A fantasy examination question for an A level student fifty years from now, might read as follows. ‘Competent leadership on the part of generals and politicians was a crucial element in enabling the Allied nations to obtain victory over Fascism in WW2. Conversely, poor political leadership helped to exacerbate the International Pandemic of the 2020s. Discuss.’ I realise that I have been thinking a lot about the failures and successes of leadership over recent weeks. We now have the commemorations of the Second World War to remind us how another world-wide crisis was dealt with by our political leaders in the past. I realised that it might be helpful to set out more what I believe this mysterious quality of leadership to consist of. I am sure that somewhere among the 600 blog posts there are to be found some other reflections on the topic, but a discussion on leadership at this moment in history is going to be different from anything that has been offered before.
As I begin my random thoughts on leadership, I am comforted by the fact that, although there is a vast literature on the topic, there is much disagreement among the experts as to precisely what leadership is. This allows someone like me, possessing no specialist expertise, to reflect on the topic, basing my remarks purely on life experience. We all have had to cope with leaders and others with authority over us. Maybe we have been in a situation where other people have looked to us to provide leadership. What will be true is that everyone will have encountered the phenomenon of leadership and either benefited from it or suffered pain because it was exercised with ineptitude.
This post will try to focus on the positive aspects of leadership. Examples of bad practice no doubt will emerge as we explore the leadership that can be inspiring, helpful and transformative. We routinely think of leadership as a corporate matter, with a leader having authority over groups of people. We need, I believe, to start in a different place. Leadership begins in the human family. In a traditional family where there are two parents, one parent will typically take on the main nurturing protective role of a child. This will normally be the mother in a heterosexual partnership. But there is a further parenting and leadership role to be performed. That is the task of gradually introducing the child to the wider world, teaching him/her social skills and the ability to care for and protect him/herself and generally function within what will be the adult sphere. Child rearing will have both these aspects, nurture and challenge. Typically, a father will shoulder a significant part of this second area of responsibility. Teaching/leading a child to operate outside the safety of the home is a gradual process lasting a considerable number of years. Later on in life, many of us will seek out other individuals who will continue certain aspects of this parenting role. Their role in our lives is often described as being a mentor. Such a individual helps us by, for example, reflecting with us on difficult situations we face. He/she may offer assessments of future challenges that we are considering. A typical scenario would be a job application. The mentor may well help us clarify the positives and the negatives of a post and whether we are suitable to take up the challenges involved in it.
The parent/mentor model embodies several of the qualities of a good church or political leader. Such a figure will want to be a guide, an encourager and one who can see the way ahead with a degree of clarity. Above all, a leader is going to be a person who only wants good for those in his/her charge. Obviously, when someone has large numbers of people to care for, they cannot know everyone personally. They can, however, be expected to ‘have their ear to the ground’ to pick up the dominant feelings and aspirations of their group. Thus, when decisions are made by a leader which affect every member of a group or a nation, the individuals within it may reasonably expect to feel included somewhere in that decision. When, on the other hand, leaders make decisions that benefit either only themselves or their small band of cronies, the typical person among the followers will be able to spot that self-serving action. If, on the other hand, there has been a genuine attempt to do the very best for the majority that also will be picked up. The key to leadership is good communication. When men and women of power work in secret, that will always create distrust, resentment and resistance among the followers.
One of the best descriptions of leadership I have read, links a leader to a vision for his or her group. The leader has this vision and, through the skills of rhetoric and persuasion, draws in his followers to join him/her in sharing it. It may or may not be a message of new prosperity and plenty. A leader, like Churchill, was inviting followers to a tough period of ‘tears and sweat’. The leader is the one that can successfully articulate and communicate what needs to be said in a given situation and invite the followers to prepare for it. The important skill for any leader is the correct interpretation of the times and the ability to know what will be acceptable to the followers in effectively responding to it. That, of course, will demand gifts of a high order. I am unsure whether there is currently anyone on the political front or in church leadership who can, in fact, perform this role? At the risk of repeating what I said in the last blog post, the future of the nation and the churches looks bleak at present. From our political leaders we will need help to face up to the possibilities of shortages, increased unemployment and severe social pain. While setting out these grim realities, it will also be important to rally people around the possibility that such pain can be borne and be the harbinger of a new sort of society and church life. Froghole has helpfully listed several of the steps that might be taken to allow the ordinary members of society not to feel forgotten. I noted one suggestion which involved the closing down of financial boltholes in British Overseas Territories. If the covid-19 age has the consequence that society ends up with even greater inequality, that will be a stain on this country’s history which will never be erased. If we are to have greater economic hardship, then everyone must accept their share. I am not suggesting some fantasy equality for all, as this, historically, has proved unworkable as an aspiration. Political leadership in this situation is explaining to people what is required of every member of society. We need from our political masters some clear facts, even if they are initially extremely unpalatable.
