First Curacy

Hatfield

Hatfield is a small town South Yorkshire straddling the A18 to Goole and Scunthorpe. To describe it as a backwater would be to overstate its significance in the great scheme of things. Nevertheless the battle of Hatfield Chase fought on October 12, 633 was a decisive victory for the Welsh and Mercian’s: and led to the temporary collapse of the Northumbrian state. But by now that event was over thirteen hundred years ago and apart from the draining of Hatfield Chase by the Dutch engineer Vermuyden not much had happened since.

We drove into Hatfield and presented ourselves at the Vicarage. We were greeted by a cheerful welcoming man in Denim with a Golden Retriever at his side. This was the Vicar Ted Greathead. We were welcomed in, tea was made, the rapport was instant and I knew that Harold Wilson was right, if I was to survive a curacy in the Church of England then it would be under the tutelage of this unassuming, humble, yet immensely gifted and generous man.

Then the doorbell rang. The visitor, we were told, was Dr Waters and it was at his house that we were to stay for the weekend.

Ash Hill Lodge was a lovely Queen Anne style house on the edge of Hatfield and we invited to follow Bill in his VW as he literally raced through the village and onto the gravel drive of Ash Hill Lodge. As he drove the VW into the garage I glimpsed the classic radiator grill of an R Type Bentley in the garage.

Janet and I were stunned, speechless, panicking and just a tad overawed. But this was nothing as we were introduced to Jean Waters. I had a sense of being in the presence of Royalty. Jean was simply the most gracious hostess I have ever known. Her table was never less than generous, the food was beautifully prepared and served, the house was as elegant as our hostess and yet comfortable, warm and welcoming.

I just wished that my Jeans and Jacket had been chosen with a little more care and that my Polo neck sweater was a little less worn. But we were welcomed as important guests and the Water’s girls appeared from time to time with prayer books and hymn books aimed I guess at making us feel at home.

Bill quizzed us thoroughly as only an expert diagnostician can, but with no hint of prescription. He prepared us for another side of my future Vicar, the parish new nothing of the plan to invite a curate, there was no house or accommodation and when I was introduced on Sunday morning it was as a friend of the Water’s family, that part had already become true over the course of the Saturday.

As the weekend drew to an end and I indicated my enthusiasm to accept the offer of a first curacy with Ted I was reminded that I had another interview in Sheffield on the way home. This was with Ian Griggs in the parish of St Cuthbert, Fir Vale and important, successful and thriving parish in Sheffield.

Ted spent our last session over a cup of tea at his kitchen table trying to convince me of the merits of Ian Griggs and the Parish of St Cuthbert, Fir Vale, where I would be sure to learn so much more than he could ever teach me.

Fir Vale came and went. It was Leeds again, slightly more hospitable, but the same listings of duties and responsibilities, days off, services to be attended, youth groups, scout troops and visiting lists and each day’s activities to be reported at Evening Prayer. There was simply no comparison with the previous week-ends discussions; our hopes; our attitudes to sex, music and poetry; our dreams, our hopes and aspirations as young people coming of age in the sixties. If we wanted to prepare for ministry in the Church of the past rather than the church of the future then certainly Fir Vale would offer excellent preparation. It is interesting that later Ian Griggs became a Bishop as did one of his successors, indeed Ian Harland became my Bishop in Carlisle.

So my last days in Salisbury were spent preparing for Ordination and life in Hatfield. As usual it was a time of practical planning, physical effort, fun and risk. My best man Pete Dunk was also moving to Sheffield and so we rented a small pickup truck and with a friend, we loaded our bits of furniture into it and set off to Sheffield. Our furniture such as it was went into store because our first home was to be a caravan on the Vicarage lawn.

This was the housing solution that had been arrived at in the process of a three way correspondence between me, Bill and Ted. Then Janet and I drove North again stopping in St Albans for the occasion of Janet’s older brother’s marriage, we then went first to Manchester where Janet stayed with my parent’s whilst I attended the Ordination Retreat, joining me in Sheffield after my Ordination for the final stage of the journey to Hatfield.

