Tithe War is the forgotten story of almost 100,000 tithe-paying farmers and landowners whose fight for a just and equitable end to an archaic tax spanned the inter-war years of the 20th century. The tithe system brought ruin to thousands of small farming families, already in the depths of agricultural depression, and opened a bitter and lasting gulf between rural parishes and their clergy.
It affected many parts of England and Wales indiscriminately, but it was the Great Tithes of East Anglia and the hop tithes of Kent that gave rise to the leaders of the tithe-payers’ revolt. They took on the Establishment long before it was fashionable or easy, and their persistence and dedication to the cause is only now being recognised.
Carol Twinch’s book is based on the unpublished archive of ‘AG’ Mobbs of Suffolk, one of the chief protagonists, and traces the final ‘war’ in the 4,000-year-old history of the tithe.