Address by the President of Ukraine on the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation, 8 May 2022

Can spring be black and white? Is there eternal February? Are golden words devalued? Unfortunately, Ukraine knows the answers to all these questions. Unfortunately, the answers are “yes”.

Every year on May 8, together with the entire civilized world, we honor everyone who defended the planet from Nazism during World War II. Millions of lost lives, crippled destinies, tortured souls and millions of reasons to say to evil: never again!

We knew the price our ancestors paid for this wisdom. We knew how important it is to preserve it and pass it on to posterity. But we had no idea that our generation would witness the desecration of the words, which, as it turned out, are not the truth for everyone.

This year we say “Never again” differently. We hear “Never again” differently. It sounds painful, cruel. Without an exclamation, but with a question mark. You say: never again? Tell Ukraine about it.

On February 24, the word “never” was erased. Shot and bombed. By hundreds of missiles at 4am, which woke up the entire Ukraine. We heard terrible explosions. We heard: again!

The city of Borodyanka is one of the many victims of this crime! Behind me is one of many witnesses! Not a military facility, not a secret base, but a simple nine-storey building. Can it pose a security threat to Russia, to 1/8 of the land, the world’s second army, a nuclear state? Can anything be more absurd than this question? It can.

250kg high explosive bombs, with which the superpower shelled this small town. And it went numb. It cannot say today: never again! It cannot say anything today. But here everything is clear without words.

Just look at this house. There used to be walls here. They once had photos on them. And in the photos there were those who once went through the hell of war. Fifty men who were sent to Germany for forced labor. Those who were burned alive when the Nazis burned more than 100 houses here.

250 soldiers who died on the fronts of World War II, and a total of almost 1,000 residents of Borodyanka who fought and defeated Nazism. To ensure: never again. They fought for the future of children, for the life that was here until February 24.

Imagine people going to bed in each of these apartments. They wish good night to each other. Turn off the light. Hug their loved ones. Close their eyes. They dream of something. There is complete silence. They all fall asleep, not knowing that not everyone will wake up. They sleep soundly. They have a dream of something pleasant. But in a few hours they will be awakened by missile explosions. And someone will never wake up again. Never again.

The word “never” was dropped from this slogan. Amputated during the so-called special operation. They stabbed a knife in the heart and, looking into the eyes, said: “It’s not us!” Tortured with the words “not everything is so unambiguous.” Killed “Never again”, saying: “We can repeat.”

And so it happened. And the monsters began to repeat. And our cities, which survived such a heinous occupation that 80 years are not enough to forget about it, saw the occupier again. And got the second date of occupation in their history. And some cities, such as Mariupol, got the third. During the two years of occupation, the Nazis killed 10,000 civilians there. In two months of occupation, Russia killed 20,000.

Decades after World War II, darkness returned to Ukraine. And it became black and white again. Again! Evil has returned. Again! In a different uniform, under different slogans, but for the same purpose. A bloody reconstruction of Nazism was organized in Ukraine. A fanatical repetition of this regime. Its ideas, actions, words and symbols. Maniacal detailed reproduction of its atrocities and “alibi”, which allegedly give an evil sacred purpose. Repetition of its crimes and even attempts to surpass the “teacher” and move him from the pedestal of the greatest evil in human history. Set a new world record for xenophobia, hatred, racism and the number of victims they can cause.

Never again! It was an ode of a wise man! Anthem of the civilized world! But someone sang out of tune. Distorted “Never again” with notes of doubt. Silenced, beginning his deadly aria of evil. And this is clear to all countries that have seen the horrors of Nazism with their own eyes. And today they are experiencing a terrible deja vu. See it again!

All nations who have been branded “third-class”, slaves without the right to their own state or to exist at all hear statements that exalt one nation and erase others with ease. They claim that you don’t really exist, you are artificially created, and therefore you have no rights. Everyone hears the language of evil. Again!

And together they acknowledge the painful truth: we have not withstood even a century. Our Never again was enough for 77 years. We missed the evil. It was reborn. Again and now!

This is understood by all countries and nations who support Ukraine today. And despite the new mask of the beast, they recognized him. Because, unlike some, they remember what our ancestors fought for and against. They did not confuse the first with the second, did not change their places, did not forget.

