60 years ago: Calgary gives Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, "Red" Dean of Canterbury, the reception he so richly deserves

Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson (1874-1966), Dean of Canterbury, was a well-known apologist for the Soviet Union in the mid-20th Century who looked like a thinner version of the great English comic actor Alastair Sim. Lloyd Billingsley, in his book The Generation that Knew Not Josef (1985), devotes a chapter to the "Red Dean." According to Mr. Billingsley (p.55):

Prototalitarian clergymen are a decidedly modern phenomenon. The early Christians, with all their glaring faults, never produced anyone capable of seeing in Alaric, the Visigoth king who sacked Rome, the coming savior of the world. Modern tyrants, however, compared to whom Alaric was a bumbling and squeamish amateur, have had many enthusiastic supporters in the pulpit. If some sort of hall of fame were to be constructed for these clergy, the Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, would surely be inducted on the first ballot.

On May 22, 1950, Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury was nearing the end of a tour of Canada, and was scheduled to speak that evening in Calgary at United Ukrainian Hall (209--4th Avenue East) at a meeting sponsored by the Calgary Peace Council, a Communist front organization. The purpose of the dean’s tour, according to The Calgary Herald of May 22, "is peace, the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction and renewed approaches between east and west." Dr. Johnson claimed to be following the advice of Winston Churchill, who was promoting new multinational peace negotiations.

Anglican clergymen in Calgary, interviewed by the Herald on Sunday, May 21, made it clear that the Dean of Canterbury did not speak for them or the Church. Rt. Rev. H.R. Ragg, Anglican Bishop of Calgary, stated, "He does not speak for the church, but only for himself, a right which belongs to every citizen in our free, democratic British Empire."

Canon W.H.H. Crump of Christ Church, Elbow Park, went further, saying that the Dean of Canterbury was causing "great grief and embarrassment" to the Anglican communion:

His views are not shared by his church, his government or the government of Canada. While he will be completely ignored by the church in this city, many including myself, will feel that if he insists on taking advantage of the freedom of speech which we all uphold, he should in fact become a private citizen and resign his deanery of Canterbury.

Canon E.H. Maddocks, rector of St. Stephen’s, was equally blunt:

His message as coming from a professed Christian minister I utterly fail to comprehend. In the Communist empire of Russia, which is so warmly commended by the dean, the state is laying claim to the whole soul and body of its citizens. To such a theory the church cannot but offer unyielding, uncompromising opposition." Canon Maddocks called modern Russian a vast "slave camp," and declared "in this darkness the Dean of Canterbury professes to find the closest approximation to the Kingdom of God on earth. Anyone holding such views ceases to command the respect of the followers of the Christ of the New Testament.

Coincidentally, newspapers on May 22 carried an Associated Press dispatch stating that John C. Allum, the Mayor of Auckland, New Zealand, had said that he’d written to Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher asking him to define the Church of England’s position toward the Dean of Canterbury so that the city authorities would know how to receive him. According to Mr. Allum, Archbishop Fisher replied:

My advice to Anglican churches overseas is that they should completely ignore a visit of Dean Canterbury.
It is unfortunately true that Dean Canterbury so conducts himself as to create embarrassment and difficulty wherever he goes, not as Dean Canterbury or as an ecclesiastic, but purely as an individual who desires to declare his belief on certain political matters. There is no obligation on civic authorities to take any notice of him. He is completely unrepresentative of the Church of England and this country.

The AP dispatch went on to say that the Church of England had disavowed Dean Johnson’s pro-Soviet sentiments, but explained that he could not be removed from office because he had not made himself liable to charges in either a civil or ecclesiastical court.

Dean Johnson entered the hall through the front door; the door was hit by a tomato as soon as it closed behind him. The meeting of the Calgary Peace Council began with the United Nations song, followed by another song titled I’m Gonna Put My Name Down. Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, was introduced at 8:50 P.M. by Arthur Wray, Member of the Legislative Assembly for Banff-Cochrane, who was currently sitting as an "independent Social Credit." The Red Dean declared that the U.S.S.R. was using atomic power for peaceful purposes, and deplored western nations’ rejection of Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s peace offers. Said the dean, "War to a planned economy is an intolerable nuisance. It is essential to an unplanned economy." Dean Johnson charged the United States with military expansionism for putting military bases near Russia, and urged audiences "to see that you get control of your press."