The leadership of the Church has, to all appearances, been paralysed by the virus. As I articulated in the last post, there is something slight awry when church leaders gather to discuss how the church is going to pass through the present crisis but keep their deliberations secret. When the committees of Church House and the House of Bishops play this game of secrecy, they imply that they own the church in a way that is not true of the rest of us. If dramatic contingency plans are being made, we need to know. If there is a hope that the show goes on as before, we also need to be told. Leadership, good leadership should be telling us the prognosis for the future, good or bad. Will the church not be healthier for facing up to reality and beginning to adapt to coping with its implications?
Stephen – Thank you so much for this. It is extremely apt.
One of the things that astounded me about the pay and rations of the French clergy is that there is no differential between senior clergy and the rank and file (I am also indebted to the very useful comments made by Stanley and Steve in relation to this point). It has brought me back to thinking about how the Church of England mirrors class relations – and antagonisms – in society at large and how it has invariably helped to legitimate them (think of James I and VI saying “no bishops, no king”).
What the crisis has brought into sharper relief is the toxicity of class antagonisms and how they are reflected in the death rate: look at any map of excess mortality in recent months and it is the deprived boroughs in the inner cities (as well as less affluent rural districts like Cumbria) that have borne the brunt of the virus.
There are already significant signs that, whilst the Left is mobilising a useful critique of these unfortunate economic conditions, it is – once again – failing to capitalise on the crisis to provide an effective and practical vision for the reconfiguration of our political economy. The Right, too, is mobilising (and rather more effectively than the Left) to wind down the ‘unaffordable’ war socialism of the crisis period in the quest to revert to the status quo ante (note how the push towards a green future is being watered down by the pleas of the aviation and oil sectors to susceptible governments in their anxiety to retain financial, and political, substance and influence). There is therefore a genuine risk that, yet again, a crisis will fail to stimulate those societal changes that are necessary, not only to secure equity, but also enduring economic stability.
This brings me back to class power. In 1944 a very important Polish economist, Michal Kalecki (Keynes avant la lettre, and the prime originator, amongst other things, of the vital theory of sectoral balances) remarked that capitalists are not actually interested in maximising profits if they result from full employment increasing workers’ spending power. What matters most to them is the discipline of the ‘sack’; it is class power which is their holy grail. Note that the attitude of the Baldwin ministry in 1926 and the New Right after c. 1968/9 was about *increasing* class antagonism to restore class power. Elevated levels of unemployment resulting from the crisis may be welcomed by employers, provided capitalists can maintain a decent level of profit (whilst their debts are eroded by moderate inflation), since it will enhance their class power.
Where is the Church in this? It is, courtesy of the Commissioners, thick with some of the masterminds of this system. Two of the Commissioners are senior executives at Black Rock, which has arguably supplanted Goldman Sachs as the epicentre of this regressive world view.
We need *vision* from the Church. Right. Now.
Church of England “leadership” is not what it seems. Power, you would have thought, should be vested in the most senior clergy, for example the Archbishop of Canterbury. All he would have to do then, is come up with a fantastic new vision for the Church, give the orders out and empower his legions of deputies and vicars across the land to carry out the plan.
But as far as my memory stretches back, this is never been how things work. Formal organisational leadership described simply like this cannot happen.
By contrast in the business world, you can find examples like I described. A strong visionary sets up and grows a strong successful and profitable business. Even then it’s not of course plain sailing, especially at the minute.
More complex organisational structures function differently. The bigger and more ancient, the more complex.
The C of E has discernible strands of power, for example the charismatic Anglican HTB movement. Numerically and in financial terms this has been very successful. All Souls’ is another strand, this time conservative. Others within this group may prefer a different name eg St Helens/Ebbs etc but you know what I mean.
These strands can basically do what they like. Arguably they already do, even calling the shots on smaller less financially prosperous groups who depend on them for the parish share.
