John
Trevor
was born in 1855. His mother died when he was a child and he was brought
up by his Calvinist grandparents. He lost his faith in his early
twenties but he was converted to Christianity by the Unitarian
minister, Philip
Wicksteed. For a while Trevor assisted Wicksteed at his chapel in
Upper Brooke Street.
Converted to Socialism, Trevor founded the Labour
Church in Manchester in October,
1891. Other Labour Churches were soon established in other industrial
towns including Barnsley, Birmingham,
Bradford, Bolton, Dundee,
Halifax, Leeds,
London, Nottingham,
Oldham, Plymouth
and Wolverhampton.
Trevor and his followers were Christian
Socialists who believed that the labour movement could be the
driving force in obtaining "the Kingdom of God on earth".
Many of Britain's leading socialists were active in the Labour
Church
and included Keir Hardie, Ben
Tillett, Tom Mann, Fred
Jowett, Philip Snowdon and Margaret
McMillan.
When a conference was held in Bradford
to form the Independent Labour Party, Trevor
organised a church service to accompany the event. It was estimated
that over 5,000 people attended the service in the Bradford
Labour Church.
In
Manchester John
Trevor ran a Shelter for the Homeless and provided a Cinderella Club
for underprivileged
children in the Deansgate area of the city. In January 1892, Trevor
also began publishing a monthly magazine, The
Labour Prophet.
The motto on the cover was "God is our King" but later it
changed to "Let labour be the basis of civil society'. This resulted
in complaints as the word God was not included and eventually Trevor
reverted to the original motto. The
Labour Prophet
continued
until 1898 when it was replaced by the smaller, quarterly, Labour
Church Record.
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