CATHOLICS FIGURE prominently among the victims of oppression and persecution behind the Iron Curtain, while the peace of Belgian cities is disturbed by Catholic-Socialist clashes and rioting. But relations between Church and State are excellent in authoritarian Spain and democratic Ireland, so that it would appear that Catholics may be happy under democracy or totalitarianism — or neither. With capitalism in decline and new movements challenging with new ideas the communism which threatens to replace it, the whole question of the Catholic attitude towards politics demands examination.
Conviction that this life is merely a preparation for an eternal existence after death in no way implies that worldly problems are of no interest or concern. On the contrary, Catholics are continually urged by their spiritual leaders to play their part in the civic and political life of their country, and to make the fullest possible contribution to solving the grave problems of the day. The only question at issue is what form of political organisation Catholics should support.
A survey of Catholics in politics throughout Western Europe reveals one striking fact — Britain is the only democracy which has no Catholic Party. (We may except Switzerland with its denominational cantons and the Scandinavian countries with their negligible Catholic populations). Belgium, France, Germany, Holland and Italy all have their "Christian Democratic" parties.
The origins of these Catholic parties are well known ; their effect is often disastrous. The Socialist parties which emerged on the continent in revolt against the capitalist evils of the late nineteenth century were Marxist in inspiration and materialist in philosophy ; in defence of spiritual values against Marxist materialism the Catholic parties were formed, and automatically became anti-Socialist and right-wing. The Socialists retaliated with an anti-clerical campaign, accusing the Catholic parties of reaction and of hostility to working-class interests. So successful has this campaign proved that in France (and to a lesser degree in Italy) the masses of the workers have been alienated from the Church and have drifted towards communism. The people have been divided in an age when union is the most urgent necessity; here lies a warning and a challenge to Britain.
Continental Catholics are amazed when they learn for the first time that not only is there no Catholic party in England, but that the majority of Catholics in this country vote for the Labour Party. They think instinctively of their own socialist parties, and forget that the Labour Party in Britain owes little or nothing to Marxism. (It has been said that the British Labour Party is in origin "not Marxist but Methodist".) The sanctimonious atmosphere of teetotalism which prevailed in the early days of the Labour Party might have been alien to Catholic spirit and tradition, but it was fundamentally Christian, and therefore presented no ideological impediment to Catholics entering the party. But there is another reason for this close affinity between Catholics and the Labour Party — the high proportion of Irish among the Catholics of Britain. In the famine years Irish emigrants turned to America, but more recently the majority have come to Britain. Manual workers in most cases and therefore " Labour " in outlook, they have inherited the traditional Irish hatred of Toryism. In London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow, in every industrial city of England, Wales and Scotland, they have swelled the Labour vote.
Catholic support for the Conservative Party has been largely confined to the middle and upper classes (as among non-Catholics) and to the intellectuals. Communism has obviously no attraction for the Catholic intellectual (unlike his non-Catholic counterpart) and he has loyally supported Toryism, influenced and guided by The Tablet.
This political division in the Catholic ranks should effectively dispose of any lingering belief that Catholics are " directed" how to vote by their spiritual advisers. In a symposium of Catholic thought* published last year, Lord Pakenham, in his chapter The Catholic in Politics, has expounded clearly and concisely the Catholic's right to choose between those political organisations whose policies are not contrary to the divine law. * Catholic Approaches, ed. Lady Pakenham (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 21s.)
He explains that he is a member of the Labour Party because he thinks it is most conscious of the dignity of the human person, and most likely to apply that consciousness for the benefit of the majority. But with commendable objectivity he then examines Conservative criticisms of his political beliefs:
"But there is no denying the fact that other English Catholics who have thought over these matters at least as earnestly, have reached precisely opposite conclusions. They recognise the emphasis of the Papal Encyclicals on the need for social justice. But this, they argue, must be considered in the fight of the emphasis laid with equal vigour on the dangers of excessive State activity. The Catholic intellectuals of the Right are also sharply critical of the attitude of all Socialist parties to private property . . . The contention that Labour proposals for a further increase of State ownership and control would be contrary to Papal teaching, is not to be dismissed so lightly ..."
I discussed this Tory-Labour dilemma in my article Rerum Novarum and the Syndicalist State in The European of October 1954 and suggested that syndicalism was the ultimate solution to "the impasse in the struggle between monopoly capitalism and State socialism, the deadlock between the Labour and Conservative parties and the farce of nationalisation, de¬nationalisation and re-nationalisation with each successive change of government". Lord Pakenham appears to have considered this alternative, for later in the chapter quoted above he returns to his search for a via media and says:
"Perhaps the German 'co-determination' (or co-partnership), perhaps our own co-operative societies, perhaps our own embryo systems of joint consultation will supply the germinal clue."
But the Catholic's attitude to politics is not exclusively concerned with industrial organisation. In fact, he is often alarmed at the undue emphasis upon material success which is the hallmark of the present system, irrespective of party. He is primarily interested in matters which affect the daily lives of himself and his family, and the education of his children is probably the most important of these.
Differences between Catholics and the State in the field of education arise from the fundamental principle of responsibility ; the State has the right to demand certain standards of secular education, but the responsibility for providing that education belongs to the parent, who usually delegates his authority to a teacher : although appointed by the State the teacher is not its servant but stands in loco parentis. The Catholic parent wishes the moral atmosphere of the school to be that of the home, and religious instruction to be given according to the Catholic faith, by teachers who all share that faith. But the 1870 Education Act had stipulated that no denominational instruction should be given in State schools, which were beginning to spring up.
