Strikes: Reformulating Catholic Thinking in Britain

Extract

If it is to be of real value, Catholic discussion in Britain on the right to strike must take into account the main strands of reflection so far on the subject. My object here is simply to draw attention to these, not to describe them in detail, much less to make here a theoretical contribution to the discussion myself.

It may be of interest to begin with three contrasting examples of clerical reflection born out of social realities. Cardinal Manning’s social thinking had an important influence on trade unionists even in his own lifetime. He seems to have developed personal friendships with some union leaders, described rather ambiguously as ‘some of their most famous agitators’ by the anonymous writer of the 1934 Preface to a collection of Manning’s works on social questions. Manning was deeply and personally involved in the celebrated London dock strike of 1889. Writing a couple of years after that strike, the Cardinal took it as ‘evident’ that between a capitalist and a working man there can be no true freedom of contract. The capitalist is invulnerable in his wealth. Concerning the nature of strikes he reflected, ‘A strike is like war. If for a just cause, a strike is right and inevitable, it is a healthful restraint imposed upon the despotism of capital’. John Lopes was Catholic chaplain at Cambridge from 1922 to 1928. During the General Strike of 1926 he was dismayed to hear of undergraduates volunteering as strike breakers and he warned, ‘If there is ever a class war in this country the universities of Oxford and Cambridge began it in 1926’. The Cardinal, preaching at Westminster, condemned the strike; dons were divided.