Welsh Journals

'Pilgrims Through a Barren Land' Nonconformists and Socialists in Wales 1906-19141 by Robert Pope, PhD Despite the reservations prevalent in polite society, religion and politics appear invariably to mix, at least in practice. The way in which people perceive eternal values and truths effects the way in which they act socially and politically. As such, the relationship between politics and religion tends to be natural and automatic, though much debate has ensued particularly during the twentieth century over ideological relationships between the two. This debate has especially concerned the relationship between politics of the left and the Christian faith, and has taken place on various levels including the rather bald and sweeping statements of theologians like Paul Tillich to the effect that 'any serious Christian must be a socialist',2 and such astute, if puzzling, enquiry as that of Charles Davis, who writes 'Why is it, then, that many Christians have found it possible to speak of Christian socialism without a sense of incongruity, whereas the phrase "Christian capitalism" has the impact of an oxymoron?'3 3 Welsh history, perhaps, demonstrates the dilemmas and the paradoxes better than that of most nations. R. Tudur Jones has noted that Wales in 1890 was a 'Christian' country, demonstrating effectively the validity of such a claim.4 Yet the early twentieth century would see the grip of religion, particularly in its Nonconformist guise, virtually disappear from Welsh society to be replaced by an equally strong religio-political domination in the form of the Labour Party. Morgan Phillips, one time General Secretary of the Labour Party and product of a Welsh-speaking, working-class, Nonconformist upbringing, famously remarked in a speech in Copenhagen in 1951 that the labour movement in Britain owed more to Methodism than to Marxism. The statement is so familiar to be observed now as little more than a cliche. Yet in many ways Phillips hit upon a truth that should not be forgotten: the ethical socialism adopted by many leaders of the early labour movement, their sense of duty or divine vocation to ensure better living and working conditions for the working class, and their rhetorical skills, employed with the sole purpose of provoking a reaction, were largely the result of their training in democracy 1 Based on the Arthur Horner Memorial Lecture, read to members of the Welsh Labour History Society at Llanerch Community Centre, Llanelli, on 9 June 2000. 2 Quoted in John Atherton, Christianity and the Market: Christian social thought for our times (London, 1992), 117. 3 Charles Davis, Religion and the Making of Society: Essays in Social Theology (Cambridge, 1994), 179. 4 R. Tudur Jones, Ffydd ac Argyfwng Cenedl I, Prysurdeb a Phryder (Swansea, 1981), 15