Hewlett Johnson (25 January 1874 – 22 October 1966) was an English priest of the Church of England and Christian communist. He was Dean of Manchester and later Dean of Canterbury, where he acquired his nickname "The Red Dean of Canterbury" for his unyielding support towards Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union and its allies. Early life Johnson was born in Kersal as the third son of Charles Johnson, a wire manufacturer, and his wife Rosa, daughter of the Reverend Alfred Hewlett. He was educated at The King's School, Macclesfield and graduated from Owens College, Manchester, in 1894 with a Bachelor of Sciences degree in civil engineering and the geological prize. He worked from 1895 to 1898 at the railway carriage works in Openshaw, Manchester, where two workmates introduced him to socialism, and he became an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers. After deciding to do mission work for the Church Mission Society, he entered Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, in 1900 and later attended Wadham College, Oxford, where he gained a second in theology in 1904. The society rejected him because of his increasingly radical theological views, so he concentrated on training for priesthood and was ordained that same year. He became curate in 1905 and in 1908 a vicar of St Margaret's Altrincham. He and his first wife organised holiday camps for poor children and a hospital for returning World War I wounded soldiers in the town. His unconventional views on the war caused him to be refused employment as an army chaplain on active service but he officiated at a prisoner-of-war camp in his parish. He became an honorary canon of Chester Cathedral in 1919 and rural dean of Bowdon, Greater Manchester, in which area his parish lay, in 1923. An avowed Christian Marxist, Johnson was brought under surveillance by MI5 in 1917 when he spoke in Manchester in support of the October Revolution. Although he never joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, he became chairman of the board of its newspaper, The Daily Worker. His political views were unpopular but his hard work and pastoral skills led to him being appointed Dean of Manchester by Labour Party founder and then-prime minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. He was appointed Dean of Canterbury in 1931. The Socialist Sixth of the World Johnson came to public prominence in the 1930s when he contrasted the economic development of the