The Revd David Whittington writes:

CANON Bill Wright was one of the founding fathers of industrial mission in the Church of England, and one of its great thinkers. He belonged to a Church and a nation that were still recovering from the Second World War.

Teesside was dominated by the huge workforces of ICI and British Steel; the local economy was still one of the main centres of a great manufacturing nation; and local government shaped the character of communities, in which “movers and shakers” had to be challenged to reach out towards one another across the divides, sometimes deeply entrenched.

After a period with the Sheffield Industrial Mission, Bill went to Stockton in 1959 to found the Teesside Industrial Mission (TIM), where he remained until his retirement. He was constantly challenging Church, State, industry, and commerce to recognise the creative Spirit of God at work within the others: God “out there, not in here”. Bill was based both in TIM and in Stockton Parish Church. The church became part of the Stockton Town Centre Group, to which Bill brought the same challenges: “What mission and ministry are you called to? Who are your partners? How are you working with them? Where do you see God at work? How do you celebrate that in others?”

These were days of much ecumenical activity, days when Teesside County Borough and then Cleveland County were paralleled by the Teesside Council of Churches, and the Bishop of Whitby aided Anglican cohesion by acting both sides of the Tees for the dioceses of both Durham and York.

As time went by, these became days of decline and unemployment, as local industry was re-shaped or dismantled. Bill was as creative in that context as he had been in the days of growth, harnessing the early retired, the redundant, and the unemployed to deliver the successive government-funded programmes that tried to address these issues.

Throughout all of this, Bill remained at Stockton Parish Church as a regular Sunday celebrant and preacher. His sermons were challenging — and sometimes challenged — and could be cunningly disguised as updates on this year’s crop of carrots from his allotments. In this way, too, he straddled church divides. He lived warmly, lovingly, and argumentatively what he believed. Church and State recognised that with the award of a Lambeth MA and an OBE respectively.

Bill’s late wife, Pam, was also involved in ministry. She was the heart and soul of the Portrack and Tilery Community Development Project and of much else around and within Stockton Parish Church.

Bill was one to whose thinking and commitment the Church of England might give fresh heed in the challenges that it faces today. “What are you for?” “Where are you seeing the creative work of God?” “How are you reaching out across current divisions and differences?” And “Get on with it!”

Canon Timothy Ollier adds: It was the particular insight of the IM to bring to the attention of the Church the changes that were going on in the lives of the vast majority of society in the 1960s. Industrial Missioners had to face the effects of mass unemployment and what new styles of work might mean.

They did not see their task as evangelism in the conventional sense. Their ministry was to remind both management and labour that what they were doing was significant beyond the balance sheet, and that, indeed, work need not be, should not be, relegated to what we have to do so that we can feed and house ourselves, but has a dignity and a creative value, at least potentially, in itself.

The Mission did have to justify its existence to sometimes suspicious clergy who saw parishes not being filled and wondered why their brothers were not running confirmation classes. Bill was assiduous in his attendance at Chapter, signifying his assertion that what he and others were doing was important in the life of the Church. It was important because it was recognising that Christian ministry could not be, should not be, confined to the domestic environment. In other words, here was a complementary way of ministering to the community, which surely the C of E should be about. As much as the domestic environment mattered, so, too, did the structures of society.

Under the encouragement of Bishop Ian Ramsey, Bill and Margaret Kane set up the Frontier Groups. The principle of these was that those in the Church, those on the edge of it, and, indeed, those on the outside of it should come together around a common concern, sharing their varied insights with mutual respect. Here was a humble Church, ready to be working in partnership with others, each learning from the other. Several national reports in the socially changing 1960s owed their significance to this way of working.

Bill’s influence was greater than he ever knew. Passion, commitment, community — these are the words that sum him up.