The Christian Socialist Movement, or CSM, is a socialist society affiliated to the British Labour Party.
The CSM was an amalgamation of the Society of Socialist Clergy and Ministers and the Socialist Christian League. R. H. Tawney made one of his last public appearances at the Movement's inaugural meeting on 22 January 1960. Donald Soper chaired the Movement until becoming its President in 1975.
The movement fulfilled a need among political activists on Christian left in Britain for an organisation that would be politically engaged and theologically reflective at the same time. It affiliated to the Labour Party in 1988.
The CSM was a volunteer organisation until 1994 when it appointed a co-ordinator, followed by an administrator. This followed interest in the movement following the disclosure that the then Labour Leader John Smith was a member.
Today the CSM has over 40 members in the House of Commons and House of Lords and the former prime minister Gordon Brown. As of April 2009, its Director is Andy Flannagan; its Executive Committee Chair is Alun Michael; its Vice Chair is Helen Dennis.
CSM is a member organisation of the International League of Religious Socialists.
Famous quotes containing the words christian, socialist and/or movement:
“My Christian friends, in bonds of love, whose hearts in sweetest union join,
Your friendship’s like a drawing band, yet we must take the parting hand.
Your company’s sweet, your union dear; Your words delightful to my ear,
Yet when I see that we must part, You draw like cords around my heart.”
—John Blain (18th century)
“Men conceive themselves as morally superior to those with whom they differ in opinion. A Socialist who thinks that the opinions of Mr. Gladstone on Socialism are unsound and his own sound, is within his rights; but a Socialist who thinks that his opinions are virtuous and Mr. Gladstone’s vicious, violates the first rule of morals and manners in a Democratic country; namely, that you must not treat your political opponent as a moral delinquent.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty.... Here was every sensuous curve of the “human figure divine” but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.”
—Edward Weston (1886–1958)