Catholics struggled to build and maintain their own schools, although since 1891 they have, of course, being paying in addition the local education rate (and their share of the exchequer contribution to education) to maintain State schools which their children do not attend. The burden was considerably lifted by the Education Act of 1902, which established the local education authorities and empowered them to equip denominational schools (after the Church had built them) and — most important of all — to pay all maintenance costs (except for the building), including teachers' salaries.
The Haddow Report of 1926 recommended that all children should pass from elementary to secondary schools at the age of eleven. After protracted negotiations it was finally agreed that the local education authorities should pay up to seventy-five per cent of the costs of denominational schools built solely to carry out this recommendation. Very few had been built when the outbreak of war suspended all school building.
To usher in the brave new post-war world the Education Act of 1944 imposed upon local education authorities the duty of carrying out the Haddow Report, by providing secondary education in one of three forms - "modern", grammar, or technical — for all children at the age of eleven. To provide the remaining twenty-five per cent of the cost of schools agreed upon before the war, and the total cost of many schools outside that arrangement, is imposing an intolerable financial burden upon the Catholic community of this country. It has been estimated that during the next thirty years they must raise (in capital payments and interest on loans) a sum of £100,000,000. It is often over¬looked that if Catholics cannot provide these schools their children must be absorbed by the already overcrowded State schools. The State would then be forced to spend money on additional schools, and for this reason alone the Catholic plea for State provision of denominational schools is justifiable. But an appeal to principle is more powerful than one to mathematics ; any government which professes to believe in religious freedom should recognise and satisfy the Catholic educational claims, although it may not agree with them ; the hard fact is that neither Labour nor Tory party shows any indication of doing so.
A close examination of other questions in which Catholics are particularly interested reveals the same wide gulf between theory and practice. Old party protestations of respect for the rights of small nations sound strange in Irish ears as long as their native land is partitioned. The Irish regard the Tories as responsible for partition, and Labour Party pledges to end it strengthened the instinctive Irish support for that party. The first Labour Government in power with a clear majority passed the Ireland Act of 1949, which declared that partition should never be ended "without the consent of the Northern Ireland parliament". The boundaries of the constituencies in the Six Counties, the franchise and the methods of election have been examined in earlier issues of The European; it is a mathematical certainty that an anti-partition majority can never be secured in the Belfast parliament. Yet the Irish-Catholic electors of Britain continue to vote for Labour Party candidates, and in a number of constituencies do much to ensure their election.
The failure of the old political parties to solve the housing problem renders the rearing of a large family almost an impossibility. The " no children" rule imposed by many landlords of the " furnished rooms" which are home to thousands of young married couples is an open invitation to practise artificial methods of birth prevention. The Welfare State has provided clinics for instruction in this practice, and the Chester Hospital Management Committee recently created a precedent by allowing the Family Planning Association to open a clinic in one of its hospitals. As it is estimated that at least fifty per cent of nurses and orderlies in British hospitals are Catholics a clash between Church and State could occur, coupled with a vigorous demand for many revolutionary methods of solving the housing problem.
The Catholic press tends to skate lightly over such problems, afraid of penetrating the thin ice and landing in the cold water of political controversy. It will denounce anti-Catholic activities on the continent, but appears coy about criticising the established political parties in Britain, perhaps for fear of offending its readers. Above all, it is never suggested that there may be an alternative worthy of Catholic consideration, outside the main political parties. Lord Pakenham took a tentative step in this direction in the article from which we have already quoted :
"The question of Catholicism and democracy is rather more complex . . . Nor can it be claimed that Catholic social teaching officially describes democracy as good and totalitarianism as bad. But when we look round Western Europe to-day we shall be inclined, I think, to conclude that the Catholic political genius at its highest takes democratic shape ..."
The first part of this statement is perfectly correct, but is a striking admission by a Labour peer; the second part ignores the strength and stability of the authoritarian governments of Catholic Spain and Portugal: the whole begs the vital question of whether there is any alternative to both democracy and totalitarianism. As early as 1947, in his book The Alternative, Sir Oswald Mosley spoke of a new system which went "beyond both Fascism and democracy" and he has developed this idea in later speeches and writings, most recently in his article The Problem of Power in the July issue of The European. An examination of this thesis might do much to dispel the bogy of dictatorship, which has long obstructed an objective examination of his policy. (A study of that policy in relation to some of the problems discussed in this article reveals that he advocates syndicalism, or workers' control of industry, is pledged to end the partition of Ireland, has promised State provision of denominational schools wherever there is a substantial local demand, and advances a vigorous housing programme). But of supreme interest to Catholics is his plea for the union of our continent, based on his concept of Europe a Nation. Catholics look forward to the day when mankind throughout the world is united in universal brotherhood, but they see in Europe the heart and centre of Christian civilisation. They re-echo the words of Belloc: Europe is the Faith. They have watched Europe divided against itself in two wars in this century. Have they not also witnessed the post-war yearning for European union stifled by the old political parties of Britain, who rendered it lip-service ten years ago ?
Old men, old parties, and an old system, have enjoyed a long and secure tenure of office, but now a worsening economic situation prepares the ground for a communist attack, not from without in the form of war, but from within in the shape of industrial unrest and civil strife. The time has come to examine, with minds cleared of old prejudices and preconceived ideas, new men, new movements, and new policies.
Geoffrey Vernon
Published in The European - January 1956
|
