A History of the Catholic Civil Service Guild 1933 - 2005

Faith of our Fathers: the life, voices and lessons of the Civil Service Catholic Guild 

Introduction 

Writing in the national bulletin of the Civil Service Catholic Guild in 1978 after the election of Pope John Paul II, an employee of the Department for Employment posed a pointed question: “Are we Civil Servants who happen to be Catholics, or Catholics who are also Civil Servants?” (3)

The question was a faint echo of the more dramatic words uttered centuries earlier by the Guild’s Patron, St. Thomas More: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first”. And it was a question to which the Civil Service Catholic Guild attempted to be a living response. The Guild was established in 1933 to make Catholic Civil Servants better servants and better Catholics. The Guild was active for nearly sixty years, then lingered in “retirement” from 1992 until as late as 2005, just sixteen years before the current Catholic Group – part of the Christians in Government network - was established in 2021. Drawing on the Guild’s publications, correspondence and press reports, this article explores this rich yet little-known history, the Guild’s aims and activities, its growth and decline, what it achieved and what lessons it can offer Catholic Civil Servants today. 

The Three Objectives

“The basic reason for the existence of any Guild or other large society in the Church is to enable its members to be effective in the lay apostolate”. (4) 

So declared Monsignor Derek Warlock - a rising star in the Church during the Second Vatican Council, and later Archbishop of Liverpool. Guild leaders had approached Monsignor Warlock for advice on renewal in the 1960s, and his statement of its fundamental aim was considered “entirely consistent with” the three objectives of the Guild that headlined all its publications: “Founded in 1933 to promote among its members their spiritual welfare, an enlightened Catholic outlook on the problems of public administration, and Christian fellowship” In its early, pre-War years, the Guild saw its primary aim as the spiritual welfare of its members, followed by fellowship. With most adult Catholics practising their faith in the 1930s, the priority was to bring many of those in under the umbrella of “Catholic Action”, and at the same time, shore up the faith and identity of Catholics, especially younger ones, amid a growing materialistic culture outside. The name of “Guild” denoted a model and ethos that looked unapologetically backwards. In its own words of 1947, the Guild was “founded in 1933 by a group of officers who felt that an association was needed which would unite all Catholic Civil Servants for their spiritual, moral and social welfare in a manner similar to that which marked the Guilds of the Middle Ages.”5 As a “Guild”, headed by a “Grand Master”, it joined a growing array of Catholic professional guilds that had emerged, including those for Printers, Police, Transport, Post Office, Doctors, Nurses, Stage, Musicians, Artists, Opticians, Chemists, Teachers, Journalists and Warehousemen and Clerks. Yet the Guild was never intended as merely a mutual aid society, but an example of St. John Henry Newman’s vision for an educated and confident Catholic laity that could better witness to and articulate their faith. In 1935, its leaders observed: Unlike many other bodies which have formed Guilds, the Civil Service is a National organisation comprising upwards of 300,000 State Servants of the non-industrial classes, and without unduly stressing the point, the qualifications looked for are such as to recruit to the service an educated body of men and women, drawn in the main from Secondary Schools, High Schools, Public Schools and the Universities … A unique opportunity presents itself by reason of the facilities afforded by the organisation of the Service, to draw from it, under the auspices of a Guild, a body of educated men and women capable of realising and appreciating the Catholic standpoint. The Council feel that the blessed gifts of intelligence and understanding based on a sound Catholic education, which are given by God, should be used to carry the Catholic outlook into the daily lives of Civil Servants, in the defence of Catholic principles, and in the spread of the faith.6 In 1947, and prompted by the advent of the new post-War welfare state that expanded the reach and size of government and Civil Service, the Guild explicitly adopted a new object: “to develop among the members an enlightened Catholic outlook on the problems of public administration”. For this was seen as a second age of “Rerum Novarum” 7 – “of new things”: of new social and economic questions, new public policy responsibilities, technological and institutional innovation, and new threats. “Catholics who were also Civil Servants” needed instruction in how to comprehend and contribute to these “new things”, what they could assimilate and what they must resist. Post-War bulletins testified to these new things, with articles on, amongst other topics of the day, the new National Health Service, strikes, and law and order. In particular, in the years following the Second World War, growing fears of communism within Civil Service trade unions became a central preoccupation of the Guild. Catholics 5 Paper published by the National Council 1947, Birmingham (Diocesan) archives, AP C19 6 National Council paper, 26 April 1935, Southwark (Diocesan) archives. 7 Rerum Novarum was the seminal encyclical of Pope Leo XIII promulgated in 1891 that set out the Catholic Church’s response to the “new” problems of industrialisation and class conflict. were encouraged to join their unions and staff associations in order to preserve the integrity of the Civil Service against communist infiltration. We don’t know to what extent individual Catholic officials addressed their new responsibilities in a distinctively “Catholic” way, but the Guild was there to support them. Emphases changed over the decades, as we shall see below. 