I’m sure these strands or streams already have strong vision and strong leadership. They are doing their vision. As I mentioned before locally both the above have planted (they call it seeding) churches both of which are outside the Church of England. That’s power. That’s vision. That’s leadership. That’s also politics. They would argue that it’s mission.
As with national politics, church political decisions are hardly ever written down. They are hardly ever debated, hardly ever democratic and rarely communicated formally, if at all. But it is a mistake to assume there isn’t a plan just because we haven’t seen it.
People at the helm, whether they are technically the official “leaders” or (as is usual) not, will however be judged on results, that is to the extent we discern who they are.
Those that lead do so by engaging with the people who then follow them. The masses are attracted to the vision they extol. We may not like it, but it’s working for them.
I’m a great believer in leading the cause we promote. We may not have great energy or youth and vigour on our side, but we can speak. And write.
Steve – I think this is a very shrewd set of observations (if you will forgive the impertinence). The structures of the Church perhaps prevent effective leadership from ever being exercised.
Essentially, the Church is a web of miniature private corporations (mostly parishes – but even bishops are known in law as ‘corporations sole’), with their own legal personalities. Absent the canonical oath of obedience and the ability to discipline clergy in exceptional circumstances, bishops have down the centuries struggled to impose their will upon the clergy (the most celebrated instance of that being, arguably, the Gorham judgement of 1850). This remains the case to some extent. However, two major developments have led to an increase in episcopal authority.
First, with effect from the 1830s the state created an operational superstructure (in the form of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners from 1840) which enabled the bishops to project their authority, at least to some extent, and despite the fact that the three executive commissioners were always layfolk. This was bolstered to some extent by the struggle against ‘ritualism’ (Tait’s Public Worship Regulation Act 1874, controversial yet underwhelming though it was).
Second, and much more recently, the mechanism of extinguishing the freehold, and its substitution by common tenure, by which the concept of an incumbent as previously understood, has been watered down (though the 2015 Sharpe case revealed the limits of freehold rights); whilst clergy on common tenure have certain rights under the Employment Act 1996, bishops can exert considerable suasion over them, as has been seen in threats of CDMs made to clergy who have challenged the supposed ban on using their churches during the lockdown.
Indeed, the comparative quiescence of the profession to the archbishops’ ‘ukase’ about the use of churches does indicate that the top leadership can exert its authority if it has the will to do so. However, appeals to obedience are contingent and will only be effective if they are supported by moral authority; in recent days a ‘credibility gap’ has emerged between bishops and clergy as the sinews of that authority have withered.
Power without moral influence is redundant. I think that many of us will keep returning to the example of William Temple, whose brief primacy was a ray of light between a courtier (Lang) and a martinet (Fisher). In the darkest days of the last war even FDR (an Episcopalian) appealed to Temple for advice. Temple was able to add moral and ethical ballast to Beveridge’s appeals for a new settlement for the people, and for a consensus between capital and labour. The current leadership of the Church needs to turn to the example provided by Temple during the war, one of the few instances in English history where a bishop has been able to provide the leadership and vision to which Stephen alludes, and who was able to influence the contours of national politics.
Thanks James. Aha I enjoy your turn of phrase! I do feel that I am myself impertinent with frequent crashing into other people’s glass houses. It would be much harder for me to speak out if I were in holy orders myself.
I do think you’re right about Temple. And the mass of clergy appear to have obeyed the 3 line whip with the requirement to keep churches closed with Covid19. So in theory it (episcopal leadership) can be done and in practice too. But… if I’m being cynical (perish the thought) if the Church hadn’t closed up, it would have committed a critical error. The populace would not have forgiven it. Measures such as disestablishment, removal of charitable tax breaks etc would have been hastened in by way of punishment.
They can do the right thing when they have to.
The challenge we have if we want change is we are asking people in position to be different, not who they actually are. Our psychological solution is frequently to change ourselves instead, to stop our ears, blind ourselves, resort to unthinking acquiescence and mutely elevate and adore the very same leaders we wanted to behave differently. Odd I know, but human. Stephen touched on this more eloquently in an earlier thread.
I agree there is hope though, but perhaps not in the direction we would expect. Nature abhors a vacuum and the church is no exception. The deep cry for spiritual connection particularly under the current suffering is louder than ever. I sense Stanley was right about the cleansing effect of post-viral Britain. We’ve all had to consider closely what really matters. Our helplessness is only matched by the eternal love and power of a Saviour.
