This week the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby resigned after a report directly implicated him in the cover-up of the physical and sexual abuse of over 115 boys by barrister and Christian youth camp leader John Smyth.
Welby was not the only one who protected abusers. Already, six bishops have also been revealed to have helped cover-up the abuse.
Smyth is only the latest and most prolific in a long tradition of abusers and rapists whose crimes were shrouded in silence by the Church of England (CofE) leadership.
Alongside similar cover-ups and cases of sexual abuse in the BBC, the monarchy, the Tory Party, Harrods, the Catholic Church, Hollywood, the music industry, and the Metropolitan Police, this disgusting scandal once again reveals how the establishment is rotten to the core.
Cover-up
The details of the abuses are sickening. John Smyth, a distinguished barrister, was the chairman of the Iwerne Trust, an organisation which ran Christian camps for boys from the top 30 boys schools in Britain.
Using his position as a leader at these summer camps, Smyth physically and sexually abused at least 115 boys and young men – some as young as 13 – across England, South Africa, and Zimbabwe over a period of half a century.
Stories tell of Smyth molesting and then savagely caning victims over 800 times, after which he would supply nappies to contain the bleeding. Smyth told victims that the beatings were “an appropriate step in their Christian progression”.
As the report explains, CofE leaders – including six bishops and the Archbishop, the most senior members of the church – knew about the scale and brutality of these abuses as early as 1982.
Yet, as the report puts it, they “participated in an active cover-up to prevent that report and its findings…coming to light”. As a result, these abuses continued up until John Smyth’s death.
Justin Welby himself – supposedly the highest spiritual authority in England besides the King – had attended four of the Iwene camps that Smyth led, and undeniably knew about the abuse from at least 2013, when he became the Archbishop.
Undoubtedly, there’s a lot more that these ‘holy men’ know about. A 2020 report exposed that 390 clergy members were convicted of abuse between the 1940s and 2018.
A more recent report found 383 new cases relating to abuse. And given the culture of cover-up, we can be sure that this is only a fraction of the real number of cases.
In each case, priests are put in a position of spiritual authority over vulnerable, young people. When they abuse this power, their crimes are covered up by the religious establishment for fear of tarnishing the institution, or implicating the powerful people that the abusers are connected to.
For example, Peter Ball – who confessed to the abuse of 18 young boys in his position as a Bishop – was spared from prosecution in 1993 after a campaign in his defence by a member of the royal family, a Lord Justice of Appeal, Cabinet ministers, and public school headmasters.
As the 2020 report explains: “The primary concern of many senior clergy was to uphold the Church’s reputation, which was prioritised over victims and survivors.”
Pillar of the state
The CofE is not a neutral institution. It is the state church. For centuries, it has been one of the most important instruments in the hands of the British ruling class – along with the monarchy and the Tory Party.
Beyond its ideological functions, the Church plays an equally important political role. 29 bishops – the ‘Lords Spiritual’ – are guaranteed seats in the House of Lords (the only other countries to do this are Iran and the Vatican), and they open every session of parliament with prayers.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the highest ranking non-royal in England: tasked with blessing each new parliament and leading all of the ceremonial religious-monarchical services.
These absurd, mediaeval traditions are a means of sanctifying Britain’s ruling institutions. They give the appearance that the state stands above society, and that the immoral order that it governs over is natural and divinely ordained.
From time to time, the Church can be deployed as a spiritual weapon against the labour movement – like when it lent its authority to the slanders that left-wing Labour leader Jerermy Corbyn was ‘antisemetic’.
But when it came to members of the British establishment, Archbishop Welby was a paragon of Christian mercy, urging forgiveness for the ‘transgressions’ of Prince Andrew.
Like any institution of the state, the upper circles of the clergy – the spiritual representatives of the British ruling class – must serve as stewards of the interests of the rich and powerful, just like the generals, judges, and politicians.
In 2022-23, only 25 percent of prospective priests for ordination were from working-class backgrounds. But when it comes to the heads of the Church, this fraction is miniscule. 86 percent of serving bishops went to private or grammar schools, and 85 percent studied at Oxford or Cambridge.
Justin Welby, for example, is the son of Winston Churchill’s private secretary, a baroness. He went to Eton and Cambridge, worked as an oil executive, and inherited £2 million pounds from his mother.
Though they preach chastity and humility, these cassocked parasites enjoy lives of opulence and excess.
Behind all its archaic traditions, the CofE is a thoroughly capitalist institution. Alongside donations and hundreds of millions in tax money, it survives on a £10 billion investment fund – £10 million of which was invested in arms and oil until earlier this year – and a £2 billion property portfolio.
This money does not go to fund local parishes, which are closing at a rate of 20 a year, but to the upkeep of the palatial houses of the bishops, complete with gardeners and chauffeurs, at annual cost of £70,310 per house.
These are extremely rich and powerful people, who are connected by a thousand threads to the class of rich and powerful people that run Britain.
They have been bred in the same classrooms, gentlemen’s clubs, and ballrooms to lord it over the ‘unwashed rabble’, with almost unlimited and unaccountable power and money.
That this stinking swamp produces John Smyths, Prince Andrews, and Al-Fayeds comes as no surprise, whatever the Bible might say about their behaviour.
Putrid establishment
This sordid scandal further undermines the legitimacy of this pillar of the British establishment.
The CofE, along with the rest of organised Christianity, has lost its hold over the minds of millions in Britain. According to the 2021 official census, for the first time in history, fewer than half of the population of England and Wales now describe themselves as Christian.
And a survey in 2018 revealed that 56 percent had either “very little” or “no confidence at all” in the Church.
Everyone can see that the high priests are just as rotten as the rest of the establishment. The spiritual weapon of the Anglican Church has been blunted. Its open hypocrisy has rendered it impotent. Who will listen to the pedophile-defending clergy as the ‘moral compass of the nation’?
The CofE has responded to the recent scandal by kicking out the Archbishop, who has assumed “institutional responsibility”. Under pressure, Starmer’s Labour belatedly weighed in to support the move.
But, as per usual, they are not concerned with justice for the victims of these horrific crimes. This is nothing but damage control. They are shaking loose a rotten apple to save the rotten apple tree.
In the end, even if six bishops are sacrificed, the Church will remain exactly as corrupt and putrid as it has been for centuries, with the next Archbishop hand picked by a secretive council of unelected bishops.
Some clergymen have said that all would’ve been well had the bishops passed the relevant evidence to the police. But even if the conspiracy of silence had been broken, who trusts the police?
By their own admission, they are institutionally racist, homophobic and sexist, and have themselves covered up cases of murder and rape. Like the rest of them, they protect the property and privileges of the rich.
Ultimately, the rot is emanating from the British ruling class itself, and has spread into all the organs of its rule.
The crisis of capitalism parallels the crisis of feudalism. Back then, the degeneracy of the court aristocracy was reflected in a depraved and perverted clergy.
In the 17th century, this sickness was cured by Cromwell, who, backed by an army of the poor, led a revolution that drained the fetid sewer of bishops, politicians, and royals. In his words:
“Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes?…
“Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?…
“Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation…In the name of God, go!”
This time, however, a far more thoroughgoing revolution is required to cleanse the muck and flush out the British establishment’s Augean stables.
Corruption and abuse can only be permanently rooted out by overthrowing the degenerate system which breeds vice and debauchery. That task falls to the working class.
