Most of the reports and papers are printed, published and distributed by Russell-Spencer Ltd., a redundant family company owned and controlled by Spencer and his wife. This company meets all the associated costs as well as IT and telephone costs, and the cost of insuring the collection. This work for the PRC has been the only activity of the company since 1 January, 2005. It has made a Corporation Tax loss each year since then, aggregating £10,789 on 31 March, 2011. The Spencers have made a series of interest-free unsecured loans to the company to keep it solvent. The Spencers also meet all the establishment costs of the PRC, which is located in their home.
Since 2007 Spencer has paid £10,500 into the Trust’s bank account under Gift Aid, mainly in order to build up a reserve towards the costs of packing, delivering and indexing the Newman Collection, destined for the University of Durham. These monies have been invested and provide an income to meet minimal expenses of the Trust: purchases of books and journals, postage and trustees’ travel expenses. The Spencers provide accommodation cost-free. Russell-Spencer Ltd. meets all other costs. The Trust could do much more if it had other sources of financial and material support and will be glad to hear from charities and foundations interested in assisting it, and from individuals offering support under Gift Aid.
The PRC occupies the attic floor of a large private house two miles from Taunton. The Newman Collection incorporates what was inherited from the NDS in 1964, and all that has been acquired since by Spencer. The library has a particularly strong collection of religious directories (Protestant as well as Catholic) covering not only the British Isles but also the rest of the world. An Annotated Bibliography of Newman Demographic Survey reports & papers, 1954-1964, was published in 2006. A draft bibliography of PRC reports & papers, 1964-2009 (including a register of work in progress) was prepared for the PRC Trustees but has not yet been edited for publication.
The archives filing system has followed the same model since 1953, but due to lack of space and time it is often very difficult to find papers that are known to exist. The Third World archive is stored in two garages and is not accessible.
The databank consists of schedules, questionnaires, pre-perforated needle-sort Mc Bee cards, 80 column punch cards, microfilms, CDs, data on the computer hard-drive, and card indexes. Three quarters of the McBee cards relating to the 1961 Census of Clergy & Religious were lost in N. Ireland, and a small fraction of the 1957 YCW survey questionnaires have been damaged by rising damp.
The Newman Collection is open to established researchers and journalists by prior appointment.
The PRC has the use of the IT and printing equipment, and office and library furniture, of Russell-Spencer Ltd., a redundant family company owned by the Spencers, which prints, publishes and distributes all NDS and PRC reports and papers. The financial resources of the PRC Trust are set out in its annual reports and accounts. Spencer is the Hon. Secretary of the Trust and its only full-time researcher.
Anthony Spencer
Spencer, Principal of the PRC since March, 1964, continues to manage the completion, editing and publication of NDS and PRC reports and papers. Both the NDS and the PRC have had a pragmatic approach. Unexpected but urgent calls for assistance have not been sent to the back of the job queue. If assessed as important they have been given priority. As a result, many interesting and worthwhile jobs have been put on hold, to be resumed later. When the NDS was shut down at short notice early in 1964 the work being done by perhaps a hundred volunteers came in most cases to a sudden halt. There was little point in completing them later as there was a general ban on publishing anything without permission. So they could only be circulated privately. This situation ended early in 2005 when the Catholic Bishops’ Conference declassified all NDS reports and papers. Since then a considerable number of NDS reports and papers have been formally published, but large numbers wait in the editorial queue. Much larger numbers represent jobs that were ‘in progress’ early in 1964 but need a great deal of further work before publication can be considered. The same pragmatism applied to the work of the PRC, particularly in N. Ireland where the focus was on conflict resolution. There remain a huge number of NDS and PRC jobs to be completed, reports drafted and then published.
Moreover, in December, 2009, Spencer’s wife had a severe stroke and now requires a great deal of his time as her carer, and as manager of the household and a large garden. The Trustees have accepted that work programmes and publication targets are no longer practicable.
Drafts are circulated to the Trustees for comments and suggestions. As Hon. Secretary, Spencer prepares a detailed report on his work for discussion at the two Trustees’ meetings each year, usually held at Heythrop College, by courtesy of the Principal. Now that arrangements have been made to transfer most of the library, databank and archives to Durham University and other institutions, attention has to be given to the identification, cataloguing, arrangement and weeding of files in the archives, disposal of unwanted items in the library and storage of items in the databank. The destination of the Third World Collection (on the educational, health and social action work of Christian Church-related agencies in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Latin America) has yet to be settled.
