ABSTRACT
In 1943, Cuthbert Bardsley, Rector of St Mary’s, Woolwich, began to visit the deep air raid shelters of Siemens Brothers, a large engineering company on the South Bank of the Thames. Colin Cuttell, a member of staff at Southwark Cathedral, took over from him, and also visited other factories and offices in the London Bridge area. Other South Bank clergy began to visit the industries in their parishes. A network thus evolved. Few corporate decisions were required, and all that was needed was an occasional meeting to share experience. In 1952, the Bishop of Southwark’s Industrial Advisory Council was
appointed by the Bishop to support the chaplains’ activity, and in 1956 this turned into the South London Industrial Mission (SLIM) which had a
constitution which gave subscription-paying members (mainly shop stewards and managers) the responsibility for electing part of the Council. A voluntary organization had clearly been born, with a governing body (the Council), a Senior Chaplain (Colin Cuttell), and chaplains. But Colin Cuttell was a member of staff at Southwark Cathedral, and the other chaplains were incumbents of parishes and thus independent of any attempt to control them by the Council – except that the Council’s General Purposes Committee began to raise money and to pay small honoraria to the chaplains, thus giving itself some slight influence. In 1956, Robert Gibson’s honorarium was raised from £50 to £100 p.a. (a large increase then) ‘in view of the excellent work he was doing’. This wording suggests that the honorarium was more an incentive bonus than working expenses, and he certainly saw honoraria as a recognition that industrial mission involved work additional to the parish ministry. Amongst the dozen or so chaplains in the team during the 1950s, most were paid by their denominations, but one, Charles Birtles, was paid by the Industrial Christian Fellowship (an independent charity) and another, Roy Beattie, was paid half by the Methodist Church and half by SLIM itself. During the 1960s, the period in which Robert Gibson and then Peter Challen
were Senior Chaplains, a full-time team developed. Few of the chaplains retained parish responsibilities, but they were still paid by their denominations. This situation continued until the end of the 1980s, at which point the denominations became unwilling to pay chaplains and the full-time team again became a team of part-time chaplains, disappearing altogether in 2002. During the period when SLIM had a large team of full-time chaplains the
team met weekly to study together, to discuss their work, and to plan events. When Peter Challen was appointed in 1967, the post of Rector of Christ Church Southwark was combined with the post of Senior Chaplain, and Christ Church became the Mission’s base: so the Senior Chaplain was at the physical as well as the organizational hub of the Mission’s work. He also had a personal vision for the organization’s work, and was clearly the organization’s leader. Honoraria soon died out, and the Council and its Executive Committee no longer had much control over the Mission’s activity; and the denominations, which paid the chaplains, found that they had little control over the team’s activity either. Thus the chaplains’ team became the South London Industrial Mission, and it is arguable that, whilst SLIM had a structure which made it look like a bureaucratized voluntary organization, in fact it was an association, or perhaps even just a network, of individual clergy who met once a week – though there was a certain amount of formalization, evidenced by regular meetings (Chapin and Tsouderos 1956). A complicating factor throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s was that the industries which chaplains visited made donations to SLIM’s funds. Whilst these were not large in relation to the chaplains’ salaries, they provided the Mission with funds of its own, and there
was therefore pressure on the chaplains not to be too critical of the industries to which they ministered. Any genuine governance there was (in relation to corporate events,
publications, and so on) was by the chaplains’ team; there was leadership (Cuttell’s largely by example; Gibson’s by team-building; Challen’s by a rather personal ideology – a leadership sometimes challenged by team members); and there was professionalization (for the chaplains were mainly clergy, who regarded themselves, and were regarded by others, as being trained in a particular expertise). In 1996, John Paxton became Senior Chaplain. Since his appointment the
task has been survival, but the team of chaplains has not survived and, although SLIM’s Board of Directors still exists, and still holds an Annual General Meeting, it is doubtful whether any meaningful activity can now be achieved. Throughout its history SLIM was its chaplains and their activity (with much help from people who ought to have been called ‘friends’ rather than ‘associates’ or ‘members’), and so, without the chaplains, SLIM has in fact ceased to exist as an association or perhaps just a network – which is all it ever was (Torry 1990).
