Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 130 (2012), 241–277

Politics in Bristol, 1865–86 By RICHARD WOODBERRY

Whilst Bristol’s status as a port, its economic history and reasons for decline have been meticulously and widely studied for the mid to late Victorian period, its politics have been sadly ignored. The perception that the city’s great days had gone, that Liverpool hugely surpassed it as a port, Manchester was an alternative capital city, Birmingham had evolved as the hub of a great industrial hinterland and Leeds as a dynamic regional centre, all contributed to the historical neglect. No major national political figure emerged from Bristol in the period. For the Liberals the party leadership was either in the north, or in the House of Lords, or when in Birmingham was by- passed; for the Conservatives the centre of gravity remained in the counties in general, though not necessarily the southern ones, or Lancashire in particular, and London, where urban Toryism of a reform, if not a democratic, nature, grew.1 Disraeli’s famous Act of 1867 had a major effect on the structure of Bristol’s politics, almost doubling the electorate, modernising the parties, opening up new techniques of seeking political favours and broadening the nature of debate and discourse. Nevertheless, it did not alter the outcome of the city’s election results, which had been, and continued to be, Liberal. Apart from one fleeting by-election victory in April 1868 (overturned in Nov.), no Conservative was returned for Bristol from 1852–85.2 In terms of the size of its population by the 1860s Bristol had fallen from second place (as achieved in the previous century) to tenth due to industry sweeping production and people northwards.3 The comparative figures for both population and size of electorate are detailed below:

1. In order to see the city in context, the three following introductory surveys provide interesting comparisons and points of reference: R. McWilliam, Popular Politics in Nineteenth-Century England (1998), R. Price, British Society, 1680–1880: Dynamism, Containment and Change (1999), and J. Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture, c. 1815–67 (Cambridge, 1993). It is noted that no mention of Bristol is made in either index or text of these volumes. The place of publication is London, unless otherwise stated. 2. The overall picture can be seen in H.J. Hanham, The Reformed Electoral System in Great Britain, 1832– 1914 (1968). The national effect of 1832 is best approached via M. Brock, The Great Reform Act (1972). The exemplary studies of 1867–8 are all from the 1960s: R. Blake, Disraeli (1966), M. Cowling, 1867: Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution, The Passing of the Second Reform Bill (Cambridge, 1967), F.B. Smith, The Making of the Second Reform Bill (Cambridge, 1966) and J. Vincent, The Formation of the British Liberal Party, 1857–68 (1966), though see the second edition, 1976, for ‘Afterthoughts’. A useful modern synthesis is K.T. Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation, 1846–86 (Oxford, 1998). 3. By 1881, Bristol had fallen one place further to 11th, being overtaken by Belfast, whose statistics were: 1861; 121,602; 1881; 207,671.

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Borough/City Population, Population, Electorate, 1865 Electorate, 18614 1881 1868 1) London5 2,500,517 3,245,429 150,629 249,887 2) Liverpool 443,398 601,050 20,618 39,645 3) Glasgow 394,864 487,968 16,819 47,854 4) Manchester 357,979 393,676 21,542 48,256 5) Birmingham 296,076 400,757 14,997 42,042 6) Dublin 254,803 273,164 10,847 12,5606 7) Leeds 207,165 259,212 7,217 39,244 8) Sheffield 185,172 284,508 8,557 29,955 9) Edinburgh 168,121 228,190 10,343 20,779 10) 7 4567 Bristol 154,093 206,874 11,303 21,153 Rather than comparing Bristol to cities which had surpassed it in population terms, a greater sense of relevance can be gained by looking for similarities elsewhere. Norwich and Newcastle upon Tyne, respectively the regional capitals of East Anglia and the North East; Nottingham, the only other city and county where the borough freeholders voted within the city itself; Kingston upon Hull, where the ancient port’s patterns of trade were somewhat similar; Bradford and Wolverhampton, industrial centres nearest in size of population; all offered an alternative mode of comparison.8

Borough/City Population, Population, Electorate, Electorate, 1861 1881 1865 1868 1) Wolverhampton 147,670 164,303 4,830 15,772 2) Newcastle upon Tyne 109,108 145,228 6,630 18,557 3) Bradford9 106,218 180,459 5,189 21,518 4) Kingston upon Hull 97,661 161,519 5,566 17,146 5) Norwich 74,891 87,843 4,817 13,296 6) Nottingham 74,693 111,631 5,934 14,168 9

4. Population figures are based on the relevant censuses, the Parliamentary Papers (Electoral Returns) for 1865–6 and the Boundary Commission Report for 1885. The electorates also come from the second of the above and Dod’s ‘Parliamentary Companions’ for the two election years cited. 5. London’s borough constituencies were, in 1865: City, Finsbury, Lambeth, Marylebone, Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Westminster, to which were added Chelsea and Hackney three years later. 6. There were separate Acts in 1868 affecting the franchise for both Ireland and Scotland. The 1865 figure for the electorate is based on the returns for 1862. 7. The 1865 figure evinced a sharp decline from the highest total reached between the First and Second Reform Acts of 12,929 in 1859. 8. Neither the Disraelian borough creations of 1868, nor the electoral divisions of London both before and after 1867–8, have been included. The former offer no real method of comparison; the latter were ‘sui generis’. 9. The town, being so very different, provides an interesting contrast and it can be studied via D.G. Wright, ‘Politics and Opinion in Nineteenth-Century Bradford, 1832–80’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, (Bradford, 1968). For a more general comparison, see D. Fraser, Urban Politics in Victorian England: The Structure of Politics in Victorian Cities (1976).

