Labour and the Caucus : Working-Class Radicalism and Organised Liberalism in England, 1868-1888 [1 ed.] 9781781385654, 9781846319440

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Labour and the Caucus Working-Class Radicalism and Organised Liberalism in England, 1868–88

s t u d i e s i n l a b o u r h i s t ory 3

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Studies in Labour History ‘...a series which will undoubtedly become an important force in re-invigorating the study of Labour History.’ English Historical Review Studies in Labour History provides reassessments of broad themes along with more detailed studies arising from the latest research in the field of labour and working-class history, both in Britain and throughout the world. Most books are single-authored but there are also volumes of essays focussed on key themes and issues, usually emerging from major conferences organized by the British Society for the Study of Labour History. The series includes studies of labour organizations, including international ones, where there is a need for new research or modern reassessment. It is also its objective to extend the breadth of labour history’s gaze beyond conventionally organized workers, sometimes to workplace experiences in general, sometimes to industrial relations, but also to working-class lives beyond the immediate realm of work in households and communities.

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Labour and the Caucus Working-Class Radicalism and Organised Liberalism in England, 1868–88

James Owen

L I V ER POOL U N I V ER SI T Y PR ESS

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Labour and the Caucus Cover illustration: ‘No Third Class!’ by John Proctor, published in Judy: or The London serio-comic journal, 11 November 1868, p. 26. The figures shown in the carriage from left to right are: J. S. Mill, Lord John Russell, George Goschen (almost certainly) and Robert Lowe. The guard is Thomas Hughes, the stoker John Bright and the driver William Gladstone.

First published 2014 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2014 James Owen The right of James Owen to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available ISBN 978-1-84631-944-0 cased Web PDF eISBN 978-1-78138-565-4 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed and bound by Booksfactory.co.uk

Contents Contents

Acknowledgements vii Abbreviations ix

Introduction 1 1. The Struggle for Political Representation: Labour Candidates and the Liberal Party, 1868–76

2. Activism, Identity and Networks: Urban and Rural WorkingClass Radicalism, 1868–74

24 61

3. Labour’s Response to the Caucus: Class, America and Language, 1877–85 91 4. Tensions and Fault Lines: The Lib-Lab MPs, the Wider Labour Movement and the Role of Irish Nationalism, 1885–8 5. Rethinking the ‘Revival of Socialism’: Socialists, Liberals and the Caucus, 1881–8

121 155

Epilogue 186

Appendix I

Appendix II

196

209

Bibliography 213

Index 231

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For my parents

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Acknowledgements Acknowledgements

During the period in which this book was conceived, researched, and written, I have been generously supported by colleagues, institutions, friends, and family, and it is a pleasure to take this opportunity to give them my deepest thanks. Following the completion of my doctoral thesis, I was fortunate to have the continuing encouragement of Alastair Reid, my supervisor, and Chris Wrigley, my external examiner, as I pursued a career in academia. Both of them have read chapters of this book, and I thank them for their continued interest in my work. As a fledgling academic, I was very lucky to work alongside especially supportive colleagues, so I would like to thank Richard Crane and Michael Sistrom at Greensboro College, North Carolina, and Edward Bujak, David Green, Gordon Kingsley and Helen Snow at Harlaxton College, the British Campus of the University of Evansville, Indiana. In the initial planning stages of this book I benefited greatly from the advice of Eugenio Biagini and Jon Lawrence, and the insightful comments of the anonymous reader for Liverpool University Press helped shape the final version. I am also grateful to Robert Saunders for sharing his expertise with me. During the writing of this book, I have been lucky enough to discuss my ideas with my friends and colleagues at the History of Parliament. Stephen Ball and Henry Miller have been ever-reliable sounding boards, and Philip Salmon, the editor of the House of Commons, 1832–1945 project, has been a tremendous source of advice and wisdom. I want to give special thanks to Kathryn Rix, who has read the majority of this book, and whose criticism, insight, and unflagging support have proved invaluable. My thanks also to Don MacRaild for first putting me in touch with the Society for the Study of Labour History, Alan Campbell for his faith in the project, and Alison Welsby at Liverpool University Press for helping me see it through to its completion.

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The research for this book was undertaken at a variety of libraries and institutions and I am pleased to record my appreciation. My thanks go to the archivists and staff of the following institutions for allowing me to consult material in their possession: Birmingham University Library, the Bishopsgate Institute, Bristol University Library, the British Library (St Pancras and Colindale), the British Library of Political and Economic Science, Hull Local Studies Library, the Institute of Historical Research, Newcastle City Local Studies Library, Nottingham Local Studies Library, Nottingham University Library, Nottinghamshire Archives, Sheffield Archives, Sheffield Local Studies Library, Sheffield University Library, and the Tyne and Wear Archives. I am also very grateful to the Institute of Historical Research for granting me a Scouloudi Foundation Historical Award to complete the research for this book, and to the British Academy for awarding me a Small Research Grant. Closer to home, I would not have been able to complete this book without the unwavering support of my wife, Kelly Cyr, whose love and confidence in me have made all the difference. I would also like to thank Richard and Jennifer Cyr for being such wonderful hosts as I wrote a portion of this book at their home in Grapevine, Texas. Finally, my career in academia would simply not have been possible without the steadfast support and encouragement of my parents, Robert and Wendy Owen, to whom this book is dedicated.

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Abbreviations Abbreviations

BLA CDC DF DMA HRCGB IDA ILP INL LEA LLL LNALL LRC LRL LTRA LWMA NALU NLA NLF NMA NRL SDF SLP TUC UCRLA

Birmingham Liberal Association Central Democratic Committee (London) Democratic Federation Durham Miners’ Association Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain International Democratic Association Independent Labour Party Irish National League Labour Electoral Association Land and Labour League Lincolnshire and Neighbouring Amalgamated Labour League Labour Representation Committee Labour Representation League Land Tenure Reform Association London Working-Men’s Association National Agricultural Labourers’ Union Newcastle Liberal Association National Liberal Federation Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association National Republican League Social-Democratic Federation Scottish Labour Party Trades Union Congress United Committee of Radical and Labour Associations (Sheffield)

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Introduction Introduction

When Keir Hardie sought the Liberal nomination at the Mid-Lanark by-election in April 1888, his supporters claimed that his candidature was ‘a test question as to how far the professed love of the Liberal party for labour representation is a reality’.1 Following his rejection at the hands of the Mid-Lanark Liberal Association, and his subsequent heavy defeat as an independent labour candidate, it appeared that, for Hardie, the question had been answered. Addressing his supporters, he declared that your vote marks a turning point in history … There is such a thing as a policy of revenge, and the Labour party is just strong enough, not to win seats for itself, but to lose them [for] official Liberalism.2

Hardie’s attempt to mythologise his rejection and defeat was given added weight when, following the decision of the Attercliffe Liberal Association in Sheffield to select a local alderman and employer instead of a well-known local trade unionist for that division’s by-election in July 1894, Ramsay MacDonald wrote to Hardie that Liberalism and more particularly local Liberal Associations, have definitely declared against Labour, and so I must accept the facts of the situation and candidly admit that the prophecies of the ILP (Independent Labour Party) relating to Liberalism have been amply justified.3

For many labour activists, a local Liberal association, known pejoratively as the ‘caucus’, was their political bogeyman. When the Birmingham brassworker William John Davis was denied the Liberal nomination for a T. Threlfall to K. Hardie, 29 Mar. 1888, published in the Miner, Apr. 1888. 1 Miner, May 1888. 2 J. Ramsay MacDonald to K. Hardie, published in Labour Leader, 28 July 1894. 3

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local school board election, the chairman of his election committee dryly noted that ‘if an angel from heaven came down … unless he had the imprimatur of the Liberal Association he was unfit for office’.4 Supporters of labour representation in Parliament could be vitriolic in their condemnation of the caucus if it rejected a working man’s candidate. For them, ‘the question was whether the Liberal caucus should rule eternally as a despotic tyrant.’5 Subsequent labour autobiographies mythologised and entrenched this picture of the ‘dictatorial’ caucus causing working men to leave the Liberals and champion an independent Labour party. George Lansbury, who became leader of the Labour party in 1932, wrote that his break with Liberalism came in 1889 when, at the National Liberal Federation’s annual conference, he was ‘gently but firmly pushed down the steps’ when he tried to move a resolution in favour of the eight-hour day. ‘I said it was a conference, and a rank and filer like myself was entitled to be heard. But the caucus said otherwise’.6 The caucus was given an even more sinister undertone by Arthur Henderson’s biographer. Following his rejection by the Newcastle Liberal Association (NLA) in 1895, Henderson had apparently ‘seen the cloven hoof. The sight was not forgotten’.7 The relationship between working-class candidates and the caucus is seen as central to explaining the evolution of labour politics, with Hardie’s rejection at Mid-Lanark portrayed as a pivotal moment. For Michael Barker, the Mid-Lanark by-election was a ‘milestone along the stony road leading to total separation’ between labour and the Liberal party.8 This assumption remains an integral part of the narrative of the birth of the Labour party, with one of its most recent histories insisting that Hardie’s ‘adoption of independent Labour politics during the 1890s reflected … his irritation with [Liberal] local organisations for not conceding more candidacies to men like himself ’.9 In this context, Hardie’s attempt to mythologise his defeat at Mid-Lanark has been largely successful. The date of April 1888 is indelibly etched into histories of the Labour party. There are three fundamental problems with the attention given to Hardie’s campaign at Mid-Lanark and the uncritical assumption that the caucus was truly a monolithic obstacle to the achievement of labour Birmingham Daily Post, 19 Nov. 1875. 4 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 24 Aug. 1885. 5 G. Lansbury, My Life (London: Constable, 1928), pp. 72–3. 6 M.A. Hamilton, Arthur Henderson. A Biography (London: Heinemann, 1938), p. 30. 7 Henderson, though, remained a Liberal agent until after the turn of the century. M. Barker, Gladstone and Radicalism: The Reconstruction of Liberal Policy in Britain, 8 1885–1984 (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1975), p. 131. M. Pugh, Speak for Britain! A New History of the Labour Party (London: The Bodley 9 Head, 2010), pp. 24–5.

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representation in Parliament. Firstly, there was nothing intrinsically new about the tone of Hardie’s campaign and the rhetoric that followed. Nearly twenty years prior to this by-election, there were self-styled ‘labour’ candidates asserting, through actions and words, their independence from organised Liberalism. For example, at the Southwark by-election of 1870, George Odger, standing as a ‘working man’s candidate’, aggressively challenged the authority of organised Liberalism. Moreover, the discussion of the need for a ‘Labour party’ to fight organised Liberalism that followed Hardie’s defeat had occurred before. As early as 1873 the leaders of the Labour Representation League (LRL) told the ‘working men’ of the United Kingdom to ‘organize in your several constituencies, not as mere consenting parties to the doings of local wirepullers, but as a great Labour party’.10 The second major problem is that the notion of the caucus as labour’s political nemesis completely ignores the extent to which labour activists were pragmatic and flexible enough to put their misgivings aside and work with organised Liberalism when and where it suited them. Indeed, their ability and willingness to do this was shaped largely by the local political context. How ‘place’ mediated the relationship between the labour activist and the caucus is yet to be fully addressed. Third, the myths surrounding the caucus have not been properly exploded. The ‘caucus’ was not a fixed term to describe a precise model of party organisation. The term was a malleable one and therefore a useful and versatile weapon with which not only labour activists could attack Liberal opponents, but Liberals could defend themselves against the challenge of labour. The rhetorical value of the caucus needs to be understood. Labour and the Caucus addresses these three fundamental problems. In doing so, it provides not only a hitherto unwritten ‘prehistory’ of the Labour party between 1868 and 1888, but also a fresh examination of the evolution of the Liberal party and its ability to respond to the pressures of mass politics. The starting point of 1868 is apposite. The Second Reform Act of 1867 enfranchised ‘registered and residential’ male householders, giving the vote to thirty per cent of working men. This highly significant event presented both opportunities and challenges for the labour movement and the two main political parties. The two decades that followed witnessed a sustained and concerted campaign for working-class parliamentary representation from a range of labour organisations to an extent that was hitherto unseen in British political history. Moreover, the controversial introduction after 1868 of more sophisticated forms of electoral machinery, which became known as the ‘caucus’, to manage an expanded electorate exposed serious 10 A copy of the address, dated 17 Mar. 1873, is located in the Labour Representation League minute book, British Library of Political and Economic Science, London.

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fault lines between the labour movement and Liberalism. Although there are impressive accounts of labour’s shifting relationship with the Liberal party after 1888,11 the problematic nature of this relationship in the third quarter of the nineteenth century remains neglected. Critically, Labour and the Caucus does not offer a teleological interpretation of the rise of a parliamentary Labour party that began in 1868. Rather, this present study argues that the period between the 1868 general election and Hardie’s by-election at Mid-Lanark has to be seen in its own right, and not with any degree of inevitability about the course of labour politics. While the labour movement challenged official Liberalism’s claim to best represent the interests of the working classes, it was also willing to work with the Liberal party when and where this furthered its own ends. Labour and the Caucus therefore stresses the importance of the specific political context: labour’s attitude towards official Liberalism differed between urban and rural localities, and from local to national elections. Thus, by examining, in this twenty-year period, labour’s attitudes towards and interactions with organised Liberalism, it is possible to reject teleological assumptions about the rise of independent labour and instead focus on questions that remain about how working-class radicals and Liberals contested and negotiated power, and how this relationship changed over time. Labour candidates and party organisation before 1868 To appreciate the state of the relationship between the labour movement and official Liberalism in 1868, it is necessary to examine labour’s assertive stance towards mainstream party organisation in the three decades that preceded the Second Reform Act. As this brief discussion will indicate, labour activists from the late 1830s onwards bequeathed a legacy not only in tactics for challenging the control of the two main political parties in the sphere of electioneering, but also in the rhetoric of independence, particularly the discourse of a new, distinct ‘people’s party’. However, as will be shown, while the labour movement certainly equivocated over its relationship with middle-class Liberalism in the 1840s and 1850s, there were clear instances of co-operation between working- and middle-class radicals that prefigured the Lib-Labism of the 1870s and 1880s. 11 P.F. Clarke, Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); D. Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, 1888–1906 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983); D. Tanner, Political Change and the Labour Party, 1900–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); A. Chadwick, Augmenting Democracy: Political Movements and Constitutional Reform during the Rise of Labour, 1900–1924 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999).

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Before examining these legacies, it is important to note that the drive to establish local party organisations in order to reach out to an expanded electorate that followed the Second Reform Act was also not a new occurrence. As demonstrated by Philip Salmon, the post-1832 system witnessed a strong growth in party identities, particularly in reformed municipal elections, and this was underlined by the increasing realisation that electoral success lay in efficient registration of potential supporters.12 Following their loss of power in 1835, local Conservatives were particularly keen to establish party associations to co-ordinate the registration effort,13 though, as was the case with the Durham Conservative Association led by Lord Londonderry, the function of selecting candidates for parliamentary elections was largely the domain of the local landowner, who held the purse strings.14 Meanwhile, the Liberals, through Joseph Parkes and the Reform Association, the Anti-Corn Law League, and, from 1847, the freehold land societies, mounted a series of successful registration drives.15 Meaningful popular involvement in party organisation was evident in the Rochdale and Stockport Liberal associations in the 1850s (the Rochdale Reform Association having been first established in 1834), and to a certain extent in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester in the 1860s, but these were the exceptions.16 In many boroughs prior to 1868 (and after), the selection of Liberal candidates was in the hands of the leaders of the town council, who were mainly local industrialists, though, as was the case in Nottingham, this control over the selection process was consistently challenged.17 The Carlton Club (established 1832) and the Reform Club (1836) reflected some determination amongst the Westminster parties to co-ordinate electoral activity on a national scale, though local party associations fiercely protected their independence, a trend that was to later hamper the efforts of not only the National Liberal Federation (NLF) after 1877 but also the Labour Electoral Association (LEA) after 1886. 12 P. Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work: Local Politics and National Parties, 1832–41 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2002). 13 M. Cragoe, ‘The Great Reform Act and the Modernization of British Politics: The Impact of Conservative Associations, 1835–41’, Journal of British Studies, 47 (July 2008), pp. 581–603. 14 Durham Conservative Association, Report of the speeches delivered at the third anniversary dinner of the Durham Conservative Association (Durham: Francis Humble,1836), p. 25; J. Owen, ‘Durham North’, History of Parliament. The House of Commons, 1832–1868 (forthcoming). 15 M. Chase, ‘Out of Radicalism: The Mid-Victorian Freehold Land Movement’, English Historical Review, 106 (1991), p. 322. 16 J. Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party, 1857–68 (London: Pelican, 1972), pp. 131–53. 17 J. Owen, ‘Nottingham’, History of Parliament. The House of Commons, 1832–1868 (forthcoming).

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In the 1840s and 1850s the two main parties’ control over the process of elections was frequently subject to radical challenges. As the recent work of Malcolm Chase has demonstrated, the Chartist movement had a ‘direct engagement with the Westminster electoral process’, particularly through the work of their National Central Registration and Election Committee (NCREC), established in 1846. In addition to contesting the ‘theatrical arena’ of the hustings, explicitly designated Chartist candidates proceeded to the polls on nearly forty occasions between 1839 and 1860.18 Although labelled ‘Labour’s candidates’ by Feargus O’Connor, because of the required property qualifications to stand, only a small minority of these candidates were working class. However, the Chartist candidatures did prefigure a number of the tactical and strategic questions faced by the LRL and their candidates in the 1870s. For example, in 1841 O’Connor’s National Star urged Chartists to support Tories where they could not bring forward their own candidate, whereas Bronterre O’Brien rejected the notion of supporting any mainstream political party. In 1847, meanwhile, the NCREC endorsed nine Radical-Liberal candidates.19 This same tension was evident when the leaders of the LRL debated the extent of support they should give Liberal candidates, and when members of the LEA argued over the validity of including ‘working-class Tories’ in their organisation. The Chartist candidates’ rhetoric of independence also prefigured the labour movement’s attempts to articulate a separate identity for itself in the 1870s and 1880s.20 In 1848 William Lovett published A Proposal for the Consideration of the Friends of Progress, which urged the formation of a nationwide general association, outside the sphere of the Westminster parties, to pursue political and social change, a proposal that was later cited as an inspiration to the campaign of George Odger, who stood as a labour candidate at Southwark in 1870.21 Chartist rhetoric and propaganda emphasised this sense of separateness. For example, in 1852 the Star of Freedom declared that ‘a real People’s Party is now forming’.22 This Chartist rhetoric of ‘party’ was heightened by William Newton, the leader of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, who became the first independent working-class candidate to go to the polls when he stood for Tower Hamlets in direct opposition to three Liberals at the 1852 general 18 M. Chase, ‘“Labour’s Candidates”: Chartist Challenges at the Parliamentary Polls, 1839–1860’, Labour History Review, 74 (April 2009), pp. 64–89. 19 Chase, ‘Labour’s Candidates’, pp. 69, 76. 20 A. Taylor, ‘“The Old Chartist”: Radical Veterans on the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Political Platform’, History, 95 (2010), pp. 458–76. 21 W. Lovett, A Proposal for the Consideration of the Friends of Progress (London: John Cleave, 1848). 22 Star of Freedom and National Trade Journal, 25 Sept. 1852.

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election.23 Newton was unequivocal in his call for working men to enter Parliament, declaring that the rights of labour will never be fairly advocated … till a man from the ranks of labour … catches the eye of the Speaker of the House, and in burning words pours forth his woes, the sympathies and the aspirations of the toilers.24

Significantly, he was sceptical of the ability of the existing Radical members of Parliament to represent the labour interest, asking if ‘we had a House constituted of Brights, Humes [and] Cobdens, would they represent labour? No, they would continue true to their doctrine of mere commercialism’.25 Newton’s candidature was part of a wider conflict between the Engineers and the Association of Employers of Operative Engineers, underlining the fact that, as was the case in the 1870s and the early 1900s, the contested status of trade unions could provoke labour candidates to articulate the need for political independence. Defeated at the bottom of the poll, Newton subsequently urged the coming together of trade unionists, co-operators and veteran Chartists to form a ‘National Party’, whose sole aim would be the attainment of manhood suffrage, on the grounds that all other points of the Charter would follow once suffrage had been obtained. The plan never got off the ground, however, particularly as Ernest Jones, who commanded a greater following than Newton, was highly critical of the engineers and, more generally, of trade unionism.26 It is also important to note that the leaders of the labour movement who were the driving force behind the new political focus of trade unionism in the 1850s and 1860s went on to play a significant role in promoting labour candidatures in the 1870s under the auspices of the LRL. Central to this rise in political activity was the struggle of building workers in London to attain the nine-hour day, which led to the formation of the London Trades Council in 1859, the leaders of whom became known as the ‘Junta’. Traditional interpretations of this period have perpetuated the assumption, first put forward by the Fabians, that Chartism was incompatible with the new, ‘politicised’ trade unions, who were suspicious of the ‘socialistic meddling’ of Chartists, although more recent work has shown that such was not always the case.27 Similarly, as chapter five demonstrates, recent work on 23 F.E. Gillespie, Labor and Politics in England, 1850–1867 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1927), p. 100. 24 Operative, 10 Apr. 1852. 25 Star of Freedom and National Trade Journal, 8 May 1852. 26 ‘William Newton’, Dictionary of Labour Biography, II, ed. by J.M. Bellamy and J. Saville (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 270–6. 27 J. Belchem, ‘Chartism and the Trades, 1848–1850’, English Historical Review, 98 (1983),

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the fledgling socialist groups of the 1880s has shown their attitude towards trade unions to have been far more flexible than previously allowed by labour historians. Further driven to political action by the legal restrictions imposed on trade unions by the Master and Servant Law, the leaders of the ‘Junta’, who were initially supported by the Bee-Hive, edited by George Potter, formed the Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association in 1862, and in February 1865 helped to establish the Reform League. Moreover, at the 1865 general election, the working-class leaders of the Reform League effectively harnessed trade union resources to secure the return of advanced Liberals. The campaigns of the Reform League between 1865 and 1867 underlined a longer-term current of co-operation between working-class radicals and middle-class Liberals that could be traced back to the international campaigns of the 1850s. Working-and middle-class radicals were zealous in their advocacy of European nationalism, especially in the north-east of England, where Joseph Cowen, junior, the epitome of Tyneside radicalism, welcomed Hungarian nationalists, Polish exiles and championed the cause of Mazzini and Garibaldi.28 Meanwhile, the opposition to Palmerston following his conspiracy to murder bill, brought forward in response to the Orsini bomb plot, comprised a genuine coalition of working- and middleclass radicalism.29 The support the leaders of the labour movement gave to middle-class Liberals during the Reform League agitations therefore cemented already existing trends. However, the question of whether such co-operation was merely on the Liberals’ terms caused extreme unease in the labour movement and, as this study will demonstrate in its examination of labour’s attitude towards organised Liberalism, was a defining theme of popular politics in the 1870s and 1880s. The nature of the relationship between working-class radicalism and mainstream Liberalism has been keenly contested by historians of nineteenth-century popular politics, particularly in terms of how far the period between 1848 and the 1880s was marked by continuity or change. The next section examines these key historiographical debates.

pp. 558–87; D. Thompson, ‘Chartism and the Historians’, in her Outsiders: Class, Gender and Nation (London: Verso, 1993), pp. 27–30; Chase, ‘Labour’s Candidates’, pp. 79–80. 28 J. Allen, Joseph Cowen and Popular Radicalism on Tyneside 1829–1900 (Monmouth: Merlin Press, 2007), pp. 103–32. 29 K. McClelland, ‘England’s Greatness, the Working Man’, in C. Hall, K. McClelland and J. Rendall (eds), Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race, Gender and the Reform Act of 1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 80–1.

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Working-class radicalism, Liberalism and independent labour: the historiography Henry Pelling’s Origins of the Labour Party, first published in 1954, remains the classic text on the relationship between the labour movement and the Liberal party. For Pelling, the willingness of labour leaders to engage with Gladstonian Liberalism in the 1860s and 1870s was the product of a shared set of beliefs in political reform.30 Echoing this approach, Pelling’s contemporaries, Hugh Clegg, Alan Fox and Pat Thompson, viewed the small group of Lib-Lab MPs as an assertive rather than a quiescent presence in the Commons, who achieved significant industrial and political reform.31 The merits of this claim are supported by one of the latest histories of the trade union movement.32 Although Pelling’s work has continued resonance sixty years after its publication, I approach the relationship between the labour movement and the Liberal party from a different perspective. The implicit suggestion in Pelling’s Origins is that labour’s alliance with middleclass Liberalism was largely based on terms defined by the latter. The problem with this assumption is it that it cannot account for the extent to which the labour movement was able to adopt not only a flexible but also an assertive stance towards official Liberalism. This study argues that the variations in labour’s interaction with official Liberalism can only be understood by focusing on the specific context. Not only did ‘place’ mediate the relationship between working-class radicals and the Liberal party, but also a shift in the electoral context, for example from parliamentary to municipal, could drastically alter how a labour candidate interacted with organised Liberalism. Pelling’s work was the subject of a forceful challenge in the 1960s and 1970s from labour historians on the left who rejected the notion that working-class radicals, by allying themselves with the Liberal party, had achieved significant breakthroughs for the cause of labour. For Eric Hobsbawm, the years between 1848 and the 1880s represented a nadir for the advance of labour; a stagnant period of compromise that only ended with the politics of conflict heralded by the ‘Great Depression’.33 Central to much of the analysis of historians on the left was the ‘labour aristocracy’ thesis, 30 H. Pelling, The Origins of the Labour Party, 1880–1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. 1–7. 31 H.A. Clegg, A. Fox and A.F. Thompson, A History of British Trade Unions since 1889. Volume 1. 1889–1910 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 48–54. 32 A.J. Reid, United We Stand: A History of Britain’s Trade Unions (London: Penguin, 2004). 33 E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘Trends in the British Labour Movement since 1850’, in his Labouring Men: Studies in the History of Labour (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), pp. 316–43.

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which argued that a skilled, economically privileged stratum of the working class robbed the workforce of effective leadership through the acceptance of constitutional methods.34 This model was fiercely rejected by Pelling, who argued that there was little evidence for a separate labour elite who betrayed the cause of those supposedly beneath them. Moreover, the model grossly over-simplified the range of workers’ experiences.35 Nevertheless, the labour aristocracy thesis, and its link to wider debates concerning working-class acquiescence, continued to influence scholarship into the 1980s.36 Of all the works produced in the 1960s and 1970s that were shaped by the labour aristocracy thesis, Royden Harrison’s Before the Socialists is the most immediately relevant to this study. Examining the period between 1861 and 1881, Harrison, echoing the earlier work of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, reasserted the ‘discontinuity’ theory, arguing that the leadership of the ‘new model’ unions, particularly the London ‘Junta’, marked a new, distinct phase of ‘heightened self-confidence’ in which trade unionism was ‘concerned with its public image and its wider mission’. This concern with a rise up the social scale led to a bourgeois spirit among the leaders of the ‘Junta’, which in turn, led them to sell-out to mainstream Liberalism after the passing of the Second Reform Act.37 George Howell, as a paid electioneering agent of the Liberal party in 1868, came in for particularly harsh criticism, which Harrison reasserted in 1994, citing his ‘thoroughly false position’ as secretary to the parliamentary committee of the Trade Union Congress as further evidence of the ‘labour aristocracy’.38 In this context, Harrison seizes on the assumption in Pelling’s Origins, that labour’s alliance with the Liberals was largely defined on the latter’s terms. Although a pioneering work in its own right, the periodisation of Before the Socialists creates its own problems. Its adherence to the labour aristocracy thesis, and its assumption that 1881 marked an end to the caesura of the 34 E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘The Labour Aristocracy in Nineteenth-Century Britain’, in Labouring Men, pp. 272–315. 35 H. Pelling, ‘The Concept of the Labour Aristocracy’, in his Popular Politics and Society in Late-Victorian Britain (London: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 54–6. For a good overview of the debate see R. Gray, The Aristocracy of Labour in Nineteenth-Century Britain, c.1850–1900 (London: Macmillan, 1981). 36 For a good overview of the historiography of British labour in this period see J. Allen and M. Chase, ‘Britain: 1750–1900’, in J. Allen, A. Campbell and J. McIlroy (eds), Histories of Labour: National and International Perspectives (Pontypool: Merlin Press, 2010), pp. 76–8. 37 R. Harrison, Before the Socialists: Studies in Labour and Politics, 1861–1881 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 5. 38 Harrison, ‘Introduction to the Second Edition’, Before the Socialists (Aldershot: Gregg Revivals, 1994), pp. xlvii.

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rise of independent labour politics, gives undue weight to the significance of the ‘revival of socialism’. Reflecting Harrison’s work, the rise of socialism in England in the 1880s has traditionally been seen as a major turning point in the history of the labour movement. It is not difficult, therefore, to detect a trace of teleological intent in some of these earlier works, as their authors, influenced by the ‘forward march of labour’, have sought to trace the achievements of the ground-breaking post-war Atlee government back to the emergence of socialist groups in England in the 1880s.39 The problematic assumptions inherent in this approach have been successfully overturned by further research, which, by focusing on what preceded the socialist revival rather than followed it, have highlighted important linkages between mid-nineteenth-century radicalism and the socialist revival. Stan Shipley’s study of London’s clubs in the 1870s demonstrated how its lively debating culture nurtured an environment in which the capital’s fledging socialist organisations could emerge, while Mark Bevir, in an insightful essay, explained how the followers of Bronterre O’Brien, the Irish-born Chartist, shaped the policies of the Democratic Federation (DF), which evolved into the Social-Democratic Federation (SDF).40 Jon Lawrence, meanwhile, has revealed how socialist groups drew on elements of the radical tradition, particularly the Fabians, who, in their determination to forge an alliance between trade unionism and the radical tradition, played ‘a vital, if largely unwitting, role in the transition from Radicalism to independent Labour politics’.41 This view should not be overstated though, as the leaders of the LEA, who were the epitome of the link between trade unionism and the radical tradition, fundamentally rejected the Fabian strategy of permeating local Liberal associations.42 Notwithstanding some detailed scholarship on the socialist revival,43 it is fair to say that the historiography of the three 39 P. Adelman, The Rise of the Labour Party, 1880–1945 (Harlow: Longman, 1972); K. Laybourn, The Rise of Socialism in Britain, c.1881–1951 (Stroud: Sutton, 1997). Note the end dates in the titles of these two works. 40 S. Shipley, Club Life and Socialism in Mid-Victorian London (Oxford: History Workshop Pamphlet No. 5, 1971); M. Bevir, ‘The British Social Democratic Federation, 1880–1885: From O’Brienism to Marxism’, International Review of Social History, 36 (1992), pp. 207–29; M. Bevir, ‘Republicanism, Socialism and Democracy in Britain: The Origins of the Radical Left’, Journal of Social History, 34 (2000), pp. 351–68. 41 J. Lawrence, ‘Popular Radicalism and the Socialist Revival in Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 31 (April 1992), p. 179. 42 T.R. Threlfall, ‘The Political Future of “Labour”’, Nineteenth Century, 35 (1894), pp. 213–14. 43 For useful studies of the SDF see C. Tsuzuki, H.M. Hyndman and British Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961); M. Crick, The History of the Social-Democratic Federation (Keele: Ryburn Publishing, 1994); G. Johnson, Social Democratic Politics in Britain, 1881–1911 (Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellon Press, 2002). E.P. Thompson’s

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main socialist groups of the 1880s – the SDF, the Socialist League and the Fabian Society – remains patchy and uneven, and there is more to be done on not only the similarities and differences between them, but also the extent to which they disagreed within themselves.44 In this present study of the relationship between working-class radicalism and organised Liberalism, my analysis of the revival of socialism begins by challenging the assumption, which has been perpetuated by the existing historiography, that ‘in political terms, the Liberal party was seen as the biggest enemy of the socialist movement.’45 It is not difficult to see why this conclusion has been reached. The socialist organisations’ own publications, most notably the SDF’s Justice, repeatedly attacked what they perceived to be a nefarious Liberal party holding back the rise of socialism, while the autobiographies of early socialist pioneers served to mythologise the image of the plucky socialist activist taking on intransigent local Liberals.46 The work of June Hannam and Karen Hunt has played a critical role in demonstrating how such myths can be abolished. By revealing the ways in which the identities of socialist organisations were created by contemporaries, Hannam and Hunt have persuasively advocated the need for new narratives for the socialist movement.47 As will become clear from the analysis in chapter five, my own approach responds to this call by demonstrating what new light can be shed on the socialists’ interactions with organised Liberalism once we refocus from how the William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1955) remains the most detailed account of the Socialist League. For the Fabians see E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘The Fabians Reconsidered’ in his Labouring Men, pp. 250–71; M.  Cole, The Story of Fabian Socialism (London: Heinemann, 1963); A.M. McBriar, Fabian Socialism and English Politics, 1884–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); cf. M. Bevir, ‘Fabianism, Permeation and Independent Labour’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), pp. 179–96. 44 Three notable exceptions are L. Barrow and I. Bullock, Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); K. Hunt, Equivocal Feminists: The Social Democratic Federation and the Woman Question, 1884–1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); M. Bevir, The Making of British Socialism (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011). 45 G. Johnson, ‘Making Reform the Instrument of Revolution: British Social Democracy, 1881–1911’, Historical Journal, 43 (2000), p. 98. 46 For two useful discussions of socialist and labour autobiography see D. Tanner, ‘Socialist Pioneers and the Art of Political Biography’, Twentieth Century British History, 4 (1993), pp. 284–91; J. Lawrence, Speaking for the People: Party, Language and Popular Politics in England, 1867–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 259–61. 47 J. Hannam and K. Hunt, ‘Gendering the Stories of Socialism: An Essay in Historical Criticism’, in M. Walsh (ed.), Working out Gender: Perspectives from Labour History (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 102–18. See also J. Hannam and K. Hunt, Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s (London: Routledge, 2002).

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organisations described themselves, on to what their members actually said when addressing the people of late-Victorian Britain. The important links between earlier working-class radicalism and the socialist revival can be located in the broader continuity thesis, which has had a significant impact on the study of nineteenth-century popular politics. Published in 1991, Currents of Radicalism, a series of pioneering essays edited by Eugenio Biagini and Alastair Reid, argued that there was a ‘substantial continuity in popular radicalism throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century’, which reflected not only a radical dimension to Gladstonian Liberalism, but also ‘radical liberal elements’ behind the formation of the Labour party.48 The undoubted strength of the continuity thesis is that it unequivocally demonstrates that radicalism still had a voice after 1848, and a number of subsequent studies have explored how post-Chartist radicalism was a diverse and complex creed.49 Biagini, in his own work, has developed the continuity thesis, demonstrating how popular Liberalism echoed British radical traditions, while Reid, in a new history of trade unionism, states rather provocatively that, given the progress organised labour made under the stewardship of the Lib-Lab MPs, who were the epitome of the ‘radical liberal’ tradition, the ‘mystery’ of nineteenth-century politics was ‘why such a separate Labour party should eventually have been felt to be necessary at all’.50 Of course, nineteenth-century Liberalism was a hugely diverse creed, and so Gladstone, presented as a charismatic figure who could transcend such divisions and appeal to the ‘masses’, looms large in these debates.51 Indeed, in his recent work on the relationship between Irish nationalism and British democracy, Biagini, building on earlier work by Michael Barker, has sought to demonstrate that Gladstone’s decision to adopt Irish Home Rule helped to cement ‘the cultural and political 48 E.F. Biagini and A.J. Reid (eds), Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 1–4. 49 M. Finn, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics, 1848–1874 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); M. Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism, 1847–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); O. Ashton, R. Fyson and S. Roberts (eds), The Chartist Legacy (London: Merlin Press, 1999). For useful local studies that prefigured the continuity thesis launched by Biagini and Reid’s edited collection see K. Tiller, ‘Late Chartism: Halifax 1847–58’, in J. Epstein and D. Thompson (eds), The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working-Class Radicalism and Culture (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 311–44; B. Lancaster, Radicalism, Co-Operation and Socialism: Leicester WorkingClass Politics, 1860–1906 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1987). 50 Reid, United We Stand, p. 149. 51 C. Wrigley, ‘Gladstone and Labour’, in R. Quinault, R. Swift and R. Clayton Windscheffel (eds), William Gladstone: New Studies and Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 51–70.

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hegemony of the Liberal party on the British left’ and therefore retarded the emergence of an independent labour movement.52 Although the continuity thesis has clear merits, its failure to account for a series of tensions in the radical–Liberal alliance is a problem. As this present study will demonstrate, in the third quarter of the nineteenth century there were clear fault lines running through the relationship between workingclass radicalism and official Liberalism. Indeed, the emergence of a discourse concerning a ‘Labour party’ following the Liberal government’s Criminal Law Amendment Act, and the subsequent debate about the programme and membership of a ‘Labour party’ in the mid-1880s, arguably undermines Reid’s contention that it was a ‘mystery’ why it was felt that a distinct Labour party was needed.53 A number of important local studies have already shown clear tensions between working-class radicals and official Liberalism. Lawrence’s study of popular politics in Wolverhampton revealed that radicals and Liberals frequently clashed over the right to ‘represent’ the town’s constituencies, and that ‘the stranglehold of caucus organisation within the Liberal party’ was an important part of these tensions. In this context, the ‘continuity’ identified by Lawrence was radicalism’s ‘long-term distrust of party’, which ultimately played a part in ‘labour’s break with Liberalism’.54 The more recent work of Antony Taylor has further challenged the ‘untroubled unity’ of the radical–Liberal alliance, demonstrating that post-1848 Chartism in London exposed fault lines between metropolitan radicals and the reform agenda of the Liberals.55 Although these works are invaluable, it is dangerous to use one local case study to determine a national picture. To fully understand the shifting relationship between working-class radicalism and the Liberal party, the regional variations in labour’s attitude towards organised Liberalism must be understood. Indeed, the existing literature, taken as a whole, shows how locality affected such attitudes. For Biagini, the strength of Lib-Labism in the Durham coalfields revealed a popular Liberalism fuelled by the labour movement; for Taylor, London politics was home to a bitter struggle 52 E.F. Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876–1906 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 12–13; Barker, Gladstone and Radicalism, p. 96. See also T.W. Heyck, The Dimensions of British Radicalism: The Case of Ireland, 1874–1895 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), p. 26; D.A. Hamer, The Politics of Electoral Pressure: A Study in the History of Victorian Reform Agitations (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1977), pp. 315–17. 53 Reid, United We Stand, p. 149. 54 Lawrence, Speaking for the People, pp. 46–7, 173–7, 264. See also J. Belchem, Popular Radicalism in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 129–131. 55 A. Taylor, ‘Post-Chartism: Metropolitan Perspectives on the Chartist Movement in Decline 1848–80’, in M. Cragoe and A. Taylor (eds), London Politics, 1760–1914 (London: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 75–96; Allen, Joseph Cowen, pp. 103–32.

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between radicals and Liberals to seize control of the progressive agenda; for Lawrence, local politics in Wolverhampton witnessed a fledgling Labour party attempting to reach out to a constituency of workers more closely aligned to the Conservatives than the Liberals. Any attempt, therefore, to offer a definitively ‘national’ picture of labour’s relationship with Liberalism is fraught with difficulty and, given the clear regional variations, lays itself hostage to fortune. This is not to say, of course, that the national picture is not relevant. Indeed, the tension between the national and the local is critical to understanding the attempts of the labour movement to further its own political causes.56 As will be shown, not only did localism pervade the labour movement, with local trade organisations reluctant to embrace any attempt at national co-ordination, but labour leaders were frequently unwilling to establish a national programme, a tension that was integral to the debates concerning what constituted a ‘Labour party’. Moreover, when a national programme was established, activists often had to modify their positions depending on the locality in which they were agitating, a phenomenon that was particularly experienced by socialist activists in the 1880s. Reflecting the diversity of their responses to official Liberalism, labour activists also distinguished between their opposition to the local caucus, and their support for the radical wing of the national Liberal party. An emphasis on the continuity of Liberalism with English radical traditions can also obscure the relationship between Tory and labour or socialist traditions. Supporting the Liberal party was not always the only path to take for working-class radicals.57 As Lawrence has highlighted, popular Toryism made inroads into many traditional radical strongholds from the 1870s and, as Patrick Joyce demonstrated in his detailed examination of popular politics in Lancashire, working-class Conservatism was an obstacle which groups such as the LRL failed to overcome.58 Moreover, as Martin Pugh postulates, in his New History of the Labour Party, there was common ground between Toryism and socialism in terms of ideals: on issues such as 56 For an insightful analysis of the tension between national and local interests see K. Rix, ‘The Party Agent and English Electoral Culture, 1880–1906’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, (2001). 57 A.J. Lee, ‘Conservatism, Traditionalism and the British Working Class, 1880–1918’, in D.E. Martin and D. Rubinstein (eds), Ideology and the Labour Movement: Essays Presented to John Saville (London: Croom Helm, 1979), pp. 84–102. 58 J. Lawrence, ‘Class and Gender in the Making of Urban Toryism, 1880–1914’, English Historical Review, 108 (1993), pp. 629–52; P. Joyce, Work, Society and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980). For a useful re-examination of Joyce’s work see V.C. Barbary, ‘Reinterpreting “Factory Politics” in Bury, Lancashire, 1868–1880’, Historical Journal, 51 (2008), pp. 115–44.

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immigration, empire, civil liberties, alcohol, the churches and the Union, the two movements shared common assumptions ‘in opposition to the LiberalRadical tradition’.59 Working-class Toryism thus poses difficult questions to proponents of the continuity thesis. Significantly, it also posed difficult questions to the leaders of the labour movement in the 1870s and 1880s, when they began to attempt to define who constituted a bona fide member of a ‘Labour party’. How these debates played out, and the wider implications of the tensions concerning how the labour movement viewed itself, form a critical part of the narrative of the rise of independent labour. The language of the caucus Following the formation of the NLF in Birmingham in May 1877, the Liberal party machine became pejoratively known as the ‘caucus’, a term that had originated in the United States, where it was used, in its strictest sense, to describe a meeting held by a political party to agree on a candidate for office.60 The concept of the caucus and its implications was debated widely in contemporary periodicals, with particular emphasis given to how its alleged coercive tendencies corrupted Burkean ideals of political representation, namely that a member of Parliament should be free to exercise his independent judgement without sacrificing it to the opinions of his constituents. Further concerns included the professionalisation, or (arguably worse) the Americanisation, of British politics, and, more pertinently, the fear that, because of the self-interested bourgeois leadership of the local party associations, working-class candidatures would become even more unlikely.61 The Times subsequently embedded the term into contemporary debate with an editorial lamenting that ‘the policy of the politicians of the Midland capital will bring upon us the “caucus”, with all its evils’.62 59 Pugh, Speak for Britain, pp. 12–13. 60 Notes and Queries, 11 (January to June 1855), p. 28. The earliest account of this word appears in William Gordon’s The history of the rise, progress, and establishment, of the independence of the United States of America (London: Charles Dilly and James Buckland, 1788), I, p. 240. Gordon describes how a number of men in Boston ‘where all the ship-business is carried on, used to meet, to make a caucus’. The ‘Boston Caucus’, established in the 1720s, is often referred to as America’s first urban political machine: G.B. Warden ‘The Caucus and Democracy in Colonial Boston’, New England Quarterly, 43 (1970), pp. 19–45. One of the earliest known uses of the word in English political discourse was in 1831 during a debate in the House of Lords. Complaining that not all peers had been invited to the approaching coronation of William IV, Lord Strongford declared that ‘all the Privy Council were not summoned, but that a selection from it has been made, similar to that which our Transatlantic brethren would call a caucus’. See Notes and Queries, Eighth series, vi (1894), p. 309. 61 See chapter three for a discussion of the contemporary debate. 62 The Times, 31 July 1878.

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For many opponents of organised Liberalism, though, the idea that an American-style party machine had arrived in England was a moot point; for those wishing to attack the party, the caucus, given its connotations with the discredited American political system, provided an immediate rhetorical tool with which to paint a Liberal association as dictatorial, tyrannical and corrupt. This was especially the case for working-class radicals who had been denied the Liberal nomination. The language of the caucus was therefore an integral part of not only how the labour movement articulated its opposition to organised Liberalism, but also the way in which it demanded to have the right to bring forward its own candidates. This study, therefore, gives analytical weight to the language that working-class political activists used when attacking the caucus. The heated and often controversial debates generated by the notion of the ‘linguistic turn’ have undoubtedly had a major impact on how historians approach nineteenth-century political history. The debates on ‘postmodernism’ and ‘post-structuralism’, which raged in the mid-1990s but had largely died down by the end of the decade, have been summarised succinctly elsewhere and it is not my intention to rehash them here for the sake of it.63 However, given the emphasis on the language of political activism in this book, and the recent assertion that ‘few labour historians have fully embraced the postmodern agenda,’ 64 it is worthwhile very briefly sketching out the nature of the debate, and then explaining my own approach to the question of language, which informs this study. Gareth Stedman Jones and Patrick Joyce are the major proponents of the ‘linguistic turn’.65 Although there are important differences between their approaches, they share an emphasis on the significance of language and discourse in the construction of social reality, which has been interpreted as a denial of the existence of reality independent of thought and language. This rejection of social realities has been fiercely opposed not only by those who assert a materialist view, but also those who contend that ‘social determinists’ have been far more sensitive to the importance of language than 63 M. Bentley, ‘Victorian Politics and the Linguistic Turn’, Historical Journal, 42 (1999), pp. 883–902. 64 Allen and Chase, ‘Britain: 1750–1900’, p. 86. 65 G. Steadman Jones, ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in his Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 90–178; P. Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question of Class, 1848–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); P. Joyce, Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Subject in Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also J. Vernon, ‘Who’s Afraid of the “Linguistic Turn”? Social History and its Discontents’, Social History, 19 (1994), pp. 81–97; P. Joyce, ‘The End of Social History’, Social History, 20 (1995), pp. 73–91.

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‘post-structuralists’ would allow.66 Between these two apparent dichotomies, though, a more thoughtful analysis has emerged that appreciates the importance of language without rejecting material factors. For example, Lawrence has explained how local politicians had to construct electoral support by using language that engaged with the material concerns of their constituents, while Biagini has focused on ‘the way popular political ideas and ideologies (rather than simply languages) related to material interests’.67 My approach is informed by the belief that close attention to the use of language by the working-class political activists offers an invaluable insight into understanding not only the nature of the problematic relationship between working-class radicals and organised Liberalism, but also how those within the labour movement perceived the notion of a ‘Labour party’ in the 1870s and 1880s, a phenomenon that remains largely unaddressed by the existing literature. While I therefore concentrate on how labour activists articulated their ideas, values and attitudes, I remain equally focused on the political and cultural context in which they spoke. I do not believe that reality does not exist outside of language. In fact, because this book concerns party organisations, elections, and urban and rural activism in various places, it is driven by the need to investigate the links between the linguistic and the political and the cultural. Given the often understandable confusion concerning the use of linguistic analysis, it is worth clarifying my position with the use of specific examples. In terms of the political context, was there a link between the behaviour of local party organisations and the language used by labour activists wishing to challenge its authority? Did a labour candidate in a parliamentary election articulate his opposition to organised Liberalism in a different way to one standing in a local election? I also examine how Westminster politics, particularly concerning trade union legislation, affected the language of the activists. For example, in what ways did the Liberal government’s trade union legislation of the 1870s influence the desire of the leaders of the labour movement to articulate their identity in terms of a coming ‘Labour party’? In terms of links between the linguistic and the cultural, I am deeply interested in how ‘place’ shaped the language of labour activists, particularly given the importance of regional variations in the relationship between working-class radicals and organised Liberalism. For example, in what ways did John Burns, standing as an SDF candidate in Nottingham in 1885, negotiate the published positions of the socialist organisation in order to articulate his 66 N. Kirk, ‘History, Language, Ideas and Postmodernism: A Materialist View’, Social History, 19 (1994), pp. 221–40. 67 Lawrence, Speaking for the People, pp. 61–9; Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, p. 19.

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connection with the town’s Chartist past? Was the way in which a labour candidate articulated his opposition to the local Liberal association affected by the question of whether he himself was local or not to a constituency? An appreciation of the link between language and its political and cultural context also allows for textual analysis. In the case of labour’s attitude towards organised Liberalism, this is absolutely crucial as it is necessary to distinguish between a genuine articulation of independence and mere rhetoric intended to score political points. The language of the caucus remains largely unaddressed by the existing scholarship on the rise of party organisation. The first major accounts of the caucus were shaped by the contemporary political world in which they were written. In the 1890s James Bryce, who had previously offered a thoughtful defence of the NLF and rejected the usefulness of drawing analogies with the American caucus, invited two political scientists to study the British political system.68 The first to publish was Moisei Ostrogorski, a Russian refugee based in Paris, whose seminal work of 1902 documented the machinery of the caucus.69 After thirteen years of research that included visiting meetings of local associations and speaking to party secretaries and agents, Ostrogorski produced a detailed examination of the rise of both Liberal and Conservative party organisations. However, his work was informed not by the subject of his material, but by his sense of liberalism and his fear of democracy. Believing that political machinery equalled the end of politics, his book ended up as an attack on what he perceived to be the corruption of liberal ideas and practices.70 For Ostrogorski, the ‘main, the real, business of the Caucus Associations … amounts to manipulating the electorate in the interest of party, with the pretension of doing this on behalf of and by the people.’71 Moreover, his faith in the ability of ‘the people’ to stand up against this manipulation was limited; he believed that local associations became ‘a hierarchy of wire-pullers’ because of the poor ‘intellectual and moral tendencies of their members’.72 The work of A.L. Lowell, the second political scientist sponsored by Bryce, was also informed by a liberal ideology, but it did not reach the same dark conclusions. Lowell accepted the notion that in a political democracy, 68 J. Bryce, ‘Some Aspects of American Public Life’, Fortnightly Review, 32 (July to Dec. 1882), p. 643. 69 M. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties, I (London: Macmillan and Co., 1902). 70 P. Pombeni, ‘Starting in Reason, Ending in Passion. Bryce, Lowell and Ostrogorski and the Problem of Democracy’, Historical Journal, 37 (1994), pp. 326–7. 71 Ostrogorski, Political Parties, I, p. 329. 72 Ibid., p. 352.

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party was a necessary tool for the functioning of the constitution, and parties needed some form of popular organisation. His investigation of Liberal and Conservative organisation, therefore, reflected his belief in the primacy of parliamentary government. In contrast to Ostrogorski, he did not believe that the rise of party organisation would have apocalyptic consequences. Indeed, he concluded that ‘the story of the Caucus is [the] story of a popular organisation striving in vain to direct party policy’.73 Rejecting the alarmism that permeated Ostrogorski’s work, Lowell informed Bryce that ‘Ostrogorski starts to investigate the organization of parties as natural growth and then appears to treat them in the end as something which is quite capable of artificial and arbitrary change.’74 Just as the work of Ostrogorski and Lowell was based on their interpretations of contemporary liberal thought, when a new generation of historians examined party organisation in the 1950s, there remained the same drive to interpret it through the prism of the contemporary political world. H.J. Hanham’s investigation of the rise of party organisation was shaped by his interest in the ‘continuities between the mass politics of the 1880s and the mass politics of the 1950s’.75 He therefore charted the growth of party management in the context of the need to fight and win elections under a two-party system. Although Hanham argued that the formation of the NLF ‘supplied the associations with both an ideology and an organisational model which thereafter became almost obligatory’ he cast doubt on the ability of the caucus to shape late-Victorian politics, concluding that ‘the whole controversy has little more than an antiquarian interest because it had so little direct effect on events.’76 However, Hanham was largely referring to the intellectual debates that littered the contemporary periodicals in the late 1870s. There was little engagement with how would-be politicians and activists, particularly working-class radicals, articulated the merits and demerits of party organisation in order to express their political demands, 73 A.L. Lowell, The Government of England, I (New York: Macmillan, 1908), p. 540. 74 Quotation taken from Pombeni, ‘Starting in Reason’, p. 330. Ostrogorski himself was aware that his work would be criticised, writing to Bryce that he would be told ‘you have forged with your imagination a monster, have labeled it caucus, and have put at his door all the sins of Israel’. Quotation taken from Pombeni, ‘Starting in Reason’, p. 332. 75 H.J. Hanham, Elections and Party Management: Politics in the Time of Disraeli and Gladstone (Hassocks: Harvester Press, 1978 edn), p. xviii. 76 Ibid., p. 141. This scepticism was echoed in a later, pioneering study of the Liberal party by John Vincent, who rejected the importance of party organisation within the success of the Liberal party as a movement, arguing that the emphasis on party organisation in the 1880s was misguided as it had become conflated with the careers of Chamberlain and Churchill. For Vincent, ‘the organizational leviathan of 1880 might have [had] less grip than the pothouse committee of 1832’. See Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party, p. 118.

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and the extent to which this became part of contemporary political discourse.77 The language of the caucus has to be taken seriously. The ‘caucus’ was not a fixed term, but a malleable one, and was a versatile rhetorical weapon that could be adapted to suit the local political context. If labour leaders were unable to break the caucus’s stranglehold on the local political environment, or to secure their choice of nominee for an election, then a frustrated, consolatory anti-caucus rhetoric was often the result. If, however, the political dynamics of a locality allowed the labour movement to have a significant stake in party organisation, their attitudes towards the caucus were generally positive. Once this is understood, the contrasting conclusions reached in the most recent work on the caucus can be understood too. For example, Lawrence has also shown how, in Wolverhampton, plebeian radicals were unwilling to engage fully with the caucus because ‘of a deep-seated popular suspicion of party’, and, looking back to the tradition of town meetings and direct democracy, placed far more importance on open public meetings.78 Radical opposition to the caucus, therefore, suggests this period should not be viewed as the ‘triumph of party’.79 Although this may have been the case in urban Wolverhampton, it was certainly not the situation in the rural coalfields of Durham, where, as Biagini has shown, not only did the labour movement recognise the necessity of organising Liberal electors but also ‘working-class radicalism … took control of the party and moulded Liberalism into its own image.’80 It is vital, therefore, to consider the relationship between the labour movement and the caucus in its own political context. There is no single over-arching explanation for labour’s attitude and behaviour towards official Liberalism. Labour’s attitude to the caucus was contingent on factors such as whether the constituency was urban or rural, whether there were local traditions of working-class protest that could be tapped into, or whether the election was parliamentary or municipal. Moreover, when workingclass radicals expressed hostility to the caucus, it was often simply rhetoric that reflected not a principled opposition to official Liberalism but simply frustration at those running the machine. By focusing on the language of the 77 For a useful study of how Liberal and Conservative party members discussed political clubs as practical demonstrations of what their parties stood for see J.A. Garrard, ‘Parties, Members and Votes after 1867: A Local Study’, Historical Journal, 20 (1977), pp. 145–63. 78 J.  Lawrence, ‘Popular Politics and the Limitations of Party: Wolverhampton, 1867–1900’, in Biagini and Reid, Currents of Radicalism, p. 69. 79 cf. J. Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815–1867 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 182, 192, 337. 80 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 328–37.

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caucus, therefore, it is possible to engage with both the rhetoric and reality of labour’s shifting relationship with the Liberal party. A recurring theme in this book is the mediation by ‘place’ of the way in which labour activists interacted with local Liberalism. Moreover, the inability of organisations such as the LRL, the NLF and the LEA to have a definitive impact upon a constituency’s politics can be explained, in large part, by localism, particularly an inherent dislike of ‘outside’ interference. This study, therefore, makes great use of local case studies, especially of activism and electoral politics (parliamentary and local) in Birmingham, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham and Sheffield. Broadly speaking, in the nineteenth century, all four cities witnessed significant working-class radical movements, and were home to a strong Liberal party that enjoyed the support of a nonconformist community. There are also important differences. For example, whereas organised Liberalism was popular and efficient in Birmingham (prior to 1886) and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Liberal organisation in Nottingham and Sheffield was often characterised by internecine warfare. While in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the charismatic Joseph Cowen and his Newcastle Chronicle was able to harness the support of Tyneside radicalism and Irish nationalism, in Nottingham any would-be radical politician had to first invoke the political memory of the Chartists in order to begin to draw together a coalition of support. In Birmingham the labour movement was able to effectively challenge Liberal hegemony in local elections, but in Sheffield fissures between different working-class radical groups critically curtailed any cohesive movement. The four cities therefore offer excellent case studies for analysing the diversity of working-class radical responses to organised Liberalism. There are, of course, limits to this approach. Firstly, by focusing mainly on urban activism and elections, rural activism does not figure as prominently. This is partly rectified in the second half of chapter two, which examines the politics of the agricultural labourers and their attitudes towards the Liberal party, and the relationship between urban and rural radicalism. Overall, though, the balance of the case studies remains heavily tipped towards the urban. Nevertheless, this does reflect the political realities of the period. Because the agricultural labourers were not enfranchised until 1885, the efforts of the labour movement to achieve representation in Parliament and on municipal bodies, which brought them into conflict with the Liberal caucus, were focused almost exclusively on urban constituencies. Secondly, in examining the relationship between ‘labour and the caucus’, more weight is given to labour’s side of the story. Again, I think that there are compelling reasons to take this approach. Given the tendency of the existing literature on the rise of independent labour to focus on 1888 and beyond, the fluid, ambiguous and often complex nature of labour’s attitude towards the Liberal

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party in general and its organised manifestation in particular between 1868 and 1888 has been lost. This needs to be corrected, and can only be done by giving sustained attention to labour’s response to the caucus. Of course, the labour movement did not face a simple binary choice between supporting the Liberals or establishing an independent party: working-class Conservatism, prominent in various regions, proves this was not the case. Thus, where appropriate, attention is given to this factor, especially the way in which the existence of working-class Conservatives posed a difficult problem during the debates on what and who constituted a ‘Labour party’. That said, because labour’s struggle to bring its own candidates forward for parliamentary elections was a battle overwhelmingly fought with local Liberal associations (and the case studies in question were predominantly Liberal strongholds), it is necessary that the relationship between working-class radicals and the Liberal party remains the focus of this present study.

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1 The Struggle for Political Representation: Labour Candidates and the Liberal Party, 1868–76 Labour Candidates and the Liberal Party, 1868–76 In November 1868 a leading article in the Bee-Hive declared that there is a vast amount of rottenness in the ranks of the Liberal party, which must be rooted out before the working men can expect to be treated fair and honourably in their efforts to enter the House of Commons.1

The call for direct labour representation – understood here as the election of working-class men to Parliament to represent the labour interest as Liberal MPs rather than independently – had enjoyed a broad range of support during the reform agitations that followed the establishment of the Reform League in February 1865. Gladstone, along with several prominent Liberal MPs, such as Henry Fawcett and Peter Alfred Taylor, had spoken in support of working-class parliamentary representation, while the workingclass radicals in whom the management of the Reform League was vested were zealous advocates for the labour movement having its own voice inside the Commons.2 However, in the decade following the 1867 Reform Act – which enfranchised ‘registered and residential’ male householders, giving the vote to thirty per cent of working men – the labour movement struggled to secure the return of their own representatives. As discussed below, the obstacles presented by issues of finance, organisation, localism and disagreements within the labour movement itself over the merits of working-class representation were undoubtedly great. Yet, as indicated by the above pronouncement from the Bee-Hive, the labour movement made an explicit connection between the failure of their candidates at the poll and a Liberal party that was hostile to direct labour representation. The parliamentary and local election campaigns of working-class candidates in the decade following the 1867 Reform Act offer an important Bee-Hive, 21 Nov. 1868. 1 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 338. 2

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insight into not only the debates concerning the political representation of the labour movement but also the difficult and often strained relationship between labour and organised Liberalism. Because the story of the labour candidates in this period was largely one of failure, and the leaders of the labour movement chose to explain their defeats in terms of the ­intransigence of local Liberal associations, historians have arguably overlooked the extent to which the tactics labour adopted when interacting with organised Liberalism could be fluid and contingent. Moreover, the fact that, in some instances, working-class candidates were willing to actively assert their independence from the Liberal party has largely been ignored. This chapter, by examining both parliamentary and local elections between 1868 and 1876, demonstrates how working-class candidates could adapt their attitude towards local Liberalism depending on the electoral and organisational context. The fluid nature of how the labour movement perceived its relationship with organised Liberalism is particularly evident in its discourse, both in the press and when would-be politicians spoke directly to the electorate. The ways in which labour used language to construct its identity in relation to the Liberal party are therefore explored below. Of course, in the heat of an election campaign and in its often bitter aftermath, labour’s discourse could lapse into frustrated and consolatory rhetoric, so particular attention is given to the difference between what labour activists said and what they did. The chapter begins by examining the rise of working-class political organisations in the 1860s, and the ways in which labour activists conceived their identity in relation to official Liberalism. The extent to which the failure of working-class candidates at the 1868 general election prompted labour leaders to reassess this identity is considered, paying particular attention to the formation of the Labour Representation League (LRL). The League’s response to the Criminal Law Amendment Act and its strategy at the 1874 general election are analysed in detail, along with a consideration of the ways in which local Liberal associations disabled their candidatures. The final part of the chapter examines how labour and organised Liberalism interacted during municipal and school board elections. Working-class political organisation The 1860s witnessed the emergence of assertive and confident working-class political organisations.3 The London Trades Council, formed in response to the 1859 London building dispute, established itself as a significant national Reid, United We Stand, pp. 143–4. 3

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pressure group.4 Its leaders were drawn from the national officials of craft unions: George Howell and Edwin Coulson of the bricklayers; William Randal Cremer and Robert Applegarth of the joiners; George Odger, of the shoemakers; William Allan of the engineers and Benjamin Lucraft, a cabinet maker. In 1862 they set up the Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association and in 1864 played a leading role in establishing the International Working Men’s Association, though it increasingly fell under the sway of its more revolutionary elements.5 In February the following year these men helped establish the Reform League and thereafter became the organisation’s most prominent spokesmen, leading the call for manhood suffrage.6 The dedication of these leaders of ‘new model’ unionism to the Liberal cause quickly became clear: at the 1865 general election they effectively harnessed trade-union resources to secure the return of advanced Liberals such as Thomas Hughes at Lambeth, John Stuart Mill at Westminster and Joseph Cowen at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.7 The leaders of the London Trades Council subsequently organised a series of mass demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park in 1866–7, although their role in shaping the final Reform bill has been much debated.8 The most prominent body established solely to promote the election of working-class candidates was the London Working-Men’s Association (LWMA), formed in 1866 by George Potter, a carpenter and owner of the Bee-Hive. Potter had been forced out of the London Trades Council in 1865 over his principled support for local strikes, and he became a fierce critic of the ‘Junta’, the Council’s leaders, who also figured prominently on J. Saville, ‘Trades Councils and the Labour Movement to 1900’, Bulletin of the Society for 4 the Study of Labour History, 14 (1967), pp. 29–34; W.H. Fraser, Trade Unions and Society: The Struggle for Acceptance 1850–1880 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974), pp. 42–9. For the IWMA see K. Robinson, ‘Karl Marx, the International Working Men’s 5 Association and London Radicalism, 1864–72’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester (1976). For the Reform League campaigns see A.D. Bell, ‘The Reform League from its 6 Origins to the Reform Act of 1867’, unpublished DPhil. thesis, University of Oxford (1961); F.M. Leventhal, Respectable Radical: George Howell and Victorian Working Class Politics (London: Weidenfeld, 1971), chs 2 and 3; J. Breuilly, G. Niedhart and A. Taylor (eds), The Era of the Reform League: English Labour and Radical Politics 1857–1872. Documents Selected by Gustav Mayer (Mannheim: Palatium Verlag im J. & J. Verlag, 1995). Reid, United We Stand, pp. 145–6. 7 The classic account of their importance is Harrison, Before the Socialists, ch. 3, ‘The Tenth 8 April of Spencer Walpole: The Problem of Revolution in Relation to Reform, 1865–1867’. The agitations are also examined in K. McClelland, ‘England’s Greatness, the Working Man’, pp. 71–118. For a study that downplays their importance see R. Saunders, Democracy and the Vote in British Politics, 1848–1867: The Making of the Second Reform Act (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 226–30.

