A Bishop on Birth Control (1943)

From the September 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Bishop of St. Albans asked the Government in the House of Lords yesterday to take drastic steps to end what he described as ‘a scandal.’

“At a time when every man and woman was needed for vital work for winning the war, he said, thousands were employed in the manufacture and distribution of contraceptives, with the consequent use of raw materials, especially rubber.

“I understand that this work in this particular firm is said to be a sideline. Even so, apart from the mail-order department, the number of these articles is simply amazing. Seventy-five gross or more a day of boxes each containing twelve of these articles at five days a week means an output of over 35,500,000 a year.”—Manchester Guardian, 8/4/43.

The Bishop of St. Albans is most perturbed. It appears that fifty years hence there will only be twenty-six million people in the British Isles, because the birth rate is falling so rapidly. Apparently, despite the paramount importance of the war, much greater damage is being done by “French” letters than German bombs. It is not the savagery of the Nazis or the bestiality of the Fascists—but the “refusal to face responsibility and self-sacrifice in having children” that is causing the trouble.

It is really a nuisance, after all the speeches and plans —and the promise of family allowances after the war—to find millions of workers, like Lenin’s peasants in 1917 (who voted against the war “with their feet”) “voting” against capitalism with contraceptives.

Recently the Bishop returned to the charge : —

“The Bishop of St. Albans, Dr. Michael Furse, declared yesterday that the Church must “face boldly” the decline in the birthrate, which he described as “appalling.”

The Church, said the Bishop, who was speaking at St. Albans Diocesan Conference, should bring pressure on Parliament to ban the sale of contraceptives to any but married people.

Then they should be sold only on production of a doctor’s certificate as in the case of dangerous drugs. 

Refusal to face responsibility and self-sacrifice in having children, he added, was “not only unpatriotic but against the law of God.”—(Daily Mail, May 21.)

Naturally, it is the duty of Bishops, tending their “flocks” of sheep, to breed them, as required. We emphasise, “as required,” because one other infamous priest, a certain Dr. Malthus, in his day, when the sheep were a bit too prolific, thought just the opposite to Dr. Furse, and told the capitalists to stop ’em breeding too much. He, if he could, would have dished out “those articles” like the present Government has issued gas-masks.

Karl Marx, on page 676 of Vol. 1 of “Capital,” enjoys himself considerably at the expense of the Protestant Parsons by showing that they have always “monopolised the delicate question … of the economic fall of man.” “They generally contribute to the increase of population to a really unbecoming extent, whilst they preach at the same time to the labourers the ‘principle of population.'”

In fact, we might reasonably claim that Malthus’ suggestion, Limitation of Population, is being practically applied in this country to-day—without result, so far as a solution of social problems is concerned.

In Germany, and the democratic Bishop is most concerned about winning the war, Dr. Furse’s proposal has been operated for years.

Douglas Reed in his book, “Insanity Fair,” relates an amusing incident of a desperate little chemist who deposited his entire stock of the banned articles outside the British Embassy.

Doubtless, Dr. Furse would have dealt summarily with this scoundrel. The idea seems to be that we abolish “those articles” here, to help us beat Germany, that is—imitate Germany slavishly—so that we can restore their right to contraceptives; then perhaps they’ll help us to restore ours later. Actually, whatever people do makes little difference. One of Marx’s greatest services was to show how capitalism compensates labour shortage by machinery.

“The labouring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production; and in fact every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits alone. An abstract law of population exists for plants and animals only, and only in so far as man has not interfered with them.”—(Capital, Kerr Edition, Vol. 1, p. 692.)

The Bishop is quite right—it is appalling. Appalling, that millions of intelligent young working men and women, faced with the prospect of the hopeless struggle to raise children in the conditions of the war-torn, unemployed world of to-day—are compelled to stifle the strongest natural instincts and voluntarily starve themselves of the great prerogative of parenthood. Only Socialism, where the material bases of existence are free to all, will allow men and women to enjoy the happiness of producing children whose lives will be even more universal than their own.

Horatio.