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Bristol’s population by 1865–6 did not quite justify an additional third MP in 1867.10 There were attempts made to increase the city’s representation. Laing had proposed in June giving one extra member to the six, largest, English, non-metropolitan, boroughs but this plan and a subsequent try by the sitting, senior Liberal for the city, Berkeley, also failed.11 The issue divided the local parties. The Liberals wanted a third MP; the Conservatives would only accept the increase if it was accompanied by the minority vote principle.12 The ideal Tory solution was the creation of Clifton as an entirely separate parliamentary constituency and as Gravesend was the only new, southern, English, seat created in 1867 outside London, there was a clear case to be made.13 With regard to the city’s redistribution, significant changes had been proposed by the Tory leaning Boundary Commission adding 20,000 people from the surrounding county seats. The additions were to be:

County Division Area Population 1) Gloucestershire, West Bishopston 5,000 2) Gloucestershire West St George 12,500 3) Somerset, East Bedminster 2,500 Total 20,000

Whilst Bishopston (which included a part of both Horfield and Stapleton) should be regarded as Tory, St George’s to the east of the city included radical mining villages and Bedminster was a working-class suburb south of the River Avon.14 However, Bristol was one of the 33 constituencies called in by the Liberal-dominated Commons’ Select Committee in 1868. After ‘investigation’ 15 mainly large boroughs were not permitted any extension to their boundaries, of which the city was one.15 Spofforth, a member of Disraeli’s ‘Kitchen Cabinet’, had written to all the affected seats so referred asking for their views as to whether or not the obvious gerrymandering should be contested in the Commons. The local Tory chairman wrote back saying that he had consulted

10. Of the English cities outlined above, this only happened to Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester. 11. Laing’s motion was defeated by 247–239, Berkeley’s by 235–136; Sheffield, also, by 258–122. Laing’s was a national motion involving important principles of redistribution; Berkeley was acting as a local M.P., hence the difference. The figure decided upon was 250,000 population as at 1861 (Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester), to which was added during debate, Leeds, in order to enhance Yorkshire conservatism in particular, and ‘Justice to the North’, in general. Samuel Laing; MP (Lib.) Wick burghs 1852–7, 1859–60, 1865–8; Orkney and Shetland, November 1873–85; junior office 1859–60; finance minister, Council of India 1860–5; chairman, Crystal Palace Railway Company 1852 onwards; barrister; member of the Liberal ‘Cave’ 1866–7, regarded by Disraeli as the ‘second ablest’ after Lowe. 12. ‘At a meeting yesterday of the Conservative Working Men’s Association it was resolved that steps be immediately taken to secure for Bristol a 3rd, or minority, Member … when the vacant seats are about to be disposed of’, S.V. Hare to Disraeli, July 1, 1870, Hughenden Papers [hereafter H.P.], Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ref. B/XXII/B/5. For Hare, see later. The ‘vacant seats’ were: Beverley, Bridgwater, Cashel and Sligo, all disfranchised for corruption in 1870. (Although after the 1867–8 Acts, the view expressed is representative of that period). 13. Clifton did become a separate constituency as Bristol, West but not until 1885. The other possibilities in the South of England which were considered in 1866–7 by Disraeli were Croydon, Gosport, Great Yarmouth, Luton, Margate and Ramsgate (combined), and Torquay. 14. Horfield had 453 county voters (who did their jury service in Gloucester), Stapleton 38 and Bedminster 1,093. Not bringing St George’s into the city would deprive 1,796 householders of the right to vote. 15. See Reports of the Boundary Commission for England and Wales in February and of the Select Committee (and subsequent parliamentary debates), May–July, all in 1868.

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Fig. 1 East and West Gloucestershire, 1832–1885.

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the party heads and that the unanimous view of the leaders in Bristol, East Somerset and West Gloucestershire was that the Select Committee Report, with regard to Bristol, should not be contested. He wrote, ‘the agents for the County agree in our view and Mr John Miles also … offer no opposition to [the] Select Committee so far as it affects Bristol’.16 The necessary analysis as to the effect of the proposed increase to include both Bedminster and St George had been undertaken by a firm of local solicitors. Its conclusion was ‘… probably 1,500 would call themselves Radical and 1,000 Conservatives … If [the] Boundary Commission Report [was] not adopted 500 [Bedminster] voters would be disfranchised by the rejection of the proposed extension of the borough boundaries’.17 Consequently, no change was made and Bristol’s parliamentary limits remained the same from 1832–85. The city provided a good insight into the electoral politics of the Gladstone-Disraeli era because of the number of contested elections which took place. If we compare with the other 15, non-metropolitan, boroughs both above and below Bristol in population terms, the situation from 1865–85, before the redistribution of the latter year came into effect, was:18

Parliamentary Number of Contested Number of Contested Total Borough General Elections By-elections 1) Bristol 4 4 8 2) Liverpool 3 4 7 3) Manchester 4 3 7 4) Norwich 4 3 7 5) Nottingham 4 3 7 6) Belfast 4 2 6 7) Newcastle 4 2 6 8) Bradford 3 2 5 9) Dublin 4 1 5 10) Edinburgh 3 2 5 11) Kingston upon Hull 4 1 5 12) Leeds 4 1 5

16. J. Ford to M. Spofforth, H.P., June 2, 1868, Box 46/2, Ref. B/XI/H/4. The preceding paragraph read as follows: ‘Our position has entirely changed since the new boundary line was sent to the Commissioners. We know now that we can calculate on support from the out-parish of St Philip’s adjoining the proposed new parish of St George and, therefore, we should prefer letting well alone. Besides this, we see that the present freeholders in St George would continue to have votes for the County, so that we should not purge the County as we intended, in fact, so far as the Radical freeholders are concerned, we should be giving them double power’. John Miles was, briefly, Conservative MP for Bristol, April–Nov. 1868. 17. Vizard and Co.’s submission, as included in the above correspondence. 18. Voided elections (both general and by-) have been included on the grounds that they were still electorally significant, that the Ballot Act of 1872 seemed to make little difference to the prevailing political culture and that a disbarred contest (due to bribery) usually indicated, not an unimportant vote, but simply that the perpetrators had been too public, or were unlucky, or that the climate of the day required an example to be made. For the overall context, see B.L. Kinzer, The Ballot Question in Nineteenth-Century English Politics (1982). Starting in 1865 allows for a slightly broader comparison to be undertaken and is necessary because of the Bristol by-election in spring 1868.

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Fig. 2 Bristol’s actual and proposed parliamentary boundaries.

