When nuns held up a bank

A community fearing being left behind, takes novel action to help change its economic and social fortune. Ryan Gilfeather tells the tale.

Ryan Gilfeather

Ryan Gilfeather explores social issues through the lens of philosophy, theology, and history. He is a Research Associate at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.

A pile of coins in focus at the bottom of an out of focus glass tube.

Small value coins were at the heart of the nuns' actions.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.

Days before Christmas 2001 a mob of nuns and priests held up a bank in Oxford Street. They were not stealing money but rather paying it in. The Nuns of St Antony’s Forest Gate, a 2000-person strong Catholic parish saved their collection money until they had a staggeringly vast quantity to deposit. On the day, they took the money in a van to an HSBC branch in Oxford Street, wheeled it in on trolleys, where they proceeded to deposit every single coin.

At the same time priests in their clerical collars, and worshippers from a range of congregations in East London queued up at the other desk to slowly and repeatedly enquire about opening savings accounts. All the while, other members of these institutions stood outside holding banners accusing HSBC of exploiting low paid workers, saying “Give HSBC a Living Wage for Christmas.” The entire branch was brought to a standstill. Anxious Christmas shoppers stood helpless and astonished as this spectacle frustrated their attempts to withdraw money.

They heard that wages were so bad that workers needed to take on multiple jobs, forcing them to choose between feeding their kids and seeing them.

These nuns, priests and other Christians planned this action to secure a liveable wage for all who work at HSBC, but they also had broader ambitions. The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO), a broad-based coalition of citizens from churches, mosques, and other faith and community groups began to organise for a pay rate which was enough to live on, the amount which is now known as the Real Living Wage (currently £11.95 in London; £10.90 everywhere else). Each of these citizens had been listening to the people in their institutions. They heard that wages were so bad that workers needed to take on multiple jobs, forcing them to choose between feeding their kids and seeing them, and preventing them from praying and worshipping. Motivated by the belief that all human beings are of equal value and dignity in the eyes of God, these Christian communities, alongside the other groups in TELCO began campaigning for a fair and just rate of pay.

The new neighbour

As these discussions were ongoing they could see the new HSBC tower slowly ascending above their East London skyline. Considerable amounts of government money had been spent on the infrastructure of Docklands, which would serve this tower. TELCO citizens discerned that if it was going to benefit those who lived in east London, there would need to be a living wage for everyone who would work in that building. Therefore, they decided to ask the bank to make contracts for cleaning and security at the new tower on the condition that workers be paid enough to live on, in East London (£6.30 at the time). A number of religious and civic leaders had written to the HSBC chairman, Sir John Bond, to request a meeting to discuss these poverty wages. However, they had heard nothing back.

At this point, the nuns at St Antony’s came up with their plan. Visitors and members of the 2000 strong congregation would leave coins in the collection when they light candles in church, and the nuns were accustomed to depositing them every Tuesday. However, they decided to keep hold of them for several months until they managed to fill that small van. Eventually, on 19 December they set out in it to Oxford Street, with priests and parishioners in tow, and brought this branch to its knees.

The action worked. Within an hour Sir John had agreed to meet with TELCO members at St Philip's Church, Plaistow, to discuss their demands that cleaning and security contracts pay a living wage. Negotiations continued until 2004, when HSBC agreed to the campaigner’s demands, ensuring that every contractor pays a living wage, sick pay, pension and free access to a trade union. This victory built great momentum for the movement for a Real Living Wage, which is now voluntarily paid by over 12,000 UK employers. Therefore, this life-giving campaign for economic justice finds its origins, in part, with a group of nuns saving up their small change, because their faith led them to believe in the inextinguishable dignity and value of all human lives.

Explainer

Creed

Humility

Leading

Pride

Weirdness

20 May 2024

5 min read

Humility is just plain weird

Can leaders be humble?

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

The Pope, wearing white, kneels, crades a bare foot, and kisses it.

Pope Francis kisses the foot of a woman inmate of the Rebibbia prison.

Vatican Media.

Last week I met the Pope. You don’t often get to write a sentence like that but despite the shameless name-dropping, I mention it because it got me thinking about something that shed light on our political and social life.

It wasn’t just me and him. I was with a group of Anglican bishops and Archbishops and we had an hour with Pope Francis in one of the grand reception rooms in the Vatican. When you enter the Vatican, you can’t but be impressed by the sheer grandeur and size of the place. Long corridors with statues and huge windows, large reception rooms with elaborate frescoes of biblical scenes, Swiss guards with their brightly coloured uniforms saluting as you walk past.

