Part 2: Let’s have a High Council
- deansimpson7
- 3 hours ago
- 5 min read
In the second of a four-part series. Salvos Online history writer BARRY GITTINS explores the tumultuous events of 1929, when General Bramwell Booth’s leadership of The Salvation Army reached a crisis point.
On 22 November 1928, seven Salvation Army commissioners successfully called for a High Council to be held.
The seven were Samuel Hurren, Robert Hoggard, Charles Jeffries, David Lamb, Henry Mapp, Wilfred Simpson and Richard Wilson.
The commissioners requested “all to refrain from public discussion of the matter … if any dissension is caused within our ranks, it cannot be the result of the action we have taken but will arise from misrepresentation of [the Council’s] nature and purpose”.
Tongues wagged and consternation ensued.
Particularly painful for Salvationists was the fact that the press had already well and truly gotten wind of the Salvation Army’s woes.
Commissioner Charles Jeffries, writing on 20 November 1928 to the Army’s International Training Garrison, lamented the fact that “unauthorised” statements to the press from Lieut.-Colonel Tucker were being “discussed in the newspapers [with] statements that are, to say the least, misleading … especially those alleging that certain people are claimants or candidates for the position of General, should it become vacant.”
Mentioning the High Council’s imminent proceedings, he asked those officers in training to stop talking about what the entire Salvation Army world was talking about. He urged them to remember in prayer both General Bramwell Booth and the Chief of the Staff (Higgins, the soon-to-be elected third General). And he reminded them that the High Council was “instituted by our revered Founder to deal with such an emergency as the present”.
On 21 November 1928, the day before the seven requisitioning commissioners received their High Council codicil from IHQ, Bramwell’s wife, Florence Booth, addressed the growing concerns about Bramwell’s competence and capacity, determined to defend her spouse’s position.
In a letter sent around the world as a telegram, also dispatched from the Army’s International Headquarters at 101 Queen Victoria Street, London, the General’s wife unknowingly confirmed what many of the Army’s commissioners around the world sincerely believed – that Bramwell was fading fast and unable to conduct his duties.
“My dear Comrade,” she wrote, “I write this letter in the General’s sick room. He is so ill that I cannot be long away from him.
“In view of various mis-statements which have appeared in the press in this country and elsewhere, I feel that it is very important that the Staff Officers of The Army should clearly understand that the High Council has been called expressly for the purpose of deciding ‘whether the General is unfit for office and should be removed therefrom’.
“It is heartrending to all those who love him that such a thing should happen at what may prove to be the close of a long life of self-sacrificing toil and devotion for God and The Army.
“For over fifty years, my dear husband has given himself without stint – first as his father’s right hand in the formation and consolidation of the Movement, and again, during the last sixteen years, as our General and Leader.
“Do you realise that seven Commissioners have called the High Council for the purpose named, at a moment when he lies seriously ill, unable to defend himself, and indeed at a time when he cannot even be made aware of their action, as the doctors declare that any shock might prove fatal.
“As, therefore, he cannot speak for himself, I must make my poor efforts to do so for him.
“If the General goes to Heaven before the High Council can meet, it may be that there will be no opportunity to remove the stigma which has been cast upon him by the requisitioning of the Council.
“In order that you may more fully understand the position, I hope to have available copies of the Foundation Deed (1878) and the Supplementary Deed (1904), which will be sent to you, post free, if you will make application to Commissioner Catherine Booth …
“This letter is confidential and not for publication,” the General’s wife wrote, actively lobbying against the legally called High Council in her unofficial capacity.
“In the interests of The Army, I have carefully avoided making reference in the public press to recent Salvation Army affairs. At this crisis, you can all help The Army, to which for service and sacrifice we have all given our lives, by thinking clearly, acting courageously, and praying ceaselessly that God will restore the General to health for further service, and over-rule all for the Glory of His name.
“Your affectionately in The Army, (Signed) FLORENCE E. BOOTH”
The drama, lobbying, grief and pain all led to the deposing of Bramwell as ‘General’ in a process that stretched through January and February 1929.
Bramwell died, or was ‘promoted to glory’, on 16 June, a few months after being removed from power.
Posterity and historical research, human nature and interactions, and the full passage of time that strips away fears are all forces that reveal what folks would have preferred to keep concealed.
In due time, much of the Army’s linen would be washed through the High Council; wrung through law courts and put out in plain sight through the secular media, to be dried thoroughly in the light of day.
Correspondence was flying around the world and the United Kingdom as the High Council drew nearer. Commissioner David Lamb wrote several letters throughout December 1928 defending the right of commissioners to call the High Council. “Your letter is intended as propaganda on behalf of some person or persons,” he charged a fellow officer, “and not as you try to make out something from a sincere soul seeking after truth …
“No one of us knows all the facts – even I do not know it all – but [we had] no alternative but to requisition the convening of the High Council …
“You are of course perfectly entitled to your personal opinion on the question … but your action in broadcasting it [to] your fellow Officers is entirely gratuitous and, indeed, impertinent. It certainly does scant credit to your own sense of modesty, and still less to the intelligence, integrity and good faith of the seven Requisitioning Commissioners, of the chief of Staff [and] the eight retired Commissioners who, after the most careful consideration, have endorsed their action.”
Warming to his theme, Commissioner Lamb told his “impertinent” correspondent that his propaganda against the High Council assumed that I and my fellow Officers [lack] the mental acumen or integrity of purpose equal to at least your own, to form an unbiased judgment …
“I do not propose to attempt to refute your argument, though it would be easy enough to drive a ‘coach and four’ through its logic, or, rather, want of it.”
Addressing aspersions of disloyalty to Bramwell, Lamb wrote that he and his fellows had “dedicated their lives to The Army’s service, before they had so much as seen wither the Founder or the General … our allegiance was not, and could not be, a question of personalities …
“Nevertheless, I yield to no one in my reverence for the memory to the Founder, and my personal affection for and loyalty to the General, as Head of The Army. But the part is less than the whole … none of us can possibly be untrue to the General, as part of The Army, if we are true to the interest of The Army as a whole.”
