1930s >> 1933 >> no-349-september-1933

Up and down the English countryside a tithe-war is in progress. Farmers, and other holders of land subject to tithe, say they cannot and will not pay. They have organised a national association to defend their interests. Against them stands the Church, with its back to the wall, demanding its money. The Church invokes the law-courts and the police, and at its behest bailiffs seize the land, stock and crops, of the debtors. The answer of the farmers to forced sales of goods is an aggressive boycott of the auction. Massed picketing and veiled threats of violence are usually sufficient to dissuade intending buyers from making bids.

The history of tithes is long and complicated. They go back for many hundreds of years, and it is disputed whether in England they began as the voluntary gifts of pious churchmen or as a compulsory levy. In any event there is no dispute as to their form. The landholder subject to tithe had to donate each year one-tenth of the produce of his land, one-tenth of his calves, lambs, wool, milk, eggs, grain, and so on. At first this stream of wealth was divided into four parts; one part each for the bishop and the parish priest, one part for the upkeep of the church building, and one part for the poor. Subsequently the bishops were otherwise provided for. The tithes were then divided into three parts; one-third for the parson and two-thirds for the monks, to be used by them for their own upkeep, for the entertainment of strangers, and for the relief of the poor. There is no doubt that by this time at least the relief of the poor was not a voluntary act on the part of the monastic houses but was a duty imposed on them by the Crown. In receiving tithe and using part of it to relieve the poor, the monks were acting as agents for the King, as is shown by a statute passed in the early years of the fourteenth century, during the reign of Edward I.

When the monasteries were suppressed at the time of the Reformation about one-third of their tithes were seized by the Crown and handed over to laymen.

The whole of the remaining two-thirds came to be payable to the clergy.

Until 1836 tithes were, for the most part, paid not in money but “in kind.” In that year the Tithe Commutation Act substituted a money rent-charge, varying with the price of corn, for the payment in kind. In 1891, owing to the difficulty experienced in the collection of tithe, the obligation was transferred from the tenant to the landowner.

Both in 1836 and under various later Acts the clergy were given the benefit of relief from part of their liability for rates payable on the tithes received by them.

Under the Tithe Act, 1925, the tithe payment, instead of varying with the price of corn, was for the first time stabilised on the basis of £105 for each £100 of tithe-rent charge; with an additional payment of 4½ per cent a year to provide a fund for the extinction of tithes over a period of 85 years.

The annual cost is now £3,300,000, of which about two-thirds is payable to the clergy and the remaining third to other receivers of tithe whose rights were acquired from the monasteries at the Reformation. It is this £3,300,000 which is the grievance behind the present dispute.

The Church—A Declining Industry
The Tithe-payers’ Association makes the claim that the burden of tithes is ruining the farmers. While it is true that some farmers cannot pay their tithe, it is obvious that we must look further than this for an explanation of the dispute between the tithe-payers and the Church, for the total amount of tithe represents only a very small percentage of the annual income of the farmers. On the other hand, a sum of over £2 million a year is of the utmost importance to the Church. It represents the livelihood of thousands of the clergy.

The fact is, that during recent years changes have been taking place affecting both the farmers and the Church. Many of the former have been badly hit by the post-war slump in the prices of agricultural products. They receive a declining income from the sale of their products but have to pay a fixed charge to the clergy and other recipients of tithe. Their position is doubly difficult in the many cases of farms having been bought on borrowed money at the high prices of the War years. On the other hand, the farmer’s inclination to withhold tithes has been strengthened by the loss of prestige and popularity on the part of the Church and its ministers. The Church is a great commercial concern which, so to speak, has its capital sunk in a declining industry. As Dean Inge puts it, the Church used to be a monopoly undertaking and is now trying to exist under conditions which have deprived it of its monopoly.

It sells an article which has not kept up with the changing demand of the twentieth century. “Spiritual consolations” and the kind of social activities provided by the Church are as definitely out-of-date as horse-buses, lantern lectures and tallow candles. The hold of the parson is relaxing. The torments of hell and the delights of heaven alike pass over the heads of a generation brought up on war and war-novels, on the cinemas and wireless. Cinemas and wireless have captured the field, hence the interesting results of most of the votes on Sunday opening. In one town after another we see the Councils—composed of elderly persons, often active Church workers—voting against Sunday cinemas, only to have their decision heavily reversed when it goes to a poll. The clergy try to hold back the tide, but what can they do against new needs and the cinema combines? They are like the little shopkeepers trying to fight Woolworths, Boots, Selfridges, and the other giant concerns which are fast devouring them.

In a variety of ways the influence and the income of the clergy have been diminished. Now comes the final blow of the campaign against tithes. In reply, the Church militant shows what it is made of, and fights for cash as it never fought for anything else. As Marx so cruelly said, “the Anglican Church will more readily pardon attacks upon 38 of its 39 articles than upon one thirty-ninth of its income.”

