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The politics of the enabling act (1919)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
I doubt whether any event in the constitutional history of Church and State (wrote Randall Davidson in February 1921) has ever been wrought out with so little friction, and on so smooth a current as this great change ... I think it is indisputable that if we had failed in December 1919 to get through Parliament what is popularly known as the Enabling Bill, we might have waited for it for many a long year with increasing and most harmful loss of enthusiasm, and growth of irritation among the progressive groups. Instead of this we have had a continuous stream of praise and thankful gratulation at the way in which the new system has begun to work.
These words are a useful reminder that contemporaries were surprised at the easy passage of the enabling act, and that its success therefore requires explanation. The ‘rightness of the cause’ has tended to obscure the fact that right causes often fail. Moreover subsequent criticisms of the act, and particularly the disappointment of the life and liberty movement with what followed, have tended to minimise the significance of the changes it made. Nevertheless the charisma of William Temple and Dick Sheppard seems to have led even the critics to attribute the act’s success to the life and liberty movement; viscount Wolmer’s church self-government association has been relegated to the sidelines; and the verdict of bishop Bell (who in 1919 was Davidson’s chaplain) that ‘Its achievement was due to Randall Davidson more than to any other single person’ has been forgotten. In this paper I shall argue that the political success of the enabling act requires a political explanation, that parliamentary tactics in both the house of commons and the house of lords are therefore of prime importance, and that the significance of the success is enhanced by a fact which has never been discussed before - the initial opposition of the government of the day.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1975
References
1 [Lambeth Palace MS,] D[avidson] P[apers], 14, memo of 6 February 1921.
2 For example Henson, [H.H.], [Retrospect of an Unimportant Life], 1, (London 1942) pp 301–2 Google Scholar; Iremonger, F.A., William Temple (London 1948) p 281 Google Scholar; Thompson, [K. A.], [Bureaucracy and Church Reform] (Oxford 1970) pp 156-78Google Scholar.
3 For example, Thompson p 175.
4 Bell, [G.K.A.], [Randall Davidson] (3 ed London 1952) p 980 Google Scholar.
5 Bell pp 956-70.
6 DP, 13, memo of 2 March 1919.
7 Times, 19 May 1919, 15 December 1919; Henson pp 206-11, 301-6.
8 H[ouse of] C[ommons] Debates, 5 series, 120, col 1852.
9 Times 28 May 1919, 16 June 1919. The first setback was the insistence on the historic episcopate.
10 H[ouse of] L[ords] Debates, 5 series, 34, cols 993-1015.
11 Jones, T., Whitehall Diary, 1, ed Middlemas, K. (London 1969) p 86 Google Scholar.
12 [PRO MS] CAB 24/80, no GT 7349, Bell-Fisher 26 May 1919; CAB 26/1, H.A.C. 30 § 2, 28 May 1919; [Bodleian Library MSS], Fisher Diary, 2 June 1919.
13 DP ‘enabling bill’ file: national liberal federation, 18 June 1919; national free church council, 24 June 1919; dissenting ministers, 4 July 1919.
14 CAB 24/82, GT 7557, Schuster-Fisher 21 June 1919; CAB 26/1, H.A.C. 32 § 3, 26 June 1919; HL Debates, 5 series, 35, cols 94-5, compare col 30.
15 CAB 23/10, War Cabinet 586 § 2, 30 June 1919.
16 DP, 13, memo of 9 December 1917 (compare Bell, p 965).
17 Ibid 13, memo of 2 March 1919.
18 Ibid 14, memo of 6 February 1921.
19 Ibid 13, memo of 6 July 1919; ‘church and state’ file, Haldane-Davidson 21 May 1919.
20 Ibid ‘church and state’ file, Dibdin-Davidson, 8 June 1919, Davidson-Dibdin, 13 June 1919: (compare Bell, p 977, Thompson, pp 168-9. I do not share Thompson’s sinister interpretation of this episode).
21 Ibid 13, memo of 6/13 July 1919. Bell wrongly calls viscount Finlay the lord chancellor.
22 Ibid 6, fol 41, Meyer-Davidson 11 July 1919; fol 42, Wolmer-Davidson, 26 July 1919.
23 Ibid 14, memo of 6 February 1921.
24 CAB 24/80, GT 7349 (printed list inside ‘Explanation of the National Assembly of the Church of England (Powers) Bill: its cause and justification’: issued by the joint parliamentary church enabling bill committee); DP, ‘church and state’ file, Wolmer- Davidson, 28 October 1918.
25 Fisher Diary, 7 july 1919, 22 July 1919; DP, 6, fol 42, Wolmer-Davidson 26 July 1919.
26 DP, ‘enabling act’ file, Davidson-Wolmer, 3 March 1919.
27 Fisher Diary, 14 October 1919 (CAB 23/12, War Cabinet 630 § 9, 14 October 1919 says that consideration was adjourned until the leader of the house of lords and the lord chancellor were present, but there is no further reference to the matter in the cabinet minutes): HC Debates, 5 series, 120 col 661.
28 HC Debates, 5 series, 120, cols 1817-95; analysis of the division Ust based on Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, 1920, and the list of the church enabling bill committee referred to earlier.
29 HC Debates, 5 series, 121, col 1801; 122, cols 838-66; HL Debates, 5 series, 38, cols 15-22, 537.
30 DP, 14, memo of 6 February 1921.
31 Ibid.
33 HL Debates, 5 series, 35, cols 471-2. Lord Phillimore expressed disapproval.
33 Bell, pp 982-5, 1126-30.
34 HL Debates, 5 series, 38, cols 18, 20.