The Poles didn’t forget, on whose land the Nazis began their march and fired the first shot of World War II. Didn’t forget how evil first accuses you, provokes you, calls you an aggressor, and then attacks at 4.45am saying it’s self-defense. And they saw how it repeated on our land. They remember the Nazi-destroyed Warsaw. And they see what was done to Mariupol.

The British people did not forget how the Nazis wiped out Coventry, which was bombed 41 times. How the “Moonlight Sonata” from the Luftwaffe sounded, when the city was continuously bombed for 11 hours. How its historic center, factories, St. Michael’s Cathedral were destroyed. And they saw missiles hit Kharkiv. How its historic center, factories and the Assumption Cathedral were damaged. They remember London being bombed for 57 nights in a row. Remember how V-2 hit Belfast, Portsmouth, Liverpool. And they see cruise missiles hit Mykolaiv, Kramatorsk, Chernihiv. They remember how Birmingham was bombed. And they see its sister city Zaporizhzhia being damaged.

The Dutch remember this. How Rotterdam became the first city to be completely destroyed when the Nazis dropped 97 tons of bombs on it.

The French remember this. Remember Oradour-sur-Glane, where the SS burned half a thousand women and children alive. Mass hangings in Tulle, the massacre in the village of Ascq. Thousands of people at a resistance rally in occupied Lille. They saw what was done in Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka, Volnovakha and Trostyanets. They see the occupation of Kherson, Melitopol, Berdyansk and other cities where people do not give up. And thousands of them go to peaceful rallies, which are beyond the power of the occupiers, and all they can do is shoot at civilians.

The Czechs have not forgotten this. How in less than a day, the Nazis destroyed Lidice, leaving only ashes from the village. They saw Popasna destroyed. There are not even ashes left from it. The Greeks, who survived massacres and executions throughout the territory, the blockade and the Great Famine, have not forgotten.

This is remembered by Americans who fought evil on two fronts. Who passed Pearl Harbor and Dunkirk with the Allies. And together we are going through new, no less difficult battles.

This is remembered by all Holocaust survivors - how one nation can hate another.

Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Danes, Georgians, Armenians, Belgians, Norwegians and many others have not forgotten this - all those who suffered from Nazism on their land and all those who defeated it in the anti-Hitler coalition.

Unfortunately, there are those who, having survived all these crimes, having lost millions of people who fought for victory and gained it, have desecrated the memory of them and their feat today.

The one who allowed the shelling of the cities of Ukraine from his land. The cities that, along with our ancestors, were liberated by his ancestors.

The one who spat in the face of his “Immortal Regiment”, placing torturers from Bucha next to it.

And challenged all mankind. But forgot the main thing: any evil always ends the same – it ends.

Fellow Ukrainians!

Today, on the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation, we pay homage to all those who defended their homeland and the world from Nazism. We note the feat of the Ukrainian people and their contribution to the victory of the anti-Hitler coalition.

Explosions, shots, trenches, wounds, famine, bombing, blockades, mass executions, punitive operations, occupation, concentration camps, gas chambers, yellow stars, ghettos, Babyn Yar, Khatyn, captivity, forced labor. They died so that each of us knows what these words mean from books, not from our own experience. But it happened differently. This is unfair to them all. But the truth will win. And we will overcome everything!

And the proof of this is called “Werewolf”. This is Hitler’s former headquarters and bunker near Vinnytsia. And all that is left of it is a few stones. Ruins. The ruins of a person who considered himself great and invincible. This is a guide for all of us and future generations. What our ancestors fought for. And proved that no evil can avoid responsibility. Will not be able to hide in the bunker. There will be no stone left of it. So we will overcome everything. And we know this for sure, because our military and all our people are descendants of those who overcame Nazism. So they will win again.

And there will be peace again. Finally again!

We will overcome the winter, which began on February 24, lasts on May 8, but will definitely end, and the Ukrainian sun will melt it! And we will meet our dawn together with the whole country. And family and loved ones, friends and relatives will be together again! Finally again! And over the temporarily occupied cities and villages our flag will fly again. Finally again! And we will get together. And there will be peace! Finally again! And no more black and white dreams, only a blue and yellow dream. Finally again! Our ancestors fought for this.

Eternal honor to all who fought against Nazism!

Eternal memory to all those killed during World War II!

(Posted by Daniel Boffey in today's online Guardian.)

Mourir Pour Kyiv?

It's a grey and sombre Ash Wednesday in Durham.