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Parliamentary Number of Contested Number of Contested Total Borough General Elections By-elections 13) Sheffield 4 1 5 14) Glasgow 4 0 4 15) Birmingham 2 1 3 16) Wolverhampton 3 0 3 The party voting totals in Bristol for the 1865–85 (pre-redistribution) elections were as follows:19

Conservative Liberal 1865 4,269 5,22820 1868 (April) 5,173 4,977 Sub-total 9,442 10,205 1868 6,694 8,71421 1870 (March) 7,062 7,882 1870 (June) 7,238 7.816 Sub-total 20,994 24,412 1874 16,178 17,620 1878 (December) 7,795 9,342 1880 9,395 10,070 Sub-total 33,368 37,032 Totals 63,804 71,649 2021 There were no further internecine splits after the Tory division of 1847, though the problem of nomenclature was still apparent in 1865. The sub-totals take account of the pre-1867/8 changes over both franchise and redistribution and the introduction of the secret ballot in 1872. The 1865 General Election was the last Palmerstonian contest in the city with the two supporters of the Prime Minister winning easily.22 Two of the major psephological authorities (Craig and McCalmont) list the third candidate T.F. Fremantle as a ‘Liberal’ in 1865 but as he eventually succeeded Disraeli as MP for Buckinghamshire a decade later, he had, perhaps, best be labelled as

19. The figures are compiled from Dod,op . cit.; F.W.S. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results, 1832– 1885 (1977); J. Vincent and M. Stenton (eds.), McCalmont’s Parliamentary Poll Book, 1832–1918 (1971) and the local newspapers. There are small disparities. Only the second-placed Liberal vote has been taken in both 1865–8 (Peto in the former year, Morley in the latter) as the Tories only ran one candidate in those two General Elections. In 1880, the disbarred, winning, Liberal from 1870, E.S. Robinson ran as an ‘Independent Liberal’, with no further Tory candidate standing. Only the total for the second- placed Liberal has been entered (Fry), Morley’s figure at the head of the poll was 10,704. The five other contests had the appropriate number of candidates for the single ‘normal’ General Election of 1874, i.e. two per party, and one each for the four by-elections. 20. The first placed Liberal candidate, Berkeley, polled 5,296. 21. This time (as top of the poll again) Berkeley gained 8,759 votes. 22. Berkeley (Lib.) 5,296, Peto (Lib.) 5,228, Fremantle (Lib./Con.) 4,269; Lib. majority 959. On the Liberal party as a whole, see E.F. Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the age of Gladstone, 1860–80 (Cambridge, 1992), J.P. Parry, The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (1993) and T.A. Jenkins, The Liberal Ascendancy, 1830–86 (1994).

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a ‘Liberal/Conservative’.23 During the great events of 1866–8 Bristol’s voice was quietened by Peto’s financial ruin and parliamentary absence, whilst Berkeley’s health also had given way and, in any case, his main effort had been made in the previous generation in attempting to bring about the secret ballot, as well as earlier in 1867 over the possibility of a third local member.24 Peto resigned as MP early in 1868 triggering the by-election in April.25 The Liberals had to decide whether to pick another absentee capitalist, who would be as ignorant of the city’s economic and business affairs as was Peto, but who would provide the necessary finances for the party, or opt for a local employer, who could advocate and lead the cause for necessary investment in the docks.26 Although a number of names were mooted (including Robert Lowe), the party leadership supported the former idea in the shape of Sir John Bowring, whilst the membership launched a peasants’ revolt and preferred the latter in the form of E.S. Robinson, who was Berkeley’s preference.27 The compromise choice, after much press speculation and coverage over what had taken place, was Samuel Morley.28 The Conservatives went the other way and chose the local banker and ship owner, J.W. Miles, after his three imported predecessors as the party’s candidates, had all lost, twice very heavily.29 With a general election looming due to the unstable parliamentary situation, getting any wealthy Conservative to stand was a minor party triumph.

23. Thomas Francis Fremantle, 2nd Baron Cottesloe, 1890; 1830–1918; MP (Con.) Buckinghamshire Sept. 1876–85; defeated Bristol 1865, Wareham (as Conservative, 1868). Fremantle only just won in 1876 by 2,725–2,539 and although a direct comparison with 1874 cannot be made because it was a tripartite constituency with only three proper candidates standing, Hardy’s journal entry for Saturday, Sept. 23rd, 1876 highlighted the increase in the Liberal vote and the decline in the Tory one. For the diarist, see: Nancy E. Johnson (ed.), The Diary of Gathorne Hardy, later Lord Cranbrook, 1866–92, Political Selections (1981). 24. He was absent from both the city and the House of Commons from autumn 1867 onwards. Francis Henry Fitzhardinge Berkeley; 1794–1870; MP (Lib.) Bristol, 1837 - March 1870; proposed annual bill in favour of the secret ballot, 1842–62, following Grote’s retirement, 1841: only in 1862 did such a motion pass by 83–50; Anglican. On Berkeley, see, M. Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism, 1847–60 (1995) and an unpublished Bristol University M. Litt. thesis by R.G. Mackenzie: ‘The Parliamentary Representation of Bristol, 1837–59, and the Political Career of Henry Berkeley’; on the context of his later years see E.D. Steele, Palmerston and Liberalism, 1855–65 (Cambridge, 1991). 25. Sir Samuel Morton Peto; 1809–89; 1st baronet, Feb. 1855; MP (Lib.) Norwich 1847–54, Finsbury 1859– 65, Bristol 1865–8; contractor for public works and railways; Baptist. About the possibility of there being a contest, Berkeley had written a little earlier: ‘I cannot for an instant believe the Tories dare fight us in Bristol. I don’t suppose a thirty years of faithful service has done me much harm, and Peto never stood better, his misfortune has done him honour’. Berkeley to G. Parsons, (local Liberal politician), June 21, 1866, National Liberal Club MSS., DM 1621, Special Collections, Bristol University Library. 26. For the financial background and situation in the city, see B.W.E. Alford: ‘The economic development of Bristol in the nineteenth-century: an enigma?’ in P. McGrath and J. Cannon, editors, Essays in Bristol and Gloucestershire History (1976). 27. ‘I don’t think the Dissenters will let Peto go, and I don’t think they ought. I should like you, however, quietly to feel the pulse of the city as far as you have an opportunity and let me know the result. Your suggestion, as to Mr. Robinson, I will consider’. Jan. 11, 1867, ibid.. Sir John Bowring; 1792–1872; knighted 1854; diplomat, politician and writer; MP (Lib.) Kilmarnock 1835–7, Bolton 1841–9; lost Blackburn 1835, Kilmarnock 1837, Kirkcaldy, Jan. 1841; consul-general, Canton 1849–53, governor, Hong Kong 1853–9. For E.S. Robinson, see below. 28. The leading Liberal newspaper in Bristol was the Western Daily Press; the main Tory one, the Bristol Times and Mirror. The absence of political manuscripts (diaries, journals and letters) for the period makes the press of paramount importance. 29. 1852: F.A. McGeachy 3,632, lost by 899; 1857: no contest; 1859: F.W. Slade 4,205, lost by 80; 1865: T.F. Fremantle lost by 959. The losing figure is as against the winning, second placed, Liberal.