Activities and Governance

The Guild was a formal constituted organisation, created by civil servants in collaboration with the church hierarchy. St. Thomas More was its patron. Its president was the Archbishop of Westminster, with the other Archbishops and Bishops of Dioceses which contained regional branches serving notionally as Vice Presidents. It enjoyed a permanent “Grand” Chaplain, Monsignor Francis Bartlett, who served it for over 40 years. A formal constitution set out its purposes and provided for Annual General Meetings, a National Council and Executive, committees, membership rules and fees. The “chief executive” role belonged to the Grand Master, supported by a Deputy Grand Master and General Secretary, along with a General Treasurer, Registrar, publicity officers and a newsletter editor. After the Second World War, a new Constitution allowed for regional branches around the country, with London naturally the dominant centre. Each regional branch had its own Master, Secretary, Treasurer and Chaplain, under the approval of the local Bishop. You had to apply to join, and you had to be a Catholic. 

What did the Guild do in practice in order to further its high-level objectives? At national level the Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Dinner were flagship annual events over a whole weekend. Next in profile were the annual Patronal Mass on the feast of St. Thomas More and regional “rallies” or conferences which brought together several branches. Branches themselves held regular meetings and Masses, as well as annual dinners and AGMs. Pilgrimages and visits to Catholic shrines, monasteries and places of heritage were frequent in the decades following the War. Lenten retreats, educational talks and lectures, and “brains trust” sessions were typical activities across branches, along with standard social events such as dances, quizzes, whist drives, bingo, bazaars, rambles and meals out. 

It was not uncommon for Guild members to find a future spouse in these activities. Indeed, at its inception, the Guild was conscious of the challenge of young Catholic entrants in a Civil Service workplace where the sexes were now “aggregated”, and where “the danger of mixed marriages lies”. Indeed, the Guild foresaw its potential to bring Catholic couples together, without promoting that explicitly:

As Catholics we understand the teaching of Holy Church in regard to mixed marriages, and as a Guild we have assumed responsibility of providing so far as it is possible, facilities for Catholic Civil Servants to come into contact with one another by joining in spiritual exercises and social functions to their edification and mutual benefit. It is not suggested, nor is it intended that the Guild should regard itself as a matrimonial agency. On the contrary, it is believed that the less ostentation there is in regard to this particular subject, the greater will be the results. For this reason part of the work of the Guild should be to provide with discretion properly organised functions – under the supervision of responsible people – and to trust to God that beneficial results may follow. 

Fellowship and faith tended to be easier to facilitate on a systematic basis than formation and education. After the War, the Guild encouraged members to join local “Newman Circles” which ran part-time courses in public administration, but was not in a position to do anything formal itself. By the late 1950s the Guild had, in the view of one of the London Branch Masters, neglected its second object: “Compared with the realisation of the Guild’s other two aims, the spiritual welfare and Christian fellowship of its members, comparatively little progress has, I think, been made in this more educational direction.” 

A review in 1964, prompted by declining membership (see below) and the advice of Monsignor Warlock already mentioned, led to a renewed focus on studying faith and contemporary challenges. The key to an effective lay apostolate was educational: developing knowledge of the Church’s doctrinal and social teaching. Although not unprecedented, from the 1960s two residential study weekends at Spode House in Staffordshire (pictured) and Wood Hall in Wetherby became a popular annual fixture for active Guild members, diving deeply into scriptural and social themes. Over 70 members attended the Spode House study weekend in 1964, and attendance remained strong even as the Guild shrank, with 40 members attending in 1977. Following the Second Vatican Council, talks and lectures outside of these set-piece events were arranged on its key documents and themes, typically with a more generic educational aim – and even audience - rather than specific to the needs of civil servants. But they were seen by many as a model of how the Guild could meet a need that parishes could not, working with the wider Church and drawing more Catholics into the Guild.

The social side of the Guild did not abate. Indeed, wider economic trends at this time, such as cheaper travel, enabled new opportunities. From the late 1960s there were more frequent Guild holidays and pilgrimages, including to Ireland, Aylesford, Wales and in 1975, Rome for the Holy Year, and in 1983 – the Golden Jubilee year of the Guild - to France. 