While 1,200 people were inside United Ukrainian Hall to hear the Red Dean, there were 500 outside, mostly boys of high school age, who, about five minutes after the beginning of the dean’s speech, began throwing eggs, firecrackers, and rocks at the building. A window was broken, and three youths were arrested. Some of the protesters shouted "Where’s Endicott?," referring to pro-Soviet United Church of Canada missionary James Endicott, chairman of the Canadian Peace Council. Mr. Endicott was in Edmonton that night, but was scheduled to be in Calgary in June. Towards the end of the protest some of the crowd outside began singing the song of the Volga Boatman. Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, who had entered United Ukrainian Hall through the front door, escaped out the back door and climbed over a fence in order to reach his getaway car in the back alley.

The Calgary Herald commented on the Red Dean's appearance, and the resultant riot, in an editorial on May 25:

The Dean and The Mob

The rioting outside the hall where the Dean of Canterbury spoke on Monday was a shameful disgrace to Calgary. Most of it appears to have been the work of a bunch of teenagers, for whom the proper treatment would be a prolonged session in the woodshed with their fathers.

Breaking windows solves nothing, and if these high-school students have not yet learned anything about tolerance, then something is seriously wrong with the school system in this city. This kind of hoodlumism is vicious and unpardnonable, no matter what its motives: and we hope there will be no tendency on anyone’s part to excuse the rioters on the grounds that Dr. Hewlett Johnson’s strange opinions are calculated to arouse that kind of violence.

What is shocking about this uncivilized outburst of mob violence is that the youths taking part in it probably had only the sketchiest notion of the issues raised by the speeches which the Dean has been delivering. In any event, they did not hear him speak and therefore could not argue that his words had aroused them to frenzy. They displayed the same kind of goon-like intolerance which we used to expect from the Hitler Youth. They have no excuse.

* * *

Inside the hall, the fanatic figure in the black robes of the Church seemed to enjoy his incipient martyrdom. If Dr. Johnson visualizes himself as a lonely voice crying in the wilderness, then these young mobsters did their best to encourage his fantastic dream. He will now be able to go around the world preaching about the intolerance he found in Canada and using the fact as an argument to support his familiar contention that the Western nations are engaged in some murky capitalist plot to victimize the innocent Russians.

We must confess that we have revised our opinion of this man. Not long ago, we urged our readers to regard him as a misguided zealot who, unfortunately for himself and the great Church which he represents, did not know any better. Having heard him speak on Monday, we are convinced that our earlier estimate was wholly wrong.

The Dean of Canterbury is not a senile babbler with more sincerity than good sense. He is a vicious and vindictive old man who gives every appearance of enjoying himself as he recalls what happened at Hiroshima and mutters dark threats about what the Russians are preparing for use in the next war. (He knows, he explained on Monday, because he numbers many Russian scientists among his friends.)

He gloats openly over the fact that Frederic Joliot-Curie, the French Communist recently removed from his job as head of France’s atomic energy establishment, is a skilled scientist who has almost certainly told everything he knows to his friends in Moscow. He says he was well aware, some time ago, that it would not be more than two or three years before the Russians had the bomb "and," he added with what can be described only as a leer, "I know they aren’t stopping there."

The Dean of Canterbury, in other words, is going around the world rattling the sabre: not on behalf of his own country or his country’s allies, but on behalf of Russia. He carries on this evil work in the costume of a high prelate of the Church of England; he delivers his blood-curdling speeches while fondling a jewelled Crucifix (a present from the leader of the Orthodox Church in Russia) in a manner which comes perilously close to blasphemy.

He speaks as a man of God. He uses his position as head of the chapter at Canterbury Cathedral for the purpose of decrying his own country abroad and strengthening his country’s enemies. Do not let us be misled into supposing that Dr. Johnson’s speeches can be separated from his position in the Church. If he were plain Mr. Johnson, a civil engineer, nobody would pay any attention to him. It is because he wears the robes of sanctity and speaks from behind the image of the Cross that he is able to draw audiences wherever he chooses to go.