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Though Miles was from the protectionist family of the 1840s, Sir William Miles being his half- brother, had a Ritualist full brother as a clergyman in the city and acknowledged that most of his shipping interests were in London, nevertheless the point was made. The election was scheduled for the end of April, fortuitously for the Tories just a few days after the Fenian attempts to blow up both Buckingham Palace and the Duke of Edinburgh and the British military success in Abyssinia.30 Bristol was the first large constituency to be polled since the passage of Gladstone’s Irish Church Resolutions. Whilst Morley fought a major campaign outlining all the important issues of reform that required addressing, Miles ignored them and restricted himself to issuing slogans only: ‘Ships, Colonies, Commerce’, ‘No Popery’ and ‘The Poor Man’s Beer’. Four Cabinet Ministers, including Northcote, spoke on his behalf during the campaign. Abel Smith’s temperance reform bill and Morley’s support for it led to a flight to the Conservatives by the publicans, and their associates in the liquor trade.31 Free trade and protection also featured, as did recent events in Sheffield: neither were to the Liberals’ benefit. The result was:

J.W. Miles Conservative 5,173 S. Morley Liberal 4,977 Con. majority 196 This outcome was both rather remarkable in its local setting and resonated nationally. The terse diarist, Hardy, commented, ‘Yesterday off very early to East Kent where we won a decisive victory as we have done at Cockermouth & Bristol. Indeed the Elections have gone most favourably.’32 The results allowed Disraeli to press on with the remaining three Reform Bills (Boundaries, Ireland and Scotland), reasonably secure in the belief that the Radicals would not support a Liberal party vote of no confidence, even if tabled. For Disraeli there was the temptation to dissolve on the old electoral registers but that would mean the loss of the proposed, new, county seats and would fit oddly with the spirit of the 1867 Act. No general election was, therefore, held under the 1832 system, when a reunited Conservative party could fight a Palmerston-less Liberal one. Ever since 1841, one or other, or both, of these factors had militated against a Tory triumph. Miles was not to enjoy his victory. His agents were found guilty of corruption (‘Beer, Breakfast and Gold’) and he was removed from the Commons in June. No new writ was issued. The Liberals clearly did not want the expense of losing another election on the old register and preferred to await the new opportunities that were expected in the autumn. The long awaited 1868 General Election was held in Nov. This time no external factors helped to turn matters the Tory way. There were no Fenian outrages, Abyssinia could not realistically be used again and the only foreign incident of note was another revolution in Spain. However, as this was a constitutional one it probably assisted the Liberals, assuming that it had any impact at all, which was unlikely.33 J.W. Miles was again the only Tory, against Berkeley and Morley. With the former an absentee candidate, E.S. Robinson became his proxy. This attempted to reconcile the divisions of the spring for the Liberal party and allowed him to put down a marker for the next time there was a vacancy. As the Palmerstonian Berkeley was too entrenched and senior to be realistically threatened, was both pro-drink and pro-Anglican Church, (certainly in England), the contest was in effect a

30. See P. Marsden, The Barefoot Emperor: An Ethiopian Tragedy (2007). 31. The newspapers estimated that publicans, licensed victuallers and beer sellers voted Tory by c. 5–1. 32. Hardy Diary, op. cit., Friday, May 1, 1868. The Conservatives held both other seats with an increased majority in East Kent. 33. It was reported on in the quality local press.

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re-run of the April by-election on the old boundaries but with a significantly increased electorate, much of it working-class.34 Morley made some attempt at moderation during his campaign invoking Berkeley’s name at every opportunity. He was much less vulnerable than at the by-election and could shelter behind national events, issues and personalities. He advocated the radical agenda of the day, adding a suffrage for widows when in the working-class districts, but played down his programme when in north and west Bristol. Both the United Kingdom Alliance and the Baptist Union held their annual conferences in the city, in theory highlighting his vulnerability on the important issues of limitations on the right of drinking and of the Church of England.35 However, the ‘drink interest’ was split in the autumn, unlike the spring, and the Church of Ireland and its future was a difficult rallying-cry for the Conservatives. Liberal economic and trade doctrines remained the majority view and the promise of a free, or freer, breakfast and tea table, resonated to a greater extent, or in a more holistic and rounded way, than the specific Tory proposal to abolish the malt tax. By contrast to Morley’s approach, Miles became overtly political, espousing a limited version of urban Toryism as to be found in Lancashire, as well as party credit for the Second Reform Act, the need for poor law redress, the introduction of a state education system (if along Anglican lines), combined with the retention of his local standing (as ‘the Bristol candidate’) against a corrupt, extreme, carpet-bagger. Miles benefited, in theory, from the presence of J.R. Stephens who campaigned against the appalling workhouse system in working-class districts, specifically designed as it was and spectacularly failing to cope as it did, with cyclical levels of industrial and manufacturing poverty.36 Clearly such a bed-fellow could not be used in more respectable areas of the city. As the single Conservative candidate Miles asked his supporters either to plump for himself or to split the ticket and vote for Berkeley as their second choice. General Election day, Nov. 27, saw the worst electoral violence in the city since 1831, and made national headlines.37 There had been violent demonstrations on Brandon Hill, the traditional meeting-place for Bristol’s Chartists a generation before and the wholly inadequate city police force, of c. 300–400 officers, had been unable to maintain law and order. So appalling did matters become that 50 pupils from Clifton College were placed on guard against Radical ‘ruffians’.38 Turnout was high with the newspapers estimating that 15,750 electors out of the 21,153 (excluding additional entries) eligible voted.39 Each candidate won nine of the 18 electoral wards into which the city was divided but the only populous area gained by the Tories was Clifton, whilst the working-class areas of St Paul’s and St Philip’s voted for Morley (and Berkeley) overwhelmingly, with Bedminster doing so to a lesser extent.