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the executive council of the Reform League.9 The LWMA called for ‘the direct representation of labour in parliament’ and resolved to work with co-operative societies and trade councils to bring forward working-class candidates for suitable seats.10 If a candidate was successful, they would enter the Commons not as an independent labour politician, but work alongside Liberals such as Hughes and Mill.11 The LWMA, however, failed to establish itself as an effective promoter of working-class candidates. Although it had control of the Bee-Hive, there was no parliamentary fund, and its membership was small.12 Potter, though, did play an important role in mobilising support for the Reform League’s mass demonstrations around the country, suggesting that his earlier conflicts with the ‘Junta’ had been more personal than political.13 Although the working-class leaders of the Reform League were at the head of a genuinely successful national movement, they were hampered in their ability to effectively promote working-class parliamentary candidatures. Soon after the 1867 Reform Act was passed, the general council of the Reform League called for joint action with trade unions to secure the return of ‘a number of working men proportionate to the other interests and classes at present represented in Parliament’.14 However, the organisational nature of the League, which had been a source of strength during the reform agitations, now became a source of weakness. The League consisted of three layers: a central executive office in London, regional departments that were focused on urban centres, and local branches.15 Howell, as the League’s secretary, was especially keen to keep provincial branches loyal to the central executive by accepting their independence ‘as they always know best their own affairs’.16 The consequence of this provincial independence, though, was that when the League tried to organise working-class candidatures, S. Coltham, ‘George Potter, the Junta and the Bee-Hive’, International Review of Social 9 History, 9 (1964), pp. 390–432. 10 G.D.H. Cole, British Working-Class Politics, 1832–1914 (London: Routledge, 1941), pp. 40–2. 11 Ibid., p. 45. 12 Ibid.; Bee-Hive, 9 Mar. 1867. 13 For example, Potter shared a platform with the leaders of the ‘Junta’ at a mass reform demonstration at Birmingham on Easter Monday 1867. See Birmingham Journal, 20 and 27 Apr. 1867. 14 Minutes of the General Council of the Reform League, 4 Dec. 1867, George Howell Collection, Reform League papers, microfilm copy, University of Cambridge Library. 15 D. Mares, ‘Transcending the Metropolis: London Radicalism and Provincial Popular Radicalism, c. 1860–75’, in M. Cragoe and A. Taylor (eds), London Politics, 1760–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 129. 16 G. Howell to W.J. Shea, 8 Jan. 1869, George Howell Collection, letter books.

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the London office had little influence over local branches.17 Moreover, many of the local branches themselves lapsed due to inactivity following the passing of the Reform Act, diminishing the prospects of working-class candidates being brought forward by local organisations.18 Money was also a major obstacle for the League: in 1868 their finances were in a parlous state.19 Effective co-operation with trade unions was unrealistic too. The 1868 conference of provincial trades councils in Manchester (which was to become the first Trades Union Congress or TUC) was ignored by the leaders of the London Trades Council, making national co-ordination, at this stage, impossible.20 Consequently, no practical steps were taken to promote labour candidates following the resolution, prompting a leading article in the Bee-Hive to ask ‘“What are the Trade Unions and working classes doing to secure a direct representation of their interests in the new House of Commons?” … With deep regret we are compelled to reply: “Nothing; absolutely nothing.”’21 Given these organisational deficiencies, personal connections between labour leaders and prominent Liberals became an important way of sustaining the League’s political ambitions. Howell assiduously attempted to cultivate the support of prominent Liberal MPs, and he became a familiar sight in the ‘lobby of the House of Commons and the waitingrooms of Pall Mall clubs’.22 James Stansfeld, Liberal MP for Halifax who had been a staunch advocate of Joseph Cowen’s Northern Reform Union, was particularly receptive to Howell’s diplomacy, and shared his belief that an alliance of like-minded working-class and middle-class radicals was necessary for the future of progressive politics. To this end, in April 1868 Stansfeld and Howell established the Adelphi Club on the premises of the Reform League. The object was to cultivate closer relations between labour leaders, Liberal MPs and intellectuals.23 Although the funds were provided by wealthy Liberals such as Samuel Morley and Titus Salt,24 it would be a mistake to see the club as evidence of Howell’s unquestioning deference towards middle-class Liberalism.25 Howell abhorred the ‘childish treatment 17 Mares, ‘Transcending the Metropolis’, p. 130. 18 Lawrence, Speaking for the People, p. 88. 19 Harrison, Before the Socialists, p. 141. 20 Reid, United We Stand, p. 152. 21 Bee-Hive, 4 July 1868. 22 Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 101. 23 Draft appeal for the Adelphi club, 9 Apr. 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book. 24 Morley had donated £50 to the club. Howell to S. Morley, 25 May 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book. 25 Howell’s supposed deference to middle-class politicians, and his subsequent reputation as an apologist for Liberalism, has arguably been entrenched by much of the existing

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of working men’ that had been witnessed in other middle-class ventures to build bridges with labour, and insisted that, at the new club, ‘we shall find our level’.26 Significantly, he believed that the Adelphi would be ‘different to the “working men’s club” where patronage of the worst kind kills them’, and stressed that ‘our desire is to make this a central club and effectively compete with the public house’.27 For Howell, the Adelphi project was part of the League’s wider strategy of seeking ‘entry into the political nation as respectable and sober citizens’.28 As he wrote to Applegarth, ‘I have faith in the self respect and self interest of our own class and believe that they will endorse the steps I have taken’.29 Socialising between the labour leaders and parliamentary Liberalism, however, could only achieve so much. For the Reform League to establish itself as a viable electoral machine, it needed strong financial backing, and no one appreciated this more than Howell, who, without a permanent union post, was dependent on financed political appointments. In the early summer of 1868 Howell negotiated a secret financial agreement on behalf of the League with George Glyn, the Liberal chief whip.30 In return for personal security, Howell agreed to use League machinery to investigate seventy boroughs in England and Wales that had returned Conservative MPs by a majority of less than 100 votes in 1865.31 The money for the ‘special fund’ was supplied by Samuel Morley, who in the first instance put up £1,000 for the ‘preliminary investigation’. The aim was primarily to gather election literature on his career. For example see Harrison, Before the Socialists, pp. 208–9; Leventhal, Respectable Radical, pp. 93–116. 26 Howell to W. Maccall, [n.d], George Howell Collection, letter book. 27 Howell to D. Hack, 8 June 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book. 28 McClelland, ‘England’s Greatness, the Working Man’, p. 77. 29 Howell to R. Applegarth, 15 June 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book. 30 Belchem, Popular Radicalism, p. 118. 31 The boroughs were identified by James Acland, a journalist and former lecturer for the Anti-Corn Law League, who later became a professional election agent and was hired by the League. In August 1868 Howell and Cremer, along with fifteen other agents, visited the constituencies and drew up their reports, which were then compiled by Howell and sent to Glyn. Reports were submitted for sixty-five boroughs: Andover, Bath, Beverley, Birkenhead, Bolton, Boston, Brecon, Bridport, Buckingham, Cambridge, Chichester, Chippenham, Christchurch, Cockermouth, Colchester, Coventry, Crickdale, Derby, Devizes, Doncaster, Dorchester, Durham, Exeter, Grantham, Guildford, Harwich, Haverford West, Helston, Hereford, Huntingdon, Ipswich, Knaresborough, Kidderminster, Leeds, Lichfield, Liverpool, Ludlow, Macclesfield, Maldon, Marlborough, Monmouthshire, Newark, Newcastle-underLyme Newport, Northallerton, Preston, Plymouth, Pontefract, East Retford, Southampton, Stamford, Sunderland, Tewkesbury, Thirsk, Tiverton, Truro, Warwick, Warwick, Westbury, Weymouth, Whitehaven, Whitby, Wigan, Wilton, Winchester, and Woodstock. See ‘Election Reports’, George Howell Collection, Reform League papers.

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intelligence for the Liberal chief whip, but also to promote the establishment of working-class political organisations, either as League branches or Liberal associations.32 For Howell, the necessity of organisation was clear: ‘in most cases’, he wrote, ‘the only thing to be done is to lay the foundation for a thorough organisation of the Liberal party in which working men shall be consulted and called into active political life’.33 Attempts to introduce new electoral machinery to manage the expanded electorate exposed the fault lines in the relationship between working-class radicals and organised Liberalism. In the 1860s working-class involvement in local Liberal organisation was patchy and limited. Popular involvement in Liberal associations was evident in Rochdale and Stockport in the 1850s, and to a certain extent in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester in the 1860s, but these were the exceptions.34 As the election reports compiled by the Reform League in 1868 revealed, political organisation was woefully inadequate in the majority of English boroughs.35 Broadly speaking, on the eve of the 1868 general election Liberal organisation was established on an ad hoc basis with local associations formed to suit particular circumstances.36 Moreover, rather than reflecting unity, these organisations were the product of uneasy compromises that served to magnify rather than contain tensions between the Whig and radical sections of the party. For example, at Manchester, Ernest Jones, the writer and former Chartist, was adopted, after much protracted negotiations, as the nominee of the working men. His selection by the Manchester United Liberal Party was the result of a carefully brokered deal. The local Liberal party agreed to pay all his election expenses in return for him touring the country, and speaking on behalf of Liberal candidates in constituencies where they were lacking in resources.37 Jones subsequently fought under the Liberal banner, but was defeated in fifth place. Moreover, the campaign was ultimately a divisive one that merely underlined the fault lines in the local Liberal alliance.38 In many cases, new associations only served to institutionalise long-standing tensions. In Nottingham the newly formed Liberal Parliamentary Registration Association was essentially the same small clique of 32 Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 107. 33 Howell to J. Stansfeld, 26 Aug. 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book. 34 Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party, pp. 131–53. 35 For example, in Derby it was reported that ‘there is really no organization and I expect there will be no stir until the election’. See ‘Election Report: Derby’, George Howell Collection, Reform League papers. 36 Hanham, Elections and Party Management, pp. 93–4. 37 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 24 Oct. 1868. 38 A. Taylor, ‘“The Best Way to Get what he Wanted”: Ernest Jones and the Boundaries of Liberalism in the Manchester Election of 1868’, Parliamentary History, 16 (1997), pp. 185–204.

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town councillors who had hitherto controlled the nomination of Liberal candidates for the borough, under a new name. Popular involvement in the association was limited to one single public meeting, and its leaders’ inability to conciliate opposing factions resulted in four Liberal candidates going to the poll.39 This situation was replicated around the country, prompting Glyn to lament that ‘the old local party managers do not realize the altered state of matters and if they do they are extremely slow to coalesce with the new men’.40 In a number of localities, Liberal associations attempted to manage these tensions by organising American-style primaries where ‘test ballots’ of all Liberal voters could determine the parliamentary candidate. However, such experiments were largely discredited due to accusations of corruption, and they seldom worked in the interests of working-class candidates.41 There was also little sense of co-operation between the League and the leaders of local organised Liberalism. Apart from the notable exceptions of Bristol and Blackburn, very few Liberal committees encouraged the League to send its agents from London to help them.42 This, in part, was due to Howell’s desire to respect the independence of provincial political organisations, but it also reflected local Liberalism’s dislike of outside interference, regardless of whether it was from labour or not. There was little that Howell could do, therefore, to promote a candidate standing in ‘the labour interest’ if the local Liberal committee was not supportive. For example, Odger, having spent the summer as a paid lecturer for the League in Devon and Cornwall, reported that Truro was ‘worth looking after’ as there was ‘an excellent opportunity … for a “thorough Radical”’, and a candidate, Passmore-Edwards, was duly brought forward as ‘the working-men’s candidate’ with vocal support from the League.43 The local Liberal committee however, refused to endorse him, prompting Howell to unsuccessfully persuade Passmore-Edwards to retire.44 More significantly for the cause of direct labour representation, the Howell-Glyn pact, and the ‘special fund’ that underpinned it, existed to promote Liberal candidates against vulnerable sitting Conservatives. ‘Not a 39 J. Owen, ‘“An Inexplicable Constituency?” Organised Liberalism in Nottingham, 1868–1880’, Midland History, 35, 1 (2010), pp. 112–115. 40 G. Glyn to W.E. Gladstone, 8 Oct. 1868, Gladstone Papers, BL Add. Mss. 44347, f. 190. 41 Hanham, Elections and Party Management, pp. 96–9. Odger was defeated in test ballots at Stafford in June 1869 and Bristol in March 1870. See Reynolds’s Newspaper, 23 May 1869; Bee-Hive, 12 June 1869, 19 Mar. 1870. 42 Hanham, Elections and Party Management, p. 95. 43 ‘Election Report: Truro’, George Howell Collection, Reform League papers; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 3 and 10 Sept., 15 Oct., 5 Nov. 1868. 44 Howell to J. Morrison, 18 Sept. 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book.

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shilling’ would be used to fund a fight against a Liberal.45 Howell, therefore, could not sanction any kind of pecuniary assistance for a labour candidate if it would threaten the return of a Liberal. This was illustrated most starkly at Northampton, where the secularist Charles Bradlaugh, who was also a member of the League’s council, offered in the radical interest despite there being two sitting Liberal MPs, Charles Gilpin and Lord Henley, already in the field. Bradlaugh insisted that his candidacy was not in opposition to Gilpin but only the Whig, Henley.46 In response, the League publicly backed Gilpin and suggested that Bradlaugh and Henley submit their claims to a primary of Liberal electors.47 In private correspondence Howell reassured the Northampton League branch that he had ‘no desire in any way to interfere with your local efforts and decisions’, only to then make a personal visit to the borough to persuade Bradlaugh to retire.48 Aggrieved at the League’s behaviour, Bradlaugh persisted in his candidature, but he finished a disappointing fifth in the poll.49 Two former Chartist stalwarts also suffered from the League’s stance. Edward Greening came forward at Halifax but failed to gain the backing of Stansfeld, the sitting Liberal, while William Newton, who offered at Tower Hamlets, was ignored by the coalition of Edmond Beales, the League’s president, and Acton Ayrton, who was defending his seat.50 To summarise, although the 1860s had witnessed the emergence of assertive working-class political organisation, going into the 1868 general election, labour leaders were hampered by numerous organisational obstacles. Suspicion of outside interference severely curtailed the ability of Howell, as secretary of the Reform League, to promote working-class candidatures, and the uneven and limited nature of Liberal organisation precluded any significant working-class involvement in the selection of candidates. Moreover, the nature of the Howell-Glyn pact ensured that, at 45 Howell to S. Morley, 1 Dec. 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book. The exception to this was the contest in Sheffield, where the League supported Anthony Mundella in his successful attempt to oust John Arthur Roebuck, a radical who was hostile to Gladstone and trade unions. See Hanham, Elections and Party Management, p. 337. 46 National Reformer, 5 and 12 July 1868. 47 Howell to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, 6 Aug. 1868. 48 Howell to George Whalley, 18 Aug. 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book; Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 105. 49 National Reformer, 23 Aug. 1868, 22 Nov. 1868; W. L. Arnstein, The Bradlaugh Case: A Study in Late Victorian Opinion and Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), pp. 24–8. 50 For Greening’s unsuccessful campaign see Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 109. For reports of Newton’s notably bitter contest see Morning Post, 22 Oct. 1868 and Daily News, 6 Nov. 1868. Ayrton topped the poll, but Beales was defeated in fourth place. Newton finished bottom though he gained 2,890 votes. See Appendix I for the full results.

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the coming general election, the issue of working-class candidatures not only illuminated the invidious position in which Howell had placed himself, but also raised serious questions concerning the relationship between the labour interest and the Liberal party. Working-class candidates at the 1868 general election The Reform League’s attempt to return a limited number of working-class candidates at the 1868 general election failed miserably. No labour candidates were elected, and a spate of withdrawals underlined the sheer futility of working-class candidates coming forward without serious financial backing or effective organisation, particularly when they lacked any connection to the constituency.51 Of course, the Reform League had been established as an agitating body to demand registered and residential manhood suffrage, not as an electoral machine, but its working-class leadership undoubtedly made matters worse. George Howell’s decision to contest Aylesbury crystallised everything that was flawed in the League’s strategy: a London-based trade unionist opposed Nathaniel Mayer de Rothschild, a local Liberal landowner, who held the purse strings in a large, agricultural borough. Party organisation in Aylesbury was practically non-existent, and following Rothschild’s refusal to back Howell, there was no opportunity for the latter to harness the crucial support of the agricultural labourers, farmers and employers who were spread across the ‘hundreds’ of the borough.52 Moreover, the Reform League could only offer Howell limited financial assistance, and his modest expenditure of £416 was dwarfed by Rothschild’s, who spent over £1,500 on the campaign.53 Howell’s outsider status was also a severe handicap. The fact that his election committee was based in London reinforced his lack of local connections and prompted the Buckinghamshire Chronicle to speculate that ‘the main objection to Mr Howell’s return [is] that in the event of 51 In addition to the candidatures discussed, Alexander Macdonald, a Lanarkshire miner who established the Miners’ National Association in 1863, had offered as a labour candidate at Kilmarnock, but with three Liberal candidates already in the field, he subsequently withdrew from the contest. See Glasgow Herald, 8 Oct. 1868; Birmingham Daily Post, 16 Nov. 1868. In Hackney, Colonel Dickson, a member of the League, came forward as the working-man’s candidate and had the support of the Shoreditch and Hoxton branches, but with four other Liberals already declared, Howell refused to offer any financial support, and Dickson was defeated in fifth place. See Daily News, 17 Sept. and 17 Nov. 1868; Howell to C. Royal, 16 Oct. 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book. 52 R.W. Davis, Political Change and Continuity, 1760–1885: A Buckinghamshire Study (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1972), p. 209. 53 PP 1868–9 (424), l. 13. See Appendix I for full details of the election expenses of working-class candidates.

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his election … he would … be under the influence and subject to the dictation of the Reform League’.54 Glyn, in a letter to Gladstone, lamented Howell’s decision to stand, writing that ‘he has unfortunately chosen the wrong place … A stranger cannot win there’.55 Following an acrimonious nomination, he finished third, the vast majority of his 942 votes coming from the town of Aylesbury and the other large villages.56 Randal Cremer, standing at the double-member borough of Warwick, suffered a similar fate. Although he received public backing from the Liberal MPs Thomas Hughes, Charles Gilpin, and Henry Fawcett, as an outsider to the constituency, such support was meaningless. Cremer did manage to secure the backing of the small Warwick Working Men’s Liberal Association, but they were almost penniless. The Warwick Reform Association, whose president ostensibly claimed that they feared a split in the Liberal vote, wanted full control over the Liberal nomination, and effectively disabled Cremer’s candidature by refusing to provide any financial assistance. Cremer ultimately spent £135 on the campaign, compared to the £312 spent by the victorious Liberal candidate.57 He finished bottom with only 260 votes.58 The attitude of working-class candidates towards the Liberal party at the 1868 general election ranged from supportive to antagonistic. At Aylesbury, where the representation of the two-member borough was shared between the Liberal and Conservative parties, Howell’s candidature was not a challenge to Liberal hegemony but rather a protest against the neutralisation of the borough’s voice following Rothschild’s decision not to endorse a second Liberal.59 Howell’s election addresses, therefore, promised unequivocal support to Gladstone.60 Similarly, in Warwick, where the local Liberals and Conservatives were content to maintain shared representation, Cremer declared that he ‘spoke on behalf of the Liberal party, who had always striven to advance the interests of the working classes’.61 Following the debacle of the 1868 general election and the dissolution of the Reform League in March 1869, Howell’s seemingly blind loyalty to the Liberal cause was resented by Bradlaugh and Odger, who harassed him for an account of the way in which the ‘special fund’ had 54 Cited in Reynolds’s Newspaper, 1 Nov. 1868. 55 Glyn to Gladstone, 13 Nov. 1868, BL Add. Mss. 44347, f. 107. 56 Morning Post, 17 Nov. 1868; Davis, Political Change and Continuity, p. 207. 57 PP 1868–69 (424), l. 25. 58 H. Evans, Sir Randal Cremer: His Life and Work (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909), pp. 50–2. 59 Davis, Political Change and Continuity, pp. 207–8. 60 George Howell, ‘To the electors of the borough and hundreds of Aylesbury’, George Howell Collection, Bishopsgate Institute, London. HOWELL/9/1/6. 61 Birmingham Daily Post, 31 Oct., 5 and 14 Nov. 1868.

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been used.62 Historians have been no less unfavourable to Howell, accusing him of obsequiousness. According to his biographer, he ‘mortgaged the interests of the Reform League to the purposes of the Liberal party’.63 This verdict, which is based on the assumption that Howell sacrificed the independence of the League without obtaining any concessions from the Liberal party, is arguably flawed. Firstly, with many of its provincial branches moribund, the League had ceased to be a sustainable national organisation before the Howell-Glyn pact: with no money and no viable future, there was little for Howell to sacrifice in the first place. More importantly, the accusation that Howell rejected the ‘alternative of the political self-reliance of the workers’ misses the point of Howell’s Liberalism.64 His correspondence during the establishment of the Adelphi club revealed a man who believed that the labour interest was equal, not subservient, to the Liberal party. Indeed, an insight into his thinking came in a significant speech at the eighth TUC, when he argued that As working men they were trade unionists first and politicians afterwards; but, as individual members of a great state, what every man of dignity should aspire to was to be a politician first and a member of a trades union afterwards.65

For Howell, only entry into the House of Commons could confirm a working man’s complete entry into the political nation. The fact that he believed the Liberal party to be the best vehicle to achieve this aim in no way diminished his support for direct labour representation. A more assertive stance towards the Liberal party as a whole was taken by George Odger, who came forward at the double-member borough of Chelsea with the support of the local Working Men’s Electoral Association, in opposition to Sir Henry Hoare who, along with Charles Dilke, was an official Liberal candidate backed by Glyn and the party leadership. Supporting Odger’s candidacy, Reynolds’s Newspaper dismissed Hoare’s election committee as ‘a little knot of middle-class busybodies, who call themselves a Liberal association’, reflecting the fact that electoral machinery was at the heart of tensions within the Liberal 62 Minute Book of the Executive Council of the Reform League, 3, 5 and 9 Dec. 1868, George Howell Collection, Reform League papers. Howell, who complained to Glyn that ‘I have never had so much badgering over anything in my life,’ relented and allowed the members of the executive committee to inspect the payments made by the ‘special fund’, although he did not reveal the precise terms of the pact. Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 112–14. 63 Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 110. See also Harrison, Before the Socialists, pp. 202–9, who offers a similar verdict. 64 Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 111. 65 Report of the Eighth Trades Union Congress (1875), p. 21.

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alliance.66 Although, like Howell and Cremer, Odger believed that Liberalism remained the best vehicle with which to advance the labour cause, he made a distinction between supporting the ‘advanced Liberals’ and opposing ‘your milk-and-water Liberals’ who, through their ‘positive nuisances and obstructions’ were guilty of ‘splitting the Liberal interest’.67 Odger was therefore making a distinction between a national advanced Liberal party and a local, obstructionist Liberal association. To resolve the impasse, Odger and Hoare agreed to put their claims to an arbitration committee of three Liberal MPs, who subsequently decided in favour of the latter.68 Odger accepted the decision and withdrew, but his rhetoric towards the less advanced sections of the Liberal party remained hostile. He warned that a blow had been dealt to the Liberal party; and although he was as faithful to the Liberal party as any man could be, he was not faithful to every limb of it, because he knew there was a rotten limb behind it.69

It was certainly the case that, in some instances, local Liberal party managers could use nefarious means to disable independent candidatures. In 1862 at Stoke-on-Trent, the manufactures who ran the local Liberal association deliberately neglected to mention the selection meeting for prospective candidates to Samuel Pope, who had previously stood against official Liberal candidates on a temperance ticket.70 In 1868 the same committee decided to buy off Robert Hartwell, a former Chartist who had offered as a labour candidate. Unlike Howell, Cremer and Odger, Hartwell had little time for the Liberal party. He declared that he came forward to support ‘the interests which he considered to be far superior to either Liberal or Conservative, or any party ties – the interests of labour’.71 However, his belligerent anti-party stance was too much for the Reform League, who refused to support him.72 Following the failure of the LWMA to cover his expenses, his financial situation was perilous, and he readily accepted the Liberal pay off.73 66 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 30 Aug. 1868. 67 Ibid., 4 Oct. 1868; quoted in Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 123. 68 The committee comprised Thomas Hughes, James Stansfeld and Peter Alfred Taylor. See Daily News, 31 Oct. 1868; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 1 and 8 Nov. 1868. 69 Daily News, 3 and 5 Nov. 1868. 70 R. McWilliam, The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Sensation (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), p. 130. 71 Birmingham Daily Post, 15 Oct. 1868; Bee-Hive, 17 Oct. 1868. 72 G. Howell to E. Hind, 3 Dec. 1868, George Howell Collection, letter book. 73 Birmingham Daily Post, 19 Nov. 1868. Hartwell’s propriety was defended in the Bee-Hive, 21 Nov. and 28 Nov. 1868, but suspicions remained and he subsequently withdrew from the newspaper’s editorship. See Bee-Hive, 9 Jan. 1869.

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Although the working-class candidates differed in their attitudes towards Liberalism, they all embraced a very broad and inclusive conception of their class. As Jon Lawrence has highlighted, labour politicians down to the First World War preferred to use ‘softer-edged’ terms such as ‘the workers’ or ‘the working classes’.74 The leaders of the Reform League were no exception. They spoke of ‘working men’ candidates and the ‘working classes’, a deliberate attempt, no doubt, to use language as a way of emphasising the inclusiveness of their political appeal, a strategy that was clearly vital during an election campaign.75 Indeed, on the election stump, the candidates repeatedly insisted that they abhorred ‘class legislation’ or the notion of a ‘class monopoly’ in Parliament. Their campaign discourse focused on presenting themselves as responsible working men who, by entering the Commons, would, in the broadest sense, ‘defend the rights of the people’.76 By and large, the working-class candidates made their appeal a national one, arguing that working-men MPs would destroy class legislation, rather than entrench it. For example, Odger insisted that ‘when one working man got into parliament dozens of them would follow soon, and they might depend on it, when class legislation was swept away, there would be a prospect of a brighter and happier future for England.’77 Significantly, although Odger accepted that ‘rightly or wrongly, the existence of class-interests is the ground upon which many are asking for the direct representation of labour,’ he insisted that electing working-class men to the Commons was the only way to stop ‘class-made laws’.78 The Labour Representation League The formation of the Labour Representation League (LRL) in November 1869 was the first concerted attempt to establish a national organisation to promote the return of working-class men to Parliament. The management of the League was to be under the direction of an annually elected executive council composed of not less than thirty-two members. Richard Latham, a middle-class barrister sympathetic to the labour movement, was elected its first president, William Allan its treasurer and Lloyd Jones, the prolific 74 Lawrence, Speaking for the People, p. 144; Lawrence, ‘Labour and the Politics of Class, 1900–1940’, in D. Feldman and J. Lawrence (eds), Structures and Transformations in Modern British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 255. 75 Minutes of the General Council of the Reform League, 4 Dec. 1867, George Howell Collection, Reform League papers. 76 See Odger’s speech at Chelsea: Reynolds’s Newspaper, 25 Oct. 1868. 77 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 25 Oct. 1868. 78 G. Odger, ‘The Working Man in Parliament’, Contemporary Review, 16 (Dec. 1870), p. 109.

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labour journalist, its secretary. Unsurprisingly, the first council, which had been self-appointed not elected, was dominated by London trade unionists, including Howell, Odger, Potter, Cremer and Applegarth.79 Although personal rivalries and jealousies still prevailed, there was now much greater unity among the leaders of London’s trade unions. Applegarth and Odger had joined the managing committee of the Bee-Hive while Potter backed the leaders of the London Trades Council in their support of the Minority Report of the 1867 Royal Commission on trade unions. The League’s prospectus contained three key rules. Its ‘principal duty’ was to ‘procure the return to Parliament of qualified working men’, although it would ‘when deemed necessary recommend and support candidates from amongst other classes’ if they had ‘studied the great labour problem’. Secondly, it would ‘promote throughout the kingdom the registration of working men’s votes, without reference to their political opinions’. Thirdly, the League would act as a watchdog of ‘bills in Parliament which deal with working men’s interests’.80 ‘Working men’ could join for an annual subscription of one shilling. The language of the LRL at its inaugural meeting stressed the need for independence from middle-class politicians. In Odger’s words, ‘the working classes had come to the conclusion that the middle classes were but the sorry representatives of labour in Parliament, and for the future they intended to look after themselves.’81 George Druitt, secretary of the London tailors’ association, concurred, arguing that ‘for the future the working classes intended to take no heed of the bugbear cry “do not divide the Liberal interest.”’82 In practical terms, this meant that, unlike the strategy deployed in 1868, labour candidates would no longer step aside if a Liberal was already in the field. Although there was no plan to form an independent party, this discourse of self-reliance was significant as it reflected a growing acknowledgement that, at the organisational level, labour activists could not rely on local Liberal associations. This discourse continued to develop over the next few years. At the LRL’s conference in Birmingham in December 1872 George Potter argued that in future elections where the Liberal party did not recognise their claims, the working-class electorate should unite and ‘carry their man with a plump vote’. John Kane, founder of the National Association of Ironworkers in Gateshead, went further, declaring that the Liberals had no interest but their own … They were liberal with the freedom and power of the working classes, but they were not liberal in tendering to 79 80 81 82

Daily News, 5 Nov. 1869; Morning Post, 5 Nov. 1869. The full prospectus of the League was reprinted in the Bee-Hive, 1 Jan. 1870. Daily News, 5 Nov. 1869. Ibid.

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them their fair share of power … It was better to fight a losing battle for principle rather than a successful one without it.83

There was a noticeable lack of any formal declaration of political principles by the leaders of the League. This caused a degree of consternation. At the inaugural meeting Bradlaugh, who was not on the executive council, moved that ‘it was unadvisable for the meeting without a declaration of principles to form any league for the return of working men to Parliament’.84 His motion, which in part reflected his personal animosity towards those who had ‘elected themselves a committee’, was largely motivated by his desire for the League to take up a position on the nationalisation of land. He was, though, in a minority, and after a notably acrimonious end to the meeting, the League’s rules were passed.85 A subsequent leading article in the Bee-Hive defended the League’s decision not to promote ‘any large number of questions’ as any focus on a ‘question on which there is any difference of opinion’ would have ‘completely defeated the object the League had in view, as it would … split up the power of the working people’.86 However, disagreements within the labour movement over whether to establish a precise set of policies did not go away, and became a major feature of the debates concerning what constituted a ‘Labour party’ in the mid-1880s. In 1869, though, the LRL was determined to ensure that its discourse underlined its inclusiveness. However, the LRL’s wish to be a national organisation was severely hampered by the need to accept the superiority of provincial independence. At the inaugural meeting, a plan was proposed for the establishment of provincial branches.87 By March 1870, seventeen applications for the formation of local branches had been made, and within a year of its formation, preparations were underway at important urban centres such as Birmingham, Bristol and Sheffield.88 Provincial independence, though, was still a major obstacle, and the establishment of a London and Provincial Council in 1871 to co-ordinate activity never got off the ground. Moreover, the political independence of local trades councils represented a barrier to national co-ordination. The 1869 TUC did see greater co-operation between the provincial and London activists, and although the London Trades Council did not officially attend, the presence of Howell and Odger ensured an increasing sense of national unity.89 Yet, despite this sense of harmony, 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

Bee-Hive, 14 Dec. 1872. Daily News, 5 Nov. 1869; Morning Post, 5 Nov. 1869. Ibid. Bee-Hive, 13 Nov. 1869. Cole, British Working-Class Politics, pp. 50–2. Mares, ‘Transcending the Metropolis’, p. 134. Reid, United We Stand, pp. 152–3.

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there was no appetite to formally co-ordinate the activities of Congress and the newly established LRL. Alfred Armstrong Walton, a former Chartist and leading founder of the League, insisted that its membership should be ‘totally unconnected with the Trade Unions … or the funds thereof ’. Rather than local trade societies being converted into political associations, their members ‘after trade business was over … could resolve themselves into a political society for consideration of any questions that might come before them’.90 Thus, the leading members of the LRL did not seek to exploit financially their trade union affiliations. The northern unions were also woefully underrepresented, leading to the inescapable conclusion that, despite genuine efforts to the contrary, the LRL was essentially a London body without any significant access to money. Despite such structural weaknesses, George Odger’s candidacy at the Southwark by-election of February 1870 revealed the potential strength of a working-class candidate willing to aggressively challenge organised Liberalism.91 The unusually long campaign went right to the heart of a labour candidate’s dilemma: whether or not to resist the cry of ‘don’t divide the Liberals’.92 Odger, who was backed by the LRL, stood on a solid, advanced Liberal platform. He called for ‘justice for Ireland’, backed the National Education League, and championed the ballot.93 However, he faced a crowded Liberal field. Sir Sydney Waterlow and Henry Labouchère, who had sat briefly as Liberal MPs for Dumfriesshire and Middlesex respectively, had already come forward, and Charles Bradlaugh had announced his intention to stand.94 Labouchère called for a test ballot but Odger, in a change of strategy since Chelsea and Stafford, declared that he fully intended to go to the poll ‘come what may’ and that he would ‘listen to no proposal for a ballot, or arbitration, or compromise of any kind’.95 Odger’s belligerence upset the local Liberal press. According to one newspaper, ‘if the policy of Odger and his present supporters became that of the Liberal party, then it might no longer rely upon the support of the intelligent and respectable portion of any class in the community’.96 Like Odger’s aborted candidacy at Chelsea in 1868, the battle was over who represented the ‘true’ Liberal party. 90 Bee-Hive, 4 Sept. 1869. 91 The most detailed account of Odger’s campaign is found in F.W. Soutter, Recollections of a Labour Pioneer (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923), pp. 25–53. 92 The sitting member, Austen Henry Layard, had announced his intention to retire in the autumn of 1869, but a new writ for the borough could not be issued until Parliament reconvened in January 1870. 93 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 19 Dec. 1869. 94 Daily News, 16 Nov. 1869. 95 Ibid., 11 Dec. 1869. 96 Quoted in Soutter, Recollections, pp. 29–30.

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The campaign also shone a spotlight on the legitimacy of a ‘working man’s candidate’. Odger’s supporters dismissed Bradlaugh as ‘a middle class man’, prompting the latter to insist that ‘he was born in Bethnal Green, had worked for years at 10s. a week, and had been a private soldier for three years. If he was a middle class man, the middle class did not say so.’97 Labouchère, meanwhile, attacked Odger’s claim that Southwark needed a working man’s representative, exclaiming that ‘I have worked for the Liberal cause … Did Odger mean to say a man could only work with his hands? Could not a man work with his brains?’98 In reply, F.W. Soutter, the radical journalist who had been instrumental in bringing Odger forward, told Labouchère that ‘no man in your position can speak or act for Labour so well as the man who is a direct representative. The necessary knowledge cannot be bought.’99 It was unusual for the labour movement to promote a narrow, sectarian conception of class.100 Indeed, at the 1868 general election there were instances of candidates who were not manual workers framing themselves as a ‘working man’s candidate’, for example Passmore-Edwards, a solicitor’s clerk, at Truro, and Colonel Dickson, a retired soldier, at Hackney.101 However, with more than one ‘working man’s candidate’ in the field, it was clearly necessary for Odger to articulate his working-class credentials in a way that diminished Bradlaugh’s. In a crowded field, what constituted ‘working class’ was necessarily contested. Despite such opposition, Odger’s candidature prospered, leaving Labouchère and Bradlaugh to withdraw. Managed by the election agent James Acland, Odger’s campaign displayed superior canvassing tactics. Firstly, the support of the Greenwich Advanced Liberal Association was secured, giving Odger important organisational backing. Secondly, recognising the need to have local support, Odger’s committee, through an endless series of public meetings, took great pains to make it appear that he had ‘the sanction of the Liberal working man voters of the borough’.102 Yet, as a working-class candidate, Odger faced pernicious financial obstacles. His candidature was nearly destroyed when the returning officer, the high bailiff of Southwark, determined that the official expenses of the contest amounted to £600, and demanded that Odger (along with the Liberal Waterlow and the Conservative Beresford) pay £200 to cover his 97 Daily News, 24 Nov. 1869 98 Ibid., 14 Dec. 1869. 99 Soutter, Recollections, p. 31. 100 Lawrence, Speaking for the People, p. 146. 101 Royal Cornwall Gazette, 3 and 10 Sept., 15 Oct., 5 Nov. 1868; Daily News, 17 Sept. and 17 Nov. 1868. 102 Daily News, 16 Nov. and 22 Nov. 1869.

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share.103 Waterlow and Beresford duly paid, but Odger’s inability to do so temporarily disabled his campaign. With only £100 forthcoming, the returning officer refused not only to give Acland information concerning polling places but also to release tickets for the admission of Odger’s supporters to the election hustings. Citing the illegality of the returning officer’s actions, Odger petitioned Parliament, and his case was argued in the Commons by Serjeant Simon, MP for Dewsbury.104 The solicitor general confirmed that the returning officer had no right to deny Odger the necessary election facilities, but declined to intervene directly, leaving Odger to rely on a last-minute donation from the Liberal MP Thomas Hughes to keep his campaign alive.105 Odger thus continued to the poll, only for Waterlow’s intransigence to prove fatal. Although he received an impressive 4,382 votes, Waterlow, who retired hours before polling closed, gained 2,951 votes, allowing the Conservative Beresford to be returned with 4,686. Although Odger’s campaign ultimately failed to provide convincing evidence of a breakthrough in the cause of labour representation, the inflexibility of organised Liberalism in dealing with a popular working-class candidate caused the LRL’s supporters to re-evaluate the labour movement’s relationship with the Liberal party and adopt a more assertive rhetoric. A leading article in the Bee-Hive stated that the working men of England … will gladly and heartily co-operate with the Liberal party … but if we are to fight our own battle with our own hands, let us know it, and it will soon be seen we can take care of ourselves.106

The labour movement’s aggressive stance towards the Liberal party increased dramatically in 1871 following the Liberal government’s Criminal Law Amendment Act.107 Although the 1871 Trades Union Act secured the legal status of trade unions, the Criminal Law Amendment Act (which had originally been part of the government’s Trades Union bill) made picketing illegal, and therefore removed a union’s ability to strike. Disillusioned by the legislation, Howell wrote in private correspondence that ‘we must create a Working Class Party, for Whig, Tory and middle class Radicals ignore our wants and requirements’.108 This new discourse of a distinct ‘party’ 103 Soutter, Recollections, p. 39–42. 104 Hansard, 11 Feb. 1870, vol. 199, cc. 178–80. 105 Ibid., cc. 182–4; Soutter, Recollections, p. 43. 106 Bee-Hive, 19 Feb. 1870. 107 For a useful narrative of the labour movement’s response to the Criminal Law Amendment Act see L.L. Witherell, ‘Direct Parliamentary Representation of Labour and the Controversy of 1872’, Parliamentary History, 12 (1993), pp. 143–63. 108 Howell to William Hickery, 6 Sept. 1871, George Howell Collection, letter book.

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was subsequently echoed by Latham, who stated that ‘it was time that the working classes should form a party of their own and take a distinct position as a power in the state’.109 This was followed by a published address to the ‘trade unionists of the United Kingdom and working men generally’, which declared: We urge you to organize in your several constituencies, not as mere consenting parties to the doings of local wirepullers, but as a great Labour party – a party which knows its strength, and is prepared to fight and win.110

This discussion of ‘a great Labour party’ is clearly significant as it was the first time the labour movement used the term ‘party’ to help create an identity for itself that separated it from the Liberals. However, although Latham, in the meetings of the LRL executive, described the imminent coming of a ‘Labour party … whose interests and demands must be attended to, whether Whigs or Tories were in office’, he did not elaborate on how such a ‘party’ would operate in theory or in practice.111 The closest any member of the LRL came to conceiving of a ‘Labour party’ was George Potter, who explained that the ideal result of the expected general election would be ‘a significant number of working men [who would] hold the balance of power between the two parties now in the House’.112 Interestingly, Potter’s hope that the arithmetic of the Commons would allow working-class MPs to assert their presence in Parliament prefigured the later arguments of the Irish nationalists, who wished to hold the balance of power in the Commons in order to force the government to carry out their wish for Home Rule, a strategy that, in turn, influenced how many within the labour movement perceived the role of a third party in British politics.113 This new discourse of ‘party’, though, was temporary and did not reflect any principled change, suggesting that it was, at least in part, consolatory rhetoric following the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. Following a meeting to establish a ‘plan of action’ for the expected election, it was resolved that ‘the League should hold meetings in support of Liberal principles’.114 Moreover, there was little sense of a national strategy to help establish a ‘Labour party’ and, with the League £30 in debt, there was no 109 Labour Representation League minute book, 15 Mar. 1873. 110 A copy of the address, dated 17 Mar. 1873, is found in the Labour Representation League minute book. 111 Ibid., 27 Mar. 1873. 112 Ibid. 113 See chapter four. 114 Labour Representation League minute book, 12 Sept. 1873.

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money to carry out a plan, even if one had existed.115 Indeed, the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act actually saw Howell work more closely with the parliamentary Liberal party as he began liaising with figures such as Thomas Hughes, Anthony Mundella and Samuel Morley in an attempt to amend the legislation.116 Howell, as secretary of the TUC’s parliamentary committee, which had been formed that year to watch over the progress of the government’s Trades Union bill, and Alexander Macdonald, the founder of the Miners’ National Association and the committee’s chairman, assiduously lobbied Liberal MPs.117 Meanwhile, Potter called for the LRL’s new secretary, Henry Broadhurst, to solicit subscriptions from Liberal MPs favourable to their cause, which was hardly indicative of a serious plan to achieve independent labour representation.118 Meanwhile, the enthusiasm of the TUC for assisting the return of labour candidates was noticeably muted. At the sixth congress, held at Sheffield in January 1874, Broadhurst’s proposal for a small levy on every trade union in order to raise an electoral fund for the return of labour candidates was defeated.119 A compromise motion stating that ‘local efforts are most desirable and the best means of securing the return of working men to Parliament,’ and that all trades unions in districts should ‘amalgamate and go in common council for the said object’, became the substantive motion, but even this was rejected.120 It was ultimately resolved that in the opinion of this congress, it is unwise and undesirable to pledge itself to any course of action in respect to labour representation in Parliament, and that each representative be at liberty to take what action he thinks proper in the town or city in which he resides.121

Although the resolution disappointed Broadhurst and Howell, it should not necessarily be seen as indicative of any trade union intransigence towards direct labour representation. The resolution was arguably more reflective of the fact that provincial trades union leaders remained wary of an 115 Ibid., 7 Feb. 1873. 116 Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 152. 117 As a result, William Harcourt, Liberal MP for Oxford City and later home secretary, introduced a bill to amend the Criminal Law Amendment Act, but it failed at the second reading: Hansard, 5 July 1872, vol. 212, cc. 750–2. Howell, who felt that the bill had been ‘stabbed and thrust under the hedge in the darkness of the night’, abandoned his strategy of seeking an amendment, and instead called for its total repeal: Howell to Charles Bartlett, 15 Aug. 1872. George Howell Collection, letter book. 118 Labour Representation League minute book, 15 Mar. 1873. 119 Report of the Sixth Annual Trades Union Congress (1874), pp. 27–8. 120 Ibid., pp. 28–30. 121 Ibid., p. 30.

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a­ ccumulation of funds that would lead to a centralising of power in the hands of the parliamentary committee.122 This rhetoric of local independence, of course, was not just specific to the labour movement, and was evident in both the Liberal and Conservative parties at this time. The leading Positivists of the trade union movement also appeared to equivocate on the question of labour representation. Edward Beesley and Frederic Harrison, who had served on the TUC’s first parliamentary committee before losing their places in 1872, were outraged by what they perceived to be the complete failure of Howell and Macdonald to secure an amendment of the Criminal Law Amendment Act from the Liberal government.123 Subsequently, at the TUC at Leeds, Harrison argued that unionists should no longer back the Liberal party, and Beesley urged them ‘to form a third party’.124 However, the Positivists, just like the LRL, had no political programme on which to base the formation of a new party. Indeed, Beesley appeared to advocate the labour movement working within the Liberal party in order to promote Joseph Chamberlain’s programme of ‘free church, free land, free schools, free labour’.125 Meanwhile, on the eve of the election, although Harrison maintained that ‘by resolutely forming a Labour party … the special claims of labour will be advanced,’ he called upon working men to vote Liberal and support the slogan of ‘no class legislation’.126 His eve-of-election call therefore mirrored the LRL’s, which informed the working-class voters that ‘as a class you desire no predominance in the council of the nation, but as honest men and self-respecting citizens, you do desire to put an end to that most unjust class exclusion’.127 Like the working-class candidates at the 1868 general election, the language of the LRL was embracing an inclusive definition of the working classes and underlining the fact that the return of working-class MPs would end rather than produce class legislation. The LRL and the 1874 general election The return of the country’s first two working-class MPs at the 1874 general election highlighted the importance of securing special deals between organised labour and local official Liberalism. At Stafford, an industrial double-member borough whose population was dominated by the working 122 123 124 125 126 127

Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 176. Bee-Hive, 31 May, 7, 14, 21 and 28 June 1872. Ibid., 25 Jan. 1873; Harrison, Before the Socialists, p. 299. Harrison, Before the Socialists, 300–1; Bee-Hive, 31 Jan. 1874. Harrison, Before the Socialists, 300–1; Bee-Hive, 31 Jan. 1874. Labour Representation League minute book, 27 Jan. 1874; Bee-Hive, 31 Jan. 1874.

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class, Alexander Macdonald of the Miners’ National Association was elected in second place, behind the incumbent Conservative Thomas Salt, a local wealthy manufacturer.128 Standing on an advanced Liberal platform, Macdonald called for repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, a reduction in taxation, abolition of the game laws and Home Rule for Ireland.129 His candidature was a direct result of a deal brokered in 1869 between the Staffordshire miners and the local Liberal party: following Odger’s defeat in a test ballot at Stafford in June of that year, it was agreed that a working-class candidate would be brought forward at the next general election. Subsequently, in May 1873, following an approach by a committee of Stafford working men, Broadhurst, in his capacity as the LRL’s secretary, brought forward Macdonald.130 Significantly, the extent to which local organised support could transcend national issues was evident when the Staffordshire miners, who were affiliated to the Amalgamated Association of Miners as opposed to Macdonald’s National Association, nevertheless gave their strong backing to the working-class candidate.131 The traditional obstacle of election finance was overcome when the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) agreed to fund Macdonald’s expenses, which totalled £305, just £3 more than Salt.132 Crucially, there was also little doubt that Macdonald would be able to sustain himself financially whilst in Parliament: the speculative investments he had made in the mining industry in the 1850s and 1860s had secured him a small fortune.133 The election of Thomas Burt, the full-time secretary and agent of the Northumberland Miners’ Association, at Morpeth underlined the importance of financial stability. Not only did the Northumberland Miners’ Association cover his elections costs of £674, the organisation also agreed to provide him with a salary of £500 per year should he be elected.134 The strengths of Burt’s local connections were also undeniable. He was a local man who spoke with a ‘Northumbrian burr’, and the resident miners, who, following a highly successful franchise campaign in 1873, had finally been placed on the ratebooks as occupiers and now dominated the electorate, were all unswervingly loyal 128 G.M. Wilson, Alexander McDonald: Leader of the Miners (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1982), pp. 149–50. Although the family name was ‘McDonald’, Alexander adopted the ‘Macdonald’ form in the 1870s. For the sake of consistency, he is referred to as ‘Macdonald’ throughout this book. 129 Ibid., pp. 149–50. 130 Ibid., p. 148. 131 Ibid. 132 PP 1874 (358), liii. 24. See Appendix I. 133 Wilson, Alexander McDonald, p. 148. 134 L.J. Satre, Thomas Burt, Miners’ MP, 1837–1922: The Great Conciliator (London: Leicester University Press, 1999), pp. 32–3.

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to their popular agent and secretary.135 The vocal backing of the LRL leadership was therefore superfluous and the organisation had nothing to do with his election. Burt, who declared that his candidature reflected the desire of the miners to see ‘the exclusive barriers which have hitherto kept poor men outside the House of Commons, and made that House a “rich man’s club”, broken down and swept away’, offered an advanced Liberal platform, and although he called for the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, he was careful to blame its existence on the ‘employers’ in the Commons rather than the Liberal government.136 Unsurprisingly, he decisively topped the poll, receiving 3,332 votes to 585 for his Conservative opponent. The following month, Burt and Macdonald’s election as ‘the first direct and fully recognized representatives of labour in the British Parliament’ was celebrated in London by a banquet hosted by the LRL. Both men, though, were keen to stress that they would not be ‘representing a class’ and, while Macdonald insisted that they were ‘handicapped by no party – they were in Parliament to judge men by their measures’, he declared to his audience that he and Burt had ‘thrown their lot in with the Liberal Party as the great party of progress’.137 The failure of the LRL’s ten other candidates at the 1874 general election underlined the range of obstacles facing a labour candidate in the 1870s.138 Finance was a persistent problem. Where the labour candidate had close connections to the local mining industry, financial support was generally forthcoming. At Merthyr Tydvil, Thomas Halliday, who, as president of the Amalgamated Association of Miners, had been instrumental in establishing effective trade union organisation in the South Wales coalfield, spent £889 on his campaign (the most of all the labour candidates), although he was defeated by two Liberal MPs with a strong Welsh identity.139 Likewise, William Pickard, agent of the Wigan Miners’ Association, was able to afford £659 for his campaign, more than any of his four opponents.140 In the other 135 Daily Gazette, 18 Oct. 1873. 136 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 25 Oct. 1873; Northern Echo, 20 Oct. 1873. 137 Bee-Hive, 21 Mar. 1874. 138 Henry Broadhurst (Wycombe); William Randal Cremer (Warwick); Thomas Halliday (Merthyr Tydfil); George Howell (Aylesbury); John Kane (Middlesbrough); Thomas Mottershead (Preston); George Odger (Southwark); William Pickard (Wigan); George Potter (Peterborough); Alfred Walton (Stoke-on-Trent). See Appendix I for the full results and their expenses. The LRL had brought forward Lloyd Jones at Gateshead, but he withdrew before the poll. Benjamin Lucraft stood at Finsbury, but the executive of the LRL decided not to endorse him because of his criticism of trade combinations. See Labour Representation League minute book, 27 Jan. 1874. 139 K.O. Morgan, Wales in British Politics, 1868–1922 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1970), p. 39. 140 See Appendix I.

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instances, though, the labour candidates were crippled by a lack of money. For example, Howell and Potter spent barely a quarter of the expenses incurred by the victorious Liberal candidate in their respective contests.141 Unsurprisingly, the local Liberal associations in question were loath to pool any of their funds with candidates who would be unable to fund themselves if elected. Local Liberal electoral machines also displayed superior canvassing tactics that helped to neutralise the threat of a labour candidature. At Middlesbrough, John Kane, founder of the National Association of Ironworkers in Gateshead, represented a potentially serious challenge to Henry Bolckow, the local iron master. In a region dominated by the iron industry, Kane enjoyed the support of the division’s organised labour and secured the support of the local branch of the United Kingdom Alliance. He failed, though, to successfully reach out to the division’s unskilled and non-unionised Irish workforce.142 The Middlesbrough Liberal Reform Association specifically targeted this demographic, and within forty-eight hours of Kane announcing his candidature party members had conducted an exhaustive canvass of the areas on the fringes of the constituency where many of the Irish resided, and four thousand circulars had been issued.143 Although Kane secured the support of John Welsh, secretary of the local Home Rule Association, local Liberals successfully undercut this alliance by courting the support of the Reverend Richard Lacey, who made a direct appeal to the members of the Home Rule Association to back Bolckow.144 In terms of personnel, the links between organised Liberalism and the local Irish were significant. For example, Thomas Sanderson, a supporter of the Middlesbrough Irish Literary Association, was also a leading member of the Liberal Reform Association, and he loyally backed Bolckow.145 Even when deals were made between a labour candidate and the local Liberal party machine, the fact that such arrangements often reflected uneasy compromises rather than solid alliances only served to weaken the cause of direct labour representation. Alfred Armstrong Walton’s candidature at the Stoke-on-Trent by-election of February 1875 illustrates this point. At the 1874 general election Walton had been brought forward by the leaders of the pottery trade unions as a labour candidate for Stoke-on-Trent. With 141 Ibid. 142 M. Chase, ‘The Teesside Irish in the Nineteenth Century’, in P. Buckland and J. Belchem (eds), The Irish in British Labour History (Liverpool: Conference proceedings in Irish Studies, no. 1, 1992), p. 55. 143 Daily Gazette, 27 Jan. 1874. 144 Northern Echo, 2 Feb. 1874; Daily Gazette, 28 Jan. 1874. 145 Daily Gazette, 30 Jan. 1874.

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two Liberal candidates already in the field, Walton’s candidature split the Liberal vote, allowing the return of a Conservative in second place. As a result, William Woodall, one of the leaders of the Stoke-on-Trent Liberal Association, brokered a deal that ensured, at the next general election, the second Liberal candidate would be nominated by the trade unions, though it was not expected it would be Walton, who had little connection with the borough.146 However, the sudden and unexpected resignation of the sitting Liberal member in December 1874 threw the association into turmoil, and Walton was hastily nominated for the by-election, much to the chagrin of the middle-class members of the local Liberal association. The association’s chairman, Christopher Dickinson, admitted that Walton had no ‘special ability or special connection with the district’, while other members pledged to support the Conservative candidate.147 This messy situation was deftly exploited by the independent Edward Kenealy, who had been the controversial leading counsel for the Tichborne claimant in 1873.148 Although Walton was a bona fide working-class candidate, the majority of the local potters and miners backed Kenealy, whose reformist credentials were unquestionably championed by Reynolds’s Newspaper.149 Moreover, even though Kenealy was middle class, he declared that he hoped to be the first of two hundred independent working-class MPs devoted to the sweeping away of the old injustices that had seen the defeat of the Tichborne claimant.150 Paradoxically, because of his populist appeal, Kenealy seemed to be able to articulate working-class interests more resonantly than Walton. Of course, Walton’s failure was indicative of a wider problem of securing the working-class vote. In this analysis of labour’s struggle for parliamentary representation, it should not be forgotten that Liberalism was not the only path for working-class voters. Working-class Conservatism, particularly in Lancashire, was clearly an obstacle that the LRL’s candidates failed to overcome.151 At Preston, where the silkweaver Thomas Mottershead was brought forward by the LRL in 1874, the vast majority of the town’s working class voted for the two Conservative candidates. Although he 146 McWilliam, Tichborne Claimant, p. 131. 147 Staffordshire Sentinel, 16 Jan. 1875. 148 R. McWilliam, ‘Radicalism and Popular Culture: The Tichborne Agitation and the Politics of Fair Play’, in E.F. Biagini and A.J. Reid (eds), Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 44–64. 149 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 345. 150 Potteries Examiner, 9 Jan. 1875. 151 For a discussion of working-class Conservatism see Lee, ‘Conservatism, Traditionalism and the British Working Class’, pp. 84–102; Joyce, Work, Society and Politics; Lawrence, ‘Class and Gender’, pp. 629–52; Barbary, ‘Reinterpreting “Factory Politics” in Bury’, pp. 115–44.

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received the support of the local union leadership, his supporters did not singularly back his candidature: 1,200 of Mottershead’s 3,756 votes were split with the Conservative Edward Hermon, ‘the embodiment of Lancashire textile paternalism’, who topped the poll.152 Similarly, at Wigan, Pickard, a miners’ agent standing in his hometown, was unable to overcome the appeal of Conservatism. Interestingly, Pickard and his supporters articulated the issue of direct labour representation not as a party-political matter, but one of national identity, with the chair of his election committee asking the employers of the town to consider the issue ‘dispassionately, as Englishmen, and not as Tories or Liberals’.153 However, the two Conservative candidates comfortably topped the poll and he finished fourth.154 Clearly, here was an unpalatable truth for the leaders of the LRL: the working men were not necessarily anxious to be represented in Parliament by their own class. Indeed, in 1875 the labour movement itself was not united on the necessity of direct labour representation. At the eighth TUC, held at Glasgow in October that year, a motion calling for trade unionists to return to Parliament ‘men of their own order’ was keenly contested, with one delegate insisting that ‘the reason why working men candidates had not been returned to Parliament was that working men themselves did not wish to see them returned’.155 Another delegate, who opposed the motion, stated that he ‘did not want the delegates to vote for working men, but to choose the best man they could find, whether he was a working man or not’.156 However, after a lengthy debate, the motion in favour of returning ‘working men’ to Parliament was passed with only five votes against.157 As the above discussion of the 1874 general election has suggested, lack of finance, localism, working-class Conservatism and, more broadly, workingclass apathy towards direct labour representation presented the LRL’s candidates with insurmountable challenges. However, in the post-mortem that followed, a published address by the LRL in the Bee-Hive laid the blame squarely at the door of organised Liberalism: The labour candidates to a man were of Liberal principles, who would have given an intelligent support to a really Liberal government, and yet the managers of the Liberal party … regarded them with suspicion, and treated them in an unfriendly spirit. Where a love of principle and a loyalty 152 Joyce, Work, Society and Politics, p. 315. 153 Liverpool Mercury, 20 Jan. 1874. 154 H. Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections, 1885–1910 (London: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 266–7. 155 Report of the Eighth Trades Union Congress, p. 20. 156 Ibid., p. 21. 157 Ibid.

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to party should have operated, class jealousy prevailed. This is the main reason why working men candidates have not been successful.

The solution, according to the LRL, was for working men to Inform the middle-class managers of electioneering contests that their claims must be acknowledged. They must insist on being consulted on the candidates … In this way alone can the various sections of the Liberal party be brought to unite.

If this did not happen, The working men must fight their own battle in their own way, at whatever cost to a party which, whilst calling itself Liberal, makes prejudice and exclusion leading characteristics of its policy.158

The LRL’s drawing of attention to the ‘middle-class managers of electioneering contests’ is significant. The leaders of the labour movement where making a clear link between organised Liberalism and the failure of working-class men to receive the Liberal nomination. In this context, the LRL’s address prefigured the later adoption of the ‘caucus’ as a political bogeyman. It is fair to say that although the LRL attacked Liberal organisation, it still supported Liberal principles. This does not mean, though, that the clear tensions in the Liberal alliance can be ignored. For example, a leading article in the Bee-Hive argued that ‘if the leaders of the Liberal party will not accept the new Liberal force in a right spirit it will fling itself against them and smash them like glass.’159 The LRL was thoroughly assertive in presenting itself as a channel for this ‘new Liberal force’: a force that supported key radical demands, such as Home Rule for Ireland, and backed the direct representation of labour in Parliament. The LRL’s analysis of its defeats therefore mirrored the Reform League’s interpretation of the failure of its working-class candidates six years earlier. The loser was not direct labour representation per se, but rather the Liberal party, as its intransigent local managers were not allowing the party to become its true advanced self. However, in a change of language from 1868, if the Liberal party, both in government and at the local level, was perceived to be acting in direct opposition to the labour interest, the leaders of the LRL were willing to assert an independent identity through the rhetoric of a ‘Labour party’.

158 Bee-Hive, 14 Mar. 1874; Labour Representation League minute book, 27 Jan. 1874. 159 Bee-Hive, 21 Mar. 1874.

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Labour candidates and local elections Although the return of working-class men to Parliament remained the driving force behind the LRL’s political agenda, it also supported the election of labour candidates at local elections. A number of historians have pointed to the more fruitful possibilities offered by local government for labour candidates.160 Moreover, it has been recognised that local elections were the ‘nursery of electoral organisation, since the municipal ward was universally accepted as the basic unit of electioneering’.161 Local elections, therefore, offer revealing cases studies for the diverse ways in which the labour movement interacted with organised Liberalism. In the decade following the Second Reform Act labour candidates offered at a number of school board and municipal elections. The 1870 Education Act made working men eligible for election to the newly created school boards, and although it was only in 1878 that property qualifications for election to town councils were abolished, working-class candidates still went to the polls.162 In some cases, as highlighted below, they even enjoyed a moderate level of success. Certainly, the use of the cumulative vote in school board elections – whereby an elector could vote as many times as there were seats, and give all their votes to one candidate – offered a working-class candidate a potentially increased chance of success.163 A study of their campaigns reveals the extent to which labour’s attitude towards organised Liberalism was contingent: the way in which local labour leaders approached their relationship with local Liberalism was subject to a process of negotiation and renegotiation. The dynamics of local politics in Birmingham in this period provide an illuminating insight into this process.164 As the discussion below suggests, although the city was home to arguably the most sophisticated 160 A. Briggs, History of Birmingham: Borough and City, 1865–1938, II (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), pp. 165–94; J.S. Hurt, Elementary Schooling and the Working Classes, 1860–1918 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), pp. 75–98; E.P. Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons: Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth-Century Urban Government (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), pp. 131–9; D. Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England: The Structure of Politics in Victorian Cities (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1976), p. 258; Lancaster, Radicalism, Co-operation and Socialism, pp. 98–121. 161 Hanham, Elections and Party Management, p. 387. 162 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, pp. 321–2. 163 Hurt, Elementary Schooling, p. 75. 164 It is not the intention here to present local elections in Birmingham as in any way being representative of a national picture. Birmingham in the 1870s was unusual for the fervency with which local elections were contested. In boroughs lacking efficient party organisation, there was often a shortage of candidates for the position of councillor, and in some towns, candidates rarely wore party labels. See Hanham, Elections and Party Management, pp. 387–96.

