Did Lambeth Palace know the ‘fresh information’ about Bishop George Bell before Lord Carlile published his report?

Feb 5, 2018 by Jill

by Martin Sewell, from Archbishop Cranmer:

It was all going so well for the George Bell Group and the less well-known Bell Society.

The Carlile Report had delivered a blow every bit as devastating as they (and I) predicted. A number of searching questions had been tabled to call the Church of England to account at the upcoming General Synod, and my Synod colleague David Lamming had crafted a typically measured and accurate motion to be offered for debate if it could garner the requisite 100 signatures to qualify for consideration in July.

The Bell Group was co-ordinating a series of letters from a number of distinguished people calling on the church to uphold the simple twin propositions that ‘a man is innocent until proven guilty’, and that unless proven guilty by a fair process, a person’s reputation is entitled to be restored. Theologians and historians had already weighed in; distinguished lawyers were waiting in the wings and questions were being asked in the House of Lords.

Richard Symonds took the bull by the horns and arranged a conference at Church House under the aegis of the Bell Society. Church House is home to the General Synod: it was a tank parked on the lawn of the Established Church, and undoubtedly provocative.

The Bell Group and the much smaller Bell Society are like the Common Law and the Law of Equity: they run in the same channel but they do not mix.

The Archbishop of Canterbury had issued a rather bullish statement reiterating that the late Bishop George Bell remained under “a significant cloud”. This was itself a provocation; ignoring the traditional ‘innocent until proven guilty’ principle, and with more than a nod to the intellectually bankrupt and legally discredited PC-driven narrative that “the victim must be believed”. He implicitly fished that notion out of the bin to which Lord Carlile had consigned it. It is like one of those zombie films: just as you turn your back, it begins to climb out of the grave.

From Archbishop Justin’s “significant cloud” one reasonably derives that “he might be guilty”, which could be considered a fair judgment were it not for one very important omission. When has the Archbishop or anyone at Lambeth Palace or Church House ever flipped that coin over and publicly acknowledged the equal truth that Bishop George Bell might be innocent?

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