CITY OF LONDON (GUILD CHURCHES) BILL (Hansard, 3 July 1952)

THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time. It is, in point of fact, so far at any rate, an agreed measure. I am empowered by my own ecclesiastical leader, the most reverend Primate the Lord Archbishop of Canter-bury, to say that he gives full support to the Bill. Indeed, I think that the Archdeacon of London, who is the architect of the Bill, has been in consultation with His Grace the Archbishop at every stage of its compilation. Not only so: there has been, so far, a unanimous measure of agreement among the many interests which had to be consulted before the Bill could be compiled at all. There were as many as 250 vested interests which had to reach agreement before the Bill could be compiled. The Bill has, moreover, passed through all the necessary stages in another place, and so far there has been no opposition at all to it.

I suppose that I myself should feel highly gratified and flattered at this unanimity of agreement about a Bill which proposes to enable the Bishop of London to do certain things. But I hasten to point out that the Bill does not, in fact, add to the Bishop of London's powers. While, throughout the arrangements, we tried to see that all the various 674 interests concerned "broke even," it is a fact that the Bishop of London loses a certain amount of power and does not gain any. It is not a very great matter, but I thought it necessary to make that word of explanation because the wording of the Bill might lead people to believe that the Bill intended to give the Bishop of London powers which, in fact, it does not give him. It does, however, enable him to do certain things and it is those which really form the basis of the Bill.

I am sure that your Lordships will not expect me to go through all the clauses of the Bill, but you will expect me to explain its main purposes. Perhaps I can best do that by recalling to your Lordships' recollection a Commission over which the noble Lord, Lord Merriman, presided, and which reported in 1946. That Report was issued in two Parts. The First Part dealt with the financial aspect of the ecclesiastical organisation for the City. Your Lordships passed a Bill that was compiled as a result of that Report, and the effect of that Bill has been to bring order out of the previous chaos in our financial arrangements in the City. Both Church and City are extremely grateful to the House for what it did on that occasion.

The Second Part of the Report dealt not with finances but with the actual buildings, the churches in the City, and it is with that matter that the present Bill in fact deals. There are forty-seven churches in the City of London, and there is a population of not much more than 5,000: only about 5,000 people actually sleep in the City of London. On the other hand, nearly 500,000 people work there by day. The existence of this congested population during the day and the small population at night time involves a very special problem. The question is, how to use the forty-seven churches to the best advantage. Lord Merriman's Report was extremely conservative, and we are all very happy about that, because on a previous occasion it had been suggested that no fewer than nineteen of the City churches should be demolished or removed. On this occasion the suggestion is only that three churches should not be rebuilt. There are three churches in the City which have been almost obliterated, and there is no point in rebuilding them. There are two churches which it is pro- 675 posed shall be given over to other uses, one to become the choir school of the Cathedral Choir, and the other to become a central hall for the diocese. With regard to two other churches, we have not yet made up our minds what would be the best thing to do with them. That disposes of the odd seven, and we are left with forty churches for which we must devise some satisfactory use. Out of those forty churches, it is now proposed to use twenty-four as parish churches and to reorganise the parish boundaries in the City so that the parishes will be completely catered for by these twenty-four churches.

The remaining sixteen it is proposed to put to a hitherto unprecedented use, and that is the main point of the Bill. What has been suggested is that these churches should be used as what we call guild churches—that is to say, that they shall be taken out of the parochial organisation of the City altogether and shall be used mainly to minister to the day-time population of the City. This involves, of course, running quite contrary to the customary procedure in the Church of England. If the churches are taken out of the parishes, it will also necessitate depriving the incumbents or vicars of those churches of the customary freehold. They will be given a five years' tenure of office, with the possibility of being reappointed for a short period of years if they prove successful at the particular work which they are doing. That will at once both preserve the traditional stability of our work in the City and introduce an entirely new element of flexibility. We shall have sixteen churches which have no permanent incumbent and which therefore can be used for any special purpose. The vicar of such a church will be relieved of the legal necessity of taking Divine Service on a Sunday, because the bulk of the people who work in the City are not there on a Sunday. Therefore he will have much more freedom to practise special techniques or to introduce new ways of doing church work, which it is impossible to practise under the old and still traditional parochial system. I must point out that this is an important change in our methods of work in the City, and I hope that we have your interest and your support.

676 There is one other thing that the Bill will enable the Bishop of London to do—namely, to designate certain churches, whether they are parochial churches or guild churches, to become ward churches; that is to say, to appoint them to individual wards in the City, so that the aldermen of the ward can sit on their parochial church council, their board of management so to speak, and other representatives from the ward can come and take an interest in the organisation and management of the church thus designated a ward church. In one particular example, that liaison between the City and the Church would be most effectively cemented. The Church of St. Lawrence, Jewry, would be the Corporation of London and City of London church, and the Corporation would have not only the right of patronage but also the actual freehold.

My Lords, I hope that I have said enough to explain the main purposes of the Bill. Your Lordships will realise that, from our point of view, the advantages of such an arrangement are tremendous because it will set free for the spiritual administration in the City sixteen of these churches, and will give an opportunity for trying out many experiments in church work which hitherto have been almost impossible. One of our great difficulties in the past has been the almost impossibility of experimentation. Owing to our historical position, the close legal ties that bind us and fix our whole method of work, it is almost impossible to start upon a new venture. But if these churches are thus released we shall be able to embark upon more experimentation than has been possible up to now. Further, we shall have the very great advantage that the City will be much more closely linked with the churches, and the Church will be much more closely bound to certain wards in the City. Above all, I am sure your Lordships will be interested to know that there will be preserved the priceless heritage of Wren buildings, which are one of the most glorious architectural features to be found in the whole of Europe. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.