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party ­organisation in the country, Liberal leaders still had to respond to and engage with the political demands of the labour movement. The Birmingham Liberal Association (BLA), which was initially formed in February 1865, was reorganised in October 1867 in response to the Second Reform Act.165 Although the constituency’s electorate tripled and the borough gained a third member, the minority clause meant that electors continued to have just two votes. To discipline this increased electorate, the association’s secretary, William Harris, an architect and surveyor, designed a three-tier organisational structure.166 The foundations were the ward branches, and each ward elected members to a general committee responsible for selecting candidates, and also members to an executive committee responsible for the general direction of the association. Membership was open to anyone willing to pay an annual subscription of a shilling, though middle-class Liberals monopolised the top posts.167 Its first president, the mayor George Dixon, was an Anglican merchant, and many of the borough’s prominent businessmen, most notably Joseph Chamberlain, played a leading role in the association’s affairs.168 Moreover, the town’s fledging radical organisations quickly came into the fold, with the Birmingham Working Men’s Reform League and the St George’s Reform League merging with the Association.169 At the 1868 general election the BLA successfully organised Liberal electors by ward in order to secure the return of all three of their parliamentary candidates.170 Broadly speaking, the BLA’s relationship with the leaders of local organised labour was harmonious. When Chamberlain introduced the nine-hour working day at his screw-making business in 1872, he won the admiration of the Birmingham Trades Council, who thereafter championed his municipal career.171 His narrow re-election to the town council in 1872 owed a great deal to the influential backing of William John Davis, the leader of the Birmingham Brassworkers’ Union, and in 1873 the trades council appointed Chamberlain trustee of its parliamentary election fund, which had been established to encourage working-class representation in the town.172 165 Briggs, History of Birmingham, pp. 165–7. 166 Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons, pp. 131–3. 167 Briggs, History of Birmingham, pp. 167–8; T.R.  Tholfsen, ‘The Origins of the Birmingham Caucus’, Historical Journal, 2 (1959), p. 184. 168 D. Leighton, ‘Municipal Progress, Democracy and Radical Identity in Birmingham, 1838–1886’, Midland History, 25 (2000), pp. 115–42. 169 Briggs, History of Birmingham, p. 192. 170 Ibid., pp. 167–9. 171 P.T. Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 62–3; J. Corbett, The Birmingham Trades Council, 1866–1966 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1966), p. 41. 172 Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain, p. 61.

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However, the nomination of working-class candidates for local offices proved to be a flashpoint of contention between labour and the BLA. At the 1870 school board elections, the general committee of the BLA sought to control the electoral process by producing a list of fifteen candidates. The Birmingham branch of the LRL submitted the names of three workingclass men to the general committee to consider, but it subsequently included only one on their final list of fifteen candidates.173 The president of the Birmingham LRL objected strongly to this perceived slight, pointing out that the selection of candidates should reflect the fact that the working class formed the bulk of the electorate, and proposing that working men should be brought forward to run against the chosen fifteen.174 Chamberlain mediated between the LRL and the BLA, insisting that he supported ‘the principle of direct labour representation’, but Jesse Collings, a leading advocate of free and non-sectarian elementary education and a prominent member of the BLA, rejected the argument that as the Education Act had been passed for the benefit of the working classes, they were the best people to manage its implementation.175 Although this episode caused strain in the relationship between labour and the nonconformist leaders of the BLA, the dispute did not concern educational policy. The local labour leaders broadly supported Chamberlain’s policy of confining state-supported instruction to secular subjects, leaving religious instruction to religious denominations.176 The disagreement revolved around whether the Birmingham LRL had the right to expect a certain proportion of the Liberal candidates to be working men. Ultimately, though, the LRL reluctantly accepted the BLA’s list of fifteen candidates, and disavowed the late candidacy of David Kirkwood, a gun-action filer, who offered, unsuccessfully, as an independent labour candidate.177 The LRL’s acquiescence should not be interpreted as subservience to organised Liberalism. Indeed, the Birmingham labour movement was not only assertive in its relationship with organised Liberalism, but also outflanked it. At the beginning of the decade the Birmingham LRL successfully ran a number of municipal candidates against incumbent Liberals.178 Prior to 1873, when Chamberlain’s campaign for mayor prompted the Liberal ward associations to intervene directly in the selection of 173 Hurt, Elementary Schooling, p. 87. 174 Birmingham Daily Post, 14 Nov. 1870. 175 Ibid., 11 and 14 Nov. 1870. 176 Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain, pp. 52–3. 177 Hurt, Elementary Schooling, p. 87. 178 For the municipal election results of the working-class candidates discussed in this chapter see Appendix II.

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municipal candidates, the BLA was not directly involved in the nomination process.179 Consequently, if local labour wished to offer their own candidate, they did not have to operate through the official channels of the BLA. At the 1870 municipal elections, Hanan Morley, a baker who had been brought forward by the Birmingham LRL, successfully took Nechell’s ward from the sitting Liberal councillor, whom the LRL felt was no longer a suitable representative for an area largely composed of working men.180 Similarly, in 1871, James Whateley, a pearl-button worker who declared that the council needed ‘men who had been thoroughly acquainted with working men of their own order’ and insisted that ‘if elected … he should not be the tool of any party,’ defeated the sitting Liberal councillor at Hampton Ward.181 In 1872 John Osborne of the Birmingham LRL challenged Francis Schnadhorst, arguably the BLA’s most effective political organiser, at St Mary’s ward.182 Osborne, a builder and licensed victualler, declared that ‘the time has come when, independent of party, working men must stick to their own interests,’ but Schnadhorst, who spoke in favour of direct labour representation, contended that the St Mary’s Ward Liberal Association, of which he was secretary, contained a significant number of working men, and therefore he had a legitimate right to represent the ward’s working class.183 Both men were ultimately defeated by the Conservative candidate, the only Liberal loss in the town’s elections.184 Nevertheless, municipal elections could be fertile ground for the labour movement, even when opposing local Liberalism. The success of John Airey in Worcester is a pertinent example. A member of the LRL and president of the Worcestershire branch of the Agricultural Labourers’ Union, he believed that the labour movement ‘must not depend on the Liberals’ and in 1870 he won a seat on the Worcester town council and continued to champion direct labour representation thereafter.185 The labour movement’s relations with organised Liberalism must not be viewed as a one-way process: in a number of cases at school board elections, it was organised Liberalism that reached out to the working-class leadership.186 For example, at the 1870 school board elections in Leeds, the 179 Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons, p. 135; C. Green, ‘Birmingham’s Politics, 1873–1891: The Local Basis of Change’, Midland History, 2 (1973), pp. 85–7. 180 Birmingham Daily Post, 19 Oct. and 1 Nov. 1870. 181 Ibid., 18, 20, 29, 30, 31 Oct. and 2 Nov. 1871. 182 Schnadhorst became the BLA’s secretary the following year. See B. McGill, ‘Francis Schnadhorst and Liberal Party Organisation’, Journal of Modern History, 34, 1 (1962), pp. 19–20. 183 Birmingham Daily Post, 17, 26, 29 Oct., 1 and 2 Nov. 1872. 184 Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons, p. 135. 185 Bee-Hive, 14 Dec. 1872; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 1 Nov. 1873. 186 For the school board election results of the candidates discussed in this chapter see Appendix II.

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local Liberal Registration Association opened negotiations with the Leeds Reform League and selected William Beckworth, a tanner and leather cutter, who became the first working man to be elected to the board.187 At Nottingham, Edward Smith, a lace maker, was elected to the first school board with ‘the undivided support of the Liberal party’ and thereafter the Nottingham Liberal Association co-operated with local working men’s committees to ensure that at least one of their nominees was returned.188 Moreover, at Stafford, the local Liberal party backed the candidature of Henry Holder, secretary of the local branch of the tailors’ union, who was returned to the local school board in 1871.189 Where Liberal organisation was severely lacking, though, this sense of local Liberalism engaging with labour was rare. At the London school board elections candidates were frequently brought forward by ad hoc committees, leading to a crowded field of Liberal nominees. In 1870 George Potter stood for the Westminster school board. Although he offered as ‘a working man to represent working men’, he was careful to insist that, if elected, he would ‘enter upon his duties distinct from party feelings’.190 Despite this inclusive call, and the support of five Liberal MPs, he lacked the organisation to ensure that his request for his supporters to give him all five of their votes was realised, and he was defeated in sixth place.191 Cremer at Marylebone and Robert Applegarth at Lambeth suffered similar fates. Benjamin Lucraft was returned in sixth place at Finsbury.192 Potter was eventually elected to the Westminster school board in 1873.193 However, Liberal organisation in London remained weak. Henry Broadhurst, who was defeated the same year at the Greenwich school board election, later recalled that, although publicly backed by Liberal MPs, he ‘had very little electioneering machinery to speak of, and not more than half a dozen helpers’.194 In Birmingham, the fate of labour candidates was not necessarily determined by the strength of Liberal organisation. Indeed, a split between labour and the BLA in 1875–6 underlined the fact that labour could successfully assert its own authority. In 1875 the BLA put forward the Reverend E.F.M. McCarthy for one of two seats that became vacant on 187 Hurt, Elementary Schooling, p. 89. 188 Nottingham Daily Express, 24 Nov. 1870; Hurt, Elementary Schooling, p. 90. 189 S.R. Broadbridge, ‘Alexander McDonald and Stafford, 1868–81’, Bulletin of the North Staffordshire Labour Studies Group, 1 (1973), pp. 7–16. 190 Bee-Hive, 22 Oct. 1870. 191 Ibid., 12 and 26 Nov., 3 Dec. 1870. 192 Ibid., 12 Nov., 3 Dec. 1870. 193 Ibid., 1 Nov., 6 Dec. 1873. 194 H. Broadhurst, The Story of his Life from a Stonemasons’ Bench to the Treasury Bench (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1901), pp. 64–5.

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the school board. The choice of an Anglican schoolmaster rather than a working man infuriated William John Davis, the leader of the Birmingham Brassworkers’ Union who had previously assisted Chamberlain in his re-election as a councillor in 1872. Subsequently, Davis, with the support of the LRL and C.R. Bowkett, the president of the trades council, offered in opposition to McCarthy.195 The campaign discourse of both sides focused on using contested conceptions of the BLA to stress that the other side could not speak for the working man. Davis insisted that, as a ‘working man’s’ candidate, he was ‘not fighting the Liberal Association but it was the Liberal Association which was fighting working men’.196 The BLA’s apparent ‘dictatorial and tyrannical’ control over the nominations was the central issue, with the chairman of Davis’s election committee declaring that ‘if an angel from heaven came down … unless he had the imprimatur of the Liberal Association he was unfit for office’.197 In contrast, George Dixon, one of the borough’s three Liberal MPs, articulated the role of the BLA in a way that stressed the inclusiveness of organised Liberalism. He declared that the BLA could fairly lay claim to being able to speak on behalf of the local workmen, as ‘at the ward meetings the working men were invited over and over again to select men, whether workmen or otherwise’.198 A leading article in the Birmingham Daily Post echoed this point, stating that the working men were ‘members and supporters of the Liberal Association; they guide[d] and control[led] it’.199 Davis, in contrast, maintained that the BLA’s ‘representative character was a delusion’.200 Although there were two vacant seats, the presence of a Conservative candidate ensured that there would be no rapprochement between the two camps. The BLA called on Liberal electors to give both their votes to McCarthy while Davis urged his supporters to plump for him.201 Following a bitter contest in which Davis had been supported in his canvass by Potter and Broadhurst, McCarthy comfortably topped the poll with 25,989 votes. Davis, who received 9,951, narrowly missed out on the second seat by just over 500 votes. The Birmingham labour movement had shown itself to be assertive in the face of organised Liberalism. Subsequently, in January 1876 Davis founded the Birmingham Labour Association to ensure that working men could 195 196 197 198 199 200 201

Hurt, Elementary Schooling, p. 88. Birmingham Daily Post, 4 Nov. 1875. Ibid., 19 Nov. 1875. Ibid., 4 Nov. 1875. Ibid., 15 Oct. 1875. Ibid., 19 Nov. 1875. Ibid., 15 Oct., 4 Nov. 1875.

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‘promote their own class interests’.202 Although the membership of the Association was small, Chamberlain was sufficiently impressed with Davis’s performance at the school board election to attempt to bring him into the organisational fold of the BLA.203 Chamberlain made Davis an offer: ‘if you want to be on the school board, or the town council, come to me. As far as I can see your principles are the same as mine, and you have a following which must eventually be recognised’. Chamberlain’s suggestion that his principles were the same as Davis’s was not simply flattery. There is little doubt that in the local elections, the labour candidates stood on broadly the same platform as their Liberal counterparts. However, Davis declined the invitation, simply stating that ‘A Labour Party must and will exist’.204 For Davis and his supporters, the Liberal party was no longer the vehicle with which to pursue their interests. At the subsequent 1876 school board election, Davis, who stood as a ‘Labour’ candidate, was returned.205 Although Davis was subsequently willing to work with local organised Liberalism, this was a sign of assertiveness rather than acquiescence. Following Davis’s election, Schnadhorst, on behalf of the BLA, agreed a semi-formal alliance with the Birmingham Labour Association. There were two key components to the agreement. Firstly, the Labour Association would ‘not be asked or expected to merge itself into the Liberal Association, but to continue under its present constitution as an independent political force’. This acceptance of the Birmingham Labour Association as ‘an independent political force’ was significant as it showed that Schnadhorst recognised the desire of Davis and his supporters to have their own identity in local politics. In practice, this meant that working men could count on one or two places on the Liberal list for forthcoming elections.206 This was enshrined in the second component: when vacancies occurred for local government bodies, the two organisations would consult over the nominations.207 Subsequently, in 1880 when the Labour Association nominated Davis for the town council in Nechell’s ward, the BLA did not oppose him, and he was returned.208 The successful realisation of the alliance between the two organisations underlines the fact that, at the level of Birmingham’s local politics, labour was able to negotiate the nature of 202 Ibid., 15 Jan. 1876. 203 Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain, p. 99. 204 Quotations taken from W.J. Davis in the Searchlight of Greater Birmingham, 13 Nov. 1913; W.A. Dalley, The Life Story of W.J. Davis, J.P. The Industrial Problem: Achievements and Triumphs of Conciliation (Birmingham: Birmingham Printers, 1914), p. 47. 205 Birmingham Daily Post, 2 Nov. 1876. 206 Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain, p. 99. 207 Quotation taken from Dalley, The Life Story of W.J. Davis, p. 54. 208 Ibid., p. 56; Birmingham Daily Post, 14 Jan. 1880.

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its relationship with an organised Liberalism that was responsive to its assertions of independence. Conclusion In the decade following the Second Reform Act the labour movement continuously equivocated over the nature of its relationship with the Liberal party. A major flashpoint was the trade union legislation of the Gladstone government. The passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act was followed by a palpable sense of outrage amongst the labour movement, which was reflected in the LRL’s language of the coming of a great ‘Labour party’. With the Liberal government curtailing the right to strike, it was clearly necessary for the LRL to create a distinct identity for itself, and the discourse of a ‘Labour party’ served this purpose. Although, at times, this was consolatory rhetoric, it should not blind us to the fact that in the early 1870s the labour movement was, through language, carving out its own identity in relation to the Liberal party. Moreover, the 1874 general election exposed fault lines in the relationship between working-class radicalism and organised Liberalism. Even though the language of a ‘Labour party’ was not part of the campaign discourse and the LRL’s candidates took great pains to insist that they were standing in the Liberal interest, they still argued that they were the ones who represented the ‘real’ Liberalism, not the intransigent Liberal party managers who were the focal point of the LRL’s ire. The most persistent point of dispute was the question of whether the labour movement had the right to expect organised Liberalism to nominate working-class candidates. In this sense, labour’s equivocation over its relationship with the Liberal party concerned the question of who controlled local politics rather than any divisions over political principles or ideology. The 1874 general election, therefore, showed that the Howell-Glyn pact of 1868 was unsustainable for the longer term. The establishment of the LRL, and the increasing level of debate within the TUC, confirmed that labour wanted to put forward its own candidates, even though, hamstrung by an inability to agree on how to raise the all-important finances, no coherent strategy to achieve this emerged. An analysis of the parliamentary campaigns of labour candidates reveals that even when a labour candidate did come forward, they faced a plethora of obstacles: lack of money, poor organisation, the superior canvassing tactics of local Liberal associations, localism and, significantly, disagreement within the labour movement as to the merits of working-class MPs. However, a consideration of how labour and organised Liberalism interacted at local elections shows that labour had more opportunities to both flex its muscles against local Liberalism and be receptive to the overtures of local Liberal associations who wanted working men to take

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public office. At the local level, therefore, the relationship between the labour movement and organised Liberalism was not fixed, but fluid. As political circumstances changed and new organisations emerged, labour’s attitude towards the Liberal party was open to a process of negotiation and renegotiation.

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2 Activism, Identity and Networks: Urban and Rural Working-Class Radicalism, 1868–74 Urban and Rural Working-Class Radicalism, 1868–74 The period between 1868 and 1874 was extremely important for both urban and rural working-class activism. Following the passage of the Second Reform Act, a renewal of republicanism was witnessed in a number of urban centres around England, peaking in 1873 with the establishment of two national organisations, the National Republican Brotherhood and the National Republican League (NRL). Contemporaneously, the agricultural labourers began a political movement calling for greater civil rights, which also culminated in the formation of two national bodies, the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU) and the Federal Union of Agricultural and General Labourers. Significantly, there was extensive cross-organisational activity between all these groups. In establishing their organisations and making their demands, labour activists from both urban and rural backgrounds clashed with Liberals at both the local and national level. The focus of this chapter is therefore the different ways in which these activists perceived their identity in relation to mainstream politics in general and official Liberalism in particular, and the extent to which ‘place’ and personal networks shaped this identity. Although historians have considered the activities of the LRL, English republican clubs and agricultural labourers in isolation, the connections between them have been largely overlooked. The aim of this chapter is to correct this oversight. Not only were these movements contemporaneous, but also the level of cross-organisational activity was hugely significant. Through personal networks, the leaders of the LRL, the republican movement and the agricultural labourers moved in and out of each other’s worlds, which had important implications for how the labour activists conceptualised their identity. The first half of the chapter examines the English republican movement. It begins by considering early republican activity in London following the 1868 general election, paying particular attention to the extent to which these

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groups established networks with the wider labour movement. Next, the attitudes of the provincial republican clubs towards local organised Liberalism are analysed, highlighting how their ability to secure the full support of their fellow working-class radicals was strongly shaped by place. The importance of locality to the movement is then underlined by an assessment of why the attempt to establish national republican organisations failed. The second half of the chapter examines the political identity of the agricultural labourers. It stresses how the activism of the rural worker was rooted in place, particularly at the level of parish politics. Local activism gave the labourers an important sense of independence that was reflected in their subsequent assertive stance towards the Liberals over the franchise question. However, their sense of ‘separateness’ was diluted by the extent of personal networks with not only the wider labour movement but also official Liberalism. Indeed, an appreciation of these networks makes it clear that urban radicalism played an important role in the development of rural radicalism and consequently shaped how the agricultural labourers perceived their identity. The final part of the chapter re-examines the diverse and shifting attitudes of the leadership of the agricultural labourers towards the Liberal party in the 1870s. Strands of republican activity: London, 1868–71 The renewal of republicanism that emerged after the passage of the Second Reform Act was closely related, both in terms of ideas and personnel, to the labour movement. Republicanism in London had its roots in workingclass radical demands for land nationalisation and schemes to tackle unemployment, and the most prominent republican activists were key players in the contemporaneous struggle for direct labour representation. In London in the late 1860s and early 1870s there were three embryonic republican organisations: the Unemployed Poor League, the International Democratic Association (IDA), and the Land and Labour League (LLL). There was also the more moderate Land Tenure Reform Association (LTRA) founded by John Stuart Mill. The following discussion analyses how these groups conceived the notion of republicanism and considers their attitudes towards mainstream party politics, especially towards the Liberal government. Moreover, it pays particular attention to how individual activists moved across these groups and the extent to which republican propaganda imposed artificial distinctions between them. The Unemployed Poor League, led by a small group of working men, revived republican sentiment during a series of open-air meetings at Hoxton market place in the East End of London during the 1868 general election campaign. They passed resolutions criticising the failure of Gladstone and Disraeli to address ‘the life and death question of providing labour and

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subsistence for the numerous unemployed and starving poor’, and called upon the working classes to press parliamentary candidates to support ‘a self-supporting system of home colonisation, on British soil, in the cultivation of well selected lands, for all the unemployed and able bodied poor’.1 Significantly, the League urged the government to make the ‘claims of starving millions’ its priority, rather than ‘any application by, or on behalf of, the Prince of Wales for an addition to his already excessive annual income, for doing worse than nothing’.2 The dismay of working-class radicals at the pecuniary assistance given by the state to the royal family was to become a cornerstone of English republicanism in the first years of the 1870s. The IDA, formed in July 1869, took up the republican mantle and established its presence through a series of demonstrations in Trafalgar Square. The IDA clearly viewed its sphere of operations as being outside of the two main political parties. Advocating the ‘emancipation of the labouring classes from the bondage of oppressive and unrenumerative [sic] labour’, they confirmed their ‘separateness’ by calling for a ‘battle with the “powers that be”’, whom they identified as tyrannical landlords, ‘hereditary usurpers’ and ‘an aristocratic clique of soi-disant “right honourables”’.3 Their demands, though couched in a language of republicanism that stressed opposition to the monarchy, were largely a continuation of long-standing radical protest: their chief concerns were the plight of the unemployed, attacking the land monopoly, and defending Irish nationalism.4 Indeed, after much debate, they decided to use the word ‘Democratic’ in their title, rather than ‘Republican’, in an attempt to encapsulate a broader appeal.5 Nor did their public agitations represent a clear break with the past. At its open-air meetings on Clerkenwell Green, the IDA was frequently joined by ‘several branches of the Reform League’.6 Reform League banners were also visible at later IDA meetings in Hyde Park, organised to show sympathy with the French Republic.7 Meanwhile, William Osborne, a leading member of the IDA’s provisional committee, had been an instrumental figure in the activity of the Clerkenwell branch of the Reform League.8 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 18 Oct. 1868. 1 Ibid., 25 Oct. 1868. 2 Ibid., 25 July 1869. 3 F.A. D’Arcy, ‘Charles Bradlaugh and the English Republican Movement, 1868–1878’, 4 Historical Journal, 25 (1982), p. 369. Reynolds’s Newspaper, 11 July 1869. 5 Morning Post, 14 Sept. 1869. 6 Ibid., 17 Apr. 1871. 7 See a report of a Trafalgar Square meeting in June 1866 where Osborne attacked the 8 Crown Prince Frederick William, the Queen’s new son-in-law, for taking up a commission in the Prussian Army: Commonwealth, 30 June 1866.

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Formed in October 1869, the LLL, through its words and actions, established itself not only outside the sphere of mainstream party politics, but also in specific opposition to the Liberal party. The League’s advocacy of land nationalisation brought it into direct conflict with the Liberal government. Following Gladstone’s refusal to meet a deputation of the League to discuss a memorial asking that the ‘government take into its possession all waste unoccupied lands in the United Kingdom’, Patrick Hennessy, the LLL’s president, roundly attacked the premier, citing the fact that Gladstone had recently met deputations from temperance and emigration groups.9 The fact that the League, in contrast to other pressure groups, had not been granted an audience only served to reinforce the ‘separateness’ of the fledging republican organisations. When the League organised a demonstration in Trafalgar Square in support of the French Republic, they articulated their disappointment at the government’s refusal to recognise the republic by attacking the two leading figures of the radical wing of the Liberal party. Their pamphlet, entitled ‘The People’s Litany’, included such verses as, ‘O, Gladstone, King of St Stephen’s, why hast thou deserted thy faithful people?’ and ‘O Bright, why did you run from the arms of the people?’10 This sense of independence from the political parties at Westminster was underlined by the mode of dress worn by the demonstrators at their public meetings in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park. Activists wore ‘broad scarlet sashes, not over the shoulder, but around the waist, in the exact pattern current among the democratic leaders of the first French Revolution’.11 Subsequent attempts by the police to ban republican meetings in Trafalgar Square that championed the Paris Commune only served to further underline their ‘separateness’ from mainstream party politics.12 Many of the members of the LLL were also leaders of the LRL, and the two groups, along with the IDA, often held joint meetings, reinforcing the importance of the personal networks between the organisations. Arguably the most closely connected to both the LLL and the LRL was George Odger, who, in addition to touring the country as a republican lecturer, was in regular communication with Charles Bradlaugh, owner of the National Reformer and a staunch supporter of the French republican cause, and the Radical MP Charles Dilke.13 As discussed in the previous chapter, at Reynolds’s Newspaper, 13 Mar. 1870. 9 10 Ibid., 17 Apr. 1870. 11 Ibid. 12 Birmingham Daily Post, 1 Aug. 1871. 13 G. Odger, ‘The Land Question’, Contemporary Review, 18 (Aug. 1871), pp. 23-42. For Odger’s correspondence with Dilke between 1871 and 1872 see Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke Papers, BL Add. Mss. 43909, ff. 188, 190, 193, 216, 248.

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the formative LRL meetings, Odger had stated that the working classes had to ‘look after themselves’ in terms of political representation.14 His pronouncements on republican issues also reflected his dismay with the Liberal government, though his views were often tailored to the context of the meeting at which he was speaking. At the inauguration of the Newcastle Republican Club, Odger was critical of the government’s endorsement of the civil list, claiming that the Liberal ministry had ‘no interest in common with the working community of this great empire’, but at a joint meeting of the LLL, the LRL and the IDA to discuss the recent parliamentary session, he took care to distinguish between Gladstone and his ministry.15 He agreed with Savage of the LRL that Gladstone had done much ‘in the cause of progress’, but he also supported the IDA’s condemnation of the government by stressing that he had ‘the utmost contempt for the great majority of [Gladstone’s] colleagues’.16 Given the importance of context and audience, it is necessary to dismantle the assumption, arguably perpetuated by some labour historians, that the working-class radicals who joined the LLL were opposed to the Liberal government while those who joined John Stuart Mill’s more moderate LTRA were somehow betraying the labour cause.17 George Howell, as financial agent to the LTRA, has traditionally been seen as the epitome of the disloyal labour activist, seemingly too willing to acquiesce to the demands of mainstream Liberalism and disassociate himself from republicanism.18 Certainly, Howell’s membership of the LTRA frustrated the more belligerent members of the LLL, such as Martin Boon, its secretary, who criticised the conduct of certain so-called workingmen leaders, who, professing to adopt the programme of the League, did not understand the principles enunciated, and who felt themselves flattered by the patronage of the middle class, who knew how to tickle their vanity.19

However, in private correspondence, Howell expressed clear republican sympathies, writing to Goldwin Smith in 1873 that ‘the time will come when [republicanism] will come to the front in the hands of good men and true’.20 As was the case with Odger’s pronouncements, audience and 14 Daily News, 5 Nov. 1869. 15 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 2 July 1871. 16 Morning Post, 31 Oct. 1871. 17 For example, see R. Harrison, ‘The Land and Labour League’, Bulletin of the International Institute of Social History, 8 (1953), pp. 169–95. 18 Ibid., p. 178. 19 Republican, 1 Sept. 1870. 20 G. Howell to Goldwin Smith, 12 December 1873, quoted in A. Taylor, ‘“The Nauseating

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context were critical. According to Sir Charles Dilke, Robert Applegarth and William Randal Cremer were, in private, ‘theoretical’ republicans but, given their close ties to official Liberalism, they felt unable to openly declare their sympathies.21 Meanwhile, Cremer was one of many activists who were members of both the LLL and the LTRA, indicating that personal rivalries often obscured the extent of cross-organisational activity between the two groups.22 Without a doubt, republican propaganda served to artificially inflate fissures between the different strands of the labour movement. The Republican, a monthly journal edited by G.E. Harris, a leading member of the IDA, was especially guilty of this. In addition to calling the LTRA ‘unworthy [of] the support of the working classes’ as it ‘advocates an extension of private ownership in land for the advantage of the middle class’, the journal reserved its greatest vitriol for the LRL, describing the organisation as ‘a self-elected body of men’ whose ‘wires … are pulled from Downing Street … Anything more presumptuous or preposterous, can scarcely be imagined’.23 Interestingly, the use of terms such as ‘self-elected body’ and ‘wirepullers’ was part of a wider language of party organisation that was used rhetorically to undermine an opponent’s political legitimacy. The words used by the Republican to attack the LRL therefore prefigured the subsequent use of caucus discourse in electoral campaigns involving labour candidates.24 Critical of the LRL’s perceived cosiness with the Liberal government, the Republican set out to emphasise the movement’s ‘separateness’ from the mainstream political parties. As one leading article declared to its readers: Cut yourself away – every man of you, from the old parties, and stand out independently for your principles, and you will soon see these old parties Cult of the Crown”: Republicanism, Anti-Monarchism and Post-Chartist Politics’, in D.S. Nash and A. Taylor (eds), Republicanism in Victorian Society (Stroud: Sutton, 2000), p. 69. Howell, however, felt that Odger’s fervent and public support for republicanism was a result of ‘a tinge of madness’: Howell to Edmond Beales, 10 Apr. 1871, George Howell Collection, letter books. This comment, though, was probably more reflective of Howell’s personal relationship with Odger than his views on republicanism per se. For example, Howell’s diary entries during the formation of the Labour Representation League are notably critical of Odger’s personal behaviour. On one occasion Howell recorded that Odger had ‘got heavily drunk and quarrelsome and even suggested to settle some differences with a fight’: George Howell Collection, diary, 3 Aug. 1869. 21 Taylor, ‘Nauseating Cult of the Crown’, p. 69. Significantly, Dilke made the point in an interview with the New York Times, but his words were picked up on by sections of the English provincial press. For example, Birmingham Daily Post, 21 Nov. 1871. 22 Ibid., 19 May 1871. 23 Republican, 1 June 1871; 1 Oct. 1870. 24 See chapter three.

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break … Their issues are dead. The only live issue before the world is labour reform.25

The Republican was not alone in using editorials to portray the ‘otherness’ of the Republican cause. Reynolds’s Newspaper, which was widely read in London radical clubs, was, according to Charles Booth, written in a tone that was ‘republican, outside of the lines, authorised or unauthorised, of English party politics’.26 Indeed, Reynolds’s was particularly scathing of Gladstone’s intransigence towards the policy of land nationalisation, insisting that the premier had ‘lost all hold upon the people. And when that grim and imperious tyrant, Death, shall smite him … no tears shall be shed save by his foolish flatterers’.27 Although clearly a piece of propaganda in support of the LLL, this unequivocal condemnation belies the assumption that Gladstone, as a charismatic leader, inspired unquestionable devotion amongst the working classes. However, the narrative produced by the republican press did not reflect the positions of many republican activists. Like the socialist journals of the 1880s, the propaganda contained therein was often modified by activists when campaigning at the grassroots level.28 For example, the Republican was particularly scathing of trade unions: Class feeling should never be allowed to intervene if in politics there is to be elevation … A Trades Union is just as greedy, as exacting, as exclusive as the gang of comedians in black, known by the name of Anglican priests.29

In contrast, George Odger framed the trade union movement as the epitome of republicanism: Every trades’ unionist admitted that every member of the union had a vote, and every unionist knew that no vote was valid unless every member had had a chance of voting upon it. That was pure Republicanism.30

The Republican’s attack on trade unions was part of its wider critique of class exclusivity. Paradoxically, for a journal that stressed the ‘separateness’ of its politics, it rejected the argument that only a working man could represent the labour cause: It is a mistake to suppose that one selected from our own ranks will 25 26 27 28 29 30

Republican, 1 Oct. 1870. Quoted in Taylor, ‘Nauseating Cult of the Crown’, p. 60. Reynolds’s Newspaper, 6, 13 and 27 Mar. 1871. See chapter five. Republican, 1 Sept. 1870. Reynolds’s Newspaper, 1 Dec. 1872.

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be truer to us than one, honestly avowing our sentiments, who is not a working man. The labour reform, though begun by the wages class, is not their cause any more than it is the cause of the merchant, the lawyer or the physician.31

This position was in clear opposition to Odger’s and, indeed, Howell’s, who following the 1871 Criminal Law Amendment Act had written, in private, that ‘we must create a Working Class Party, for Whig, Tory and middle class [sic] Radicals ignore our wants and requirements’.32 Significantly, the question of whether the political representation of the labour movement could only be carried out by working men prefigured the debates over what constituted a ‘Labour party’ that were played out in the late 1880s.33 Provincial republican clubs and official Liberalism: place, space and ‘separateness’ The activity and discourse of provincial republican clubs between 1871 and 1873 exposed clear fault lines between republicanism and official Liberalism. This sense of detachment from mainstream Liberalism was further reinforced by clashes between local clubs and Liberal-led town councils over the use of space for specific republican meetings. To explore this dynamic, the activities of republican clubs in Nottingham, Sheffield, Birmingham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne will be analysed. It has been estimated that between 1871 and 1873 around 100 republican clubs were established in Britain, though membership of individual clubs could be very small, and many clubs folded soon after their initial meeting.34 Those in Nottingham, Sheffield, Birmingham and Newcastle were among the first to be established in 1871, and attracted a higher membership than most others in the country, though their meetings, when a space could be secured, could still be sparsely attended, a circumstance that was frequently ridiculed by the local press.35 Regular meetings of the Sheffield Republican Club, for example, often attracted only fifty members.36 An analysis of the activities of these clubs, and the speeches of their leaders, sheds light on how the nature of the relationship between republican clubs and official Liberalism 31 Republican, 1 Oct. 1870. 32 Howell to William Hickery, 6 Sept. 1871, George Howell Collection, letter book. 33 See chapter four. 34 C. Rumsey, The Rise and Fall of British Republican Clubs, 1871–1874 (Oswestry: Quinton Press, 2000), pp. 100–5. 35 For example, see a report of a republican demonstration in Nottingham: Nottingham Guardian, 3 Mar. 1871. 36 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 24 Aug. 1871.

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was determined by place. Moreover, it allows us to consider the ways in which the local political environment not only shaped the ‘separateness’ of republican activists but also affected their ability to embrace the wider working-class radical cause. The leaders of provincial republicanism made sure that their arguments were sympathetic to the interests of the labour movement. The discourse of the provincial republican clubs was not geared towards the abolition of the throne, but rather a consistent attack on how the financial wastefulness of the Crown disproportionately penalised the working classes. Hooper of the Nottingham Republican Club stressed that he ‘did not ask the Queen to be told to leave the throne’ and Thomas Garbutt, president of the Sheffield Republican Club, insisted that ‘the mission of the club was not to overthrow the monarchy’.37 However, as Garbutt declared, ‘the present monarchical government was the worst that could possibly exist, wringing the uttermost farthing out of the working classes to support a tyrannical aristocracy.’38 Such attacks formed part of a broader republican critique of economic inequality. For example, Garbutt linked his criticism of the monarchy to ‘the miserable advance labour was making in comparison with that made by capital’, while Adams of the Birmingham Republican Club argued that republicanism aimed at ‘a more equal distribution of the wealth arising from the profits of labour’.39 Given this broader focus, it is not surprising that provincial republican clubs called for a parliamentary strategy. In March 1871 the Nottingham Republican Club urged ‘the people to organise with sufficient force to return such members to the House of Commons as will pledge themselves to a reduction and a revision of the taxation of this country’.40 At this stage, there was no mention of returning working-class candidates: it was support for the economic principles of republicanism that mattered. This strategy was therefore part of a long-standing English radical tradition of seeking change through the institution of Parliament. As Charles Cattell, president of the Birmingham Republican Club, noted, the reformers of 1832 ‘always counselled peace, law and order, and they achieved something for the people of England’.41 It is significant that, like the Chartists in the 1840s, it was the Whigs rather than the Conservatives who were the subject of republican ire. For example, when Hooper of the Nottingham Republican Club claimed that ‘they had had enough of Whig jobbery, and rather than have any more 37 38 39 40 41

Nottingham Guardian, 3 Mar. 1871; Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 24 Aug. 1871. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 24 Aug. 1871. Birmingham Daily Post, 30 July 1872. Nottingham Guardian, 3 Mar. 1871. Reynolds’s Newspaper, 8 Oct. 1871.

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they would prefer Tory jobbery,’ it was strongly reminiscent of the 1841 by-election in Nottingham, when the Chartists supported the Conservative John Walter in his campaign against the Liberal candidate.42 The fact that Hooper chose the term ‘Whigs’ is also revealing as it suggests that, like several LRL candidates in the 1870s, his criticism distinguished between ‘weak-kneed’ moderate Liberals and the ‘real’ advanced Liberal party. In 1872 the leaders of the Birmingham Republican Club narrowed the call for parliamentary representation, passing a resolution stating that ‘it is desirable that a working man of Republican principles should be sent to the House of Commons for Birmingham’.43 Significantly, Birmingham republicans sought a solution to their demands within the broader aim of direct labour representation. However, the importance of a parliamentary strategy must not be overstated. Although many of the provincial clubs passed similar resolutions, they were largely rhetorical. There was no plan (let alone finances) to put a parliamentary strategy into action. Republican activity, therefore, remained rooted in the public meeting. Critically, the right to meet in certain locations was contested. For example, the Altrincham Republic Club was refused permission by the ‘so-called Liberals’ on the town council to use the town hall for their meetings, while the Stockton Republican Club was denied a meeting place in the town’s Temperance Hall.44 Again, it is important to note the language being used by the republicans. The use of the term ‘so-called Liberals’ suggests that, in the republicans’ eyes, a ‘real’ Liberal would not have opposed their cause. Even when republicans secured a place to meet, there was often sustained disruption, sometimes with the collusion of the local authorities.45 Odger was seriously injured by loyalists in an ambush at Reading station, whilst a republican was killed by a Tory mob during Dilke’s visit to Bolton.46 Interestingly, at Nottingham, with its tradition of tensions between radicals and moderates, when a republican meeting was disrupted by the throwing of flour, one member of the club commented that he ‘was satisfied that the flour was not Tory flour, but that it was that bad Whig game again’.47 42 Nottingham Guardian, 17 Feb. 1871. For the 1841 by-election and further examples of Chartists backing Tory candidates in Nottingham see Owen, ‘Nottingham’. 43 Birmingham Daily Post, 30 July 1872. 44 Republican, 15 Sept. 1872; M. Chase ‘Republicanism: Movement or Moment?’, in Nash and Taylor (eds), Republicanism in Victorian Society (Stroud: Sutton, 2000), p. 41. 45 A. Taylor, ‘Republicanism Reappraised: Anti-Monarchism and the English Radical Tradition, 1850–72’, in J. Vernon (ed.), Re-Reading the Constitution: New Narratives in the Political History of England’s Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 165. 46 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 16 Dec. 1871. 47 Nottingham Guardian, 3 Mar. 1871.

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Thus, the republicans’ response to disruption was often shaped by local political traditions. The republican clubs’ struggle to secure their own space served to entrench their sense of ‘separateness’, particularly from local Liberalism. This was certainly the case in Birmingham when the mayor refused the use of the town hall for Charles Bradlaugh’s lecture on ‘the impeachment of the House of Brunswick’. N. Harrison, the honourable secretary of the Birmingham Republican Club, stated ‘we have in our Birmingham club 200 ratepayers, who have as much right – as far as we know – to the use of the hall as anyone else’.48 According to the local Liberal-supporting press, though, ‘when the ratepayers of Birmingham built the Town Hall we do not suppose they meant it to be used for the propagation of republicanism or infidelity.’49 This refusal of civic identity undoubtedly isolated the Birmingham republicans from mainstream politics. Intriguingly, the Birmingham town council was split on the issue, and Joseph Chamberlain, who believed that ‘such matters should be discussed in a quiet, constitutional way’ or ‘they would crop up in a more disagreeable form again’, was the most vocal in defending the right of the republican club to use the town hall.50 Chamberlain was therefore happy to appeal to the working-class strand of English republicanism, although, as Peter Marsh points out, he did not support immediate change as the reforms he wished to bring about could still take place under Britain’s adaptable constitutional monarchy. Chamberlain was also fully aware of the importance of royal patronage to the success of new borough councils: he orchestrated and paid, out of his own pocket, for the visit of the Prince of Wales to Birmingham in 1874.51 Chamberlain’s actions reveal that, at the local level, there was a temporary and strategic nature to Liberals’ toleration of republicanism. When the republican clubs did secure control over their own space, they were careful to ensure, in their discourse at least, that the space was not controlled entirely by men. At a meeting of republicans in Nottingham, a male speaker announced that they had ‘enrolled 400 members, including four women’, adding, with disappointment, that ‘they were anticipating a great number of women’.52 There is no doubt that republican male-led 48 Birmingham Daily Post, 21 Sept. 1871. 49 Ibid., 22 Sept. 1871. 50 Daily News, 11 Oct. 1871. The council voted 26–18 in favour of not granting the use of the hall. Following the illness of the Prince of Wales in December 1871, Cattell withdrew the petition (Daily News, 13 Dec. 1871). Bradlaugh delivered the lecture at Birmingham Town Hall in May 1872, following a narrow vote on the town council (Birmingham Daily Post, 7 May 1872). 51 Marsh, Chamberlain, pp. 60–1, 87–8. 52 Birmingham Daily Post, 23 July 1872.

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discourse was ambivalent about the merits of female participation. When the Nottingham branch of the International discussed suffrage, one male member is reported to have stated that as women were subject to the law, they should have a voice in making it. Still, he did not doubt that if they had female suffrage the women would oppose many of the objects which the International had in view. They would doubtless serve to increase the numbers of the Conservative party.53

In this context, supporting the aims of the International was painted as a ‘manly’ endeavour which women could not be relied upon to carry out. Moreover, even when republicans discussed equal rights, the tone could be patronising. When Bayfield of the North Shields Republican Club stated that ‘the rights of one man should be secured equally with those of another,’ he added ‘not forgetting the rights of the weaker sex – he meant the ladies (laughter)’.54 Despite the male-led discourse, the republican movement still held a strong appeal for a female audience.55 As Antony Taylor has suggested, the republican campaign against the dowry for Princess Louise served to highlight her husband’s lack of practical skills, which reinforced the sense of a gulf existing between the pampered state of the monarchy, and ‘the plight of poor, working-class women living under the threat of the Poor Law’.56 The republican’s sense of isolation was heightened by their failure to attract the support of other local radical groups. The extent of this failure was shaped by the politics of place. As Malcolm Chase has shown in his case study of Teesside politics, radicals and secularists in Middlesbrough, which had a large Irish population, shied away from the local republican club because of its close ties to Fenianism.57 In Nottingham, meanwhile, the republicans refused to embrace local Irish support due to bad blood over recent school board elections. Samuel Parker, a local republican and member of the Nottingham Labour League, wrote in private that ‘I have no confidence in [the Irish] … We help to liberate them and they, through priestcraft [sic], are determined to enslave us … In the school board elections the priest led them with few exceptions’.58 Close ties in terms of personnel between the Nottingham Working Men’s Political Union and the local 53 Ibid. 54 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 26 May 1872. 55 Taylor, ‘Republicanism Reappraised’, p. 169. See also Chase, ‘Republicanism: Movement or Moment?’, pp. 46–7. 56 Taylor, ‘Republicanism Reappraised’, p. 170. 57 Chase, ‘Republicanism: Movement or Moment?’, pp. 39–41. 58 Quoted in P. Wyncoll, ‘The First International and Working-Class Activity in Nottingham, 1871–73’, Marxism Today (Dec. 1968), p. 377.

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Liberal Association also ensured the Nottingham Republican Club stayed on the margins of local political life, reflecting the fact that the local workers were more closely affiliated to Liberalism. In contrast, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where various radical organisations and Irish nationalists had a long-standing tradition of working together, the Northern Republican League was able to assimilate itself into local radical culture. Under the direction of Joseph Cowen, the Republican League played an important role in the nine hours movement, which ended in victory for the Tyneside workers.59 Moreover, republican clubs co-operated with other political organisations on various national issues. For example, in Birmingham, the republican club joined with the Liberal Association, the LRL, and the Peace Society in backing a joint resolution condemning the government’s proposal to increase the army estimates in March 1871.60 Examples of such harmony, though, were rare. Broadly speaking, the attitude of republican activists towards the representatives of the Liberal party was antagonistic. The customary annual public meetings of MPs with their constituents at the end of a parliamentary session created a space where republican activists could challenge parliamentary representatives. At the annual public meeting of Nottingham’s two Liberal MPs in December 1871, the leaders of the republican club enjoyed a semblance of control over the public space: they appeared on the platform and the chair was taken by their nominee. They were able to make an impact on the meeting because one of the town’s MPs, Auberon Herbert, was a noted republican who had spoken in support of Dilke’s motion of inquiry into the civil list. Moreover, at the meeting he insisted that a ‘Republic’ was ‘the best form of government’. In contrast, Herbert’s Liberal colleague, Charles Seely, was constantly interrupted by the audience, who berated him for his vote against Dilke’s motion.61 Anthony Mundella, Radical MP for Sheffield, endured similar treatment at his annual meeting. While admitting that Mundella had ‘discharged his duties as a Member of Parliament very well’, Garbutt attacked him for supporting the dowry for Princess Louise, which was, he claimed, ‘in opposition to the will and desire of the people’.62 It would be a mistake, though, to see this opposition as evidence of what Royden Harrison dismissed as ‘the vulgar “Civil List” republicanism of the masses’.63 The civil list controversy was part of a broader republican critique of the wasteful 59 N. Todd, The Militant Democracy: Joseph Cowen and Victorian Radicalism (Whitley Bay: Berwick Press, 1991), pp. 80–95. 60 Birmingham Daily Post, 4 Mar. 1871. 61 Nottingham Guardian, 8 Dec. 1871. 62 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 12 Sept. 1871. 63 Harrison, Before the Socialists, p. 212.

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consumption of public money that disproportionately damaged workingclass interests. Up until the end of 1872, the English republican movement had been characterised by local clubs asserting, through language and use of space, their separateness from mainstream politics. Between December 1872 and May 1873 two separate attempts were made to establish national republican organisations. Their almost instantaneous failure confirmed the essentially local dynamic of republicanism in the 1870s. Formed in Sheffield in December 1872, the National Republican Brotherhood was a loose federation of republican clubs from Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and the north-east of England. As Malcolm Chase has demonstrated, the Brotherhood was ‘essentially the project of mining and other heavy industrial trade unionists in the region and can only be fully understood in that context’.64 Its leaders, particularly John De Morgan, the Irish internationalist, were frustrated with the perceived moderation of the trade union leadership, and were now advocating a more searching critique of capital and society. They were also especially assertive in their attitude towards mainstream politics.65 According to the provisional committee of the Brotherhood, ‘we must, as reformers, separate ourselves from the present dominant political parties and form a new one – a people’s party’.66 This discourse of separateness was echoed by a resolution at its inaugural conference to adopt a ‘Republican Brotherhood Flag’ of green, white and blue: ‘the principle being the green denotes fertility, the white purity, the blue the sky, representing that under the sky all men are equal so long as they are guided by purity of action and thought.’ 67 Charles Bradlaugh, who had not been invited to take part in the formation of the Brotherhood, dismissed the organisation through the pages of his National Reformer, and was particularly scornful of the potentially seditious display of republican flags.68 In response, Bradlaugh established the National Republican League (NRL) at Birmingham in May 1873. More moderate in its aims and tone than the Brotherhood, Bradlaugh asserted that the League’s guiding principle should be to legally ‘overthrow the government by making a party in parliament’ that would then seek to abolish the monarchy by an Act of Parliament.69 Having established this parliamentary strategy, he then called for 64 Chase, ‘Republicanism: Movement or Moment?’, p. 50. 65 R. Williams, The Contentious Crown: Public Discussion of the British Monarchy in the Reign of Queen Victoria (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), pp. 31, 46. 66 International Herald, 9 Nov. 1872. 67 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 4 Dec. 1872. 68 National Reformer, 3 Nov., 8 and 15 Dec. 1872. 69 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 18 May 1873.

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Republicans to oppose all candidates who do not come up for certain points in reference to legislation … When any half-hearted Whigs come forward as Liberals, a purely Republican candidate should be brought forward, even though doing so would cause the victory of the ­Conservatives.70

Such a strategy closely echoed both the LRL’s contemporaneous approach of ignoring the cry of ‘don’t divide the Liberal interest’ and the distinctions made by labour candidates between ‘real’ and ‘milk-and-water’ Liberals. R.A. Cooper, who chaired the inaugural meetings of the NRL, had, at an earlier meeting in London, gone even further than Bradlaugh, arguing that ‘it was high time that Republicans broke away from the Liberal party’.71 The language that the republican activists used to articulate their sense of a separate identity is particularly noteworthy. The National Republican Brotherhood spoke of the need to for a new ‘people’s party’ while Bradlaugh raised the spectre of republicans forming their own ‘party in parliament’. Like the LRL, who articulated the coming of a great ‘Labour party’, the republicans used the notion of a distinct ‘party’ to conceptualise their political identity. The republicans’ use of the term ‘people’s’ is in itself significant as it reflected their desire to reach out to a wide audience. As noted above, the IDA decided to use the word ‘Democratic’ in their name, rather than ‘Republican’, in an attempt to encapsulate a broader appeal, while the Republican, when discussing the representation of the movement in Parliament, insisted that a candidate’s attachment to republican principles was more important than their social background.72 Bradlaugh was noticeably hesitant to make any move that would limit the appeal of a republican ‘party’. He thus rejected the notion of producing a party programme, insisting at the NRL’s inaugural conference that there would be no discussion of ‘those vexed economical or purely social questions which so greatly divide even avowed Republicans’.73 Indeed, Bradlaugh’s rejection of a programme was probably a reflection of the fact that a republican ‘party’ was a vague, largely rhetorical notion, mainly designed to give the movement a sense of identity. Ironically, in 1869, following the formation of the LRL, it had been Bradlaugh, motivated by his desire for the League to take up a position on the nationalisation of land, who had urged the organisation to make a declaration of principles.74 As highlighted in the previous chapter, the tension over the question of whether to establish a clear political programme beset the labour movement throughout the 1870s and 1880s, and reflected the concern of labour activists 70 71 72 73 74

National Reformer, 18 May 1873. Quoted in Rumsey, British Republican Clubs, p. 41. Republican, 1 Oct. 1870. National Reformer, 16 Mar. 1873. Daily News, 5 Nov. 1869.

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not to narrow their appeal, particularly when their opponents were quick to attack them for promoting ‘class legislation’. Charles Cattell, the president of the Birmingham Republican Club, believed that the NRL should supersede the existing political associations to become a single great union of existing radical organisations.75 However, in addition to the personal animosity between Bradlaugh and De Morgan, there were two fundamental obstacles. Firstly, the republican clubs were, in large part, shaped by the political dynamics of their locality, and therefore an overarching national organisation was wholly unsuitable. Secondly, the republican movement was unable to embrace the wider working-class radical movement. At the local level, with the exception of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the republican clubs stayed at the margins of political life. At the national level, the trade union leadership did not identify with the republican cause. As the Bee-Hive noted, the monarchy was ‘the key-stone of the arch which joins and binds us together’.76 The LRL also denounced the agitations against Princess Louise’s dowry. The establishment of the two ephemeral national organisations marked the end of English republicanism. The republican clubs, a product of their local political environment, had all attacked the wasteful consumption of public money that served to entrench economic inequality, but, unable to assimilate into the wider radical movement, there was no momentum to sustain the cause, particularly when the Prince of Wales’s recovery from typhoid heralded thanksgiving celebrations that appeared to suggest the shallowness of English republicanism.77 Yet, at the local level, the republican clubs, through their antagonistic language towards the Liberal party and their struggle to find spaces where they could meet, had established a sense of ‘separateness’ from the two main political parties that can be linked to the later calls for independent labour politics. Their rhetoric of a ‘people’s party’ also echoed the LRL’s contemporaneous discussion of a ‘Labour party’, underlining how activists used the language of party to conceptualise their identity. The identity of the agricultural labourers The rise of organised rural radicalism in England was contemporaneous to the republican movement. The period between 1870 and 1874 witnessed 75 Birmingham Daily Post, 12 May 1873. 76 Bee-Hive, 13 Nov. 1871. 49–51; E. Royle, Radicals, Secularists and 77 Williams, The Contentious Crown, pp.  Republicans: Popular Freethought in Britain, 1866-1915 (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

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the formation of agricultural labourers’ unions across rural England. In 1872 two national organisations were established: the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU), led by Joseph Arch, which had enrolled around 70,000 members from 1,000 branches by the following year, and the smaller Lincolnshire and Neighbouring Amalgamated Labour League (LNALL), which represented rural workers in the more northern counties and comprised over 7,000 members by 1873.78 These two national organisations led an undeniably political movement that called for higher wages for rural workers, the destruction of the land monopoly, and the extension of the suffrage to the counties. Although the agricultural labourers’ movement had its own agenda, it was coterminous with the republican movement and wider working-class radicalism. Personal networks between rural and urban radicalism were extremely important to the agricultural labourers, and this influenced the ways in which they conceptualised their identity. The following discussion considers the similarities between the two movements, paying particular attention to the role of place, and examines the personal networks between them and how these shaped the rural workers’ political identity. Like the urban republican activists, the rural agricultural labourers experienced a sense of ‘separateness’. Primarily, this came from the way they were perceived by their contemporaries. Rural workers had been known pejoratively as ‘Hodge’ since the early nineteenth century. The Swing Riots of 1830–1 had given rise to the notion of a barbaric sub-class, and two decades later the Morning Chronicle’s reports of rural life in East Anglia concluded that the rural labourer was ‘a physical scandal, a moral enigma, an intellectual cataleptic’.79 Even political activists sympathetic to their plight made little attempt to elevate their position. Speaking at a meeting of trade unionists in 1863, Edward Beesley told his audience that ‘there are two classes, both infinitely below you in intelligence, in organisation, and in social position, but still workmen … I mean the agricultural labourers and the negro slaves of America’.80 The Second Reform Act appeared to underline the political separation between the intelligent male urban labourers, who could be safely admitted into the franchise, and the immoral and degenerate agricultural labourers, who were beyond the pale.81 78 N. Scotland, ‘The National Agricultural Labourers’ Union and the Demand for a Stake in the Soil, 1872–1896’, in E.F. Biagini (ed.), Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 151. 79 A. Howkins, ‘From Hodge to Lob: Reconstructing the English Farm Labourer, 1870–1914’, in M. Chase and I. Dyck (ed.), Living and Learning: Essays in Honour of J.F.C. Harrison (Aldershot: Scolar, 1996), p. 219; Morning Chronicle, 18 Jan. 1850. 80 Bee-Hive, 28 Mar. 1863, quoted in Harrison, Before the Socialists, p. 73. 81 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, pp. 270–1.

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However, it was not simply a case of an urban/rural divide: within the rural sphere, the agricultural labourers were arguably ‘separate’ when it came to the franchise question. For example, the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, a bona fide radical newspaper, distinguished between the ‘sturdy independence’ of the miner, which qualified him to vote, and the ‘state of abject slavery and poverty in which the agricultural labourers of the southern counties are found to this day’.82 Significantly, similar views were being expounded by working-class radicals into the 1870s. In 1872 Lloyd Jones, writing in the Bee-Hive, described the farm labourer as ‘in intellect … a child, in position a helot, in condition a squalid outcast, he knows nothing of his past; his knowledge of the present is limited to the fields he works in’.83 As late as 1875 E.A. Rymer, the radical secularist miner, dismissed the labourers’ claim to the franchise, as ‘so many are mere drunken idiots and hardly capable of understanding wrong from right in political matters’.84 As with the urban republican activists, the agricultural labourers’ sense of ‘separateness’ was shaped by exclusion and space. Echoing the republican struggle to secure meeting places, agricultural labourers were frequently unable to hire public rooms for union branch meetings because of the hostility of landowners and local officials.85 In Newbury in July 1873, Joseph Arch was forced to hold a demonstration on the local meadow following the refusal of the mayor to grant use of the Corn Exchange.86 Outdoor meetings, therefore, remained common, though even these could be subject to interference. In Littleworth, Berkshire, in January 1873, the three leaders of a meeting of local labourers that had taken place in the centre of the village were summoned to appear before the Faringdon Bench for ‘having caused obstruction on the Queen’s highway’.87 There was, though, an important difference between a rural worker’s and an urban worker’s sense of ‘space’. In rural areas the mere process of attending a political meeting was fraught with difficulty: due to the great distances between villages, agricultural labourers often had to walk miles to attend a meeting, giving an extra dimension to their isolation. However, this sense of ‘separateness’ must not be overstated. The rise of rural radicalism heralded the end of geographical isolation. A network 82 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 2 Feb. 1867. 83 Bee-Hive, 13 Jan. 1872, cited in Howkins, ‘From Hodge to Lob’, p. 221. 84 E.A. Rymer, Barnsley Chronicle, 4 Dec. 1875, quoted in Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 291. 85 P. Horn, Joseph Arch (1826–1919): The Farm Workers’ Leader (Kineton: The Roundwood Press, 1971), p. 80. 86 Daily News, 19 July 1873. 87 J. Arch, From Ploughtail to Parliament: An Autobiography (London: Cresset Library, 1986), pp. 133–8.

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of itinerant union speakers moving across county borders broke down geographical barriers, while the NALU’s Labourers’ Union Chronicle, which had a circulation of 35,000 in 1873, published detailed accounts of branch meetings in various districts. The outside assistance of urban radicals was vital in order to sustain rural activism. Urban sympathisers, particular trade union members, often donated money for rural radical propaganda in an effort to stem the tide of rural migration to the towns and cities, and thus check the pressure on urban wages.88 Meanwhile, there were instances of the agricultural labourers physically taking their propaganda to urban centres. In the summer of 1874 Henry Taylor, the general secretary of the NALU, organised an agricultural labourers’ ‘pilgrimage’, which began in Newmarket, and processed through Northampton, Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Derby before reaching Nottingham.89 The labourers had their own flags and banners, and sang union songs, ensuring that their own culture of protest reached urban radicals.90 Moreover, the republican movement and rural radicalism were coterminous, particularly when it came to the land question. While republicans attacked the monarchy for the restrictions placed on the use of crown lands,91 the NALU were severely critical of the heir to the throne when they opposed the enclosures by the Duchy of Cornwall in the south-west of England.92 In addition to zealously advocating the rural workers’ cause, republication activists also sponsored agricultural labourers’ meetings. For example, in Nottingham in 1873, local republicans invited Joseph Arch to the city and established a fund to support the striking labourers.93 National campaigners like George Odger, who toured the country as a republican lecturer and subsequently formed the Federal Union of Agricultural and General Labourers, also acted as ‘networkers’ between the two movements.94 The agricultural labourers’ movement must therefore be viewed in a much broader perspective than simply a revolt against the farmers over their demand for higher wages.95 The movement must be seen as a political one. 88 J.P.D. Dunbabin, ‘The “Revolt of the Field”: The Agricultural Labourers’ Movement in the 1870s’, Past & Present, 26 (1963), p. 70–2. 89 The Times, 24 June 1874. 90 Ibid., 2 July 1874. 91 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 29 July 1871 92 Taylor, ‘Nauseating Cult of the Crown’, pp. 61–2. 93 Nottinghamshire Guardian, 7 Mar. 1873; Wyncoll, ‘The First International’, p. 376. 94 D. Mares, ‘George Odger’, Dictionary of Labour Biography, XIII, ed. by K. Gildart and D. Howell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 297. 95 The classic account of this period is Dunbabin, ‘Revolt of the Field’, pp. 68–97. For a concise narrative of the revolt see P. Horn, Labouring Life in the Victorian Countryside (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 1976), pp. 118–43.

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In addition to demanding a rise in wages, the programme of the NALU, established by Arch in May 1872, advocated the extension of household suffrage to the counties.96 Echoing George Howell’s belief that the enfranchisement of the urban working classes completed their entry into the political nation, Arch insisted that if the labourer ‘is to respect himself and be respected by others, he must have the dignity of citizenship’.97 The NALU also called for the destruction of the land monopoly, a demand that tied the organisation to the republican movement. Moreover, by appreciating the local origins of the individual agricultural labourers’ unions, it is clear that their motives were political. In Lincolnshire, for example, the impetus for the agricultural labourers to organise came from William Banks of Boston, a stationer by trade and a republican agitator who was called in by the local labourers in Leverton to intervene in a dispute over village charities.98 As Alun Howkins has suggested, local movements were about the labourers’ struggle for civil rights, which encompassed the call for higher wages, union recognition and the franchise.99 Although the agricultural labourers did not have the vote, they still asserted their political independence. At the level of parish politics, they acted as a forceful and independent group, unafraid to clash with figures of authority. Such clashes can be located in the wider context of the agricultural labourers’ demand for working-class political representation. In Lincolnshire and Norfolk agricultural labourers asserted their political voice by demanding a say in the administration of local charities, and calling for reform of the game laws and legislation to promote allotments.100 In doing so, they frequently clashed with the local vicar or parson, who, due to his leading role in vestry meetings, controlled charitable endowments and lands that were potential sources for new allotments.101 The rural labourers also asserted their independence by clashing with law and custom. At the local level, the personification of the law was the clergyman magistrate, who was perceived by the labourers to discriminate against the working classes in his meting out of justice. In one infamous case in Chipping Norton in 1873, sixteen agricultural labourers’ wives were sentenced to several days’ hard labour for the intimidation of substitute labour through shouting. 96 Birmingham Daily Post, 30 May 1872. 97 Labourers’ Union Chronicle, 7 June 1873. 98 R.J. Olney, Rural Society and County Government in Nineteenth-Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln: History of Lincolnshire Committee, 1979), pp. 88–9. 99 A. Howkins, Poor Labouring Men: Rural Radicalism in Norfolk 1870–1932 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), p. 59–61. 100 Olney, Rural Society, pp. 89–90; Howkins, Poor Labouring Men, p. 69. 101 M. Pugh, The Making of Modern British Politics, 1867–1945, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 75.