The grandeur is perhaps not surprising, and perhaps even modest for an institution that that has 1.4 billion followers – that’s about the population of China – and one of the greatest patrons of the arts in western history.

We filed into a long elaborately painted room with marble floor, and decorated ceiling, took our seats and waited. Finally, a frail, white-robed figure hobbled in, aided by attendants in suits and white bowties. Pope Francis was a bit unsteady on his legs, but sharp, mentally alert, and with a smile that broke out over his face from time to time.

If the Vatican felt like the palace of an ancient city state, the headquarters of a global network, like the Kremlin or the headquarters of Google, something else felt very different. The difference was brought to mind by a picture I saw a few weeks ago.

... but Rishi Sunak or Donald Trump kissing blistered, calloused, guilty feet? Hardly. This was a display of humility that stood out as plainly weird.

Just before Easter, the Pope went to prison. In case you are wondering how you missed this extraordinary story, it wasn't of course that he had been convicted of some terrible crime, but on this occasion, he went to visit the Rebibbia prison in Rome. While there, the 87-year-old, increasingly frail pontiff, stepped out of his wheelchair, and bent down to wash the bare feet of twelve women prisoners, many of whom were in tears as he did so. There is an extraordinary picture of him with his eyes closed, kissing the right foot of one of the women, clothed in her grey prison tracksuit trousers, as if it was him who had the privilege in the encounter and not her.

When I saw this picture, it struck me how truly extraordinary this action was. Here is the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, performing an act of such staggering…. well, meekness, is the only word I can find for it - kissing the sweaty feet of criminal women, feet that had presumably led them into decidedly questionable places in the past, while doing so not reluctantly but gladly, thinking this was the most wonderful thing he could ever do.

I tried to imagine the residents of other grand buildings - the American president, the UK's Prime Minister, the leader of the European Union, the President of China, or the CEO of Google doing something similar. And couldn't. I could imagine politicians visiting a homeless centre to dole out food for the social media coverage, but Rishi Sunak or Donald Trump kissing blistered, calloused, guilty feet? Hardly. This was a display of humility that stood out as plainly weird.

If I had been the Creator of all that exists, I would have made sure that the credit went where it deserved. Yet the world around us has precious few explicit reminders of God.

Yet was not entirely surprising, because humility is a distinctly Christian virtue. The Greeks were decidedly lukewarm about it. Aristotle wrote: “With regard to honour and dishonour the mean is proper pride, the excess is known as a sort of ‘empty vanity’, and the deficiency is undue humility…” Humility was appropriate for slaves but not for noble-born people, certainly not for political leaders, leaders of multinational giants – or popes for that matter.

Yet Christians have always valued humility. One of the New Testament writers says: “Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.” So why does God show favour to the humble?

The answer is, I think, surprising. It is not that God is majestic and demands humility from us measly creatures. It is that, in the Christian understanding, God is humble. Even though he appears to have not that much to be humble about. If the phrase that captures the understanding of Allah in Islam is ‘God is Great’, the main claim of Christianity is that ’God is Love’. And love cannot be proud or arrogant. It has to be humble.

The God Christians believe in doesn’t draw attention to himself, and doesn’t shout about his own qualities. Instead, he leaves it to others to do that for him. That fits with the way the world is made. If I had been the Creator of all that exists, I would have made sure that the credit went where it deserved. Yet the world around us has precious few explicit reminders of God. There is no signature written in the sky, billboards or flashing neon lights saying ‘Made by God, just for YOU!’. In fact it is quite possible to go through life and completely miss God altogether.

If there is a God, he seems oddly reticent, unwilling to advertise his existence, or as the prophet Isaiah put it, perhaps in a moment of frustration many centuries ago, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself.” This theme, of the ‘hidden God’ has fascinated theologians and philosophers from St Paul to Martin Luther, from Blaise Pascal to Søren Kierkegaard.

Even when God does reveal himself, in the arrival on the human scene of Jesus Christ, even then he is oddly hidden. Jesus was perplexingly reluctant to identify himself as God. He didn’t by and large go around saying “Look at me, I am divine!” It was possible to meet Jesus of Nazareth face to face and go away thinking he was just another Jewish rabbi or teacher. In fact, he was more likely to be found acting out the role of a servant, washing the feet of his friends, providing them with food, living a wandering homeless existence, dying on a criminal’s cross, than doing important things like wearing robes, exerting political power or living in palaces. Nowhere does God appear to us unmistakably. He is not an in-your-face kind of God. He seems, odd though it is to say it, quite shy. Or perhaps the best word is simply: humble.

So what the Pope did in that Italian prison may have been unlike any other ruler. Yet on another level it was just like the ultimate ruler of all things.