Distrait Sheppard
Edward Norman
Built as a City: God and the Urban Worid ' Today David Sheppard (Hodder and Stough' ton £3.25) The publishers of the Bishop of Woolwichn5 b. ook describe it as "arguably one of the rne,s! important and relevant" on the role of Church to have appeared for many years...Pi,'" spirituality and wisdom of the author tria:' indeed secure it a good report. Bishop Sline„Pi i pard will be read with deserved respect. in the book, despite the attractive ChristianitY er' the personality it exudes, is in places ratne, inept. A number of themes declare themseivee" — they are those familiar enough to anY°,11,, who follows the world of interests defined television discussion programmes and cn:e tomarily described as 'social concern.' yet Bishop's writing is full of spiritual insights scir much greater than the grid of second-nail interpretation he imposes on them. He is concerned with the London working; classes; no other social interest is discussed ! any length. This analysis is clear, simPlu; exclusive — there are few doubts qualifications. The book is a manifesto e which solutions of many of the social issues t,' the moment are offered. The most mg, and most sympathetic passages descry' I the continuing class conflict in this countrY,: and point, correctly, to the leadership Pot". al of working class people. He attacks en: n 5 bourgeoisement. To that extent, the Bishop p self-consciously seeking to emancipate nirtle self from the public school guilt Which sees, again correctly, as the leading propel'a of so much Church social interest. It is 4 courageous thing to do, and the Bishop does well. He is also insistent that the Chtlftc4 ought not to become merely an agencY social change: "there is a temptation to Iveen from one band-wagon to another." He,e.he sees that the 'community action,' whic,",a1 suggests should be the pivot of the lawbe Church's temporal existence, will fail of distinctively Christian if "all the life ° ed community action group should be centris, round 'issues' — in the sense of conflict sues." ,ped5 At this point, however, utopianism suc--„ial reality. For almost every one of the sof'or, solutions the Bishop endorses are, as on, mulated, socially divisive. He seems to S pose that the working classes are ale°,,e feeling "powerless"; that it is only they 'ant are outraged because no one will carrY their social panaceas. What about the traS,„"dy section of the working-class who regit'',01' vote Tory, not because they are 'deferent' a5 but because they believe in the virtne4ot they see them, of self-reliance? What av, At the disaffected intellectuals, who vvill snee'aod I anybody who doesn't happen to fall doyv11,,Die worship at the latest shrine of fashio.n`his thought? Does the Bishop see that, desPit` to plea for authentic working-class cultur`the preside at local community action centrest's0 selection of issues, and their definition, a to given time, are as set up by the intelligl — by journalists, schoolteachers, oft bishops? Those areas of urban Britain in Which there has been quite a long experience of working class leadership in local government do not disclose attractive results. They have no greater appeal than the areas where Professional class moralists are more eVident, With all their agonising attempts to pretend that their class obsession with social 'injustices' are the substance of popular politics. Bishop Sheppard declines to write about 'alienation' in the sense a Hegelian or a Marxist might recognise, yet the results of alienation are the things which worry him. Alienation can be overcome by inducing People to think differently about existing society and their place in it: for that you need a social myth. The Bishop falls short of interposing Christianity for this office, since this is a "pluralistic society" — though he does not see the matter with clarity. He prefers instead the sort of social myth contrived by those Who like to see social history in terms of a campaign for social righteousness by the underprivileged. But that is not a cohesive vision. Alienation can also be overcome by revolution: the Bishop does not contemplate that. In fact he argues unconsciously for a continuation of bourgeois society, made Palatable to the working-classes and to the guilty intellectuals by a radical diminution of its apparent privilege — privilege in ideas as Well as in wealth. Private education is to be abolished, and a system of universal comprehensive schools set up. Local authorities are to take over "private rented accommodation" There is to be effective worker Participation' in the running of industry. Large companies are to be made "accountable o the society as a whole" through a statutory Lsocial audit" carried out by an independent u°dY (containing, among others, theologians!) every few years. There is to be a "standard Wage for everyone willing to work." This is a Programme guaranteed to upset different Social sections, almost by rotation. The idea of ,a standard wage will be greeted with ,Incredulity by trade unionists, whose con!.enlporary imperialism is founded upon the Internal divisions of status within the working-classes — where the only effective ernarcations, now that the distinctions uetween skilled and unskilled labour are often Unclear, are embodied in wage differentials. Of all the Bishop's policies, the standard wage is Perhaps the most attractive — but it would be the first to be knocked out by the workingclass members of the local community groups the Bishop envisages — if those groups really did contain authentic working-class men, and not just the usual bunch of high-minded People with nothing better to do than arrange the details of other people's lives.
The Bishop is insistent that the Church Inust be involved in politics. Indeed he is right
if his programme is to be achieved. But "°es he really see the implications? He is arguing for sanctions; for a massive aggran_disement of the power of the state. To those ;17110 do not agree with his actual proposals he as to say that they will be coerced, by law, Into acquiescence. That is what political PoWer is for. He seems to think that "fear.' as prevented the Christian Church from t,suPPorting social changes. The Church, cer;ainlY, has often spoken with the lips of class `nterest. So has everyone else. But it is not an adequate explanation. It was often a wise appraisal of the facts of human nature which Inhibited churchmen from plunging into the ousiness of forcing others to agree with their r4'cial opinions by the use of state machinery. en with the perspective of eternity equally as evident as Bishop Sheppard's have seen that many of the social ills which men are Persuaded to believe oppress them are the c Ontrivance of their own scale of expectadions. The Bishop thinks that if nothing is ,one to make society more just, then milincy will increase within the working classes. r et he ought to know that in twentieth cen
tury Britain the periods of greatest social unrest have coincided with periods of greatest overall prosperity. People's expectations were then raised. So it is in general. The greatest militancy in recent years — the most direct of all the 'direct action' political behaviour — has not come from the working classes, but from that most privileged dlite: the student radicals. Would the Bishop care to include them within his canon?
He also argues, twice, that Christians who oppose political involvement are in fact supporting 'laissez-faire,' and that that is a political position itself, since "historically laissezfaire was a specific policy on which governments were frequently elected." It is a point he ought to abandon. In the last century laissez-faire — the practice of non-intervention by the state in social and economic relationships — was a generally held attitude, never implemented systematically, which was found in all political groups. The first Party to knock away its practical basis was not the Liberals, stuck as they were with Gladstonian' retrenchment ideals, but the Tories under Salisbury and Chamberlain. In this century, the most perfectly preserved version of the old doctrine of free competitive economic relationships, uncontrolled by government interference, is to be found in the TUC. It was the late Labour administration, under pressure from the unions, which abandoned attempts at control of wages and espoused a new laissez-faire. It was the present Conservative government, unable, because of union opposition, to secure a voluntary wages policy, which has adopted a strict collectivism. It is interesting to see that Bishop Sheppard advocates a state control of wages. At the close of play, therefore, he is a Tory.
Edward Norman is the Dean of Peterhouse, Cambridge
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