19 Facts About Hewlett Johnson

Hewlett Johnson was an English priest of the Church of England and Christian communist.

Hewlett Johnson was Dean of Manchester and later Dean of Canterbury, where he acquired his nickname "The Red Dean of Canterbury" for his unyielding support towards Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union and its allies.

Hewlett Johnson was educated at The King's School, Macclesfield and graduated from Owens College, Manchester, in 1894 with a Bachelor of Sciences degree in civil engineering and the geological prize.

Hewlett Johnson worked from 1895 to 1898 at the railway carriage works in Openshaw, Manchester, where two workmates introduced him to socialism, and he became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Hewlett Johnson became curate in 1905 and in 1908 a vicar of St Margaret's Altrincham.

Hewlett Johnson became an honorary canon of Chester Cathedral in 1919 and rural dean of Bowdon, Greater Manchester, in which area his parish lay, in.

An avowed Christian Marxist, Johnson was brought under surveillance by MI5 in 1917 when he spoke in Manchester in support of the October Revolution.

Hewlett Johnson came to public prominence in the 1930s when he contrasted the economic development of the Soviet Union under the First Five Year Plan with Britain during the Great Depression.

Hewlett Johnson toured the Soviet Union in 1934 and again in 1937, claiming on each occasion the health and wealth of the average Soviet citizen and that the Soviet system protected the citizens' liberties.

Hewlett Johnson collected his articles in the book The Socialist Sixth of the World, which included a preface by the renegade Brazilian Roman Catholic bishop Carlos Duarte Costa.

Hewlett Johnson was arguably the most prominent of the Western church leaders who are said to have persuaded Joseph Stalin to restore the Moscow Patriarchate.

In 1954, the Daily Sketch published a cartoon attacking Hewlett Johnson, depicting him with devil horns and posing alongside black civil rights leaders Billy Strachan and Paul Robeson.

Hewlett Johnson's influence began to wane, particularly after public sympathy for the Soviets in Britain declined dramatically after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.

One year, Hewlett Johnson put up a huge blue and white banner across the front of the Deanery which read "Christians Ban Nuclear Weapons".

Hewlett Johnson denied those accusations and argued that he knew very well the difference between religion and politics.

Hewlett Johnson remarried in 1938 to Nowell Mary, daughter of his cousin George Edwards, with whom he had two daughters.

Hewlett Johnson retired as Dean of Canterbury in 1963, the year of his 89th birthday, but settled in the town where he lived at the Red House in New Street.

Hewlett Johnson died, at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital in 1966 aged 92.

Hewlett Johnson was buried in the Cloister Garth at Canterbury Cathedral.