Max Hastings, writing in today’s Times, makes the following observation:
‘Winston Churchill, the patrician hero, failed in one big thing. He refused to identify war aims, beyond those of vanquishing the enemy. In August 1942, the brilliant Australian war correspondent Alan Moorehead highlighted this lapse.
Among the men on the battlefields, he wrote, there was “a general and growing feeling that something was being kept back from them, that they were being asked to fight for a cause which the leaders did not find vital enough to state clearly”. Talk of glory, victory, duty were not enough to motivate a citizen soldier, he said. “Now he is asking for what sort of victory? For what sort of a postwar country? For ‘my duty’ to what goal in life?”’
We think of Churchill as a great communicator, but this is one regard in which he failed. And he failed because he hadn’t grasped the hunger of those less privileged than himself for a more just and equal nation.
Our church leaders don’t seem to be very good at grasping the national mood, and speaking to it, either.
I keep seeing comments bemoaning our archbishops’ and bishops’ ‘lack of theology’, and mostly I think they mean ‘their theology is different to mine’. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe what people want to know is what our leaders’ concept of the Kingdom of God is, and how they aim to see the Church of England conform to it. In the 20th century evangelicals have majored on personal salvation and have been less good at Kingdom theology (and I speak as one from an evangelical background).
Will the Archbishop of York elect be any better at identifying the deep hungers in the nation and in the Church, and addressing them? I hope so.
Thank you very much for this! Here is a useful notice on Moorehead from the ANB: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/moorehead-alan-mccrae-15004. He is well known for writing about the Dardanelles, though of course he did so much more than that. He, together, with Keith Murdoch (Rupert’s father) did more than anyone to create, and cement, the common Australian (and Anzac) understanding of Gallipoli as a fools’ errand,and cleared the way for Peter Weir’s film. And, as far as any Australian is concerned, who was the evil/blundering genius behind Gallipoli? Why, Churchill. There is also a significant body of opinion, and not just within the ALP, that views Churchill as the leader who kept Australian forces tied down in the western desert when they should have been present in greater numbers in Malaya and New Guinea during 1941, and who failed to man Singapore adequately; in other words, that Australia should be sacrificed to home defence.
This elides with the view, widespread within Britain itself, that Churchill was a dyspeptic reactionary, the man who sent troops to the south Wales coalfield as Asquith’s home secretary; who sent troops to Russia to aid the Whites; who backed the ‘Norman conquest’ of the dollar in the face of persistent unemployment; who was in the van of union-baiting with his ‘British Gazette’ during the General Strike; and who worked to his utmost to wreck Hoare’s settlement with Congress in India. This had not been forgotten or forgiven in 1945, and his slur against Attlee’s imagined ‘Gestapo tactics’ simply confirmed the view many had that he had not changed.
Nor was he up to much as a tactician (viz. the Alanbrooke diaries). In addition to Gallipoli, there are the fiascoes of Norway (for which Chamberlain took the blame), Crete, Dieppe and, above all, the utilisation of the BEF (I recently re-read Marc Bloch’s masterpiece ‘Strange Defeat’ and its comments about Britain as an ally are painful indeed).
A great man with corresponding failings. There is therefore a latent ambivalence about Churchill here and elsewhere, and I mention this having met people who knew him (also Froghole is round the corner from Chartwell).
The government (largely staffed by a 2nd XI) is groping its way through a hydra-headed crisis: medical, economic, financial, strategic. This, inevitably, compromises the ability of the state to project some sort of plan for the future, making it all the more likely that we will lapse back into the past. As such, this is a golden opportunity for the Church to be really useful to the country at large (and I mean beyond the parish and the church community) and articulate a comprehensive alternative vision: to marry theology, ethics and practical politics. However, the silence has been deafening. I might have failed to hear what is being said, but when I try to listen for something, anything, substantive, there is nothing…just the bouncing of tumbleweed.
Well, we must not stray too far from the purpose and ethic of this blog, but how interesting that the names of Max Hastings, Alanbrooke and Marc Bloch should all turn up in two successive posts about the wartime leadership of Winston Churchill.
