Here.
Gordon Wilson, the man who proscribed both the Far Left and the Far Right within the SNP. Cardinal O'Brien, of course. Conservative Evangelical leaders within and without the Kirk.
But also an Episcopalian rector, albeit of Saint Silas, Glasgow, the most prominent monument to the "English Episcopal" experiment in resisting Tractarian influence, ongoing use of the Laudian Scottish Liturgy, and the lingering whiff of Jacobitism.
And the Moderator of the General Assembly of the United Free Church, the heir, via the United Presbyterian Church, of the Associate Presbytery and of the Relief Synod, the first significant secessions from the Church of Scotland, long before the Great Disruption, and by people who were liberal by the standards of the time, in some ways even by the standards of the present.
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If I had been Scottish I would have signed this like a shot. Where is the English petition?
ReplyDeleteWhere, indeed?
ReplyDeleteAs of course you know, the prime mover in keeping the United Free Church going after most of it had reunited with the Church of Scotland in 1929 was the Reverend James Barr of Govan, a Radical Liberal who went on to be Labour MP for Motherwell and then for Coatbridge, pacifist, Home Ruler, temperance campaigner, and pioneering agitator for the abolition of capital punishment. An interesting example of what you write about the several pre-existing political traditions that fed into the early Labour movement.
ReplyDeleteApart from Wilson, what a catalogue of the people you would like to see exercising some sort of control on candidate selection. This list would do for Scotland, something comparable for Wales and each of the English regions, all dressed up as "reaching out to the community". You know what, you might even get it under the "Blue Labour" nutters who have appeared out of who knows where since the unions gave Ed Miliband the leadership against the wishes of the party in parliament and the country. I want my party back before it is turned into something you could rejoin.
ReplyDeleteThomas Gillespie (love that, by the way), a few years hence, once several others are out of the way, I would quite like to write a little book on those clergymen who have sat in the House of Commons. They are a fascinating little lot.
ReplyDelete