The RCs

The RCs (1967)
By George Scott | Hutchinson
ISBN: none
Condition: Good (theologically intact, lightly aged)
Offered by: Crappy Old Books

“RCs” here does not mean radio-controlled cars, nor a medical college, nor some obscure government committee. It’s 1967, and RCs = Roman Catholics – specifically, Roman Catholics in Britain, in that wonderfully tense moment when the 1960s, Vatican II, the Pill, the Beatles and Harold Wilson are all colliding at once.

Subtitled (in other listings) as “a report on Roman Catholics in Britain today,” this is journalist George Scott’s attempt to walk into the confessional of a whole subculture and say, politely but firmly, “Right, what’s actually going on then?”

What’s going on inside?

Scott is doing serious reportage, not devotional literature. Expect:

• A tour of Catholic Britain in the 60s:

  • Irish migrants and old English recusant families

  • Working-class parishes, grammar schools, convents

  • Priests, nuns, teachers, busy mothers and baffled teenagers

• Honest looks at the tensions of the time:

  • Tradition vs. change after Vatican II

  • Latin vs. English in the liturgy

  • Authority vs. conscience on things like contraception and marriage

• A sense of the Church as a tribe inside a tribe:

  • A minority in a largely Anglican / vaguely Protestant culture

  • Keenly aware of its own schools, socials, hierarchies and habits

  • Wondering how to be both fully Catholic and fully modern.

It’s part sociology, part reportage, part “state of the nation” snapshot through a very particular lens: incense, guilt, fish on Friday and a lot of parish halls.

The tone: curious, not confessional

Scott writes as:

• A reporter, not a preacher – his job is to ask, observe, prod, and capture.

• Someone who finds the RC world both fascinating and slightly odd, but never sneers at it.

• A guide who introduces you to:

  • bishops and parish priests

  • activists and ordinary pew-sitters

  • schoolkids who aren’t entirely sure about all this but are definitely sure about football.

This is 1960s “serious paperback” territory: smart, readable, opinionated, and very keen to explain “what it all means” for Britain going forward.

This particular copy

• Condition: Good – which, in Crappy Old Books parlance, means:

  • Solid binding, no pages performing their own Quiet Schism and breaking away.

  • Boards or dust jacket with the usual honest wear: a bit of rubbing, maybe a small tear or chip, gentle fading – the ecclesiastical equivalent of a slightly frayed cassock.

  • Pages all present, readable, and gently tanned with age: think “well-aged parish newsletter,” not “dead sea scroll.”

No catastrophic damage, no enthusiastic underlining with zealot energy—just a proper, vintage hardback that has seen shelves, not warfare.

Why you might actually want this

• You’re interested in religion as lived culture, not just doctrine – how a big global church looked at street level in 1960s Britain.

• You like books where a sharp-eyed outsider walks into an institution and politely, methodically takes its temperature.

• You’re into the whole “long 1960s” story – social change, secularisation, the reshaping of authority – and want the Catholic thread, not just the usual swinging-London narrative.

• You simply enjoy titles where a whole community gets reduced to initials, as if they’re a half-secret society.

It’s also the kind of book that makes you quietly dangerous at dinner parties:

“Well, if you look at contemporary reports on British Roman Catholicism, like Scott’s The RCs in ’67…”

…and now you sound like someone with a proper reading habit.

The vibe

Reading The RCs feels like:

• Being taken round 1960s Catholic Britain by a sharp, slightly wry tour guide who:

  • sits in on Mass

  • visits schools

  • interviews priests

  • and then tells you what he really thinks in the next chapter.

• Watching a Church trying to decide whether it’s:

  • fortress,

  • mission outpost,

  • or just another eccentric but enduring piece of the national patchwork.

• Realising that the debates of the time – identity, modernity, sex, authority – are very much still with us, just wearing different clothes.

It’s not pious comfort reading. It’s more like religious ethnography in a suit and tie.

Ideal for:

• Catholics, ex-Catholics and Catholic-adjacent onlookers

• Historians and sociology nerds who like primary-era commentary, not just hindsight

• Collectors of 1960s religious / social reporting

• Anyone amused by the fact that a penetrating “report on Roman Catholics in Britain today” is now quietly circulating through Crappy Old Books

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where the RCs are Roman, the analysis is 1960s-serious, the condition is Good, and the arguments about faith and modern life are still humming away between the covers.

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