Max Hastings has been dismissive of Alanbrooke, asserting that the diaries demonstrate his vanity on every page. (I disagree, but I am neither a historian nor a journalist.) To me, reading the diaries of this complex man who, whilst striving always for the best outcome, often felt that he was being thwarted on every side, suggests exactly the opposite of vanity. And at the conclusion of the war in the midst of all the general triumph his response was one of humility.
I understand that Marc Bloch blamed the British for the downfall of France after the withdrawal (or retreat) from Belgium. Alanbrooke was there, as a military diplomat, trying to assist the Belgians, and in spite of his rank, was jostled and ignored. In the diaries he cites French sources that the French army had ceased to be an effective force any longer. What were the British to do on their own?
In an overnight manoeuvre Montgomery moved troops from under the Germans’ noses without a single loss of life, I believe, but this was planned by Alanbrooke – the strategist. Coupled with Hitler’s extraordinary halting of Guderian’s tank advance, most of the BEF was repatriated from Dunkirk (including some French military officers) safely to England. But for that, the war would have been lost.
Alanbrooke, now hardly remembered and barely mentioned in the recent VE Day celebrations, was a devout Christian. When appointed by Churchill to be Chief of the Imperial General Staff (without the ‘Imperial’, that military rank still exists) he knelt in prayer – far from being the ‘vain’ person Max Hastings suggested – and the diaries reveal that prayer was a regular part of his life.
Surely Alanbrooke demonstrated ‘leadership’ at that perilous time.
Froghole may have a different view about Marc Bloch, and I place on record immediately that I have not read “Strange Defeat”. I have read (but did not record the details) a thesis by a young French Canadian lady effectively blaming the Fall of France on the British, but this was so at variance with Alanbrooke’s contemporary descriptions of what actually took place, and he was there, the chaotic meetings with the French Government and admission by French military officers that they considered the cause to be lost, that I am not persuaded by anything which she wrote – none of it first-hand knowledge, and, it seemed to me, mostly a statement of prejudice.
With apologies for this ‘military’ discursion.
Thank you very much for this (and for all your other comments). Just very quickly, since this is not of relevance to Stephen’s post:
As you may be aware, Bloch is probably one of the greatest historians of the twentieth century, and ‘Strange Defeat’ was written when he was in hiding and working for the Resistance (he was later discovered and shot). He actually only refers to the British in a few pages, and it is more ‘in sorrow rather than anger’, since he was something of an Anglophile. I don’t have the actual book in front of me (I had borrowed it from the London Library), but he notes the painful but widespread *perception* in France that the Tommy abroad was a ‘looter’ and a ‘lecher’ (let’s hope this was partly the folk mythology of the Hundred Years War…). There was also the perception that the British had given up on France well before defeat became inevitable. However, his criticisms of the UK are as nothing compared with his excoriations of the French High Command, the institutions of the Third Republic and, indeed, French society in general, especially its bourgeoisie. I would recommend it strongly, as a literary classic, and for the acuity of his analysis. It is the equal of Gerald Brenan’s masterful ‘Spanish Labyrinth’ (1943).
It is especially unfortunate that I cannot quote from the hard copy as it has a number of very perceptive aphorisms about leadership and decision-making, which would apply very well to our government, both in Church and state, at present.
The best translation is by Gerard Hopkins (1968). Here are links to the French text (1946): http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/bloch_marc/etrange_defaite/etrange_defaite.html. Here also are some excerpts in translation (the reproduction quality is poor, but it should give you a flavour): https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=a2Vhbi5lZHV8ZWxpemFiZXRoLWh5ZGUtcGhkfGd4OjU4NjYxMDM2MDJmMTE3MWE
I very much agree with your other comments. Alanbrooke was an outstanding personality: here he is being interviewed by his ubiquitous erstwhile colleague, Brian Horrocks, where his first class character is much in evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhx4z4jGroA
Best wishes (and apologies to Stephen),
James
Yes, I have noted the absence of leadership too, and the lack of a goal. Mine is to win the nation for Jesus. A call at the national level for us all to turn to Jesus at this time would be very welcome. In its absence, my website http://www.turntojesus.co.uk is getting very little attention so far, but I commend the feedback page, especially numbers 006 and 026 about what may be coming.
We need inspirational leadership. There’ll be loads of ideas kicking around. We need bishops who can encourage and harness them. What was that about tumbleweed?
Psalm 83 verse 13.
😀