Two thousand miles to the east the Russian Army is pounding the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv, which, eighty years ago, endured the horrors of German occupation. And while Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his people stoically endure everything that Vladimir Putin can throw at them, the West praises their valour and offers arms, but refuses all calls for military intervention.

There are arguments for non-intervention certainly (although Boris Johnson did remark not so long ago that Ukraine was hardly "a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing"),  but - as Zelenskyy himself attested in recent days - it would be foolish to imagine that, if Putin ultimately prevails in Ukraine he will not subsequently turn his attention westward. I am reminded of the famous newspaper article by the future French collaborationist Marcel Deat in May 1939 in which he accused Poland of dragging France into an unnecessary war. What history records of the aftermath of the Munich Agreement has not been kind to the West; one wonders what it will say of us in our time.

The resolution of Ukraine has been of the highest order in resisting one of the most powerful militaries in the world. In Russia, Alexei Navalny - another supremely courageous man - has called for daily protests to end the war.  "They say that someone who cannot attend a rally and does not risk being arrested for it cannot call for it," he writes on Twitter. "I'm already in prison, so I think I can." Surely this is also the moment when the Moscow Patriarchate has the opportunity to affirm the common identity of Russian and Ukrainian and oppose this slaughter.

The meaning of Ash Wednesday has never seemed more fitting than on March 2, 2022.

Inevitable Defeat?

I posted this at my LinkedIn account earlier today.

Even as I write the Taliban are entering the outskirts of Kabul, almost twenty years since Ahmad Shah Massoud's assassination in Takhar Province and the assault on the World Trade Center two days later. In the immediate aftermath, certainly in 2001 and even in 2003, I would have counted myself a fellow traveller with those Neoconservatives who pressed for intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, not least because those who talked most loftily of respecting international law were also those who fell strangely silent when the talk of human rights abuses switched to Cuba or Venezuela and who seemed unfazed by the willingness of the United Nations to include representatives of notoriously brutal regimes on the Human Rights Council. In the case of Afghanistan, the hosting of Al Qaeda and the Taliban's refusal to expel it after 9/11 certainly seemed reasonable grounds for intervention. In the case of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I could never understand why this was not couched in terms of the simple fact that for over a decade the Iraqi regime remained in breach of many aspects of the UN resolutions to which it had committed itself in the ceasefire agreement in 1990 (the enduring complaints about the cost of maintaining the no-fly zone were a staple of the 1990s). Recalling further the betrayal of the Shia community, who were encouraged to rise against Saddam Hussein only to be then left unprotected by the Coalition (in contrast with the Kurds), there seemed ample justification both for the removal of the regime and the promotion of a multi-ethnic state in the Fertile Crescent.

The devil, of course, is in the detail. The vignette of the forty-third president's victory address on board the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath the banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" in retrospect proved symbolic of the shambles that characterised so much of the peacekeeping and 'nation-building' of the next twenty years. Ironically, for a nation that has long recognized the importance of subsidiarity and federalism, all too many of the 'experts' failed to recognise the enduring importance of the local community (which, after all, helped sustain Kurdish resistance to the Baa'thist regime, Mujahidin opposition to Russian occupation and, indeed, the Taliban themselves). A sustained commitment to a federal model from the outset might have kept in check the Sunni resentment that ultimately gave rise to ISIS and empowered local ethnic communities in Afghanistan to resist the Taliban (of course, it might also have given rise to a resurgence of warlordism, but the evident bankruptcy of the Kabul regime and the Afghan National Army today suggests that this would hardly have been worse than the present situation).

I was only five years old when South Vietnam fell, so for me it has always been a historical debate, rather than a process through which I Iived. There are many issues on which I disagree with the current president, but it seems incredibly hypocritical of some of his political opponents to condemn him for following through on a process that his predecessor set in motion. Bob Dole's acid comment in the 1976 vice-presidential debate about the deaths in "Democrat wars" in the twentieth century hardly holds true for the twenty-first (though the death toll - of Americans at least - is far less). Even if the Republican Party has now repudiated nation-building, it was a Republican president who brought us to this pass. I must confess that I better understand the old midwestern isolationists (many of whose views on economic - though not cultural - issues would suggest them to be men of the Left). They viewed the priorities of the Old World - including colonialism - as incompatible with those of the New World, but they did not offer up the United States as the embodiment of the perfect society but rather as the nation most predisposed to strive for that goal. For them it was a model that could only be adopted, never imposed.