When I left my job at twenty years of age, in 1965 to take up a place at the Bernard Gilpin Society I was earning approximately £60 per month as a clerical officer in the Civil Service. My first monthly stipend cheque as a Curate in Hatfield, after four years of study and training, was £60. Clearly Janet’s Fathers warning to her before he died, that if she married me she would always be poor, looked as though it would be true.

From then to now, we have spent a lifetime robbing Peter to pay Paul, other people sometimes appear to be managing better, sometimes they appear to be managing less well, but everything we have done has been paid for by us, there was no inheritance, no houses left to us, nothing but our own efforts and for the largest part with a single income as Janet considered, as indeed did I, that bringing up children was a full-time job. But also from 1969 when I was ordained until 1980 when our youngest was born, she seemed to spend the whole of a decade, bare foot and pregnant.

Hatfield turned out to be a good place to learn my new trade. There were characters everywhere. From Jimmy Merchant in the Windmill who traded in old cars, rebuilt rotting ‘R’ Type Bentley’s into road going convertibles and who could build a Rudge Ulster special for racing from the parts hanging on his garage wall; to the farmers out on the fens, the RAF Station at RAF Lindholme and The Borstal the parish had a wide variety of experience to offer and a wide variety of knowledge to be gained.

I also discovered that whilst I had much to learn, there are skills to everything from visiting, to conducting weddings and funerals and to preaching. It seemed I had a way of doing things that came naturally and to which people responded.

On my second day, dressed in my ‘uniform’ of jeans and a sweater I went to order my Newspapers, The Times and The Morning Star were the daily papers, The Church Times was a weekly. The newsagent was friendly and we chatted, laughed and I left the shop. Later that day I received a ‘phone call from Ted. He had called in himself later in the day to be told in no uncertain terms that it was unreasonable and unfair, I had been in the shop, she had no idea that I was the new curate and I had embarrassed her. She had treated me as a ‘normal’ customer. But I am a normal customer I protested, yes Ted agreed but you are also the new curate and perhaps you should have introduced yourself.

Good advice.

The two years in Hatfield were eventful, Janet became pregnant almost immediately that the Parish in the shape of Bill and a local builder, Geoff Norman, bought the curates house. They waited for Ted to go on holiday and then acted, decision making was not Ted’s strong suit. Geoff Norman’s words became a by-line for us for a few years. ‘Do you like the House he asked?’ We did. ‘Give ‘em a cheque’, he said to Bill Parker the Treasurer.

22 Marton Grove was our third home in a year. A pattern was being established.

We lost the first Baby and that was traumatic. Janet was at home with a neighbour whilst I was visiting the widow of a man who had just died that night and wanted to talk to me about how her faith was challenged by his death, he was in his late seventies.

As I say: a pattern was being established.

When I got back somewhat after mid-night Janet was asleep but at about three in the morning she woke to realise that she was bleeding heavily. We called Bill, who was also our family Doctor. He arrived within half an hour, immaculately dressed in a suit and tie and within minutes had called an ambulance.

Later when I visited Janet in Hospital she was in tears, distressed not so much by the miscarriage as by the treatment in the hospital. She was in a Gynaecological Ward in a side room. Apparently the senior Nurse had accused her of inducing the mis-carriage and told her that she was a disgrace, and that the other women in the ward had lost babies they wanted.

The misunderstanding arose because she looked very young and pale and because advised by the ambulance driver, she had removed her wedding ring, but mainly because her first visitor was Mavis, Ted’s wife. Mavis was the Medical Almoner, now she would be a Social Worker, who worked with unmarried mothers in the Doncaster area. I was furious and laid into the staff making my feelings clear. Whilst their subsequent treatment of Janet was a little better there was never an apology.

Once home we received what passed for counselling in those days. You ought to try again as soon as possible, said Doctor Bill. There was no unkindness or lack of sympathy just practical advice because life goes on. If you leave it, nerves can play a part, if you are not relaxed you may not conceive, the problem is made worse.

We did try again and in the January of 1971 our first born Molly arrived on the scene. She changed our lives completely. We were new parents, completely inexperienced. Somewhat nervous and Molly just knew how to play us.