The NDS was an agency of the Newman Association of Great Britain. It was founded in 1953 by Spencer and led by him until 1964. It recruited a large number of Catholic graduates and professionals with a social science or statistical background – up to 200 at the peak – working on a voluntary basis. Initially it focused on the size and age structure of the Catholic population, and the carrying out of a census of Catholic schools in January, 1955. Later that year it published estimates of the numbers of Catholic children, and the numbers in Catholic schools, both by age.
By 1955 it was clear that the Catholic Church’s pastoral and population statistics system needed a complete rationalisation. This started in 1956 and was completed by 1960. Reflecting its practical objectives the NDS prepared a planning study late in 1955 of the capacity of the Catholic teacher training system, and in 1958 was commissioned by the Catholic Education Council (CEC) to prepare another in the context of the impending massive expansion of teacher training in the country as a whole. This was completed in December, 1958, and had major consequences for the expansion of the Catholic colleges. The study also informed the Government decision, embodied in the 1959 Education Act, to halve – from 50% to 25% - the Catholic community’s share in the cost of new Catholic schools.
The 1958 study required the engagement of a salaried statistician, and this was followed by a gradual increase in the staff to a dozen in 1963. The NDS diversified into other areas. Its school census was repeated in 1959, and then annually (it continues to this day). It rolled out a programme of school planning studies for LEA areas, developed methodologies for parish censuses and parishioner records systems. It undertook for the International Catholic Migration Commission in 1959-60 a study of the arrangements for the integration of Irish immigrants in England & Wales. It carried out with the Young Christian Workers in 1957 a very large interview survey of young people in urban areas, and in 1961 a census of Catholic clergy and religious. But in 1963 Spencer was invited by the Newman Association to read a conference paper. If not, the bishops would withdraw support. The CEC objected to the text of the paper and insisted that he should withdraw from the conference. He did not comply, and in December the Catholic Bishops withdrew their support. On March 1, 1964, the educational work of the NDS, and the collection, editing and tabulation of the pastoral statistics, were taken over by the CEC. Spencer took the rest of the work with him to Cavendish Square Graduate College, and continued to work there with a small team under the name of Pastoral Research Centre. Early in 2005 the Catholic Bishops’ Conference de-classified all NDS reports and papers, leaving the PRC free to publish them.
Anthony Spencer
The PRC was established by Anthony Spencer after the Newman Demographic Survey (NDS), its predecessor, was wound up in 1964. Like the NDS its object was to apply the social sciences in general, and social statistics in particular, to the mission of Catholic Christianity. During the 1960s it continued some of the research programmes of the NDS, such as parish censuses, but its geographical scope was widened – to include a documentary study of the educational, health and social action work of Christian Church agencies in the Third World (funded by the Ford Foundation), a study of the organisation of Catholic education in New Zealand (which led to the passage of the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act of the New Zealand Parliament in 1975), and work on pastoral and population statistics of the Catholic Church in Scotland.
The closure in 1969 of the Cavendish Square Graduate College, in London – Spencer’s academic base – forced the PRC to re-locate. It moved to Belfast in 1970. In 1975 it published a short but very revealing analysis of Catholic pastoral and population statistics of England & Wales. But for most of the 1970s and 1980s it was focused on Irish matters and in particular on conflict resolution by way of reducing the degree and extent of segregation in N. Ireland. Spencer was instrumental in the foundation of Lagan College, N. Ireland’s first planned integrated school, in 1981, and a PRC report in 1984 led to the development of a network of integrated schools throughout N. Ireland.
The PRC was inactive in the 1990s, while its library, archives and databank were in store in Belfast, but work was resumed in 2002 at its present home near Taunton. In 2004 it published an analysis of the Church’s pastoral and population statistics, 1958-2002. All of its published reports and papers are going to be made available for downloading and/or purchase. The PRC Trust was incorporated as a company limited by guarantee in March, 2007 (Reg. No 6184403) and is recognised as a charity by HMRC (Reg. No XT2956).
Its work up to now has been mainly directed at:
· the completion, editing and publication of NDS & PRC studies,
· the rationalisation of the pastoral & demographic statistics system of the Catholic Church in England & Wales, and its school statistics system,
· securing a permanent home for the Newman Collection (i.e. the NDS & PRC library, archives and databank) following the death or incapacity of Anthony Spencer.
Satisfactory arrangements have now been made for the preservation and future use of the Newman Collection, and of related collections. Read the Potted History
Anthony Spencer