34. St Philip’s ward, the single biggest one to benefit, saw an increase in its electorate of 3,226. 35. On the former issue see B. Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: the Temperance Question in England, 1815– 72 (1971) and for the latter G.I.T. Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1869–1921 (Oxford, 1987). 36. Western Daily Press, Nov. 6, 1868. Joseph Rayner Stephens, 1805–79, ex-Chartist, author and lecturer; Methodist; defeated, as Chartist, Ashton-under-Lyne, 1837; elected poor law guardian, 1848; see M.S. Edwards, Purge this realm: a life of Joseph Rayner Stephens (1994) and E.G. Lyon, Politicians in the pulpit (1999). 37. ‘Cruel and extensive destruction of property by organised radical mobs in Bristol’: see The Times for Nov. 27, 1868. More generally, see D. Richter, ‘The Role of Mob Riot in Victorian Elections, 1865–85’, Victorian Studies, 15, 1 (1971), pp. 19–28. 38. Western Daily Press, Nov. 24, 1868. 39. Allowing for deaths, migration and double and triple qualifications.

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The result was:

Berkeley Lib. 8,759 Morley Lib. 8,714 Miles Con. 6,694 Lib. majority 2,020 Morley did well almost to match Berkeley’s total. The Conservative strategy of trying to split the two Liberal candidates and offering Miles as a more worthy, Liberal-Conservative, partner for Berkeley, had failed.40 The fourth election in the city in five years came about with the death of Berkeley in spring 1870. The background can be sketched via a series of letters written by a female Conservative, Charlotte Corbett, to a correspondent in Bath indicating her belief that all was not well in Bristol in the early months of the year. Naturally, Corbett hoped that the Liberals would lose the by- election. She commented on Morley’s reputation for bribery; a reputation which never entirely left him throughout his long tenure as a local MP and which was so at variance with his austere, proper and upright public image. Further letters highlighted the lack of open spaces which contributed to the high mortality rate and the outbreak of scarlet fever in the city. Internationally, comment was made about the Franco-Prussian War which increased the price of bread. However, a summer heat wave and the resulting drought led to the belief that corn merchants were profiteering, thus negating any possible Conservative advantage from the earlier concerns.41 The Liberals faced the same problems as in 1868 over candidate selection: whether to choose a local worthy or a national figure. Once again, the party leadership chose an outsider, the Bank of England director K.D. Hodgson, above the claims of E.S. Robinson.42 The party justified the choice by saying there was a proper selection process and that it was not just a case of ‘anybody but Robinson’. Nobody really believed there was the slightest grain of truth in such a claim. Local rivalries and personal jealousies could be, and were, held against a Bristol candidate, which was not the case with an outsider. Hodgson’s obvious, and perhaps sole, attraction was his money: when he died at the end of the decade he left £500,000. However, Robinson refused to withdraw his

40. Samuel Morley, 1809–86; businessman, philanthropist and politician; MP (Lib.) Nottingham 1865-May 1866, then unseated, Bristol 1868–85; defeated Bristol, April 1868; Congregationalist. John William Miles, 1817–78; MP (Con.) Bristol April-June 1868; defeated, Nov. 1868; company director; High Church Anglican; bachelor. 41. The letters appeared in the Bristol Evening Post, Jan. 20, 1983. They were passed by Tony Benn, then Labour MP for Bristol, South East to the newspaper. Mr Benn had received them from a constituent. The local newspapers for 1870 do not really give a sense of economic crisis as a whole. 42. The selection sub-committee said that it had also considered Charles Berkeley (nephew of the deceased MP), T. Milner Gibson, Sir John Lubbock, A. Herbert, R. Bernal Osborne, F. Peel, Sir F. Lycett and one other local man, Lewis Fry, who had withdrawn. For the context of such candidacies and local party decisions, see G.R Searle, Entrepreneurial Politics in Mid-Victorian Britain (Oxford, 1993). Berkeley had been briefly MP, Gloucester, Feb. 1862–5, then defeated West Gloucestershire, July 1867; Milner Gibson had lost at Ashton-under-Lyne in 1868 and was unwell in 1870; Lubbock was elected for Maidstone in February 1870, Herbert for Nottingham (in the same month and year) and Bernal Osborne was the sitting MP for Waterford. F. Peel had lost in Bury in 1865 and had been swept away in the Tory conquest of South East Lancashire in 1868. Lycett was bottom of the poll in Worcester in 1868 and then lost at Liskeard in May, 1869.

