Henrietta Dubb's Diary
From
R H Tawney's
Review
of Christianity and the Social Revolution (London. Victor Gollancz &
Co 1935)
The Attack and Other Essays
Foreword by Tony Benn MP
Spokesman, Nottingham 1981
(Original edition, 1953 George Allen and Unwin Ltd)
ISBN 0 85124 312 6
Excerpted from pages 163-166.
The watershed
between creeds which this striking book suggests is not the conventional one.
Whatever Christians and Communists may say and do, Christianity and popular
communism - though not its official variety - are alike in holding the now
unfashionable view that principles really matter. Both have their absolutes. As
far as principles are concerned, the division of the future will lie, perhaps,
less between different forms of political and economic organisation than
between different estimates of the value to be put on the muddled soul of Henry
Dubb.
[There
follows a footnote to my grandfather ]: H.D.: the civilian equivalent of the P.B.I, or
poor bloody infantry, ie the common, courageous, good-hearted, patient,
proletarian fool, whose epic is contained in the well known lines, "We go
to work to earn the cash to buy the bread to get the strength to go to work to
earn the cash," etc, and who is worth, except to his modest self,
nine-tenths of the gentilities, notabilities, intellectual, cultural and
ethical eminences put together. I seem to remember an occasion on which a
telegram addressed to Henry Dubb, Labor Party Conference, was duly delivered at
the correct sea-side resort. The statement that, on the chairman inviting the
addressee to claim it, four-fifths of the comrades sprang to their feet, is,
however an exaggeration.
[Tawney
continues:] What the rules of Germany and Italy think of him we know; and I suspect
that those of Japan think much the same. The Christian Church professes to
regard him as a little lower than the angels, a child of God, and the heir of
eternal life. But it has shown hitherto no unquenchable zeal to ensure that, in
this vale of tears, he shall be treated as what, on its own doctrine, he is. …
In the interminable case of Dubb v Superior Persons and Co whether
Christians, Capitalists or Communists, I am an unrepentant Dubbite. So I am in
the unfortunate position of being unable to applaud my friends for their vices,
which - since their shining virtues will look after themselves - is what
friends usually declare. He hath put down the mighty from their seat and
hath exalted the humble and meek. Pondering that and other indiscretions of
a neglected classic, I find it impossible to believe, with some Christians,
that the love of God, whom one has not seen, is compatible with advantages
snatched from the brother one sees every day, or that what they describe as
spiritual equality, a condition which they neither created nor - happily - can
alter, has as its appropriate corollary economic, social and educational
inequalities which, given the will, they can abolish out of hand … A Christianity
which resigns the economic world to the devil appears to me, in short, not
Christianity at all; Capitalism a juggernaut sacrificing human ends to the
idolatry of material means; and a Socialism which puts Dubb on a chain and
prevents him from teaching manners to his exalted governors, a Socialism - if
such it can be called - which has more than half its battles still before it.
I don't pretend to understand all Tawney
writes about my grand-father. In many ways Henry is still a mystery to me. I remember
being told that just before he died - a matter of days after I was born - he
said that he had always been in God's care, and that as much as he longed for
Heaven, he also wanted to see Our Heavenly Father's new earth where
righteousness and justice and truth and happiness flower in their fullest.
Granpa, had a Christian funeral - his hopes have lain dormant in my
consciousness all these years until I read Tawney's comments. Noting the
… good sense,
pertinacity, nerve and resolution of the loveable, pig-headed, exasperating
Dubb
Tawney concluded his review in these terms.
As I have said, I don't follow all that Tawney writes about him. But I put it
here to complete the record:
Since I am not a
fatalist, and regard confident predictions from past history as mostly
sciolism, I have not yet despaired of Henry. I consider it not impossible that
he may one day wake up; make an angry noise like a man, instead of bleating
like a sheep; and in England, at any rate, in spite of scales weighted against
him, use such rights as he possesses, which he is more sensible than some of
his intellectual pastors in thinking worth having, to win economic freedom.
Can I contribute to the economic freedom
which Tawney said was within the grasp of Henry, if only he would wake up? I
don't know. Inspired by Henry Dubb's example, his Australian grand-daughter is
going to try. That means accepting my vocation as a Christian citizen of this
place. How else? I'm writing this diary to wake myself up and anyone else who
is interested enough to read my scribbling may be encouraged to wonder why
things have gone wrong and how we can begin to find a new way to exercise the
stewardship God entrusts to all who live in this place.
Next diary entry: I launched my diary the day after the Government committed Australian to an invasion of Iraq.
April 2003 © Henrietta
Dubb's Diary, is written and published by Bruce C Wearne, 29
Lawrence Rd., Point Lonsdale Vic 3225 AUSTRALIA, 61-3-5258-3913. Each entry in
the diary may be photocopied or retransmitted in its entirety but
shall not otherwise be reprinted or transmitted without the publisher's written
permission. This personal project aims to
encourage positive Christian citizenship, the development of policies and
political attitudes that better express our love for God and our neighbour.
Comments are welcome.
Email can be sent to bcwearne@ozemail.com.au