Uncovering Catholic Worker Roots in Britain

If you look on the ‘About ’ page of our LCW website, you will read these words about the origins of the London Catholic Worker:

The London Catholic Worker was brought together by the Jubilee Ploughshares 2000 disarmament action. Those who came together had long sensed the need for a Catholic Worker community of hospitality and resistance in the world’s second imperial city.

In those early years after 2000, when I talked to others about wanting to start a CW house in London, the response I got was often “Oh, I thought that had finished in the 1950’s?” At that time I thought this was because the most well known biography of Dorothy Day back then (by William D Miller) finished in the late 1950s, and almost no one in Britain seemed to be aware that her life and witness, let alone the movement she founded, continued after that.

In recent years I realised there was another reason. This is due to Anna Blackman’s chapter entitled The British Catholic Worker Movement and Its Influence on Lay Social Catholicism included in the history of the British CW movement in “Lay Catholic Societies in 20th Century Britain”. Her work on this story, and the research she did in order to write it, uncovers a vital part of our history which until now had been largely forgotten.

If the British Catholic Worker was so well known in the 1930’s, why was it forgotten?

Anna outlines the beginnings of the CW in Britain with the foundation of the London based version of the CW newspaper in 1935, just a year after the first edition of the Catholic Worker was published in New York, USA. The London version reached a peak circulation of 64,000 in 1936, which is comparable to the New York CW when the size of the country is taken into account. Relative to the Catholic population, the British CW paper was far more widely read. In addition to the newspaper, scattered around the country were support groups, bookshops, reading groups, and even a few houses of hospitality.

If the British CW was so well known in the 1930’s, why was it forgotten? Speculatively, the reason for the greater immediate success of the British movement at the time is also the reason it failed to endure and is less well known now. That is to say, the British CW took a more moderate social and political position. Whereas the British CW focused on being a newspaper advocating Catholic involvement in issues of relevance to the British working class, the New York CW and the American movement it birthed became more well known for its pacifism, activism and houses of hospitality for the poor and homeless.

However, at the time, the British CW had a significant impact on British social Catholicism “out of all proportion to its size ”, to borrow a phrase from Mel Piehl ’s book on the US CW movement, “Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America ” (1982). It acted as a platform for, and gave publicity to, otherwise marginal groups and views. These included Catholic anti-fascist voices at the time of the Spanish Civil War, promoted by groups like PAX and other peace movement groups. The founders of the British CW were also among the first members of PAX, and likewise helped birth the British version of the Young Christian Workers, and the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, and supported the Catholic Social Guild and the Catholic Workers (in the more generic sense) college in Oxford. There were also connections with Christian CND in the 1950s.

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After the newspaper closed in 1959, there continued to be CW inspired social activism, the founding of the Simon Community in 1963, a short lived CW house of hospitality in Notting Hill in 1968, to the founding of Catholic Peace Action in 1982.

However, it was not until 1992 that the current renewal of British CW practice took root in a CW house of hospitality, when St Francis House opened in Oxford. Another short lived CW followed in Liverpool from 1996 to 1999. Very much focused on solidarity with East Timorese and anti-arms trade activism, it grew out of the CW related Ploughshares movement in Britain in the 1990’s. During the same period, the Glasgow CW came and went before later returning in the form it has today. At the start of the 21st century, the Ploughshares movement also played a significant part in the origins and nature of the short lived Dublin CW after 2000, as well the early years of the London CW and CW Farm.

And so we come full circle, to the support group around the “Jubilee Ploughshares 2000” action that became the seed of, and inspiration for, the London CW and later our sister houses, the CW Farm in Hertfordshire and Martha House in Tottenham. We thank God for this journey, for Anna’s work uncovering our roots, and pray that our life and witness too may have “an impact out of all proportion to our size”, guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit.

By: Martin Newell

Header image from Catholic Social Guild, Catholic Workers College, Oxford, 1924.

This review originally appeared online at https://www.londoncatholicworker.org/post/book-review.