The Council of Management of the Oxford Group only heard that the Working Party was in operation when three individuals who had been helped by Moral Re-Armament - the Mayor of Folkestone, a lecturer in history at Greenwich Naval College and a young East End clergyman - were informally approached to give evidence to it by Bishop Narborough or Canon Hudson, neither of whom, according to these individuals, concealed their hostility towards Moral Re-Armament. These three felt incompetent to give evidence of MRA's national and world-wide work, but were willing to give their personal experience provided some of those centrally responsible for the whole work were also invited. This condition was not accepted, so they declined.

Throughout 1953 there was practically no contact between the Working Party and people identified with Moral Re-Armament. Canon Wickham spent a few hours at Caux. Canon Hudson had dinner with R. C. Mowat, the history lecturer, and three friends, at Mowat's invitation. Finally, on Mowat's insistence, a meeting between the Working Party and the Oxford Group Council of Management seemed about to take place, Bishop Narborough suggesting 27 January 1954 as a convenient date.

Two weeks before that date events took place which destroyed that opportunity. The Daily Telegraph printed letters from Canon Wickham and Bishop Narborough strongly criticising Moral Re-Armament.28* Sir Lynden Macassey, who had chaired numerous government tribunals and was advising the Oxford Group, was scandalised that the chairman and a member of a body 'preparing what must be assumed to have been intended to be a fair and impartial report. . .' should 'write partisan letters to the public press condemnatory of what they had to inquire into...' 'It would be difficult if not impossible', he added, 'to imagine a parallel action...in the case of any committee or tribunal which was engaged in forming a judgement on an important controversy...'29 The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Geoffrey Fisher, opined, 'One must suppose that this Working Party was not meant to consist entirely of impartial people', but a week later assured his correspondent, the Mayor of Folkestone, 'May I just underline that no kind of report from this Working Party will reach the press or be made public at all. . .'30

(* Canon Wickham's letter of 13 January was answered by a strong statement by the Moderator of the Church of Scotland and leaders of all the Free Churches on 15 January. Others who wrote in protest as the controversy developed included the Metropolitan of India, the Most Revd Arabindo Nath Mukerjee, nine Swedish bishops, and Dr Toyohiko Kagawa and Bishop Augustine Takasa of Japan. These and other statements, some of which appeared in British newspapers, are collected in Report on Moral Re-Armament, edited by R. C. Mowat (Blandford, 1955). None of these are quoted in the report.)

437