When a
Catholic priest runs off with the bride at whose wedding he officiated
just two weeks before, it inevitably causes a scandal.
Even more so when the priest Frederick Hattersley and his lover Enid O’Hara became parents a little over a year later to a child who will become one of the towering and most popular political figures of the late 20th century.
Lord Hattersley’s latest version of how he came into being is
altogether racier than a slightly more anodyne tale he first learnt upon
his father’s death in 1973.
Even more so when the priest Frederick Hattersley and his lover Enid O’Hara became parents a little over a year later to a child who will become one of the towering and most popular political figures of the late 20th century.
But only now can the full story
of how Lord Hattersley’s father snatched his mother from her husband can
be disclosed.
In a new book written by the Labour Party’s former deputy
leader, he reveals the astonishing family saga that eventually led to
his father being excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
Lord
Hattersley never knew about his father’s past during his lifetime. For
years he thought Frederick Hattersley, despite his extraordinary
in-depth knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church and the arcane
workings of the Vatican, had been a local government clerk or else
unemployed.
But upon his death, he received a condolence letter from a bishop informing him that his father had been a Catholic priest.
But upon his death, he received a condolence letter from a bishop informing him that his father had been a Catholic priest.
At the
time Enid Hattersley was married to John O’Hara, a miner. She told her
son, then aged in his 40s, that she had left her first husband after
falling in love with the priest when he arrived at her workplace at the
local coal merchant’s to order a delivery of coal.
Over time, the two grew fond of each other and eventually Enid and Frederick ran off.
Or at least that’s how Enid Hatterlsey, who went on to become Lord Mayor of Sheffield, told it.
Over time, the two grew fond of each other and eventually Enid and Frederick ran off.
Or at least that’s how Enid Hatterlsey, who went on to become Lord Mayor of Sheffield, told it.
But
the new version - told in Roy Hattersley’s latest book The Catholics, a
study of the Catholic Church in Britain since the Reformation - is even
more scandalous.
Writes Lord Hattersley in the book’s introduction: “My father - parish priest of St Joseph’s church in Shirebrook, Nottingham - had met my mother after he agreed to ‘instruct’ her for admission to the Catholic Church in anticipation of her marriage to a young collier.
“Father Hattersley had performed the wedding ceremony. Two weeks later the priest and the bride ran away together. For the next forty-five years they lived in bliss - married after my mother’s first husband died in 1956.”
O’Hara, wishing to avoid being at the centre of the scandal, also moved on. He died intestate in Mansfield in July 1956. His estate valued at £373 12s 10d was left to his ex-wife, suggesting he never remarried nor had children.
Frederick and Enid Hattersley finally married a few months later, prompting his ex-communication because in the Church’s eyes he was still a priest and forbidden to marry.
Lord Hattersley was only told the true story after a meeting with the Bishop of Nottingham, which the former Labour politician had arranged as part of his research for a novel loosely based around his father’s life story as he then understood it.
Writes Lord Hattersley in the book’s introduction: “My father - parish priest of St Joseph’s church in Shirebrook, Nottingham - had met my mother after he agreed to ‘instruct’ her for admission to the Catholic Church in anticipation of her marriage to a young collier.
“Father Hattersley had performed the wedding ceremony. Two weeks later the priest and the bride ran away together. For the next forty-five years they lived in bliss - married after my mother’s first husband died in 1956.”
O’Hara, wishing to avoid being at the centre of the scandal, also moved on. He died intestate in Mansfield in July 1956. His estate valued at £373 12s 10d was left to his ex-wife, suggesting he never remarried nor had children.
Frederick and Enid Hattersley finally married a few months later, prompting his ex-communication because in the Church’s eyes he was still a priest and forbidden to marry.
Lord Hattersley was only told the true story after a meeting with the Bishop of Nottingham, which the former Labour politician had arranged as part of his research for a novel loosely based around his father’s life story as he then understood it.
Lord
Hattersley, 84, told The Telegraph: “My parents met when he was
instructing her to join the Catholic Church, they fell in love and they
decided nothing could be done about it. He officiated at the wedding
ceremony and they ran away two to three weeks later.
“My father and I were very close. It was a very hard act for him to walk away from the church and I was very proud of him for doing that.”
Lord Hattersley has alluded to the extraordinary affair before, writing a new introduction to his 1983 autobiography A Yorkshire Boyhood as long ago as 2001 following the death of his mother in May that year.
When Enid died in 2001 at the age of 96, obituaries recorded the slightly more sanitised version of events.
“She [Enid] kept house for her invalid mother, although she had by then married a miner called John O’Hara,” wrote The Telegraph, “When she was 27, however, Fr Frederick Hattersley (always known as Roy, his second name) called to order winter coal for his presbytery. After a brief courtship conducted perforce in secret, they decided to marry.”
“My father and I were very close. It was a very hard act for him to walk away from the church and I was very proud of him for doing that.”
Lord Hattersley has alluded to the extraordinary affair before, writing a new introduction to his 1983 autobiography A Yorkshire Boyhood as long ago as 2001 following the death of his mother in May that year.
When Enid died in 2001 at the age of 96, obituaries recorded the slightly more sanitised version of events.
“She [Enid] kept house for her invalid mother, although she had by then married a miner called John O’Hara,” wrote The Telegraph, “When she was 27, however, Fr Frederick Hattersley (always known as Roy, his second name) called to order winter coal for his presbytery. After a brief courtship conducted perforce in secret, they decided to marry.”