The history of Mirfield’s socialist monastery
You can see the towers when driving away from Huddersfield: the two coned brick turrets, level with the tree-line, of the Community of the Resurrection monastery high on the hill. I have travelled past this site several times a week for a number of years, but only recently did I discover the important events that took place there – events that were a part of the rise of the Independent Labour Party in the industrial towns and cities of West Yorkshire.
Marxist social historian E.P Thompson’s article Homage to Tom Maguire was instrumental in shaping the practice of social history to study from the bottom-up, driving the study away from bourgeois affairs and onto the provinces and their population. He argued that West Yorkshire, amongst other radical communities of the North, played a prominent role in the rise of formidable socialist movements in Britain.[1]
The Community of the Resurrection had been inspired by the Catholic Revival within the Church of England during the 19th century, which began with the Oxford Movement of the 1830s. All of the original brothers were devoted Christian Socialists who had come together in Oxford in 1892, establishing their community in the village of Radley. However, the brothers were disturbed by the conditions of the working classes in Northern England, and thus sought to relocate there to carry out their pastoral work.[2] They chose the Mirfield site, and relocated in 1898. Soon after, they developed a theological college for ‘men without means’, giving working-class boys the opportunity to study theology and enter the priesthood.[3]
The Mirfield symposia
The Community’s relocation to the industrial heartlands of West Yorkshire reflected Thompson’s argument in the Maguire thesis, moving socialist action out of the elite sphere and into the industrial provinces. Yet it can be said that the brothers participated in the growing radical movement in the region, rather than inspiring it outright. Within the grounds of the monastery is a small quarry carved into the hill, now shrouded by trees. At a time of great social and political change in industrial Yorkshire, it became an amphitheatre which hosted important political figures of the period.
Keir Hardie, founding leader of the Labour Party, spoke at the quarry in the early 1900s. Hardie shared the Christian-socialist principles of the Community brothers, declaring in 1910 that the role of Labourism was ‘to apply those principles of Christ’s teaching to modern industrial and economic problems so as to bring about the time when there shall be no poverty [… but] abundance for all.’[4]
From the establishment of the Labour Party, West Yorkshire’s industrial towns became connected by the industrial revolution, and working class movements rose up with them – the predecessor to the Labour Party, the ILP, was established in Manningham, Bradford.[5] Yorkshire became a centre for socialist MPs, with Bradford West and East, Huddersfield, Halifax and the Colne Valley electing socialists to Parliament. As Laybourn explains, Labour found parliamentary success within the region due to its existing highly-developed independent labour and trade union movement, compared to other regions which remained attached to the Liberal tradition.[6]
Hardie was not the only radical firebrand to speak from the quarry of the Community of the Resurrection; founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union and then-supporter of the Independent Labour Party Emmeline Pankhurst also spoke at the same site.
When thinking about the importance of place within history, it is expected that elite institutions such as Parliament will regularly bear host to significant figures. Yet for a small quarry on the edge of an industrial town to feature two of the most important figures in early 1900s British political and social history exemplified a golden age for the working-class movement, both within Yorkshire and across the whole country. The Community of the Resurrection celebrated the success of the nascent Labour movement, and organised a letter of congratulations to elected Labour MPs at the 1906 general election.[7]
Today
Attendees at the dawn of the last century would have travelled by foot or horse and carriage to listen to the speeches made, to hear, for perhaps the only time in their life, one of the first working-class parliamentary representatives. This was a time of excitement surrounding the organised labour movement’s potential to change the circumstances of the working class, breaking with the entrenched hegemony of the aristocratic parties. However, Mirfield has for decades now been a Tory-voting town, popular with commuters between Leeds and Manchester. The amphitheatre, once a hotspot of ‘sermons, Bible classes, plays, and political meetings’ which accommodated 6000 people, fell into disrepair in 1976.[8]
The Community of the Resurrection is still home to a small group of brothers bound by their lifelong oaths, living on large grounds maintained by a number of paid staff and volunteers. As well as religious ceremonies and theological study, the monastery grounds host a large B&B operation, and can be hired for weddings. The quarry was marked for funding and refurbishment just over 10 years ago, in the hopes of it being used for arts events by the wider community – while it has been tidied up, there seems to have been little progress in restoring it to the people’s amphitheatre it once was.[9]
Anecdotally, it took 18 years of living here before I could first visit inside. The monastery itself is rather closed off from the public, but the brothers do a lot of work outside of the grounds, fulfilling the pastoral vocations of the original founders. On a professional visit to the Community, I had a conversation with some of the brothers about circular economics. They described their politics as being varied across the political spectrum. There is seemingly still a strong philosophical and political link through the brothers of the Community, which is unsurprising given the years of theological study undertaken.
As with most institutions and organisations with radical roots, it has changed throughout the course of its life to the present day. There will be a number of factors and influences, but it is important to ensure that people know of the important peoples’ history that took place here, and the small role that it played in the formation of a workers’ party in Britain.
Bibliography
[1] E.P. Thompson, ‘Homage to Tom Maguire’, Macmillan, 1960
[2] Alan Wilkinson, “The Community of the Resurrection: A Centenary History”, SCM Press, 1992
[3] Ibid.
[4] https://www.independentlabour.org.uk/2022/02/16/hardies-creed-the-religion-of-socialism
[5] Howell, David. British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888–1906. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984, pp. 471–484.
[6] Keith Laybourn, “The Rising Sun of Socialism: The growth of the Labour Movement in the textile district of the West Riding of Yorkshire”, 2012
[7] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
Red Riding 
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