The events surrounding her birth were a story in themselves. Janet was overdue and was booked into the Hospital to be induced. The date was the date of the first Post Ordination Training week. I contacted the Diocese to explain why I couldn’t be there. The response was, you are a deacon, if you want to be priested, you will be there. So I was left with little choice I took Janet to the Hospital, drove to Whirlow Grange in Sheffield, signed in, attended the first session, drove back to Doncaster for visiting and spent the rest of the week played hookey on and off.

Today when even the Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition take paternity leave it is hard to even believe that the Church could behave in such an unfeeling, uncharitable and hard way. But it did. I was left with little alternative than treat the authorities with the absolute dis-respect they deserved.

Interestingly my Ordination to the Priesthood was nearly compromised after a service where the Station Commander of the local RAF Station objected to prayers I led at the time of the American incursion into Cambodia. Too political! He left the church slamming the door, and it was a big door, and wrote to the Bishop.

However before he could open the letter the Bishop had a stroke and it

was only a week or so after my Priesting that the Archdeacon read the letter and called me in to say that if the letter had been opened it might have caused me some problems if the Bishop had seen it.

Again a pattern was being established.

But these attitudes were not only to be found in the Church. The mid-wife sent me away from the hospital at six in the evening of the 27th January 1971 saying the baby will not be born tonight. I went to the Vicarage where Ted’s wife Mavis made me a bacon sandwich. Then we rang the hospital at about eight before I set off back to Sheffield to be told that I had a daughter. I managed to see her on my way through back to Sheffield.

Those were the days when men were men and women loved them for it. We can only be thankful that those attitudes and intolerances have been addressed and changed.

Living opposite us in Marton Grove was a young Flight Lieutenant and his wife, Mike and Jo Sweeney. They had a new baby, Fiona and whilst not exactly Mums at the school gate, Janet and Jo developed a friendship which has turned into a life-long friendship.

It was Jo and Mike who, forty years later, stepped in and took responsibility when Janet was admitted to Hospital whilst we were staying with them in Virginia Beach.

Salisbury

Salisbury

My first ever visit to Salisbury was for an interview with Harold Wilson, The Principal of the Theological College.

I hitch hiked from Manchester in my jeans with a suit in my rucksack when I got to Salisbury I changed into my suit in the toilets in the Market Square.

Two things about the interview impressed me hugely. The first was when I was asked about my appearance and how I had travelled, Harold commented that it was both respectful and a sign of good manners and something that he very much appreciated. The second was his comment on my academic achievements i.e. Five GCE passes, all achieved at night school, he assured me that it revealed to him that I had applied myself to the task set me by the selection conference and that if I succeeded at Bernard Gilpin Society, which he was sure I would, then he had no doubts that I would do well at Salisbury.

I accepted the offer of a place and joined my pre-theological course in a positive frame of mind.

The year at Bernard Gilpin passed quickly and after a summer break in Manchester I moved to Salisbury, The college address is 19 The Close and for the next three years I lived as a student in those bucolic surroundings.

The Cathedral was in my view the most beautiful building and there was no finer start to a day than to walk out of College with the Cathedral on the left and then on through the Close with a group of college friends, after the Constable had opened the gates, and walk up the High Street to W H Smiths to look over the record collection and occasionally purchase the latest Stones or Beatles Album. That was where I bought early copies of both Sgt Pepper and The White Album.

I affected an alternative dress code, one that I had developed over the years, of jeans, polo neck sweater and a tweed jacket. Once at supper in the college dining room the Principal had commented approvingly on the look which quickly became a college fashion statement.

During that first year I felt myself slowly changing, becoming more creative, impetuous, and self-confident. I continued to write and publish poetry, including a book of poems published by the college, I still have the hand-bound edition commissioned for me and my co-author, by the Principal.

Eventually I was asked to participate in writing a piece for the 1000th Anniversary of the founding of the Cathedral. Little did I know how this event and the things that happened on the jousting field would affect my life.

