Here I am, a common peasant, pulling on me northern clogs. My intent is to have a game of footie with the decapitated head of an Archbishop. Well, it was his idea.
I am a former C of E Vicar, ordained for over 40 years and I am now retired. Formerly I have: planted churches; turned dying churches back into thriving ones; had a ministry of bringing others to faith; had a genuine healing ministry; been a member of synodical government at Deanery and Diocesan levels; sat on various important church committees; helped Bishops in plans to devolve appointments and financial decisions down to local levels; even been a member of Bishop’s council in one diocese. I have been the incumbent of four different multi-parish benefices, including a premier parish in the Peak District and worked as a very effective Rural Dean. I also served for six years as an RAF Chaplain.
I had no religious upbringing. My father was an ardent atheist. I came from a working class family. Dad was a foundry worker, we lived just outside of Stockport and we were poor. I did not do well at school – today they would call it dysgraphia with associated learning issues, but in those days I was messy and untidy and found it difficult to engage with lessons. My teenage years, were on the whole, not good at all, and I was certainly “going off the rails”.
Faith came to me in 1972 at the age of 16. It was a deeply personal conversion experience. There were no rallies or hype, just God showing himself to me in a bedroom I shared with two brothers.
It was the Anglican evangelical parish church of Cheadle, St. Mary, who engaged with me. Mainly middle class, some well heeled stockbroker belt and many professionals. Yet, I found the congregation and leadership to be warm and welcoming. They took a genuine interest in an unwashed, poor, no consequence, under achieving teenager. They were: friendly; patient; kind; generous and nurturing. They helped me: find my feet; build Christian foundations; encouraged me to explore the prospect of ministry; find a secular job on leaving school; before finally sponsoring me to C of E ministerial selection.
Part of that path took me to be residential for a year at a pre-theological course at a non-University college in Cambridge – Romsey House. The next year I found myself needing to live out of college while I finished off some qualifications there. Graciously, Canon Mark Ruston of The Round Church in Cambridge, took me on as his part time parish assistant, performing various tasks, part time, in return for lodging and breakfast. While there I finished the qualifications that would subsequently take me to study at Sheffield University.
Unfortunately, my experience of Anglican Evangelicalism, in the centre of Cambridge, was totally different from that of Cheadle. Unless you were, well connected, public school, Oxbridge, a member of the “posh boys” circle, you were nothing. I tried hard, but found it impossible to make friends within that atmosphere of social exclusivity. Compared to the embrace of Cheadle, this felt like an upper crust cult. It was a “closed shop” rather than an all-embracing church.
For Ruston, I was good only for menial tasks and even then, not to his satisfaction. The Canon was quite the perfectionist, and I was, confessedly, messy.
Also sharing the lodging, was a certain Justin Welby, a student at the University. I got to know him, a little, but a significant “little”.
We all ate breakfast together and the breakfast table had to be laid “just so” special spoons and knives for this, that and the other, porridge prepared in a particular way, and I was responsible for this. A nightmare every morning, as almost inevitably, despite my best efforts, something was always not quite as it should have been, and I was roundly told so. I remember all these things very well indeed, they made quite an impression on me.
The breakfasts were occasionally attended by evangelical grandees, most of them of the “posh boys” circle. Justin was promoted by Ruston to his buddies. These were heavyweights who would support and encourage him in his ministry, an influential network, who would help him rise to dizzying heights.
When Welby wrote in his autobiography that he considered himself ‘the least likely person’ to rise, to become a Bishop, I nearly spat out my tea. He was very well connected, had the right schooling ( Eton) and although he wasn’t hugely wealthy (at the time) he did have “privilege” running through his background, like “Bridlington” or “Blackpool” runs through a stick of John Bull’s finest. While he wasn’t “rolling in it”, he really did not have a clue about real poverty. He was groomed and encouraged for higher office and the Iwerne network or “sect” were very much a part of this.
As I reported to Keith Makin, it was at a Breakfast, at 37 Jesus Lane, in the basement breakfast room, in 1978 (one without a special guest in attendance), that I witnessed a significant exchange between Ruston and Welby. Mark Ruston at breakfast asked Welby if there was “Anything more on the Smyth affair?” ( So there must have been at least one previous conversation). At the time it meant nothing to me, except initially I just thought “Smyth” was merely affected way of saying “Smith”. When I inquired of Welby at the close of breakfast if that was the case, he corrected me. A further impressionable imprint on my memory of this brief exchange, which at the time was meaningless (to me) was Welby’s answer, or rather a lack of it. He mouthed something silently back to Ruston which I could not lip read. There was something he did not want me to hear. If Welby had made a verbal reply it might not have caught my attention, but he was clearly trying to hide something from me, therefore curiosity was aroused and memory formed. In response, Ruston instructed Welby to meet with him in his study after breakfast for a conversation. This also made me suspicious, what did they not want me to know about that needed a conversation out of my ear shot?