The hubris with which the wars of the early 2000s were launched has brought us to where we are today. The sacrifices of military personnel - American and otherwise - and of those Afghan and Iraqi citizens who struggled to build a civil society would appear to have been thrown away on a cause which few politicians - on the Left or the Right - have shown much interest in promoting. What more can one say?

Enduring Colonialism?

Over the past year there have been a number of historical commentaries in the mainstream press that endeavour to explain the philosophical underpinnings of such movements as Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall. Some are more convincing than others. One account that caught my attention was Simukai Chigudu's 'Colonialism had never really ended': my life in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes', with much of which I had no quarrel but which at times suffered from the same Manichaean tendencies that inform commentary of this kind. A month ago I wrote to Dr. Chigudu, assuming that, as one scholar to another, a conversation might develop that would be mutually beneficial. Since no reply has been forthcoming I must assume that Dr. Chigudu sees nothing worthy of a response, so I am posting it here.

From: BONNER, JEREMY
Sent: 16 February 2021 09:41
To: simukai.chigudu@qeh.ox.ac.uk <simukai.chigudu@qeh.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: My life in the shadow of Cecil Rhodes

 

Dear Dr. Chigudu,

I found the account that you provided to the Guardian most thought provoking. It has taken me a while to compose this, but, wearing my historian's hat, I thought I should articulate some of the concerns that it provoked in me.

One of the problems that I have with the narratives of institutional racism and white privilege that have arisen of late is the way in which they interrogate the past by the standards of the present and, at the same time, treat current mores as if they were indistinguishable from those of sixty years ago. The idea that some of my white working-class neighbours (I should note here that my background is certainly economically privileged) in the Northeast enjoy "white privilege" as compared with, for example, the present MP for Spelthorne (whose middle-class background is undoubtedly privileged) bears little relation to reality and I would further point out that in 1975 - when Kwasi Kwarteng was born - no Home Counties Conservative association would have considered adopting a candidate of colour, regardless of his or her political views. Does that mean that the UK is free from racism? Far from it, any more than it is free from ageism or prejudice against those with unpopular religious convictions (Muslims and traditionalist Christians alike), but that makes it no more institutionally racist than it is institutionally anti-religious.

Your thoughts on the situation in Zimbabwe inspire me to take the issue a little further. My understanding was that with the Lancaster House Agreement, Robert Mugabe reached an understanding with the white minority by which he secured to them their economically privileged status in exchange for a gentleman's agreement to stay out of politics and ensure that Zimbabwe remained the breadbasket of Africa, securing Zimbabwe against fifth columnists as it transitioned from an ally of South Africa to a frontline state. That state of affairs remained in effect until the 2000 referendum, which the MDC opposed less on the grounds of land reform than on the new powers assigned to the executive. You state at one point in your narrative that "Little to nothing was said (in the early 2000s), in the media or elsewhere, of Zimbabwe’s colonial legacy, or of the suffering of Black people under Mugabe’s regime." I can't speak with confidence to the first point, but reporting of the use of terror by the war veterans knew no colour bar and an event like Operation Murambatsvina did draw attention.

You also mention your learning for the first time of Gukurahundi. In recent years many negative aspects of postcolonial Africa (from the Rwanda genocide to Nigeria's Special Anti-Robbery Squad) have been explained with reference to colonial failings, and yet there are African states that have - for the most part - handled multi-party democracy well for most of their post-colonial history (Senegal and Botswana come to mind). Equally, the tradition of strongman politics seems to take a long time dying; I can remember in the early 1990s Frederick Chiluba vanquishing Kenneth Kaunda at the polls and almost immediately thereafter going after political opponents much as Kaunda had done in his political heyday - plus ca change. And then there are the tragedies like Gukurahundi that seem to defy easy explanations of a colonial legacy. I suppose one could argue that where colonial administrators played off one ethnic group against another, such animosities might subsequently spill over into violence, but was not Gukurahundi an attempt by Mugabe to eliminate the only alternative ethnic political power base (the Ndebele) in Zimbabwe? The fact that North Korean mercenaries were employed to do it speaks volumes. The remark of the Balliol academic that you quote was certainly obtuse (and unworthy of a scholar), particularly to someone whom they did not know, but I could have imagined saying much the same about the politics (and politicians) of Northern Ireland in the past (and even today). It doesn't have to be an expression of derision so much as one of despair. Look at the recent metamorphosis of Ahmed Abiy or the police state that is Eritrea. How do you fix that may not be the most delicate of questions, but one can surely not deny that something needs fixing? If the West tries to act (except in the case of apartheid, of course) it's denounced as colonialist, if it holds off, it's denounced as indifferent.   

