Richard`s victory in Merthyr and Aberdare, other gains were made across Wales in the name of reform. But it had not been a secret ballot, and there followed a series of evictions in Wales as tenant farmers who had voted contrary to their landlords` wishes suffered the consequences. This created “a new popular martyrology” which fed into nonconformist folk memory.
All this excitement seems to have gone to the head of one of those Liberal MP`s elected in 1868. Watkin Williams, the member for Denbigh Boroughs, sought leave to introduce the first ever Welsh Disestablishment motion in 1870. It was not an opportune time. Henry Richard and others, at this stage at least, were not especially enamoured of Williams` quasi-nationalist rhetoric: what they wanted was liberation all round, not some measly Welsh affair. Gladstone, himself, refused to see any parallel with the Irish Church Act. Thus, only 7 Welsh MP`s voted for the motion, which managed to muster only 45 votes in all.
Despite this failure, Welsh disestablishment was clearly no longer a pipe-dream. Notice had been served on the Church of England that its privileged place in Welsh life was not beyond parliamentary reach. In fact, the Church had not been totally heedless of a need to put its house in order. Long standing abuses, such as pluralism, nepotism, absenteeism, political appointments and an antiquated parochial system had been confronted, and steps taken, by the National Society since 1811 and the Ecclesiastical Commission since 1840, to set things right. It is said that if nonconformists were busy as this time building chapels, Anglicans were building schools. A particularly active programme of church school building was encouraged by H T Edwards, brother of the first Archbishop, Vicar of Aberdare 1866-69 and later Dean of Bangor.
By 1867, therefore, it is estimated that two-thirds of elementary education in Wales was provided by the Church. This put Anglicans in a strong position when, in 1870, National Schools were afforded grant aid by Forster`s Education Act, much to the chagrin of Wales` nonconformist majority. However, whatever resentment was felt following the 1870 Act was but a curtain-raiser compared to the much more serious conflict that arose following Balfour`s 1902 Education Act. For three years, led by Lloyd George in the so-called ‘Welsh Revolt’, every local authority in Wales refused to implement it. Nonconformists, fired with the effect of the 1904/05 revival, had the bit between their teeth as they derided what they called a policy of ‘Rome on the Rates’. In the wake of this controversy the 1906 general election proved to be a landslide victory for the Liberals: the 1902 Act was dropped and hopes for a speedy delivery on disestablishment set high. (See below)
But schooling was not the only aspect of Anglican revival in the second half of the 19thcentury. Similar progress was made in church building. In Llandaff, Alfred Ollivant, bishop from 1849 until 1882, was especially instrumental in encouraging private benefactions. John Griffiths at Aberdare, for example, was able to restore St John`s and start the construction of St Elvan`s and St Ffagan`s 1851/53.
It was at this time, too, that a more serious effort was made to appoint clergy in sympathy with Welsh culture and the language. In 1870 H T Edwards drew Gladstone`s attention to the harm done by ‘yr Esgyb Eingl’– the English bishops in Wales. Not since the reign of Queen Ann had a Welsh-speaker been appointed to a see in Wales. As contrasted with nonconformity, the Church was in danger of appearing alien, out of touch, and of a mind not dissimilar to that of the 1847 Commissioners. Within the year, however, Joshua Hughes had been consecrated as Bishop of St Asaph and similar appointments were made in St David`s and Llandaff. Indeed, John Davies quotes the view of W J Gruffydd (Welsh literary critic and academic), writing in the 1920`s, that the Church was more respectful of the Welsh language from 1870 to 1920 than ever it was under disestablishment: every bishop appointed in Wales after 1870 was bilingual…..including A G Edwards.
Born in Llanymawddwy in Gwynedd, Edwards was, almost by instinct, a controversial figure. At Llandovery had had relaxed the ‘Welsh rule’ as set by the college`s founder, the slave-owning Thomas Phillips in 1847. Even his own cathedral chapter criticised Edwards “for patronizing English incumbents”, while the future Archbishop of Wales was not beyond describing the Welsh language as “the last resort of the uneducated”. He vigorously challenged the accuracy of nonconformist numerical strength, claiming that “the Church is everywhere; nonconformity only somewhere”. During the tithe riots of 1886-91, whereas Lloyd George had cut his political teeth defending tenant farmers, Edwards condemned any refusal to pay as an assault on the right to private property. Yet, with rentals high and an agricultural depression beginning to bite, tenants bitterly resented having to pay towards a church few of them attended. The riots, in fact, added “a new element of class resentment to the disestablishment campaign” and left a lasting legacy of bitterness.