In 1967 I was a twenty two year old Theological College in Salisbury, a long way from my home in Manchester. Term was drawing to a close and one evening I was out with a college friend for a pint in the New Inn in Salisbury.

I couldn’t help noticing the very attractive, blonde haired girl, sitting at the bar wearing a very fashionable mini skirt, I was captivated and turned to my friend and announced: I’ve just seen the girl I’m going to marry. His response was, to say the very least, sceptical.

I saw her again around the town on a few occasions but the opportunity to speak simply didn’t arise and I began to lose heart and wonder if my plan would meet the fate prophesied by my doubting friend without ever being tested.

On the Saturday of the Salisbury Millennium Festival in 1967, I was asked to meet a couple of Art College Students who were coming to the college to dress for their role in a Jousting Tournament to be held on Constable’s famous water meadows, a chore I thought, but someone had to pretend to be hospitable.

When she crossed the Cathedral Green in her mini skirt I realised that for me, to use the name of an old TV show, opportunity as well as my heart, was knocking. When I asked her out and she accepted I knew that success was at hand.

She told me that her name was Janet, that she lived at home with her family, that she was studying fashion at the Art College. It did not take me long to fall head over heels in love. I also decided on that first night that my earlier thought was right, I would ask her to marry me. The problem was that I was due to travel to Germany for six weeks to undertake a vacation job with the NAAFI.

At twenty two, six weeks is a lifetime.

So for possibly the first time in my life I tried to play a careful hand fearing that too much enthusiasm might scare her off, so I asked, I hoped casually, whether we might meet up when I got back to college after the summer. She agreed to that and then when I wrote to her from Germany she replied to my letters.

A positive sign I hoped.

On one occasion walking her home from college she told me that I made a refreshing change from other boyfriends as I hadn’t asked what her father’s job was.

Of course I had to ask.

She mentioned the delivery vans that could be seen around Salisbury. I immediately leapt to a spirited defence of working men and importance of a job like driving a delivery van. There was a long silence before she continued, telling me that her father owned the company.

Once back from Germany we began to see each other regularly. She tried to persuade me that she was not the right girl for me. The thought of becoming a Vicars wife had at this stage not really seemed to occur to her. But I was not to be dissuaded.

On the occasion of my parent’s silver wedding being celebrated in Manchester I managed to borrow a car with the intention of driving North for the weekend. I invited Janet to join me but first had to persuade her Father to allow her to make the journey. He was clearly not happy and I had to make various solemn promises about sleeping arrangements if we broke down and had to stay overnight in accommodation.

Eventually and reluctantly he agreed. Then disaster struck, the car I was borrowing belonged to the Tutor, Chris Bryant, he mentioned my plan to the Principal who called me in, my assignments were not up to date so all weekend leave was cancelled.

There was nothing for it, on the Thursday night I stayed up all night and completed the assignments, at seven a.m. I came downstairs and slid them into each of the Tutors in-trays, there was a lot of paper, I then went to Chapel, saw the Principal said that I was up to date, he relented, I got the car and off we went to Manchester.

The next eighteen months went by in a whirlwind of study, dating and moments of intense sadness as her father’s illness became dramatically worse and he died. Janet was heartbroken, the college rallied round, the Tutor took the funeral service at the Crematorium in Salisbury and together we began to repair our lives.

With another student I wrote lyrics to the music he composed. We sent our songs to Apple and were amazed and excited to receive a telephone call inviting us to the Apple studios in London.

Janet had left college and was working in a small independent boutique, designing, making and selling clothes; she then got a job in the New Forest in a couture dress designer’s studio, making the model garments. This involved her in travelling up to London to the fashion shows.

At this point her relationship with her step-mother had worsened and she was on the point of leaving home when a full-time move to London became possible. I approached the Principal about whether I might take a one year leave of absence from college in order to be married. I would move to London to be with Janet.

The Principal was against this, as he said if I left I would never return. Then out of the blue he mentioned an elderly lady, who lived in Salisbury who was looking for house sitters for the winter whilst she was in Durham with her Son. We should go and see her. The lady was herself a medical doctor, the daughter of a Bishop whose son was a vicar in Durham. He had been unwell and she wanted to be with him whilst he convalesced. The meeting went very well and we were accepted as house sitters.

