Mercy and British Culture, 1760-1960 by James Gregory

Author:James Gregory [Gregory, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Social History, Victorian Era (1837-1901), Georgian Era (1714-1837)
ISBN: 9781350142596
Google: 1XVMEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-11-04T03:10:46+00:00

Figure C2 E.H. Shepard, ‘The Neglected Child’, Punch, 21 February 1945, p.153. Reproduced under licence from Punch Cartoon Library / Topfoto.

For an Anglican readership, appeals for victims of Cold War and postcolonial conflict still presented claims for charitable contributions as works of Christian mercy.237 The tragedy of the Rosenbergs in 1953 brought an international campaign for mercy in which Catholic assertion of a principle ‘superior to other human values’ was broadcast.238 Newspapers reported St John’s Ambulance Brigade’s work as merciful – but also made the term ‘mercy squad’ familiar in the context of dealing with myxomatosis.239

How far did the discourse of mercy survive in the second half of the century as others emerged into prominence, such as that around humanitarianism? There are hints: a public and shared language of mercy, with familiar touchstones of scripture and Shakespeare, was deemed old fashioned. C.S. Lewis asserted in 1949 that the trend for a ‘curative’ and humanitarian theory of punishment was a mere ‘semblance of mercy’: no longer was there a belief in sin and thus the need to acknowledge guilt and seek pardon. He offered the paradox of mercy, detached from justice, becoming unmerciful.240 The philosopher Harry Roberts, in the 1960s, responding to Alwynne Smart’s philosophical thoughts on mercy in the law, commented: ‘It must be some time since a judge has been importuned by an advocate to temper his justice with mercy!’241 The Anglican commentator Rosamund Essex in 1977, taking her cue from a complaint about the lack of mercy from striking firemen or power-station workers, and towards Vietnamese ‘boat people’, commented, ‘apparently Christian mercy has gone out of fashion’. Justice had replaced it as a cry; mercy ‘deteriorated in value because people say that those who show mercy are putting themselves on a higher plain [sic] than others, exalting themselves, being paternalistic and condescending’.242 From a legal studies perspective Carolyn Strange notes the ‘old-fashioned ring’ which mercy has ‘increasingly’, and theologians have identified it too as an antiquated term.243

Like those anxious about the threat to acts of mercy from the welfare state in the 1940s, Margaret Thatcher stressed the ‘many deeds of mercy, the myriad acts of human kindness’ of individuals as opposed to state social services and insisted that ‘exercise of mercy and generosity’ could not be delegated.244 Thatcher’s presentation of her spiritual values before the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1988 stimulated discussion of social justice’s role compared with individual compassion, pity and mercy.245 (Thatcher’s journalism and speeches tended to refer to people and businesses being at the mercy of strikers and closed shops).246

The discourse of mercy was not seen as antiquated in the first quarter of the twentieth century, given its rhetorical and practical mobilization in the ‘thirty years’ war’. This chapter studied its appearance in interwar discussion of domestic social problems, law and crime reporting. Some of this was at the level of cliché and stock phrasing but reflected an enduring Christian culture. Its decline – but not complete disappearance – in British

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