Leyton Richards

Leyton Price Richards (12 March 1879 – 22 August 1948) was an English Congregational minister and prominent pacifist.

Early life Born in Ecclesall, Sheffield, in March 1879, Richards was a younger son of Charles Richards, a master clothier who in 1881 was employing 23 men there. After leaving school, he was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he graduated MA in 1903. He then trained as a Congregational minister.

Career Richards ministered for some years in Aberdeenshire, then about 1911 migrated briefly to Melbourne, Australia, where he had concerns about the workings of the Australian Defence Act 1910.

Returning to England, he was minister at Bowdon, Greater Manchester, until 1916, when he resigned after protesting against the Military Service Act 1916 and being fined £100. He was next appointed as Warden of the Quaker College at Woodbrooke.

From 1924, Richards was minister of the Carr’s Lane Congregational Church in Birmingham. He retired in 1939 on the grounds of poor health.

Richards became a member of the Fellowship and joined its National Committee, with Clifford Allen, Fenner Brockway, Alfred Salter, Aylmer Rose, Bertrand Russell, C. H. Norman, Catherine Marshall, Edward Grubb, John P. Fletcher, Morgan Jones, Will Chamberlain, and A. Barratt Brown.

Later work In 1925, Richards made a tour lasting three months of the United States, in the interests of better international understanding, speaking from many well-known pulpits on Sundays, and during the week speaking about world peace to various schools and societies throughout the US. In March he spoke at the Phillips Brooks House in Harvard Yard on behalf of the Fellowship of Youth for Peace, a recently founded nationwide body.

He went on to write several books on Christian pacifism.

Personal life In 1907, at Whitby, Richards married Edith Ryley Pearson. Their daughter Margaret Richards (1910—1996) was born in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. In January 1912, a second daughter was born while Richards and his family were living in Hawthorn, Victoria. A third daughter was born in 1916 in Salford, Manchester.

Richards died at his house in Mortimer Common, near Reading, on 22 August 1948. He left an estate valued at £8,755, and a widow, Edith Ryley Richards. She moved to Betchworth, Surrey, where she died in 1963.

Selected publications The Christian's Contribution to Peace (1935) The Christian's Alternative to War (1935) Realistic Pacifism: the Ethics of War and the Politics of Peace (Chicago and New York: Willett, Clark & Co., 1935) Conscription and Christian Obligations (1947) Christian pacifism after two world wars (1948) Kirisutokyō hisen heiwa shugi (Tokyo: Shinkyō Shuppansha, 1952) (in Japanese)