I have never set much store by statues myself (except where the individual in question is of historical interest to me), but I can appreciate that some feel differently. The recent trend towards iconoclasm typified by Rhodes Must Fall, however, makes me uneasy. It seems to be driven by the same impulse to obliterate the past that you so eloquently document in discussing Rhodes's insistence that the Great Zimbabwe statues were not African in origin. Doubtless you would insist that the place for contextualizing such statues is in a museum not in the public square, but the truth is that iconoclasm rarely stops with the great offenders. We're already seeing a drive to eliminate public representations of many who have been found to offend against present-day orthodoxies of one sort or another and I see no signs of this trend relaxing. Far more efficacious is the erection of new statues that celebrate those previously excluded from the pantheon, and the introduction of suitable contextualization for those already on display. Human history is, ultimately, an exercise in documenting the interplay of darkness and light, of the demons and angels of human nature, as indeed your article makes very clear.

Sincerely,                  Jeremy Bonner            

A New Book

Almost eight years ago I first broached with Grant LeMarquand at Trinity School for Ministry the possibility of a book centred on the Kikuyu Conference of 1913 and the theological debate that erupted in the Church of England as a result.

This project has gone through many twists and turns in the years that followed and the final result, released tomorrow as part of Brill's Anglican-Episcopal History and Theology series, is very different from what was originally envisaged. I would nevertheless argue that the topics under consideration, covering a period from the twilight of the British Empire to the political and cultural upheaval of the early twenty-first century, serve to illuminate the ecclesial conundrum that is contemporary Anglicanism. 

To my fellow contributors, and especially to my co-editor, Mark Chapman, I extend a profound expression of thanks for the patience and good humour with which they have greeted the numerous delays on our journey. May all our readers be informed and encouraged by the lessons of the past.  

The Royal Historical Society

On Friday I was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, "the foremost society in the UK working with professional historians and advancing the scholarly study of the past." Fellowships are awarded to those who have made “an original contribution to historical scholarship,”and are subject to peer review. In a year that had its share of disappointments, including failing to find a permanent academic position at Durham, I am obviously pleased at this professional recognition.

Stand Up Guards: An Anniversary

Today is Waterloo Day, one year short of the bicentennial.

It would also have been my father's eighty-eighth birthday. 

I miss him.

Remembering Tiananmen Square, June 1989

Twenty-five years ago, beginning on the night of June 3, 1989, units of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) entered Beijing's Tiananmen Square to bring to an end six weeks of protests that had witnessed over a million students and workers demanding reforms that raised the possibility of an end to one-party rule and the advent of democracy in China. At the time observers speculated as to whether the PLA would side with the protesters or the government, but the lack of response from the countryside served to make clear that for many Chinese the prospect of widespread civil disorder only twenty years after the Cultural Revolution was not welcome.    

Post-Tiananmen China has become a global superpower with armed forces that are increasingly able to assert Chinese influence across South-East Asia. A hundred years ago, Theodore Roosevelt predicted a "Pacific Century" in which the United States would be the global superpower; today it seems that the twenty-first century will also be a Pacific Century.  Yet just as Vladimir Putin looks back to Peter the Great and the Romanovs for his inspiration, so the Chinese Communist Party seeks to emulate the expansionism of the Ming and the Qing dynasties, without succumbing to the Western "vice" of democracy. Will it succeed? It was hard in June 1989 to anticipate that only six months later the Berlin Wall would have fallen and the Soviet Union be in an advanced state of disintegration yet so it proved. While nationalism has proved an appealing theme for the Party to promote in recent years, the Manchus remain a potent example of how revolutions devour their own children. Twelve years after the Boxer Rebellion, the last emperor abdicated.

No one can know the consequences of democratization in China, either in 1989 or 2014, and yet, as Churchill remarked, though it may be a bad system it is better than the alternatives. We can nevertheless salute the idealists of Tiananmen Square, those who died and those who still live, for their refusal to accept the status quo. One day, God willing, they will have their memorial in the country for whose future they strove.                     

