by Fergus Butler-Gallie, The Critic
Antidisestablishmentarianism is, almost certainly, the word that most people know without really thinking what it means. The longest word in English is due a revival from being just a Scrabble player’s dream to being something thought about more seriously.
To be an antidisestablishmentarian is to oppose removing the links between church and state which — despite the ill informed America brained musings of plenty in the public sphere — we do not have in this country. Or, more precisely, we do not have in most of this country.
The mammoth word really entered wider public consciousness over a hundred years ago as Lloyd George prepared his last assault on the constitution — the disestablishment of the Church in Wales.
The eventual disestablishment in 1920 followed the removal of the privileges of the Irish Church in 1870 and were followed by the Church of Scotland Act of 1921 which technically kept the Presbyterian polity established but removed many of its actual practical joins to the state.
Since then there have been sporadic efforts to consign the Church of England to the same fate. These ought to be resisted. It’s time to rediscover antidisestablishmentarianism. The examples of Wales and Scotland over the last century show that Church establishment is something worth fighting for.
It’s worth dealing with the elephant in the room. Most English people don’t go to church every Sunday, and in polling a majority of them seem to be against establishment (although it is worth stating that most of them don’t even know what it is). Some argue that the numbers make establishment ridiculous. It’s worth pointing out that it, like all of the Constitution, was never about numbers, but a statement about the dignified aspects of the state.