John Groser

St John Beverley Groser (23 June 1890 – 19 March 1966) was an English Anglican priest and prominent Christian socialist. Hannen Swaffer described him as "the best-known priest in the East End [of London " and Kenneth Leech wrote that he was "one of the most significant Christian socialist figures in twentieth-century Britain".

Early life and education Groser was born 23 June 1890 in Beverley, Western Australia, one of the English-born Phoebe (née Wainwright) and the American-born Thomas Eaton Groser's eleven children. His father was an Anglican missionary, serving as the local parish's rector and ministering to people on and around the cattle station where they lived. He wrote:

After finishing at Ellesmere, Groser spent six years with the Community of the Resurrection, studying at the College of the Resurrection toward ordination as well one year at the University of Leeds. Despite the socialistic teaching at the college, he remained seemingly oblivious to the problems associated with imperialism until his first curacy.

Military career and curacies in Newcastle and Cornwall Groser's first appointment after his diaconal ordination was a curacy in the slum parish of All Saints', Newcastle upon Tyne, from 1914 to 1919. Groser worked alongside his fellow curate and brother-in-law Jack Bucknall. While the parish's three priests were all socialists, Groser and Bucknall were substantially more radical than the vicar. On 9 August 1924, Langdon served Groser (and likely Bucknall as well) six months' notice of their termination, saying "it was evident that they were not working together in a way which would advance the work of the parish and expressing deep regret that he saw no other way out of the situation." In the following months, Langdon was replaced as vicar, allowing the curates' departure to be postponed.

Groser was dismissed in 1927 due to his left-wing activism, but his licence to officiate was restored the following year when he was made priest-in-charge of Christ Church, Watney Street, Stepney. While in Stepney, he served as president of the Stepney Tenants' Defence League until his resignation in 1940. In 1936, the British Union of Fascists (BUF) planned a march through the East End (which then had a large Jewish population). The Jewish People's Council organised a petition, calling for the march to be banned, and gathered the signature of 100,000 East Londoners in two days. Groser was part of the community delegation which presented the petition to the Home Office. The petition was unsuccessful so a counter-demonstration was planned; the clashes between the anti-fascists, police and fascists becoming known as the Battle of Cable Street. Groser was present that day, was hit several time by police truncheons and suffered a broken nose.

Christ Church was destroyed in the Blitz in 1941, and Groser and his congregation transferred to St George in the East. He remained there until 1948, when he took up an appointment as warden of the Royal Foundation of St. Katharine. He was appointed chaplain to the Bishop of London after Henry Montgomery Campbell's translation to the see in 1956. Groser died at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, in 1966, aged 75.

Outside of his priestly duties, Groser played Thomas Becket in the 1951 film Murder in the Cathedral, based on a play by T. S. Eliot. Writing for The New York Times, the reviewer Bosley Crowther praised his acting as "grandly dignified and benign".

Views Groser was an Anglo-Catholic. Both his secondary school and divinity school were high-church institutions, and he was also influenced by the Catholic Crusade movement of Conrad Noel, a fellow Christian socialist. Groser advocated a return to the festivals, music, dancing, and processions of the medieval English church, and implemented that to some extent with his own congregations. He believed Christianity (and only Christianity) could establish a "new social ethic" and would produce radical social change. A Christian socialist, Groser was influenced by Marxism to some extent, particularly its view of class struggle. He was prominent in the anti-fascist movements of the 1930s.

As he supported a Labour election candidate over a Communist candidate, Groser left Catholic Crusade and, in 1931, founded the League of the Redemption. The league merged with the Socialist Christian League in 1933.