The Goddess of Democracy

Crumbling Edifice: The Church Commissioners and the Decline of the Anglican Establishment

Review: Andrew Chandler, The Church of England in the Twentieth Century: The Church Commissioners and the Politics of Reform, 1948-1998 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2006).

On January 15, 1991, First Church Estates Commissioner Douglas Lovelock brought disturbing news to the bishops of the Church of England. After more than a decade of property speculation that had significantly increased the value of the investments of the Church Commissioners, the economic bubble had finally burst and the Church of England faced a need for drastic economic retrenchment. Almost overnight, a cacophony of protest erupted as Anglicans in the pews (and episcopal palaces) denounced the hubris of the Church Commissioners in so believing in their financial expertise as to squander long-term security for short-term gain.

Andrew Chandler's weighty tome on the fortunes the Church Commissioners represents a most valuable contribution to scholarship, with still relevant insights concerning the way in which ecclesiastical assets can and should be managed. Much of the value of The Church of England in the Twentieth Century derives from its reliance on the internal papers of the Church Commissioners, providing a window into the mindset of the relatively small group of men (and occasionally women) who set postwar fiscal policies that allowed the Church of England to establish adequate pay scales for its clergy and maintain church buildings that would otherwise have fallen into disrepair. Their correspondence throws an equally revealing light on the activities of Anglicans in the pews in the years following the Second World War. 

Formed in 1948 from the merger of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (a corporation established by Parliament in 1836 to manage church estates and revenues) and Queen Anne's Bounty (a charity organized in 1704 to provide grants to poor benefices and loans for the repair of clergy houses), the Church Commissioners were one of the fruits of the twentieth century managerial revolution, and enjoyed the active support of Geoffrey Fisher, perhaps the last archbishop of Canterbury to take much interest in the institutional church. Chandler demonstrates the increasing detachment of future archbishops from the work of the Commissioners, typified in the lament of Archbishop Michael Ramsey to the then bishop of London in 1967. "One of the more godly laymen on the Board of Church Commissioners," he wrote, "has asked why the meetings do not begin with prayer. When I became Chairman I was informed that it was not their custom to have prayer and I followed the existing pattern. I must confess that at the time I sometimes used to feel the proceedings were so ungodly that the custom was just as well, but there is really no reason why this should be the only ecclesiastical body which does not pray at its meetings." (Michael Ramsey to Robert Stopford, 19 May, 1967, quoted on 150-151).

Ramsey's comments reflect the unease with which many churchmen contemplated (and still contemplate) the world of finance. The general lack of clerical experience in that arena (the present archbishop of Canterbury notwithstanding) coupled with the perception that markets were not renowned for respecting the dignity of the individual only accentuated the gulf between the guardians of the Church's purse and the shepherds of its souls. That said, the history of the Church Commissioners is in great measure a history of the postwar Church of England. Despite the relative autonomy granted by the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act of 1919, the half century that followed attested to the enduring supremacy of Parliament (characterized most notably by the parliamentary rejection of a proposed revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 1928). The Church of England remained a national church, its clergy vested with responsibility for all within their pastoral cure, not merely those who identified as practising Anglicans, and its assets were intended to benefit the nation.

The early Commissioners, insists Chandler, bore the stamp of the era in which they were formed, "a pragmatic liberal bureaucracy; a brisk but humane enterprise set in motion by experienced and committed executors who understood their tasks sensibly, rationally, without the show of politics." (24) They were typified by Malcolm Trustram Eve, Third Estates Commissioner from 1952 to 1954 and First Estates Commissioner from 1954 to 1969. A seasoned industrialist (with interests in cement), Eve sustained and developed the policies adopted by the Church Commissioners in the late 1940s, that included an embrace of Stock Market transactions at the expense of the Church's earlier reliance on the purchase of government bonds, investment in commercial property and the reorganization and consolidation of the scattered agricultural holdings of the Church of England.

Such policies brought about a sea change in the relationship between the Church and those who continued to be its tenants, whether London householders or rural farmers. Particularly after the lifting of rent controls in London in the early 1950s, the Commissioners began to emphasize the income potential of their properties in the London districts of Maida Vale and Hyde Park (although they conceded the importance of affordable housing for their tenants in Paddington). Similar concerns reshaped relations with their farmer tenants, particularly after the suppression of the glebe as a mechanism binding the income from a specific piece of land to a particular incumbency. Agricultural land that failed to provide an assured source of revenue was now as likely to be sold as retained.