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candidacy because of past promises made and because he was the better choice, and after much internal party huffing and puffing a ‘Test Ballot’ was held in order to decide matters.43 Although it was unlikely that a Tory candidate would stand, such a primary election was an unknown quantity for both provisional Liberal candidates. Hodgson might well lose that which he already had, whilst Robinson was taking on the party machine. Other hats could also be thrown into the ring and following the Reform League report on the city in 1868 and the formation of the Bristol Radical Association in early 1870, George Odger joined the contest. His programme included ‘the direct representation of labour’, the end of a state church, the secret ballot, universal (adult, male) suffrage, the abolition of the land and game laws, the stopping of the government pension list and a Chamberlainite junior education system. It was not the right seat for such a candidacy being too economically and religiously diverse.44 The majority of the questions put to Odger at his public meetings concerned his atheism, rather than his political views.45 During the primary campaign the Liberal party rallied round Hodgson as someone who could bring new economic opportunities to the city, particularly ocean steamers via his links with Barings. Although the Bank of England directorship sounded impressive on paper, he had recommended not helping Overend and Gurney in 1866. Bristol already had an absentee Liberal capitalist in Morley and from a party point of view Hodgson did not really balance the ticket. As an Anglican he was not just a pale imitation of Morley but he never quite removed the feeling that he was little more than an imposed figure from on high, firstly from Glyn, the Liberal Chief Whip and secondly, from the local party hierarchy.46 Robinson campaigned on his record as mayor and knowledge of, and support for, the city’s businesses and industries and its many charities, and for the necessary reforms to be undertaken over the administration of the local Poor Law, the state of the gaol, the development of the (Bristol) Channel docks, the licensing laws and the Town Council. The other issues of previous service in 1868, promises made and candidate suitability remained as before. Using the new 1869 register, and excluding only those voters who had plumped for J.W. Miles in 1868, c. 17,000 electors were eligible to participate.47 The result was:

Robinson 4,502 Hodgson 2,861 Odger 1,335 Total votes cast 8,698

43. In 1868, the Manchester Liberals had held a ‘Trial Ballot’ in the expectation that the Conservative MP, Hugh Birley, would be unseated on petition. The vote was between Milner Gibson and Ernest Jones, with the latter unexpectedly winning. ‘Trial Ballots’ were also held at Maryport, Stafford and Sunderland between 1867–70. Birley remained Conservative MP for Manchester, 1868–80. 44. George Odger, 1813–77; secretary, London Trades’ Council, 1862–72; Reform League lecturer and organiser, 1866–8; defeated Chelsea, 1868, Stafford, 1869, Bristol (in ‘Test Ballot’) 1870, Southwark 1870 and 1874 as Lib./Lab. In the first of these two contests at the Feb., 1870 by-election Odger only lost by 4,686–4,382 to the Conservative candidate: there were two Liberals standing, thus splitting the anti-Tory vote. 45. Western Daily Press, March 19, 1870. On Odger, see N.J. Gossman and J.O. Baylen, (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals, 3 vols. (Brighton, 1979–88) and E. Royle, Radicals, Secularists and Republicans: Popular Free Thought in Britain, 1866–1915 (Manchester, 1980). 46. George Grenfell Glyn, 2nd Baron Wolverton, 1824–87; MP (Lib.) Shaftesbury 1857–73; Liberal Chief Whip 1868–73 (solely), with H. Brand 1866–8. 47. The gross figure was 21,153. The Assessed Rates Act (Goschen’s Act), 1869, had remedied the problems that the Liberals, in particular, had been having over the registration of the compound householders.

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The only parish which Robinson did not carry was Clifton. At the 11th hour the Conservatives finally decided to fight the by-election. Although at loggerheads with his party leadership, Robinson was still a Liberal, a Baptist, and his radicalism had been rather hidden by Odger’s standing.48 If Hodgson had prevailed, the Tories may well not have contested the seat. The push came from the Conservative Working Mens’ Association in the city, another peasant uprising, if not quite a revolt. Candidates mentioned included Miles and the two lawyers Giffard and Karslake.49 None seemed very keen on what appeared to be a waste of both time and money but finally the local employer and ex-mayor, S.V. Hare agreed to stand on a ‘Liberal/Conservative’ platform, a Bristol version of the urban Toryism consequent upon 1867.50 Hare was both personally pleasant and politically astute and could best be seen as a Bristol version of Beecroft, Goldney, Graves, Horsfall and Jervis, who had done so much to assist Disraeli with the Conservative party in 1867. He spoke in favour of free education for all, religious equality, the protection of trade union funds, the moral and economic right for workers to belong to them and the secret ballot. He also campaigned with an estimable wife, a Duchess of Marlborough figure rather than ‘Lady Bountiful’ and this was much commented upon in the press.51 Hare’s appeal was to middle-class, Anglican, Liberals disliking Robinson on religious grounds and to working-class ones prepared to question free trade and to support his views on trade reciprocity, where Hare called for the creation of a Royal Commission. He pointed out that free trade had not produced ‘a free breakfast table’ and was not now likely to. Liberal worries can be attested to by the urgency with which Morley was brought down from London to indicate party unity, with both Hodgson and Odger also rallying round. It was known that Morley had wanted Hodgson as his colleague, so the former’s presence gave Robinson a patina of official backing. It seemed to work with the result being:

Robinson Liberal 7,832 Hare Conservative 7,062 Liberal majority 77052 52 After such a long wait and having tried so hard and making enemies along the way Robinson did not enjoy his triumph for very long. Again, the impetus for questioning the result came from below, with both the Conservative working-men and the ladies of Clifton, not the party hierarchy,

48. The Bristol ‘Trial Ballot’ is considered in its national context by H.J. Hanham, Elections and Party Management, Politics in the time of Disraeli and Gladstone (Brighton, 1978), p. 99. The emphasis of Hanham’s paragraph conflicts a little with the brief outline given here. 49. Hardinge Stanley Giffard, 1st Earl of Halsbury, 1823–1921; knighted 1875; MP (Con.) Launceston March 1877-April 1885; defeated Cardiff 1868, 1874, Horsham, February 1876; solicitor-general 1875– 80, lord chancellor 1885–6, 1886–92. Sir John Burgess Karslake, 1821–81; knighted Jan. 1867; MP (Con.) Andover, Feb. 1867–8, Huntingdon, Dec. 1873-Feb., 1876; defeated Exeter, 1868; solicitor general 1866, attorney general 1867–8, 1874–5. 50. Sholto Vere Hare, 1819–1900; oil and paint manufacturer; mayor of Bristol 1862–3. 51. Mrs Hare was instrumental in the founding of the Bristol Conservative Ladies’ Association in 1872. 52. Craig, op. cit., gives the official figure for the electorate as 21,153 in 1870 (the same as for November 1868); McCalmont, op.cit. 21,158.