On the 16th November 1968 we were married in the College Chapel by the Principal with a choir of college students singing Charles Wesley’s And Can It Be. When we got to the line, My Chains fell off, my heart was free, I nearly wept with the delicious irony.

During my last round of exams Janet was working in a Chemist’s shop, her rag trade employers having seen that work and marriage did not go well together, had ‘let her go’, so took the first job she could.

During the previous two rounds of Exams I had managed to pass with a relatively disappointing 46%. As the pass mark was 45%, I boasted that this represented 1% wasted effort. During this last round of exams, I worked because I felt guilty that Janet was working to keep me, the result was that the extra effort was not wasted and in one paper I gained a distinction. The Principal commented that it was a pity that I hadn’t married sooner.

!966 – 1969 were the most significant and the happiest years of my life to that point. I have had times since, jobs since, intimate times with family since, but for those three years as a student, the last two in a serious relationship with someone that I loved deeply, and to whom I was for the last six months married, meant that I had the time of my life.

By the end of the spring term most students knew which parish they would be serving their title in. I still had no idea. I had been approached by the Vicar of the parish where Janet’s stepmother lived, it would have kept us in Salisbury but I was uneasy and Janet wanted to move on. At this stage I found London exciting to visit but too daunting a place to countenance living, although Janet would have been able to find work.

Harold Wilson sent us North to Leeds for an interview with a Vicar in a Parish on a huge council estate. We had left Salisbury after Janet had finished work and driven North in our Mini, a long road in those days.

When we arrived we were told that the Vicar was eating and were asked to wait in the sitting room whilst he finished. It turned out that the door had been opened by the vicar’s wife. That night we went to bed hungry.

The whole experience was utterly dreadful, unwelcoming and rude. We travelled back to Salisbury in a cloud of depression to be greeted by the Principal who showed me a letter from the Vicar saying that I would not be welcome and asking if the Principal thought that I should be ordained. Sharing your mind with a prospective employer was an early error of judgement that continued to play well into my career.

Harold then showed me another letter, this one from a friend of his from Sheffield, Ted Greathead, Ted was looking to appoint a Curate but at that point the Parish was unaware of his plan so for the moment he had to be discreet.

Was I interested? Harold asked. The name of the parish was Hatfield near Doncaster so once again Janet and I took the long road north.

Little Hulton

We had arrived in Newcastle on the rebound from my first job as a Vicar.

When I was licensed as Vicar of St John the Baptist, Little Hulton, my former Vicar The Archdeacon of Bolton preached the Sermon, ‘Your new vicar’ he said, ‘is a radical in the truest sense of that word, he will get to the roots of the matter and begin rebuilding from there’.

How true.

As I walked from the Church to the school for the bun fight I fell into conversation with an elderly clergyman who had been Vicar of a Church I had briefly attended before I moved to Stoke on Trent. That’s a bloody awful service he said, I sometimes think when they read out all that rubbish, ‘shove a brush up my arse and I’ll sweep the Sanctuary as well!

Encouraging!

But after our friends had left Janet and I had tucked the children into bed and settled back with a glass of wine I mentioned the comment to Janet. We both knew that this move was a mistake. How soon could we move without it ruining my career prospects? I worked it out. It was 1974 if we said four years was a respectable length of time to stay that would be 1978, so if I started looking for a job in say late 1977 then we could move and Crockfords would give the dates as 1974 – 1978 and that would look OK, in fact it would appear to be four years even if it was only say three and a half.

The next morning I took a communion service accompanied by Teddy Roberts, Teddy had no official role in the Church, he held no office, but he was the Master of Ceremonies, he had wheeled my two predecessors around the sanctuary defining their roles and actions according to a C19 Anglo-Catholic Vade Mecum.

After the service as I was about to enter the Vestry I was offered the service book open at what was known as the last Gospel, I read it and then entered the vestry and into the first of the many rows, both public and private, that Teddy and I were to have in the, hopefully few, years ahead.

