Joe Egerton was the Conservative candidate for Leigh in 1992, a GLC candidate for Deptford in 1977, and has stood for local office in Oxfordshire and Lambeth. He is a former Economics Director of the BCC, NATO Research Fellow at Oxford and Head of Strategy Services for a leading city consultancy.
This week the General Synod of the Church of England meets for the first time after the defenestration of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Huge damage is being done to a great English institution that the Tory Party so often protected. But Conservative MPs have scarcely noticed that anything is happening. Kemi Badenoch must change that.
Most of us have heard the names Makin and Smyth. Keith Makin is the author of a review, commissioned in 2019, and published over four years late at a cost of £1,052,000. Few will have got further than the first page – attempting to read it produces a sensation of chewing cardboard.
Following its publication and the usual selective briefing, the editor’s reaction – like many others – was to argue that Justin Welby should resign
Anyone who endures the task of reading through 250 pages of this badly constructed, meandering, and unsourced report will be struck by the absence of any evidence that Justin Welby had any grounds for suspecting that John Smyth was a sadistic monster.
This is what Makin tells us. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, Justin Welby heard Smyth, at the time a widely respected young QC, speak at annual evangelical summer camps. After Smyth had spoken to the Christian Union in Cambridge in 1978, somebody heard a vehement conversation between Justin Welby and a local rector.
In 1982, in Paris, Welby was drinking coffee after a Sunday service. The Rector mentioned that Smyth was there. But he gave Welby the cold shoulder. About a fortnight later the Rector told Welby that Smyth was “not a nice man” and he should keep clear of him.
Nowhere does Makin say that a victim had claimed that he had told Welby that he had been abused. The only victim to speak on the subject (not quoted by Makin) has stated categorically that Welby knew nothing of Smyth’s abuses.
In 2013, when Justin Welby became Archbishop, letters about safeguarding addressed to Lambeth Palace had been dealt with by a correspondence secretary. There was no bishop at Lambeth to whom Justin Welby could delegate. In July 2013 the Ely Diocese received a report of Smyth’s abuse, spoke to the Cambridgeshire police, and told the Archbishop’s chaplain who told Welby.
Welby wanted to pursue the matter with the trust that had run the camps where Smyth had first come into contact with some victims. He was told not to do so because the Police did not want anyone tipped off. Ely had also written to South Africa where Smyth lived and the bishop there had emailed that he had received the letter and spoken to the Archbishop of Cape Town.
Makin’s report is so badly constructed that it took a day’s work to confirm how little evidence there was to sustain the charges in the misleading briefing that had been picked up by many.
This is not to say Justin Welby was faultless. He was not. He made mistakes in an interview with Cathy Newman of Channel 4, he should have seen all victims who wanted to see him and ignored advice not to do so. He has lost a lot of sympathy with his ill-judged speech in the House of Lords. But any suggestion that knew something of Smyth’s abuses has no basis in fact.
The real problem with Makin is what he failed to pick up. Although his terms required him to comment on those who knew about Smyth’s abuse, he made no criticisms of most of those who knew of the abuse for nearly 40 years who are still alive.
The Church website and a report to the Synod state that the panel considering what disciplinary measures should follow is only considering people criticised by Makin. To compound this, disciplinary tribunals dealing with clerical misconduct (unlike, for example, those dealing with financial misconduct) sit in private. In a climate sympathetic to victims who are complaining about secrecy and cover-ups, this is idiocy of a high order.
If anyone has lacked curiosity, it is Makin. He was told that the Iwerne Committee had approval at a high level in the church for its decision not to report Smyth to the police but to manage the situation to deny Smyth opportunities to entrap schoolboys or undergraduates again.
Underlying the Smyth scandal is an organised campaign dating back to the 1930s by a faction called Conservative Evangelicals to gain office in the Church of England.
Elizabeth I and Charles II legislated only for complete uniformity of liturgy; the 39 Articles allowed for a wide range of doctrinal positions. While neither every decree of the Council of Trent nor everything preached by Calvin and Zwingli was permissible, a wide range of views could be lawfully held. T S Eliot explained the peculiar essence of Anglicanism thus:
The Church of England maintains its unity in spite of the differences, and because we do not agree to disagree. Each party in this Church can defend its own doctrine, in the conviction that its doctrine is the true doctrine of the Church of England.
Although the campaign that started in the 1930s in the camps that nurtured Smyth did not accept that others had a place in the church, the Evangelicals were only allowed to seize control by Gordon Brown’s transfer of choice of bishops from the Prime Minister. Until then the PM aided by an appointments secretary in Number 10 acted as umpire over the disputes of scheming clerics and carefully maintained a balance between various factions.
The power to nominate has gone to a committee of apparatchiks rather grandiosely called the Crown Nomination Commission or CNC. A new CNC is constituted for each diocesan vacancy. Ruthless organisation in the General Synod has allowed the Conservative Evangelicals to obtain so many places on the panel from which CNC members are drawn that they have a veto. The veto has left two dioceses without bishops and there is credible speculation that the CNC for Canterbury will fail to provide a new archbishop.
If that happens, Keir Starmer will have difficulty in avoiding resuming the former role of the Prime Minister and finding a name to recommend to the King.
The most astonishing feature of the Makin Review is his dismissal of suggestions that when Smyth left for Zimbabwe in 1984, this was an integral part of the operation to sweep the dirt under the carpet approved at a high level in the church. In Bleeding for Jesus, Andrew Graystone offers a far more plausible account of Smyth’s departure in which he was not just pushed out of England but support was organised for him.
This is dynamite because this man who should never have been allowed near schoolboys again was able to run camps for them in Zimbabwe. At one of these a 15 year boy called Guide Nyachuru tragically died. If Smyth’s abuses had been exposed in England in 1982 Guide would be alive today. Makin acknowledges this but missed the evidence that Smyth’s move to Zimbabwe was organised by a small clique with tacit approval at a high level in the church.
In 1959, the Commons debate on the Hola camp deaths produced what many have described as the greatest Parliamentary speech in the second half of the twentieth century – culminating in these words:
Nor can we ourselves pick and choose where and in what parts of the world we shall use this or that kind of standard. We cannot say, “We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia, and perhaps British standards here at home.” We have not that choice to make. We must be consistent with ourselves everywhere.
All Government, all influence of man upon man, rests upon opinion. What we can do in Africa, where we still govern and where we no longer govern, depends upon the opinion which is entertained of the way in which this country acts and the way in which Englishmen act. We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places, fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility.
These words should echo round the General Synod. Makin’s 250 pages of waffle ultimately fail to hide one fact: a decision that avoided a scandal in England was at the price of the life of a 15-year-old boy in Africa and the abuse of many more. Welby bears no responsibility for this. Smyth’s victims should be given the truth.
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