The Rev John Papworth
‘Turbulent priest’ who was jailed with Bertrand Russell and sheltered the Soviet spy George Blake
THE REV JOHN PAPWORTH, who has died aged 98, was a “turbulent priest” in the Church of England, those words being the title of a short television documentary made about him in 1997; he was also at various times a communist, cook, beggar, editor, presidential adviser, parliamentary candidate and prisoner.
Papworth had a remarkable ability to cause trouble and alienate people, especially his allies. He was jailed with Bertrand Russell during anti-nuclear protests in the 1960s; sheltered George Blake when the Soviet spy was sprung from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966; and suggested to a neighbourhood watch committee in 1997 that shoplifting from supermarkets was “a badly needed reallocation of resources”.
“I said, if somebody takes goods from their local store without paying for them, that’s illegal and it’s immoral. If they take goods from giant supermarkets, it may be illegal but it’s not immoral, because Jesus said love your neighbour – he said nothing about loving Marks and Spencer.”
It was enough to guarantee Papworth – who was tall and thin with a shock of white hair – his five minutes of fame, and led to him being barred from preaching by the Archdeacon of Charing Cross, whom he described as “the bishop’s bully boy”.
Long before environmental activism became mainstream, Papworth was campaigning to save the planet. Once he sat cross-legged on the famous zebra crossing on Abbey Road holding a handwritten banner reading: “Stop car madness use busses [sic] and trains”. He was arrested and detained at Paddington Green police station: “Then they asked, did I want to see the local vicar? And I said, ‘Well, that’s me’.”
He refused to accept a caution, preferring to be charged, but the sergeant told him: “Look mate, we’re not here to give crazy people like you free publicity. Just bugger off.”
On another occasion he redrafted the Ten Commandments, claiming that the original ones handed down to Moses had too many loopholes.
Papworth’s version included: “Thou shalt enjoy the gift of sex … but thou shalt not procreate excessively.”
John Papworth was born on December 12 1921 and raised in an Essex orphanage. He described his time there as “very miserable”, but regarded the locally run institution as a success until it was taken over by the authorities.
On leaving he worked as a baker’s boy but became depressed. Three times he tried to take his own life: he stood in front of an open window in midwinter to catch pneumonia; jumped on to the track at an Underground station, but missed the live rail and instead cracked open his chin; and, back home, put his head in the oven and turned on the gas – but the meter ran out of money and he came round in an ambulance.
From hospital he was taken to a Salvation Army shelter. He ran away and lived on the street until being picked up by the police, who took him to a Christian hostel. Regaining the will to live, he found work as a school chef.
After the Dunkirk evacuation he joined the Home Guard, but discovered how ill-prepared the country was for a German invasion. “To think that the safety of the country was dependent on a 17-year-old bloke with a broomstick,” he told The Ecologist.
Too deaf to become an RAF pilot, he instead spent seven years as a military chef. After the war he signed up for an Economics degree at the LSE, but was “completely out of my depth” and was thrown out. Meanwhile, he had joined the Communist Party, but was ejected after objecting to its authoritarianism. He stood for Labour at Salisbury in the 1955 general election, losing by 7,639 votes to the Conservative John Morrison.
Later Papworth was taking tea at the Commons with the Labour MP Anne Kerr, who asked if he would like to be adopted for a by-election in the north of the country. When he protested that he did not know anyone there and they did not know him, she replied: “Well, these things can be arranged.”
He recalled that her comment “just echoed in my head”. In everything he had known, from the orphanage to the military and political parties, the bigger the organisation, the more it disempowered ordinary people. From then on, his life was devoted to championing the idea of “small community” and the decentralisation of civic structures.
This included helping to found the magazine Resurgence, through which the economist EF Schumacher developed the ideas for his influential book Small is Beautiful (1973). Before long Papworth had crossed swords with his fellow editors. He found a new outlet for his ideas by setting up the journal Fourth World Review.
In the 1970s Papworth was employed as personal assistant to President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. While there he felt called to Holy Orders and was ordained, serving in the Lusaka diocese until 1981, when he returned to Britain to cause trouble in various parishes including St Saviour’s, Paddington, and St Mark’s, Hamilton Terrace.
Despite his love of small communities, when Papworth finally left London to settle in one – Purton, in Wiltshire – it was a disaster. He was barred from preaching (again), thrown off the board of the village magazine, blackballed by the British Legion, and threatened with legal action by the local headmaster after launching a vehement attack on the school’s expansion plans. His final act of defiance was refusing to complete his 2001 census return, for which he was fined £120.
“I know some people call me a crank,” he once said. “But it’s worth remembering that a crank is a device used by engineers to create revolutions.”
Papworth’s French-born wife, Marcelle, died in 1995; they had two sons and a daughter.
John Papworth, born December 12 1921, died July 4 2020