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­ ignificantly, the leadership of the NALU linked the affair at Chipping S Norton to their demand for working-class political representation: If a law is made and enforced upon us as a class, if we are bound to obey the law and have no voice in selecting who shall make it, every man thus circumstanced is a slave.102

The way in which the agricultural labourers responded to such clashes gives an insight into how they perceived not only their cause, but also their identity. The prosecution of the labourers’ wives at Chipping Norton revealed how the leaders of rural radicalism viewed the role of rural women. Commenting on the case, Arch insisted that ‘the honest-hearted English labourer loves his wife as well as any man, his interests are vested in his wife’.103 Although these ‘interests’ mainly concerned looking after their home and children, the audiences’ response to George Dixon, Liberal MP for Birmingham, when he addressed the inaugural meeting of the NALU, suggests that the rural wife’s responsibilities were seen as being of equal importance to those of her husband: If the agricultural labourer had a certain quantity of land, his wife, who was really an agricultural labourer – (hear, hear) – could work upon it instead of going to work in the fields.104

The way in which the male leadership of the NALU articulated the role of rural women was therefore less patronising than the tone adopted by male republican activists when they spoke of ‘not forgetting the rights of the weaker sex’.105 Mirroring the divisions in the republican movement, the agricultural labourers failed to establish an over-arching national organisation that would give them a cohesive, structural identity. Localism was undoubtedly at the root of this failure. Prefiguring the uneasiness associated with the Birmingham-based leadership of the NLF upon its formation in May 1877, the authority of the NALU to speak for the whole movement was contested at its inaugural meeting at Leamington in May 1872. For example, the content of a brief report on the origins of the movement was challenged on the basis that ‘the report was too exclusively that of the Warwickshire movement,’ while another delegate claimed that the North Herefordshire labourers deserved a place in the first official narrative of the union’s history.106 Moreover, the NALU failed to attract 102 103 104 105 106

Labourers’ Union Chronicle, 28 June 1873. Ibid. Birmingham Daily Post, 30 May 1872. Reynolds’s Newspaper, 26 May 1872. Birmingham Daily Post, 30 May 1872.

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the support of many rural workers in the more northern counties, who gravitated towards the LNALL, which was established in Grantham in 1872 under the leadership of the republican William Banks. The League had additional branches in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, and by 1873 had over 7,000 members.107 Significantly, the Lincolnshire-based leadership of the LNALL did not see their identity as purely rural. As Edward Jackson, the chairman of the LNALL’s 1873 annual conference, declared, ‘the great object of the League was to bring about a thorough amalgamation of agricultural and town labourers’.108 Thus, the leaders of the LNALL wished to use their organisation to construct an alliance between urban and rural workers, suggesting that they conceptualised their identity as working-class radical activists, not agricultural labourers. An appreciation of the importance of place sheds light on the reasons behind this approach. The emergence of rural organised radicalism in Lincolnshire in 1872 was closely linked to the contemporaneous urban movement for the nine-hour working day, with many urban activists, such as Banks, helping to establish labourers’ unions.109 Reflecting the importance of these links, Banks subsequently led the LNALL into the Federal Union of Agricultural and General Labourers, which comprised both urban and rural workers, and had been established by George Odger.110 However, the authority of the Lincolnshire-based leaders of the LNALL was also challenged, particularly by urban radicals. For example, a delegate from the Sheffield Labourers’ Association stated that they did not wish to financially contribute to the LNALL as they opposed its policy of sending rural workers to the city and swamping the labour market.111 Localism, therefore, severely curtailed the agricultural labourers’ efforts to establish a national organisation that would give them a presence on the national political stage. Although the rural workers’ movement produced two national organisations, it would be a mistake to see them as mutually antagonistic. Historians of rural radicalism have traditionally emphasised the rivalry between the NALU and the Federal Union. Patricia Horn cites Arch’s refusal to speak on the same platform as members of the Federal Union as a sign of the irreconcilable divisions between the two groups.112 Moreover, Richard Olney has argued that that, in terms of their co-operation with 107 108 109 110 111 112

Olney, Rural Society, p. 87. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 21 Jan. 1873. Olney, Rural Society, p. 86. The Times, 24 Apr, 1874. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 21 Jan. 1873. Horn, Arch, p. 105.

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other bodies, the NALU worked with Liberal politicians, particularly those based in Birmingham, while the Federal Union established a close working relationship with the leaders of the London Trades Council.113 However, there is a problem with this picture: it is over-reliant on Arch’s oppositional rhetoric and the narrative established by the NALU’s organ, the Labourers’ Union Chronicle. Like the Republican, the Labourers’ Union Chronicle was quick to entrench its opposition to any rival organisation. For example, it reported that, in Market Rasen, where George Ball, the local NALU leader, was agitating for better pay, ‘there are two classes of men here who do not much like Mr Ball’s name – the Lincoln Labour League and the farmers’.114 However, newspaper reports such as these completely obscured the crossorganisational activities of the members of both national organisations. Once the nature of the personal networks that existed between both bodies is appreciated, it is clear that such oppositional rhetoric belied the reality at ground level. The distinction between an NALU that supported the Liberal party and a Federal Union that worked only with the wider labour movement is a false one. To be sure, the leadership of the NALU had close links with the radical wing of the Liberal party. George Dixon, Liberal MP for Birmingham, presided over the inaugural meeting of the NALU, and, from its inception, Jesse Collings sat on its executive committee. Arch, in his visits to London, had attended meetings of Mill’s LTRA, while Howard Evans, another prominent member of the NALU, had worked closely with Charles Dilke when he moved his allotments extension bill in 1874.115 However, the NALU also worked closely with the leaders of London trades unionism. For example, an NALU meeting held in London in 1874 to call for help for labourers locked out by farmers was attended by Samuel Morley and George Dixon, and also by Lloyd Jones, George Holyoake, Benjamin Lucraft and Randal Cremer.116 Cremer was also a member of the NALU’s consultative committee, while Arch had represented the NALU at the fifth annual TUC at Leeds in 1873.117 Similarly, although the LNALL, through its association with the Federal Union, worked closely with the leadership of the London Trades Council and the LRL,118 Banks also worked closely with Samuel Morley and George Dixon in the negotiations that led to the settlement 113 Olney, Rural Society, p. 90. 114 Labourers’ Union Chronicle, 12 July 1873. 115 Scotland, ‘The National Agricultural Labourers’ Union’, p. 162. 116 The Times, 24 Apr. 1874. 117 Horn, Arch, pp. 79, 84. 118 For a report of the general council of the LRL, which urged closer co-operation with the agricultural labourers, see The Times, 13 Apr. 1874.

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that ended the lockouts in Lincolnshire.119 Meanwhile, Auberon Herbert, the pro-republican Liberal MP for Nottingham, worked closely with both organisations and, following the Chipping Norton affair, attempted to move for a royal commission to inquire into the power of county magistrates.120 These personal networks, therefore, ensured that both the NALU and LNALL leaderships were closely intertwined with not only the radical wing of the Liberal party, but also the London-based leadership of the labour movement. The extent of such networks gives an insight into how the leaders of rural radicalism conceptualised their identity. Reflecting the important contribution made by not only urban activists but also trade union leaders and advanced Liberal MPs, the leaders of the agricultural labourers conceived their cause as part of a wider working-class radical movement that demanded greater political rights. Although agricultural labourers experienced a sense of ‘separateness’ because of their contemporaries’ negative perception of them and the difficulties they faced in securing places to meet, the rise of rural radicalism, which was strongly influenced by urban radicalism, ended their geographical isolation. Yet, while the distinctions between urban and rural radicalism became blurred, the importance of place remained. The political activities of the agricultural labourers were rooted in their locality. In addition to their struggle for civil rights, which encompassed their call for higher wages, union recognition and the franchise, they asserted their presence in the local political environment by calling for reform of charitable endowments and the game laws, and legislation effecting allotments. Significantly, this assertive behaviour at the parish level, which can be linked to broader demands for working-class political representation, gave the labourers a sense of independence. Moreover, this independence was evident in their interactions with official Liberalism, to which the analysis now turns. The agricultural labourers and the Liberal party Because of the links in terms of personnel between the leaders of rural radicalism and members of the Liberal party, historians have tended to assume that the leadership of the NALU was essentially an ‘adjunct of the Liberal party’.121 The NALU’s support for the Liberal party, following 119 For reports of Banks’s co-operation with Morley see the Lincolnshire Chronicle, 8 and 22 May 1874. See also The Times, 23 May 1874. 120 Herbert’s motion failed as there were not forty members present: Hansard, 24 June 1873, vol. 216, cc. 1339–40. 121 P.F. Clarke and K. Langford, ‘Hodge’s Politics: Agricultural Labourers and the Third

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its call for the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourers, has served to perpetuate this assumption. Moreover, Joseph Arch’s election as Liberal MP for North-West Norfolk in 1885 has given the impression that the labourers’ support for official Liberalism was inevitable. However, such assumptions ignore the diversity of rural radicalism’s responses towards the Liberal party. As discussed below, their loyalty to official Liberalism could be contingent as support was often given on the basis of whether it furthered their own ends. Looking at the first two years of its existence, there is clear evidence that the NALU was not only highly assertive towards but also stringently critical of the Liberal party. Even individual MPs who were close to the movement were vulnerable to attacks. Following his speech at the 1873 annual meeting of the NALU, George Dixon was strongly condemned by the Labourers’ Union Chronicle for his ‘impatient complaint that the [NALA’s] advocacy was too bold and threatening’.122 Significantly, the leadership blamed the prosecution of the labourers’ wives at Chipping Norton on the Liberal government’s Criminal Law Amendment Act, a piece of legislation they described as ‘unjust and oppressive towards the labouring classes of this country’.123 Indeed, this attack underlines the argument that the labourers’ conceptualised their identity as part of a broader working-class movement for political rights. Just as had been the case with the leaders of the LRL, the leaders of the agricultural labourers used the issue of trade union legislation to attack the capability of the Liberal party to protect the interests of the working classes. At the 1873 annual meeting of the NALU, Arch declared that He wanted to know if the government was a Liberal government or not? … [W]e had too much of that ‘dodgery’ of that obnoxious thing called ‘Liberalism’ which when put to the test proved to be only rank Toryism … He would ask if that government was practically Liberal [when it] allows a body of honest labourers that had broken no law, violated no right … to be coerced and oppressed.124

In this context, the agricultural labourers were not attacking Liberalism per se, but rather the failure of the government to live up to its ideals. A subsequent leading article in the Labourers’ Union Chronicle made this clear: it was ‘the apathy, neglect and treason to the Liberal party of the present Reform Act in Suffolk’, in N. Harte and R. Quinault, Land and Society in Britain, 1790–1914: Essays in Honour of F.M.L. Thompson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 129. For a similar argument see Scotland, ‘National Agricultural Labourers’ Union’, p. 162. 122 Labourers’ Union Chronicle, 7 June 1873. 123 Ibid., 28 June 1873. 124 Ibid., 14 June 1873.

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government’ that was the problem.125 Thus, in 1873, if the agricultural labourers were to work with the Liberal government, it would have to be on suitable terms. According to Arch, until the Criminal Law Amendment Act was repealed, for the Liberal government to ask the rural labourer to work with it was ‘to insult him with loud sounding but loose rhetoric’.126 On the question of franchise reform, the agricultural labourers demonstrated a diversity of responses to official Liberalism. Reflecting the essentially political nature of the movement, the call for the franchise had been a basic demand of the agricultural unions from their very inception. Particular support was given to George Trevelyan, Liberal MP for the Hawick district of the Border burghs, who from 1872 repeatedly introduced into the Commons a resolution calling for the extension of household suffrage to the counties.127 Although his bills were consistently defeated, support for his proposals grew steadily, and in 1880 Gladstone’s second administration took office with a clear commitment to franchise reform. Prior to 1880, though, the leaders of rural radicalism were undoubtedly equivocal in their support for the Liberals. The leaders of the agricultural labourers were highly critical of the failure of Gladstone’s first administration to support the extension of household suffrage to the countryside. In July 1873 one sympathetic supporter of the rural workers argued in a letter to the Daily News that the claim of Hodge to the franchise is indefeasible – and yet the most he can wring from a Liberal premier is the statement that he is watching the movement with interest … These men ask Mr Gladstone to blow a trumpet; he simply gives a whistle.128

These views were echoed by the labourers’ leaders following a meeting between a joint deputation from the NALU and the Federal Union and Gladstone at Downing Street in January 1874. The meeting itself is significant for two reasons. Firstly, since republican activists had earlier been refused an audience with the Liberal premier, the fact that the meeting took place at all underlined the importance of the networks the two labourers’ organisations had established with Liberal MPs and the London Trades Council. Secondly, that the meeting was headed by a joint deputation underlines the fact that the NALU and the Federal Union did not operate independently of each other. To the dismay of the deputation, though he recognised the ‘anomalies of the present law’, Gladstone refused to commit to supporting 125 126 127 128

Ibid., 2 Aug. 1873. Ibid. For Trevelyan’s views on the issue see Hansard, 7 July 1875, vol. 225, c. 1096. Daily News, 18 July 1873.

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the enfranchisement of the agricultural labourers, stating that public opinion was not fully behind their cause.129 Odger, a delegate of the Federal Union, described the premier’s speech as ‘most vague and unsatisfactory’, a view echoed by Alexander Macdonald, the miners’ leader who two weeks later was elected as MP for Stafford.130 Macdonald subsequently called for ‘an agitation outdoors’, a proposal that was backed not only by the NALU and the Federal Union, but also by the delegates from the Northern Reform League, which included Joseph Cowen, who had been present at the Downing Street meeting.131 Eugenio Biagini has postulated that ‘the only section of the labour movement really committed to enlargement of the franchise after 1874 was the agricultural workers themselves.’132 However, the fact that, throughout the rest of the 1870s, these close, personal networks between rural and urban radicalism remained strong, indicates that this was not the case. Meanwhile, the NALU remained highly sceptical of giving their support to the Liberals, now in opposition following the 1874 general election. In February 1875 a leading article in the Labourers’ Union Chronicle stated that ‘our policy is to do whatever lies in our power to keep the Tories in power … We shall squeeze from them various small measures of progress’.133 Following the formation of his second ministry in 1880, Gladstone’s clear commitment to franchise reform affected a noticeable change in the rhetoric of the agricultural labourers’ leaders, underlining the contingent nature of their attitude towards official Liberalism. Congratulating Gladstone on his victory, the LNALL declared that ‘we are preparing for the day of our political liberation by forming each branch of our organization into a Liberal club’.134 Similarly, in stark contrast to his organisation’s paper expressing the wish to ‘keep the Tories in power’, Arch declared that at the 1880 general election ‘the people of England came to their senses and returned a Liberal government to power’.135 Indeed, by the end of 1884, when the agricultural workers were finally admitted into the franchise, it was increasingly difficult to distinguish between NALU and local Liberal party meetings.136 Union branch meetings frequently held practice ballots for the labourers, which invariably produced Liberal victories. For example, 129 Morning Post, 22 Jan. 1874. 130 See chapter one. 131 Morning Post, 22 Jan. 1874. 132 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 291. 133 Labourers’ Union Chronicle, 13 Feb. 1875. 134 Cited in Dunbabin, ‘Revolt of the Field’, p. 90. 135 English Labourers’ Chronicle, 19 Jan. 1884. 136 For example see reports of Arch speaking at the Grimsby Liberal Association and the Norwich Junior Liberal Association: English Labourers’ Chronicle, 19 and 26 Jan. 1884.

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at Alderton in Suffolk in November 1885, a practice ballot gave 78 out of 80 votes cast to the Liberal candidate.137 To reinforce the point, Arch’s Address to the New Voters, which was published by the London and Counties Liberal Union, stated, in reference to Gladstone’s leadership, that ‘I have not the slightest doubt … you will, by returning good sound Liberals to Parliament at the next General Election, hold up the hands of your political Moses’.138 This was a far cry from 1875, when the Labourers’ Union Chronicle declared that, following Gladstone’s retirement, ‘we will not now waste any words over expressions of regret as to his numerous failures’.139 The land reform proposals of Jesse Collings also helped deliver the labourers’ support for the Liberal party. Collings’s success in securing the passing of the Allotments Extension Act in 1882 had already made him a popular figure amongst the rural workers, and, in 1885, his advocacy of providing allotments and small holdings for the rural poor, which was crystallised by the slogan of ‘three acres and a cow’, entrenched his position as their champion. Joseph Chamberlain’s adoption of the slogan for his ‘Radical Programme’ further cemented the mutual bond between the NALU and the advanced wing of the Liberal party.140 Yet, despite the undoubted support of the NALU for the Liberals, it would be a mistake to see the agricultural labourers as passive in this relationship. Just as Odger, while standing as a candidate in Chelsea in 1868, had distinguished between his support for ‘advanced’ Liberalism and his opposition to ‘your milk-and-water Liberals’,141 Arch, while addressing the members of the Ilkeston Liberal Association, attacked those ‘weak-kneed Liberals’, reserving his support for ‘men like Chamberlain and Dilke’.142 At the local associational level, moreover, the agricultural labourers did not want their political activity to be completely subsumed into organised Liberalism. At the annual meeting of the NALU’s council in May 1884, a delegate from Dorset stated that he was ‘strongly of the opinion that the time had arrived when the working men in the rural districts ought to form themselves into political associations’, a proposal to which Arch gave only lukewarm support, warning that it should only be done ‘where practicable’.143 At the 1885 general election the agricultural labourers returned Liberals in 137 Horn, Labouring Life, p. 138. 138 J. Arch, An Address to the New Voters (London: London and Counties Liberal Union, 1884), p. 1. 139 Labourers Union Chronicle, 13 Feb. 1875. 140 T.A. Jenkins, The Liberal Ascendancy, 1830-1886 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994), p. 188. 141 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 4 Oct. 1868. 142 English Labourers’ Chronicle, 5 Jan. 1884. 143 Ibid., 31 May 1884.

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over half of the 158 rural or semi-rural English constituencies.144 However, this outcome, particularly Arch’s election at North-West Norfolk, must not be seen as the inevitable product of the teleological rise of the agricultural labourers’ support for official Liberalism. There is clear evidence that rural workers were equivocal in their support of the Liberal party. The tradition of political assertiveness in parish politics made sure that they would not be passive partners in their relationship with the Liberals. Thus, the failure of Gladstone’s first administration to extend the household franchise to the counties was strongly condemned, as was the government’s Criminal Law Amendment Act. Indeed, their criticism of this Act, which affected urban and rural workers, reinforces the argument that the agricultural labourers’ did not solely conceive of their movement as a rural one. Conclusion Three major conclusions can be drawn from this comparative analysis of the republican clubs and the agricultural labourers in the decade following the Second Reform Act. Firstly, ‘place’ mediated the relationship between working-class activists and official Liberalism. This is not to say that there was an urban/rural dichotomy that can account for differences in political behaviour and attitudes. Rather, it was the specific locality that was the determining factor. The failure of the Nottingham Republican Club to attract the support of the town’s wider labour movement was due to the close organisational ties between local working-class radicalism and organised Liberalism; the inability of the Birmingham republicans to secure a space for their meetings was down to the strong Liberal presence on the town council; the forceful political activism of the Lincolnshire agricultural labourers reflected the urban origins of the movement. Moreover, the strength of localism was behind the failure of both the republicans and the agricultural labourers to establish a cohesive, legitimate national organisation that could assert its presence against the Liberal government on the national stage. Secondly, there was a significant diversity of responses towards the Liberal party. Depending on the context and the audience, the leaders of both urban and rural radicalism could switch from outright criticism of official Liberalism to making the distinction between ‘weak-kneed’ moderate Liberals and the ‘real’ Liberal party. Because many republican activists had the vote while the agricultural labourers did not, they asserted their independence in different ways. The republican leaders spoke of the need for a ‘people’s party’ like their counterparts in the LRL, who declared 144 P. Lynch, The Liberal Party in Rural England 1885–1910: Radicalism and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 22–3.

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the coming of a ‘Labour party’, though there was no programme on which such a party could be founded, reflecting the fact that it was a rather vague rhetorical notion. Although rural workers did not have the franchise, they asserted their independence at the level of parish politics by demanding a say in the administration of local charities, and calling for reform of the game laws and legislation to promote allotments. These demands can be located in the wider context of the call for working-class political representation. The rural workers’ independent streak was further evident in the 1870s, when the leadership of the NALU was both highly forceful towards and severely critical of the Liberal party, a fact that has arguably been overlooked by the existing historiography. Thirdly, there existed important personal networks not only between urban republicanism and rural radicalism, but also between both groups and the wider labour movement. These networks had a significant influence on how labour activists conceptualised their political identity. Significantly, both republicans and agricultural labourers conceived their identity to be part of a wider working-class radicalism. This is reflected by the fact that their demands, while emanating from concerns over the state’s pecuniary support for the royal family and the low wages of rural workers, were part of a broader working-class call for greater political rights. Of course, it must not be overlooked that, owing to difficulties in securing meeting places at the local level and opposition to a seemingly intransigent Liberal government at the national level, republicans and agricultural labourers often perceived themselves to be separate from mainstream politics. Moreover, the rhetoric of the republican and labourers’ publications was clearly oppositional. However, by appreciating the importance of these personal networks, it is possible to separate the rhetoric from the reality. These close personal ties ensured that not only were republican and rural activists more united than their separate national organisations would suggest, but they were also never fully isolated from the wider labour movement. The agricultural labourers had closer personal networks with official Liberalism than the republicans, but, as the discussion above highlights, this should not necessarily be taken as evidence of rural workers being merely an ‘adjunct of the Liberal party’. By conceptualising their identity not just as rural but as part of a broader working-class movement for political rights, the agricultural labourers remained assertive in their relationship with official Liberalism during this period.

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3 Labour’s Response to the Caucus: Class, America and Language, 1877–85 Class, America and Language, 1877–85

Following the refusal of the Peterborough Liberal Association to select George Potter, a working man’s candidate, as its nominee at the 1878 by-election, George Howell wrote that if this is the way in which the Caucus deals with those who may seek a seat in Parliament … it will be a disgrace to Liberalism, disastrous to the Liberal party, and a violation of all constitutional rights and personal freedom in electoral matters.1

After the formation of the National Liberal Federation (NLF) in May 1877, the perceived unwillingness of local Liberal associations to accommodate the labour movement’s demands for political recognition put the role of the political machine centre stage in the debate concerning labour ­representation. This chapter is therefore concerned with labour’s response to the rise of the Liberal party machine, which became pejoratively known as the ‘caucus’. The first part examines the impact of the NLF on labour’s prospects of returning working-class men to Parliament, and analyses the labour movement’s intellectual response to the caucus. Of course, the labour movement’s critique of the caucus was but one part of a wider debate about the problem of organising a democracy. In the five years that followed the formation of the NLF, politicians, political commentators and the press vigorously debated whether this new kind of party organisation was a legitimate way to organise an expanded electorate in Britain. Comparisons with the United States, a democracy with an Anglo-Saxon culture that had given birth to the ‘caucus’, were therefore integral to this debate. Although historians have focused extensively on how nineteenth-century British intellectuals conceptualised American democracy, far less attention has been given to the ways in which British working-class radicals who actually travelled to America Industrial Review, 2 Nov. 1878. 1

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interpreted their politics. The next part of the chapter, therefore, reconsiders the travel writings of working-class radicals who journeyed to the United States and recorded their assessment of the American caucus, and examines the lessons that could be drawn from them by the labour movement. Although an American-style party machine never arrived in England, the language of the caucus, with its references to ‘wire-pullers’, ‘dictation’ and ‘tyranny’, was certainly appropriated by politicians wishing to attack an opponent’s legitimacy. Using case studies of contests in Sheffield and Newcastle-upon-Tyne at the 1885 general election, the final part of the chapter explores the different ways in which labour candidates used this language of the caucus to not only express their frustrations at intransigent Liberal associations, but also articulate labour’s demand for the right to nominate their own candidate for a parliamentary election. The National Liberal Federation and labour representation The debate concerning the rise of machine politics, precipitated by the formation of NLF, was one of the most prominent political issues of the late 1870s. Established by Joseph Chamberlain and the leaders of the Birmingham Liberal Association (BLA), the NLF was an ambitious project to extend the ‘Birmingham model’ to industrial England.2 Historians differ in their precise interpretations of the driving forces behind its formation, but three identifiable factors come to the fore. Firstly, the leading role taken by Chamberlain, who, believing that within the party ‘there are only individual Radicals, each specially interested in some part of the whole, but with no connecting organization or idea of united action,’3 determined that ‘to radicalize the content of the Liberal party policy, he would have to radicalize the structure of the party.’4 Secondly, Liberals felt that greater extra-parliamentary ­organisation J. Chamberlain, ‘A New Political Organization’, Fortnightly Review, 22 (July to Dec. 2 1877), pp. 126–34; T.L. Crosby, Joseph Chamberlain: A Most Radical Imperialist (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), pp. 22–3. For a discussion of the Birmingham model see chapter one. J. Chamberlain to J. Morley, 19 Aug. 1873. Joseph Chamberlain papers, University of 3 Birmingham Library, Special collections, JC/5/50. Chamberlain subsequently outlined the need to construct the party along more advanced lines: J. Chamberlain, ‘The Liberal Party and its Leaders’, Fortnightly Review, 14 (1873), pp. 287–302. P. Auspos, ‘Radicalism, Pressure Groups and Party Politics: From the National 4 Education League to the National Liberal Federation’, Journal of British Studies, 20 (1980), pp. 184–204. The architect of the scheme to extend the Birmingham model remained William Harris, and therefore Chamberlain’s organisational role must not be overstated. For a critical assessment of his role in Victorian politics see R. Quinault, ‘Joseph Chamberlain: A Reassessment’, in T.R. Gourvish and A. O’Day (eds), Later Victorian Britain, 1867–1900 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 70–1. Gladstone, though, was impressed and, following the inaugural meeting of the NLF, wrote that Chamberlain was ‘a man worth watching, of

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was needed to win elections under an enlarged franchise. Many in the party felt that poor organisation was to blame for their unexpected defeat in the 1874 general election, and significant Conservative gains in populous boroughs that year had appeared to vindicate the existence of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations, formed in 1867 as a means of organising the newly enfranchised working-class men in urban England and Wales.5 Thirdly, the timing was relevant. When Russia went to war with Turkey in April 1877, Chamberlain realised the role that a new organisation could play in overcoming Liberal divisions over foreign policy.6 The constitution of the NLF set out to enshrine the ideal of popular representation in the governance of the Liberal party. The new governing principle was ‘the direct participation of all members of the Party in the direction of policy, and in the selection of those particular measures of reform and of progress to which priority will be given’, which could only be secured by ‘the organization of the Party upon a representative basis: that is, by popularly elected committees of local associations, by means of their freely chosen representatives, in a general federation’.7 The stated objective of the NLF, which comprised a council of delegates sent from the federated associations and an annually elected ruling body called the General Committee, was ‘to assist in the organisation throughout the country of Liberal Associations based on popular representation’ and to ‘promote the adoption of Liberal principles in the government of the country’.8 The notion of ‘popular representation’ was not merely descriptive but prescriptive: in order to affiliate, Liberal associations had to be organised along the ‘Birmingham model’. Paradoxically, therefore, the NLF’s definition of popular representation hindered the founders’ attempts to make the organisation reflect the whole Liberal constituency. Many local Liberal strong self-consciousness under most pleasing manners and I should think great tenacity of purpose’: quoted in Marsh, Chamberlain, p. 121. The poor performance of the Liberals and their lack of party discipline was addressed 5 by Gladstone in his article ‘Electoral Facts’, Nineteenth Century, 4 (1878), pp. 955–68. For the formation and the impact of the National Union see: E.J. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party: Conservative Leadership and Organization after the Second Reform Bill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 124–5; Zig Layton-Henry, ‘Democracy and Reform in the Conservative Party’, Journal of Contemporary History, 13 (1978), 656–7. M. Ostrogorski, ‘The Introduction of the Caucus into England’, Political Science 6 Quarterly, 7 (1893), pp. 287–316. The importance of the Eastern question is downplayed in F. Herrick, ‘The Origins of the National Liberal Federation’, Journal of Modern History, 18 (1945), pp. 116–29. However, the Eastern question certainly explains the timing of the NLF’s formation. National Liberal Federation, ‘Constitution Submitted to the Conference of 1877’, 7 Proceedings attending the formation of the National Federation of Liberal Associations, 1877. NLF, Proceedings, 1877, 31. 8

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associations did not attend the inaugural conference as their mode of organisation was not deemed representative enough, and only half of the attending delegates agreed to immediately join the federation, reflecting unease about Birmingham’s assumption of primacy.9 Indeed, Chamberlain had refused to allow Manchester to join the convening conference, leading this other great centre of provincial Liberalism to adopt a distinctly suspicious attitude to the NLF in its early years.10 These tensions were exacerbated by the disproportionate number of Birmingham delegates attending the conference and the fact that the key posts of president, treasurer and secretary were all taken by Birmingham men.11 Working-class participation in the councils of the NLF was curtailed by the founders’ zealous commitment to the Birmingham model. For example, the Nottingham Liberal Union, which had a significant working-class membership and enjoyed close ties to the Nottingham Working Men’s Political Union, was not deemed to be organised along a ‘representative model’ and so it sent no delegates in 1877.12 At the inaugural conference, the two delegates from the Banbury working-men’s club were the sole representatives of their class, and this situation was slow to improve.13 At the 1881 conference Joseph Arch, the leader of the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU), became a member of the General Committee, and the Reading Working Men’s Liberal association sent three delegates, but it was far from impressive for a body that prided itself on popular representation.14 To be sure, most local Liberal associations had some working-class component, and Francis Schnadhorst, the NLF’s secretary, actively Forty-six Liberal associations affiliated to the federation in 1877, most coming from 9 provincial towns and industrial counties. None of the delegates who attended belonged to the county and aristocratic families from rural constituencies and, significantly, there were almost no delegates from London, reflecting the poor state of Liberal organisation in the capital (Marsh, Chamberlain, pp. 117–18). By 1879, 101 associations had affiliated (NLF, Annual Report, 1879, p. 10). 10 Chamberlain had written to Jesse Collings that ‘I think it is a great mistake to ask Manchester and Leeds to join Birmingham in starting the Federation … If these two Associations are joined with us they will seriously hamper our action and they will claim equal representation on all Committees of the Federation, and this would render prompt and united action an impossibility in the future’ (Chamberlain to Collings, 2 March 1877, JC/5/16/60). For a useful summary of the relations between Manchester and Birmingham Liberalism see Hanham, Elections and Party Management, pp. 149–54. 11 Joseph Chamberlain was elected president; J.S. Wright became treasurer and Jesse Collings honorary secretary. Francis Schnadhorst, who had been the most prominent organiser in Birmingham Liberal politics, became the active secretary of the federation. 12 Nottingham eventually affiliated to the NLF in 1882. 13 NLF, Proceedings, 1877, p. 9. 14 NLF, Annual Report, 1881, pp. 4, 29.

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encouraged the leaders of the local associations to invite working men into the fold.15 Moreover, in urban centres where Liberal organisation was particularly strong, the level of participation was high. Two-thirds of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Liberal Association were manual workers,16 while the BLA, through its emphasis on organisation in each municipal ward, maximised working-class involvement. As Chamberlain boasted to John Morley, ‘three-quarters of the great committee of the 600 are workingmen’.17 Of course, it was one thing for workers to join an association and quite another for them sit on its executive and influence its direction. Put simply, the majority of workers had neither the time nor the money to devote their energies to the running of the local political machine. There are examples of local associations reaching out to prominent labour leaders and co-opting them into their executives, such as the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Liberal Association, which counted Thomas Burt, Charles Fenwick and Robert Knight amongst its number, but it was arguably of little use to the labour movement as a whole as these individuals were already successful.18 The participation of working-class women in the NLF and its affiliated branches was also limited. Women, of all social backgrounds, were far from prominent in the NLF before 1886. The organisation largely determined its agenda without female influence, prompting Lydia Becker, co-founder of the Women’s Suffrage Journal, to declare that ‘I do not believe that the Liberal party as a party cares a straw for the interests and wishes of women’.19 In fact, the NLF’s annual conference did not consider an official resolution for women’s suffrage until 1905.20 Relations in this period between the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement and the Labour Representation League (LRL) were also mixed. Between 1878 and 1879, George Howell acted as parliamentary agent to the Women’s Suffrage Committee, but William Randal Cremer was a vehement anti-suffragist. It has also been demonstrated that the members of Liberal working-men’s associations were often wary of feminist claims because they believed that women would vote for the Conservative party and therefore retard the cause of labour.21 When 15 McGill, ‘Francis Schnadhorst and Liberal Party Organisation’, p. 34. 16 E.I. Waitt, ‘The Divisions of Liberalism: Newcastle Politics 1870–1902’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester (1972), Appendix B. 17 Chamberlain to Morley, 25 November 1876. JC5/54/127. 18 Biagini, British Democracy, pp. 177–8. 19 Cited in M. Pugh, The March of Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage, 1866–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 122. 20 M. Pugh, ‘The Limits of Liberalism: Liberals and Women’s Suffrage, 1867–1914’, in Biagini (ed.), Citizenship and Community, p. 57. 21 A.  Clark, ‘Gender, Class and the Constitution: Franchise Reform in England, 1832–1928’, in Vernon (ed.), Re-Reading the Constitution, pp. 230–53.

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the Women’s Liberal Federation (WLF) was established in 1887 under the presidency of Gladstone’s daughter, Catherine, its leadership remained firmly in the hands of upper middle-class women, many the relations of Liberal MPs. Like Schnadhorst, Sophia Fry, a prominent member of the WLF, encouraged the active participation of the working classes, insisting in 1892 that the wives of working-class men who had the vote had ‘the full sympathy of the wives in the work of our committees’.22 However, as Fry’s rhetoric suggested, it was still the middle-class women who ran the committees. This distinction was certainly evident at the local level. By the early 1880s women’s Liberal associations had been established in a number of towns, most notably Birmingham, Bristol, York and Darlington, and there were already forty in existence by the time of the WLF’s formation.23 Like the republican clubs and agricultural labourers’ unions discussed in the previous chapter, their origins reflected the politics of locality. For example, the Darlington Women’s Liberal Association was formed by Sophia Fry to assist the election of her husband.24 Although the membership of these associations was socially mixed, the fact that, like their male counterparts, working-class women did not have the time or money to take up leading positions, meant that the agenda of women’s Liberal associations reflected middle-class preoccupations such as reform of local government and education.25 It is significant that, like urban and rural working-class activists, the leaders of the women’s movement responded to official Liberalism in diverse ways. Josephine Butler, the founder of the Women’s National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, worked closely with advanced Liberal MPs such as James Stansfeld, but made dramatic interventions in direct opposition to organised Liberalism at parliamentary by-elections when the Liberal nominee supported the Acts. For example, at Colchester in October 1870, Butler argued that the nomination of Sir Henry Storks was the result of a political fix organised by ‘wire-pullers’ in the Liberal party machine.26 Similarly, although Helen Taylor worked 22 Cited in E. Orme, Lady Fry of Darlington (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1898), pp. 118–19. 23 L. Walker, ‘Party Political Women: A Comparative Study of Liberal Women and the Primrose League, 1890–1914’, in J. Rendall (ed.) Equal or Different: Women’s Politics, 1800–1914 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 165–91. 24 L. Walker, ‘Gender, Suffrage and Party: Liberal Women’s Organisations, 1880–1914’, in M. Boussahba-Bravard (ed.), Suffrage outside Suffragism: Women’s Vote in Britain, 1880–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 80–1. 25 K. Cowman, Mrs Brown is a Man and a Brother: Women in Merseyside’s Political Organisations, 1890–1920 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), p. 46. 26 For the National Association’s account of the Colchester by-election see the Shield, 5 and 12 Nov. 1870.

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closely with the Southwark Radical Association during her successive returns for the London school board in 1876, 1879 and 1882, she opposed the North Camberwell Radical Association when she came forward as an independent Liberal candidate for the division at the 1885 general election. Interestingly, in seeking the working-class vote, Taylor identified herself with the labour movement, claiming that women ‘were the greatest sufferers from class privilege’ and insisting that ‘if there had been a working class labour candidate before North Camberwell’ she would not have come forward.27 Although the latter comment was arguably campaign rhetoric designed to court the working-class vote, the women’s movement shared the same dilemma as the labour movement: whether to pursue its goals by attacking official Liberalism or by working within it.28 The diversity of the two movements’s responses to official Liberalism underlines the pragmatic nature of their political strategies. Certainly, the establishment of the NLF and its founders’ commitment to the Birmingham model made the leaders of the labour movement equivocate over what future strategy to pursue. Significantly, it was the question of the selection of working-class candidates, rather than increased working-class participation in the new-model Liberal associations, that most concerned them. There was undoubtedly support in the NLF for the election of working men to Parliament. Speaking in 1890, Schnadhorst, who was ‘on the most close and intimate personal terms with all the leaders of the labour party in the House of Commons’, claimed that he had been ‘a most cordial supporter of the cause of labour representation’ for fifteen years. However, he was unmoveable on how it could be secured: The lesson I have tried to teach the working men generally, and especially those who are anxious for labour representation, is that there is only one means of getting it, and that is in co-operation with the Liberal party. They cannot get it otherwise. [They cannot] seduce the great mass of their fellow workingmen from their allegiance to the Liberal party.

In practice, ‘co-operation with the Liberal party’ meant seeking representation ‘through the organisation and through the sympathy of the Liberal party as a whole’.29 The NLF, though, was largely impotent when it came to the question of candidate selection. The inaugural conference had decreed that ‘the decision 27 For reports of Taylor’s elections meetings see: Morning Post, 27 Oct. and 18 Nov. 1885; Daily News, 16 Nov. 1885. 28 Pugh, ‘The Limits of Liberalism’, p. 54. 29 Press cutting from the Western Daily Mercury, 28 May 1890, in Scrap albums and addresses of Francis Schnadhorst, MS18, Birmingham University, Special Collections.

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of the majority in the selection of candidates’ was ‘binding upon those who consent to be nominated’, and as, in the words of Robert Spence Watson, ‘it was made abundantly clear that the independence of local organisations would not be interfered with,’ there was little the NLF could do to directly ensure the selection of working-class men.30 Writing in 1892, Herbert Gladstone echoed this interpretation: Probably one morning spent in the rooms of the Central Liberal Association would teach a valuable lesson to the gentlemen who appear to think that Mr Arnold Morley or Mr Schnadhorst can nominate candidates as they please. The fact remains that constituencies and their local managers are infinitely sensitive over advice from headquarters.31

The impact of the NLF’s formation on the way in which the leaders of local caucuses responded to labour’s call for political representation was therefore minimal. Although the NLF sought to create a national machine, local organisation still mattered most. This potential weakness was compounded by a lack of financial resources. Independent of the Liberal Central Association, the NLF was cut off from the flow of the parliamentary party’s money, which undoubtedly hampered its effectiveness as an electoral organisation. Thus, though there was a genuine desire in the upper echelons of the NLF to bring forward working-class candidates, the rich subscribers who held the purse strings of the local associations were unsurprisingly hostile to the ambitions of would-be labour candidates who were unable to fund themselves.32 Labour’s critique of the caucus George Howell’s article ‘The Caucus System and the Liberal Party’, which appeared in the New Quarterly Review in the autumn of 1878, was the most comprehensive critique of the caucus by a leader of the labour movement.33 The article, which assumed that the ‘Birmingham model’ was synonymous with the ‘caucus’, was preceded by an introduction that summarised his objections to the caucus on six counts: 30 NLF, Proceedings, 1877, 38; R.S. Watson, The National Liberal Federation from its Commencement to the General Election of 1906 (London: T. Fisher Unwin 1907), p. 16. Robert Spence Watson, one of the leaders of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Liberal Association, was president of the NLF, 1890–1902. 31 H.J. Gladstone, ‘The Liberal Party and the Labour Question’, Albemarle, 1 (Feb. 1892), p. 54. 32 Barker, Gladstone and Radicalism, p. 130. 33 G. Howell, ‘The Caucus System and the Liberal Party’, Bishopsgate Institute, London, HOWELL/6/40.

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(1) That it is a mechanical contrivance intended to produce uniformity in the Liberal ranks, which is impossible. (2) That it does not, and cannot command the confidence of the majority of the electoral body in the constituencies. (3) That it tends to encourage professional politicians, and throws into their hands the power to manipulate elections. (4) That it seeks to substitute discipline for popular force. (5) That it assumes dictatorial powers in trying to enforce its authority. (6) That it arrogates itself a right which belongs only to the great body of the electors, namely that of deciding as to who shall, or shall not, stand as a candidate to solicit the suffrages of the constituency.

On the surface, there was nothing in Howell’s six objections that was unique to the labour movement. For example, points four, five and six all drew on the ‘purist’ argument that party machines corrupted the ideal of representation as established by Edmund Burke in the 1770s. This ideal was based firstly on the belief that Members of Parliament should be free to exercise their independent judgement on political matters without sacrificing it to the opinions of the constituents, and secondly the fear that an extra-parliamentary movement would undermine true parliamentary government.34 Moreover, the notion of a dictatorial caucus already preoccupied many MPs. For example, in 1878 William Edward Forster refused to become a candidate for the Bradford Liberal Association after its chairman insisted he should abide by all decisions made by the association, something Forster felt would be ‘intolerable to the self-respect of any politician who rightly regards political duty’.35 Meanwhile, William Marriott, Liberal MP for Brighton and later a Conservative, argued that the real principle of popular government is to bring the representative of the people face to face with the people, and not have between him and them a complex and intricate machine whose motions will be directed and whose wires will be pulled by paid officials.36 34 In a speech to the electors of Bristol in 1774 Burke declared ‘your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion’. Quotation taken from Paul Kelly, ‘Constituents’ Instructions to Members of Parliament in the Eighteenth Century’, in C. Jones (ed.), Party and Management in Parliament, 1660–1784 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984), p. 170. 35 The Times, 12 August 1878. 36 W.T. Marriott, ‘The Birmingham Caucus’, Nineteenth Century, 11 (June 1882), p. 956. For a similar argument see ‘The Government and the Opposition’, Edinburgh Review, 169 (January 1879), p. 258.

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Howell’s six points, therefore, were part of a much wider debate about how to organise a democracy.37 However, a closer examination of the main text of Howell’s eleven-page article reveals that his entire analysis of the caucus was coloured by his fear that it would irrevocably damage the cause of labour representation in Parliament. On the issue of candidate selection, he wrote that the ‘caucus system’ was a blow aimed at that freedom of election which is an inherent principle of our representative system, under which a man has the right to offer himself as a candidate for the representation of any constituency, if he can only secure the requisite number of electors to stand as his sponsors on the day of nomination.38

He continued to argue that a candidate’s inability to secure the nomination would ‘immensely increase’ if they were ‘thwarted at every step by the officious officials of the borough, however favourably he may be received by a large section of the electorate’. Howell’s concern here was what he felt to be the inevitable fate of a labour candidate if he had to seek the nomination through the caucus system. This fear was underlined when he stated that ‘the power of selection [in the caucus] is in the hands of those who pay the expenses, and who therefore hold the key of the position’. For Howell, party organisation could only fulfil the ‘conditions of local representation’ when it could secure a candidate’s return ‘without touching the pocket of the candidate for a single penny of the costs’.39 Such an arrangement would clearly be a prerequisite for the return of a working man to Parliament. Howell’s fear that those who held the purse strings would inevitably refuse a working-class candidate was echoed by a piece in Reynolds’s Newspaper, which was sympathetic to the cause of labour representation. In a letter to the editor, ‘Gracchus’, argued that ‘the overloading of the “caucus” with … men of rank, wealth and belonging to what are called the upper classes’ meant that ‘no workman would stand the slightest chance of nomination.’40 The argument that the caucus would entrench class distinctions was reinforced by Lloyd Jones, who believed that 37 F. Schnadhorst, ‘The Caucus and its Critics’, Nineteenth Century, 12 (July 1882), pp. 8–28; Two Conservatives, ‘The State of the Opposition’, Fortnightly Review, 32 (July to Dec. 1882), pp. 668–76; H. Labouchére, ‘Radicals and Whigs’, Fortnightly Review, 35 (Jan. to June 1884), pp. 208-25; J. Macdonell, ‘Is the Caucus a Necessity?’, Fortnightly Review, 38 (July to Dec. 1885), pp. 780–90. 38 Howell, ‘The Caucus System’, p. 582. 39 Howell, ‘The Caucus System’, pp. 583–5. 40 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 1 Sept. 1878. In this instance, ‘Gracchus’ was probably Edward Reynolds, the younger brother of G.W.M. Reynolds, the newspaper’s owner.

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If any man presented himself to the preliminary choice of the caucus with the damning stain of co-operation or of trade union activity, there is nothing on earth more certain than that he would be rejected by shopkeepers and manufacturers who would wish for, reasonably enough, a winning candidate who would hold the ‘caucussians’ free of expense, vote as directed, and show no leaning to the sentimentalism of co-operation or the anarchic unreason of trade unionism.41

For Lloyd Jones, this ostracising of working-class interests by party organisation would naturally lead to the marginalisation of labour interests in the Liberal programme. The only progressive policy the Liberal caucuses were likely to adopt would be the equalisation of the borough and county franchises, something in which the working class had ‘no strong special interest’. On labour questions the Liberal ‘middle-class caucus’ would offer ‘the strongest and most determined opposition’, and any man supporting those questions ‘would be rigorously excluded from any chance of entering by means of a caucus into the British House of Commons’. Even if the working classes were admitted into the association, Lloyd Jones writes, ‘borough caucuses … will serve admirably as traps in which to shut up the working men’.42 It would be wrong, though, to see Howell’s article as an attack on the Liberal party in general or party organisation in particular. He certainly appreciated the need for ‘the organisation and consolidation of the “great Liberal party”’, but for him, ‘a political organisation to be effective for its purpose, must primarily and essentially be educational and propagandist’. For this to be achieved, ‘a declaration of policy must precede organisation and … all associations which lay claim to the title of “Liberal” must have a platform of principles as the groundwork of their constitution’. This wish to see a standardised platform of principles was part of Howell’s wider desire to see the Liberal party stress ‘national and imperial concerns’; the Birmingham model merely accentuated ‘local interests, petty local ambitions, personal jealousies, and factional strife’.43 This position arguably suggests that Howell had learnt the wrong lessons from the failure of the LRL’s candidates at the 1874 general election. Localism had certainly hindered the labour candidates’ prospects, but it was their inability as outsiders to claim that they spoke on behalf of the local workers, and therefore could meaningfully engage with the local political culture, that had proved to be so damaging. Nor was Lloyd Jones opposed to the Liberal party; he insisted that ‘strong Liberal opinions 41 Lloyd Jones, ‘The Caucus Question and the Working Man’, Industrial Review, 31 Aug. 1878. 42 Lloyd Jones, ‘The Caucus Question’. 43 Howell, ‘The Caucus System’, pp. 585–9.

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should be the possession of working men,’ but, fearing that the leaders of the caucus would oppose labour questions, he urged workers to ‘stand aloof and only co-operate when the Liberal cause … involves no retardation of their own cause – the cause of labour’.44 Lloyd Jones, like many of the labour candidates at the 1874 general election, was drawing a distinction between the local Liberal caucus, which would retard the cause of labour, and a national Liberal party, which remained the best vehicle for the workers’ interests. There can be little doubt that Howell’s article was based on and motivated by his personal experiences. It reflected firstly the frustrations of workingclass radicals in regions like London, where trade unionism was weak and there was little scope for influencing official Liberalism,45 and secondly his own interactions with Liberal associations through his failed candidatures at Aylesbury and his leading role in the LRL.46 The article also has to be understood in the context of the Peterborough by-election, which was held as he penned his critique. The LRL had brought forward the now seasoned by-election campaigner George Potter, who, with two other candidates, sought the Liberal nomination.47 At the beginning of the campaign, Howell had praised the Peterborough Liberal ‘one hundred’, writing that ‘there is, we believe, the germ of the consolidation of the Liberal party in such organisation,’ but, following the association’s insistence that it would only nominate Potter if he won a test ballot of Liberal electors (which was highly unlikely), Howell dramatically changed his tune, calling the Peterborough caucus’s decision a ‘violation of all constitutional rights and personal freedom in electoral matters’.48 Potter, whose candidature was described as ‘manifestly hopeless’, subsequently withdrew.49 The LRL also faded from view after the Peterborough by-election, and made little effort to co-ordinate labour candidates at the 1880 general election. Howell’s campaign scars were clearly evident in the conclusion to his article, when he stated that ‘the calibre of the men chosen as candidates, wherever it has been done under [the Birmingham model], is by no means of the highest order’.50 For Howell and Lloyd Jones, the future for labour candidates under the NLF was bleak, though this did not translate into any call for the labour movement to go their own way at parliamentary elections. 44 Lloyd Jones, ‘The Caucus Question’. 45 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 336; Leventhal, Howell, p. 199. 46 See chapter one 47 The Times, 24 Oct. 1878. 48 Howell claimed that the test ballot was ‘impracticable’ because of lack of time and ‘there could be no proper guarantee as to the character of the voters who should take part in it’ (Industrial Review, 26 Oct., 2 Nov. 1878). 49 Northampton Mercury, 2 Nov. 1878. 50 Howell, ‘The Caucus System’, p. 590.

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The ‘caucus’ in practice: America and transnational influences The labour movement’s critique of the caucus was one part of a wider debate about the problem of organising a democracy in a new era of mass politics. Following the formation of the NLF, the pages of contemporary journals and periodicals were littered with pronouncements on whether this new kind of party organisation was a legitimate way to organise an expanded electorate in Britain. Comparisons with the United States, whence came the ‘caucus’, dominated this debate. Prior to the formation of the NLF there had been a long lineage of British radical engagement with American democracy. Although most radicals in the mid-nineteenth century saw America as a ‘beacon of freedom’, there was a significant degree of criticism.51 In the 1830s Owenite socialists, pointing to American economic distress, argued that prosperity did not automatically flow from republican government; in the 1840s a number of Chartists insisted that America had not achieved universal suffrage since it had three million slaves.52 Moreover, in the 1850s Reynolds’s Newspaper maintained a consistent critique of the American ‘social and political system’.53 Even during the American Civil War, when it was supposed that working-class radicals were generally sympathetic to the Unionist North, there was a degree of equivocation. While the civil war certainly reignited working-class interest in reform, ‘working-class leaders and trade union leaders did not speak with one voice’.54 Moreover, as discussed below, from the 1860s onwards many ex-Chartists travelled and settled in the United States, and their observations, many of them critical, were widely published in Britain.55 More broadly, the contemporaneous debates concerning the Second Reform Act prompted British liberal writers and thinkers, such as Thomas Carlyle, Anthony Trollope, Walter Bagehot and John Stuart Mill, to assess American democracy in print.56 British Liberal politicians who travelled to 51 G. Claeyes, ‘The Example of America a Warning to England? The Transformation of America in British Radicalism and Socialism, 1790–1850’, in Chase and Dyck (eds), Living and Learning, pp. 66–80. 52 Claeyes, ‘The Example of America’, pp. 70–1; Northern Star, 27 Mar. 1841. 53 Reynolds’s Political Instructor, 13 Apr. 1850; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 29 Nov. 1857. 54 R.J.M. Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), pp. 8–12, 113–15; cf. R. Harrison, ‘British Labour and Slavery’, Science and Society, 25 (Dec. 1961), pp. 307–11. See also D.A. Campbell, English Public Opinion and the American Civil War (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003) and B.E. Kinser, The American Civil War in the Shaping of British Democracy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). 55 R. Boston, British Chartists in America, 1839–1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971). 56 F. Prochaska, Eminent Victorians on American Democracy: The View from Albion (Oxford:

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the United States in this period differed in their interpretations.57 Charles Dilke, who visited in 1866, criticised the ‘grossest mis-statements … made to us in England’ that painted American party organisation as ‘so dictatorial, so despotic’, while Lord Rosebery, who made three visits between 1873 and 1876, was dazzled by the mass Democratic political demonstrations in New York City.58 In contrast, William Baxter, Liberal MP for Montrose Burghs, was thoroughly unimpressed with the American political system, telling his British readers in 1855 that they could have ‘no idea how severe and exacting a despot is Party in the United States’.59 In 1860 this view was echoed in the Commons when the Conservative MP John Rolt commented that in America electors were forced to vote for ‘persons whom the elector has never seen or heard of ’, who ‘were fixed on at a “caucus” to which he was not admitted’.60 Thus, by the beginning of the 1860s, the language of American politics, with its ‘despots’, ‘party bosses’ and the ‘caucus’, was part of English political discourse, though it did not become a rhetorical weapon during election campaigns until after the formation of the NLF in 1877. In terms of the chronology of the evolution of English attitudes towards the American political system, it is significant that six months prior to the NLF’s formation two separate events prompted a renewed English critique of the workings of American democracy. Firstly, the result of the 1876 presidential election between the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and the Democratic Samuel J. Tilden (who, as governor of New York, had sent William Tweed, the leader of the notorious Democratic party machine at Tammany Hall, to prison) was fiercely contested. Although Tilden won the popular vote, Hayes secured victory in the electoral college, an outcome that The Times reported to be largely the result of the Republican party machine Oxford University Press, 2012); M. Gerlach, British Liberalism and the United States: Political and Social Thought in the Late Victorian Age (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 18–43. For a good discussion of how the example of American democracy informed the Reform debates in Britain see R. Saunders, Democracy and the Vote, chap. 5. 57 Significantly, Gladstone never visited the United States. However, he had many close American correspondents and in his article ‘Kin beyond the Sea’ he praised the American political system: W.E. Gladstone, ‘Kin beyond the Sea’, North American Review, 127 (Sept. to Oct. 1878), pp. 179–211. However, at a speech in Southwark, following the establishment of the NLF, he warned against the dangers of caucus politics in the United States, where party organisation could become a vehicle for ‘sectional aims and sectional objects’, The Times, 22 July 1878. 58 C. Dilke, Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries during 1866–67, I (London: Macmillan, 1868), pp. 291–5; Lord Rosebery’s North American Journal, 1873, ed. by A.R.C. Grant (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1967). 59 W.E. Baxter, America and the Americans (London: George Routledge and Co., 1855), p. 56. 60 Hansard, 19 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, c. 876.

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orchestrating a campaign of intimidation in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana, where there was uncertainty surrounding the ballots.61 Leading articles in the newspaper subsequently blamed the ‘folly’ of the American political system, which enabled such machinations.62 Secondly, in 1877 New York City witnessed an upper-class led revolt against universal male suffrage in municipal elections. The campaign, which was widely reported in England, appeared to reject the cherished notions about the rise of American democracy. Significantly, the revolt was in part against the Democratic party machine at Tammany Hall and its seemingly endless mobilisation of voters.63 An underlying theme to the English commentary on the American political system was how far the course of American democracy served as a viable precedent for what could potentially happen in England. As early as the 1830s, following the publication of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, it was argued that, given its social structure, ‘the precedent of America does not apply’.64 However, as Robert Saunders has suggested, the example of New York City resonated with the English public as ‘it was not an American city at all,’ but rather an ‘Irish and German’ one. The features of New York City were instantly recognisable to any resident of a late-nineteenthcentury English city: crowded streets, an urban proletariat and extremes of poverty and wealth.65 Significantly, it was the unequivocal criticism of the Democratic party machine at Tammany Hall, New York, particularly the machinations of ‘Boss Tweed’, that figured most heavily in the writings of English travellers to the United States. Even Liberal enthusiasts who had witnessed first-hand American democracy accepted that the caucus system in New York was prone to corruption and produced a class of professional politicians of dubious quality.66 Moreover, Tammany Hall, with is patronage-based politics and its ability to give employment to the large Irish working-class population resident in the city, would have been of particular interest to the labour movement in England. Following the establishment of the NLF, the press were quick to raise the spectre of the American ‘caucus’ arriving in England. The Saturday 61 Louis J. Jennings, the American correspondent for The Times, wrote a series of reports outlining the accusations against the Republican party machine. For example, The Times, 11, 13, 14 and 15 Nov. 1876. 62 The Times, 20 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1876. 63 S. Beckert, ‘Democracy and its Discontents: Contesting Suffrage Rights in the Gilded Age in New York’, Past & Present, 174 (Feb. 2002), pp. 116–57. 64 Lord Stanley, quoted in Saunders, Democracy and the Vote, p. 150. 65 Ibid. 66 For example James Bryce, who visited in the summer of 1870, lamented the fact that in New York City, ‘the class of professional politicians has of late years weakened it’ (J. Bryce, ‘The Legal Profession in America’, Macmillan’s Magazine, 25 (Jan. 1872), p. 212).

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Review warned against the dangers of ‘American vulgarity and corruption’; the Edinburgh Review declared that ‘caucuses in the American form are out of place among our comparatively small constituencies’; and a leader in The Times suggested that there ‘is to be a sort of Liberal Parliament organized, which, in American language, seems intended to act as a Liberal “Caucus”’.67 The Times subsequently embedded the word into the contemporary debate with an editorial lamenting that ‘the policy of the politicians of the Midland capital will bring upon us the “caucus”, with all its evils’.68 However, these leading articles were not using the word ‘caucus’ as part of a carefully constructed comparison between two political systems. It was being used as a quick rhetorical device to conjure up images of the corrupt machine politics that were alleged to be prevalent in American cities. In contrast, two analytical pieces in the Nineteenth Century sought to draw parallels between the NLF and the American caucus. W. Fraser Rae postulated that the founders of the Birmingham model had ‘drawn their inspirations from the United States’. Rae condemned the working of the American political system, arguing that it had created the avocation of the ‘politician’, which ‘honest men despise’. Controversially, he insisted that most of the arrangements present in the American machinery were to be found in the Birmingham model, including the ‘party king’ and the ‘dictator out of office’, the only difference being ‘the trivial one of the “Primary” meetings in the United States being called “ward” meetings in Birmingham and of the “Nominating Convention” in the former being entitled the “six hundred” in the latter’.69 Meanwhile, Edward Wilson downplayed the exact parallels between the two systems, yet insisted that the term ‘caucus’ could be justifiably used to describe the Birmingham model ‘since it conveys the idea of secrecy and irresponsibility’. Moreover, the worst vices of the American ‘caucus system’, namely the sacrifice of independent thought and the rights of minorities to ensure party success, were ‘showing themselves’ in England.70 Chamberlain immediately rejected the American parallel, writing that it was the ‘height of presumption to say that the effect of any scheme of organization would necessarily be exactly alike when applied to the United States and England respectively’. The specific difference of ‘cardinal importance’ that undermined the comparison was the ‘pernicious practice which obtains 67 Saturday Review, 16 June 1877; Edinburgh Review 148 (April 1878), p. 332; The Times, 12 June 1877. 68 The Times, 31 July 1878. 69 W. Fraser Rae, ‘Political Clubs and Party Organization’, Nineteenth Century, 3 (May 1878), pp. 922–5. 70 Edward D.J. Wilson, ‘The Caucus and its Consequences’, Nineteenth Century, 4 (October 1878), pp. 704–5.

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in America of making the tenure of all public offices coterminous with the life of the political party’. As the British civil service was based on examination and all appointments made independent of the party in power, ‘the most prolific source of political dishonesty will be avoided’.71 This defence was echoed by James Bryce, the historian and Liberal MP for Tower Hamlets. Acutely aware that the ‘caucus’ was being ‘described as a poisonous weed which, when once brought across the Atlantic will strike root everywhere among the pure wheat of English politics’, Bryce was convinced that ‘politics are a totally different thing in America from what they are in England’. Highlighting the fact that the ‘spoils system’ of the executive rewarding salaried offices to its supporters did not exist in England, he concluded that the Birmingham model had to be judged on its own merits and ‘not by false analogies drawn from beyond the Atlantic’.72 The British working-class radicals who visited the United States in the two decades following the civil war were equally concerned with appraising not only the American political system but also the spectre of machine politics. According to Henry Pelling, ‘the outcry about the caucus as a dangerous Americanism carried little weight with labour leaders’ as hostility to America was to be found only at ‘the top of the social scale’.73 However, as was noted above, working-class and trade union leaders did not speak with one voice when it came to America. Moreover, by examining the writings of the working-class radicals who travelled to the United States, it becomes clear that attitudes towards the caucus were not determined only by class, but by a more nuanced interaction of existing political sympathies, preconceived notions about America, and the actual location visited. As will be shown, the writings of George Julian Harney, George Holyoake, William Linton, James Dawson Burn and William Edwin Adams revealed a range of interpretations. Moreover, the fact that their writings were widely published, in book form and, more importantly, in the provincial press, meant that their interpretations of American politics directly fed into the wider debate concerning the rise of the party machine in England. The journalism of George Julian Harney, who had been one of the foremost spokesmen for physical force Chartism, reflected the nuanced way in which 71 Joseph Chamberlain, ‘The Caucus’, Fortnightly Review, 24 (July to December 1878), pp. 721–3; see also Chamberlain to J. Morley, 1 Oct. 1878, JC5/54/223, where he refutes the American parallels. 72 James Bryce, ‘Some Aspects of American Public Life’, pp. 634–53. The work of Bryce, particularly his seminal work The American Commonwealth, has been credited with influencing the intellectual realignment of English interpretations of the American political system that took place towards the end of the nineteenth century. See H.A. Tulloch, ‘Changing British Attitudes towards the United States in the 1880s’, Historical Journal, 20 (1977), pp. 825–40. 73 Pelling, America and the British Left, pp. 45, 48.

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the American political system was analysed by British radicals.74 After emigrating to Boston in 1863 he became the American correspondent for the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, which had a large and dedicated working-class readership, and corresponded regularly with labour leaders such as George Howell.75 Working as a clerk in the secretary’s office at the Massachusetts state house, his ‘American notes and Boston notions’ consistently championed American democracy. However, following a visit to New York City, where he saw the corrupt machine politics at Tammany Hall, he felt that he was witnessing an ‘age of corrupt and shameless politicians’.76 A zealous advocate of American democracy before he first travelled to Boston, it was the standard of the politicians in New York, rather than the democratic institutions themselves, that dismayed Harney, and through the pages of his weekly columns, his faith in American democracy remained unshaken.77 Harney’s qualified praise for the American political system was mirrored by his successor as American correspondent for the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, William Edwin Adams. Adams, a former Chartist and radical journalist who felt that ‘American politics, almost everywhere outside America, are believed to be corrupt,’ used his letters, first published in 1882, to dissuade his readership of that image.78 He defended the spectre of the professional politician, arguing that in America, as opposed to Britain, there was ‘no exclusion whatever in [its] public service’, and although he accepted that the spoils system gave ‘countenance to the worst charges of American corruption’, he insisted that it had not ‘prevented the employment of distinguished men of letters who have had no connection with parties at all’.79 Yet, like Harney, Adams had nothing but disapprobation for New York City politics, calling it ‘the worst governed city in the world’, and was scathing of John Kelly, the head of the Democratic party machine at Tammany Hall, where he witnessed elections that were ‘very much of a sham’.80 The British radical freethinker George Holyoake shared Adams’s dismay at the ‘sham’ 74 For his personal correspondence see F.G. Black and R.M. Black (eds), The Harney Papers (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum and Co., 1969). 75 O.R. Ashton and Joan Hugman, ‘George Julian Harney, Boston, USA, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, 1863–1888’, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 107 (1995), pp. 165–84. 76 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 28 Mar. 1874. 77 A.R. Schoyen, The Chartist Challenge: A Portrait of George Julian Harney (London: Heinemann, 1958), p. 269. 78 His letters were subsequently published in book form as W.E. Adams, Our American Cousins: Being Personal Impressions of the People and Institutions of the United States (London: Walter Scott, 1883). 79 Adams, American Cousins, pp. 125–30. 80 Ibid., pp. 135–40. See also Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 11 Mar. 1876.