It is Written in the Bond
The tithe-war is rich in incident. There is the Rector who assented to a farmer sacking one of his unfortunate labourers in order to be able to afford to pay tithe. The Rector said that he could not afford to let the farmer off what he owed, “and that it was a just debt.” The Church authorities, as a whole, have taken up the same legalistic attitude, standing strictly on the letter of the law. Shall not Shylock have his pound of flesh? Is it not written in the bond?

Where they do allow some remission it is only on the ordinary commercial principle of taking 75 per cent, because there is no possibility of getting the whole. Yet prominent Churchmen, including Lord Parmoor, state that the burden of tithes is unduly heavy in view of the unforeseen fall in prices.

One case has, however, come to light of a tithe claim being abandoned entirely by the parson to whom it was owed. An old shoe-maker was a tithe-payer to the extent of 3s. 6d. a year. It was the custom to hold an annual “Tithe Feast,” presided over by the Vicar and held at the village “pub,” which all tithe-payers were entitled to attend. The old shoe-maker was relieved of his obligation to pay tithe because, as he explained, “they lost money over him” at the annual spread.

Attempts to seize farmers’ property have been resisted, with the consequence of numerous cases of assault, some of which reach the courts. In one case of distraint it was disclosed that an original debt of £20 for tithe was increased to £700 through legal costs charged against the debtor in a series of actions to enforce payment.

The attitude of the Daily Herald, official organ of the Labour Party, has been amusing. Its desire to sympathise with the farmers, whose votes it wants, is equalled by its anxiety not to antagonise the supporters of the Church. So it presents the delicate problem of how to give the farmers more without giving the Church less; and as that problem is truly baffling, it demands that the Government shall instantly do its duty—and appoint a Commission! Happy memories of the late Labour Government, with its dozens and dozens of Commissions and Committees of Inquiry, probing into this question and the other.

Why do the Christians so Furiously Rage Together ?
It is an entertainment to see how the followers of Jesus fight for filthy lucre as bitterly as any poor benighted heathen. Where is that other-worldliness, that spirit of self-denial that the clergy never fail to recommend to workers who come out on strike?

Christians, were you not commanded to love one another? And do you now send your message of love by the bailiff’’s men? O, ye of little faith! Do you not know that strife can be avoided by the exercise of Christian charity and forbearance? Why, yes, of course you know, for did you not, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at your head, found the Industrial Christian Fellowship for no other purpose than to show the cantankerous workers how to avoid industrial strife, and how to live at peace with the employers?

Lastly, there is the case of Mr. George Middleton. As First Church Estates Commissioner and Chairman of the Tithe Committee of Queen Anne’s Bounty, it falls to Mr. Middleton to defend the Church. This he does in letters to the Press urging the farmers to respect the sanctity of contracts and the rights of private property. What makes his case interesting is that he was a Labour M.P. and an official of a postal workers’ union until he had the good luck to slip into his present position at £1,200 to £1,400 a year, plus cost of living bonus; a job which literally lasts for life. There is no modern nonsense about needing young blood or being too old at 70 or 80 for the First Church Estates Commissioner’s job.

Mr. Middleton is a supporter of the Industrial Christian Fellowship referred to above, and an advocate of peace between employers and employed, but as Chairman of the Tithe Committee of Queen Anne’s Bounty he wages fierce war on tithe defaulters.

Idle talk among ex-soldiers often strays over the question which of the Monarchs, Ministers and Generalissimos won the real prizes of the War in which their loyal followers perished. By common consent it was the defeated ex-Kaiser, with his fortune of millions serenely ending his days in retreat at Doorn. If a similar question were to be put about the fruits of the great Labour Party victory which put them into office in 1929, it can hardly be doubted that Mr. Middleton, wafted into this placid backwater at the Ecclesiastical Commission, was one of fortune’s special favourites.

However, let it not be supposed that we are filled with bitterness towards the clergy or towards the Mr. Middletons. They are only trying to make the most of the opportunities capitalism offers them in the particular circumstances in which they happen to be placed. They are responding to the pressure of material conditions. It does not matter in the least, either to us as Socialists or to the condition of the workers, whether this individual or that secures what plums of office there happen to be. The Church, like any other concern run on business lines, has its highly paid bishoprics and its minority of pleasant livings for the influential few. It also has its rank and file, who live under conditions very much akin to those of the rest of the black-coated workers; with a large minority whose pay is so small that they have great difficulty in making ends meet and “keeping up appearances.” Capitalism being what it is, what can the parson do but try to hold on to his livelihood and demand payment of tithe? And what can the farmer do but try to help himself by whittling it down?

Our quarrel is not with the men, but with the system. Our message is directed to the working class, who alone can alter things. To them we say that it is useless, and worse than useless, to denounce the man who takes the opportunity which capitalism offers while at the same time at the elections upholding the system itself. Capitalism compels us all to struggle for survival and teaches us to kick each other down in the fight for greater security and a better livelihood. The only way to end the wolfish struggle is to end capitalism.

If we dwell on the weak and illogical position of the Church, it is in order to show that the solution does not lie there, but only in Socialism.

H.