There was a sense of gravity in Ruston’s instruction and the conversation took place in Ruston’s study with the door firmly closed. Normally Ruston, seeing people would leave the door ajar. (Well, you would not want to be accused of doing something inappropriate would you?) The door being closed sent me a clear signal, this was serious, whatever it might be.
As far as inappropriate was concerned, Ruston played a straight bat. Anything sexually off-colour would have been utterly detestable to him. How that competed though, with the reputational damage that could rebound onto the Iwerne camps, and the project to promote and place evangelical men from “the right backgrounds”, in positions of power, authority and influence is another question and something Makin rightly explored and exposed.
I am absolutely sure Welby, as a student, knew in 1978 that there was a problem with Smyth. I have no doubt that Ruston was alerted to such issues by those at dormitory level like his trusted servant and future candidate for leadership, (a young man he treated like the son he never had), Justin Welby. For Welby not to remember this occasion (as he testified to Makin) is very convenient and disingenuous, but sadly, not a surprise to me.
You see my experience of Welby, was that he could not bear the consequences of his actions. When things went wrong at 37 Jesus Lane, guess who perpetually “copped” for it and received the tongue lashing from Ruston? Yes, indeed, your truly. Ruston would blame me for doors being left unlocked at night amongst a multitude of other things. I’ll give you no prizes for guessing who the real culprit was.
It is indelibly imprinted on my memory, how, I was on my final day, standing in the hallway about to leave through the front door. I had cases in hands, rucksack on back, almost a hand on the front door handle, when Welby, gazelle like, bounded down the stairs, two at a time, leaning heavily, semi sliding upon the bannister. He asked me if I was leaving now? I thought that was pretty obvious but going to Eton does not necessarily mean you are, or make you sharp. Simply, I replied “yes” but wondered what this was about. As soon as Justin knew I was about to probably leave his and Ruston’s lives for ever, he then proceeded to tell me he wanted to “confess” to me. “What for?” I asked. “Well, on all those occasions the front door was left unlocked and you were blamed for it and received a telling off, that was me” was his message on my departure. No he had not said this to the Canon and I received no communication back from Mark Ruston to indicate that he might have wrongly blamed me.
What I did receive, astonishingly, a week or two later, was a hand written letter through the post, from Welby, telling me I had not shown enough gratitude to Ruston for his kindness towards me. Yes, he had given me breakfast and a bed, but I had toiled for him doing all manner of jobs, setting out chairs for meetings, printing sermons and publications on an inky hand cranked duplicator, painted his shed, run messages hither and thither and mended his Raleigh Runabout moped, as more than fair exchange, but I left feeling belittled and disempowered and that my face did not fit.
Later on in Derby Diocese I spoke with the former Bishop of Derby, the good Bishop Alastair Redfern, that I had lived with Welby for a year and shared daily breakfasts with him and Ruston. Apparently, according to him, Welby did not remember me.
When I met Justin subsequently after an event at The Round House in Derby, (where he spoke, June 2016 ) he completely blanked me. There was no warm greeting or recognition of the time we had shared. It made me wonder, what had gone on in the Archbishop’s experience to delete this and me from his memory?
In hindsight, I generously speculated, that perhaps this had this been a painful year for him. Not only with the death of his father, but in other ways traumatised. I wondered if this weak, impressionable and vulnerable young man had also been a victim of John Smyth? Ruston had been a mentor and surrogate father figure to him. Had Smyth also offered a similar substitute perhaps though with unpleasant treatment as a part of the “fathering” ? Could such an abusive experience have happened so that his memory had ”shut down” to protect himself from the pain of it all? This is of course pure speculation in search of a reason for his lapse in memory.
On the other hand, it could have just been the old Justin, acting as he had done as a student, unable to bear the consequences of his actions. It is curious just how much eludes the memories of Bishops and Archbishops at the most convenient of occasions.
For sure, it was a year that made an impression on me. It taught me lot about the public school evangelical sect, and their values, even though I did not know even half of what was really going on, unlike other key people in the story.
Why is Welby not on the sticky end of a Clergy Disciplinary Measure for his mishandling of Safeguarding issues? Any other rank and file cleric would have been severely punished for such goings on. It’s not just “process” either – this is personal responsibility one that Welby should have acted upon straightaway as he gained seniority.
On another occasion I will tell you of my experience of a Bishop who has done some unpleasant things to clergy, someone whom Justin has shamefully defended. For now though, it’s time for me to put the Archbishop’s head down, put t’coal in t’bath and walk the whippet.
