The
Labour Church was founded by John Trevor,
a former Unitarian minister. The first
service took place in Manchester in
October, 1891. Other Labour Churches were soon established in other
industrial towns including Barnsley, Birmingham,
Bradford, Bolton, Dundee,
Halifax, Leeds,
London, Nottingham,
Oldham, Plymouth
and Wolverhampton.
These churches were sometimes formed in response to church ministers
supporting Liberal and Conservative
candidates in parliamentary elections. For example, the Bradford Labour
Church was formed in 1892 after a Nonconformist
minister supported the Liberal Party candidate
against the socialist, Ben Tillett, in
the 1892 General Election. By 1895 there
were over fifty of these Labour Churches in Britain.
John Trevor and his followers were Christian
Socialists who believed that the labour movement could be the
driving force in obtaining "the Kingdom of God on earth".
Many of Britain's leading socialists were active in the Labour Church
and included Keir Hardie, Ben
Tillett, Tom Mann, Fred
Jowett, Philip Snowdon and Margaret
McMillan.
When a conference was held in Bradford
to form the Independent Labour Party, John
Trevor organised a church service to accompany the event. It was
estimated that over 5,000 people attended the service in the Bradford
Labour Church.
Labour Churches usually attracted congregations of between 300 and
500 people. Dundee averaged 400 but had
to close the doors when Keir Hardie spoke
at one meeting. The Halifax Labour Church was one of the popular and
regularly attracted 500 worshipers. The normal service was (1) Hymn,
(2) Reading, (3) Prayer (4) Choir, (5) Notices and Collection, (6)
Hymn, (7) Address, (8) Hymn and (9) Benediction. The hymns used were
taken from the Labour Church Hymn Book, and although it included
some approved traditional hymns, mainly comprised socialist songs
and poems written by Edward Carpenter,
Charles Kingsley and William
Morris. Church readings tended to taken from the work of socialist
writers rather than from the Bible.
Most of the Labour Churches
were involved in charity work. The London
Labour Church, under the leadership
of Paul Campbell, the editor of the
Christian Socialist
magazine, and Margaret McMillan, established
a school, whereas D.
B. Foster in Leeds, led a campaign to improve
the condition of the slums in the city. John
Trevor in Manchester ran a Shelter
for the Homeless and provided a Cinderella Club for underprivileged
children in Deansgate.
John
Trevor
began publishing a monthly magazine, The
Labour Prophet
in January, 1892. The motto on the cover was "God is our King"
but later it changed to "Let labour be the basis of civil society'.
This resulted in complaints as the word God was not included and eventually
Trevor reverted to the original motto. The
Labour Prophet
continued until 1898 when it was replaced by the smaller, quarterly,
Labour
Church Record.
John Trevor
left
the Labour Church in 1900. Without his leadership the church went
into decline. There was a brief revival after the 1906
General Election but by the outbreak of the First
World War, the Labour Church had ceased to exist.
Labour Church congregation in Ashton in 1901
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