I THOUGHT of my dad as a bit of a Jedi when I was little. He wore a long black cloak with a lion’s-head clasp, and he was up at six every morning, ringing the single, repeating bell for morning prayer outside my bedroom window, with the legs of his pyjamas rolled up under his cassock. A teller of jokes and a drinker of whisky, he was a man who, though disorganised and always late, could welcome a distressed stranger into our house and with prayer and calm words, bring them to peace — something that I witnessed in the middle of the night as a child.
My maternal grandfather, the Revd St John Groser, died years before I was born, but his influence was woven into the fabric of my parents’ ministry. A radical priest, he, along with his family, lived and served in the poorest parishes of east London for his entire working life. He helped to create the Stepney Tenants’ Defence League, co-ordinated rent strikes with the local rabbi and the residents to prevent slum landlords’ demanding price hikes, and had his nose broken by police in the Battle of Cable Street.
My grandfather worked tirelessly not only for the practical needs of the poorest in his constituencies, but also to combat the fascist movement’s efforts to divide an increasingly diverse, but equally poor, society, with racism and hate. As a “turbulent”, “meddlesome”, priest, he was, in later life, approached to play Thomas Becket in a rather solemn film version of T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.
The Revd Jack Boggis, a socialist priest in his own right, wrote about my grandfather that: “The heart of Fr John’s religion . . . is that nothing is more important than a person. He tended to avoid such phrases as ‘living souls’, because it is easy to forget that ‘living souls’ have bodies which need to be fed, clothed and housed. So he fought for these things for them. The gospel was not confined to the church but carried into the streets.”
I HAVE been thinking a lot about this element to my parents’ and grandparents’ ministry. I have a black-and-white press photo on my wall of my father, David, in his Hammersmith parish in the 1970s, protesting against the demolition of Butterwick House, a 750-bed hostel for vulnerable men, to make way for the A40.
Despite their drive to support the most vulnerable people in their communities, the same support was not afforded to my parents when they were at their most vulnerable. I am sure there are many others like them. I can’t help seeing a bitter irony in the experience of housing insecurity which they faced towards the end of their working lives and beyond.
Ruth PlattRuth, aged four, on pilgrimage with her father
During my childhood, my parents viewed the privilege of living in a large, if run-down, vicarage as an obligation to provide shelter under our roof to others. It had upsides — I remember sharing my room with a family of children whose mother had just left their explosive dad, as we chattered in the dark — and downsides. One night, my sister woke up in the early hours to see a young woman sitting on her bed, who then whispered, “Shall we pray together?”
My mother’s father went further. He fought for the very poorest in his community in ways that directly challenged systemic inequality, and his personal/spiritual and public/political life were fused together in his visionary ministry.
I wonder whether the Church has created a gap between the personal and the political in faith and in ministry, and between the spiritual and the practical — one that allows a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
There are many in the Church who fight for social justice. There are many more ensuring that people in their community are fed, housed, and have access to adequate health care, as a core part of their ministry. But the Church of England is inextricably woven into the very institutions — the monarchy, the State — that hold up the structures — capitalism, profit, preserving the richest — from which all these inequalities arise.
In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher sold off 1.9 million council homes. It was a decision that potentially shifted the working-class vote towards her for a generation, but one that cost councils the equivalent of £194 billion in today’s money as a result of the heavily discounted sales. Although, arguably, this policy had more benefits for working people than other asset-stripping policies implemented at the same time, there were, as always, ramifications down the line of selling off publicly owned resources.
In this instance, councils became poorer, social housing became scarcer, and housing became less affordable than ever in the long term. The Church sold off up to 8000 vicarages, potentially losing, according to one report, £8 billion in assets in today’s figures. There were also disastrous investment losses in the 1990s by the Church Commissioners. I remember my dad being worried about how it might affect his pension. Again, he can’t have been the only one.
Fifty-six per cent of current clergy apparently own their own homes (News, 4 July 2024), although this is trending downwards. A few years back, a priest near us bought a lovely cottage for £650,000 in his retirement. That is a lot of saving on a £30,000 annual stipend. A previous job, a partner’s job, or an inheritance, must make this possible for some; inheritance is becoming the single biggest indicator of lifetime wealth in the UK.
MY HUSBAND and I often joke that two things have sealed our fate: the Church and communism. I come from a long line of priests who never acquired property. My husband’s grandfather had all his property confiscated in former Yugoslavia by the post-war communist state. As I’ve grown up, I’ve started to realise that most people of my parents’ generation own their own homes.
My father worked as hard in his house-for-duty position in retirement — besides caring for my mother — as he had in a stipendiary position before. When his health failed, he rented a small flat from the church, up two flights of stairs. It cost half his pension.
When I took my small children to visit — my mum had died by then — they would toddle around the towering piles of Christian CND newspaper and books, and giant furniture from the big old houses that we had grown up in but never owned, crammed against the walls. It was rent and pension down the drain, but it was a reduced rent and a roof.
AlamyThe 1955 film version of Murder in The Cathedral, in which the author’s grandfather played Thomas Becket
Long before my dad became bedbound, those two flights of stairs kept him housebound; then, three weeks after his stroke, the hospital needed the bed, and placed him in a care home without warning. The privatised, run-for-profit care system in this country is one that pays workers poorly, strips many in care of their dignity, and charges councils and families thousands a week.
The lack of provision for sick or elderly clergy makes me wonder how much the Church feels a pressing need to give back to their core, grass-roots workers after lifetimes of service, and how much it has just accepted the bigger picture of systemic inequality just as the way things are, and not regarded it as a direct contradiction of Christian theology.
Priests are not usually motivated by money and power, or even by self-interest. I wonder whether the idea of sacrifice in church teaching often seems to justify hardship subliminally and celebrate endurance of suffering. I think, perhaps, that is why change for the clergy has not come sooner. The idea of personal sacrifice should not be used to avoid institutional duty.
The Clergy Retirement Dignity and Fairness Review is now under way. Funding for pensions and for clergy retirement housing is being increased. But it is too late for my dad, and many like him — and the cost of living is getting only worse.
THERE is another irony to my father’s story. The peace and acceptance that come from being given the last rites by a good, compassionate priest are a profound thing in death, and he was able to give that to many. He almost had it himself. Soon after his stroke, when we were told that he was near the end, I frantically tried to find a priest to visit him.
I managed to find the Revd Paul Smith, who, as a young man, had sought advice from my father about training for the priesthood. He was now a parish priest near the community hospital, and he arrived swiftly — gliding through the corridors on his electric wheelchair, and making my dad smile as soon as he arrived by commenting on the state of the place. He gave my dad the last rites, and it was quiet, healing, extraordinary. I wish my dad had slipped away then. But he lived another 18 months, in a care home, in a body that didn’t work, and through a lockdown that sealed him off from the outside world. God has a funny way of doing things, sometimes.
He endured it, as many do, but I think he deserved better. I think the Church would do well to embody, in an institutional way, the radical heart of Christ’s teachings, because, as the Revd Jack Boggis observed, “It is easy to forget that ‘living souls’ have bodies which need to be fed, clothed and housed.” And that must apply to the most vulnerable — even the Church’s very own.