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elections of local government officials. Attending the Republican convention at Saratoga, New York, in 1879, he noted that the ‘decided caucus leader’ nominated a candidate ‘in a tone which said “yes we have settled that before we came here”’.81 In contrast to Harney and Adams, who, though dismayed with the machinations at Tammany Hall, maintained their advocacy of the American political system, William James Linton, the poet, wood-engraver and former Chartist, thoroughly castigated what he saw as the failures of American democracy. Unlike the majority of his former Chartist colleagues, Linton, even prior to travelling to America, had been a stern critique of the country’s political system, describing it, in 1855, as ‘the worst monarchy and aristocracy of mere wealth’.82 His experiences when visiting America only confirmed his suspicions. First arriving in New York City in November 1866, he wrote a series of articles for the Manchester Examiner attacking the city’s corrupt government. He subsequently produced ‘The House that Tweed Built’, an engraving that catalogued the crimes of the democratic boss of Tammany Hall, William Tweed. But his criticism did not stop at Tammany Hall. The ‘shallow candidates’ and ‘sheep-like voters’ he saw made him ‘utterly disgusted with universal suffrage’, something which he had assiduously championed while in England.83 James Dawson Burn, a miner and political activist who moved to Pennsylvania during the civil war, concurred. Previously a zealous advocate for the ballot in England, he wrote that ‘since I came to see the new organization of self-government by the American people and the working of the ballot, my idea of that boasted safeguard has been thoroughly exploded’. He was equally scathing of those who ran party organisations, declaring that ‘I do not wish my countrymen to be deceived by the idea that the political machinery of America is kept in motion by simple honest-minded patriots’.84 Burn’s preconceived notions of the triumphs of American democracy, particularly the ballot, were rudely dismantled by what he saw. This personal sense of disappointment and disenchantment undoubtedly coloured his analysis of the American political system. Significantly, British working-class radicals also disagreed over the political prospects of the working classes in America. A leading article titled ‘Labour Candidates’ in the Radical argued that ‘visions’ of working-class politicians were ‘commonplace in the United States’: 81 G.J. Holyoake, Among the Americans (London: T.H. Roberts and Co., 1881), p. 14. 82 Quoted in Claeyes, ‘The Example of America’, p. 74. 83 Quoted in F.B. Smith, Radical Artisan: William James Linton 1812–97 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), p. 174. 84 J.D. Burn, Three Years among the Working-Classes in the United States during the War (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865), p. 247.

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Abraham Lincoln was a rail splitter; Andy Johnson a tailor; Garfield, the president-elect, at one time worked as a bargee. When shall we have an English premier spring like so many American presidents from the ranks of the poor and the toiling? 85

Mirroring this sentiment, Adams declared that, in America, ‘the highest positions … are attainable by the man who has brains enough and energy enough to secure them … [T]he difference [with England] is the difference between a democratic and an aristocratic form of government’.86 According to Gracchus, writing in Reynolds’s Newspaper, the ‘caucus’ was therefore ‘admirably adapted to the form of American society’ as it did not necessarily discriminate against potential working-class candidates for political office. The caucus model, however, would not work in Britain, ‘where every institution, clerical, political and social, is so constituted as to increase the power of the powerful, and grind down the poor to the dust’.87 In this sense, Adams and Gracchus saw nothing inherently wrong with American party organisation; it was just that it was incompatible with the supposedly ‘aristocratic’ society in Britain. This argument was the natural corollary of George Howell and Lloyd Jones’s position – that labour representation could not flourish when the purse strings of the Liberal caucus in Britain were held by the middle class. Adams’s interpretation of American society, though, was not shared by his former Chartist colleagues. Both Harney and Linton felt that post-civil war society in America had degenerated to the lowest form of the ‘cash nexus’, with millionaires able to dominate and manipulate governments.88 As Linton had reportedly told Adams, ‘America is no country for the poor man’.89 The British readership of the working-class radicals in America, therefore, was certainly receiving mixed messages as to the political prospects of the working man under the American caucus. Clearly, the attitude of working-class leaders towards American politics varied, although those who had witnessed proceedings in New York City left their British readership in no doubt about the corrosive nature of the caucus. Such conclusions would undoubtedly have had great resonance given New York’s analogous relevance to large English cities. Moreover, the unequivocal criticism of the Democratic party machine at Tammany Hall, with is patronage-based politics and its ability to give employment to the large Irish working-class population resident in the city, would have been of particular interest to the labour movement in England. It is therefore 85 86 87 88 89

Radical, 4 Dec. 1880. Adams, American Cousins, p. 127. ‘The “Caucus” System’, Reynolds’s Newspaper, 1 Sept. 1878. Schoyen, The Chartist Challenge, pp. 264–5. Adams, American Cousins, p. 294.

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misleading to conclude that ‘working-class leaders made no condemnation of American politics’.90 Yet, there was no desire on behalf of the leaders of the NLF to introduce an American style caucus into British political life. In contrast to the big American cities, a political machine that was able to dish out job-based patronage to the local constituency never emerged in English boroughs.91 Moreover, Liberal localism ensured that a national political machine would never materialise.92 Thus, Ostrogorski’s belief that the caucus manipulated the electorate through its ‘hierarchy of wirepullers’ was far removed from the reality.93 Nevertheless, the reams of journal and newspaper articles on the American party machine ensured that the politically active in Britain knew about the corrupt caucus politics of New York. As Holyoake said in his Among the Americans, published in 1881, ‘I had heard in England a good deal about American political organisation’.94 Lloyd Jones, in his article ‘The Caucus and the Working Men’, dismissed the usefulness of these comparisons, arguing that ‘our public writers who found their objection on American experience, waste their energies in combating evils that may never arise in England’.95 However, the sheer amount of writing on American politics ensured that the ‘caucus’ and its associated language of ‘dictatorial party bosses’ and ‘wirepullers’ became part of the English political consciousness. Significantly, this language was appropriated by political candidates wishing to attack the legitimacy of their opponent. As discussed below, this was particularly the case with labour candidates, who used this language of the caucus not only to express their frustrations at intransigent Liberal associations but also to articulate labour’s demand to have the right to nominate their own candidate for a parliamentary election. The language of the caucus No one understood the rhetorical significance of the ‘caucus’ better than Joseph Chamberlain. He realised that ‘the sting does not lie in the original meaning of the word, but in its modern acceptance as involving the idea of corruption unfortunately associated with American politics’. As the word had ‘the great merit of being inferentially offensive, a quality which has 90 Pelling, America and the British Left, p. 46. 91 N. Kirk, Labour and Society in Britain and the United States: Challenge and Accommodation, 1850–1939 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994), p. 260. 92 Watson, The National Liberal Federation, p. 16; Biagini, British Democracy, p. 177. 93 Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties, I, pp. 329, 352; cf. Pombeni, ‘Starting in Reason, Ending in Passion’, pp. 326–30. 94 Holyoake, Among the Americans, p. 14. 95 Industrial Review, 31 Aug. 1878.

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insured the survival of much of our political nomenclature’, he felt it was ‘useless’ for supporters of Liberal organisation to argue that the word was ‘inexact and misleading’.96 This being the case, ‘it will be better frankly to accept the word, while trusting to time and experience to attach new and more attractive meanings to it’.97 Unsurprisingly, given its negative connotations, the word was never reclaimed as a positive term that embraced popular representation rather than dictation. Instead, it was appropriated by MPs and would-be politicians as a rhetorical weapon with which to attack their political opponents. By the beginning of the 1880s, the contested legitimacy of a party’s organisation was becoming an increasingly important battleground in the fight to control local politics. In Birmingham, for example, Charles Haven, vice-president of the local Conservative association, declared that the organisational model of the local Liberal association was ‘a system of political slavery’ and that the ‘caucus system will be adopted only by narrowminded Radicals and sectarian bigots’.98 Schnadhorst dismissed Haven’s attack, writing that it was sheer hypocrisy of the officers of the Birmingham Conservative Association to feign horror of the constitution of an organization which they have done so much to imitate … [T]heir real grievance is that the Liberal Association is strong, successful and respected; the Conservative Association is feeble, invariably unsuccessful, and shunned by the respectable Conservatives of the town.99

Chamberlain echoed these comments, declaring that he was ‘not surprised that the Tories dislike [the caucus]. I do not wonder that they feel so painfully what they unsuccessfully try to imitate’.100 It was certainly the case that, following the Liberal party’s success at the 1880 general election, and Chamberlain’s bullish (and exaggerated) claim that the caucus had secured sixty seats for the Liberals in sixty-seven boroughs,101 new Liberal and Conservative associations began to be constructed along lines similar to 96 The Times, 1 Aug. 1878. 97 Joseph Chamberlain, ‘The Caucus’, pp. 721–4. 98 The Times, 16 Aug. 1878. As Jon Lawrence has highlighted, this Conservative attack on the caucus ‘encapsulated a much broader critique of the changing nature of late-Victorian Liberalism’, which sought to portray the party as being hijacked by faddists who would put their own interests above those of the nation. See Lawrence, ‘Class and Gender’, p. 635. 99 The Times, 20 August 1878. 100 Chamberlain’s speech at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 15 Jan. 1884, reproduced in C.W. Boyd (ed.), Mr Chamberlain’s Speeches, I (London: Constable and Co., 1914), p. 117. 101 See Chamberlain’s letter in The Times, 13 Apr. 1880; cf. T. Lloyd, The General Election of 1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 63–89; Hanham, Elections and Party Management, pp. 144–5.

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the Birmingham model. This being the case, the language used to describe an opponent’s party organisation became increasingly relevant, as it was a means of distinguishing between a representative party association and a wire-pulling caucus, even if, in reality, the two organisations were essentially the same. If the formation of the NLF and the subsequent press coverage of American politics brought the term ‘caucus’ into political discourse, the general election of 1885 gave the term a new rhetorical edge as the debate shifted from rather abstract objections to concerns over the control of local politics in the new single-member constituencies created by the 1885 Redistribution Act. The new constituencies necessitated the reorganisation of local party associations. Although the Liberal ‘hundreds’ remained for each borough and county, the key organisational body became the newly formed divisional associations. The NLF hoped that every constituency would have its own divisional association with its very own constitution and would select its own candidate.102 The identification between the local party association and their chosen candidate, therefore, became stronger, putting the spotlight firmly on the methods used to select the candidate and prompting local party leaders to seek new ways to reassure the wider Liberal constituency that the decision-making process was not dictatorial. This was particularly the case when local radical associations demanded that, following the partition of their borough into single-member seats, at least one division be reserved for the nomination of a working-class candidate. Labour activists, who welcomed a more transparent process of candidate selection, held generally positive attitudes towards the 1885 Redistribution Act, and were particularly supportive of the theory that constituencies would be divided ‘as to enable particular industries to send a Member’.103 Certainly, the dominance of the coalfields in the new divisions of Durham allowed the miners to broker deals with local organised Liberalism to ensure the nomination of their chosen candidates.104 Yet, at the same time, the closer identification between a candidate and their chosen constituency put further strain on the strategy of sending London-based labour activists to the provinces to stand in constituencies to which they had no local connection. An examination of the contest in Sheffield Central at the 1885 general election reveals the ways in which working-class radicals appropriated the language of the caucus to challenge the legitimacy of local organised Liberalism. Following the division of the borough into five constituencies, 102 NLF, Annual Reports, 1885, p. 24. 103 T.R. Threlfall, ‘The Programme of the Labour Party’, printed in Leeds Mercury, 13 Jan. 1888. 104 See chapter four.

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a coalition of radical and labour groups challenged the Sheffield Liberal Association over the right to bring forward a candidate of their choosing for the Central division. Internecine conflict was not unknown in Sheffield Liberalism. In 1849 middle-class radicals had withdrawn from the Liberal ranks to establish the New Reform Association, and two years later Isaac Ironside, the local Chartist leader, had founded the Central Democratic Ward Association in direct opposition to the Liberals.105 Meanwhile, at the 1874 general election the Sheffield Reform Association had backed Joseph’s Chamberlain’s candidature against the nominee of the Sheffield Liberal Club.106 The contest was a bitter one, and Chamberlain’s subsequent defeat prompted the borough’s reformers to unite and establish the Sheffield Liberal Association.107 Following redistribution in 1885, Henry Joseph Wilson, honorary secretary of the Sheffield Liberal Association since its inception in 1875, set out to establish a new organisation deliberately aimed at keeping the borough’s progressive forces united.108 Anthony Mundella, Liberal MP for the borough since 1868, was especially keen that the new reformed Liberal association should reach out to the labour interest, writing to Wilson that any organisation’s ‘one great strength after all must be with the working men’.109 In May the Sheffield United Liberal Committee was established, although the name belied the reality. The five newly formed divisional associations were allowed to be run along different lines without any central association to co-ordinate their activities.110 Lacking institutional coherence, the Liberal association for the Central division, which was reported to be ‘almost without party leadership’, was initially unable to bring forward its own candidate, allowing Sheffield’s radical organisations to seize upon the uncertainty. The subsequent challenge to the Liberal caucus by a ‘labour’ candidate revealed not only how complex local political loyalties could be, but also 105 D. Smith, Conflict and Compromise: Class Formation in English Society, 1830–1914: A Comparative Study of Birmingham and Sheffield (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 84; S. Pollard, A History of Labour in Sheffield (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1959), pp. 40–50. 106 M. Hurst, ‘Liberal versus Liberal: The General Election of 1874 in Bradford and Sheffield’, Historical Journal, 15 (1972), pp. 685–96. 107 W.S. Fowler, A Study in Radicalism and Dissent: The Life and Times of Henry Joseph Wilson 1833–1914 (London: Epworth Press, 1961), p. 21. 108 R. Leader to H.J. Wilson, 1 Jan. 1885, in H.J. Wilson Papers, 37P/20/0/i-ii, Sheffield University Library. 109 A.J. Mundella to H.J. Wilson, 30 July 1884, in H.J. Wilson and Mrs Rawson Papers, MD 5932, Sheffield Archives. For Mundella see W.H.G. Armytage, A.J. Mundella, 1825–1897: The Liberal Background to the Labour Movement (London: Benn, 1951). 110 ‘Minutes of a Meeting of the Representatives of the Five Liberal Associations of the Borough of Sheffield’, 1 May 1885, Wilson and Rawson Papers, MD 5893; The Times, 31 Dec. 1885.

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how the legitimacy of party organisation could take centre stage in a political campaign. The Sheffield Radical Club, the Working Men’s Radical Association, and the Labour and Democratic Federation came together under the banner of the United Committee of Radical and Labour Associations (UCRLA) and, believing that they ‘should be permitted to nominate one out of the five candidates’, brought forward Mervyn Hawkes, a London-based journalist with a reputation for republicanism, as a candidate for the Central division.111 Hawkes made his appeal ‘specially to the working classes, believing firmly that labour requires special representation in Parliament’, but his candidature was rejected by the Sheffield Liberal Council.112 This was not, though, a straightforward rift between labour and the caucus. Tellingly, the Sheffield Labour Association had refused to coalesce with the UCRLA,113 and its secretary, Stuart Uttley, a file cutter who was also secretary of the Sheffield Federated Trades Council, attacked Hawkes over his opposition to Chamberlain’s shipping bills.114 Unsurprisingly, Hawkes’s lack of bona fide working-class credentials and his outsider status were mercilessly seized upon, Robert Leader, editor of the Liberal-supporting Sheffield Independent, asking ‘are we, as a local party, so lacking a good man, that we are really impelled to take this dip in the lottery bag of alien Bohemianism?’115 Despite this conflict, Hawkes’s candidature in defiance of the Central Liberal Association did not reflect a significant difference in political principles. In his address he championed the standard radical demands of peace, disestablishment and disendowment, and insisted that he had ‘perfect confidence in the thorough radicalism of Mr Gladstone’.116 Samuel Plimsoll, the eventual nominee of the Central Liberal Association and a noted shipping reformer, echoed this advanced platform. Significantly, he was also backed by Uttley, who declared that Plimsoll ‘represented the great majority of the working men electors in the Central Division’, and William Wardley, the president of the Sheffield Federated Trades Council, who warned that ‘if Sheffield rejected Mr Plimsoll it would disgrace itself ’.117 Because there was little disagreement over the Liberal platform, the dominant question of the campaign became whether the UCRLA had 111 Letter by Dr Hardwicke, chairman of Hawkes’s election committee, Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 25 July 1885. 112 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 14 Oct. 1885. For a report of Hawkes’s meeting with the Sheffield Liberal Council see Ibid., 12 Aug. 1885. 113 Ibid., 20 July 1885. 114 Ibid., 24 July, 12 Aug. 1885. 115 Ibid., 24 July 1885. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid., 5 and 6 Nov. 1885.

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the right to nominate a candidate for one of the borough’s five seats. Dr Hardwicke, president of the Sheffield Radical Club and chair of Hawkes’s election committee, declared that ‘it is a piece of impertinence, and an assumption of prerogative they have not the least right to, for the Liberal Council to arrogate to themselves the sole right of nominating Liberal or Radical candidates.’118 Plimsoll’s supporters, meanwhile, insisted that ‘the Liberal Association of the Division may be safely left to deal with Dr Hardwicke’s curious attempt to claim for the Radical club the position of sole and only orthodox representative of Radicalism.’119 Paradoxically, Hardwicke continued to attack the Liberal caucus while imitating its structure in his own organisation. He renamed his club the ‘Radical Association’, titling himself its ‘parliamentary secretary’ and establishing an ‘elected auxiliary and executive committee’.120 Because of this imitation between rival associations, the language used to describe an opponent’s organisation became the best means of attempting to lay claim to the legitimacy to nominate a candidate. Hardwicke, who insisted that he spoke for ‘the organised Radical party’, attacked ‘the treachery of the Liberal council’, stating that ‘the question was whether the Liberal caucus should rule eternally as a despotic tyrant.’121 He subsequently wrote that the Liberals’ preference for Plimsoll over Hawkes was the ‘cunning device of the Liberal caucus’, who ‘under the disguise of the lamb’s skin’ set out to ‘poison the healthy stream of expanding radical and labour activity with the subtle venom of the serpent’.122 In turn, Plimsoll’s supporters painted the ‘Radical Association’ as the true caucus. Hardwicke, they argued, had ‘shown himself as dictator to the people of Sheffield’, and the groups behind the UCRLA were mocked as the ‘Central Radical clubs and the affiliated mushroom organisations with pretentious names that spring up for the momentary edification of a modern Jonah’.123 The language of the caucus, therefore, comprised hyperbolic assertions about the ‘tyranny’ of an opponent’s organisation. It is crucial to understand, though, that this language reflected neither a disagreement between radicals and Liberals over the party platform nor, given the level of imitation, a 118 Letter by Hardwicke, Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 4 Sept. 1885. For a report of Hawkes’s meeting with the Sheffield Liberal Council see Ibid., 12 Aug. 1885. 119 Ibid., 27 July 1885. 120 Ibid., 7 Oct. 1885. This strategy of simultaneously imitating a rival ‘caucus’ while attacking it was also evident in London constituencies, where, like Sheffield, there was a history of Liberal organisational instability. See J. Owen, ‘Triangular Contests and Caucus Rhetoric at the 1885 General Election’, Parliamentary History, 27 (2008), p. 230. 121 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 24 Aug. 1885. 122 Ibid., 28 Aug. 1885. 123 Ibid., 25 Aug. 1885.

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principled opposition to the party machine. The language of the caucus was utilised by both Sheffield radicals and Liberals to attack their opponents’ ‘right’ to bring forward a candidate for the Central Division. In this context, the term ‘caucus’ was not a precise description of the Birmingham model but simply a rhetorical device to describe what the other side in a local political conflict was doing. Arguably the epitome of the anti-caucus politician was Joseph Cowen, Liberal MP for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1873–86, and proprietor of the Newcastle Chronicle, who became embroiled in a number of public and bitter disputes with the Newcastle Liberal Association (NLA). Historians have certainly played a role in elevating Cowen to his position as the enemy of the party machine. Ostrogorski wrote that the ‘Newcastle caucus set itself up as a sort of Holy Inquisition with the mission of watching every word that fell from Cowen’, while one of his biographers claimed that ‘the Liberals of the [Newcastle] caucus were an altogether different and baser breed.’124 More recent interpretations, though, have provided a more balanced assessment of his anti-caucus stance.125 Nevertheless, a re-evaluation of Cowen’s attitude towards organised Liberalism is necessary to underline the fact that one man’s caucus discourse should not necessarily be interpreted as evidence of working-class antipathy towards the Liberal party. Cowen, who identified himself with the ‘original English radicals … who were in general sympathy with the Liberals, but in advance of and independent of them’, was certainly suspicious of the concept of ‘party’.126 In December 1879 he attacked the ‘disastrous, and always objectionable’ party system, quoting Alexander Pope’s view that ‘party was the madness of the many for the gain of the few’.127 His attitude towards party organisation, however, was contingent and evolved over time. Cowen was a founding member of the NLA and its leader, Robert Spence Watson, with whom he corresponded regularly, had been his election agent in 1873.128 Moreover, in 1879 he insisted that Liberals should use the instruments of ‘agitation and legitimate and necessary organisation’.129 It was not until the general election of 1880, when the NLA intended to make its second 124 Ostrogorski, Democracy, I, p. 235; Todd, The Militant Democracy, p. 157. 125 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, 359–68; Allen, Joseph Cowen, pp. 103–32. Biagini and Allen differ, though, on whether Cowen, in his opposition to the caucus, distinguished between the organisation and those who promoted it. See Allen, Joseph Cowen, p. 122. 126 J. Cowen to G. Mitchell, undated letter, Joseph Cowen Papers, CP/F43(5), Tyne and Wear Archives, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. 127 J. Cowen, ‘Party Government, Shorter Parliaments, and Payment of Members’. Speech given at North Shields, 3 Dec. 1879. Joseph Cowen Papers, CP/B200, pp. 3–4. 128 For the constitution of the Newcastle Liberal Association see The Times, 10 Nov. 1885. 129 Cowen, ‘Party Government’, Joseph Cowen Papers, CP/B200, p. 6.

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candidate, Ashton Dilke, the senior member, that Cowen formally withdrew from the organisation and developed his anti-caucus stance.130 Cowen, who, through his proprietorship of the Newcastle Chronicle, had established a loyal following amongst Tyneside’s working class, was particularly concerned about the effect of the ‘caucus’ on labour representation in Parliament. In his satirical article ‘Caucustown’, published in 1882, Cowen, who portrayed himself as the popular orator ‘Mr Bullfrog’ fighting against the machinations of ‘Mr Scruples’ of the ‘caucus’, argued that ‘workingclass representation, though an excellent thing in theory, was apt to become inconvenient and objectionable in practice’ to the leaders of the ‘caucus’.131 The NLA did, though, have a considerable working-class membership, but Cowen insisted that the caucus actively recruited potential labour candidates as paid agents to prevent them from standing.132 At the 1883 by-election at Newcastle, necessitated by the resignation of Dilke on the grounds of ill health, Cowen backed the independent working-class candidature of Elijah Copland against John Morley, the freethinker and journalist who was the nominee of the NLA. Writing in the Chronicle, he stated that Copland’s candidacy was ‘honourable’ and that the ‘faction popularly going by the name of the Caucus does not view the labour movement with approval’.133 However, it would arguably be wrong to conclude, as the most recent biography of Cowen has done, that this contest exposed ‘the deep fragility of the Radical/Liberal alliance on Tyneside’.134 Although a meeting of local Irish electors, dismayed at the Liberal government’s record on coercion, declared that as ‘the Liberal Association in Newcastle [was] the enemy of Irishmen [and] Mr Morley had declined … to separate himself from the caucus’, Irishmen should back Copland,135 a large meeting of working men convened to consider the question of labour representation passed a resolution endorsing Morley as a candidate who ‘combines all the necessary qualifications of a labour candidate’.136 Further resolutions by working men were passed in favour of Morley, and he was also backed by the city’s trade unions.137 His candidacy hopeless, Copland subsequently withdrew, citing lack of finances.138 Clearly, if Copland’s fledging campaign, which 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138

Allen, Joseph Cowen, p. 127. J. Cowen, ‘Caucustown’, Joseph Cowen Papers, CP/255. Ibid. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 17 Feb. 1883. Allen, Joseph Cowen, p. 135. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 17 Feb. 1883. Ibid., 12 Feb. 1883. Ibid., 19 Feb. 1883; Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 363. Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 20 Feb. 1883.

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was backed by Cowen, had reflected any ‘fragility’ in the ‘Radical/Liberal alliance’, it was entirely superficial. Cowen’s support for Copland infuriated the members of the NLA, whom he believed to be ‘bilious party zealots’.139 At their meetings they openly discussed opposing his re-election, and Morley, in a letter to Spence Watson, revealed his intention to ‘smash, pulverise, and destroy him when the time comes’.140 At the general election of 1885, however, this animosity was actually manageable. Because, in contrast to the majority of English boroughs, Newcastle-upon-Tyne had kept its double-member status following the Redistribution Act, Cowen could maintain his anti-caucus stance without directly challenging Morley. Neatly capturing this predicament, Cowen told an audience of electors that ‘Newcastle is big enough for both me and the caucus. They can go their way – I will go mine’.141 Cowen narrowly topped the poll at the 1885 general election, with Morley returned in second place, but Cowen’s victory was only secured with Tory votes. He had already alienated Thomas Burt, the working-class MP for neighbouring Morpeth, and he had lost the support of the hugely influential Durham Miners’ Association (DMA).142 In this context, Cowen no longer represented the forces of Tyneside radicalism, so it is difficult to conclude that his anti-caucus stance reflected ‘fragility’ in the relationship between local working-class radicals and organised Liberalism. Indeed, citing the fact that 7,000 voters had plumped for Morley in 1885 and therefore endorsed the ‘caucus’, Cowen chose to retire at the dissolution in 1886 rather than defend his seat. Announcing his resignation, he concluded that ‘what the caucus wants is a political machine – I am a man, not a machine’.143 Conclusion The establishment of the NLF in May 1877 put the role of the political machine centre-stage in the debate concerning labour representation. In practical terms, the formation of the NLF had little impact on how the leaders of local caucuses responded to labour’s call for political representation. Although there was a genuine desire among the Federation’s leadership to bring forward working-class candidates, the independence 139 Ibid., 2 July 1886. 140 Newcastle Liberal Association minutes, 31 Dec. 1881, Newcastle City Local Studies Library, local tracts, LO42/DY107; J. Morley to R. Spence Watson, 10 Aug. 1883, quoted in F.W. Hirst, Early Life and Letters of John Morley (London: Macmillan and co., 1927), p. 171. 141 J. Cowen, Speeches Delivered by Joseph Cowen as Candidate for Newcastle-upon-Tyne at the General Election, 1885 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: A. Reid, 1885), p. 14. 142 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, pp. 367–8. 143 Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 2 July 1886.

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of local ­associations remained paramount, and the rich subscribers who held the purse strings of the local caucus were hostile to the ambitions of would-be labour candidates who were unable to fund themselves. This fact was central to George Howell’s published critique of the caucus, though it is important to remember that he neither rejected the importance of organisation nor expressed a desire to abandon the Liberal party. Labour’s critique of the caucus remained rooted in personal experience rather than philosophical objections, and thus the movement’s scorn remained directed at those who ran the party machine. The formation of the NLF also brought the term ‘caucus’ to the forefront of political discourse. After the wider implications of the new organisation were debated in the pages of journals and newspapers, and greater scrutiny was given to the American political system, the language of the caucus was appropriated by labour candidates during parliamentary contests to express their frustration with intransigent Liberal associations, and also labour’s demand for the right to nominate their own candidates. Significantly, this language reflected neither a disagreement between working-class radicals and Liberals over the party platform nor, given the extent to which they imitated it, a principled opposition to the party machine. The language of the caucus was utilised by both radicals and Liberals to attack their opponent’s ‘right’ to bring forward a candidate: it was not a precise description of the Birmingham model, but simply a rhetorical device to describe what the other side was doing in a local political conflict. The introduction of a vast number of single-member constituencies in 1885 not only put the spotlight firmly on the methods local party associations used to select a candidate, but also provided the labour movement with another reason why they should be allowed to bring forward a candidate of their choosing unencumbered by a Liberal opponent: if a hitherto double-member constituency which contained a significant working-class population was being divided into five seats, why should they not have the right to nominate their own candidate for one of those seats? Significantly, the 1885 general election witnessed the return of twelve working men to the House of Commons, a number of whom had been involved in the failed campaigns of the LRL. It is to them, and their relationship with the Liberals and the wider labour movement, that the analysis now turns.

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4 Tensions and Fault Lines: The Lib-Lab MPs, the Wider Labour Movement and the Role of Irish Nationalism, 1885–8 Lib-Lab MPs, the Wider Labour Movement and Irish Nationalism At the 1885 general election twelve working-class MPs were returned to the House of Commons.1 As labour members who were unequivocally Gladstonian Liberals in their politics, they subsequently became known as Lib-Labs.2 Although the Lib-Labs have often been dismissed as holding back the growth of democratic labour politics,3 revisionist interpretations have stressed that they were in fact the ‘dominant feature’ of English working-class politics: they led the TUC and the organised labour movement, while remaining ‘virtually unshakeable’ in their connection with the Liberal party.4 This has led to the conclusion that, given the progress organised labour made under the stewardship of these men, the ‘mystery’ of nineteenth-century politics was ‘why such a separate Labour party should eventually have been felt to be necessary at all’.5 This current orthodoxy overlooks the significant tensions at the local and national level between the Lib-Lab MPs and the wider labour movement. The twelve members were: William Abraham (Rhondda, Glamorgan); Joseph Arch 1 (North-West Norfolk); Henry Broadhurst (Bordesley, Birmingham); Thomas Burt (Morpeth); William Crawford (Mid-Durham); William Randal Cremer (Haggerston, Shoreditch); John Durant (Stepney, Tower Hamlets); Charles Fenwick (Wansbeck, Northumberland); George Howell (North-East Bethnal Green); Joseph Leicester (South West-Ham); Benjamin Pickard (Normanton, West Riding); John Wilson (Houghton-le-Spring, Durham). See Appendix I for the full election results and the candidates’ expenses. The description originated as a term of abuse, used by socialist opponents, and was 2 abbreviated to Lib-Lab in the 1890s: J. Shepherd, ‘Labour and Parliament: The Lib.-Labs. as the First Working-Class MPs, 1885–1906’, in Biagini and Reid (eds), Currents of Radicalism, p. 190. Z. Bauman, Between Class and Elite (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972), 3 p. 131. J. Shepherd, ‘Labour and Parliament: The Lib.-Labs.’, p. 187. 4 Reid, United We Stand, p. 149. 5

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At the local level, the inability of labour activists to successfully broker deals with organised Liberalism over the selection of working-class candidates at the 1885 general election exposed the fragility of the alliance between the labour movement and the Liberal party. At the national level, the Lib-Lab MPs, the trade union movement, and individual labour activists sharply disagreed over who or what constituted a ‘Labour party’, a term that was widely in use by the mid-1880s. This chapter begins with the local level by examining both the nature of the deals struck between the successful Lib-Lib MPs and organised Liberalism in 1885, and the tensions between the wider Lib-Lab movement and local Liberal associations that were exposed when a working-class candidate failed to garner the Liberal nomination, paying particular attention to the tactics used by both sides in the subsequent parliamentary campaign. The second part of the chapter addresses disagreements at the national level by analysing the competing definitions of a ‘Labour party’ in the mid-1880s, giving close scrutiny to whether the term stood for a particular group of people or a specific programme. Of course, the main protagonists in this debate were not operating in a vacuum. The third part of the chapter, therefore, considers how the Irish nationalist movement shaped the ways in which the leaders of the labour movement conceived the notion of what a ‘Labour party’ stood for, and assesses the extent to which strategies employed by Irish nationalists served as a model for the labour movement in its dealings with the Liberal party. The chapter concludes by examining Keir Hardie’s election campaign at Mid-Lanark in 1888. Traditionally seen as a ‘milestone along the stony road leading to total separation’ between labour and the Liberal party,6 the significance of this contest is assessed in terms of its immediate impact and how far the labour movement’s attitude towards the Liberal ‘caucus’ during this episode reflected a change from the experiences of Howell, Odger and Potter in the decade following the Second Reform Act. Thus, rather than reading history backwards from the formation of the Labour party in 1900, the Mid-Lanark contest is analysed in the political context of 1888, enhancing our understanding of the fault lines between Liberalism and labour at this crucial point. The Lib-Labs and the caucus All of the twelve Lib-Lab MPs returned in 1885 had been selected by a Liberal association, but the deals that secured their nomination varied depending on the locality. In London, there was little organised preparation Barker, Gladstone and Radicalism, p. 131. 6

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for the redistribution of seats: the London and Counties Liberal Union, established in 1885, was a purely advisory, educational and propaganda body.7 The poor state of Liberal organisation in the capital meant that the process of candidate selection was largely carried out on an ad hoc basis by hastily formed divisional associations. It was within this context that George Howell was able to agree a compact with the Bethnal Green Liberal Association. In a shrewd move, Howell first secured the backing of the long-standing Bethnal Green Radical Club, a lively focus for working-class political enthusiasm.8 In February 1885 the club put him forward for the newly created constituency of Bethnal Green North East, and informed the leaders of the Bethnal Green Liberal Association that they would instruct their members to support a middle-class Liberal candidate in the South West division on the condition that the Liberal Association backed Howell.9 After four months of protracted negotiations, in an acknowledgement of the Radical Club’s influence, the Bethnal Green Liberal Association formally adopted Howell as their candidate for the North East division, while the Radical Club pledged to support the middle-class lawyer Edward Hare Pickersgill in the South West division. The Radical Club, though, had limited funds. With no formal trade union connections, therefore, Howell’s finances were far from stable, but Hamilton Hoare, a Liberal banker, started a subscription fund to pay his election expenses, to which a number of sympathetic Liberals donated.10 In addition to deals brokered between local organisations, Lib-Lib MPs also benefited from the intervention of the central Liberal party machine based in London. At the 1880 general election the Liberal chief whip William Patrick Adams paid £500 to the Stoke-on-Trent Liberal Association to secure their endorsement of Henry Broadhurst as the second Liberal candidate.11 Through his work as secretary of the TUC’s Parliamentary Committee, Broadhurst had cultivated strong relations with a number of leading Liberals, and the intervention of Adams undoubtedly assuaged the fears of the middle-class leadership among the Stoke-onTrent Liberal Association, who had been against the nomination of Alfred Armstrong Walton at the borough’s 1875 by-election.12 Broadhurst was also close to Joseph Chamberlain and Francis Schnadhorst. Both men strongly P. Thompson, Socialists, Liberals and Labour: The Struggle for London, 1885–1914 (London: 7 Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), pp. 92–3. Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 205. 8 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 22 Mar. 1885. 9 10 Samuel Morley donated £200 and Thomas Brassey £50: Leventhal, Respectable Radical, p. 205. 11 Hanham, Elections and Party Management, p. 380. 12 See chapter one.

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backed his nomination by the Bordesley Divisional Liberal Association in Birmingham at the 1885 general election and, in June 1886, when Broadhurst informed Schnadhorst that he was unwilling to offer for re-election owing to the ‘strained relationships’ between the rival factions of Birmingham Liberalism following Gladstone’s declaration in favour of Irish Home Rule, Schnadhorst worked closely with the Nottingham Liberal Union to secure his return in the borough’s western division.13 The strategy of securing the endorsement of a local radical club and then using it as leverage when attempting to broker a deal with organised Liberalism was frequently used by would-be working-class candidates, though it was rarely successful, unless the club had a tradition of being a significant force in local politics (as was the case in Bethnal Green). When Neiles Billany, a ship carpenter and well-known local political activist, was selected by the recently formed Kingston-upon-Hull Radical Club as their candidate for the central division at the 1885 general election, the Central Hull Liberal Association immediately dismissed his candidature as illegitimate, and refused to even consider him as an official Lib-Lab candidate. As one member of the association explained, Mr Billany in effect elects himself as a candidate for the Central Division  … He arranges with a few friends that he shall be elected, then, attends a meeting of twenty-two at the club, he waiting in another room, while the small section go through the farce of passing a resolution asking Mr Billany to become their candidate.14

In reality, the process through which Billany’s Liberal opponent, Charles Norwood, had been selected was hardly more democratic. Norwood, a successful steamship owner who had represented Kingston-upon-Hull in Parliament since 1865, had held a series of informal meetings with the leaders of the local Liberal association before his name was put before the general council of the central division to be rubber stamped.15 Billany, who was backed publicly by Benjamin Pickard, Lib-Lab candidate for the Normanton division of Yorkshire, persisted with his candidature in direct opposition to Norwood, though it was carried out on a shoestring budget. With no direct ties to local trade unionism, his main source of income to pay his election expenses were the collections made at the doors of his meetings.16 Using another tactic familiar to independent labour 13 H. Broadhurst to F. Schnadhorst, 14 Apr. 1886, in Manuscript papers relating to Francis Schnadhorst and the organisation of the Liberal party, 1881–1962, Box 1, f. 46, Bristol University Special Collections; Broadhurst, Story of his Life, pp. 177, 183, 218, 237. 14 Hull Daily News, 3 Nov. 1885. 15 Hull Daily Mail, 26 Oct. 1885. 16 Ibid., 27 Oct. 1885.

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candidates, he sought the endorsement of the local trades council, only to be rebuffed, one of its members informing the local press that Mr Billany is not put forward by the representatives of labour at all, but is solely the nominee of the Hull Radical Club. The Hull Trades Council … wisely decided to have nothing to do with this miserable attempt to foist upon the electors such an ignorant person as Billany appears to be.17

This was not, though, a view shared by all of the council’s members. Fred Maddison, who represented the council at the TUC, publicly endorsed Billany, arguing that he was ‘the only true Liberal candidate’. However, Maddison added the caveat that he was not speaking ‘as a representative of the council’.18 In this context, there is a need to distinguish between the frequent ‘no-politics’ stance of local trades councils at election time, and the behaviour of their members as individuals. With the contest tight between the Conservative and Liberal nominees, Billany’s candidature, though inherently weak, represented a real threat to a Liberal majority. The local Liberal party machine therefore adopted a range of tactics in an attempt to disable his candidature, ranging from the predictable scheme of disseminating the accusation that he was working in league with the Tories, to the more nefarious ploy of offering him £200 to retire.19 In a sign of desperation, the Liberal candidate for the Kingston-upon-Hull West division, Charles Henry Wilson, a prominent shipowner, offered to guarantee Billany the Liberal nomination on ‘some future occasion’ if he withdrew his candidature, only for Billany to persevere and go to the poll.20 Ultimately, Billany’s 735 votes cost the Liberal candidate the election. In the nonconformist coalfields of the north-east of England, the close alliance between the powerful Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) and the local Liberal associations paved the way for a quickly brokered deal concerning the selection of working-class candidates. Following the Third Reform Act, the federation board of the DMA not only selected three candidates with an agreed annual salary of £500, but also reserved three constituencies for them, a decision that was readily accepted by the newly formed divisional Liberal associations in the county.21 In Durham, the DMA effectively became the leadership of organised Liberalism, and in 1885 William Crawford, the leader of the DMA, and John Wilson, secretary of 17 Hull Daily News, 27 Oct. 1885. Original emphasis. 18 Ibid., 27 Oct. 1885. 19 Hull Daily Mail, 27 Oct. 1885. 20 Ibid., 19 Oct. 1885. 21 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, p. 364; J. Wilson, Memories of a Labour Leader [1910] (Sussex: Caliban Books, 1980 edn), pp. 281–3.

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the Miners’ Political Reform Association, were returned as Lib-Labs for Mid-Durham and Houghton-le-Spring respectively.22 Significantly, this neat electoral arrangement between the DMA and the Durham Liberal associations was challenged by the wider local labour movement. In the Chester-le-Street division, Lloyd Jones, whose previous experience as an arbitrator in mining disputes made him extremely popular among the local miners, came forward in opposition to the well-liked mine owner James Joicey, the official candidate of the Liberal association.23 Jones, who argued that by selecting a mine owner the Liberal association had struck a blow against the ‘labour interest in Parliament’, ran a vehemently anti-caucus campaign.24 In his address he declared that ‘I appeal for support to you, the actual electors, and not to any body of men – however elected or selected – who, under whatever pretence, seek to usurp your new electoral power’.25 As was the case with Mervyn Hawkes’s campaign in Sheffield Central, Jones’s anti-caucus rhetoric was used against him. One Joicey supporter stated, in reference to Jones’s backers, that ‘however Mr Jones can … permit himself to be put forward as the representative of as red a caucus as would certainly make glad the heart of Mr Chamberlain, is difficult to understand.’26 The fact that he was backed by Joseph Cowen, who had been rebuked by Joicey for the anti-Liberal government sentiments expressed in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, also led to accusations that he was merely doing the bidding of Newcastle-based wire-pullers.27 Mirroring the offer made to Billany of a future safe seat in Kingston-upon-Hull, following the withdrawal of the miners’ candidate, J. Trotter, the leaders of the Bishop Auckland Liberal Association tried to cut a deal with Jones by inviting him to contest the vacancy in order to ‘allay the irritation’ in Chester-le-Street, only for Jones to insist that he would never ‘submit to be the chosen candidate of any Liberal association or caucus’.28 William Crawford, leader of the DMA, insisted that Joicey was the legitimate candidate, but many of his union’s members backed Jones.29 The contest, which Jones eventually lost by just over 800 votes, underlined the fact that even where links between trade unionism and organised Liberalism were essentially strong, disputes over candidate selection and the party machinery 22 The third candidate, J. Trotter, subsequently withdrew from the contest at Bishop Auckland. 23 Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform, pp. 364–6. 24 For example, see his speech at Gateshead: Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 19 Mar. 1885. 25 Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 8 Aug. 1885. 26 Ibid., 16 Mar. 1885. 27 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 30 Nov. 1885. 28 Newcastle Courant, 2 Nov. 1885. 29 Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 30 Mar. 1885.

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behind it could quickly expose tensions between the Lib-Lab movement and organised labour. Indeed, opposition to the compact between the DMA and the Durham Liberal Association was not limited to Lloyd Jones’ campaign. In the Jarrow division, James Johnston, an engineer and native of the town, was brought forward by the hastily established Jarrow Radical Labour and Representation League to oppose the Liberal candidate, Sir Charles Palmer, owner of a large shipbuilding and iron company based in the division. Johnston described the Jarrow Liberal Association as ‘a number of men that called themselves leaders, who appointed themselves to a very great extent’, and insisted that Palmer was ‘not sufficiently advanced in his opinions to represent the views of the mass of electors’.30 With no Conservative candidate in the field, Johnston presented very little threat to Palmer’s return, but the local Liberal association still set out to undermine his candidature. At a number of Johnston’s election meetings, Samuel Thompson, the local Liberal agent, moved an amendment that Johnston was not the ‘fittest person’ to represent the division.31 The electoral compact in Durham between the miners’ association and organised Liberalism was not replicated throughout the country. Indeed, in some instances, the broader Lib-Lab movement was in direct competition with official Liberalism. The independent Lib-Lab candidature of James Haslam at Chesterfield in 1885 is a case in point. Haslam was the epitome of Lib-Labism. He was secretary of the Derbyshire Miners’ Association and a prominent member of the Clay Cross Polling District Liberal Association, which reported to the Chesterfield Liberal Association. However, when brought forward by the council of the miners’ association as a candidate for Chesterfield, Haslam was rejected, after ‘considerable discussion’, by thirty-nine votes to twenty-eight, by the executive committee of the Chesterfield Liberal Association in favour of Alfred Barnes, a local colliery owner.32 According to newspaper reports, many on the Liberal association’s executive committee had been concerned about Haslam’s ability to cover the costs of his election expenses, an issue that was of no concern to the wealthy Barnes.33 Undeterred by his rejection, Haslam continued his campaign, funded by the Derbyshire Miners’ Association, and was strongly backed by the miners in the Clay Cross district. In response, the local Liberal party machine persistently canvassed Barnes’ employees and banned Haslam from 30 North Eastern Daily Gazette, 17 Oct. 1885. 31 Ibid., 10 Sept., 17 Oct. 1885. 32 Derbyshire Times and Chesterfield Herald, 26 Aug. 1885; J.E. Williams, The Derbyshire Miners: A Study in Industrial and Social History (London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), p. 488. 33 Derbyshire Times and Chesterfield Herald, 5 Sept. 1885.

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addressing ‘Liberal gatherings’.34 Following a bitter campaign, Haslam polled a respectable 1,907 votes, just over 200 votes behind the second-placed Conservative but 1,501 behind Barnes. As Haslam achieved this poll on an expenditure of only £191 compared to Barnes’s £843, local trade unionism had delivered a significant rebuke to official Liberalism in backing an independent Lib-Lab candidate.35 The relationship between Lib-Lab MPs and local organised labour could also be strained. Certainly, disagreements over the eight-hour day question had the potential to seriously undermine an MP’s credibility. The defeat of Henry Broadhurst at Nottingham West in 1892 illustrates this point. First elected for the division in 1886, Broadhurst had enjoyed the unequivocal support of the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association (NMA),36 but his refusal, on principle, to support legislative intervention in favour of the eight-hour day was widely condemned by the union’s leadership. William Bailey, the miners’ agent and a staunch Lib-Lab who had recently been elected president of the Labour Electoral Association (see below), accused Broadhurst and the executive of the Western Division Liberal Association of ‘ignoring the desires of the miners and insulting their representatives’ and urged the miners to ‘sink their politics’ and back the Liberal Unionist, Charles Seely, who, if returned, had pledged to support the measure in Parliament.37 Broadhurst protested, asking ‘is there a man here or elsewhere who would dare to say that … I am not in full accord with the desire to have shorter hours of labour?’38 However, according to Bailey, ‘Mr Broadhurst has ceased to be a labour representative. He has severed his connection with trade unionism’.39 Thus, Broadhurst’s defeat showed that, in the event of a disagreement over legislation, organised labour was not only willing but also capable of challenging the political legitimacy of a Lib-Lab MP, even if he was backed by the leaders of organised Liberalism.

34 Ibid. 35 PP 1886 (199), lii. pp. 488–9. 36 See a meeting of the NMA in support of Broadhurst: Nottingham Daily Express, 30 June 1886. 37 Nottingham Daily Express, 21 June 1892; For Seely’s pledge see Nottingham Guardian, 6 June 1892. 38 Nottingham Daily Express, 1 July 1892. 39 Ibid.

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The ‘Labour party’ debate: people or programme? In October 1886 Randal Cremer declared: I wish it were possible to have a labour ‘party’ in the House, and by and by I believe that we have one. We tried in the early part of the last Parliament, and we have appointed Mr Fenwick as the whip; and although we have had no formal meeting in the present Parliament, where our ranks are somewhat thinned, Mr Fenwick acts in that capacity still.40

In this context, John Shepherd has argued that ‘the Lib.–Labs. formed the first parliamentary Labour party at Westminster.’41 Fenwick was acknowledged by contemporaries as ‘the Parliamentary “Whip” of the Labour party’ while Thomas Burt believed that ‘on purely Labour questions’ the group was ‘as they ought to be, a party’.42 A brief analysis of a sample of the Lib-Lab MPs’ votes in the Commons confirms this sense of solidarity. In the second parliamentary session of 1886, when there were nine Lib-Lab MPs, there were forty-six divisions. Out of the twenty-five divisions when two or more Lib-Labs were present, they voted as a united group twenty-four times.43 The only dissension was Howell’s vote in favour of a sessional order on the interference of peers in elections, which saw him dividing against Broadhurst, Burt, Crawford, Cremer, Fenwick, Pickard and Rowlands, who supported Bradlaugh’s motion to reject it, on the grounds that it was never enforced.44 Although it is fair to say that Burt and Fenwick promoted a common identity between the Lib-Labs in Parliament when working together on issues that directly affected the working classes, one cannot ignore that they were implacably opposed to a distinct Labour party that would put forward its own candidates at parliamentary elections. At the 1887 TUC Fenwick declared that Heaven knew they had too many political parties in the House of Commons at present, and to create another party was simply to court, on their part, failure and disaster.45

Burt, who believed that the loyalty of the working-class MPs lay firmly with the Liberal party, concurred, writing that 40 The Labour Tribune, 30 Oct. 1886, quoted in Shepherd, ‘Labour and Parliament’, pp. 206–7. 41 Shepherd, ‘Labour and Parliament’, p. 206. 42 The Labour Tribune, 11 Dec. 1886; T. Burt, ‘Labour in Parliament’, Contemporary Review, 55 (May 1889), p. 686. 43 House of Commons Division Lists, 1886 sess. 2. 44 Ibid., sess. 2, 19 Aug. 45 Report of the Twentieth Annual Trades Union Congress (1887), pp. 30–1.

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Though the labour representatives were nominated neither by club nor caucus, they are avowedly party men. They appealed to the electors as Radical politicians, were elected as such, and, as a rule, they have acted and voted with the Liberal party … Among those who most bitterly denounce existing parties, the opinion prevails that the working-men should form themselves into, and act as, a distinct and independent party … I entirely disagree with them, and believe that little or no good, and much evil, would result from such a policy.46

This was not a view shared by all of the Lib-Lab members. For example, John Wilson declared that he was ‘unhesitatingly’ an advocate for ‘the formation of a distinct Labour party’.47 The Lib-Lab MPs’ claim to represent the ‘Labour party’ in Parliament was vociferously challenged by individuals in the wider labour movement. In 1887 Keir Hardie, as secretary of the Ayrshire miners, stated that the working man representative has not hitherto been much of a success in Parliament … He thinks more of his own reputation in the eyes of the House, than of the interests of his suffering brethren in mill and mine.48

For Hardie, the Lib-Lab MPs were ‘content to follow in the train of the Liberal party whithersoever it may lead’. In one particularly damning section of a piece on ‘labour representation’ for his journal, the Miner, he wrote: Party be hanged … I have contempt for the men, who, knowing what should be done, are yet afraid to proclaim it from the housetops if need be. It is the half-heartedness of the present leaders which keeps our cause from progressing.49

Hardie’s personal criticism of the Lib-Lab MPs was part of a broader critique of the Liberal party’s perceived unwillingness to legislate on specific issues affecting miners. Hardie was dismissive of ‘The New Liberal Programme’ of 1886, which contained letters by Burt, Howell and Pickard but ‘not a word about [mineral] Royalties’, and contended that Broadhurst and Fenwick’s position of refusing to support a bill for the eight-hour day was ‘not a tenable one’.50 Hardie personalised his argument at the 1887 Congress, accusing Broadhurst of being ‘in direct antagonism to the working 46 Burt, ‘Labour in Parliament’, pp. 684–5. 47 Report of the Twentieth Annual Trades Union Congress (1887), p. 32. Interestingly, Wilson made this point when he was not an MP. Having lost his seat at Houghton-le-Spring in 1886, he was returned for Mid-Durham in 1890 following the death of Crawford: Wilson, Memories of a Labour Leader, pp. 283–4. 48 Miner, Feb. 1887. 49 Ibid., July 1887. 50 Ibid., July 1887; Sept. 1887; A. Reid, The New Liberal Programme, Contributed by Representatives of the Liberal Party (1886).

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classes’.51 This attack, though, found little support. Bailey of the NMA rebuked him for wishing ‘to tell Congress what they should do’, while Broadhurst deplored the ‘intolerable un-English and lecturing attacks’ from the ‘high-priest and prophet from Ayrshire’.52 Significantly, the Lib-Lab MPs believed that, as elected representatives in Parliament, it was not their overriding duty to satisfy the miners in particular or the labour movement in general. As Fenwick argued, ‘it was not to Congress that they were responsible. By the verdict of his constituents he stood or fell’.53 The formation of the Labour Electoral Committee at the 1886 TUC introduced an alternative conception of the ‘Labour party’. Moved for by Thomas Threlfall of the Typographical Association, the objective of the Committee, which proposed to divide the United Kingdom into eight districts to co-ordinate its activities, was to Act in co-operation with the [TUC] Parliamentary Committee, the labour representatives in the House of Commons, and the friends of labour representation throughout the country. The time had arrived for doing something towards finding some central body which should have the means at its disposal for aiding labour candidates.54

After a vigorous debate which witnessed some opposition to the ‘unnecessary’ and ‘costly’ proposal, the motion was passed by fifty-nine votes to nineteen. At the 1887 Congress, the Committee formally became the Labour Electoral Association (LEA). For Threlfall, ‘the time had arrived when the Labour party must cut itself adrift from the great parties of the country’.55 In this context, the ‘Labour party’ was not precisely defined, but rather a linguistic tool to give a cohesive identity to the extra-parliamentary labour associations that it was hoped would be established under the umbrella of the LEA to promote the return of ‘working men to Parliament, town councils and school boards’.56 In reality, the establishment of new local labour electoral associations around England in the two years following the 1886 TUC was extremely patchy. In Manchester, labour activists struggled to form a branch because, in the words of one local trade unionist, ‘they lacked unity of thought and ideas’.57 The notion of forming such an association was discussed by the 51 Report of the Twentieth Annual Trades Union Congress (1887), p. 29. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., p. 31. 54 Report of the Nineteenth Annual Trades Union Congress (1886), p. 35. The eight districts were Eastern, Western, Northern, Southern, Midland, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. 55 Report of the Twentieth Annual Trades Union Congress (1887), pp. 28–9. 56 Ibid., p. 28. 57 Birmingham Daily Post, 4 Sept. 1888.

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Leeds Trades Council in December 1887, but the issue was adjourned.58 Meetings of miners in Birmingham and Newcastle passed resolutions in favour of forming labour electoral associations, but progress in realising this aim was notably slow.59 Labour activists in Liverpool had more success, and by 1888 the city boasted a number of associations that had affiliated to the central LEA, but without an immediate election to fight, some quickly languished. As one Liverpool working-class ‘Radical’ informed the local press, ‘these associations are for the most of their time in a state of suspended animation’.60 Although there was a general consensus at the TUC that the LEA should promote the return of working-class candidates in local and national elections, the parameters of what a ‘Labour party’ stood for were keenly contested. Firstly, there was disagreement over what constituted a bona fide ‘Labour’ candidate. For Fred Maddison, of the Hull Trades Council, it was not ‘sufficient that the candidate is a working man. He should be, first of all, a trade-unionist in principle’.61 This view became particularly pertinent when the question of working-class Conservatism was raised. For many at Congress, Conservative working-class men could not be considered ‘Labour’ candidates.62 However, Benjamin Pickard, the Lib-Lab MP for the Normanton division of the West Riding, believed that ‘if there were Tory working men, it was not right to gag and muzzle them’.63 Threlfall, moreover, felt that ‘if a Conservative working man could be found who would support the advanced policy of the labour programme then that man would be worthy of being sent to the House of Commons’.64 It is significant here that Threlfall advocated ‘a genuine and distinct Labour party’ that included ‘all working men, whatever their general politics’. The inclusiveness of this viewpoint is further evidence that the term ‘Labour party’ was a means of using language, rather than clearly defined principles, to create a common identity for working-class political activists. This conceptualised identity of a Labour party member was undoubtedly a masculine one. The male-led discussion at the 1887 TUC focused exclusively on working ‘men’. Significantly, during the debate on labour representation at the 1888 TUC, Clementina Black of the Women’s Trade Union League and a member of the LEA, used similar language, declaring that ‘she did not think 58 Leeds Mercury, 10 Dec. 1887. 59 Birmingham Daily Post, 5 Nov. 1887; Newcastle Courant, 8 June 1888. 60 Liverpool Mercury, 2 Jan. 1888. 61 Report of the Nineteenth Annual Trades Union Congress (1886), pp. 24–5. 62 For example, see the statement of Mr Cameron (London): Report of the Twentieth Annual Trades Union Congress (1887), p. 28. 63 Report of the Nineteenth Annual Trades Union Congress (1886), p. 34. 64 Report of the Twentieth Annual Trades Union Congress (1887), pp. 28–9.

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there was a question now before Englishmen of more importance than this’.65 In a subsequent article by Black which addressed the question of a distinct Labour party, she insisted that ‘my personal interests are not involved … I have no husband, brother, or father with political ends to serve.’66 Interestingly, Black rejected the argument that being working class was the only criterion of being a ‘Labour’ MP: ‘to have been a working man no more makes Mr. Broadhurst a Labour member than to be the son of a marquis makes Lord Compton a Conservative’. This contention was part of Black’s wider belief that for a Labour party to succeed, it had to be completely separate from the Liberal party. According to Black, ‘no man can properly be called a Labour representative unless he represents a Labour majority, as distinguished from a Liberal or Conservative majority’.67 In this respect, Black’s views were far more in tune with those propagated by the spokesmen of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in the mid-1890s than her colleagues on the LEA. Of course, there was more than one road to becoming a working-class politician. The example of William Rolley is particularly relevant here. Born in Sheffield and apprenticed as a steel maker, Rolley was initially the archetypal Lib-Lab activist. President of the TUC in 1874 and a member of its parliamentary committee two years later, he was elected as a Liberal to the Sheffield school board and helped establish the Sheffield LEA in 1883. After failing to gain the Liberal nomination for the Attercliffe division in 1885, he became disillusioned with the leaders of local organised Liberalism and, although initially in favour of Home Rule (but opposed to separate parliaments), he became ‘thoroughly disgusted with the abuse of Mr Chamberlain from – so-called – Liberals’. Hurt that his efforts on behalf of organised Liberalism had not been properly recognised, and believing that ‘the working classes were likely to get as much from the Tories as from the Liberals’, he became a Tory in 1888 and thereafter championed their legislative efforts on behalf of the labour interest.68 Rejection by the Liberal caucus could, therefore, have the opposite effect to pushing candidates towards supporting independent labour representation. The ambiguity concerning what constituted a ‘Labour candidate’ was part of the broader debate concerning whether the LEA should promote a specific manifesto. Stuart Uttley of Sheffield pressed the need for a ‘national programme’, arguing that, without one, it was impossible to 65 Report of the Twenty-First Annual Trades Union Congress (1888), p. 24. Emphasis added. 66 C. Black, ‘The Trades Union Congress’, Universal Review, 8 (Oct. 1890), p. 182. 67 Ibid., p. 186. 68 How I Became a Primrose Orator: Or, a Short Sketch of the Life of William Rolley, pp. 3–20; H.J. Wilson papers, MD 6020; W. Rolley to H.J. Wilson, 21 May 1888, H.J. Wilson papers, MD 6020.

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create a ‘national labour party’ and the LEA would remain ‘impotent’.69 In contrast, Pickard, referring to his experiences of coming forward under the auspices of the LRL in 1874, stated that they had ‘endeavoured to separate their platform from both Liberals and Conservatives’, but he ‘found to his cost that the idea would not suit’.70 The pull of loyalty to the Liberal party was also still strong. As Maddison postulated, ‘was the watch word [sic] of “peace, retrenchment, and reform”, which had led them to so many victories, to be abandoned?’71 Hardie, though, was adamant that ‘there should be a programme, and every candidate for Parliament should know that unless he could support it, he must look elsewhere for a seat’.72 The 1887 TUC ended without any resolution on this issue. Referring to the LEA’s description of a ‘national labour party’, Hardie wrote that I am extremely pleased to learn that there is a Labour party in the United Kingdom, but should be better pleased to see some fruits of its existence … There is something even more desirable than the return of working men to Parliament, and that is to give working men a definite programme to fight for when they get there.73

According to Hardie, the Liberal party had ‘done a noble work in the past in securing civil and religious freedom’, but now a ‘new party’ was needed. Consequently, under the banner of ‘The Sons of Labour’, he proposed a sixteen-point programme to ‘improve the material, mental and moral condition of the people’.74 Broadly speaking, the programme was a collection of advanced radical demands, with a particular emphasis on issues affecting miners, with only the proposed nationalisation of railways, minerals and mines reflecting a socialist standpoint. To actualise these demands, ‘The 69 Report of the Twentieth Annual Trades Union Congress (1887), p. 29. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. Maddison subsequently stood as a Lib-Lab candidate for Central Hull in 1892, much to the annoyance of local labour activists, who wished to bring forward their own candidate. See Howell, British Workers and the ILP, pp. 119–20. 72 Report of the Twentieth Annual Trades Union Congress (1887), p. 29. 73 Miner, July 1887. 74 The sixteen points were: power to control or prohibit liquor traffic to be vested in the inhabitants of the locality; payment of members; adult suffrage; triennial parliaments; abolition of non-elected authority; graduated income tax on all incomes over £300 a year; reassertion of national rights in the soil, and the re-enaction of a state rent; promotion of home colonies and cultivation and reclamation of waste land; free education; an eight-hour day in the mines; the establishment of a national insurance fund; state ownership of the railways, minerals and mines; improved homes for working people; protection of household effects to the extent of £200 from seizure of debt; the establishment of tribunals for settlement of all labour disputes; direct taxation and abolition of customs duty on all articles of food. See Miner, July 1887.

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Sons of Labour’ manifesto proposed the ‘organisation of political power in every constituency, in order to secure the return of candidates pledged to our programme’. In contrast to the LEA, this extra-parliamentary action was going to be independent of organised labour. For Hardie, the ‘Labour party will be a distinct organisation from the trade unions’.75 Another alternative conception of the ‘Labour party’ was offered by Henry Hyde Champion, a middle-class socialist journalist and member of the ‘metropolitan section’ of the LEA who had previously been a leading member of the Social-Democratic Federation (SDF).76 Like Hardie, he was highly critical of the Lib-Lab MPs: There are in the present House of Commons some half-dozen ‘labour representatives’. There are now, have always been, and always will be, adherents of the Liberal party, ever ready, with a fidelity, fully recognised by their employers, to put the political necessities of the Liberals before the rights of the working classes.77

The time was ‘ripe’, therefore, for a ‘Labour party’ which ‘sets before itself the task of furthering the interests of the working class by securing the legislative restriction of competition through the compulsory reduction of the hours of labour’.78 A reduction in the hours of labour, though, was the only policy Champion proposed. Moreover, he did not elaborate on how a Labour party would achieve political power. Rather, he appeared to suggest that merely by standing, working-class candidates could pressure the candidates of other parties to accept some of their demands. To this end, in January 1888 he offered as a candidate of the ‘National Labour Party’ at a by-election in Deptford, and subsequently withdrew when he believed that the Liberal candidate had made concessions in favour of the labour interest.79 He attempted a similar tactic at by-elections at Ayr Burghs and Southampton in the summer of 1888, when he declared himself a ‘delegate of the Labour party’ and publicly pressed the Liberal candidate to make clear his position on the hours of labour question.80 Hardie, though, remained sceptical about such an approach, lamenting the fact that Champion had failed to ‘enunciate any cut and dry programme, evidently preferring to see the right kind of men returned’.81 75 Miner, August 1887. 76 H. Pelling, ‘H.H. Champion: Pioneer of Labour Representation’, Cambridge Journal, 6 (1952–3), pp. 222–35. 77 H. Champion, ‘The New Labour Party’, Nineteenth Century, 24 (July 1888), p. 83. 78 Ibid., p. 89. 79 The Times, 23 Jan. 1888; Pelling, ‘Champion’, p. 227. 80 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 22 July 1888. 81 Miner, July 1888.