Later that day I met with Teddy and the Architect, it still hadn’t dawned on me that much of what I was and would continue to experience in the parish was a direct result of the very strong links that Teddy and the folk he was associated with had as a result of their membership of the Freemasons.

After the Architect had undertaken his inspection I was informed that, ‘It’s Dry Rot Vicar, in the Sanctuary roof and the Organ’ and so the plan for the first two years of the four I had allowed myself was set.

Get rid of the old fashioned Anglo-Catholicism, replace it with a Modern Liberal Catholic practice and Liturgy.

Root out the dry rot including the Organ and replace the rotten wood with new wood.

And if possible renew the church community, without replacing the old congregation, with some new, younger families.

In other words: ‘Get to the roots of the matter and begin rebuilding from there’, all in four years.

Little Hulton was a large Salford Council overspill estate with a population of 60,000 people, spread across two other Church of England parishes, St Paul’s, Walkden and St Paul’s, Peel. Even without the challenge of deep rooted traditions reaching back to a predecessor who had been Vicar for thirty four years until perhaps five years before I was appointed, this was a big job for a young man not yet thirty years of age. But as I reasoned Jesus started when he was thirty, worked for only three years and look at what he achieved.

So we set to in more ways than one and there were some good moments and good experiences and the one liberating and essentially life-saving aspect of my time was that Elizabeth, now Dame Elizabeth Hoodless of CSV, when I said that I wouldn’t pursue my application for the job she had offered me, asked if I might be interested in working for CSV for twelve hours a week in a development and support role in the North West.

I said yes to that offer.

So when the going got tough, which it frequently did, I could jump in my car and drive away from the parish to meet volunteers or other CSV staff and have sensible conversations over a glass of beer.

It also meant that I could begin to pay down some of the accumulated debts of the first ten years in ministry and buy a reliable car.

From my induction through to my resigning of the living I battled with the contradictions of being a Vicar. You are person of both importance, and, no importance. You are a figure of respect as well as a figure of fun. You are welcome and not welcome.

From building up a successful youth club with visits to youth camps on the Fylde Coast to chasing youngsters away as they tried to climb up the lightening strap to raid the Kestrels nesting in the church tower, the job was a constant contradiction.

There were successes, the Worsley Churches Care Scheme, funded by the Manpower Services Commission was an Ecumenical Job Creation scheme and was briefly the largest employer in Little Hulton.

The fundraising campaign was hugely successful and the Church was restored and redecorated and rededicated and the congregation rose from around forty communicants on an average Sunday to around a hundred. The only complaint from the Treasurer was when the Diocesan Quota was increased as a consequence.

There were Baptisms and Weddings and Funerals, times of celebration and Joy along times for weeping and sadness.

One Maundy Thursday the young people held a disco for people with disabilities, under the auspices of phab – the organisation for physical handicapped and able bodied young people.

The timing of the event on Maundy Thursday had been hotly contested by the PCC and their approval had only been given because of my casting vote as Chairman.

I had preached at the Maundy Thursday Service on Jesus washing the disciples feet and the gone over to the disco being held in the Church School Hall.

Harry Dearden, a member of the PCC came across and was watching proceedings from the doorway. I went across and asked what he thought. ‘Vicar’ he replied, ‘this is a proper foot washing is this’.

I found his comments inspirational.

Then during the long, hot summer of 1976 the Vicarage developed an extremely deep crack and the front of the house ripped away from the rear, subsidence had caused the concrete raft on which the house was built to snap and the house all built collapsed, to the point where it was dangerous and had to be demolished and the front rebuilt on new foundations, meanwhile with three young children aged five and under, it was assumed that we would continue to live in the back.

It was then, earlier than planned, that I applied for a job in Newcastle.

The news of my appointment coincided with an article in the Daily Mirror in which I was hailed as: ‘Britain’s First Punk Vicar’.

What had happened was that during a confirmation class which preceded the Youth Club, I played the young people a couple of tracks from a new Album by the Sex Pistols.

It made for a different confirmation class but we had a good discussion and that, I thought, was that.