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taking the lead in challenging matters.53 Although Robinson and his agents were cleared of any wrong-doing during the by-election itself, one of his committee was found guilty of treating during the trial ballot and he was, as a consequence, unseated.54 The second by-election of the year saw Hodgson finally get his chance and the Conservatives’ removal of Robinson (their tit for tat for the Liberals’ wholly unnecessary attack on Miles two years earlier) helped to bring the majority party together. There was some discussion about choosing Berkeley or Fry but Hodgson’s moral claim could hardly be overlooked and if it had been the local party would look ridiculous. A more pressing concern was whether Odger would run on the grounds that the test ballot result was no longer relevant. After 10 days of dithering, Odger withdrew any threat of standing: a further defeat coming on top of Chelsea, Stafford and Southwark in the last two years would have done little for the direct representation of labour issue.55 The Tories also had their difficulties with a party leadership reluctant to take on and finance another lost cause, nor was Hare particularly popular with the local hierarchy being too liberal, too popular with the grass-roots, not of sufficient national standing and unprepared to pay all his election expenses. He was, after allowing for all the obvious differences of policy, the Conservative Robinson. However, for the party not to stand again after the earlier result and given the importance of the constituency was untenable, as such an outcome could have national ramifications. It would compromise the ethic of 1867; question Disraeli’s unsteady leadership; and give entirely the wrong message to the ‘young Turks’ emerging in the (particularly borough) constituencies who required encouragement, not a return to the soporific days of the Palmerstonian Liberal hegemony. To fight the good fight and lose was more honourable than not contesting matters at all: no doubt such a message was relayed from London.56 Education featured as an important issue in the campaign. Hodgson trod a fine line and did it well. He agreed with continuing voluntary support for the existing British and National schools but disagreed with the lack of compulsory elementary education and the right of the School Boards to choose over religious instruction, as this could lead to ‘Church rates in disguise’.57 One particular feature in Bristol was the number (and quality) of the city’s charitable and endowed schools.58 Hodgson very sensibly said that he would follow local wishes. Both Morley and Odger actively campaigned for him in the latter stages: Robinson sent an open letter of support to the man previously mocked as a ‘stranger’.59 The Tory labelling of Hodgson as a ‘money-bags’ was attractive and his parliamentary record hardly inspired awe but Hare, too, inevitably had his own difficulties and support came from the local county magnates, Bright and Thynne, both to help and to indicate the necessary level of

53. Bristol Times and Mirror, April 30, 1870. 54. The case was sent to the Court of Common Pleas because of the novel legal point at issue and whether bribery at a ‘trial ballot’ was covered by the 1868–9 Acts. Elisha Smith Robinson, 1817–85; MP (Lib.) Bristol March-June 1870; defeated same 1880 as ‘Independent Liberal’; chairman, E.S. and A. Robinson, printers; Baptist; mayor 1866; member, Liberation Society; travelled to India, Turkey and the U.S.A., articles are in the local press; left estate valued at £70, 000. 55. Western Daily Press, c. June 10–20, 1870. 56. A deal was struck whereby the local party would pay one third and Hare two thirds of the estimated expenses of c. £2,000–3,000. 57. Bristol Times and Mirror, June 17, 1870. 58. The main ones were: Bristol Grammar, Colston’s, Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital and Redmaids’ Schools. 59. Western Daily Press, June 21, 1870.

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party confidence.60 Due to his wife’s attractiveness and vivacity Hare was accused of running ‘a petticoat, political, campaign’.61 Whether this harmed him in any meaningful way, if indeed it was true, is impossible to say. If anything, it probably cheered the (male) electorate up – even though it might then go and vote Liberal. His, and the Tory town council’s, record was attacked in an attempt to undermine Hare’s local appeal and the rather pleasing prospect of a split representation, with Morley the national Liberal and Hare the worthy local Conservative.62 They would reconcile the party balance in the city as well as the local versus national, Anglican as against Dissent, and capitalist vis-à-vis trade, interests. On the same register as earlier in the year, the result was:

Hodgson Liberal 7,827 Hare Conservative 7,266 Liberal majority 561 Hodgson had polled only five votes less than Robinson and 887 fewer than Morley in the second election in 1868.63 Hare had increased by 204 since earlier in the year and there were glimmerings that ‘Tory Democracy’ was catching on in Bristol.64 In St Philip’s at the three contests held to date under the Second Reform Acts, the results were: 65 Total votes cast Conservative Liberal Liberal majority November, 1868 3,740 1,167 2,573 1,406 March, 1870 3,849 1,534 2,315 781 June, 1870 3,939 1,570 2,369 79965

60. Sir Richard Bright, d. 1878; MP (Con.) East Somerset, 1868-March, 1878. Lord Henry Thynne, 1832–1904; younger brother of the 4th Marquess of Bath; MP (Con.) South Wiltshire 1859–85; defeated same, 1857, Westbury, 1885; treasurer, H.M. Household, Jan. 1876-July 1885. 61. The phrase was used by Handel Cossham (see later), Western Daily Press, June 25, 1870. 62. ‘Why the local Council had not removed the toll bridges in St Philip’s? Why the local Council had taken no action to bring about pure air in the city? Why there were no amenities for the poor on Brandon Hill? Why there was no proper fish market at Bristol Bridge? Why there were no almshouses as in Exeter, no convalescent hospitals as in Bradford, no free libraries as in Liverpool, no public parks as in Birmingham and no public markets, as Miss Coutts had provided, in London?’ Letter from ‘A Working Man’, Bristol Times and Mirror, June 23, 1870. Although much of the responsibility for the enclosed lay with the local Board of Health, rather than the Town Council as such, the point was legitimate and well made. For lack of local initiative in a national setting, see J. Prest, Liberty and Locality: Parliament, Permissive Legislation and Ratepayers’ Democracies in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1990). 63. Kirkman Daniel Hodgson, 1814–79; MP (Lib.) Bridport 1857–68, Bristol, June 1870-Dec. 1878; defeated Penryn and Falmouth, 1868; Anglican; financier; director, Bank of England, 1849–78 & Barings; left c. £500,000. 64. The party voting totals since 1867 were: Nov. 1868 - 6,694; March 1870 – 7,062; June 1870 – 7,266. 65. The 1868 figure is for Morley, as the second-placed Liberal. The totals are for the large parish of St Philip (Without), i.e. outside the ancient city boundary. The voting figures for the much smaller parish of St Philip (Within) are only available (via the newspapers) for two of the three contests. They were: Total votes cast Conservative Liberal Liberal majority November, 1868 363 147 216 69 June, 1870 355 162 193 31