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The national leadership of the LEA, moreover, criticised Champion for claiming to speak on behalf of the ‘Labour party’. Responding to his interventions at Ayr Burghs and Southampton, Threlfall insisted that ‘the National Labour Electoral Association knew nothing of this, and had never been consulted’ and accused Champion of assuming a ‘dictatorship’.82 The national leadership’s wish to maintain a level of control over the activities of its membership was further evident at the Liverpool Walton by-election in February 1888. In January 1888 the executive committee of the Liverpool LEA resolved to bring forward a ‘Labour candidate’ for the forthcoming by-election, and proposed to invite William John Parry, president of the North Wales Quarrymen’s Union.83 Believing that the return of the Conservative candidate was certain, the executive committee of the national LEA wrote to the Liverpool branch, informing them that as this was ‘an inopportune time to contest the said division’, Parry should withdraw. The Liverpool branch duly accepted the demand, though its executive protested that the seat could have been won with more support from the national leadership.84 The first LEA annual conference held in October 1888 underlined the centralising, controlling tendencies of its leadership. The decision to hold a conference distinct from the LEA’s meetings at the annual TUC was a deliberate one, and reflected Threlfall’s desire to keep ‘doctrinaire’ issues away from the Congress, and give the LEA a more solidly political identity.85 The first clause of its new constitution declared that the LEA was ‘the organising and administrative centre of the labour party, whose object was the elevation and emancipation of labour’. A subsequent clause established that every affiliated association should pay ‘not less than one penny per year per member to the central fund’. Hardie had opposed the clause, moving an amendment that branches should only be ‘expected to make a donation’, but following Threlfall’s insistence that ‘the movement had not progressed to the extent it ought to have done simply because it had had no fixed income,’ the amendment was defeated.86 Importantly, the issue of the social composition of the LEA’s delegates, which had stimulated much debate at the TUC, was also settled. Despite strenuous opposition from Hardie, the clause stating that only ‘a bona-fide workman or a representative of a trades organisation’ was eligible for election as a delegate to the LEA conferences was passed. The clause, according to Threlfall, was necessary to ‘protect the labour 82 83 84 85 86

Reynolds’s Newspaper, 22 July 1888. Liverpool Mercury, 16, 19 Jan. 1888. Ibid., 1 Feb. 1888. Birmingham Daily Post, 4 Sept. 1888. Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 13 Oct. 1888.

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party in the future’ from the ‘professional classes’. Champion was therefore excluded from the management of the association. The delegates also elected an executive committee to ‘officially represent the party’ and ‘advise and assist local committees in the selection of labour candidates’. The executive comprised a president, vice-president, treasurer, secretary and five further members elected from a list of twelve nominees. Hardie, who finished in seventh place, lost out in his bid to be on the executive.87 Significantly, the conference also adopted a political ‘platform’ for ‘future action’. This acknowledgement that the ‘Labour party’ required a programme around which its membership could coalesce was an important step forward for the labour movement, even though most of its thirteen points were essentially long-standing radical demands.88 The platform therefore mirrored most of the ‘Sons of Labour’ programme, with the important exception of Hardie’s socialistic demand for the nationalisation of railways, minerals and mines.89 With its platform and constitution established, the conference conferred a degree of centralised authority on behalf of the executive committee of the LEA, but in doing so it exposed the tensions within the movement, particularly concerning the social composition of the LEA’s membership. Dismayed at being marginalised, Hardie and Champion seceded from the LEA at the end of the year.90 The debate concerning who or what represented the ‘Labour party’ in the mid-1880s therefore revealed the fault lines running not only between the Lib-Labs and the LEA, but also through the LEA itself. Irish nationalism and the British labour movement As the above discussion makes clear, in the mid-1880s the term ‘Labour party’ was firmly part of the political discourse. Importantly, the leaders of the labour movement were not operating in vacuum, impervious to the events around them. The Irish nationalists, who were concurrently pursuing their goal of Home Rule by renegotiating their relationship with the Liberal 87 Ibid. 88 The thirteen points were: state payment of members; payment of returning officer charges in elections out of the rates; nationalisation of the land; adult (including women’s) suffrage; free education; national parliaments for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and an imperial parliament for imperial affairs; religious equality; reform of poor laws; eight hour bill for miners and a reduction in the hours of labour for all those employed in occupations requiring parliamentary sanction; triennial parliaments; nationalisation of royalty rents; abolition of perpetual and political pensions; establishment by legislation of courts of conciliation and arbitration for trade disputes. 89 Miner, Aug. 1887. 90 Pelling, ‘Champion’, p. 228.

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party, provided an immediate model for the ambitions of the labour leaders. The focus of the following discussion is threefold. Firstly, the contrasting and shifting nature of the parallels the Irish nationalists and Lib-Labs drew between the Home Rule struggle and the plight of the British working classes. Secondly, the ways in which organised Liberalism’s support for Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule bill immediately affected the priorities of its working-class members, with specific reference to the question of labour representation. While it is generally accepted that working-class members of local Liberal associations fell into line behind Gladstone, there is evidence that in certain localities they equivocated over the emphasis that should be placed on Home Rule in relation to labour representation in Parliament. Thirdly, the ways in which the Irish nationalists’ political strategy and Gladstone’s subsequent support for Home Rule influenced how the leaders of the labour movement conceived the notion of a ‘Labour party’ and its relationship with the Liberals. Just as working-class radicals had different conceptions of a ‘Labour party’, the ways in which they interpreted the strategies of the Irish nationalists (who equivocated among themselves over which course to pursue in relation to the Liberals) depended on their own political needs. The ways in which Irish nationalism influenced the British labour movement were therefore nuanced and require further attention. The leaders of Irish nationalism drew parallels between their struggles and the political plight of the British working classes. In 1877 John Ferguson, an Antrim-born Protestant who had arrived in Glasgow at the end of the 1850s and had helped establish the first branch of the Irish Home Government Association in Britain, stated that I often think I might serve the cause of Ireland as much in the ranks of British reformers as in those of Home Rule, and I would like to see a fraternisation of English and Irish Democracy that would enable a man to belong to both organisations.91

In 1881 Parnell, the leader of the Irish party in the House of Commons, proposed A junction between English democracy and Irish nationalism upon a basis of Ireland’s right to make her own laws, the overthrow of territorialism in both countries and enfranchisement of labour from crushing taxes for maintenance of standing armies and navies.92

Michael Davitt, a founder of the Irish Land League, developed the 91 Nation, 6 Jan. 1877. 92 Cited in M. Davitt, The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland: Or, the Story of the Land League Revolution (London: Harper and Brothers, 1904), pp. 307–8.

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connection in order to suggest an electoral alliance between the Irish and British working classes: The industrial classes in these countries can, if they combine at the polls, hurl the party of wars and waste, of land monopoly and the plunder of labour … from the helm of the state, and substitute government of the people and by the people.93

In certain English localities with a significant Irish population these theoretical partnerships were actualised by close, personal networks. For example, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which had an Irish population of more than 50,000, was a ‘Home Rule hotbed’.94 Joseph Cowen, through the pages of the Newcastle Chronicle, ‘a bona fide Irish journal’, zealously attacked the Gladstone ministry’s policy of coercion, earning him the praise of Parnell.95 The city hosted the first convention of the National Land League of Great Britain in August 1881, and thereafter prominent figures from the parliamentary wing of Irish nationalism, such as Thomas Healy and Thomas Power O’Connor, who became president of the newly formed Irish National League of Great Britain in 1883, kept in close contact with the leading lights of Tyneside radicalism.96 O’Connor was also an ally of a number of important London-based radicals, including Helen Taylor, John Stuart Mill’s stepdaughter, with whom he helped found the Anti-Coercion Association in 1880.97 Taylor’s close contacts with the leaders of Irish nationalism clearly shaped her political outlook. At the 1885 general election, when she campaigned as a parliamentary candidate in North Camberwell, she advocated legislative independence for Ireland, and was supported by Davitt, who, in a published letter to her, stated that ‘I am satisfied that Ireland would not have a truer friend or a more staunch supporter [at] Westminster than you’.98 Many other British working-class radicals, however, did not share Davitt’s conception of a parallel struggle between the Irish peasantry and the British industrial classes.99 This was certainly the case with the Lib-Labs. For example, Thomas Burt and Henry Broadhurst were wary of viewing the fight for Home Rule along class lines, instead preferring to focus their energies in 93 Cited in T.W. Moody, ‘Michael Davitt and the British Labour Movement, 1882–1906’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. 3 (1953), pp. 63–4. 94 Biagini, British Democracy, p. 59. 95 Allen, Joseph Cowen, p. 94. 96 Ibid., pp. 99–100. 97 L.W. Brady, T.P. O’Connor and the Liverpool Irish (London: Royal Historical Society, 1983), p. 44; Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p. 15. 98 Daily News, 16 Nov. 1885. 99 Morning Post, 29 June 1885.

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opposing coercion.100 Meanwhile, at the 1881 Stafford by-election, George Howell, standing as the sole Liberal candidate, refused to condemn Irish coercion, praising Liberal policy as ‘order and progress’, which earned him a swift rebuke from the local branch of the Land League, who called on the local Irish to ‘Despise him, scorn him, condemn him! Leave him at the poll with the odium and disgrace due to himself ’.101 Moreover, at the 1885 general election, when Howell came forward at Bethnal Green, he declined to give his support for Home Rule.102 Indeed, in 1885, apart from the notable exception of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where Cowen continued his attack on Gladstone’s Irish policy, Home Rule was not a prominent issue for British working-class radicals.103 This state of affairs changed dramatically following the events precipitated by Parnell’s manifesto advising the Irish voters in Britain to vote against the Liberals, which was released on the eve of the general election on 21 November 1885 in response to Gladstone’s refusal to be drawn into bidding for Irish support.104 The subsequent narrative of events is well known. Outside Ireland the Liberals won eighty-six seats more than the Conservatives, but with the Irish party MPs also numbering eighty-six, the latter held the balance of power in the Commons. In December the ‘Hawarden kite’ announced that Gladstone was moving towards Home Rule and, following Salisbury’s announcement that the Conservative administration would return to a policy of coercion, the Irish MPs and the Liberals combined to throw them out of office. On 10 April 1886 Gladstone introduced his Irish Home Rule bill. It was now the Liberals’ turn to draw parallels between Home Rule and justice for English workers.105 This rhetoric was taken up by the Lib-Lab MPs, who were unanimous in their support for Gladstone. On the eve of the 1886 general election Joseph Arch and Joseph Leicester released an address ‘to the sons of toil and artisans of England’, which praised Gladstone as ‘the greatest of living English statesmen and philanthropists’. The address, which was backed by the other Lib-Lab members, appealed to the workers’ sense of imperial patriotism, stating that The British empire is not dismembered nor disintegrated, but strengthened and consolidated by having twenty-three Home Rule parliaments. Why 100 Biagini, British Democracy, pp. 58–9. 101 Stafford Chronicle, 12 Nov. 1881. 102 Leventhal, Respectable Radical, pp. 205–6. 103 Biagini, British Democracy, pp. 64–5. 104 C.H.D.  Howard, ‘The Parnell Manifesto of 21 November 1885 and the Schools Question’, English Historical Review, 62 (1947), pp. 42–51. 105 Biagini, British Democracy, p. 71.

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should not Ireland make a twenty-fourth? … Your support will [deliver] increased vitality to our empire.106

The Lib-Labs also sought to draw parallels between their constituents and the plight of the Irish working class. In Durham, John Wilson insisted that the miners closely identified with the policy because they ‘like to manage their own business and don’t always submit to the powers that be’.107 Certainly, in the nonconformist coalfields of the north-east, the pitmen, as Thomas Burt boasted, were ‘thoroughly and heartily in favour of the principle of Home Rule’.108 Moreover, according to Arch, the ‘Norfolk labourers comprehend the Irish question as they comprehend that their own shackles have not yet been fully removed’.109 The level of united support within organised Liberalism for Gladstone’s proposals was striking.110 By the end of April, the Liberal ‘hundreds’ at major urban centres such as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham, Manchester, Leeds, Derby and Halifax had overwhelmingly declared in favour of Gladstone.111 The central council of the Birmingham Liberal Association, in contrast, was split on the issue.112 Key figures such as Schnadhorst and R.W. Dale sought a compromise position, but Chamberlain’s insistence on total opposition to the city’s Gladstonian Liberals at the 1886 general election triggered a period of internecine conflict that was only resolved when the Liberal unionists seceded two years later.113 The situation in Birmingham, though, was unique. In Leicester, for example, a member of the ‘five hundred’ informed Schnadhorst of ‘the unanimity of our people here [in favour of Gladstone] … It is a fact, and this is between us, the name of Mr Chamberlain is received in silence’.114 In May 1886 the NLF officially backed Gladstone’s proposals, prompting Chamberlain’s resignation, and at its annual conference the federation reported that ‘while not a single Liberal association withdrew from membership, within a month upwards 106 Leeds Mercury, 14 June 1886. 107 ‘Lecture by John Wilson, MP for Mid-Durham’, cited in Biagini, British Democracy, p. 72. 108 Northern Echo, 31 May 1886. 109 Pall Mall Gazette, 15 July 1886. 110 P.C. Griffiths, ‘The Caucus and the Liberal Party in 1886’, History, 61 (1976), p. 187. 111 For Manchester see: Benjamin L. Green (North-West Manchester Liberal Association) to F. Schnadhorst, 14 Apr. 1886, in Manuscript papers relating to Francis Schnadhorst and the organisation of the Liberal party, 1881–1962 (Hereafter Schnadhorst papers), Box 1, f. 132, Bristol University Special Collections. 112 H. Broadhurst to F. Schnadhorst, 11 June 1886; F. Wright to Cllr. Whateley, 26 June 1886, in Schnadhorst Papers, f. 46, f. 31. 113 Griffiths, ‘The Caucus and the Liberal Party’, p. 193. 114 G. Chapman to F. Schnadhorst, 2 May 1886, in Schnadhorst Papers, f. 99.

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of fifty associations became affiliated’.115 Meanwhile, the federation moved its headquarters from Birmingham to London, merging extra-parliamentary organisation with the London party machine, and therefore installing Radical views in the parliamentary headquarters.116 The first question that needs to be addressed is how did this chain of events affect the labour movement’s relationship with organised Liberalism? Although there is a notable lack of evidence concerning working-class defections from local Liberal associations in the summer of 1886,117 there is regional evidence that suggests that the labour movement, in its dealing with organised Liberalism, equivocated on the importance of Home Rule in relation to labour representation. In Bristol the district Labour League brought forward J.D. Marshall, a working man’s candidate, to be selected by the council of the Bristol Liberal Association only for the council to vote by 100–9 in favour of Alfred Carpenter, a London surgeon.118 The Labour League, who announced that ‘unless the Liberals were prepared to make some concession to the Labour party, their determination was to break down the monopoly’, persisted with Marshall’s candidature and made their priorities clear.119 One League member stated that ‘whilst he had always been a Home Ruler, he believed that the English working men had interests at stake as well as their Irish brethren,’ while another insisted that ‘the principle [Marshall’s] candidature represents is of greater importance to the country than any Irish question’.120 Although Marshall eventually retired, believing that his campaign was being partly funded by the Tories, the Labour League were clearly opposed to the Bristol Liberal association’s apparent wish to prioritise Home Rule over labour representation in Parliament.121 Meanwhile, a meeting of the ‘working men of North Birmingham’ manifested even clearer priorities when a resolution in favour of ‘having candidates pledged in favour of labour representation and Home Rule’ was defeated by an amendment stating that ‘while this meeting is in favour of labour representation it is not in favour of Home Rule’ as Gladstone’s proposals would be ‘used as a leaver [sic] to obtain further 115 NLF, Annual Reports, 1886, p. 17. 116 The Times, 21 Sept. 1886; Griffiths, ‘The Caucus and the Liberal Party’, p. 196; T.W.  Heyck, The Dimensions of British Radicalism, pp. 162–3. 117 Griffiths, ‘The Caucus and the Liberal Party’, p. 195. Griffiths cites the fact that Reynolds’s Newspaper ‘does not record any working-class defections in its extensive treatment of these debates’. 118 Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 19 June 1886. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., 21 June 1886. 121 Ibid., 1 July, 9 July 1886.

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concessions’ until Ireland became ‘entirely separate’.122 The Bordesley divisional Liberal association in Birmingham, which had a high workingclass membership, was also split over Home Rule. When Broadhurst retired from the division, citing his ‘strong disinclination to stand for a place where strained relationships seem to have taken the place of mutual confidence’, Schnadhorst and Jesse Collings, the honorary secretary of the NLF and prominent land reformer who opposed Gladstone’s proposals, were deadlocked following a vote of the divisional council to choose his replacement.123 Schnadhorst subsequently gave way, but Lawson Tait, standing as a Gladstonian Liberal against Collings, ran a campaign that stressed not only his adherence to Home Rule but also the damage his opponent had done in forcing Broadhurst’s retirement, warning that ‘if Mr Collings raised a finger against labour representation he was the worst friend they had’.124 Thus, while there is little doubt that Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule bill was generally supported by the labour movement, local electoral considerations had the potential to make them recalibrate the relative importance of Home Rule and labour representation. Organised Liberalism’s support for Gladstone’s Irish proposals also had an impact on their finances. Clearly, the falling away of wealthy subscribers increased the likelihood that local party managers would shy away from nominating working-class candidates who required heavy subsidies.125 Private donations to H.J.  Wilson’s campaigns in Holmsfirth fell from £200 in 1885 to £43 in 1886, while in Gladstone’s Midlothian constituency the Liberal association suffered a dramatic collapse in its income.126 However, local variations must again be taken into account. For example, the Nottingham Liberal Union expanded its operations in the summer of 1886 and was able to bring in Broadhurst for the western division, while in Leicester the withdrawal of wealthy subscribers actually acted as a catalyst for workingclass Liberals to establish their own political organisations.127 Moreover, as James Moore has argued, ‘with two general elections in nine months it would be surprising if local parties did not suffer some short-term financial problems,’ but by 1887 many associations, such as Manchester, had quickly recovered and found new subscribers.128 122 Birmingham Daily Post, 25 June 1886. 123 H. Broadhurst to F. Schnadhorst, 11 June 1886, Schnadhorst Papers, f. 46; Griffiths, ‘The Caucus and the Liberal Party’, p. 193. 124 Birmingham Daily Post, 2 July 1886. 125 Barker, Gladstone and Radicalism, p. 130. 126 Ibid. 127 J.R. Moore, The Transformation of Urban Liberalism: Party Politics and Urban Governance in Late Nineteenth-Century England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), p. 110. 128 Ibid., p. 82.

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The second, arguably more important, question to ask is whether the Irish nationalists’ political organisation and strategy, and Gladstone’s subsequent support for Home Rule, influenced how the leaders of the labour movement conceived the notion of a ‘Labour party’ and its relationship with the Liberals. The Irish nationalists had certainly established a model for attempting to use organisational strength to pressurise the Liberal party. At the first annual conference of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain (HRCGB) held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in August 1873, Isaac Butt warned that ‘if the Liberal party of England wished to keep the Irish vote upon their side, they must defer to Irish feelings’.129 Interestingly, in making this point, Butt was careful not to advocate the establishment of ‘a separate Irish interest’ in Britain, asking ‘why should not the Irish take up an English workingman who will pledge himself to Home Rule?’130 In this sense he had to negotiate the same tension between a party based on a group of people or a party based on a policy that was confronting Champion and Hardie in their competing conceptions of a ‘Labour party’. While Butt had largely seen the HRCBG as a means to organise the Irish vote to directly pressure Liberal politicians into responding to Irish issues, Parnell developed the idea of co-ordinating the Irish vote to determine whether the Liberals or Conservatives were successful in any one constituency, claiming in 1878 that Measures had been taken to inquire into the voting power of the Irish population in other constituencies, and it was by proper organisation they could hold the balance of power between the two great political parties in Great Britain.131

Parnell, though, was claiming too much here. Although the HRCBG had established 100 branches in 1874, by 1878 their number had severely declined, and ‘atrophy’ had set in.132 It was not until the establishment of the Irish National League (INL) in October 1882 that the Irish nationalists had something approaching a party machine.133 The INL had a distinct programme resting on five issues – national self-government, land law reform, local self-government, extension of the parliamentary and municipal franchises, and the development and encouragement of the labour and industrial interests of Ireland134 – and had 129 Nation, 30 Aug. 1873. 130 Ibid., 1 Mar. 1873. 131 Cited in A. O’Day, ‘The Political Organization of the Irish in Britain, 1867–90’, in R. Swift and S. Gilley (eds), The Irish in Britain, 1815–1939 (London: Pinter Publishers, 1989), p. 183. 132 Ibid., pp. 194–5. 133 Biagini, British Democracy, pp. 190–1. 134 Freeman’s Journal, 16 Oct. 1882.

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established a four-tier ­hierarchical structure: the local branch, the county convention, the organising committee, and the parliamentary party.135 The organisation grew rapidly – from 242 Irish branches in 1884 to 1,286 in 1886 – and achieved an effective level of national co-ordination, though individual branches varied greatly in size, with some containing only a handful of members.136 The British labour movement, in contrast, had neither the united willpower nor the means to actualise such a model themselves. The founders of the LEA did make some attempt to establish a national framework by dividing Britain and Ireland into eight districts in order to focus their efforts, but the results were uneven at best. As discussed above, local labour activists often had competing priorities, and a year after the LEA’s formation affiliated labour associations had been established in only twelve towns.137 Indeed, the labour movement’s inability to imitate the organisational features of Irish nationalism was reflective of the overriding difference between bringing together the various lines of a movement with a clearly defined agenda, and trying to co-ordinate the electoral activity of a class with competing political, industrial and religious loyalties. It was also problematic for the British labour movement to carry out the ‘balance of power’ strategy that Parnell had suggested in 1878. While it was, in theory, possible for the LEA to attempt to co-ordinate how the workers in one particular constituency should vote (and the LRL had discussed doing this in 1873), this strategy could not be translated to the House of Commons, where the Lib-Labs, as the sole direct representatives of the labour movement, where firmly wedded to the Liberal party, despite any rhetorical claims to be a ‘Labour party’ in Parliament. Moreover, as they numbered only twelve in 1885 and nine in 1886, the arithmetic of the Commons was against them. By the 1880s, the Irish nationalists’ ‘balance of power’ strategy was firmly concentrated on the House of Commons. In 1882, Thomas Healy, who was MP for Wexford at the time, wrote that The Irish Party must be vigorous enough to overcome not merely the natural reluctance of ministries to undertake large legislative changes for their own sake, but the further hesitation superimposed on [a Liberal] government by the standing attitude of the Tories.138

For Healy, ‘political action between separate peoples is founded not upon justice but upon necessity’. Thus there was no reason to believe that the 135 C. O’Brien, Parnell and his Party, 1880–1890 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 133. For a detailed examination of the INL see Biagini, British Democracy, pp. 190–205. 136 Biagini, British Democracy, p. 191. 137 Report of the Twentieth Annual Trades Union Congress (1887), pp. 28–9. 138 T.M. Healy, ‘The Irish Parliamentary Party’, Fortnightly Review, 32 (July to Dec. 1882), p. 626.

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Liberals would be more ideologically predisposed to give the Home Rule to the Irish than the Conservatives: it was simply a matter of who needed Irish party votes in the Commons. Davitt, who continued to go further than the parliamentary wing of Irish nationalism in drawing analogies with British working-class radicalism, raised the spectre of the Labour movement holding the balance of power in the Commons: Labour organisations have only to effect a slight change of tactics. Instead of waiting on political parties, they have only to permit political parties to wait on them. If they would do this, as they might very easily, we should witness remarkable changes … there is hardly any enterprise in which labour might more readily and withal more usefully engage co-operatively than in running a powerful press. By this means the constituencies might be educated up to the level of combination to return a Labour party fifty or sixty strong to the House of Commons, instructed to act independently of political parties, and with a view to the interests of labour.139

Of course, Davitt’s proposal was unrealistic. With only twelve Lib-Labs returned in 1885, even the most optimistic proponents of the LEA were not envisioning returning fifty Labour MPs to Parliament. Nevertheless, the result of the 1885 general election, and Gladstone’s subsequent conversion to Home Rule, showed the labour movement the possibilities of pressure based on the ‘necessity’ of maintaining a majority in the House of Commons. This is not to say that the Irish nationalist movement, particularly the INL, could have a decisive impact on Conservative and Liberal party fortunes in English constituencies. As Alan O’Day has argued, outside of the Scotland division of Liverpool, which returned Thomas O’Connor, the Irish influence may have been limited to just three seats in 1885.140 However, what was important was the perception that not only the Irish electorate but also the Irish MPs were a factor in the political calculations of the two main parties.141 As Hodge from Glasgow argued during a debate on labour representation at the 1888 TUC, ‘it would only be when they took up the position which the Parnellites had taken up that they would be able to change the circumstances necessary to ameliorate the conditions of labour’.142 139 M. Davitt, Leaves from a Prison Diary or Lectures to a ‘Solitary’ Audience, II [1885] (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972), pp. 160–1. 140 These were Manchester South-West, Leeds East and Cumberland Cockermouth. See A. O’Day, ‘Irish Influence on Parliamentary Elections in London, 1885–1914: A Simple Test’, in S. Swift and R. Gilley (eds), The Irish in the Victorian City (London: Croom Helm, 1985), pp. 98–105. 141 O’Day, ‘The Political Organization of the Irish in Britain’, p. 186. 142 Report of the Twenty-First annual Trades Union Congress (1888), p. 24.

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The Parnellite strategy was advocated most strenuously by Henry Champion. Referring to the ‘precedent’ of Parnell’s manifesto of 21 November 1885, he wrote that the Labour Party sets before itself the task of furthering the interests of the working class by securing the legislative restriction of competition through the compulsory reduction of the hours of labour. The question which will interest the practical politician … is how the force can be found to bring such matters into the sphere of practical politics. A precedent – a successful precedent – exists. Methods once practised by others with striking results are now being used by the Labour party, with a success which fully warrants a belief in certain and speedy triumph.143

For Champion, the logic was clear. The result of the 1885 general election was ‘to render the Liberal party dependent on Mr. Parnell’; now ‘the wishes of the Irish leader became the chief factor in the programme and policy of the Liberals’. Thus, ‘any political project can be speedily brought to the front if its adherents are possessed of sufficient electoral power to hold the balance between the parties’.144 To validate his claim that the Labour party was carrying out such methods ‘with striking results’, he pointed to recent by-elections in Ayr Burghs and the Isle of Thanet, where the threat of a ‘Labour party’ candidate had, according to Champion, persuaded the Liberal candidate to adopt a programme supporting key labour demands, such as the eight hour bill, an arbitration court for miners, manhood suffrage and the payment of members. However, Champion’s analogy was fundamentally flawed. The Parnellite strategy had appeared to work because the eighty-six Irish MPs elected in 1885 held the balance of power in the Commons. In this context, Healy’s model of ‘necessity’ had been realised. Champion’s ‘New Labour Party’, in contrast, had no parliamentary representation. His political strategy was confined to electioneering. Indeed, the paradox of Champion’s position was that, if his strategy of using stalking horse Labour candidates to pressurise Liberal nominees to adopt a more Labour-friendly programme succeeded, there would never be any need for a Labour Party in the House of Commons. To use the Irish MPs as a model for a ‘New Labour Party’ was to draw a false analogy. Nevertheless, the perception that the potential of the Irish vote was a key factor in the political calculations of the two main parties gave would-be ‘Labour’ candidates a new rhetorical device to threaten seemingly intransigent Liberal associations. Keir Hardie’s campaign at Mid-Lanark illustrates this point. 143 Champion, ‘The New Labour Party’, p. 89. 144 Ibid., p. 90. See also Champion’s letter in The Times, 23 Jan. 1888, which makes the same case.

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Mid-Lanark and its immediate aftermath In April 1888, when Keir Hardie come forward at the Mid-Lanark by-election, the competing interests of organised Liberalism, the LEA and its critics within the labour movement came together. The narrative of his candidature at Mid-Lanark, a mining division near Glasgow with a strong minority of Irishmen, is well known.145 Rejected by the local Liberal association, who subsequently selected the London-based barrister John Wynford Philipps, Hardie stood as an independent labour candidate but was comfortably defeated, polling only 617 votes. Hardie made his appeal to the Liberal association on two grounds. Firstly, he argued that it was ‘imperative that someone intimately connected with mines and having practical acquaintance with mining should be in the House of Commons’.146 Secondly, he unambiguously pressed his Liberal credentials. He described himself as ‘a Radical of a somewhat advanced type’ and a supporter of Home Rule, who had been a loyal member of the Liberal party all his adult life.147 Even following the decision of the caucus Hardie insisted that he was fully committed to the Liberal programme established at Nottingham a year earlier. Yet, he was determined to go to the poll, whatever the cost: Better split the party now, if there is to be a split, than at a general election; and if the Labour party only make their power felt now, terms will not be wanting when the general election comes.148

Hardie’s candidature was backed not only by Champion but also by Threlfall of the LEA, who announced that The members of the Labour party naturally look with considerable interest to this first attempt to secure for Scotland a labour representative … It is practically a test question as to how far the professed love of the Liberal party for labour representation is a reality.149

This declaration of support for Hardie, and Schnadhorst’s subsequent journey to Glasgow, where he unsuccessfully attempted to persuade him to withdraw, 145 K.O. Morgan, Keir Hardie: Radical and Socialist (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984 edn), pp. 23–43; Howell, British Workers and the ILP, pp. 144–7; J.G. Kellas, ‘The Mid-Lanark By-Election (1888) and the Scottish Labour Party (1888–1894)’, Parliamentary Affairs, 18 (1964–5), pp. 318–29. 146 See Hardie’s letter to the chair of the Mid-Lanark Liberal Association published in the Miner, Apr. 1888, p. 38. 147 Morgan, Hardie, p. 25. 148 Miner, Mar. 1888. 149 Threlfall to Hardie, 29 Mar. 1888, published in the Miner, Apr. 1888. For Champion’s support, see his letter in The Times, 18 Apr. 1888.

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gave what began as a local contest a national dimension.150 Rightly or wrongly, Mid-Lanark became the prism through which the national Liberal party’s attitude towards labour representation was assessed.151 Hardie’s campaign was a seemingly paradoxical one of professing his allegiance to the Liberal party while simultaneously attacking his Liberal opponents in Mid-Lanark. In this sense, he was echoing the earlier positions of labour activists who distinguished between the national Liberal party at Westminster and its local manifestation as the caucus. He insisted that a vote for himself was a vote for Gladstone, but warned that ‘the Labour party is the party of the future and the lesson of Mid-Lanark will be such as … middle class Liberalism has never before received’.152 Hardie believed that the national leadership of the Liberal party were ‘anxious to come to terms with the Labour party, but the local men are determined that none but a monied man is fit to represent them’.153 Given the distinction that he drew between the national leadership and the local organisation, it would be wrong to see his campaign as symbolising the beginning of an inexorable break between the Liberal party and the labour movement. Hardie’s dual position also put his ‘Sons of Labour’ manifesto into perspective. He undoubtedly believed that a national programme was necessary and that a distinct organisation was needed to pressurise the Liberal party to accept it, but his language of a ‘new party’ was more of a rhetorical tool to give a common identity to his supporters than a concrete plan to establish an independent Labour party that would supersede both the Liberals and Conservatives in the House of Commons. Hardie’s defeat can be explained in terms of his inability to secure the support of the two main constituencies to which he principally made his appeal: the Irish and the miners. Champion’s failure to gain Parnell’s endorsement of Hardie, and the subsequent decision of the INL to denounce any Liberals who contemplated dissent, gained the attention of the national press, but as the Irish amounted to only one-sixth of the electorate, it was arguably the miners’ loyalty to Gladstonian Liberalism that paralysed his campaign.154 Hardie’s own diagnosis appeared to confirm this, as he 150 Schnadhorst publicly claimed that he had not gone to Glasgow to arbitrate, stating that ‘the difficulty in question can be dealt with by those more immediately concerned without interference from outside’. See The Times, 21 Apr. 1888. It later emerged that Schnadhorst had offered Hardie a Liberal seat at the next general election on the condition that he retired. See Morgan, Hardie, p. 30. 151 For example see the Scotsman, 23 Apr. 1888, which speculated whether the contest represented the disintegration of the Liberal party as a whole. 152 Miner, Apr. 1888. 153 Ibid. 154 Morgan, Hardie, p. 29.

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believed that ‘few know how much Mr Gladstone’s name counts for till they come to try and fight a political battle without it’.155 He did secure the backing of the Glasgow Trades Council, but trade unionism was generally weak in the region, leaving little organisational basis from which he could mount a significant challenge to local organised Liberalism.156 Hardie’s campaign itself, which has been described as a ‘pot-pourri of late Victorian radicalism at its most variegated’, was also a source of weakness.157 Tainted by his involvement in securing Tory money for socialist candidates in 1885, Champion was a rather questionable asset, while his agent, Tom Mann, was notably erratic. Hardie’s refusal to respond to Schnadhorst’s mediation also prompted Threlfall to withdraw the LEA’s support, reflecting the fact that, despite his rhetoric of labour cutting ‘itself adrift from the great parties of the country’, Threlfall’s political compass was rooted in Lib-Labism. Hardie immediately attempted to mythologise the defeat. Writing in the Miner, he praised the ‘gallant six hundred’ and declared that In days to come the great Liberal victory in Mid-Lanark will be remembered only in connection with the stand you made. Your vote marks a turning point in history … There is such a thing as a policy of revenge, and the Labour party is just strong enough, not to win seats for itself, but to lose them [for] official Liberalism.158

Although Hardie’s narrative of a ‘turning point’ has been taken up by historians, it is significant that in the immediate aftermath of the contest, leading articles in the national and provincial press played down its importance. The Times, which was traditionally sceptical about the predictive abilities of by-elections, stated that ‘the Mid-Lanark election cannot be regarded as possessing any particular diagnostic value’, while the Morning Post insisted that ‘it is idle to attach any great important to most bye-elections’.159 Where interpretations of the result were offered, the potential rise of an independent labour movement barely figured, although the Pall Mall Gazette suggested that the ‘Liberals, having triumphed can afford to be reasonable. Now … is the acceptable time for … arranging a modus vivendi [with labour] whereby such unseemly divisions may in future be avoided’.160 However, most editorials concluded that the victory was a ‘striking success’ for the Liberal party and an ‘approval of Home Rule’.161 155 156 157 158 159 160 161

Miner, May. 1888. Howell, British Workers and the ILP, pp. 146–7; Pelling, Social Geography, p. 408. Morgan, Hardie, p. 29. Miner, May 1888. The Times, 28 Apr. 1888; Morning Post, 28 Apr. 1888. Pall Mall Gazette, 28 Apr. 1888. For example see Daily News, 28 Apr. 1888 and Manchester Times, 5 May 1888.

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Reynolds’s Newspaper, the most sympathetic to the cause of labour representation, urged organised Liberalism to ‘set their house in order’, declaring that ‘Mr Schnadhorst, if he cares to save the party, must reckon with the Labour vote in every district of the country’. However, for Reynolds’s, the most regrettable aspect of the election was not organised Liberalism rejecting the demands of labour, but ‘the attitude of the Irish members and the Home Rule party generally towards Mr Keir Hardie and the Labour party’, and the paper attacked the Irish leaders for being ‘wantonly engaged in a contest with which they have nothing to do’.162 There was also the wider issue of whether the implications of a Scottish contest could be extrapolated to English politics. Indeed, historians have convincingly shown that Hardie’s initiative can be located ‘within the sentiments of Scottish Radicalism and the fissiparous organisational tendencies of Scottish Liberalism’.163 His campaign certainly had a Scottish dimension. For example, his supporters tied his candidature to the issue of national identity. Robert Cunninghame Graham, a Radical MP for North-West Lanarkshire, hoped that ‘all Scotchmen will see the importance of not returning an Englishman’, while Lady Florence Dixie wrote that it was ‘high time the working-classes of Scotland shook themselves free from the wire-pulling orders of the English Liberal clique’.164 In his campaign speeches Hardie boasted that he was the only true local, Scottish candidate, though his association with Champion and the LEA encouraged the Liberals to paint him as the carpetbagger.165 In defeat, he also appealed to the ‘Scotchmen’, asking ‘can we ever expect … a Parliament to protect our crofters, to reform our liquor laws, to defend our miners’ lives – if we return Englishmen?’166 In this context, although Hardie and his supporters made the contest a test case of the state of the relationship between labour and Liberalism throughout the United Kingdom, he ran a campaign that was closely tied to issues of Scottish national identity. Moreover, Hardie’s first organisational initiative following his defeat was to establish the Scottish Labour Party (SLP). Formed at Glasgow in May 1888, the SLP laid out a nineteen-point programme that was largely an extension of Hardie’s ‘Sons of Labour’ manifesto: it brought together radical and labour demands, and maintained its focus on issues directly affecting the miners, reflecting the geography of the programme’s origin.167 It is 162 163 164 165 166 167

Reynolds’s Newspaper, 29 Apr. 1888. Howell, British Workers and the ILP, p. 144; Morgan, Hardie, pp. 23–33. See their letters to Hardie published in the Miner, Apr. 1888. Morgan, Hardie, p. 26. Miner, May 1888. For the programme see the Miner, Sept. 1888.

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important not to inflate the importance of the SLP in terms of representing a leap forward for the cause of independent labour representation. Indeed, the most striking aspect of the new ‘party’ was not its programme but its ambivalent attitude towards organised Liberalism. At the inaugural meeting, it was agreed that ‘labour associations be formed in the constituency with a view to independent electoral activities or joining the Liberal association as may seem fit’.168 The leading members of the party were also equivocal. While insisting that he had severed his connection with official Liberalism, Hardie suggested that working men would support the Liberal party if it adopted the SLP’s programme,169 while John Ferguson, leader of the Home Government branch of the INL and vice-president of the SLP, informed Hardie that the new party should ‘enter the Liberal association and work through it’.170 Indeed, echoing his earlier stance on the membership of the LEA, Hardie was noticeably free from prejudice concerning who could join the SLP, writing that ‘if anyone, peasant or peer, is willing to accept the programme, and work with and for the party, his help will be gladly accepted’.171 Clearly, the Mid-Lanark contest had not whetted the labour movement’s appetite for independent political representation. This fact was not lost on the leaders of the NLF, who, in their report of the by-election, concluded that The difficulties attending the question of labour representation are very grave; they do not, however, arise from the leaders of the party, who would gladly welcome more labour members in the House of Commons, nor from those responsible for the organisation of the party, who are prepared to use such legitimate influence as they possess to assist the cause. The great obstacle arises from the fact that workman themselves … are greatly divided on the subject. Until the leaders of the labour party have overcome this difficulty it is obvious that the success of the cause cannot be assured.172

Given the fact that, twenty years after the Second Reform Act, the leaders of the labour movement were still equivocating over their relationship with organised Liberalism, it is necessary to ask to what extent the situation by the end of 1888 reflected a significant change from the campaigns of the LRL’s candidates in the 1870s. After all, although the LEA resolved to ‘promote the interests of labour, irrespective of the convenience of any 168 169 170 171 172

Ibid., May 1888. Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p. 72. Quoted in Morgan, Hardie, p. 33. Miner, Sept. 1888. NLF, Annual Reports, 1888, pp. 29–30.

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party or candidate’ at its inaugural conference in October 1888, this clarion call was little different to the LRL’s declaration, made in 1869, that ‘for the future the working classes intended to take no heed of the bugbear cry “do not divide the Liberal interest.”’173 Yet, there were important differences between 1868 and 1888 in terms of how the labour movement conceptualised its identity in relation to official Liberalism. Although in 1873 the LRL had published an address calling on the workers to organise as ‘a great Labour party’, this had been a temporary and largely rhetorical response to the sense of disenchantment following the Liberal government’s Criminal Law Amendment Act. In contrast, by 1888 the LEA’s sustained use of the term ‘Labour party’ reflected a clear recognition that a distinct, centralised organisation with a specific platform was needed to promote labour representation, and this was backed by a genuine effort to establish local labour associations and co-ordinate their activity, although the results were notably uneven. Hardie, moreover, was clearly more belligerent in his dealings with official Liberalism than Howell, Odger and Potter had been, and his ‘Sons of Labour’ manifesto that was appropriated by the SLP achieved something that the LRL had failed to do: establish a clearly defined political programme. However, like Howell, Odger and Potter, he made a distinction between the intransigence of local organised Liberalism and the national Liberal party. It is therefore difficult to dispute Kenneth Morgan’s contention that at the end of 1888, ‘Hardie’s links with Liberalism were still far from being severed’.174 Conclusion As the above discussion makes clear, the return of twelve Lib-Lab MPs at the 1885 general election should not obscure the fault lines in the relationship between the wider labour movement and official Liberalism. While it is true that the election of the Lib-Lab MPs reflected an important advance in the ability of local trade unions, particularly miners’ associations, to broker deals with local organised Liberalism to secure the nomination of working-class candidates, the role of the caucus in disabling labour candidatures was still a source of frustration for both the wider Lib-Lab movement and individual labour activists. The debate over who or what constituted a new ‘Labour party’ also highlighted significant tensions not only in the relations between the Lib-Labs, trade unionism and the wider labour movement, but also within the groups themselves. The Lib-Lab MPs viewed themselves as a ‘Labour party’ within Parliament, the LEA, though sympathetic to Lib-Labism, 173 Daily News, 5 Nov. 1869 and 15 Oct. 1888. 174 Morgan, Hardie, p. 36.

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believed it was the extra-parliamentary organisation that constituted the new ‘party’, while Hardie insisted that a ‘Labour party’ could only exist when it had established a definite political programme. Meanwhile, the behaviour of labour activists in the immediate aftermath of Gladstone’s declaration in favour of Irish Home Rule revealed that they could hold different priorities to the leaders of organised Liberalism. In terms of the influence of the Irish nationalists, the ‘balance of power’ strategy they pursued, which resulted in Gladstone’s Home Rule bill, created the perception that united action by an independent party could force a government to acquiesce to certain legislative demands, and this certainly gave Champion and Hardie a rhetorical device with which to articulate the role of a ‘Labour party’. Given the relative weakness of the LEA, however, this analogy was flawed. Despite the clear fault lines running between the Lib-Labs, the LEA and individual labour activists such as Champion and Hardie, it is important to note that they were united by their refusal to close the door on closely co-operating with official Liberalism. Thus, while Hardie and his supporters may have presented the Mid-Lanark by-election as a ‘test case’ for the Liberal party’s attitude towards labour representation, in the immediate aftermath of the contest, none of the leading actors in the labour movement identified the beginnings of an inexorable break with Liberalism that would lead to the formation of an independent Labour party.

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5 Rethinking the ‘Revival of Socialism’: Socialists, Liberals and the Caucus, 1881–8 Socialists, Liberals and the Caucus, 1881–8

The 1880s witnessed the emergence of three socialist organisations in England: the Social-Democratic Federation (SDF), the Socialist League and the Fabian Society. In London and throughout various other provincial urban centres in England, these three groups attempted to educate and agitate amongst the workers, leading historians to identity this period as witnessing a ‘revival of socialism’.1 Through their activism, the fledging socialist groups interacted not only with each other, but also with organised Liberalism. Significantly, in their official publications, they were antagonistic towards each other and frequently blamed an intransigent, organised Liberalism for holding back the rise of socialism. This picture was subsequently entrenched by the autobiographies of socialist activists who depicted themselves as heroic pioneers fighting against the nefarious leaders of local Liberalism.2 For example, Henry Snell, a member of the SDF who later became a Labour MP, wrote that ‘Liberalism’ in the 1880s ‘was still regarded as an audacious political enterprise’ and ‘the working-class vote was a sacred preserve into which no Socialist poacher should be allowed to put his unclean feet’.3 Although a number of innovative studies have highlighted the ways in which the identities of socialist organisations were created by contemporaries,4 the historiography of Britain’s first socialist organisations, particularly the SDF, remains wedded to their official publications and autobiographies. For a helpful overview of this period see Bevir, The Making of British Socialism. 1 For a useful discussion of labour autobiography see Tanner, ‘Socialist Pioneers and the 2 Art of Political Biography’, pp. 284–91 and Lawrence, Speaking for the People, pp. 259–61. Lord Snell, Men, Movements and Myself (London: Dent, 1936), p. 63. Snell was Labour 3 MP for Woolwich East from 1922 to 1931. Hannam and Hunt, ‘Gendering the Stories of Socialism’, pp. 102–18. For an excellent 4 examination of how members of the SDF articulated women’s movements see Hunt, Equivocal Feminists. See also June Hannam and Karen Hunt, Socialist Women.

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The aim of this chapter is to overcome this defect. It argues that we need to rethink not only the way in which England’s fledging socialist organisations interacted with each other and official Liberalism, but also the reasons why socialist activists failed to convert working-class Liberal supporters to their cause. In order to do this, this chapter offers a new analysis for understanding the ‘revival of socialism’ in England in the 1880s. Rather than relying on the positions printed in the socialist organisations’ own journals, this new narrative draws from the speeches made by socialist activists when they campaigned at the grass-roots level. When one refocuses from how socialists theorised in their own publications to what was said when they directly addressed the public, it becomes clear that activists were willing to negotiate the official policies of their respective organisations in a bid to win working-class support. This was particularly the case in an electoral contest when a socialist candidate challenged the nominee of a Liberal caucus. The first half of the chapter therefore examines John Burns’s candidature for the SDF in Nottingham West at the 1885 general election. Not only did Burns’s speeches deviate from the positions published in Justice, the official organ of the SDF, but also the issue of the ‘caucus’ dominated the campaign discourse, and Burns’s anti-caucus rhetoric was turned against him by members of the local Liberal association. An analysis that is sensitive to what was said and done at the ground level also reveals that the degree to which different socialist groups co-operated with each other and interacted with organised Liberalism was shaped by the local political environment. Case studies of socialist candidates at local elections provide a useful insight into this dynamic. This chapter therefore analyses socialist candidatures at local elections in Nottingham and London, paying particular attention to the extent to which socialist candidates from different organisations, which traditionally have been seen as opposing each other, were willing to co-operate. The ability of socialist activists to secure the endorsement of local radical and Liberal associations, in certain districts where they were closely identified with their community, is also examined. A new narrative that is no longer tied to the socialist organisations’ publications also allows for a re-evaluation of the reasons behind the failure of England’s early socialist groups to convert more workers away from Liberalism and to their cause. As discussed below, activists from a variety of socialist organisations were flexible in their electioneering, and therefore the notion of the caucus holding back the socialist cause, a narrative created by the socialists themselves and arguably perpetuated by labour historians, needs to be challenged. In particular, an explanation of the failure of socialist candidates at the polls must take into account their inability to penetrate the local political environment, particularly the links between organised Liberalism, nonconformity and trade unionism. This

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chapter therefore assesses the reasons for Burns’s defeat at Nottingham West by considering the city’s political culture. Moreover, socialist activists who engaged with strikes were also willing to moderate official positions, and given this adaptability, it is necessary to move beyond the socialists’ inability to generate class conflict. To explore this point, the final part of the chapter analyses the Northumbrian miners’ strike of 1887, when socialist activists from different organisations co-operated with each other and modified their leaderships’ positions, but close ties between the miners, their union and nonconformity prevented the socialists converting the miners to their cause. This is certainly pertinent, as the most recent history of the SDF reduces explanations of its failures to the ‘non-revolutionary character of the British working classes’, arguing that ‘the inherited traditions in this country gave legitimacy to political institutions and sentiments which in turn largely precluded a revolutionary strategy’.5 Clearly, this is the same sort of narrow Marxist analysis that the SDF itself used to explain its failures. Of course, this new narrative does not deny the importance of socialist literature. Historians have greatly benefited from the large volume and varied content of these organisations’ publications. These works have facilitated the dissection of both the nature of their political philosophies and their political strategies. The chapter begins, therefore, with an analysis of how the three principal socialist organisations of the 1880s strategised their relationship with official Liberalism in their own journals. Socialist strategy and the caucus The three principal socialist organisations in England in the 1880s were the SDF, the Socialist League and the Fabian Society. Given the fact that these groups not only disagreed with each other over political strategy, but also within themselves, their stated positions towards engaging with the political process in general and organised Liberalism in particular require further exegesis. Initially formed as the Democratic Federation in London in 1881, the origins of the SDF have been tied to middle-class radical unease with organised Liberalism.6 However, Henry Pelling’s assertion that the DF may Crick, Social-Democratic Federation, pp. 291–2. To support this point, Crick cites the 5 argument of Theodore Rothstein, a prominent member of the SDF, who argued that the movement failed because the favourable economic situation of British capitalism acted as barrier to the organisation’s success. For a more wide-ranging discussion of the barriers to socialism see R. McKibbin, ‘Why was there no Marxism in Great Britain?’, English Historical Review, 99 (1984), pp. 297–331. M.S. Wilkins, ‘The Non-Socialist Origins of England’s First Important Socialist 6 Organisation’, International Review of Social History, 4 (1959), p. 199. The official history of

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be ‘regarded as the product of a reaction against the Chamberlain caucuses’ needs some qualification.7 The narrative of the federation’s establishment is relatively straightforward. On 5 March 1881 Joseph Cowen presided over a formative meeting attended by an eclectic mix of political activists, including delegates belonging to radical clubs from the West End of London; the Tory radical Henry Myers Hyndman; the positivists Edward Beesley and Henry Compton; and advanced radicals such as Herbert Burrows and Lloyd Jones. The motion to establish a ‘new and independent party’ to promote the ‘direct representation of labour and the improvement of the social position of the people’ was passed unanimously.8 Following a further series of meetings, the DF was formally launched in June, with Hyndman emerging as its leader. Although Hyndman had already confirmed his conversion to socialism in print,9 the DF’s programme was in no sense socialist. It did not advocate collective ownership of the means of production and, with the exception of land nationalisation, its proposals were political rather than social, being largely a continuation of earlier Chartist demands.10 To be sure, opposition to organised Liberalism had been manifest at the formative meetings. For example, Cowen, prefiguring his subsequent battles with the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Liberal Association, had declared that he Strongly condemned the caucus system, which made the present House of Commons the most slavish ever known. The caucuses all acted in support of the government, no matter what principle was at stake.11

However, while the leaders of the LRL had criticised the caucus for its the SDF is H.W. Lee and E. Archbold, Social-Democracy in Britain (London: The SocialDemocratic Federation, 1935). In addition to the weekly journal Justice, the Social-Democratic Federation also published Socialism Made Plain (London: The Social-Democratic Federation, 1883). In the 1880s the leader of the SDF, Henry Myers Hyndman, produced three works: England for All (London: E.W. Allen, 1881), The Historical Basis of Socialism in England (London: K. Paul, Trench & Co., 1883), and The Social Reconstruction of England (London: William Reeves, 1884). He also wrote an autobiography, Record of an Adventurous Life (London: Macmillan, 1911). Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p. 18. 7 Radical, 12 Mar. 1881. 8 H.M. Hyndman, ‘The Dawn of a Revolutionary Epoch’, Nineteenth Century, 9 (Jan. 9 1881), pp. 1–18. Hyndman subsequently published England for All (1881), in which he expounded the views of Marx but neglected to mention his name. 10 The DF’s programme called for: adult suffrage, triennial parliaments, equal electoral districts, payment of members, abolition of the House of Lords, bribery at elections to be made a felony, nationalisation of the land, and legislative independence for Ireland. See Pall Mall Gazette, 9 June 1881. For the influence of the Chartist movement on the DF and the SDF see: M. Bevir, ‘The British Social Democratic Federation 1880–1885’, pp. 207–29. 11 Daily News, 7 Mar. 1881.

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intransigence towards working-class candidatures, the founding members of the DF primarily attacked the caucus over its perceived support for the Liberal government’s policy of Irish coercion. As a leading article in the DF’s organ, the Radical, stated, The base uses to which the caucus may be put were never more clearly demonstrated than now. Whenever a popular demonstration takes place against the coercive policy of this pseudo-Liberal government … [its friends], possibly acting on instructions from the chief wire-pullers in London or Birmingham … call a hole-and-corner meeting of select Liberals … at which resolutions are passed with farcical solemnity.12

Meanwhile, given the weak state of organised Liberalism in London, it is clear that the delegates of the West End’s radical clubs were not solely motivated by the desire to break the caucus’s hold over the nomination of candidates. A lively focus for working-class political enthusiasm, the clubs were actually assertive in their attitude towards the capital’s mishmash of ad hoc Liberal committees.13 For example, as a member of the Battersea Liberal club wrote, ‘we find that being thoroughly independent makes us the more respected and feared by the caucus-system people’.14 This fierce sense of independence was thrown into sharp relief in the autumn of 1881 when, following Hyndman’s denouncement of the ‘hollowness and hypocrisy of capitalist Radicalism’, all except one of the Radical clubs defected from the DF.15 His belligerence was also too much for Cowen, who thereafter distanced himself from the organisation.16 Hyndman felt that the defections proved that ‘the Liberal wire-pullers, specially paid for that purpose, are at work taking the clubs from us,’ but his paranoia found little support, especially from Helen Taylor, the stepdaughter of John Stuart Mill and now a leading figure in the DF, who argued that a government led by Joseph Chamberlain and John Morley would be ‘a little better than any government now existing in the world’.17 In the first year of its existence, therefore, it was opposition to Irish coercion 12 Radical, 12 Mar. 1881. 13 For a useful study of London club land see Shipley, Club Life and Society. 14 Radical, 5 May 1881. 15 Quoted in W. Wolfe, From Radicalism to Socialism: Men and Ideas in the Formation of Fabian Socialist Doctrines, 1881–1889 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1975), p. 76. 16 Although Cowen had presided over the 5 March meeting, he attended neither the 19 March meeting, which discussed the organisation’s programme, nor the 8 June meeting, which formally launched the DF. He did, though, chair a DF meeting the following year to protest against Irish coercion, but thereafter did not associate himself with the organisation. See Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p. 22. 17 Hyndman to Helen Taylor, 2 Oct. 1881; Helen Taylor to Hyndman, Sept. 1881, John Stuart Mill-Helen Taylor Correspondence, British Library of Political Science.

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rather than the belief that the caucus was holding back the cause of direct labour representation that defined the fledging DF. As the working-class radicals left the federation, they were replaced by middle-class socialist recruits who were heavily influenced by Henry George’s writings on land reform.18 However, the organisation retained its radical identity. With the support of Edward Belfort Bax, Henry Hyde Champion and William Morris, the federation converted to socialism in 1883, accepting Hyndman’s declaration of principles in his Socialism Made Plain, which limited nationalisation to the railways, banks and the land.19 The following year the organisation was renamed the SDF, and the proposals for collective ownership were extended to the ‘means of production, distribution and exchange’.20 Although traditional interpretations of the SDF have labelled it ‘Britain’s first Marxist party’,21 the federation remained wedded to its radical roots.22 As Logie Barrow and Ian Bullock have highlighted, ‘radical political democracy remained integral to the SDF’s conception of socialism’.23 While the federation called for the nationalisation of all means of production, its strategy was political rather than social. For Hyndman, democracy needed ‘some parliament or convention to carry out the orders of the people’ and the organisation’s ten-point programme included a demand for adult suffrage, payment of members and triennial parliaments.24 Thus, the road to socialism began at the ballot box and not with industrial struggle. This was not, though, a view shared by all of the SDF’s council. In December 1884, with Hyndman determined to impress a parliamentary strategy upon the federation, William Morris and nine other members resigned from the SDF, rejecting his ‘political opportunism’.25 Born out of the split, the founders of the Socialist League set out to establish an alternative strategy. Morris, writing in its journal, Commonweal, argued that 18 Wolfe, From Radicalism to Socialism, pp. 79–102. 19 Social-Democratic Federation, Socialism Made Plain. 20 Quoted in Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, pp. 25–6. 21 For example, H. Collins, ‘The Marxism of the Social Democratic Federation’, in A. Briggs and J. Saville, Essays in Labour History 1886–1923 (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 48. 22 J. Lawrence, ‘Popular Radicalism’, pp. 175–6; M. Bevir, ‘H.M. Hyndman: A Rereading and a Reassessment’, History of Political Thought, 12 (Spring 1991), pp. 138–42. 23 Barrow and Bullock, Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, p. 14. 24 ‘The Democratic Federation’, Justice, 19 Jan. 1884, p. 7. 25 The other nine members of the Council who resigned were Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx Aveling, Robert Banner, Edward Belfort Bax, W.J. Clark, J. Cooper, John Lincoln Mahon, S. Mainwaring and Joseph Lane. For a detailed overview of the split see Thompson, William Morris, pp. 331–65.

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The work that lies before us at present is to make Socialists, to cover the country with a network of associations composed of men who feel their antagonism to the dominant classes, and have no temptation to waste their time in the thousand follies of party politics.26

Although analyses of the Socialist League have generally focused on their ‘unqualified rejection of politics’,27 there was in fact a high degree of equivocation over strategy. For example, the League’s third annual conference in 1887 witnessed a split between the anti-parliamentarians and those who wished to promote the election of socialists to the House of Commons, town councils and school boards.28 The attitude of individual activists was also far from fixed. In 1885 John Lincoln Mahon, as secretary of the League, urged socialists in Leeds to renounce ‘the political opportunism and state socialism of the SDF’, but two years later, after working with the SDF during the Northumbrian miners’ strike, he converted his allegiance to the parliamentary side and was actively trying to swing the northern branches over.29 Significantly, while the London-based leadership agonised over strategy, local League branches frequently took matters into their own hands. As discussed below, the Nottingham branch of the Socialist League frequently brought forward candidates for local elections, underlining the fact that attitudes towards participation in the political process were contingent. The Fabian society, established in 1884, also equivocated over political strategy. Although existing studies of the group have understandably focused on their aim of ‘permeating’ organised Liberalism,30 the extent to which some of its members were wary of this policy demands a reassessment of the Fabians’ relationship with and attitude towards the Liberal caucus.31 Sidney Webb, believing that Fabian experts should focus on educating the Liberal party as to what policies were necessary for an efficient society, was a zealous advocate of permeation. Writing to his fellow Fabian Edward Pease, he stated that: I believe very much in getting hold of the Liberal caucuses. They are just on the turn, without knowing it, and a little push from inside does much to send them in our direction.32

For Webb, who was a member of the Bloomsbury Liberal Association, it 26 Commonweal, July 1885. Original emphasis. 27 Barrow and Bullock, Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, p. 24. 28 Thompson, William Morris, pp. 446–7. 29 Ibid., pp. 381, 451. 30 Hobsbawm, ‘The Fabians Reconsidered’, in his Labouring Men, pp. 250–71; Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, pp. 73–8. 31 M. Bevir, ‘Fabianism, Permeation and Independent Labour’, pp. 179–96. 32 Sidney Webb to Edward Pease, 16 Nov. 1887, reprinted in N. Mackenzie (ed.), Letters of

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was ‘so easy to capture these Liberal Associations’, and he frequently wrote to fellow socialists, giving detailed instructions on how to influence a local caucus.33 Webb therefore rejected any independent political action that would antagonise local Liberal associations.34 Instead, he pushed for permeation, which would ‘drive official Liberals on into a very sea of socialism’.35 In contrast, George Bernard Shaw advocated the formation of a new, independent party. He had little time for engagement with official Liberalism, which he labelled as ‘only a forest of dead trees’, and called for a Fabian manifesto to: Emphatically repudiate the Liberal party and denounce Gladstone in express terms … We must proclaim ourselves, not an advanced guard of the Liberal party, but a definitely Social-Democratic party.36

Shaw, though, did not completely reject working with the existing mainstream parties. Believing that the radical wing of the Liberal party would defect and join with the socialists once Irish Home Rule had been settled, Shaw insisted that he would be prepared to work with ‘the Radical party as far as that party pursues its historic mission of overthrowing capitalist Liberalism in the interests of the working classes’. However, he rejected any permeation of local caucuses, believing that, as they were ‘only the tail of the National Liberal Federation’, they would oppose socialism.37 Shaw’s vision of an independent party was shared by his fellow Fabians Hubert Bland, who called for the ‘formation of a socialist party on political lines with a definite policy’, and Annie Besant, who declared that ‘socialists should organize themselves as a political party, for the purposes of transferring into the hands of the whole community full control over the soil and the means of production’.38 To this end, in February 1887 Bland, Besant and Shaw, with the support of John Burns of the SDF, established the Fabian Parliamentary League. Its manifesto stated that the League would Take active part in all general and local elections. Until a fitting opportunity arises for putting forward socialist candidates to form the nucleus of a Sidney and Beatrice Webb, I [1918] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 107–9. Webb urged Pease to join the Newcastle Liberal Association. 33 For example, see Webb to W.W. Bartlett, 8 Jan. 1888 and 27 Jan. 1889, Letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, I, pp. 123, 126. 34 Bevir, ‘Fabianism, Permeation and Independent Labour’, p. 185. 35 Letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, I, p. 220. 36 Shaw to Sydney Oliver, 16 Dec. 1890, reprinted in B. Shaw, Collected Letters, I, ed. by D.H. Laurence (London: Reinhardt, 1965), pp. 255–6. 37 Shaw to Sydney Oliver, 16 Dec. 1890, Shaw, Collected Letters, pp. 255–6. 38 H. Bland, ‘The Socialist Party in Relation to Politics’, Practical Socialist, 1 (1886), p. 156; ‘Socialism and Political Action’, Practical Socialist, 1 (1886), p. 165.

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socialist party in Parliament, it will confine itself to supporting those candidates who go furthest in the direction of socialism … It will not ally itself absolutely with any political party.39

At its inception, therefore, the League was more a pressure group than the basis of a new party, and the manifesto urged its members to ‘write to their Parliamentary representatives on any bill on which the League takes action’. Nevertheless, the League, which Webb initially opposed, was further evidence that permeation of local Liberal associations was far from the dominant strategy of the Fabians in the 1880s. The contrasting strategies of Shaw and Webb were crystallised by two further publications. Shaw, in his True Radical Programme (1887), claimed that the Fabians’ policies were those of ‘the True Radical Party – the New Labour Party – in a word the Practical Socialist Party’, while Webb’s Wanted, a Programme: An Appeal to the Liberal Party (1888) underlined his belief in the fallacy of pursuing an independent course of action.40 Importantly, there existed a clear disjuncture between socialist strategising in their official publications and the reality at the ground level. Just as local Socialist League branches rejected Morris’s disapproval of electioneering published in the Commonweal, the Fabians transcended the divisions evident in Practical Socialist and agreed on a single strategy for London elections. As discussed below, in 1888 Besant and Webb joined forces to call for joint democratic committees to co-ordinate candidatures for the London school board elections, an approach that was cemented by the progressive alliance at the London County Council elections the following year. This gap between theory and practice underlines two important factors. Firstly, the socialist publications themselves were not necessarily intended to promote unified political strategies. This is certainly the case with the SDF’s organ, Justice, which was essentially a forum for internal debate and personal posturing. Secondly, this gap highlights the extent to which the views of England’s fledging socialist groups towards engaging with the political process were contingent on the political context. The next part of the chapter, therefore, examines this ‘engagement’ by focusing on the language socialist activists used when directly addressing the people.