Little expresses this bitterness more that the spirit of competition between church and chapel that marked the latter years of the 19thcentury. Just one look at the chapels built at this time suggests the need to impress that underpinned them. It is suggested, too, that the steps the Church had taken to put its house in order - in the matters of education, church building, appointments and structure - all served to arouse even greater nonconformist suspicion and resentment. Thus, a new determination and momentum seemed to mark the disestablishment campaign following the tithe riots.
Welsh disestablishment had become part of official Liberal party policy in 1887, and in the 1892 election the Liberals won 30 of the 34 Welsh seats, so allowing the 82-year old Gladstone to form his 4thministry. Yet, overall, his majority was precarious – which served the ‘Welsh Party’ of radical Liberals well: their bargaining power was that much greater. Thus, despite Gladstones`s preferred focus on Irish Home Rule, the first Welsh Disestablishment Billwas introduced in April 1894 (largely under pressure from Lloyd George and his fellow Welsh Baptist, D A Thomas, MP for Merthyr and Aberdare 1888-1910.
The rancour that followed focused on the terms of disendowment involved – its extent, its distribution and the appropriate level of compensation - these were the crunch issues now, not principles, convictions or historic loyalties. The talk was of ‘greedy prelates’, of the nonconformist ‘screw’ and of ‘wanton proselytizing’, one side of the other. Even within the Welsh Party there were disagreements as to how the secularised endowments and tithes should be re-distributed – on a parish-by-parish basis (favouring rural communities) or per head of population. Meanwhile the time-consuming matter of Irish Home Rule, together with the intransigent opposition of the House of Lords guaranteed, for now, that Second and Third Disestablishment Bills would meet the same dismal end as the First.
Even the great Liberal triumph in 1906, with Lloyd George now a member of the Cabinet, was no guarantee of expectations being fulfilled. The House of Lords remained as hostile as ever and no more likely to favour a Fourth Bill than earlier ones. What was offered, therefore, was not another Bill but a Royal Commission ‘inquiring’ into the state of religion in Wales, 1906-1910. To many it must have seemed like the classic delaying tactic; but there was reason behind the apparent madness. Welsh disestablishment would get nowhere until the teeth of the House of Lords had been pulled. Lloyd George`s ‘people`s budget’ of 1909, which the Lords rashly rejected, led eventually, to the 1911 Parliament Act, which did precisely that.
With the Royal Commission also finally completing its Report in 1910, there was no more reason to delay. Protests continued against the Fourth Disestablishment Bill of 1912, and mass meetings were held in Cardiff, the Albert Hall and Hyde Park. A G Edwards and John Owen (bishop of St David`s after 1897) fulminated against any attack on “the voluntary donation(s) of pious ancestors”while the Unionist MP, F E Smith, stretched credulity when he claimed that disestablishment “would offend the soul of Christian people everywhere”. (“Chuck it, Smith”was G K Chesterton`s satirical response in verse)
The years since 1910 had been one of great turbulence - the Tonypandy Riots, Suffragette agitation, the Curragh Mutincy in Ireland, the 1911 National Insurance Bill, the Dreadnought Crisis: all these spoke of age in which disestablishment appeared increasingly antiquated and irrelevant. Moreover, the replacing of older moderate trade union leaders, such as ‘Mabon’ (a deacon, at Nasareth CM chapel, Pentre) and David Morgan,’ Dai o`r Nant’( also a deacon, at Gadlys and, later, at Calfaria Baptist chapels, Aberdare) by more militant leaders, a higher percentage of immigrant workers from outside of Wales, the seemingly busted flush of revival excitement, and the gross overbuilding of chapels of earlier years, had all helped dim nonconformity`s appeal by 1914. For some in the ILP of Keir Hardie, the chapel minister came to be regarded “more as a class enemy than a popular champion.”, while Hardie, himself, though a supporter of disestablishment, was motivated by ideas of a different provenance (See above)
The truth is that by the beginning of the 20th century many of the traditional nonconformist grievances had already been dealt with. John Davies suggests that by then it was less a matter of injustice as the memory of injustice that kept the pot boiling. Even national pride, so injured in 1847 had been publically redeemed with the foundation of the modern National Eisteddfod (1861), a National University (1893), a National Library and Museum (1907), and a superior structure of Intermediate education since the 1889 Act - to say nothing of the heights scaled by Lloyd George in public office.
The outbreak of war in August 1914 made an immediate settlement a matter of urgency. The Lords, having dragged the 1912 Bill through the “weary ritual” prescribed by the Parliament Act, agreed to pass it, on the condition that its operation should be suspended until after the war. The curtain had finally fallen on a drama whose plot had become thin and its actors weary. The stage was now set for the dulcet tones of Sir David Brynmor Jones and friends.
Mehefin 2020
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