Out of the silence, one member rose: 'We've heard the Executive Vice-President. We know the way he has lived. I only wish I could live that way myself.' When the full Convention met and Riffe came up for confirmation in his post, no one stood against him and he was elected by acclamation. The Chairman of the International Committee also made it clear that no constitutionally sound ICFTU report had been authorized and that the AFL had also refused to condemn Moral Re-Armament.18Buchman's comment was, 'Grateful for an intelligently thoughtful friend like John.'

Meanwhile James Haworth, President of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association in Britain, a former MP and member of the Labour Party Executive, had gone to Brussels to confront the ICFTU Secretariat with their report's inaccuracies. He had an interview with the Secretary-General and the officer who had compiled the report. 'We went through the Report in detail, and when I left, I was under the impression it would be withdrawn,' Haworth wrote.19 It was - but not until twelve years later, on 18 August 1966, when the ICFTU Secretary-General, Omer Bécu, wrote to Moral Re-Armament in London confirming the ICFTU's 'attitude of strict neutrality' to Moral Re-Armament, and released his letter to the media.20

Whatever the motive of the compiler of the 'ICFTU report', most trade unionists who, without examining it closely, lent to it the authority of the ICFTU Bulletin, were probably moved by a quite simple human emotion - the feeling that an outside body was poaching on their preserves. This same feeling seems to have been at least one factor behind the launching of the report of the Church of England's Social and Industrial Council.

During the spring and summer of 1952 The Forgotten Factor was performed in a series of British industrial centres at the invitation of local management and trade union leaders. In each city the cast and accompanying team were welcomed by Church leaders who found that the play stimulated interest in spiritual matters among people who had little touch with organised religion. That, for example, was the theme of the Provost of Portsmouth's sermon at a service of thanksgiving for their visit in Portsmouth Cathedral,21 and the thought behind a letter of support from the Bishop of Coventry to that city's daily newspaper.22The Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Revd G. Johnson Jeffrey, wrote to 1,560 Scots Ministers announcing the play's visit to Glasgow as 'a venture of faith which deserves the closest attention of all Church leaders'.23

In Sheffield, however, the play encountered a different reception from one influential group of churchmen. A prestigious industrial mission, led by the Bishop's industrial chaplain, Canon E. R. Wickham, was already at work there, and it soon became apparent that Wickham and those close to him disapproved of Moral Re-Armament's intervention and regarded The Forgotten Factor as a hindrance, rather than a help, to the work they were doing. The Bishop of Sheffield himself, the Rt Revd L. S. Hunter, expressed this view when, addressing the Convocation of York shortly after the visit of The Forgotten Factor, he dismissed the play, which he had not himself seen, as 'glib emotionalism and shallow psychology' and added, 'It is frightening how easily some industrialists and others fall for the salesmanship of MRA.'*

(* 14 May 1952. Reprinted in Sheffield Diocesan Review, August 1952. Observers were all the more surprised at the Bishop's speech because of the broadly sympathetic description of Buchman's work given in his book, A Parson's Job (SCM Press, 1931, pp. 86-8) written when Archdeacon of Northumberland.)

435