In an era that knew nothing of email, whatsapp and internet, communication of events and news at national and branch levels was done through regular printed bulletins and notices. From 1947 the Guild distributed to all members a detailed bulletin or newsletter several times a year, and in the 1980s every month, right up to its dissolution in 1991. Membership fees were essential to fund printing costs and officer expenses. They were periodically uprated broadly in line with inflation: rising from 2/6 shillings in 1935 (£7.70 in 2025 prices) to £3 in 1990 (£7.43 in 2025 prices). Chasing subscription fees and keeping membership registers up to date in a low-tech world was a constant challenge, both in times of expansion and decline.

Expansion and decline

It should be already evident that the life of the Guild cannot be told as a static story.  Its trajectory was one of strong initial growth and optimism before World War Two; post-War expansion and consolidation; rapid decline during the 1960s followed by retrenchment; and in its final years, valiant but unsuccessful attempts at revival.   

The early years

Over 120 Catholic Civil Servants attended the inaugural meeting in St. Peter’s Hall Westminster on 27th February 1933. The “founding fathers” were Mr F. W. McAweeny of the Inland Revenue who had sought permission for the Guild from the church authorities; and the Reverend Malachy Feery of Westminster Cathedral: laity and clergy working together. Father Feery chaired the Guild’s management committee throughout the 1930s until the new Constitution of 1940 provided for a Master who would be a Civil Servant. 

Established initially for men, in 1934 the Archbishop gave approval to extend it to women in acknowledgement of the rapid growth in female employment in the Civil Service since the Great War. Women not only accounted for one quarter of the 300,000-plus workforce, but they now worked alongside men in clerical, executive and administrative roles, as well as in external roles such as medical officers and school inspectors. A Council paper of 1935 summarised their reasoning: 

Since the War, there has been a complete reversal of the policy which restricted considerably the employment of women in the Civil Service, and now both sexes enter it through common open competitive examinations, are employed side by side, and undertake precisely similar duties … If any advantages, whether spiritual or social, were to be derived from membership of a guild, the men would have been acting in an un-Catholic manner by the exclusion of their women colleagues.  

Admission of women contributed to an increase of 200 members by the time of the 1935 AGM, when the whole Catholic hierarchy of England and Wales gave its approval and blessing to the Guild. Women quickly came to serve on the Council and sub-committees. 

With the support of the bishops and a strong publicity drive in the Catholic press, by 1936 Guild membership reached nearly six hundred, representing “practically every grade”. By 1938, numbers approached 1000, and addressing the Annual Dinner at the Waldforf Hotel in London, Cardinal Hinsley said it “gave him great pleasure to be present to meet so many members of the Guild, all earnest Catholics, who exercise moral influence in their work for their country.”

Post-War expansion

Wartime government served only to sustain and nationalise this growth. New regional centres of administration and Catholic civil service fellowship emerged, and so new Guild branches outside of London were established, including Oxford, Blackpool, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. Numbers appear to have boomed but staff relocations made it difficult to document membership accurately. After 1945, welfare state expansion and a desire to resist communist infiltration led to a further uptick in membership. 

Leading figures after the War cemented the reputation and rise of the Guild. Most notable was Sir Desmond Morton, a former decorated soldier and PA to Winston Churchill during the War, who became Under Secretary (Director) at the Treasury. By 1950 over 1900 Civil Servants were paid-up members and by 1956 this total had reached 2530, spread across nine London branches and twenty provincial branches. 

Decline and retrenchment

The late 1950s was to be the high-water mark in membership (see chart). Yet even at that time, its leaders were concerned that the Guild was not fulfilling the high aspirations that marked its early days and post-War years. By 1960, the editor of the national Guild bulletin would plaintively write:

Sitting in my Editor’s chair reading up some of our Bulletins of ten years ago, one cannot be proud to see the names of so many distinguished persons mentioned, to take a few Dr Magee, Sir Desmond Morton, Messrs Manning, Batten, Last, Yeoman, Corcoran, and Miss Carey, who helped to build such a firm foundation of the Guild. Comparing it nowadays with the problem of apathy in attendance at meetings etc, the old phrase “they never had it so good” is very apt.

Such concern was not a one-off. Guild Bulletins in the early 1960s repeatedly fretted over a declining and ageing membership, loss of branches, and struggles with recruitment. Guild activities were less reported in the national Catholic press. The very raison d’etre of the Guild came to be questioned, and this led to the review in 1964.   Although that Review injected new energy and strategic focus it did not stem the decline in numbers, which had fallen to around 900 by 1969. The reality was clear that the operations of the Guild and its Branches were increasingly relying on a dwindling number of key individuals, including retired individuals.