* * *

But his words are a denial of the faith of which he is supposed to be a principal exponent. He claims to preach peace and loving-kindness; in fact, he preaches a virulent brand of hatred, stirring up his hearers to hate the mysterious "interests" which, he says, deliberately foment war for their own purposes.

He is openly allied with a movement personifying everything which most Christians associate with the darkest evils of Anti-Christ. His position is not so much discreditable as dishonorable: if we were at war, it would be open treason, and could be punished as such. Because we’re technically at peace, the Dean of Canterbury must be allowed to speak, and our ancient traditions demand that he not only be allowed to speak but that mobs refrain from breaking windows while he is doing so.

We have thought it right to set down our changed views about this sinister man because it seems to us that many people have probably thought as we did until last Monday--that he is a well-meaning and rather pathetic figure. We are now convinced that he is no such thing; he is a grave danger to our way of life, and it is best that we should know exactly how we stand.

The other Calgary paper, The Albertan, published an editorial on May 26, which said, in part:

Peace Plus Tyranny

The "peace" appeal of the Dean of Canterbury made in Calgary this week was strictly phony, as far as we are concerned, although he himself was obviously quite sincere. The dean and his like want peace plus a large measure of communism. They minimize Russian dictatorship and tyranny. They don’t say "in spite of all the terrible faults of Russian we sincerely hope a way can be found for communism and western democracy to live together in peace." Rather they insist that Russia’s sins are virtues, that if one hates the Russian system he is a war-monger. They preach surrender, surrender either now to the triumphant supremacy of the Soviet system, or later to the terrible might of Soviet arms. Resistance to communism is both foolish and futile.

That such a traitorous doctrine should masquerade as "peace" is one of the great tragedies of the age, When the world is so war-weary and yet on the brink of atomic destruction, and when at he same time so much of it is in the bonds of slavery and oppression, peace is a holy word, and to defile it in the manner of the Dean of Canterbury is devilish sacrilege.

This wasn't the first time that the "Red Dean" had received an unfriendly welcome in Canada. As reported by Canadian Press and published in The Albertan, November 6, 1948:

Hamilton, Nov. 5--Very Rev. Hewlett Johnson, the "Red Dean" of Canterbury, said Friday the spread of an idea such as communism--in which everyone is given according to his need--will help speed the coming of God.

He spoke to nearly 1,400 people in the first public address of his current Canadian tour.

He said his recent 12-week tour of Russia and eastern Europe convinced him that these countries are primarily interested in peaceful construction.

"The mass of the Russian people and the people of eastern Europe...have more cause to dread war than we," he said.

There were few interruptions.

One came near the end of his 90-minute speech when the dean said: "Let us try to understand the Russians. We can teach them many things. They can teach us many things."

"Yes, they can teach us mass murder," shouted a man from the balcony.

After shouts of "Throw him out" and "Shut up" had died down, the heckler reiterated: "That's what they can teach us."

During a question period, a woman asked Dr. Johnson if he knew Russia had concentration camps before Hitler came to power.

The Dean replied that these camps had been investigated by the British and found to be slave camps. But they were no worse than modern British prisons, he said.

Earlier, at Montreal, Dr. Johnson was cleared by immigration authorities after being "technically" detained by what he called an "over-zealous young official impressed by newspaper accounts."

Dr. Johnson arrived at Dorval airport early today from Britain but his passport was not stamped. He was allowed to go to a hotel for the night and appeared at the immigration office this morning.

"The immigration people were extremely courteous," he said, "and the difficulty as quickly cleared up."

As reported by Canadian Press and published in The Albertan, November 10, 1948:

Montreal, Nov. 9--Very Rev. Hewlett Johnson, the "Red Dean" of Canterbury, was sabotaged here tonight as he spoke to members of the McGill University Student Christian Movement. Somebody had cut the loudspeaker wires before his arrival.

As the S.C.M. has no large assembly room, students had rigged up a system of loudspeakers so the group could listen in rooms and halls on each floor.

Only those on the main floor could hear Dean Johnson as he told students that discourses for lasting peace would ultimately begin on the basis of the six points made by Henry Wallace, unsuccessful candidate for the United States presidency.

He said that in a recent interview with Marshal Tito, the Yugoslav leader had told him Soviet Russia "had a secret weapon even more powerful than the atomic bomb."