The next week when I met the group they had sneaked into the class room in the school and written on the Board, ‘Mr Smith is a Punk Vicar’. I thought that was great and mentioned it in the Parish magazine along with a piece announcing that I was moving to Newcastle as Bishop’s Adviser in Social Responsibility.

Somehow this came to the attention of the Daily Mirror who sent a photographer, that day was a day off and I was wearing black jeans, a T Shirt with a rip in it and a leather jacket, the camera flashed in my face, the report asked some inane questions and the next day I was Britain’s first punk vicar.

Soon the Daily Mirror was followed by most daily newspapers.

The Manchester Evening News carried ‘Punk Vicar gets Top Job’, echoed by the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, ‘Pin Back your lug holes Tyneside, here comes the Revd. Punk’.

I got a spot on radio Four, BBC Look North and was a footnote in the Reith Lectures.

Later that week I went to get fish and chips for supper, as the young shop assistant wrapped my fish and chips I once again saw the headline and my picture.

Today’s news, tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping.

That should be my epitaph.

Some years later I was invited back to preach at a centenary service at St John’s Church in Little Hulton.

I was greeted affectionately by a former parishioner who told me that ‘I was the best Vicar they’d ever had’ I pointed out that as my immediate successor had died in office and his successor had run off with the organists wife that all I’d ever had to do was leave in good health with the woman that I had arrived with.

Becoming Responsible

The Irresponsible Socialist

Sitting in my friend Bill Water’s surgery in Hatfield in 1969 waiting for him to get around to seeing me, like most Doctor’s he was running late, I got into conversation with the man sitting next to me, he was a Miner from Hatfield Main Colliery.

He was suffering with what I immediately recognised as Emphysema, caused by breathing coal dust and doubtless aggravated by smoking.

The price that working people pay for the jobs that they do is a high one and is paid in terms of poor health and disability as they grow older.

My Uncle Harold died of Asbestosis; he had worked as a Lorry Driver, delivering asbestos across the country. I occasionally spent a school or college holiday travelling with him, helping him with his work including unloading the sacks of raw asbestos.

When asbestos was recognised for the killer that it is there was a survey undertaken to identify buildings with asbestos, I recall him commenting that they would have been better interviewing him as he had delivered the asbestos when the buildings were building sites.

He even mentioned that he had delivered asbestos to Hatfield School, from which eventually it was removed.

When I was called into the surgery Bill looked surprised and suggested that, as a favour to him, in the future I should ring him at home and he would see me privately.

I was grateful but had to make it clear that my commitment to both mission and socialism meant that I had to take my place in the queue, even if my presence in the queue embarrassed both him and certain of his patients.

In almost every job that I have undertaken there has been an element of some kind of socialist analysis.

Sometimes the analysis was of a contemporary situation and sometimes it was a reflection on the history of the place.

In Little Hulton for example the church had been built by public subscription with the wife of the colliery owner standing at the colliery gates to take up a collection every pay day in order to raise the funds for the building of the new church.

It was important to understand that history.

At the same time I found myself drawn into a debate with the Local Authority over their housing policy which meant that young people from the estate had to move away when they married because all new tenancies were awarded to people being displaced by the slum clearance programme in inner city Salford.

My work in Bolton involved reflecting on and analysing the impact of unemployment on young people and their families. There were practical responses, such as the counselling scheme, Concern and the projects Work Piece and Mouth Piece alongside the squatting campaign aimed at using the properties emptied to make way for a new inner ring road.

I was eventually invited to join the Board for Social Responsibility in Manchester which was debating the role of community work strategies and techniques in developing the Churches mission and ministry in the inner city parishes of the Diocese.

Mission and Politics came together on one occasion when a Vicar of an inner city parish cast a young unmarried mum as the Virgin Mary in a Nativity Play in the parish.

The subsequent scandal spilled over into a wider debate and eventually came to the attention of the Bishop who called the Parish Priest in to discuss the situation.

The Bishop’s House was on Bury New Road overlooking part of inner city Salford.

Whilst they were talking the Bishop moved to the window and opened the curtains to look out over the parish, it all looks so peaceful from here he commented, yes, the Parish Priest apparently replied, as Hades might look from the comfort of Abrahams bosom.

