Geoffrey Fisher

Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Baron Fisher of Lambeth, GCVO, PC (5 May 1887 – 15 September 1972) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1945 to 1961.

Geoffrey Fisher was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, and grew up in Higham on the Hill, Leicestershire. He was brought up an Anglican, being the son, grandson, and great-grandson of rectors of Higham. He was educated at Marlborough and Exeter College, Oxford. He was an assistant master at Marlborough College when he decided to be ordained, becoming a priest in 1913. At this time, the English public schools had close ties with the Church of England, especially in the case of Marlborough which had been founded for the education of sons of the Clergy. It was common for schoolmasters to be in Holy Orders, and headmasters were typically priests.

In 1914 Fisher was appointed Headmaster of Repton School, succeeding William Temple, whom he later also succeeded as Archbishop of Canterbury. Fisher married Rosamond Forman, daughter of Arthur Forman, who was a Repton master and Derbyshire cricketer. Among his pupils at the school was Roald Dahl, who went on to be a highly acclaimed children's author. In Boy, his autobiography of his childhood, Dahl wrote scathingly about Fisher's use of corporal punishment, which was, in Dahl's opinion, grossly overdone. By the time Dahl became a pupil, however, Fisher had actually left Repton, and so apparently it was actually Fisher's successor, J.T. Christie, whom Dahl had encountered.

In 1932 Fisher was appointed Bishop of Chester, and in 1939 he became Bishop of London.

In 1942 Cosmo Gordon Lang was replaced by William Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury. Temple was a strong Christian Socialist, and both the Church and the general public foresaw great changes in the post-war period. However, Temple died in 1944. Some considered that the best choice now would be George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, but it was Fisher who was appointed.

Appointment of bishops in the Church of England is, ultimately, in the hands of the Prime Minister. Winston Churchill disliked Temple's politics, but had accepted Lang's advice that Temple was the outstanding figure and no one else could be seriously considered. This time, however, the situation was less clear-cut. It has been widely assumed subsequently that Bell was passed over because of his criticism in the House of Lords of the strategy of obliteration bombing of German towns. While it is probably true that this greatly reduced any chance of Bell being appointed, it is not clear that Bell was likely to be appointed, anyway. Temple had apparently regarded Fisher as his obvious successor.

Fisher put considerable effort into the task of revising the Church of England's canon law. The canons of 1604 were at that time still in force, despite being largely out of date.

He presided at the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and later at her coronation in 1953 as Queen Elizabeth II. The event was carried on television for the first time (the previous coronation, that of George VI in 1937, had been filmed for newsreels).

He is remembered for his visit to Pope John XXIII in 1960, the first meeting between an Archbishop of Canterbury and a Pope since the English Reformation, and an ecumenical milestone.

Fisher was also a committed Freemason, as were many Church of England bishops of his day. Fisher served as Grand Chaplain in the United Grand Lodge of England.

Nuclear controversy

In 1958, at a time of heightened fear of nuclear war and mutual destruction between the West and the Soviet Union, Fisher said that he was "convinced that it is never right to settle any policy simply out of fear of the consequences. ... For all I know it is within the providence of God that the human race should destroy itself in this manner." He was also quoted as saying,

"The very worst the Bomb can do is to sweep a vast number of People from this world into the next into which they must all go anyway".

He was heavily criticised in the press for this view, but a number of clergy, including Christopher Chavasse, Bishop of Rochester, defended him, saying, "In an evil world, war can be the lesser of the two evils."

Fisher retired in 1961. He advised the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, that he did not consider Michael Ramsey, who had been his pupil at Repton, a suitable successor. Ramsey later relayed to the Reverend Victor Stock the conversation Fisher had with the Prime Minister.

According to this account, Fisher said:

I have come to give you some advice about my successor. Whomever you choose, under no account must it be Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of York. Dr Ramsey is a theologian, a scholar and a man of prayer. Therefore, he is entirely unsuitable as Archbishop of Canterbury. I have known him all his life. I was his Headmaster at Repton.

Macmillan replied:

Thank you, your Grace, for your kind advice. You may have been Doctor Ramsey's headmaster, but you were not mine.

Ramsey was duly appointed.

Fisher was made a life peer, with the title Baron Fisher of Lambeth, of Lambeth in the County of London (Lambeth being a reference to Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury). By this time, appointment to the House of Lords as a peer had become a convention for retiring Archbishops of Canterbury (none had ever retired before Randall Davidson in 1928), although Fisher was the first to be created a "life peer" following the Life Peerages Act 1958.

Fisher died on 15 September 1972 and was buried in a crypt in St Andrew's Church, Trent, Dorset, a place he had chosen himself. He had been an honorary assistant priest in Trent since his retirement. A side chapel at Canterbury Cathedral was subsequently dedicated to his memory, situated next to a similar memorial chapel to Archbishop Michael Ramsey.

As well as being created a life peer, Fisher also received:-

Royal Victorian Chain 1949.

Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order 1953.

A house at Tenison's School is named after him.

One of the most famous and controversial literary accounts of Geoffrey Fisher is in Boy: Tales of Childhood, by Roald Dahl, a former pupil of Fisher's at Repton. The book recounts in some detail a brutal beating of a fellow pupil at the hands of Fisher, named as the person responsible.

Dahl alleges that the victim was ordered to take down his trousers and kneel on the Headmaster’s sofa, with the top half of his body hanging over one end of the sofa. Dahl states that as the beating took place, in between each "tremendous crack administered upon the trembling buttocks", the headmaster would light his pipe and lecture the kneeling boy about sin and wrongdoing. At the end of the beating, a basin, sponge and small towel were produced by the Headmaster, and the victim told to wash away the blood before pulling up his trousers. The details of this beating were later corroborated by Dahl's peers, and he also claimed that the incident caused him to doubt religion and the existence of God.

The accusation against Fisher was extremely controversial at the time, and led some to investigate the claims further. It was later discovered that the headmaster responsible was, in fact, Fisher's successor, John Christie, appointed in 1933, after Fisher left to become Bishop of Chester. Also, whilst records suggest brutal beatings of this nature did occur, it appears that they were very rare. In this case, the victim was an 18-year-old who had been abusing younger boys at the school.