Sources – Various National bulletins (in particular historical articles published in 1962 and 1964).  Registrar reports to AGMs thereafter reported in bulletins. 1945 data seen as unreliable due to re-location of staff.

So the 1970s was a decade of retrenchment. The Guild had ostensibly reached a level of maturity, sustained by the most committed of the post-War boom in members, who had developed strong friendships and connections over two or three decades.  But renewal and rationalisation was also in the air. A new Grand Master, David Marsh of the Ministry of Defence - at 44 years of age probably the youngest of all the Grand Masters - led the Guild from 1971 to 1976 with optimism and energy. Under his direction, a new Constitution and Officer handbook was produced, clarifying objectives, activities and rules. Governance was somewhat slimmed down. Only the strongest provincial branches remained and the London ones merged. Chunky quarterly bulletins gave way to more regular, lower cost newsletters. With rampant inflation throughout the decade, membership subs had to rise in 1973, 1975 and 1979. Although the 1977 AGM considered but rejected a proposal to drop the “old fashioned” name of “Guild”, the organisation sought to become less insular. Conscious efforts were made to join up with and feed in to other diocesan educational initiatives and apostolates. A formal hand of friendship was extended to the Civil Service Christian Union, and a number of Guild members became involved in their departmental branches in the later 1970s.  Numbers stabilised and hopes of a second spring revived, subsequently boosted by the Papal Visit in 1982 and the Guild’s Golden Jubilee in 1983 - Cardinal Hume attending the Annual Dinner along with 80 members -  when membership stood at 371. But unless sufficient new blood came in, the Guild’s active days would be numbered. 

Dissolution, rebirth and retirement 1991 - 2005

After his term of office, David Marsh continued to be actively involved, but returned as Grand Master in 1986 to make one last attempt at renaissance. As late as 1989, he wrote to members with the hope that 

“sufficient new and younger members will join together to form and run new Branches of serving Civil Servants … enabling the older members to regroup into retired sections; [and] that new Branches will start in towns where there are major concentrations of Civil Servants”

Repeated recruitment and publicity efforts led to a handful of new recruits but by 1990 the majority of the 209 paid members were retired. Outside of London, only Cardiff, Leeds and Blackpool had branches. Around twenty members attended monthly meetings of the London branch, but for most members, retired, the Guild had become a friendship network for socials, holidays and study weekends. David Marsh himself retired and moved out of London to Dorset in 1990 signalling the end of his valiant, twenty year, fight. 

So the Guild formally decided at its last AGM in Cardiff in May 1991 to dissolve itself at the end of that year. It was a poignant irony that the Guild was wound up exactly one hundred years after the publication of the great social encyclical Rerum Novarum. In his remarks, the Grand Master drew attention to the wider centenary celebrations around the famous encyclical, pointing out that “the Catholic Media Office is anxious that the Church’s social teaching should be widely publicised”. 

Even this was not the end. The Guild was reincarnated on 1st January 1992 as the “Catholic Guild of Civil and Public Servants”. The almost sacred name of “Guild” was retained for continuity and heritage, but governance was minimal:  a single “Master” (Mrs Mary Gallagher, Deputy Grand Master 1983-88), no branches, a small organising committee and events newsletter. Sixty members signed and paid up to what was in effect a retirement fellowship but which was open “to all Catholic retired or serving members of HM Civil Service or Local Government”.  Despite it being in the draft title, the word “retired” was subsequently dropped, for the hope remained that the new Guild would be a seedbed of re-germination; that was why its scope was widened to include local government officials. In the valedictory words of the ever hopeful David Marsh:

Serving members are strongly encouraged to join … they must not be put off by the title “Retired” which is merely a reflection of the major element of current membership and which could well change in the future. My prayer is that for the good of the Civil and Public Service and the spiritual and professional well-being of the Catholics and other Christians within it, there will be a move towards building the Guild to a viability which will enable it to meet the needs of the future as effectively as its predecessor did in its own period of 58 years of service (1933-91). 

But no such move to viability ever materialised, and the new Guild would inevitably grow old and die out. The new “Catholic Guild of Civil and Public Servants” appeared in Diocesan directories with its “primary objective” being “to develop the spirit of Catholic fellowship among members” – a shadow of the original Guild. It was last mentioned in the Westminster Directory in 1997. It remained in the Leeds Diocese Yearbook until 2005, with contact details for Miss Connie Grainger, who was still apparently organising the study events in Yorkshire that she had done for the Guild ever since the mid-1970s! 

Why the decline?