Some clergy become party politically engaged and active, I never have.

I have always been political but with a small p, but that has not stopped me from having strong views and expressing them as seemed appropriate.

On one occasion in America I was driving around a small town in New Hampshire. The car was a rented Cadillac with Massachusetts licence plates, in the car was Janet, our three daughters and William our son.

We were scouting out a possible job opportunity at the suggestion of my friend Rick Stecker.

After the third stooge round the town centre I looked in the rear view mirror to see that I was being followed by a police cruiser, oh oh I thought, time to leave and so we headed for the town line, as we crossed out of his jurisdiction the cruiser did a U turn and sat straddling the white line.

We were, as Rick said later that night over a glass of wine, being shown off the premises; after all he would have seen three dangers, a Cadillac, Massachusetts licence plates and four blondes. You are lucky that he didn’t pull you over.

It was for all the world like the scene from the first Rambo movie when Brian Dennehey’s Sherriff invites Silvester Stallon’s Rambo to move on.

But it happened twice more in the UK.

After I had been designated as Britain’s first Punk Parson I was followed along the Motorway back from Salisbury where we had been staying with Janet’s Stepmother, by a Police Car.

Nervous at being followed I pulled into a Motorway services only to be followed in, circled in the car park and then saluted ironically before the police car drove away, the officer in the passenger seat smiling to himself as though we had been safely seen on our way.

Then I appeared on the Jimmy Young TV show in an interview with Norman Tebbit.

Mr. Tebbit was more than holding his own and it was hard to engage with him as Jimmy Young was managing the interview closely.

Out of the corner of my eye, however I noticed that the producer was holding up a hand written cardboard sign saying, ‘less Tebbit! bring back the Canon’.

Seizing the opportunity I was able to bring the first half of the show to an end by reeling off a great list of statistics, most of which I had made up, concluding by saying: and that, Jimmy is the reality of life today in Mr Tebbit’s and Mrs Thatcher’s Britain, cue audience applause and adverts.

That night I was driving back from the TV Studio in Leeds followed by a Police Car which escorted me over the Tyne Bridge.

The next morning I was awoken at 5 00 am to be told that my office in the Church had been broken into.

Kids, said the officer when I arrived, they have no respect.

The computer was open at the page where I had prepared my notes for the Jimmy Young Show.

Cleaning up later, my colleague commented, this wasn’t kids, this was someone looking for stuff and trying to look like it was kids.

The next day my next door neighbour was broken into, again she expressed a view that it was not a robbery but someone looking for something.

They probably didn’t find it because they had broken into the wrong house.

Sometime during my work in Newcastle, the Board for which I served as the officer was described in a Diocesan Synod as, The Board for Socialist Irresponsibility.

When the epithet was coined it received a few sniggers and there was laughter in the Synod but it was a cheap joke given that the Board was seeking to address some deep seated social problems in a region which had been de-industrialising with the attendant legacy of high unemployment, poverty concentrated not only in the inner City but in the large peripheral estates characterised by Billy Connolly as ‘deserts with windows’.

So whilst I am happy to claim the epithet for myself it is interesting to reflect how the notion of irresponsibility has now come to define Capitalism, something of an oxymoron I suspect.

The debt crisis, unemployment, increasing poverty, the policy of austerity pursued by the current coalition government all conspire to remind us that it is not socialism that is irresponsible, but the capitalism that helps itself to inflated profits, huge unearned (in any reasonable definition of ‘earned’) bonuses, that avoids paying its taxes, shelters its assets in offshore accounts and uses its wealth to ensure that governments that represent its views are elected.

This irresponsible capitalism is the legacy of the Thatcher years and it is still wreaking havoc, destroying communities and setting people at odds with each other, as the recent riots evidence.

I admit to being an irresponsible socialist, irresponsible because I have never been a member of a political party, never canvassed and never been active in seeking to shape society politically.

In retirement I have joined the co-op Party and am now secretary of the North Cumbria Branch of the Co-op. After years of irresponsibility I am finally trying to become a responsible socialist.