39 Fabian Society, ‘Manifesto of the Fabian Parliamentary League’, Practical Socialist, 2 (1887), p. 42. 40 Fabian Tract no. 6: The True Radical Programme (London: Fabian Society, 1887); S. Webb, Wanted, A Programme: An Appeal to the Liberal Party (London: Labour, 1888).

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Renarrating the SDF’s political strategy: John Burns in Nottingham West The successful election of one of its own candidates to Parliament was central to the political strategy of the SDF. At the 1885 general election the federation, which was severely hampered by financial constraints, brought forward three candidates. In London, Jack Williams, who had recently been imprisoned for a month following his refusal to pay a fine for ‘obstruction’ while speaking at Dod Street, Limehouse, offered at Hampstead, while John Fielding, another prominent agitator, stood at Lambeth.41 Both candidatures were disastrous. Neither gained even one per cent of the votes cast and it was subsequently revealed that Hyndman and Henry Champion, the federation’s secretary, had accepted money from the former Marxist, but now Tory agent, Maltman Barry, to fund their campaigns.42 This ‘Tory gold’ scandal, which was recalled by Snell as ‘as deplorable an illustration of feeble strategy as political leaders have ever provided’, undermined the goodwill which had been established between the SDF’s London-based agitators and local radicals, and severely damaged Hyndman and Champion’s political credibility.43 The third SDF candidature, although ultimately unsuccessful, provides an illuminating case study with which to examine the nature of a socialist activist’s interactions with organised Liberalism. John Burns, then an engineer living in Battersea, came forward at Nottingham West.44 Because Burns left the organisation in 1889, and his subsequent career took him to serve in the Liberal cabinet, his role as a socialist activist is given scant attention by the party’s official history, despite the fact that he was the most successful SDF candidate in a general election for the first decade of its existence.45 A 41 Pall Mall Gazette, 11 Nov. 1885. See Appendix I for the full results. 42 Thompson, William Morris, p. 404. 43 Snell, Men, Movements and Myself, p. 64. 44 None of the ‘Tory gold’ went to Burns, who instead relied on small donations from leading radical figures, such as Annie Besant, socialist organisations from as far apart as Sheffield, Dublin and Newport, and a substantial donation from the wealthy Fabian soap manufacturer R. Hudson, a personal friend of Champion. See letters of support to Burns: John Burns Papers, BL Add Mss 46288, f. 12. 45 For Hyndman’s assessment of Burns’s contribution see Hyndman, Record of an Adventurous Life, p. 370, where he writes ‘I do not think he ever suggested anything which was of value, and it is the greatest mistake to suppose that he is formidable in debate’. However, at the time of the campaign, Hyndman had written that Burns’s ‘vigorous open-air speeches have a raised a feeling in Nottingham such has been unknown since the stirring the days of the Chartist movement’. See ‘John Burns for Nottingham’, Justice, 31 October 1885, p. 2. This same sense of Burns’s contribution to the early labour movement being rewritten by hostile contemporaries is equally evident in J. Burgess, John Burns: The Rise and Progress of a Right

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detailed examination of his campaign, therefore, will refocus the narrative from the story produced by the SDF and subsequently entrenched by labour historians, to the language used by a key activist when opposed by a Liberal caucus.46 This is important because, through the pages of Justice, the SDF consciously created its own narrative of a pioneering socialist body heroically challenging the Liberal party, of which it was frequently critical. The Nottingham branch of the SDF was one of the largest of all the provincial divisions in 1885.47 The city had three branches, overseen by one ruling committee with a permanent secretary, Thomas Proctor, and six provincial agents. Weekly meetings were held every Tuesday evening to ‘explain the Programme and discuss how the Social Revolution is to be brought about’.48 Public meetings were held in Sneinton Market every Sunday morning and delegates from the Nottingham branch attended the annual general meeting of the SDF. The relationship between the London-based executive and the provincial branch was murky at best, and the controversy surrounding Burns’s candidature highlighted this fact. Although the executive council of the SDF passed a resolution stating that Burns ‘be requested to accept the invitation of the Nottingham branch to stand for the division of that town’49 and Henry Keeling, secretary of the Nottingham branch, maintained that ‘not a single communication passed either directly or indirectly between us and the responsible authorities in London,’50 there was continued speculation and suggestion in the local press that Burns was simply the candidate of ‘the wire-pulling London inner circle’, reflecting the fact that Liberal supporters used the language of the caucus to undermine an opponent’s political credibility.51 Honourable (Glasgow: Reformer’s Bookstall, 1911). W. Kent, John Burns: Labour’s Lost Leader (London: Williams and Norgate, 1950), provides a more sober assessment. K.D. Brown, John Burns (London: Royal Historical Society Studies in History, 1977), remains the most authoritative account. For the brief mention of Burns’s campaign in the official history see Lee and Archbold, Social-Democracy in Britain, p. 104. 46 For example, Crick gives Burns’s campaign only four lines in his history of the organisation: Crick, Social-Democratic Federation, p. 296. Cf. J. Owen, ‘Dissident Missionaries? Re-Narrating the Political Strategy of the Social Democratic Federation, 1884–1887’, Labour History Review, 73 (2008), pp. 187–207. 47 For an introduction to the early socialist organisations in Nottingham see P. Wyncoll, Nottingham Labour Movement, 1880–1939 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1985). The SDF also had a strong presence in Lancashire. See J. Hill, ‘Social Democracy and the Labour Movement: The Social-Democratic Federation in Lancashire’, North West Labour History Journal, 8 (1982–3), pp. 44–55. 48 ‘Branch Notices’, Justice, 3 Oct. 1885, p. 7. 49 ‘Meetings and Addresses’, Justice, 22 Aug. 1885, p. 3. 50 See letter by Keeling published in the Nottingham Daily Express, 3 Nov. 1885. 51 See letter by ‘Trade Unionist of 22 years standing’, Nottingham Daily Express, 31 Oct. 1885.

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The constituency of Nottingham West, created by the 1885 Redistribution Act, had the potential to be fertile ground for a candidate of advanced political views. The city, which returned the Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor to Parliament in 1847, had a radical tradition of protest and agitation, and Burns, invoking local political memory, claimed that he ‘had taken up the Chartist programme where Feargus O’Connor had taken off’.52 The working-class vote was predominant in a constituency that contained nearly all the miners who lived within the city boundaries.53 Moreover, at the time of the election, the local workers were suffering the effects of the chronic unemployment sweeping the country, with the unskilled being hit particularly hard.54 Although Burns has been recorded as ‘the first socialist to enter the parliamentary lists’, he did not present himself at Nottingham as a ‘socialist’ campaigning on behalf of the SDF.55 Rather, he rooted himself firmly in the radical tradition. The political figure with whom he sought to identify himself was not Hyndman but Joseph Chamberlain. In the summer of 1885 Chamberlain had launched the ‘Unauthorised Programme’, a list of proposals that included free education, land reforms, graduated taxation, disestablishment, devolution-all-round, manhood suffrage and payment of MPs. Burns not only echoed the call for this programme, but also attempted to give himself a radical endorsement by hyperbolically declaring that ‘Chamberlain … had nailed his flag to the social-democratic mast’.56 Significantly, in his private notes Burns considered himself a ‘socialist’, writing that the ‘failure of political and social reform so called is the raison d’être of socialism. My own definition is for co-operation, collective ownership, work for all, overwork for none’.57 However, his ‘socialism’ did not form any part of his campaign discourse. In order to locate himself within the radical tradition, Burns began to modify his own positions, previously published in Justice, when he addressed 52 Nottingham Daily Express, 22 October 1885. A measure of how highly O’Connor was regarded in Nottingham is evident in his election campaign of 1847. In response to the criticism levelled at him by the local aristocracy, his proposer at a meeting of candidates declared ‘Such was the fate of Christ himself; for whenever they got a good man on earth, they were sure to crucify’. This comparison of O’Connor with Christ went down well with the workers present, who cheered loudly. Nottingham Journal, 29 July 1847. 53 Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections, pp. 207–8. Out of a population of 61,784 there were 19,453 registered voters. See Report of the Boundary Commissioners for England and Wales, PP 1885, XIX, p. 69. 54 R.A. Church, Economic and Social Change in a Midland Town: Victorian Nottingham, 1815–1900 (New York: A.M. Kelley, 1966), p. 250. 55 A.C. Wood, ‘Nottingham Parliamentary Elections, 1869–1900’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 60 (1956), pp. 50–65. 56 Nottingham Daily Express, 7 Nov. 1885. 57 Burns Papers, BL Add Mss, 46305, f. 1.

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the workers of Nottingham. As the SDF’s political strategy advocated parliamentary action to obtain political reform, rather than direct action by those representing the interests of labour, the official attitude of the organisation towards trade unions was one of suspicion. Hyndman argued that trade unions represented a ‘hindrance to that complete organization of the workers which alone can obtain for the workers their proper control over their own labour’.58 Burns, writing in Justice, appeared to agree, criticising the unions for not ‘moving in the interests of labour, or expressing a desire to terminate a system that makes it possible for … crises to periodically recur’.59 He was equally sceptical regarding the efficacy of strikes: his notes for a speech commented that they had ‘all failed to secure their objects’.60 However, at a keynote speech during his campaign in Nottingham West, Burns declared that he stood there … as a Trade Unionist, as a member of the largest Trade Union in Britain; and … it was the duty of local Trade Unionists … to do everything in their power to return … himself, a Trade Union workman.61

This assertion was followed by letters to the local press claiming that eighty percent of his most active supporters were trade unionists and that Thomas Threlfall, president of the TUC, supported him.62 Moreover, Burns distanced himself from previously published positions with regards to social reform. The SDF placed a great deal of importance on social reform or palliatives, believing that only a healthy working class could comprehend the need for political reform, and thus vote for it through the ballot box.63 Yet, writing in Justice, Burns postulated that palliatives are useless; these symptoms that we witness today are but the inevitable outcome of the disease that society has suffered since 58 Hyndman, Historical Basis of Socialism, p. 261. 59 John Burns, ‘To Trade Unionists’, Justice, 24 Jan. 1885, p. 2. The date of these comments is significant. Following the success of the London Dock Strike in 1889, in which Burns played an important role, general unions became a real possibility and this marked a shift in attitudes towards the potential of trade unions. For a wider discussion of these changes in attitude see Reid, United We Stand, pp. 214–40. For an examination of the SDF’s difficult relationship with trade unions see Hunt, Equivocal Feminists, pp. 10–13. 60 Burns Papers, BL Add Mss 46305, f. 8. See also 46305, f. 3, where Burns notes that the present state of unionism was the real source of the workers’ distress. 61 Nottingham Daily Express, 7 Nov. 1885. 62 Ibid., 15 Oct. 1885. This proved to be an exaggeration. His own union, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, stated their opposition to his candidature, citing neglect of their meetings. See the letter by a member of the union, Nottingham Daily Express, 25 Nov. 1885. The Nottingham Building Trades Council also openly opposed him. See Nottingham Daily Express, 19 Nov. 1885. 63 Johnson, ‘Making Reform the Instrument of Revolution’, p. 991.

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c­ ommercialisation held its sway … The remedy is not to be found in … plausible transitory panaceas from the owning classes.64

Indeed, at an SDF executive meeting he had keenly disputed the need for such ‘transitory panaceas’ as ‘capitalism was on its last legs’.65 Yet, at a large meeting at the Mechanics’ Hall in Nottingham, Burns declared that the palliatives of free education with one free school meal a day and the eight-hour day for all workers were key aspects in the ‘battle to improve the political, moral and social conditions of the people’.66 Given the existence of these contradictions, it is clear that the SDF’s strategy of parliamentary action created a problem for Burns. Such a strategy demanded electioneering that required a concerted attempt to both avoid alienating the local workers and offer a route to ameliorating their immediate plight. The official attitude towards trade unions, therefore, had to be discarded, and Burns negotiated his own position regarding palliatives. Nevertheless, the electioneering undertaken by the SDF in Nottingham proved ultimately fruitless. Burns polled 598 votes, and was soundly beaten by the Liberal candidate Colonel Seely, who won with 6,609. Edward Cope, the Tory candidate, received 3,797. The narrative established by the organisation was that the votes of the ‘brave six hundred’ were a triumph given the inherently non-revolutionary nature of the British working class. However, Burns was not competing in a vacuum. He was attempting to infiltrate the political culture of Nottingham. Local Liberal party organisation, religion, employment and locality all combined to nullify the impact of the SDF’s strategy of parliamentarianism. Burns’s campaign discourse largely aimed its fire at the Liberal ‘caucus’: he attacked the Nottingham Liberal Union, stating that he did not recognise the ‘right of an organisation … to dictate who should or should not be the representative of the district’.67 Burns held that his right to represent the local workers rested on the resolutions in favour of labour representation that were passed at his public meetings. Caucus rhetoric, though, was not solely Burns’s province; members of the local Liberal party turned his words against him. For example, one correspondent argued that Burns tried to make a point in his favour by posing as the opponent of the Liberal and Tory caucus, but if ever the word caucus was deservedly applied to a political organisation it is those who thrust Burns on the Western Division.68 64 65 66 67 68

John Burns, ‘To Trade Unionists’, Justice, 24 Jan. 1885, p. 2. T. Mann, Memoirs (London: Labour Publishing Co., 1923), p. 43. Nottingham Daily Express, 22 Oct. 1885. Ibid., 14 Oct. 1885. Ibid., 31 Oct. 1885.

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The Nottingham Liberals also made a concerted effort to paint their local organisation as thoroughly open and representative. At a time when a self-proclaimed labour candidate was threatening to split the Liberal vote, one party member emphasised the link between the workers and the body that selected Seely by claiming that a ‘large proportion of working men in the Western Division are connected with the Liberal ward associations and these associations send the representatives to the Nottingham Liberal Union’.69 Further meetings billed as the ‘Working Men of the Western Division’ sought to reinforce this link. One speaker suggested that ‘Liberal principles were the principles they had been working for … Seely would represent the interests of labour better than those opposed to him’.70 Meanwhile, the newly formed Nottingham Radical Association, essentially an auxiliary of the local Liberal party, passed a resolution stating that ‘we pledge ourselves to support such measures as will promote the general good of the working class’.71 In this sense, members of the Nottingham Liberal Union were using their working-class membership to diminish Burns’s claim of representation by intimating that Seely was the genuine progressive. The organisational strength of local Liberalism was enhanced by its strong relationship with nonconformity, which provided an important bond with the miners. The 1880s witnessed a flurry of activity in the building of chapels in the working-class areas of Nottingham West, most notably on behalf of the Primitive Methodist Circuits.72 The Primitive Methodist preachers played a considerable role in broadening the horizons of the workers, their stated mission being to ensure that ‘the people in the neighbourhood may be socially, intellectually, morally and religiously informed’.73 Moreover, the importance of this network to the very group Burns was targeting is telling: baptism registers show that ninety-one per cent of the parents who were members of the circuits until the end of the nineteenth century were in working-class occupations.74 The Nottingham Liberal Union was able to tap this potential source of 69 See letter by William Morley, Liberal candidate for Nottingham East, printed in Nottingham Daily Express, 19 Oct. 1885. 70 Nottingham Daily Express, 18 Nov. 1885. 71 Ibid., 3 Mar. 1885. A cursory glance at the names of those present reveals the close ties between the new association and the local Liberals. The chairman of the meeting was Councillor William Smith, who was also vice-president of the Wollaton Ward Liberal Association; also present was Alderman Cropper, a member of the Executive Committee of the Nottingham Liberal Union. 72 Nottingham Primitive Methodist Quarterly Guide, Oct. 1888. 73 Nottinghamshire Archives, Nottingham Primitive Methodist Collection MR 12/2. 74 G.M. Morris, ‘Primitive Methodism in Nottinghamshire, 1815–1932’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 72 (1968), p. 90.

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voters. Not only did many local nonconformist ministers have a high-profile role in the local Liberal associations, but also local Liberal councillors and aldermen held positions in the Nottinghamshire Nonconformist Association.75 Seely was often accompanied at his meetings by the Baptist minister Reverend Silby of Hyson Green, a ward in the Nottingham West constituency. Silby supported Seely because he ‘thought he had good pedigree. In the Colonel they had a safe and sound Liberal’.76 The Primitive Methodist preacher Reverend Hirst Hollowell, who was a member of the St Mary’s Ward Liberal Association in Nottingham South, also publicly backed Seely. At a Liberal conference in Nottingham he moved the resolution that ‘the principle of religious equality must be regarded as one of the principles of Liberalism’.77 Indeed, it was this sense of nonconformity reinforcing Liberal principles that was arguably attractive to the local workers. This was especially the case with Primitive Methodism, as it gave the workers a belief in social responsibility and sharing resources, thus dramatically reducing the impact of Burns’s appeal to his labour credentials.78 Furthermore, Primitive Methodism was noticeably strong amongst the mining community. Nottingham West contained nearly all the city’s miners, and between 1881 and 1891 the local coal industry absorbed manpower at a greater rate than any other industry, the numbers rising from 3,035 to 5,027.79 Primitive Methodism played an important role in the formation and leadership of the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association (NMA). John Hopkin, the agent of the association between 1884 and 1887, was a Methodist; his successor William Bailey was a local preacher and Liberal councillor.80 Significantly, Seely not only tolerated but actively encouraged the establishment of the NMA.81 The nature of this relationship therefore reinforces research that has highlighted the positive attitude held by workers towards the political and social system.82 75 For example, Alderman Gripper was vice-president of the Nottinghamshire Nonconformist Association and a member of the executive committee of the Nottingham Liberal Union. The local nonconformists also gave their explicit backing to Gladstone following the party split over Irish Home Rule, writing to the Liberal leader that ‘we desire to express our continued and affectionate confidence in you as leader of the party of national progress’. This letter was printed in the Nottingham Daily Express, 3 June 1886. 76 Ibid., 30 Oct. 1885. 77 Ibid., 24 Oct. 1885. 78 A.J. Reid, ‘Old Unionism Reconsidered: The Radicalism of Robert Knight, 1870–1900’, in Biagini and Reid, Currents of Radicalism, p. 223. 79 Church, Economic and Social Change, p. 232. 80 Morris, ‘Primitive Methodism in Nottinghamshire’, p. 97. 81 A.R. Griffin, The Miners of Nottinghamshire: A History of the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association, 1881–1914, I (Nottingham: National Union of Mineworkers, 1955), p. 85. 82 Pugh, Making of Modern British Politics, p. 76; Lawrence, Speaking for the People, p. 266.

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However, there has still been a tendency amongst labour historians to perpetuate the analyses first offered by the socialist pioneers themselves: that the trade unions, in the words of John Burns, were ‘not moving in the interests of labour’. For example, Peter Wyncoll argues that the mood and attitude of the local union members were ‘deeply conservative’. Pointing to the words of Thomas Smith, a member of the Nottingham branch of the Amalgamated Society of Lithographic Printers, who claimed that ‘the twin elements of England’s greatness were the unity between capital and labour,’ Wyncoll postulates that this desire for recognition hampered political progress.83 Yet, this overlooks the extent to which the desire for unity with employers reflected a progressive drive for equality on behalf of trade union members, rather than a submissive stance that hampered political progress.84 Indeed, Smith had argued that the workers should have ‘shares in the establishment wherein they find employment, and not only be labouring for wages, but also for a share of profits according to the savings they have invested’.85 It would also be a mistake to cite the Nottingham Trades Council’s explicit rejection of Burns’s candidature as an example of the local unions hampering progressive politics. To be sure, at a special meeting of the United Trades Committee of Nottingham, Aaron Stewart, a member of the NMA, dismissed Burns’s claim that he had the support of the local trade unions. Indeed, a motion was subsequently passed declaring that the body ‘is not in any way supporting Mr Burns’.86 However, what cannot be ignored is that individual members of the Trades Council, such as Thomas Corbett and John Osborne, were consistently vocal in meetings on the matter of labour representation and the possibility of a local labour newspaper.87 Finally, the very fact that John Burns was a political ‘missionary’ from London created difficulties. As was the case with the failed candidature of the London-based trade unionists who led the LRL in the 1870s, provincial political activists were hostile towards any outside interference. Indeed, the anti-carpetbagger rhetoric was a broader part of late-Victorian political culture. Moreover, Burns’s opponents in Nottingham West were local employers. Seely was a magistrate and, significantly, an extensive coal 83 Wyncoll, Nottingham Labour Movement, p. 33. 84 Reid, ‘Old Unionism Reconsidered’, p. 227. 85 Report of the Sixteenth Annual Trades Union Congress (1883), p. 19. 86 Minute book of the Joint Committee of the United Trade Councils in Nottingham, 16 November 1885, Records of the Nottingham and District Trades Union Council, Nottingham University Library. 87 See Minute book, United Trade Councils, 15 Apr. 1885, 14 Apr. 1887 and 9 Dec. 1887. Corbett was a member of the Nottingham Brickmakers’ Society; Osborne of the Nottingham Framework Knitters’ Society.

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owner in the region.88 Cope had been educated at Nottingham High School and was sole partner in the firm Ward and Cope, which owned many of the local lace factories.89 Burns attempted to make his appeal to the local workers on the grounds of his labour and working-class credentials. As he told an audience of local workers, ‘here in Nottingham they had the chance of returning to the House of Commons a man of the people, for the people, by the people’.90 Such claims found little resonance. The local Liberal party consistently attacked Burns for being an outsider. For example, W.J. Douse, the Liberal party agent for the division, wrote to local newspapers declaring that ‘on no grounds can Burns pretend he has any right to force himself on this constituency’.91 Thus, despite his labour credentials and his undoubted oratorical skills, Burns was unable to articulate the language of locality by referring to ‘his’ people.92 Although Burns’s campaign discourse included vehement attacks on the Liberal caucus, it would be a mistake to conclude that an intransigent, hostile Liberal association was nefariously holding back the forward march of labour. The fact that both Burns and the members of the Nottingham Liberal Union used anti-caucus rhetoric shows that the ‘caucus’ was simply deployed as a rhetorical tool to attack one’s opponents. It is also clear that citing the ‘non-revolutionary character of the British working classes’ as a reason for the SDF’s political failures is nonsense. The organisational and ideological links between Liberalism, nonconformity, and trade unionism created a local political environment that Burns’s electioneering could not penetrate. The SDF, in its publications and personal recollections, argued that such links proved that the caucus represented an immovable barrier to the socialists. However, as this discussion has suggested, organised Liberalism and nonconformity offered the local workers a positive opportunity to embrace progressive politics, without resorting to the class-based appeal of John Burns. Socialist candidates at local elections An examination of socialist candidatures at local elections underlines the fact that activists were willing to negotiate their organisations’ published 88 He also took an active part in local charitable affairs, supplying money to build churches and a local convalescent home. R. Mellors, Men of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire: Being Biographical Notices of Five Hundred Men and Women (Nottingham: Bell, 1924), pp. 94–5. 89 The Times, 25 Nov. 1885. 90 Nottingham Daily Express, 22 Oct. 1885. 91 Ibid., 14 Oct. 1885. 92 Lord Snell recalled that ‘his power as a popular street-corner orator was probably unequalled in that generation’. See Snell, Men, Movements and Myself, p. 62.

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positions and reveals the extent to which England’s different socialist groups were willing to co-operate with each other, even when, in theory, they held contrasting views on participating in electoral politics. The SDF leadership was equivocal on local elections. Writing in Justice, Hyndman stated that ‘some of our earnest friends counsel that we should spend more of our vigour in the really Radical provincial towns. These counsels … happily never found favour with the majority of the executive of the SDF.’ 93 Yet, prior to the 1887 local elections, Harry Quelch, the editor of Justice, commented that ‘we are pleased to note that where Social-Democrats are sufficiently organised to do so they are … actively engaging in local politics’.94 Morris, though, explicitly rejected local electioneering by members of the Socialist League, believing that it merely led to compromise, which then retarded the advancement of socialism.95 In defiance of the London-based leadership, members of the Nottingham branch of the Socialist League offered as candidates at local elections in the late 1880s. The branch, which was called the Nottingham Socialist Union, had been established by Thomas Proctor, a local fitter and formerly a member of the SDF. Proctor offered for the Bryon ward of Nottingham at the 1886 and 1887 municipal elections. He called for working-class representation on the council chamber, stipendiary magistrates and the election of aldermen by the direct vote of the ratepayers, but was comfortably defeated on both occasions.96 Reflecting the disjuncture between the aspirations of the local branch and the London-based leadership, Proctor’s electoral pretensions were mocked by Mahon, who, still on the anti-parliamentarian side in January 1887, labelled the Nottingham socialists ‘mere politicians … anxious to shine on school boards or town councils: with perhaps vague and distant dreams of Parliament’.97 Given Proctor’s defection from the SDF to the Socialist League, it is not surprising that there was some animosity between the groups’ branches in Nottingham. For example, at one of Proctor’s election meetings, John Peacock, a leading member of the Nottingham SDF branch who had been elected to the school board in 1886, moved an amendment against his candidature.98 However, this rivalry was merely personal and did not represent any principled fault line between the two groups. Significantly, at 93 Justice, 24 Oct. 1885. 94 Ibid., 30 Apr. 1887. 95 ‘Socialism and Politics’, Commonweal, July 1885. 96 Nottinghamshire Guardian, 5 Nov. 1886, 5 Nov. 1887; Nottingham Daily Express, 28 Oct. 1887. See Appendix II for more details. 97 Quoted in Thompson, William Morris, p. 438. 98 Nottingham Daily Express, 28 Oct. 1887.

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the 1886 municipal elections in Nottingham, Proctor and Samuel Whalley, secretary of the Nottingham SDF branch who came forward for Bridge ward, fought under the umbrella of the newly formed Nottingham Labour Representation Association.99 Moreover, when Whalley came forward as an SDF candidate for Nottingham’s Wollaton ward the following year, he stood on a nearly identical programme to Proctor’s.100 However, Wollaton ward, part of the Western Division, was a Liberal stronghold, and he was easily defeated by the Liberal candidate.101 Tellingly, the SDF blamed organised Liberalism: Wollaton Ward is the worst possible ward we could have contested, being dominated entirely by the Liberal caucus. The people agreed with what our comrade advocated … but they objected to him because he had not come through the legitimate channel.102

Although, like Burns in 1885, Whalley had been unable to penetrate the alliance between local trade unionism, nonconformity and organised Liberalism, the SDF continued the trend of making the ‘caucus’ the socialists’ political bogeyman. Following the 1887 town council elections, Nottingham’s two socialist organisations began to cement what had hitherto been an informal electoral alliance. The possibility of forming a local ‘Socialist Labour Party’ was openly discussed, and on revisiting the town in July 1888, Burns recorded in his diary that moves were being made towards amalgamation.103 From July to September 1889 both groups actively supported the lace makers’ strike, despite Justice insisting that ‘a strike is only guerrilla warfare for very small results’ and the Commonweal declaring that ‘members of the League do not in any way compromise their principles by taking part in strikes’.104 The alliance between the Nottingham SDF and Socialist League was formalised in November 1889, when Peacock and Proctor stood jointly in the school board elections. Appearing together to address the public, they promoted the same programme: free education, free school meals, school board meetings to be held in the evening so workers could attend, and ‘the teaching of the history of the workers and not to such a great extent the history of battles, intrigues, courts and kings’.105 Ironically, the 99 100 101 102 103 104 105

Christian Socialist (1886), iii. 4; Nottinghamshire Guardian, 5 Nov. 1886. Nottingham Daily Express, 22 Oct. 1887. Nottinghamshire Guardian, 5 Nov. 1887. See Appendix II for more details. Justice, 19 Nov. 1887. Quoted in Wyncoll, Nottingham Labour Movement, p. 82. Justice, 7 September 1889; Commonweal, 12 Oct. 1889. Nottingham Daily Express, 14, 15 and 19 Nov. 1889.

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alliance only served to split the socialist vote, and Peacock, who received 14,176 votes, lost his seat, with Proctor gaining only 10,276.106 The ways in which different socialist groups co-operated with each other and interacted with organised Liberalism were shaped by the local political environment. Where in Nottingham the socialists were opposed by a united and well-functioning Liberal association with strong links to local nonconformity and trade unionism, in London they faced an organised Liberalism that was much less well defined. On the one hand, the capital’s radical clubs and secular societies were affiliated to the Metropolitan Radical Federation formed in 1886, while the constituency associations were co-ordinated under the umbrella of the London Liberal and Radical Union established in 1887.107 Although both organisations were affiliated to the NLF, there was no clear understanding of how the two groups would work together during local and parliamentary elections. If they were flexible enough in their political strategy, therefore, London’s socialists had the opportunity to capitalise on this lack of coherent, united Liberal organisation and forge alliances with individual clubs and associations. Significantly, London’s socialists were willing to co-operate in the arena of local electoral politics. Prior to the 1888 London school board elections Annie Besant called for the formation of a ‘Democratic party’ to co-ordinate the votes of the capital’s radicals and socialists.108 Subsequently, in September 1888 the Fabian Society, the SDF and the London Secular Federation, with the support of the Metropolitan Radical Federation, launched the Central Democratic Committee (CDC). Although the Socialist League declined to join the CDC, and a leading article in the Commonweal was dismissive of the alliance,109 members of its local London branches, just like their counterparts in Nottingham, were willing to negotiate official policy concerning electoral politics. For example, in April 1888 the Bloomsbury branch of the Socialist League, which included Edward and Eleanor Aveling as its members, had united with the local SDF to run two candidates for the board of guardians election.110 All candidates backed by the CDC advocated an agreed programme of compulsory, free secular education, the provision of technical schools and free school meals.111 Against the backdrop of a recent royal commission that had recommended rate-aid to voluntary schools, CDC candidates joined 106 107 108 109 110 111

Ibid., 23 Nov. 1889. Thompson, Socialists, Liberals and Labour, pp. 93–4. Link, 2 June 1888. Commonweal, 8 Dec. 1888. Thompson, William Morris, p. 504. Link, 2 June 1888.

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Liberals in arguing for limited voluntary schools, which tended to support religious instruction.112 However, while the Link and Reynolds’s Newspaper supported the CDC and urged local Liberal clubs to back their candidates, other sections of the Liberal-supporting press were wary of an alliance.113 The East London Observer attacked Besant for her ‘extreme radicalism’ and urged Liberal associations to oppose her, while the Star, edited by T.P. O’Connor, the Irish Nationalist MP, recommended that its readers vote only for official Liberal candidates.114 The socialists’ ability to secure the support of local Liberal associations varied. Besant, standing in Tower Hamlets, was the most successful. A member of both the SDF and the Fabians, her candidature reflected her flexibility in dealing with disparate political organisations. In her public speeches she had unambiguously attacked the Liberal party, arguing that ‘if every demand embodied in [their] present programme … were carried into legislative effect, not a single home and not a single life amongst the working classes of the country would be brightened or bettered by it’.115 Moreover, when launching the Fabian Parliamentary League in 1887, she had clearly stated her opposition to working ‘with any political party’.116 Nevertheless, Besant quickly adapted to the demands of local electioneering. In order to appeal to the local workers she insisted that she had ‘cut myself off from [the middle classes] in order that I may pay back something of the debt which I owe. I come to you as a Democrat’.117 By stressing her secularism she also reached out to the Tower Hamlets Liberal Association, and secured its endorsement.118 Following an assiduous canvass that was carried out on her behalf by the London match girls, she was returned at the top of the poll. The Reverend Stewart Headlam, who was elected in fourth place as a CDC candidate in Hackney, had also been adopted by the local Liberal association, and his committee included the Lib-Lab MPs Randal Cremer and George Howell.119 However, CDC candidates in other districts with which they were not very closely identified, and therefore not likely to win, failed to secure the backing of local Liberal associations. Harry Quelch, a labourer and secretary of the SDF, was opposed by the candidates of the local Liberal and Radical associations in Lambeth East, as was John Ward, 112 D. Rubinstein, ‘Annie Besant and Stewart Headlam: The London School Board Election of 1888’, East London Papers, 13 (Summer 1970), p. 5. 113 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 25 Nov. 1888. 114 East London Observer, 3, 10 and 24 Nov. 1888; Star, 24, 26 Nov. 1888. 115 Birmingham Daily Post, 30 Oct. 1888. 116 Fabian Society, ‘Manifesto of the Fabian Parliamentary League’, p. 42. 117 Quoted in Rubinstein, ‘Annie Besant and Stewart Headlam’, p. 14. 118 Pall Mall Gazette, 19 Nov. 1888. 119 Rubinstein, ‘Annie Besant and Stewart Headlam’, p. 14.

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a labourer, in Lambeth West, and Annie Hicks, a midwife, in Marylebone. All three were defeated.120 Despite such difficulties, co-operation between socialists and local Liberal and Radical associations was cemented by the formation of a progressive alliance at the London County Council elections in January 1889. Indeed, John Burns’s successful candidature at Battersea in these elections underlines the extent to which the political composition of a locality shaped the nature of the interactions between socialists and Liberals.121 In Battersea, where the working class had a sense of culture quite distinct from the prosperous neighbouring districts of Clapham and Wandsworth Commons, the SDF branch was particularly strong, and earned a reputation as the champion of the unemployed through its organisations of marches.122 Burns, a local resident, was extremely well known in the district, and his imprisonment on the issue of free speech in 1888 had made him a radical martyr.123 Even though the local SDF branch wished to remain distinct from official Liberalism, the local Liberal and Radical associations backed his candidacy at the London County Council election and subsequently solicited his parliamentary candidature. Burns, from a position of strength and supported by the newly formed Battersea Labour League, declined, insisting that he would stand ‘simply as a social democrat’. He went on to warn that if ‘the local caucus and wire-pullers did not assimilate their tactics to his position’ the local Radical MPs would not be re-elected.124 Burns, therefore, maintained the ‘anti-party’ stance that he had adopted at Nottingham West but, because of his strong connection to Battersea, which lacked the same sense of a cohesive, unified organised Liberalism that was evident in Nottingham in 1885, he was able to prosper on his own terms. Activism, co-operation and its failures: the Northumbrian miners’ strike of 1887 The politics of locality are central to understanding why socialist activists failed to convert working men away from Liberalism and to their cause. In this context, the socialist agitation during the Northumbrian miners’ strike of 1887 provides a useful case study with which to examine how close 120 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 25 Nov. 1888. See Appendix II for more details. 121 For Burns’s victory see Reynolds’s Newspaper, 20 Jan. 1889. 122 C. Wrigley, ‘Liberals and the Desire for Working-Class Representation in Battersea, 1886–1922’, in K. D. Brown (ed.), Essays in Anti-Labour History. Responses to the Rise of Labour in Britain (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 130–1. 123 Brown, John Burns, pp. 26–30. 124 Quoted in Wrigley, ‘Working-Class Representation in Battersea’, p. 135.

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links between the miners’ association, Primitive Methodism and official Liberalism severely curtailed the activists’ efforts. As discussed below, the socialist agitators showed notable flexibility in their campaigns. Their words and actions during the strike reinforced the fact that they were not only able to negotiate the official party line, but were also willing to co-operate and unite across organisational divides. This being the case, in seeking to account for their failures, it is necessary to look beyond the belligerent opposition to strikes evident in socialist publications and focus on the obstacles the socialists faced in the local political environment. Hyndman was openly hostile to strikes, writing that ‘enormous sums have been spent or lost … in consequence of strikes which, if applied by [Trade] Unionists to an active propaganda against the existing system … would long since have produced a serious effect’.125 He subsequently targeted the workers directly, asking ‘when will our English workers learn that this isolated action is hopeless, and that to strike … is merely to play the game of the capitalists?’126 The council of the Socialist League, meanwhile, was equivocal on the question of industrial action. The League realised that strikes were an opportunity for socialist propaganda, but their message to the workers was ambiguous. They accepted the notion of striking ‘for higher wages or against a reduction in your already small wage’, but warned the workers that strikes ‘will be useless as a means of permanently bettering your condition, and a waste of time and energy’.127 For the League, only a complete union among all the workers could deliver the necessary ‘overthrow of the system of exploitation’, and the workers required education in socialism for this to be achieved. Industrial action, therefore, was sectional and pointless. The socialist activists who arrived in Northumberland in February 1887, however, adopted different positions to their leaders. Jack Williams, of the SDF, saw the strike as an opportunity to instil in the workers a sense of socialism, urging them to form a branch of the SDF in the district by which the working classes might be combined, so that when there was a struggle between masters and men, they would know how to take note of social and economic questions, and how to use the federation in the interests of the world.128

Williams’ speeches consistently focused on the possibilities of class antagonism, announcing that ‘he would not leave Newcastle until he had 125 Hyndman, Historical Basis of Socialism, p. 261. 126 H. Hyndman, ‘Notes’, Justice, 19 Jan. 1884, p. 3. 127 Strikes and the Labour Struggle (1886), published by the Socialist League. Quoted in Thompson, Morris, pp. 435–6. 128 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 26 Feb. 1887.

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set class against class’.129 Williams’ approach was mirrored by Mahon of the Socialist League, who encouraged the miners to stir up class conflict and declared that ‘we call the attention of the workers throughout the country to the infamous attempt of the capitalists to reduce the starvation wages we have been receiving for the past few years’.130 At a mass rally at Horton, a mining district in Northumberland, Hyndman and William Morris even shared a platform. Mirroring the SDF’s support of the strike, Morris, contradicting League policy, urged the workers ‘to persevere in their strike … because … it was part of the great labour struggle throughout the world’.131 In response to the level of co-operation evident in Northumberland, Mahon, who reported that ‘as members of the Socialist League and Social Democratic Federation have worked equally hard in the district, it would be unwise to force one organization on to the exclusion of the other,’ proposed that the organisations unite by establishing a North of England Socialist Federation.132 Fielding, of the SDF, supported this, arguing that as there seemed to be no difference between the two bodies, there was no excuse for the existence of more than one parent society, and the sooner they banded together against the common enemy the better.133 Consequently, the North of England Socialist Federation was established and the official rules stated that the League and the SDF should be treated ‘on equal terms of friendship and equality’.134 The manifesto of the Federation comprised four points: 1. Forming and helping other socialist bodies to form a National and International Socialist Labour Party. 2. Striving to conquer political power by promoting the election of socialists to parliament, local government, school boards and other bodies. 3. Helping trades unionism, co-operation and every genuine movement for the good of the workers. 4. Promoting a scheme for the national and international federation of labour.135

The four points offer an interesting insight into the equivocal nature of socialist strategy in the 1880s. Three months after Hyndman’s call to ‘neglect 129 Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 25 Feb. 1887. 130 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 16 Apr. 1887. 131 Ibid., 16 Apr. 1887. 132 Mahon to the Council of the Socialist League, 2 Apr. 1887, quoted in Thompson, William Morris, pp. 439–40. 133 ‘The Socialist Conference at Newcastle’, Justice, 16 Apr. 1887, p. 3. 134 Commonweal, 25 June 1887. 135 Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p. 54.

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politics’, and flying directly in the face of Morris’s anti-parliamentarianism, here was a direct pledge to establish a national ‘Socialist Labour Party’ and promote ‘the election of socialists to parliament, local government, school boards and other bodies’. Moreover, the commitment to ‘helping trades unionism’ contrasted sharply with both Hyndman’s well-publicised suspicion of the movement and Mahon’s contention that ‘our real immediate foes are the Trade Union leaders’.136 Clearly, the call for a united ‘Socialist Labour Party’ did not represent the beginning of a serious, concerted attempt to establish a new national party that would ‘conquer’ political power by defeating the Liberal and Conservative parties at parliamentary elections. It was a hyperbolic rhetorical response to a moment of unity in a single-issue campaign. Moreover, it cannot be seriously compared to the LEA’s discussion of a ‘Labour party’, which also took place in 1887. In contrast to the North of England Socialist Federation, the LEA had at least some semblance of a national organisational framework and, through its trade union leadership, links with the wider labour movement. Moreover, the concept of a ‘Socialist party’ failed to attract wider support within the movement as a whole. For example, at the 1887 annual conference of the Socialist League, Mahon, with the support of Bax, presented a resolution calling for ‘the spreading of the principles of Socialism and organizing the people into a Socialist Labour Party’, but it was defeated by Morris’s anti-parliamentary amendment.137 Although the factionalism of the League’s leadership was a hindrance, an even greater obstacle existed to the formation of a national party. The local branches of the SDF and the Socialist League zealously guarded their independence and, as Engels wrote, ‘they have a colossal contempt for anything coming from London’.138 The willingness of activists to adapt their position to fit their environment, and therefore move away from the more hostile positions of the socialist leadership towards trade unions and the parliamentary process, was only a source of strength for local, single-issue campaigns. Any ambition to form a national socialist party in the 1880s was immediately shipwrecked by the independence of local branches. Moreover, the new Federation had a noticeably short lifespan. Although in June of 1887 Mahon was claiming that about twenty branches had been formed, the decision of the miners to end the strike undermined the viability of the whole enterprise. In late May, the Northumbrian miners entrusted the settlement of the dispute to a new wage committee and made no protest 136 J.L. Mahon to F. Engels, 14 June 1887’, in Thompson, William Morris, Appendix I, p. 861. 137 Thompson, William Morris, pp. 452–3. 138 Engels to Sorge, 4 July 1887, quoted in Ibid., p. 454.

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when it immediately accepted the owners’ terms.139 Without the raison d’être of the strike, the branches of the new federation quickly collapsed. The difficulty of sustaining socialist propaganda without a clear industrial issue to campaign around was evident when the SDF sent Tom Mann, the Battersea-based engineer, to continue its propaganda efforts in Northumberland. Chronicling his efforts in Justice, Mann boasted that ‘it is not too much to say that the miners of Northumberland and Durham are rapidly becoming Social Democrats’.140 The official history of the SDF took up this narrative, commenting that Mann ‘succeeded in bringing together some thoroughly good workers and in organising a body of socialist opinion’.141 The reality, as recalled by Mann in personal correspondence with John Burns, was very different. He wrote that ‘the outdoor agitation shows such poor results that my enthusiasm has cooled’.142 As for the local branches of the SDF, he lamented the fact that ‘men will not pay to an inactive organisation … Justice will not sell, no matter how skilfully it’s handled the first week, it’s not puffed, it’s not asked for’.143 By the end of 1887, the reluctance of the local workers to join the socialist cause led to a frustrated outburst from Mann, who, in an outdoor speech, cried that ‘he would like to know why these poor starving devils in Newcastle must go about so quietly … He called it the conduct of a coward. The men of Newcastle were lacking in personal vigour and determination’.144 The initial enthusiasm for the SDF that had surfaced during the first phases of the miners’ strike had all but dissipated, leaving an irrevocably moribund organisation. Mann, as its chief organiser, sought work elsewhere.145 In its publications, the SDF leadership maintained its criticism of the strategy of focusing on strikes. John Burns argued in Justice that ‘the Northumberland … strikes must prove to the dullest that isolated action by sections of the workers almost always ends in invariable failure’.146 John Hunter Watts, who had worked as an activist in Northumberland during the strike, wrote that ‘the workers make no concerted attack upon their enemies and exhaust their resources in desultory skirmishes which enfeeble them’.147 139 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 28 May 1887. 140 Tom Mann, ‘The Propaganda in the North’, Justice, 4 June 1887, p. 3. 141 Lee and Archbold, Social Democracy, p. 123. 142 Tom Mann to John Burns, 31 Dec. 1887, BL, Add MSS, John Burns Papers 46285. 143 Mann to Burns, 16 March 1888, BL, Add MSS, John Burns Papers 46285. 144 Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 14 Nov. 1887. 145 Mann subsequently moved to Bolton, at the invitation of the local branch of the SDF. He continued his propaganda work and began a newsagent shop. C. Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, 1856–1941: The Challenges of Labour (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 30. 146 John Burns, ‘The Labour Parliament’, Justice, 3 Sept. 1887, p. 1. 147 J. Hunter Watts, ‘An Effectual Strike’, Justice, 12 Mar. 1887, p. 3.

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The SDF blamed the perceived lack of appetite for class conflict among the Northumbrian workers for the failure of their socialist propaganda, something all too uncritically picked up by certain sections of the historiography.148 Just as was the case with Burns’s campaign in Nottingham, it was the political culture of the Northumbrian miners that completely diminished the impact of the socialist activists. There can be little doubt that by 1887 Northumberland and Durham had become the most strongly unionised counties in the country. The Northumberland Miners’ Association had 13,000 members, compared to the Nottinghamshire association’s 500.149 Moreover, by the time Tom Mann arrived in the north-east the local miners had already secured seven-hour shifts, thus rendering the propaganda of the eight-hour day useless. The activists’ proposal to nationalise the mines also made little impact on the local miners, as did suggestions that they should join a national federation of miners’ unions.150 The miners were strong enough to eschew the kind of participation in a national political process that the socialists were calling for. The Northumbrian miners’ ability to negotiate independently with employers over their working hours, rather than going through party political channels, gave the impression, reinforced by labour historians, that the miners’ associations were inherently conservative.151 However, just as the perception of the ‘no politics’ stance of the Nottingham United Trades Council needs rethinking, the seeming reluctance of the Northumbrian miners to engage with politics should not suggest that they were in any sense conservative. Apparent suspicion of state and political interference was perhaps more reflective of a belief in the notions of self-help and self-reliance. Certainly, in a climate of precarious employment and fluctuating wages, such notions had a strong influence on the miners.152 Moreover, the activists’ attempts to paint the strike as one of class conflict may have fallen flat as the 148 Crick, Social-Democratic Federation, pp. 291–2. 149 Griffin, Nottinghamshire Miners, p. 44. The strength in numbers of the local miners is put into even greater perspective when it is considered that in 1887 the total national membership of the SDF was around 750. P.A. Watmough, ‘The Membership of the Social Democratic Federation, 1885–1902’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, 34 (1977), pp. 35–40. 150 Williams had proposed the nationalisation of the mines. See a report of his speech at Sandhill, Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 5 Mar. 1887. 151 For example, see Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections, p. 319. For an account that suggests the north-east miners were progressive in their politics see H. Beynon and T. Austrin, Masters and Servants: Class Patronage in the Making of a Labour Organisation: The Durham Miners and the English Political Tradition (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1994). 152 B. Williamson, Class, Culture and Community: A Biographical Study of Social Change in Mining (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 46.

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miners did not necessarily perceive the problems of wages in terms of a wider battle between masters and men. Throughout the 1880s, both Thomas Burt, MP for Morpeth, and Joseph Cowen, MP for Newcastle and owner of the influential Newcastle Chronicle, linked the wage issue to the uncontrollable market, not the actions of the coal owners. Moreover, the Primitive Methodism of the miners, even stronger in the north-east than in Nottinghamshire, precluded them from viewing their actions during the strike along class lines. As Robert Moore has suggested in his study of Methodism amongst the Durham miners, the morality of the religion told the miner that he was essentially equal not only with those with whom he worked, but also those who claimed superiority over him.153 Moore also postulates that ‘Primitive Methodism in the Durham coalfields was more congruent with individualism than with collectivism’.154 In this context, such a belief would turn the miners away from the collectivist ideas being espoused by the SDF missionaries. However, as Alastair Reid has argued, it is important to distinguish between the relationship between man and God and that between man and man.155 In terms of the latter, Protestantism produced a strong sense of social responsibility, giving the miners an existing model for social co-operation, and it was this that negated the impact of the SDF message. Meanwhile, important links existed between prominent Primitive Methodists and local Liberalism. Burt and Charles Fenwick, another Lib-Lab MP and high-profile member of the Newcastle Liberal Association (NLA), were both Primitive Methodists and both played a critical role in the leadership of the Northumberland and Durham miners’ associations. Meanwhile, the elections of the 1880s demonstrated the importance of the pacts made between local Liberal associations and miners’ associations. As discussed in the previous chapter, in 1885 the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) struck a deal with the Durham Liberal Association that assured the miners’ candidates safe tenure of their own seats in return for the miners’ associations’ support for the official Liberal candidates in the area.156 Again, it would be wrong to see such collusion as reflecting the conservative nature of the local miners. Indeed, during the strike, many local miners, dismayed by Burt’s unwillingness to support the action, openly accused the Liberal MP of betraying their interests.157 153 R. Moore, Pit-Men, Preachers and Politics: The Effects of Methodism in a Durham Mining Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 223. 154 Ibid. 155 Reid, ‘Old Unionism Reconsidered’, p. 223. 156 See chapter four. 157 E. Welbourne, The Miners’ Unions of Northumberland and Durham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), p. 202.

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Finally, the politics of locality were extremely important in the north-east of England. Joseph Cowen, in particular, frequently played on his local background. When speaking to the local workers ‘he used to dress in a miner’s Sunday clothes, and spoke with a very strong Northumberland accent – almost incomprehensible in London, but very effective with his Newcastle audiences’.158 Such a connection was in stark contrast to Jack Williams, the first activist to arrive during the miners’ strike, who ‘spoke with a very strong cockney accent’.159 Their lack of local connections could not be ignored, leading the chairman at one of Williams’s addresses to admit that ‘being like ordinary outsiders, they had nothing to do with the strike beyond giving their moral or financial support’.160 Yet, even financial support could be in short supply. Mathew Tate, a Northumbrian miner, wrote a poem lamenting the existence of ‘some men from London’ who ‘didn’t bring a coin to help, to aid us in our cause’.161 Meanwhile, at an event in Blyth, Mahon was forced to state that ‘remarks made by certain persons about the socialists coming from London amongst the miners to create an ill-feeling were entirely without foundation’.162 Thus, just as the arrival of John Burns in Nottingham provoked accusations of uninvited interference from an outsider, the intervention of London-based activists in the coalfields of the north-east created a palpable sense of unease. Yet, as was also the case in Nottingham, lack of local connections were only part of a much wider inability to penetrate local political culture due to the organisational and philosophical links between Liberalism, trade unionism and nonconformity. Conclusion Renarrating the ‘revival of socialism’ in the 1880s offers a different picture of the relationship between England’s fledging socialist organisations and official Liberalism to that first established by the organisations themselves and arguably uncritically perpetuated by many labour historians. Three major conclusions can be drawn from this new narrative. Firstly, by focusing on the language used by socialist activists when addressing the public, it becomes clear that they were willing to modify the previously published positions of their organisations. Thus, when John Burns was in direct competition 158 W.E. Adams, Memoirs of a Social Atom (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1903), p. 495. 159 Mann, Memoirs, p. 28. 160 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 26 Feb. 1887. 161 The poem is reprinted in T. Burt, Thomas Burt, MP, DCL, Pitman and Privy Councillor: An Autobiography with Supplementary Chapters by Aaron Watson (London: T.F. Unwin, 1924), p. 285. 162 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 30 Apr. 1887.

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with a Liberal candidate for the vote of Nottingham West’s predominantly working-class electorate, he recognised the need to negotiate both official policy concerning trade unions and his own previously published positions regarding palliatives. Moreover, by focusing on the language Burns used during his campaign, it is clear that he did not have a monopoly on using anti-caucus rhetoric. His Liberal opponents successfully painted him as the candidate of the London-based SDF ‘caucus’, underlining the fact that rather than a socialist bogeyman, the caucus should be viewed as a rhetorical device to attack the legitimacy of a political opponent. Secondly, a new narrative that is sensitive to what was said and done at the grassroots level reveals that the ways in which different socialist groups co-operated with each other and interacted with organised Liberalism was shaped by the local political environment. In London, where there was a palpable lack of a coherent and united Liberal organisation, local socialists showed great adaptability in co-ordinating their efforts with not only supposedly ‘rival’ socialist groups but also radical clubs and, in some cases, Liberal associations. Socialist strategy towards official Liberalism, therefore, was contingent upon local circumstances. Thirdly, a new narrative that is not tied to the socialist organisations’ official publications confirms that we must look beyond the supposed ‘non-revolutionary character of the British working classes’ when determining why the socialists failed to convert more workers away from Liberalism and to their cause. As the case studies of Nottingham West and Northumberland showed, close ties between official Liberalism, miners, their union and nonconformity created a formidable barrier that the socialists could not penetrate. Critically, this should not be taken as a sign of any inherent ‘conservatism’ amongst the workers. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. Harmonious relations between the miners and local Liberalism and employers reflected an assertion of equality, not subservience. Primitive Methodism also offered the workers a belief in social justice and co-operation that would have diminished the class-based appeal of the socialist activists.

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Epilogue Epilogue

The two decades that followed the Second Reform Act represent a critical period in the prehistory of the Labour party. Throughout this period the labour movement constantly re-evaluated the state of its relationship with official Liberalism. The franchise revolution of 1867 and the subsequent changes in local party organisation raised serious questions not only for a labour movement seeking to secure political representation, but also for a Liberal party that had to respond to the pressures of mass politics. With Gladstone’s first government tackling a range of issues that directly affected the lives of the labouring classes, not least trade union legislation, the labour movement felt it was essential to have working-class men, with expert knowledge on these issues, returned to Parliament. This was the rationale behind the formation of the Labour Representation League (LRL) in 1869. There can be little doubt that the LRL wished its candidates to be elected as Liberal MPs who would directly represent the labour interest. From the outset, the LRL identified the national Liberal party as the best vehicle to promote its interests. The problem was that in order to be successful, its candidates needed to be selected by a local Liberal association and brought forward as the official Liberal candidate. Labour’s interactions with the caucus were therefore pivotal in determining how the movement conceptualised its identity in relation to official Liberalism. The era of mass politics ushered in by the Second Reform Act created new challenges for the two main political parties in the sphere of electoral politics. Amidst concerns about the effects of popular pressure, both the Liberal and Conservative parties faced the difficult task of balancing the demands of the various interest groups within them. In addition to dissent and the temperance interest, the Liberal party recognised the need to reach out to the labour movement. The Howell-Glyn pact of 1868 reflected the desire of the Liberal leadership to introduce new electoral machinery to bring working-class political activists within the Liberal

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fold, but as a method of securing an electoral alliance between the labour movement and the Liberal party it was unsustainable. The passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1871 made it clear to the leaders of the LRL that working men were needed in Parliament; simply joining local Liberal associations was not enough. Unsurprisingly, the middleclass managers of local Liberal associations were unwilling to endorse a working man’s candidate who could neither fund his own campaign nor sustain himself financially if elected. Moreover, both local party managers and the wider Liberal party were concerned that working-class MPs would simply advocate ‘class legislation’, despite the labour candidates’ constant and vigorous claims to the contrary. The issue of working-class candidatures was therefore one part of the wider challenge of how to adopt a successful electoral strategy in the post-1867 era. While it was important for the two main political parties to reach out to their core activists, it was essential, in an increasingly entrenched two-party system, to appeal to the wider electorate. To the concern of some in the Liberal party, expending great energy (and money) on direct labour representation looked narrow and faddist. Labour leaders were acutely aware of this problem and took great care to present their agenda in the widest terms possible. In addition to making their appeal to the more inclusive notion of the ‘working classes’, the leaders of the LRL repeatedly refrained from establishing a political programme, believing that a clear set of principles would only serve to fracture the movement. The LRL thus sought to establish its identity in terms of its membership, but the notion of what constituted a bona fide working-class member was a contested one and, in an era of increasingly mass politics, this made it difficult for the labour movement to carve out its own political identity. The 1874 general election exposed the tension between the LRL and the managers of local organised Liberalism. The leaders of the LRL not only faced personal rejection by the caucus, but they were also treated ruthlessly in the ensuing parliamentary campaigns. This caused them to equivocate on the nature of their relationship with official Liberalism. Their response was to distinguish between the ‘milk-and-water’ moderate Liberals who led the local caucus, and the ‘real’ advanced Liberal party which they felt themselves to represent. For these labour activists, there was no contradiction between opposing local organised Liberalism while at the same time championing an advanced national Liberal party. This neat distinction between the national and the local remained an important feature of labour’s attitude towards official Liberalism for the rest of the nineteenth century. In 1894, Thomas Threlfall, secretary of the Labour Electoral Association (LEA), wrote that while he envisioned ‘Labour party MPs’ working with the Liberals at Westminster, he remained implacably

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opposed to the ‘middle-class’ managers of local organised Liberalism who prevented working-class candidatures and called for a ‘revolt against the caucus’.1 The establishment of the National Liberal Federation (NLF) in 1877 was a significant attempt to create an efficient party organisation in an era of increasingly mass politics, and the subsequent debate it generated reflected the anxieties of both Liberals and Conservatives over the role of the party machine in national political life, particularly the corruption of the Burkean ideal of political representation. The leaders of the labour movement echoed these theoretical objections, but they were more concerned with the particular problem of the power of selecting candidates being vested in those who held the purse strings of the local caucus. Their opposition to local organised Liberalism, which found its expression in a notably melodramatic anti-caucus rhetoric, was drawn largely from personal experience. The anti-caucus rhetoric labour activists indulged in during parliamentary contests did not reflect a rejection of the importance of party organisation. In fact, the labour activists analysed in this book showed a remarkable diversity of responses towards organised Liberalism. The increased opportunities at school board and municipal elections allowed labour both to flex its muscles against organised Liberalism and to work with it when it furthered its political ends, as seen through the pragmatic strategies deployed by the Birmingham labour movement in the 1870s and by socialist organisations in London in the 1880s. Labour activists therefore had direct personal experience of the power that party organisation could yield for both good and evil. These varied experiences would prove to be important as the party evolved in the early twentieth century and established its own centralised party machinery. Labour’s diverse responses to the caucus can be explained in large part by locality. At the 1885 general election, for example, labour’s ability to broker special deals with organised Liberalism was determined by the local political environment. Moreover, localism remained a significant barrier to the efforts of the labour movement to achieve direct political representation. The leaders of local party associations fiercely protected their independence, thus neutralising the efforts of those in the upper echelons of the NLF who wished to see more working-class candidacies. Furthermore, the strategy of sending ‘outsider’ London-based labour candidates to provincial constituencies was deeply flawed as they were unable to speak for the local workers. The Home Rule crisis of 1886 caused many within the labour movement to equivocate further on how they conceptualised their identity in relation to the Liberal party. The perception that the Irish Nationalist MPs, by becoming Threlfall, ‘The Political Future of “Labour”’, pp. 213–14. 1

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a factor in the political calculations of the two main parties, had prompted Gladstone to declare his support for Home Rule, certainly influenced Henry Champion, who argued that a ‘new Labour party’ could drive forward its own political agenda in a similar manner. Of course, without an independent presence in the Commons, the analogy was flawed. Yet for a new generation of labour activists, the Irish Nationalists presented a model of what a third party could potentially achieve. Indeed, the generational dimension is important here. For George Howell and George Potter, born in 1833 and 1832 respectively, their formative political experiences were in the 1860s, which witnessed the emergence of labour as a viable interest group working within official Liberalism. For Keir Hardie, born in 1856, the 1886 Home Rule crisis was a seminal moment in his political education and undoubtedly influenced the ways in which he conceived the role of a third party in British politics. Significantly, by 1886 the labour movement was even more divided over the precise identity and role of a ‘Labour party’, an issue that was coterminous with labour’s attitude towards the caucus. The Lib-Lab MPs considered themselves a ‘Labour party’ within the Liberal party in the House of Commons, while the LEA, though sympathetic to Lib-Labism, believed it was its extra-parliamentary organisations that constituted the new ‘party’. Hardie, meanwhile, insisted that a ‘Labour party’ could only exist when it had established a definite political programme. As was the case in the 1870s, at the heart of this debate lay the question of whether a party’s identity should be defined by its programme or by its membership. This debate continued to influence the contested nature of the labour movement’s political identity and its relationship with official Liberalism for the next quarter of a century. It cannot be overstressed, therefore, that the path forward for the labour movement in terms of its relationship with the Liberals was still wide open for negotiation after Hardie’s by-election defeat in April 1888. In 1892 Hardie was elected for West Ham South as an ‘independent labour’ candidate, as was John Burns in Battersea, yet, influenced by their personal experiences with official Liberalism, both men took different approaches. Hardie was insolently independent in the Commons, while Burns, who in 1893 denounced ‘bogus independent labour parties’, sought accommodation with the Liberals, reflecting his experience with the London County Council in Battersea, where the local labour league worked with the progressive alliance.2 The leaders of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), established by Hardie at Bradford in January 1893, initially attempted to construct an identity in opposition to organised Liberalism.3 Strong ILP branches emerged in areas where organised Liberalism was complacent or dysfunctional, particularly the Wrigley, ‘Working-Class Representation in Battersea’, pp. 126–35. 2 Howell, British Workers and the ILP, p. 364. 3

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West Riding, where established Liberalism gave support to Tory employers during their bitter disputes with local woollen workers.4 Yet this oppositional stance did not last. The ILP’s abject failure at the 1895 general election showed that, for all the rhetoric of independence, a pragmatic approach was required. Moreover, the leaders of the ILP did not abandon their radical Liberalism. Highlighting the importance of language in constructing an identity, they opted against putting the term socialist in the party’s title, even though they were committed to securing ‘the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’. In 1899 Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald positioned the ILP as the true heir to a Liberal party that had ‘done its work’.5 In large part, these allusions to radical Liberalism reflected the fact that the support of the trade union movement was indispensable if the ILP wanted to achieve parliamentary representation.6 Mirroring the debates of the mid-1880s, the ILP and the leaders of the LEA continually clashed over whether the identity of a Labour party should be constructed from a programme or its membership. In an 1894 article, Thomas Threlfall again insisted that only the working classes could be bona fide members of the party, and attacked the ILP for making ‘adherence to its platform rather than direct experience of the workman’s life a sufficient reason to bring out a landowner or even a millionaire as a Labour candidate’. The result was ‘endless confusion and ultimate injury’ to labour’s demand for a voice in Parliament.7 Even after the formation of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900, which represented an alliance between the trade union movement and the leadership of the ILP, the tensions concerning the identity of a ‘Labour party’ were palpable.8 MacDonald was certainly aware of the trade unions’ unease about the pretentions of the ILP: addressing the 1904 TUC he insisted that ‘The Labour Representation Committee is neither sister nor brother to the Congress, but its child. We come therefore to offer our filial respects’.9 In the House of Commons, Belchem, Popular Radicalism, p. 160. 4 J.K. Hardie and J. Ramsay MacDonald, ‘The Liberal Collapse’, Nineteenth Century, 45 5 (Jan. 1899), pp. 21–4. For a helpful account of the ways in which the history of the ILP has shaped the 6 Labour party’s identity, see G. Cohen, ‘Myth, History and the Independent Labour Party’, in M. Worley (ed.), The Foundations of the British Labour Party: Identities, Cultures and Perspectives, 1900–39 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 95–112. Threlfall, ‘The Political Future of “Labour”’, pp. 211–12. 7 The best account of the LRC years remains F. Bealey and H. Pelling, Labour and 8 Politics, 1900–1906: A History of the Labour Representation Committee (London: Macmillan, 1958). Quoted in C. Wrigley, ‘Labour and the Trade Unions’, in K.D. Brown (ed.), The First 9 Labour Party, 1906–1914 (London: Vroom Helm, 1985), p. 130.

