Welsh Journals

1912-before even the vote was won-were formidable especially with Lansbury now outside the mainstream Labour organisations. Schneer's enthusiasm for his subject diverts attention from the very real dilemmas which socialists and feminists faced. Nonetheless, Lansbury's attempts to encourage a practical and radical Labour stance deserve recognition. If Schneer overstates the positive features of Lansbury's career, there is still much that is positive about the man and his political vision which has justifiably been stressed in this original, readable and broadly convincing book. DUNCAN TANNER Bangor A HISTORY OF ST. DAVID'S UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. LAMPETER. VOL. II, 1898-1971. By D. T. W. Price. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1990. Pp. 270. £ 12.95. The central theme of this second volume of D. T. W. Price's history of St. David's College, Lampeter, is a dogged struggle by the College to survive against a variety of adverse (even on occasion, as Price maintains, malevolent) circumstances. The turn of the century was not a propitious time: secular influences were sapping religious allegiance and, more immediately threatening, the Anglican Church in Wales feared doom by disestablishment. In fact, when it came in 1920, disestablishment, despite the loss of much of the Church's wealth, had no such disastrous consequences. Indeed, it could be argued that, since that time, the disestablished Welsh Church has flourished, and indeed fared better in the difficult circumstances of this century than its formerly much stronger nonconformist rivals. Although it had a handful of influential friends who gave support intermittently, and it received help on crucial occasions from the Governing Body of the Church, the College always had to operate on a narrow financial margin. None of its public appeals for help reached its target. Mercifully, it was classed as an educational not a religious foundation and thus did not forfeit its endowments by disestablishment. But these were meagre and every Principal was at his wits' end to make ends meet. Indeed, a talent for frugal management was a more important requirement for Lampeter Principals than academic distinction or religious piety. That is not to say that Lampeter has not had its share of distinguished scholars and clerics on its staff or among its alumni. The redoubtable T. F. Tout was professor of History there at one time and there have been plenty of bishops with a Lampeter pedigree. But such luminaries, lay and clerical, are exceptional, 'highly seasoned dishes', as Lord Sankey called them; whereas. Lampeter's chief function for a century and a half was to provide the Welsh Church with its 'bread and butter', the hundreds of ordinary clergymen who laboured, most of them diligently, in vicarages all over Wales and to some extent in England and overseas.