The transformations of the 1950s, though striking, were as nothing compared to the revolution of the era that followed. The success of investment in London commercial property during the 1960s and 1970s, encouraged the Commissioners to pursue more risky schemes a decade later. The lifting of exchange controls led to extensive investment in foreign property, both in the United States (especially California and Texas) and Japan, and by the early 1980s property accounted for two-thirds of their portfolio. The Commissioners also embarked upon a series of what Chandler terms economic "dreadnoughts," most notably shopping centres such as St. Enoch's in Glasgow and the Metrocentre in Gateshead. Sizable commercial loans (often without fixed interest rates) were secured from the high street banks, including a staggering £250 million line of credit from National Westminster Bank. With the hindsight of the past decade, the inevitability of a crash seems inescapable.

There was, however, another side to the story, one for which Archbishop Ramsey's earlier comment is revealing. Both the Church Assembly and its successor the General Synod responded to the Commissioners' early successes with requests for ever increasing levels of expenditure on clerical stipends, pensions and investment in bricks and mortar. The results of this collaboration between the Commissioners, the Church Assembly/General Synod, and the Dioceses were frequently beneficial but they were also costly. Few of the beneficiaries, whether parishes, clergy or bishops, seemed conscious that with increased costs come increased liabilities. The long drive to raise clerical stipends that culminated in the establishment of Central Stipends Authority in 1973 was accompanied by an unseemly degree of inter-diocesan strife over funding priorities. When the widening gap between assets and obligations toward clerical pensions became evident during the 1970s, the unwillingness of the General Synod to embrace a measure of fiscal restraint arguably set the Commissioners on the road to the speculative plunge of the 1980s. Dioceses and parishes were always quick to identify uses for new income but slow to propose sacrifices that might keep the budget in balance.

Chandler's narrative is replete with illuminating insights into the mind of the postwar Church that range from the debates surrounding the closing and consolidation of rural parishes to the bitter struggle over divestment from South Africa. Bishops, dioceses and cathedrals all receive attention, as do the financial ramifications of such intra-church matters as Faith in the City and the ordination of women. For an institutional history, the number of vignettes of local situations (the evoling of the debate over the sale of redundant churches first to Roman Catholics in 1950s and subsequently to Muslims and Sikhs in the 1970s and 1980s is particularly fascinating) is extensive. One will search in vain, however, for references to Honest to God or the "Durham Affair," there is little discussion of church-state relations prior to the cataclysm of 1991, and the wider Anglican Communion is conspicuous by its absence. Perhaps the most misleading feature of the book is its title, which might lead the casual reviewer to assume a comprehensiveness which is absent, but as a revelation of the workings of the institutional church, Chandler has provided something of enduring value. Anthony Trollope's Archdeacon Grantley would have understood the mindset of the Church Commissioners all too well, which perhaps adds poignancy to Chandler's ultimate conclusion:

The historian of the last fifty years is left only to wonder what the next fifty years will bring. Unless the societal patterns which have gathered such force in the later twentieth century are superseded by new ones which combine to benefit the cause of corporate Christianity, at some point decline must bite through the sinews of the body and into the structures, the very bones, which give it solid form and movement. Arguably it was the achievement of the Church Commissioners between 1948 and 1998 to maintain, by a steady, ongoing reform of particulars, the contours of an order and a method which might well have decayed and even collapsed in some areas without their efforts. Perhaps a future age will observe that their legacy was simply to hold back for a period of time a decline which was altogether too formidable to be halted by the Churches. (481-482)

The Hinge of History: Henry Tandey and Adolf Hitler

Not exactly a religious story, but one of those haunting moments that illustrate the possible consequences of human foreknowledge:

Tandey was haunted the remainder of his life by his good deed, the simple squeeze of a trigger would have spared the world a catastrophe which cost tens of millions of lives.  He was living in Coventry when the Luftwaffe destroyed the city in 1940, sheltered in a doorway as the building he was in crumbled and city burned like a scene from Dante's Inferno. He was also in London during the Blitz and experienced that atrocity first hand, he told a journalist in 1940, "if only I had known what he would turn out to be.  When I saw all the people, woman and children he had killed and wounded I was sorry to God I let him go".

As Kendall Harmon would say, read it all.