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meanwhile, the ILP and the older generation of Lib-Lab MPs continually clashed over who constituted the real Labour party. For example, following Hardie’s motion to get an LRC member appointed to the select committee on the Housing of the Working Classes Acts Amendment bill in May 1906, on the grounds that, ‘as a Labour Party, paid by Labour organisations and directly representing Labour opinions, they were entitled to representation on a committee of this kind,’ Charles Fenwick retorted that the Lib-Lab presence on the committee sufficed as ‘they were trade unionists, they stood at the head of large Labour organisations’. He went on to insist that the Lib-Labs’ ‘claim in both these respects was infinitely superior to the claim of some of those who claimed to be members of the Labour party’.10 This assertion was fiercely rejected by David Shackleton, Labour MP for Clitheroe, who declared to the House that ‘he and his friends refused to accept the decision of [Fenwick] as to what constituted a party’.11 Indeed, the fact that in May 1906 the Lib-Labs sat on the ministerial side of the Commons while the ILP members, who were now part of what was officially the parliamentary Labour party, sat opposite them, was a tangible indicator of the differences between them. Yet, it must again be stressed that even at the beginning of the twentieth century, the relationship between the LRC and official Liberalism was open to a process of negotiation and renegotiation based firmly on political realities. To be sure, the rhetoric of independence was strong. In 1899 Hardie and MacDonald insisted that ‘for the Independent Labour Party to give up its independence would be to give up its life’.12 In 1903, moreover, the LRC declared that its MPs should ‘strictly abstain from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any section of the Liberal or Conservative parties’.13 However, the 1900 general election, in which only two out of fifteen LRC candidates were successful, showed the futility of believing that an electoral breakthrough could be made without some kind of deal with the Liberals. Following the Taff Vale judgement of 1901, which made unions liable for damages caused by their members during trade disputes and produced a fresh wave of trade union affiliations to the LRC, MacDonald, who had a strengthened hand now that a labour alliance was not a financial liability to the Liberals, was ready to negotiate. In 1903 he effectively conceded labour’s formal independence when he agreed a secret pact with Herbert Gladstone, Liberal chief whip, to ensure that the Liberal party 10 Hansard, 8 May 1906, vol. 156, cc. 1274–88. 11 Ibid., cc. 1281. 12 Hardie and MacDonald, ‘The Liberal Collapse’, p. 36. 13 Quoted in A.J. Reid and H. Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party, 12th ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 8.

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would withdraw parliamentary candidates in certain constituencies where LRC candidates were standing.14 At the 1906 general election, twenty-four out of the twenty-nine LRC MPs were returned in seats where the Liberals did not stand.15 MacDonald’s willingness to broker a deal with Gladstone must be seen in the broader context of the labour movement’s continuing diversity of responses towards organised Liberalism. Although MacDonald had faced personal rejection by the caucus at Southampton in 1894, he was aware, like many others in the labour movement before him, such as George Howell, that party organisation could be used for good as well as nefarious reasons. As this book has demonstrated, the culture of labour politics in the two decades that followed the Second Reform Act was one of pragmatism, flexibility and diversity, not one of outright hostility to the party machine. By understanding this, we can make sense of how Labour went on to develop such a centralised party organisation in the early twentieth century. The establishment of Labour’s National Executive Committee in 1900, which oversaw affairs between party conferences and acted as a link between the parliamentary Labour Party and affiliated organisations, represented an important step towards the centralisation of the party’s organisation.16 Throughout the Edwardian period, the National Executive Committee, which played a direct role in the day-to-day life of the party, became increasingly powerful, and formed the basis of what was eventually to become one of the most disciplined party machines in British politics. As a committed advocate of efficient party organisation, MacDonald carefully explained his position on the ‘caucus’. Writing in 1909 he attacked caucuses that ‘depend mainly on the financial support of a few men’, but argued that they were a necessary part of modern politics and had to be formed ‘as soon as a party becomes powerful and is widely spread’. For MacDonald, the difference with the ‘Labour Party caucus’ was that, through the centralising influence of the National Executive Committee, it was ‘kept properly subordinate to party opinion’.17 Echoing Howell, MacDonald thus advocated party organisation that adhered to political principles. Importantly, for the central party machinery to keep the caucus in check, it was vital for local party organisation to be closely identified with a single-member constituency. Reflecting the labour movement’s support for the 1885 Redistribution Act, MacDonald welcomed the abolishment of double- or triple-member seats 14 Belchem, Popular Radicalism, p. 170. 15 Pugh, Making of Modern British Politics, pp. 121–3. 16 See Tanner, Political Change and the Labour Party, chapter three. 17 J. Ramsay MacDonald, Socialism and Government, II (London: Independent Labour Party, 1909), pp. 23–7.

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193

which gave greater ‘opportunity for ­manipulating and regimenting votes’. For MacDonald, ‘the more complex the ballot paper, the more powerful will be the caucus’.18 Sensitive to labour’s long-standing criticism that the local caucus gave political power only to those who held the purse strings, MacDonald insisted that the ‘Labour party caucus’ guarded against this tendency by ensuring ‘the party’s financial basis is democratic’.19 Of course, for the party’s finances to be sustainable as it grew into a national party, the continuing monetary support of the trade union movement was essential. Thus, the Osborne Judgement of 1909, which ruled that the law did not allow trade unions to collect a levy for political purposes, immediately threatened Labour’s ability to maintain a disciplined political party. Acutely aware of the link between financial backing and maintaining control of party machinery, MacDonald brokered a deal with the Liberal government in 1911 which introduced salaries for MPs of £400 per annum, a piece of legislation which had long been the cornerstone of labour activists’ demands.20 The 1913 Trade Union Act restored the legality of the political levy, though this had to be validated by a ballot of all union members. The subsequent nationwide union ballot backed the levy, but it is significant that a large minority of the miners voted against it. The desire of sections of the trade union movement to keep themselves separate from party politics, which had shipwrecked the ambitions of the LRL and later the LEA, remained a constant source of tension within the labour movement before the First World War.21 MacDonald’s efforts to establish efficient, centralised party machinery was also met with resistance from within his own party. For example, ambivalent trade union attitudes towards professional party organisation delayed the appointment of Labour’s first national party agent.22 Arthur Henderson, influenced by his experiences as a Liberal agent, was a strong advocate of paid political assistance, but his views were not shared by all. At the 1908 LRC conference, Ben Turner dismissed the supremacy of centralised party machinery, claiming that ‘in the old Conservative and Liberal Parties there was a good deal too much officialdom, too much of the caucus work, too much management from London’.23 Nevertheless, the appointment of a national party agent was subsequently approved that year. MacDonald was 18 Ibid., I, pp. 150–1. 19 Ibid., II, p. 26. 20 T.R. Threlfall, ‘The Programme of the Labour Party’, printed in Leeds Mercury, 13 Jan. 1888. 21 Wrigley, ‘Labour and the Trade Unions’, pp. 129–51. 22 K. Rix, Parties, Agents and Electoral Culture in England, 1880–1910 (forthcoming), chapter two. 23 Labour Party, Annual Reports (1908), p. 55.

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Labour and the Caucus

also challenged by activists on the left of the party, who opposed what they perceived to be an increasing level of oligarchial control. Regionally elected members of the ILP’s National Administrative Committee, in their Let us Reform the Labour Party (1910) – known as the ‘Green Manifesto’ – called for increased internal party democracy.24 Their demand for a greater say in the leadership of the party was part of their wider attack on MacDonald’s belief that Labour should proceed within a ‘progressive alliance’.25 The authors of the Green Manifesto thought that Labour should attack official Liberalism at every opportunity, a view echoed by Ben Tillet in his Is the Parliamentary Party a Failure? (1908), which condemned careerist Labour MPs for betraying working-class interests by supporting the Liberal government’s social policy. However, on the eve of the First World War, such views were becoming increasingly marginalised. Most in the labour movement championed further organisation. For example, a leading article in Justice declared that ‘the chief defect of the Labour party has not been … too strict a caucus rule, but altogether too much liberty and latitude’.26 Labour’s move to establish centralised party machinery in the early twentieth century should not be seen as a great departure from their traditional origins. The paradox of a party seemingly forged out of strong anti-caucus traditions going on to develop one of the most sophisticated machines in British politics can be understood by appreciating the culture of labour politics in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Labour and the Caucus has demonstrated that labour activists were more flexible, pragmatic and diverse in their dealings not only with organised Liberalism but also with other, seemingly rival, working-class groups than has previously been acknowledged. Labour leaders, through personal experience, were fully aware of the electoral benefits of party organisation; their opposition to the caucus, again drawn from their personal experiences, was aimed at those who ran the party machine. This is not to say, of course, that the relationship between the labour movement and the Liberal party was untroubled in the two decades that followed the Second Reform Act. Between 1868 and 1888 there was a sustained and concerted campaign for working-class parliamentary representation from a range of working-class organisations that forced the labour movement and the Liberals to constantly re-evaluate their relationship with each other. Labour’s strained relationship with the Liberal caucus in this period was critical to how it conceptualised its identity as a movement, and the diverse ways in which it responded to official Liberalism 24 Tanner, Political Change and the Labour Party, pp. 51–2. 25 For a good analysis of MacDonald’s role in promoting the ‘progressive alliance’, see Chadwick, Augmenting Democracy. 26 Justice, 7 Dec. 1912.

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prior to 1888 were far more relevant to the dynamics of independent Labour in the ensuing quarter of a century than how Hardie mythologised his defeat at Mid-Lanark.

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Appendix I Parliamentary polls contested by working-class candidates in the Liberal and/or Labour interest in England and Wales, 1868–88 Parliamentary polls contested by working-class candidates Working-class candidates are in bold. Defeated candidates are in italics. Key Cons = Conservative; Ind. = Independent; IWMA = International Working Men’s Association; Lib = Liberal; Lib-Lab = Liberal and direct (working-class) representative of labour interest; LU = Liberal Unionist; RL = Reform League; LRL = Labour Representation League; SDF = Social-Democratic Federation

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Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

N.M. de Rothschild (Lib) S.G. Smith (Cons) George Howell (Lib/RL)

J. Stansfeld (Lib) E. Akroyd (Lib) Edward Greening (Lib)

A.S. Ayrton (Lib) J.D.’A. Samuda (Cons) O.E. Cope (Cons) E. Beales (Lib) William Newton (Ind. Lib)

A.W. Peel (Lib) E. Greaves (Cons) William Randal Cremer (Lib/RL)

Col. Beresford (Lib) George Odger (Lib/LRL) Sir S. Waterlow (Lib)

Constituency and date

Aylesbury 19 Nov. 1868

Halifax 18 Nov. 1868

Tower Hamlets 18 Nov. 1868

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 197

Warwick 17 Nov. 1868

Southwark 17 Feb. 1870 (by-election)

4,686 4,382 2,951

873 863 260

9,839 7,849 7,446 7,160 2,890 2 6 4 4 9

312 13 468 11 3 135 2 -

1,493 1 6,498 4 3,656 - 526 12 1,379 9

Shoemaker; chairman of council of IWMA

Founder of Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners; former member of IWMA

Founder of Amalgamated Society of Engineers; journalist

1,467 4 5 Former wire-worker; co-operative Shared with above movement activist 254 17 8

5,278 5,141 2,802

Former bricklayer; secretary of Reform League

Notes on background of working-class candidate

1,507 12 1 2,143 19 6 416 19 2

Total expenses £ s d

1,772 1,468 942

Votes

Parliamentary polls contested by working-class candidates 197

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Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

N.M. de Rothschild (Lib) S.G. Smith (Lib) George Howell (Lib/LRL)

W. McCullagh Torrens (Lib) A. Lusk (Lib) Col. C.W. Randolph (Cons) Benjamin Lucraft (Lib)

H.W.F. Bolckow (Lib) John Kane (Lib/LRL) W.R. Innes Hopkins (Cons)

H. Richard (Lib) R. Fothergill (Lib) Thomas Halliday (Lib/LRL)

Thomas Burt (Lib) Major F. Duncan (Cons)

Constituency and date

Aylesbury 6 Feb. 1874

Finsbury 9 Feb. 1874

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 198

Middlesbrough 4 Feb. 1874

Merthyr Tydvil 6 Feb. 1874

Morpeth 6 Feb. 1874

3,332 585

674 4 8 376 - -

441 5 6 1,313 11 2.5 889 17 -

1,313 13 7 332 7 6 893 2 6

3,717 1,541 956 7,606 6,903 4,912

826 4 1,729 3 1 1,056 14 10 413 15 7

2,045 15 10 2,242 6 5 524 9 6

Total expenses £ s d

10,099 9,731 7,731 3,205

1,761 1,624 1,144

Votes

Secretary of Northumberland Miners’ Association

President of Amalgamated Association of Miners

National Association of Ironworkers

Cabinet maker; former member of IWMA

Secretary of TUC Parliamentary Committee

Notes on background of working-class candidate

198 Labour and the Caucus

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Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

T. Hankey (Lib) H.G. Whalley (Lib) H.T. Wrensfordsley (Cons) George Potter (Lib/LRL) N. Goodman (Lib) R.M. Kerr (Lib)

E. Hermon (Cons) J. Holker (Cons) Thomas Mottershead (Lib/LRL)

John Locke (Lib) Lt.-Col. Beresford (Cons) George Odger (Lib/LRL) A. Dunn (Lib)

T. Salt (Cons) Alexander Macdonald (Lib/LRL) Capt. F.C. Bridgeman (Cons) H.D. Pochin (Lib)

Constituency and date

Peterborough 3 Feb. 1874

Preston 5 Feb. 1874

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 199

Southwark 7 Feb. 1874

Stafford 3 Feb. 1874

1,238 1,183 947 903

5,901 5,716 3,496 3,121

302 14 10 305 10 894 16 4 130 19

1,430 14 9 778 10 6 Undeclared 987 18 5

773 18 2.5 773 18 2.5 257 16 -

766 18 3 551 9 1 461 14 7 161 17 5 354 8 2 402 19 7

1,135 1,105 666 562 323 71 6,362 5,211 3,606

Total expenses £ s d

Votes

Founder of Miners’ National Association

Shoemaker; journalist and political activist

Silkweaver

Carpenter; journalist and owner of the Bee-Hive

Notes on background of working-class candidate Parliamentary polls contested by working-class candidates 199

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Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

G. Melly (Lib) R. Heath (Cons) W.S. Roden (Lib) Alfred Armstrong Walton (Lib/LRL)

G. Repton (Cons) A.W. Peel (Lib) A.F. Godson (Cons) William Randal Cremer (Lib/LRL)

Lord Lindsay (Cons) T. Knowles (Cons) J. Lancaster (Lib) William Pickard (Lib/LRL) H. Woods (Lib)

W.H.P. Carrington (Lib) Henry Broadhurst (Lib/LRL) F. Charsley (Cons)

E.V. Kenealy (Ind) Alfred Armstrong Walton (Lib/LRL) H.T. Davenport (Cons)

Constituency and date

Stoke-on-Trent 7 Feb. 1874

Warwick 3 Feb. 1874

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 200

Wigan 3 Feb. 1874

Wycombe 3 Feb. 1874

Stoke-on-Trent 18 Feb. 1875 (by-election)

6,110 4,163 3,901

980 113 19

2,493 2,401 1,883 1,134 1,029

836 783 740 183

6,700 6,180 5,369 5,198

Votes

Notes on background of working-class candidate

181 12 10 101 10 7 No return

601 14 2 601 14 2 591 7 6.5 659 19 4 591 7 6.5

No return of general expenses for any of the four candidates

Stonemason and journalist

Secretary of LRL

Agent of Wigan Miners’ Union

Secretary of Workmen’s Peace Association

2,079 9 10 Stonemason and journalist 3,208 2 6 Shared with Melly No return

Total expenses £ s d

200 Labour and the Caucus

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Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 201

7,683 6,830 799

E. Charles (Cons) A. Dunn (Lib) George Shipton (Lib-Lab)

Thomas Burt (Lib)

C.B.B. McLaren (Lib) Alexander Macdonald (Lib-Lab) T. Salt (Cons) G.F. Talbot (Cons)

W. Woodall (Lib) Henry Broadhurst (Lib-Lab) R. Heath (Cons) E.V. Kenealy (Ind)

Southwark 14 Feb. 1880 (by-election)

Morpeth 31 Mar. 1880

Stafford 2 Apr. 1880

Stoke-on-Trent 2 Apr.1880

12,130 11,379 5,102 1,916

1,498 1,345 1,230 1,149

2,213 1,607

T. Cobbold (Cons) William Newton (Lib/LRL)

Ipswich 1 Jan. 1876 (by-election)

Votes

Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

Constituency and date

Founder of Miners’ National Association

Secretary of Northumberland Miners’ Association

Secretary of London Amalgamated Painters’ Union

President of LRL; journalist and newspaper owner

Notes on background of working-class candidate

Secretary of TUC Parliamentary 2,337 13 8 Shared with above Committee 5,623 2 7 No return

1,052 6 0.5 363 13 11.5 551 16 6 1,371 15 4

74 2 0.5

Total expenses £ s d

Parliamentary polls contested by working-class candidates 201

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Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

J. Bryce (Lib) C.T. Ritchie (Lib) J.D’A. Samuda (Cons) Benjamin Lucraft (Lib-Lab)

S. Herbert (Cons) Joseph Arch (Lib-Lab)

T. Salt (Cons) George Howell (Lib-Lab)

George Howell (Lib-Lab) J.D. Mayne (Cons)

Henry Broadhurst (Lib-Lab) W. Showell (Cons)

A. Barnes (Lib) J.C. Macdona (Cons) James Haslam (Lib-Lab)

Constituency and date

Tower Hamlets 2 Apr. 1880

Wilton 2 Apr. 1880

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 202

Stafford 19 Nov. 1881 (by-election)

Bethnal Green (North-East) 25 Nov. 1885

Birmingham (Bordesley) 24 Nov. 1885

Derbyshire (Chesterfield) 3 Dec. 1885

3,408 2,136 1,907

5,362 4,019

3,095 1,844

1,482 1,185

819 397

12,020 11,720 10,384 5,103

Votes

843 19 9 870 17 4 191 1 7

822 12 7 802 10 2

392 6 6 631 2 7

President of National Agricultural Labourers’ Union

712 19 8 512 14 7

Secretary of the Derby Miners’ Association

Secretary of TUC Parliamentary Committee

Former bricklayer; now writer and political organiser

Former bricklayer; now writer and political organiser

Member of executive of Workmen’s Peace Association

Notes on background of working-class candidate

1,616 4 10 1,988 1 4 4,300 - 536 3 10

Total expenses £ s d

202 Labour and the Caucus

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William Abraham (Lib-Lab) F.L. Davis (Lib)

Glamorgan (Rhondda) 3 Dec. 1885

3,859 2,992

2,055 2,035

6,511 4,767

J. Bigwood (Cons) James Rowlands (Lib-Lab)

John Wilson (Lib-Lab) N. Wood (Cons)

Durham (Houghton-leSpring) 28 Nov. 1885

5,799 3,245

Finsbury (East) 26 Nov.1885

William Crawford (Lib-Lab) A. Vane-Tempest (Cons)

Durham (Mid) 3 Dec. 1885

4,409 3,606 2,018

5,702 1,731

Sir J. Joicey (Lib) Lloyd Jones (Lib-Lab) W. Ashworth (Cons)

Durham (Chester-leStreet) 28 Nov. 1885

Votes

Durham (Jarrow) Sir C.M. Palmer (Lib) 28 Nov. 1885 James Johnston (Lib-Lab)

Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

Constituency and date

Secretary of the Miners’ Political Reform Association

694 2 11 1,016 11

235 15 10 305 - -

675 7 244 5 2

Agent of Cambrian Miners’ Association

Secretary of Cab Drivers’ Union

Engineer

President of Durham Miners’ Association

633 2 9 1,003 19 9

850 19 1 325 - -

Journalist and trade unionist

Notes on background of working-class candidate

1,118 13 3 408 6 5 536 4 1

Total expenses £ s d

Parliamentary polls contested by working-class candidates 203

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Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 204

E. Stanhope (Cons) Thomas Threlfall (Lib-Lab)

Thomas Burt (Lib-Lab)

Joseph Arch (Lib-Lab) Lord Henry Cavendish Bentinck (Cons)

Lincolnshire (Horncastle) 5 Dec. 1885

Morpeth 24 Nov. 1885

Norfolk (NorthWest) 9 Dec. 1885

4,461 3,821

4,824 3,959

3,351 2,991 32

R. Gent-Davis (Cons) J. O’Connor Power (Lib) John Fielding (SDF)

Lambeth (Kennington) 26 Nov. 1885

53 18 9

991 16 2 1,290 7 -



1,271 4 1 1,329 10 1

656 17 2 685 15 5 170 14 1

939 14 11 723 18 10 181 1 9

4,193 4,027 735

H.S. King (Cons) C.M. Norwood (Lib) Neiles Boynton Billany (Lib-Lab)

Kingston-upon Hull Central 26 Nov. 1885

Total expenses £ s d 552 16 7 552 11 9 155 5 9

Sir H.T. Holland (Cons) Marquis of Lorne (Lib) Jack Williams (SDF)

Hampstead 26 Nov. 1885

Votes 2,785 1,910 27

Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

Constituency and date

President of National Agricultural Labourers’ Union

Secretary of Northumberland Miners’ Association

Typographical Association; president of TUC in 1885

Unskilled labourer and socialist activist

Ship carpenter

Unskilled labourer and socialist activist

Notes on background of working-class candidate

204 Labour and the Caucus

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Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 205

6,669 3,797 598

C. Seely (Lib) E. Cope (Cons) John Burns (SDF)

William Randal Cremer (Lib-Lab) R. Denny Urlin (Cons)

John Charles Durant (Lib-Lab) F.W. Isaacson (Cons)

Joseph Leicester (Lib-Lab) A.J. Pound (Cons)

Benjamin Pickard (Lib-Lab) Major A.H. Charlesworth (Cons)

Nottingham (West) 27 Nov. 1885

Shoreditch (Haggerston) 25 Nov. 1885

Tower Hamlets (Stepney) 26 Nov. 1885

West-Ham (South) 28 Nov. 1885

Yorkshire, West Riding (Normanton) 1 Dec. 1885

5,615 3,706

3,527 2,545

2,141 2,119

2,736 1,259

5,838 2,703

Charles Fenwick (Lib) J.B. Coulson (Cons)

Northumberland (Wansbeck) 9 Dec. 1885

Votes

Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

Constituency and date

462 10 7 978 4 8

407 1 9 798 19 7

446 19 5 612 1 5

265 13 11 379 17 4

849 5 2 758 - 2 322 1 1

697 - 11 763 8 7

Total expenses £ s d

Secretary of Yorkshire Miners’ Association

Secretary of Glassmakers’ Trade Society

Compositor and Christian Socialist

Secretary of Workmen’s Peace Association

Engineer

Northumberland Miners’ Association

Notes on background of working-class candidate Parliamentary polls contested by working-class candidates 205

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Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

George Howell (Lib-Lab) E.J. Stoneham (LU)

Nicholas Wood (Cons) John Wilson (Lib-Lab)

William Crawford (Lib-Lab)

James Rowlands (Lib-Lab) J. Bigwood (Cons)

William Abraham (Lib-Lab)

Thomas Burt (Lib-Lab)

Constituency and date

Bethnal Green (North-East) 5 July 1886

Durham (Houghton-leSpring) 14 July 1886

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 206

Durham (Mid) 6 July 1886

Finsbury (East) 5 July 1886

Glamorganshire (Rhondda) 2 July 1886

Morpeth 1 July 1886

1,973 1,912

5,878 5,059

3,095 1,844

Votes

47 12 10

25 - 7

254 3 4 472 17 3

160 4 3

887 9 6 603 5 5

210 - 582 12 8

Total expenses £ s d

Secretary of Northumberland Miners’ Association

Agent of Cambrian Miners’ Association

Secretary of Cab Drivers’ Union

President of Durham Miners’ Association

Secretary of the Miners’ Political Reform Association

Former bricklayer; now writer and political organiser

Notes on background of working-class candidate

206 Labour and the Caucus

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Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 207

5,235 1,710

Charles Fenwick (Lib-Lab) W. Wight (LU)

Henry Broadhurst (Lib-Lab) C. Seely (LU)

W.E.M. Tomlinson (Cons) R.W. Hanbury (Cons) J.O. Pilkington (Lib) George Potter (Lib-Lab)

C.B. Stuart-Wortley (Cons) Thomas Threlfall (Lib-Lab)

Northumberland (Wansbeck) 15 July 1886

Nottingham (West) 3 July 1886

Preston 2 July 1886

Sheffield (Hallam) 6 July 1886

3,581 2,612

7,497 7,296 4,982 4,771

5,458 4,609

4,084 4,064

Lord Henry Cavendish Bentinck (Cons) Joseph Arch (Lib-Lab)

Norfolk (NorthWest) 10 July 1886

Votes

Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

Constituency and date

452 17 8 435 7 1

463 5 8 498 14 10 320 4 8 315 18 2

735 3 6 919 12 4

463 15 5 632 12 5

1,053 8 10 815 6 2

Total expenses £ s d

Typographical Association

Publisher and journalist

Secretary of TUC Parliamentary Committee

Northumberland Miners’ Association

President of National Agricultural Labourers’ Union

Notes on background of working-class candidate Parliamentary polls contested by working-class candidates 207

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Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 208

2,778 2,472

Major G.E. Banes (Cons) Joseph Leicester (Lib-Lab)

Benjamin Pickard (Lib-Lab) Major A.H. Charlesworth (Cons)

J. Wynford Philipps (Lib) W.R. Bousfield (Cons) Keir Hardie (Ind. Lab)

West-Ham (South) 7 July 1886

Yorkshire, West Riding (Normanton) 9 July 1886

Lanarkshire (Mid division) 27. Apr. 1888 (by-election)

3,847 2,917 617

4,771 3,724

2,054 1,677

William Randal Cremer (Lib-Lab) Sir E. Lawrence (LU)

Shoreditch (Haggerston) 5 July 1886

Votes

Candidates and party/ organisational affiliation

Constituency and date

383 8 7 896 19 5

511 14 11 310 4 7

197 2 5 591 6 3

Total expenses £ s d

Secretary Ayrshire Miners’ Union

Secretary of Yorkshire Miners’ Association

Secretary of Glassmakers’ Trade Society

Secretary of Workmen’s Peace Association

Notes on background of working-class candidate

208 Labour and the Caucus

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Appendix II Municipal and School board elections contested by working-class/labour candidates discussed in Labour and the Caucus Elections contested by working-class/labour candidates Key CDC = Central Democratic Committee; Ind. = Independent; LRL = Labour Representation League; Lib = Liberal; SDF = Social-Democratic Federation

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School Bd

School Bd

Westminster, London 1870

Westminster, London 1870

School Bd

Lambeth, London 1870

School Bd

School Bd

Finsbury, London 1870

Marylebone, London 1870

School Bd

School Bd

Municipal

Municipal

Municipal/ School Bd

Leeds 1870

Birmingham 1870

Claines Ward, Worcester 1870

Nechells Ward, Birmingham 1870

Division and date

George Shipton (Lib)

George Potter (Lib)

William Randal Cremer (Lib)

Robert Applegarth (Lib)

Benjamin Lucraft (Lib)

William Beckworth (Ind./ Primitive Methodist)

David Kirkwood (Ind. Labour/ secularist)

John Airey (LRL)

Hanan Morley (LRL)

Candidate and affiliation

12/12 (defeated)

7/12 (defeated)

15/22 (defeated)

8/14 (defeated)

6/15 (elected)

5/38 (elected)

25/27 (defeated)

4/4 (elected)

1/2 (elected)

Placed

Builder and later Secretary of London Amalgamated Painters’ Union

Former carpenter, owner of the Bee-Hive

Founder of Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners; former member of IWMA

Joiner

Cabinet maker; former member of IWMA

Tanner and leather cutter

Gun-action filer

President Worcestershire Ag. Lab. Union

Baker

Notes on candidate

210 Labour and the Caucus

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Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 211

School Bd

School Bd

School Bd

Westminster, London 1873

Birmingham 1875

Birmingham 1876

Nottingham 1886

School Bd

Nechells, Birmingham 1880 Municipal

School Bd

Municipal

Greenwich, London 1873

St Mary’s Ward, Birmingham 1872

School Bd

Municipal

Hampton Ward, Birmingham 1871

Stafford 1871

School Bd

Municipal/ School Bd

Nottingham 1870

Division and date

John Peacock (Independent)

William John Davis (Birmingham Labour Association)

William John Davis (Birmingham Labour Association)

William John Davis (LRL)

George Potter (Lib)

Henry Broadhurst (Lib)

John Osborne (LRL)

Henry Holder (Lib)

James Whateley (Lib)

Edward Smith (Ind. Labour/ Methodist Free Church)

Candidate and affiliation

1/22 (elected)

1/2 (elected)

Uncontested (elected)

3/3 (defeated)

2/6 (elected)

5/6 (defeated)

3/3 (defeated)

2/13 (elected)

Nottingham SDF

Leader of Birmingham Brassworkers’ Union

Leader of Birmingham Brassworkers’ Union

Leader of Birmingham Brassworkers’ Union

Former carpenter, owner of the Bee-Hive

Former Stonemason; secretary of LRL

Builder

Secretary Stafford Tailors’ Union

Pearl-button worker

Lace maker

13/39 (elected) 1/2 (elected)

Notes on candidate

Placed

Elections contested by working-class/labour candidates 211

21/01/2014 08:54:41

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 212

Municipal

School Bd

Battersea, London 1889

Nottingham 1889

Nottingham 1889

School Bd

School Bd

Tower Hamlets, London 1888

School Bd

School Bd

School Bd

School Bd

Municipal

Municipal

Municipal

Municipal

Municipal/ School Bd

Marylebone, London 1888

Lambeth West, London 1888

Lambeth East, London 1888

Hackney, London 1888

Wollaton Ward, Nottingham 1887

Bryon, Nottingham 1887

Bryon Ward, Nottingham 1886

Bridge Ward, Nottingham 1886

Division and date

Thomas Proctor (Socialist)

John Peacock (Socialist)

John Burns (Socialist/ Progressive Alliance)

Annie Hicks (Socialist/CDC)

Annie Besant (CDC)

John Ward (Socialist/CDC)

Harry Quelch (Labour/CDC)

Rev. Stuart Headlam (CDC)

Samuel Whalley (SDF)

Thomas Proctor (Nottingham Socialist Union)

Thomas Proctor (Nottingham Labour Representation League)

Samuel Whalley (Nottingham Labour Representation League)

Candidate and affiliation

18/18 (defeated)

17/18 (defeated)

1/6 (elected)

10/11 (defeated) 1/11 (elected)

11/14 (defeated)

6/7 (defeated)

4/8 (elected)

2/2 (defeated)

3/3 (defeated)

2/2 (defeated)

2/2 (defeated)

Placed

Fitter

Nottingham SDF

Engineer

Midwife

Editor of the Link

Labourer

Labourer

Church of England

Lace and trimming dealer; secretary of Nottingham SDF

Fitter; member of Socialist League

Fitter; member of Socialist League

Lace and trimming dealer; secretary of Nottingham SDF

Notes on candidate

212 Labour and the Caucus

21/01/2014 08:54:41

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Index Index

Abraham, William 121n1, 203, 206 Acland, James 29n31, 41–2 Adams, William Edwin 107–10 Adams, William Patrick 123 Adelphi Club 28–9, 35 agricultural labourers 22, 33, 61 civil rights 80–1, 90 and Irish nationalism 141 and Liberal party 85–90 perceptions of 77–8 and republicans 79, 80 and ‘space’ 78–9 and urban radicals 79, 82–4, 90 see also National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU) Airey, John 55, 210 Allan, William 26, 37 Allotments Extension Act (1882) 88 Altrincham 70 America see United States Anti-Coercion Association 139 Applegarth, Robert 26, 29, 38, 56, 66, 210 Arch, Joseph 77, 79–81, 83, 85–9, 94, 121n1, 140, 141, 202, 204, 207 Aveling, Edward 175 Aveling, Eleanor 175 Aylesbury 33–4 Ayr Burghs 135, 147 Ayrton, Acton 32

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 231

Bagehot, Walter 103 Bailey, William 128, 131, 170 Ball, George 83 Banks, William 80, 82, 83, 84n119 Barker, Michael 2, 13 Barnes, Alfred 127–8 Barrow, Logie 160 Barry, Maltman 164 Battersea 159, 164, 177, 181, 189 Bax, Edward Belfort 160, 180 Baxter, William 104 Beales, Edmond 32 Becker, Lydia 95 Beckworth, William 56, 210 Bee-Hive 8, 24, 27, 28, 38, 39, 42, 50–1, 76, 78 Beesley, Edward 45, 77, 158 Beresford, Colonel 41–2, 197 Berkshire 78 Besant, Annie 162, 163, 164n44, 175–6, 212 Bethnal Green 41, 123, 124, 140 Bevir, Mark 11 Biagini, Eugenio 13–14, 18, 21, 87 Billany, Neiles 124–5, 204 Birmingham 1–2, 5, 16, 22, 27n13, 30, 38, 39, 74, 79, 81, 83, 89, 96, 112, 124, 132, 142–3, 188 local elections 52–9 republican club 68–71, 73, 76, 89

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Birmingham Conservative Association 112 Birmingham Labour Association 57–8 Birmingham Liberal Association (BLA) 53–8, 92, 93, 95, 98, 101, 106–7, 113, 117, 120, 141 ‘Birmingham model’ see Birmingham Liberal Association Black, Clementina 132–3 Blackburn 31 Bland, Hubert 162 Bolckow, Henry 48, 198 Bolton 70 Boon, Martin 65 Booth, Charles 67 Boston (Lincolnshire) 80 Boston (USA) 108 Bradford 99 Bradlaugh, Charles 32, 34, 39, 40–1, 64, 71, 74–6, 129 Brassey, Thomas 123n10 Bright, John 64 Bristol, 31, 39, 96, 142 Broadhurst, Henry 44, 46, 47n138, 56, 57, 121n1, 123–4, 128, 130–1, 139–40, 143, 200, 201, 202, 207, 211 Bryce, James 19, 107 Bullock, Ian 160 Burke, Edmund 99 Burn, James Dawson 107, 109 Burns, John 18, 156, 162, 164–72, 174, 181, 184–5, 189, 205, 212 Burrows, Herbert 158 Burt, Thomas 46–7, 95, 119, 121n1, 129–30, 139–40, 141, 177, 183, 198, 201, 204, 206 Butler, Josephine 96 Butt, Isaac 144 Camberwell 97, 139 Carlton Club 5

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Carlyle, Thomas 103 Carpenter, Alfred 142 Cattell, Charles 69, 76 caucus in America 91–2, 104–5, 109, 110 anti-caucus rhetoric 17, 21, 104, 106, 111–12, 120, 126, 156, 168, 172, 185, 188 contemporary discussion of 16, 98–102, 105–7, 111–12 historiography of 19 labour movement’s critique of 98–102, 118, 120, 157–63, 188, 193, 194 language of 17, 21–22, 66, 92, 104, 111–13, 116–17, 120, 165 origin of word 16 pejorative use of the word 1–3, 106, 111–12 see also Liberal associations, National Liberal Federation (NLF) Central Democratic Committee (CDC) 175–6 Chamberlain, Joseph 45, 123, 126, 159, 166 and Birmingham politics 53–8, 71, 95, 141 defence of caucus 106–7, 111–12 and Home Rule 141 and National Liberal Federation (NLF) 92–3, 94, 141 Radical Programme 88 and republicanism 71 Sheffield candidacy 114 Shipping bills 115 ‘Unauthorised Programme’ 166 Champion, Henry Hyde 135–6, 137, 144, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 160, 164, 189 Chartists 6, 69–70, 103, 107, 109, 110, 166

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Index

Chase, Malcolm 6, 72, 74 Chelsea 35–6 Chesterfield 127–8 Chester-le-Street 126–7 Chipping Norton 80, 84, 85 Clegg, Hugh 9 Colchester 96 Collings, Jesse 54, 83, 88, 143 Commonweal 160, 163, 174, 175 Compton, Henry 158 Conservatism and women 72, 95 working class 15–16, 23, 49–50, 132, 133 Conservative Party 1874 general election 93 1885 general election 140 local associations 5, 45, 112–13 national organisation 93, 186 Cooper, R.A. 75 Cope, Edward 168, 172, 205 Copland, Elijah 118–19 Corbett, Thomas Coulson, Edwin 26 Coventry 79 Cowen, Joseph 8, 26, 28, 87, 117–19, 126, 139, 140, 158–9, 183, 184 Crawford, William 121n1, 125–6, 129, 203, 206 Cremer, William Randal 26, 34, 38, 47n138, 56, 66, 83, 95, 121n1, 129, 176, 197, 200, 205, 208, 210 Criminal Law Amendment Act (1871) 14, 42–4, 68, 85–6, 89, 153, 187 Daily News 86 Dale, R.W. 141 Darlington 96 Davis, William John 1–2, 53, 57–8, 211 Davitt, Michael 138–9, 146

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233

De Morgan, John 74, 76 Democratic Federation (DF) see Social-Democratic Federation (SDF) Deptford 135 Derby 79, 141 Derbyshire Miners’ Association 127 Dickson, Colonel 33n51, 41 Dilke, Ashton 118 Dilke, Charles 35, 64, 66, 70, 73, 83, 88, 104 Disraeli, Benjamin 62 Dixie, Lady Florence 151 Dixon, George 53, 57, 81, 83, 85 Dorset 88 Douse, W.J. 172 Durant, John 121n1, 205 Durham 14, 21, 113, 141, 181, 183 Durham Conservative Association 5 Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) 46, 119, 125–7, 183 Druitt, George 38 East London Observer 176 Edinburgh Review 106 Education Act (1870) 52, 54 Engels, Friedrich 180 Evans, Howard 83 Fabian Society 7, 155, 161–3, 175, 176 Fawcett, Henry 24, 34 Federal Union of Agricultural and General Labourers 61, 79, 82–3, 86 Fenianism 72 see also Irish nationalism Fenwick, Charles 95, 121n1, 127, 130, 131, 183, 191, 205, 207 Ferguson, John 138, 152 Fielding, John 164, 179, 204 Florida 105 Forster, William Edward 99

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Fox, Alan 9 French Republic 64 Fry, Sophia 96 Garbutt, Thomas 69, 73 Garfield, James A. 110 general elections 1852 6–7 1865 26 1868 33–6, 53 1874 45–50, 59, 102 1880 87, 88–9, 112, 118 1885 113, 115–17, 119, 121–8, 140, 146, 147, 164, 166–8 1886 128, 140 1892 128 1895 190 1900 191 1906 192 Gilpin, Charles 32, 34 Gladstone, Catherine 96 Gladstone, Herbert 98 pact with Ramsay MacDonald 191–2 Gladstone, William 13, 24, 34, 59, 115, 162, 186 1874 general election defeat 93n5 and America 104n57 and agricultural labourers 86–9 and Joseph Chamberlain 92n4 coercion 139–40 and Irish Home Rule 13–4, 124, 138, 140, 142–4, 146, 154, 170n75 and National Liberal Federation (NLF) 141 and republicans 62, 64, 65 and working classes 67, 149–50 Glyn, George 29, 31, 32–3, 34, 35, 186 George, Henry 160 Graham, Robert Cunninghame 151 Greening, Edward 32, 197

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 234

Halifax 32, 141 Halliday, Thomas 47, 198 Hanham, H.J. 20 Hannam, June 12 Hardie, James Keir Home Rule crisis, influence of 189 and Independent Labour Party (ILP) 189–90 and Labour Electoral Association (LEA) 134–7, 144 Labour party, his definition of 134, 189, 191 and Liberal party 134, 148–9, 152, 153–4 and Lib-Lab MPs 130–1 as Member of Parliament 189 Mid-Lanark by-election (1888) 1–4, 148–51, 189, 195, 208 and Scottish Labour Party (SLP) 151–2 ‘Sons of Labour’ 134–5, 149, 151, 153 Hardwicke, Dr 116 Harney, George Julian 107–8, 110 Harris, G.E. 66 Harris, William 53 Harrison, Frederic 45 Harrison, N. 71 Harrison, Royden 10–11, 73 Hartwell, Robert 36 Haslam, James 127–8, 202 Haven, Charles 112 ‘Hawarden kite’ 140 Hawkes, Mervyn 115–16, 126 Hayes, Rutherford B. 104 Headlam, Rev. Stewart 176, 212 Healy, Thomas 139, 145, 147 Henderson, Arthur 2, 193 Henley, Lord 32 Herbert, Auberon 73, 84 Herefordshire 81 Hermon, Edward 50

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Index

Hicks, Annie 177, 212 Hoare, Hamilton 123 Hoare, Sir Henry 35–6 Hobsbawm, Eric 9 Holder, Henry 56, 211 Hollowell, Rev. Hirst 170 Holyoake, George 83, 107, 108–9, 111 Home Rule Gladstone’s adoption of 13–14, 140, 146, 189 and British labour movement 133, 138, 140–1, 142–3, 146, 154, 162, 188–9 local Home Rule associations 48 see also Irish nationalism Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain (HRCGB) 144 Hopkin, John 170 Horn, Patricia 82 Howell, George Aylesbury candidacies 33–4, 47n138, 48, 102, 197, 198 Bethnal Green candidacy 121n1, 123, 202, 206 and Central Democratic Committee (CDC) 176 correspondence 108 critique of caucus 91, 98–102, 110, 120, 192 and Criminal Law Amendment Act (1871) 42, 44 and Irish nationalism 140 and Labour Representation League (LRL) 38, 102 and Land Tenure Reform Association 65 and Liberal party 30, 35, 101, 130, 153 Liberal party electioneering agent 10 and London Trades Council 26

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 235

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Member of Parliament 129 pact with George Glyn 29–30, 31–2, 59, 186–7 Peterborough by-election 102 political beliefs 35, 80 political experiences 189 and republicanism 65–6 secretary of Reform League 27, 28 secretary of TUC parliamentary committee 10, 44, 45 and Trades Union Congress (TUC) 39, 44 views on George Odger 65–6n20 and Women’s Suffrage Committee 95 Howkins, Alun 80 Hudson, R. 164n44 Hughes, Thomas 26–7, 34, 36n68, 44 Hull 124–5 Hunt, Karen 12 Hyde Park 26, 63, 64 Hyndman, Henry Myers 158–60, 164, 164n45, 167, 173, 178, 179–80 Ilkeston 88 International Working Men’s Association 26, 72 International Democratic Association (IDA) 62, 63–7, 75 Independent Labour Party (ILP) 1, 189–91, 194 International Working Men’s Association 26 Is the Parliamentary Party a Failure? 194 Isle of Thanet 147 Irish Home Government Association 138 Irish Land League 138

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Labour and the Caucus

Irish National League (INL) 144–5, 146, 149 Irish national party 138, 140, 145–6, 151 Irish nationalism 137 and British labour movement 138–41, 151 influence on strategy of British labour movement 144–7, 154, 189 and Liberal party 144–6 see also Home Rule, Irish National League (INL), Irish national party Jackson, Edward 82 Jarrow 127 Johnson, Andrew 110 Johnston, James 127, 203 Joicey, James 126 Jones, Ernest 7, 30 Joyce, Patrick 15, 17 ‘Junta’ see London Trades Council Justice 12, 156, 163, 165, 167, 173, 174, 181, 194 see also Social-Democratic Federation (SDF) Kane, John 38–9, 47n138, 48, 198 Keeling, Henry 165 Kelly, John 108 Kenealy, Edward 49 Kingston-upon-Hull see Hull Kirkwood, David 54, 210 Knight, Robert 95 Labouchère, Henry 40–1 labour aristocracy 9–10 Labour Electoral Association (LEA) 5, 6, 11, 128, 131–7, 145, 148, 150, 151, 152–4, 180, 189, 190, 193 Labour Electoral Committee 131

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 236

‘Labour Party’ contested identity of, prior to 1888 15, 16, 129–37, 144, 153–4, 189 contested identity of, after 1888 187–8, 190–1 formation 13 National Executive Committee 192 party organisation after 1900 194 use of the term prior to 1888 3, 14, 43, 45, 51, 58, 59, 76, 122, 129–37, 146, 147, 148, 153, 180 Labour Representation Committee (LRC) 190–1, 193 Labour Representation League (LRL) 3, 6, 7, 59, 75, 85, 89, 101, 134, 145, 153, 158–9, 171 1874 general election 45–51 finances 43 formation 37–9, 186 identity 43, 187 attitude towards Liberal Party 38, 51, 186–7 provincial branches 39 and republicanism 66, 76 and Trades Union Congress (TUC) 40, 193 Labourers’ Union Chronicle 79, 83, 85, 87 see also National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU) Lacey, Rev. Richard 48 Land and Labour League (LLL) 62, 64–7 Land Tenure Reform Association 62, 65–6, 83 Lansbury, George 2 Latham, Richard 37, 43 Lawrence, Jon 11, 14–15, 18, 21, 37, 112n98 Leader, Robert 115 Leamington 81 Leeds 30, 55–6, 132, 141, 161 Leicester 141, 143

21/01/2014 08:54:42

Index

Leicester, Joseph 121n1, 140, 205, 208 Let us Reform the Labour Party 194 Lib-Labs and caucus 122–8 and Irish nationalism 139–41 as Members of Parliament 9, 13, 121, 129–30, 132, 145, 153, 189, 191 origin of term 121n2 relationship with wider labour movement 124–8, 135 Liberal associations and agricultural labourers 87–8 deals with labour movement 46–7, 48–9, 55–6, 58, 122–6, 176, 183, 188 and Home Rule 141–2, 143 independence of 45, 98, 188 and nonconformity 170, 172, 183 and Redistribution Act 113 relationship with National Liberal Federation (NLF) 94 prior to 1868 30 and Reform League 31 test ballots 31 and working-class candidatures 30, 35–6, 40–2, 48, 50–1, 54, 97–8, 100–2, 113–15, 120, 121–8, 133, 168–9, 187 women’s associations 96 working-class membership of 57, 94–5, 169 see also caucus, National Liberal Federation (NLF) Liberal Central Association 98 Liberal Party 1874 general election defeat 93 1880 general election victory 112 1885 general election 140 and franchise reform 86, 87 historiography 4n11 and Home Rule 145–6

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 237

237

and labour representation 9, 47, 50–1, 97, 149, 186–7, 191–2 and National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU) 83–4, 85–90 New Liberal Programme 130 and republicanism 71 state of party organisation 31–2, 123 and trade union legislation 44, 59, 85, 186 and women 95–7 see also Liberal associations, Lib-Labs, National Liberal Federation (NLF) Liberal unionists 141 Liberalism and American democracy 103–5 ideology 13–15, 59, 85 and Independent Labour Party (ILP) 190 Scottish dimension 151 Lincoln, Abraham 110 Lincolnshire 80, 84, 89 Lincolnshire and Neighbouring Amalgamated Labour League (LNALL) 77, 82, 83, 87 Link 176 Linton, William 107, 110 Liverpool 132, 136, 146 Lloyd Jones, Patrick 37, 47n138, 78, 83, 100–2, 110, 111, 126–7, 158, 203 localism 15, 22, 24, 50, 59, 81–2, 89, 101, 111, 188 locality, politics of 21–2, 76, 89, 101, 172, 174, 177, 184, 188 London 7, 102, 188 Liberal and radical associations 56, 97, 123, 161–2, 175–7, 185 local elections 97, 162–3, 175–7 radical clubs 67, 123, 158, 159, 175 republican organisations 62–4

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London and Counties Liberal Union 123 London County Council 163, 177, 189 London Dock Strike 167n59 London Liberal and Radical Union 175 London Trades Council 7–8, 10, 25–7, 39, 83, 86 London Working-Men’s Association 26–7, 36 Louisiana 105 Lovett, William 6 Lowell, A.L. 19–20 Lucraft, Benjamin 26, 47n138, 56, 83, 198, 202, 210 McCarthy, Rev. E.F.M. 56–7 MacDonald, James Ramsay 1, 190–4 pact with Herbert Gladstone 191–2 views on the caucus 192–3 Macdonald, Alexander 33n51, 44, 45, 46, 87, 199, 201 Maddison, Fred 125, 132, 134, 134n71 Mahon, John Lincoln 161, 173, 179, 180, 184 Manchester 30, 94, 131, 141, 143 Manchester Examiner 109 Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association 8, 26 Mann, Tom 150, 181–2 Market Rasen 83 Marriott, William 99 Marsh, Peter 71 Marshall, J.D. 142 Marxists 157, 160, 164 Members of Parliament, payment of 134n74, 137n88, 147, 158n10, 160, 193 Merthyr Tydvil 47

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 238

Methodism see Primitive Methodism Metropolitan Radical Federation 175 Mid-Lanark by-election (1888) 1–4, 148–50 significance of 150–2, 195 Middlesbrough 48, 72 Midlothian 143 Mill, John Stuart 26–7, 62, 65, 83, 103, 139 Miner 130, 150 miners 46–7, 49, 130, 131, 134, 149, 151, 166, 177, 179–85 and Irish nationalism 141 and labour electoral associations 132 loyalty to Gladstone 149–50 and Liberal associations 46, 113, 125–8, 153 nonconformity 125, 170, 183, 185 and trade union levy 193 see also Durham Miners’ Association (DMA), Northumberland Miners’ Association, ­Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association (NMA) Moore, James 143 Morgan, Kenneth 153 Morley, Arnold 98 Morley, Hanan 55, 210 Morley, John 95, 118–19, 159 Morley, Samuel 28, 29, 44, 83, 84n119, 123n10 Morning Post, 150 Morpeth 119 Morris, William 160–1, 163, 173, 179–80 Mottershead, Thomas 47n138, 49–50, 199 Mundella, Anthony 32n45, 44, 73, 114

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Index

national identity 50, 151 National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU) 61, 77 and Federal Union 82–3, 86 formation 77, 81–2 and Liberal Party 83–4, 85–90, 94 membership 77, 81–2 programme 80 and Trades Union Congress (TUC) 83 and urban radicalism 79, 83 and women 81 see also agricultural labourers, Labourers’ Union Chronicle National Central Registration and Election Committee (NCREC) 6 National Land League of Great Britain 139 National Liberal Federation (NLF) 2, 5, 162 comparisons with American caucus 16–17, 105–7, 111 dominance of Birmingham 94, 94n11, formation 16, 20, 81, 91, 92–3, 97–8, 103, 104, 188 and Home Rule 141–2 impact 119–20 and Redistribution Act 113 relationship with provincial Liberal associations 98, 120, 141–2, 175 and women 95 and working-class parliamentary candidates 97–8, 152, 188 working-class delegates 94, 95 National Reformer 74 National Republican Brotherhood 61, 74–6 National Republican League (NRL) 61, 74–6

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 239

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National Union of Conservative and Constitutional ­Associations 93 New York City 104, 105, 108, 109, 110, 111 Newcastle-upon-Tyne 22, 117–19, 144 1883 by-election 118–19 1885 general election 119 Irish population 139 republican clubs 68, 73, 76 Newcastle Liberal Association (NLA) 2, 95, 117–19, 141, 158, 183 Newcastle Chronicle 78, 108, 117–18, 126, 139, 183 Newmarket 79 Newton, William 6–7, 32, 197, 201 Nineteenth Century 106 nonconformity 22, 141, 156–7, 169–70, 172, 174, 184–5 and Liberal associations 54, 125, 170, 175 see also Primitive Methodism Norfolk 80, 141 Norfolk, North-West 85, 89 North of England Socialist Federation 179–80 North Shields 72 Northampton 32, 79 Northumberland Miners’ Association 46, 182–3 1887 strike 161, 177–81 Norwood, Charles 124–5 Nottingham 5, 22, 30–1, 79, 84 Liberal associations 56, 94, 124, 128, 141, 143, 168–70 nonconformist associations 169–70 republican clubs 68–74, 89 socialist organisations 161, 165, 173–5 Nottingham West 128, 166–72, 185

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Nottinghamshire 82 Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association (NMA) 128, 131, 170, 171, 182 O’Brien, Bronterre 6 O’Connor, Feargus 6, 166 O’Connor, Thomas Power 139, 146, 176 O’Day, Alan 146 Odger, George and agricultural labourers 79, 82, 87 Chelsea candidacy 35, 88 and Labour Representation League (LRL) 38 and London Trades Council 26 Peterborough candidacy 47n138, 48 Reform League lecturer 31, 34 and republicanism 64–5, 67, 70 Southwark candidacies 3, 6, 40–2, 47n138, 197, 199 Stafford test ballot 46 and Trades Union Congress (TUC) 39 views on Liberal Party 36, 38, 153 views on working-class MPs 38 Olney, Richard 82 Osborne, John (Birmingham) 55, 211 Osborne, John (Nottingham) 171 Osborne Judgement (1909) 193 Osborne, William 63 Ostrogorski, Moisei 19–20, 117 Pall Mall Gazette 150 Palmer, Sir Charles 127 Palmerston, Lord 8 Parker, Samuel 72 Parnell, Charles Stewart 138, 140, 144, 147, 149 Parry, William John 136 party organisation early examples of 5

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 240

state of in 1868 30 see also Liberal associations, National Liberal Federation (NLF) Passmore-Edwards, John 31, 41 Peace Society 73 Peacock, John 173–5, 211, 212 Pease, Edward 161 Pelling, Henry 9–10, 107, 157–8 Pennsylvania 109 Philipps, John Wynford 148, 208 Pickard, Benjamin 121n1, 124, 129, 130, 132, 134, 205, 208 Pickard, William 47, 50, 200 Pickersgill, Edward Hare 123 ‘place’ 3, 9, 18, 22, 61–2, 72–3, 76, 82, 89 Plimsoll, Samuel 115 Pope, Alexander 117 Pope, Samuel 36 Positivists 45 Potter, George 47n138, 57, 189, 199, 207 and Bee-Hive 2 and Labour Representation League (LRL) 38, 43 and Liberal party 38, 44, 153 and London Trades Council 26–7 Peterborough by-election 91, 102 and Reform League 27 Westminster school board election 56, 210, 211 Practical Socialist 163 Preston 49–50 Primitive Methodism 169–70, 183, 185 Princess Louise 72, 73, 76 Prince of Wales 63, 71, 76 Proctor, Thomas 165, 173–5, 212 ‘progressive alliance’ 177, 194 Pugh, Martin 15 Quelch, Harry 173, 176, 212

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Index

Radical 109, 159 radicalism and American democracy 103, 107–11 and Irish nationalism 138–40 and Liberalism 13–15, 116, 117–20 and republicanism 62–3, 69 Scottish dimension 151 and socialism 160, 166 working-class demands 51, 62, 90, 115, 134–5 Rae, W. Fraser 106 Reading 70, 94 Redistribution Act (1885) 113, 119, 123, 192 Reform Act Second (1867) 3, 24, 77, 186 Third (1884) 87 Reform Club 5 Reform League 8 1868 general election 32–7 finances 28, 33 formation 24, 26 relationship with organised Liberalism 31 and republicanism 63 structure 27 Reid, Alastair 13–14, 183 Republican 66–7, 75 republicans 62 and agricultural labourers 79 and Conservatism 69–70 and Irish 72 and labour representation 68, 70 and Liberals 64–5, 68–76 and mainstream party politics 63, 66–7, 90 and monarchy 69, 72 provincial clubs 68–74 and ‘space’ 70–1, 73 and radical organisations 72 and trade unions 67, 74 and Whigs 69–70 see also National Republican

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 241

241

Brotherhood, National Republican League (NRL) returning officers 41–2 Reynolds’s Newspaper 35, 49, 67, 100, 103, 110, 151, 176 Rochdale Liberal Association 5, 30 Roebuck, John Arthur 32n45 Rolley, William 133 Rolt, John 104 Rosebury, Lord 104 Rothschild, Nathaniel Mayer de 33 Rowlands, James 129, 203, 206 Russia 93 Rymer, E.A. 78 Salmon, Philip 5 Salisbury, Marquess of 140 Salt, Titus 28, 46, 199, 201, 202 Sanderson, Thomas 48 Saturday Review 105–6 Saunders, Robert 105 Schnadhorst, Francis 55, 58, 94–5, 97, 98, 112, 123–4, 141, 143, 148, 149n150, 150, 151 Scottish Labour Party (SLP) 151–2 Seely, Charles 73, 128, 168, 169, 170, 171, 205, 207 Shackleton, David 191 Shaw, George Bernard 162–3 Sheffield 22, 74, 133 1874 general election 114 1885 general election 113–17 Attercliffe by-election (1894) 1 Federated Trades Council 115 labour movement 82 and Labour Representation League (LRL) 39 Liberal associations 114–17 radical organisations 114–16 republican club 68, 73 United Committee of Radical and Labour Associations (UCRLA) 115–16

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Labour and the Caucus

Sheffield Independent 115 Shepherd, John 129 Shipley, Stan 11 Shipton, George 201, 210 Silby, Rev. 170 Simon, Serjeant 42 Smith, Edward 56, 211 Smith, Goldwin 65 Smith, Thomas 171 Snell, Henry 155, 164 Social-Democratic Federation (SDF) 135, 155, 175, 177, 179 formation 157–60 historiography 11–12, 157, 160, 164 independence of provincial branches 173, 180 and Liberal caucus 157–8, 159–60, 174 political strategy 164–8, 173, 178 and radicalism 158–60, 166 reasons for failure 157, 172, 185 split 160–1 socialism links with Conservatism 15 and Liberalism 155, 161–2 ‘revival of ’ 11–13, 155, 160, 184–5 Socialism Made Plain, 160 Socialist League 155, 160–1, 173, 178, 179, 180 socialists autobiography 155 cross-organisational activity 156, 173, 175–6, 178–81 independent party, support for 162, 174, 175, 180 and Liberal caucus 156, 161–3, 176–7, 185 and local elections 161, 172–7 publications 155, 157–63, 172 and radical organisations 158–9 ‘Tory gold’ 150, 164 and trade unionism 167, 180, 185 and strikes 161, 167, 174, 178–9, 181

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 242

South Carolina 105 Southampton 135, 192 Southwark 3, 40–2, 97 Soutter, F.W. 41 Stafford 45–6 Stansfield, James 28, 32, 36n68, 96 Star 176 Steadman Jones, Gareth 17 Stewart, Aaron 171 Stockport Liberal Association 5, 30 Stockton 70 Stoke-on-Trent 36, 48–9, 123 Storks, Sir Henry 96 Suffolk 88 Taff Vale judgement (1901) 191–2 Tait, Lawson 143 Tammany Hall 104, 105, 108, 109, 110 Tate, Mathew 184 Taylor, Antony 14–15, 72 Taylor, Helen 96–7, 139, 159 Taylor, Henry 79 Taylor, Peter Alfred 24, 36n68 Thompson, Pat 9 Thompson, Samuel 127 Threlfall, Thomas 131–2, 136–7, 148, 150, 167, 187–8, 190, 204, 207 Tichborne claimant 49 Tilden, Samuel J. 104 Tillet, Ben 194 Times, The 16, 104, 106, 150 Tocqueville, Alexis de 105 Tower Hamlets 6–7, 32, 176 trades councils 39, 53, 115, 125, 132, 150, 171, 182 see also London Trades Council trade unions 7–8, 9–10 1867 Royal Commission 38 and agricultural labourers 79, 84 and American Civil War 103

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Index

attitude towards party organisation 193 and Independent Labour Party (ILP) 190 legislation 8, 18, 42, 85, 186, 191, 193 levy 44, 193 and Liberal party 26 progressive nature 171 radical tradition 11, 13 and Reform League 27–8 and republicanism 76 see also Criminal Law Amendment Act (1871), Durham Miners’ Association (DMA), miners, National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU), ­Northumberland Miners’ Association, ­Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association (NMA), Trades Union Congress (TUC) Trades Union Congress (TUC) 121, 129, 167 formation 28 and ‘labour’ parliamentary candidates 44–5, 50, 129, 131–5, 146, 193 and Labour Electoral Association (LEA) 136 and Labour Representation Committee (LRC) 190 and Labour Representation League (LRL) 40 and London Trades Council 28, 39 parliamentary committee 10, 44, 45, 131 Trafalgar Square 26, 63, 63n8, 64 Trevelyan, George 86 Trollope, Anthony 103 Trotter, J. 126, 126n22 True Radical Programme 163

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 243

243

Truro 31 Turkey 93 Turner, Ben 193 Tweed, William 104, 105, 109 Unemployed Poor League 62–3 United Kingdom Alliance 48 United States Americanisation of British politics 16–17, 105–7 British critique of American democracy 103–11 Civil War 103, 107 Democratic Party 104 Republican Party 104–5, 109 working class 109–10 Uttley, Stuart 115, 133 Walter, John Walton, Alfred Armstrong 40, 47n138, 48–9, 123, 200 Wanted, a Programme: An Appeal to the Liberal Party 163 Ward, John 176–7, 212 Wardley, William 115 Warwick 34 Warwickshire 81 Waterlow, Sir Sydney 40–2, 197 Watson, Robert Spence 98, 117 Watts, John Hunter 181 Webb, Beatrice 10 Webb, Sidney 10, 161–3 Welsh, John 48 West Riding 190 Whalley, Samuel 174, 212 Whateley, James 55, 210 Wigan 50 Williams, Jack 164, 178–9, 184, 204 Wilson, Charles Henry 125 Wilson, Edward 106 Wilson, Henry Joseph 114, 143 Wilson, John 121n1, 125–6, 130, 141, 203, 206

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Wolverhampton 14–15, 21, 79 women agricultural labourers 81 and Labour party 132–3 and Liberal associations 96–7 and republicanism 71–2, 81 suffrage 72, 95 Women’s Liberal Federation (WLF) 96 Women’s National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act 96 Women’s Suffrage Committee 95 Women’s Suffrage Journal 95

Owen J, Labour and the Caucus.indd 244

Women’s Trade Union League 132 Worcester 55 working class Members of Parliament, debates concerning 37, 50, 67–8, 97–8, 113, 132–4, 152, 186, 187 membership of Liberal associations 30, 95, 96, 142 and Primitive Methodism 169–70 uses of the term 37, 187 Wyncoll, Peter 171 York 96 Yorkshire 74, 82

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