Bruce Kent obituary
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/09/bruce-kent-obituary
Leading light of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and charismatic peace activist ordained as a Roman Catholic priest
Thu 9 Jun 2022 18.30 BST
Bruce Kent, who has died aged 92, was the most controversial Catholic priest of his generation in Britain. To his detractors, his high-profile involvement with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament during its renaissance in the 1980s was unsuitable behaviour for an ordained member of a church that accepted the arguments for nuclear deterrence. For his admirers – and there were very many more of them than detractors – he was a prophetic and charismatic figure who almost single-handedly shook English Catholicism out of its complacency, studied moderation and instinctive avoidance of all things political.
To see Monsignor Kent exorcising the Polaris nuclear submarine base at Faslane on the west coast of Scotland, or leading protests at Greenham Common, Berkshire, against the deployment of US cruise missiles, or allowing bailiffs to seize his few worldly possessions rather than pay with his taxes for the proliferation of nuclear weapons was a potent reminder that the Christian gospel is a social and radical one.
One of the ironies of the ferocious campaign waged against Kent by self-avowedly God-fearing Conservative MPs, MI5 and the Vatican’s diplomatic representative in Britain, Bruno Heim – who in 1983 dubbed him a “useful idiot”, doing the Soviets’ dirty work for them – was that the subject of their fury was such a mild-mannered man. Kent was no firebrand and even when confronted and abused by his detractors was emollient. He followed Christ’s example, often quoted but notoriously hard in practice, of turning the other cheek.
That did not mean, however, that he was not passionate in his beliefs or effective in putting them across. He was perhaps fortunate with his timing. When he took over as general secretary of CND at the start of 1980, it was virtually moribund, with just 3,000 paid-up members. Within months the government’s announcements of a £5bn programme to replace Polaris with Trident and plans to host Cruise at Greenham revived the organisation. By November he was addressing 80,000 supporters in Trafalgar Square, and the next year 250,000 gathered in Hyde Park.
A gifted speaker, with a natural authority, Kent was equally skilled as an administrator and tactician, successfully countering efforts by Trotskyites to infiltrate CND’s various ruling councils and avoiding the splits that had incapacitated the organisation during its first incarnation in the late 50s.
One of the most telling compliments for Kent came in December 1982 from Denis Healey, the Labour deputy leader and no fan of CND’s policies. He had, Healey said, “achieved the most impressive victory for single-issue politics in recorded history”.
The Catholic hierarchy watched from the sidelines with growing unease and not a little envy. Cardinal Basil Hume, who had given Kent permission to take on his CND role, allowed him a great deal of rope and defended him against his accusers. But Hume, for all his monkish unworldliness, had a great deal of respect for men in uniform from the Ministry of Defence, and Kent sensed his unease with the situation.
With the approach of the 1987 general election, and the nuclear question once again high on the agenda, Kent felt he had no choice but to leave the priesthood if he was to carry on speaking out on the threat facing the world. Hume made the right noises, but accepted rather too readily for some.
For Kent, 11 February, the day of his retirement – he would never use the world resignation, though it was clear he would not be coming back – was one of the worst in his life. He wept as he broke the news to those in the church who had supported him, and many wept with him. “I knew,” he later wrote, “that I no longer fitted into the priesthood as others saw it.”
Bruce was born in London into the comfortable world of Hampstead Garden Suburb, the son of Molly (nee Marion) and Kenneth Kent, who ran the UK offshoot of the US manufacturing firm the Armstrong Cork company. At parish dances, Bruce would step out with a young Antonia Pakenham, later Fraser, whose parents belonged to the coterie of Labour politicians living in the area. The Kents were, however, more conservative in their political leanings.
Bruce’s parents were Canadians and for three years during the second world war he, his brother, sister and mother went back to Canada. She was a devout Catholic, and on their return Bruce attended Stonyhurst college, in Lancashire, the Jesuit school that vied with Ampleforth to be the Catholic Eton. “It took me another 20 years at least to realise how effectively I had been processed for English establishment life and values,” he said.......