In retrospect, it might be guessed that the Guild’s heyday was the 1950s, that fabled oasis of stability between the turbulence of war and the culturally corrosive 1960s.  Not only was the Civil Service rapidly growing then, but the Catholic Church was consolidating and expanding its parishes, schools and influence. It was bolstered on the one side by hardy older generations who had known persecution and the inter-war Catholic revival, and on the other by younger generations, sustained by an Irish influx, who were schooled in the clarity of the Penny Catechism, reasonably clear what they believed, and entered society with a strong Catholic identity. 

And yet, as the Guild in 1962 looked back at its own history, it was realistic enough to recognise the “melancholy fact that at no period has the Guild enrolled more than a fringe of the Catholics in the Service”. When practising Catholics comprised perhaps 10% of the national population, the Civil Service would have contained over 50,000 Catholics. So even the Guild at its peak would have represented a maximum of 5% of these. 

By 1960, changes in lifestyle had set limits on what the Guild might achieve, with a kind of comfortable Catholicism setting in, as the plaintiff editorial cited earlier went on to say: 

I remember meetings in those days were fully attended and plenty of interest shown, also in all Catholic activities, but nowadays what with Television, and so many other Catholic organisations, attendances are poor. It is generally the same people to be seen at all these functions (a small hard core of enthusiasts). When most Catholics have completed their Sunday obligations we never see them again until the next week-end … This feeling of apathy is not only peculiar to Catholics, but to all walks of life … I know personally to drag one-self away from a good programme on the T.V. for a meeting requires an awful effort, especially when one is getting older (who isn’t), and to encourage the youth that are coming into the Guild, a poor example 

Looking back from 1991 across the decades that he lived and worked and served the Guild, David Marsh offered the following telling analysis:

For many years success could be measured in the form of branches in all the main areas of appreciable civil service numbers. Events were well attended and interest was sustained. Then came a coincidence of several events within a fairly short period: 

• to be a Catholic no longer entailed acute feelings of isolation (still less of threat) leading to a need to band together with other Catholics for encouragement, comfort etc

• familial instructions to the youngsters embarking upon a career in the big city (“mind you join your vocational Guild as soon as you get there”) tended to get discarded like so many other caring and well-meant admonishments; the ‘age of independence’ had begun (“I don’t owe anybody anything and I don’t have to join anything if I don’t want to”)

• the Churches were re-examining their respective positions on everything on which they had seemed to be so consistent … (‘when the churches have finally made up their minds – if I think it makes any sense – I’ll think about it … meanwhile I’ll just do my own thing like most other people’)

Regarding the last point, the extensive deliberations and decrees of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), and the challenges around their communication and implementation, cannot be underestimated, particularly their coincidence with the cultural upheavals of the 1960s. This sense comes through in the Bulletins of the 1960s and 1970s. There is a tragic and ironic quality in the fact that the Guild of the 1930s and 1940s anticipated the Council’s vision of lay Catholics engaging with the complex challenges of the modern world; and yet in the years following the Council the Guild entered permanent decline. 

At its 1982 AGM, the Guild’s Grand Chaplain Francis Bartlett drew attention to the wider ecclesiastical context that was affecting all vocational guilds at that time:

While many Catholic societies were flourishing in the 1950s, the changes following Vatican II had resulted in new structures which perhaps naturally drew much of their support from the members of the old organisations; and so the old organisations withered. It was useless for the Guild to live in the past; somehow for the future if it was to thrive it must find its way to being fully compatible with the changing church.

But it would be incorrect to “blame” the decline on the Council, to attribute the Guild’s decline directly to the Council. For the rot had set in before it convened. And as we have seen, the Council’s teaching had brought new perspectives that helped, at least to some extent, to re-focus and renew the Guild. 

Ecclesiastical and cultural changes aside, there was a quite separate reality that was also imposing upon the Guild. In Marsh’s final analysis, “the most important factors affecting our Guild” were institutional and internal to the Civil Service itself, in particular:

• the long period of the 70s and 80s in which departments were combined, reconstructed, relocated, dismantled, dispersed, given Agency status etc – all of which significantly eroded the family spirit (at and between all levels) which had existed in so many of the long established departments and which had benefited the Service and underpinned and encouraged all forms of ‘out of hours’ activity and associations.

• the heavy increase in workloads without adequate resources associated with restructuring, policy review upon policy review … and a proliferation of “management information systems”. The evening stroll across the park yielded to the dash for the long-distance commuter train, with a bag of papers to be worked on for the morrow … By the time the working day was over people had had enough”

These changes had taken a heavy toll on the “spirit” of the Civil Service, and by extension on the Guild itself.