All gas and gaiters as Runcie has them feuding in the aisles

A biography of Lord Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, yesterday became an excuse for the Church of England's feuding of the Eighties to resume as if it had never left off.

The Archdeacon of York, the Ven George Austin, accused Lord Runcie of conniving at sexual immorality in an unnamed theological college. The former archbishop's memoirs are expected to reflect his own view, expressed privately to several friends, that the traditionalist party in the Church of England cannot be taken seriously so long as one of its leaders is the Archdeacon, whom he regards as a pompous rent-a-quote.

In an article in the Observer, Archdeacon Austin rehearses the old arguments against Lord Runcie as being a scheming ditherer "who sits on the fence with both ears nailed to the ground" but also accused him of being unable to tolerate criticism. He said that when he had denounced to the Archbishop the regime at one theological college, where students were allowed to spend the night with boy- or girl-friends, Lord Runcie simply passed the letter on to the principal of the college concerned. He in turn returned it to Lambeth Palace, with a note that said the Archdeacon's interest in other people's sexuality said more about his own sexuality than that of the college. Lord Runcie apparently sent this reply on to the Archdeacon, with a note of his own to say "serve you right".

The Archdeacon is still upset.

The differences of opinion may echo the BBC's popular "comedy in the cloisters" of the late Sixties, All Gas and Gaiters, which lampooned the conflicts within the Church, but it also illustrates the curious mixture of respect for institutions and disregard for traditions which was very characteristic of Lord Runcie. Respect for institutions means, among other things, that you do not sneak, as George Austin's informants had done. Lord Runcie is a man who both enjoys gossip and expects it to stay private.

That is how he got into such a mess over this latest biography, when he talked at length into Humphrey Carpenter's tape-recorder in the period of sudden depressurisation that followed his departure from office in 1991. The world in which he grew up was one in which such confidences stayed inside a magic circle, at least until after their author was dead.

He had been a history don, and in many ways wishes he had remained one. He is extraordinarily sensitive about the fact that he used speechwriters. It is a perfectly sensible thing for an archbishop to do but it would be a disgrace for a don.

It was as a former historian as well as a flattered archbishop that he approached Humphrey Carpenter. He wanted a book that would do justice to his role at the heart of the establishment during the Thatcher years. Such a book would have required access to government archives and to the memoirs of his enemies. It could not have been a straight biography. This confusion does not appear to have occurred to him until too late.

According to Mr Carpenter it was Lord Runcie's wife, Lindy, who first read and was alarmed by the book. "He didn't read it at once when I gave him the first draft. He went to America with it on one of his trips, and finally Lindy read it. People thought that nuclear testing had been resumed, by the sound of the explosions in St Albans."

Lord Runcie clearly felt that respect for institutions meant that you did not denounce a theological college behind the principal's back. It is worth noting that when he himself ran a theological college, married students were allowed there, but they could only see their wives for tea on Saturday. He slowly liberalised the regime.

The conflict between tradition and institutions also makes sense of the former archbishop's agonisings and hesitations over the ordination of women, which was finally decided after he had gone, in 1992. He came to believe in it. He found that the tradition of the church was not an insuperable bar to female priests. At the same time, he could see that the Church of England as an institution would be damaged by it. These two tendencies made it impossible for him to support wholeheartedly either side.

Now that there are female priests, it is clear that Lord Runcie was right both to support them and to fear them. The prophecies made by people such as Archdeacon Austin, that a thousand priests would leave over the issue, can now be seen as alarmist - perhaps 300 have in fact left. Lord Runcie himself told me, at the time, that he thought no more than 50 would.

But many shrewd observers had the impression that he never believed the legislation he brought forward would be passed. That is why it offered unworkable safeguards for the opponents of female priests.

That sort of institutionalised misogyny also shaped the peculiar homosexual culture which flourished until driven out by the consequences of the decision to ordain women. During Runcie's primacy, some of the most important posts in the General Synod and the Anglican Communion were held by gays, and there were times when he felt they were acting in concert against him, especially in the aftermath of the Crockford's scandal, when an anonymous preface attacking him with lucid savagery was written by one gay, commissioned by another, and defended at length by a third. Two of the men involved he had considered friends. This is what lay behind his remark to Humphrey Carpenter that "I've enjoyed their friendship, but I've always been conscious that they might stab me in the back because I wasn't one of them".

However, most of the homosexual clergy in the Church of England seem to have regarded him as a friend and protector, and certainly as an improvement on his successor, Dr George Carey, who would clearly prefer it if none of them existed.

Letters, page 13

A biographer's view, page 15