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The only other two Bristol parishes where the voting exceeded 1000 for one or the other of the parties were Bedminster and Clifton. Their figures were:

Conservative Liberal Majority November, 1868 Bedminster 929 1,262 L333 Clifton 1,053 648 C405 June, 1870 Bedminster 1,044 1,133 L89 Clifton 1,021 634 C38766 66 The overall Liberal majority had fallen by three quarters in two years. Nevertheless, given the party’s rather public, and bitter, divisions, if the Conservatives had started their campaigns at both contests, but particularly in June, rather earlier, they might have scraped a victory but perhaps it was a little premature.67 Reciprocity was clearly a popular rallying-cry for the Tories but, as yet, it played better in Clifton than St Philip’s.68 For an outlay of £5,000 (£2,000 for the petition, £3,000 on the second by-election) the party had swapped a local man of whom it partly approved for another outsider whom it loathed. Miss Corbett’s last extant letter was from 1871 and gave a Conservative flavour of matters half- way through the Gladstone government. Prices and taxation and the possibility of affairs in France spreading across the Channel were thoroughly aired, with the latter highlighted by the visit to the city of Dilke and Odger at a republican meeting, as the main political themes. However, this was somewhat off-set by the perceived decline in radicalism (the nonsensical Tichborne case being best ignored).69 The General Election was not held until Jan. 1874, in

66. Again, the 1868 figures are for Morley. The parish majorities for March, 1870 were: Bedminster – Lib. 161; Clifton – Con. 392; St Philip (Within) – Lib. 42. 67. The Liberal split was laid bare when it emerged at the end of the month that a member of the party’s executive had contributed to the election petition against Robinson. Western Daily Press, June 29, 1870. 68. ‘Every day that passes a change is coming over the working class in many of our great towns upon political questions and the change cannot be ignored. In Bristol it was patent in the very streets; you could read as you ran a great alteration in public sentiment, even in outward appearances of the place and the people. In parts of the city, especially the industrial districts where at the general election it was not safe to show a Tory emblem, blue was the favoured hue. In the buttonhole of the fustian jacket, in the cap and bonnet of the working-man’s wife, in the windows of the poor, the Tory card and Tory colours were to be seen’, Bath Chronicle, July 2, 1870: it was a Conservative paper. 69. ‘It is a pity the middle class could not get up a demonstration and upset the income tax, part of Lucifer Lowe’s budget, the same as the match makers did, but he knew too well that the much enduring and most hardly taxed portion of … clerks and people of small incomes had too much honourable feeling to do so … I assure you there is a great reaction among the respectable working classes of Bristol and should an election take place, I do not think the Radicals will have it quite so much their own way… [the Tichborne case] has been quite a mania here among many people and has served to divert their thoughts from the late war … What fearful atrocities have been committed in France since I last wrote to you, may God keep us from Republicanism to which I fear England is portending. Every kind of provision is very dear in Bristol with no prospect of its being cheaper. I am paying double for nearly everything to what it was 20 years ago, but then the population has more than doubled’, Charlotte Corbett to Mr Burman, July 18, 1871. Miss Corbett provides some evidence that Gladstone’s 1874 income tax campaign was not, perhaps, so ill-advised after all. On paragraph two of Miss Corbett’s letter, see D. Large, Radicalism in Bristol in the Nineteenth Century (Bristol Record Society Publications, 1981).

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any case, so by then matters had moved on.70 Although, as with most of the rest of the country, both Bristol parties were taken by surprise, it was clear that the Conservatives were in better organisational and political shape. Evidence for this came from the most recent School Board and local election results, and relevant by-election contests in the West of England, including the rather extraordinary one from Stroud. The town had not elected a Conservative since its creation as a borough in 1832. There was, also, a successful Tory challenge to the electoral register in Bristol, estimated by the Liberal press to be worth up to a thousand net votes and, at a more national level, Gorst’s reforms rejuvenated the party.71 These developments led to a double candidacy for the first time since 1847, Hare standing for the third occasion on the understanding that he would have a partner to help defray both cost and effort. This should be compared with the reluctance to run a single candidate by the party hierarchy on both occasions in 1870. His running-mate was G.H. Chambers, a West India sugar merchant, whose one and only election this was to be.72 As it was a national election, local issues took much more of a back seat than four years before. The essence of the campaign was whether Hare could unseat Morley in second place. Hodgson was relatively safe because he was the more moderate of the two candidates, whilst Chambers was really there to make up the numbers. As elsewhere, the cornerstone of the Liberal campaign, the repeal of the income tax, did not really catch on.73 The party relied on a general appeal to ‘progress’ as against the forces of ‘stagnation’. Morley spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with, and defending himself over, church and religious questions, whilst Hodgson attacked Conservative pretence over claims to be the true friends of the working classes and highlighted where the local candidates were out of step with the national leadership, over, for instance, the county franchise question.74 Hare was very much in the tradition of Lancashire Toryism and the New Social Movement. He understood, even if he did not articulate, both the ideas very well and the implications of 1867 for the party as a whole. He followed the tenets of the Crystal Palace and Manchester addresses of 1872, the electoral possibilities that they enunciated and possibly opened up for the Conservatives. To support county franchise extension, votes for (some) women, setting the level of payment of the income tax at £300, advocating certain reforms, such as artisans’ dwellings and social insurance, as compulsory not permissive, and seeking removal of local taxation over matters such as the police to the national exchequer, Hare may be rightly regarded as a ‘One Nation’ Conservative or a

70. For the timing, see W. H. Maehl: ‘Gladstone, the Liberals and the Election of 1874’, in the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, (1963). 71. At Bath, the Conservatives gained one of the Liberal seats in May 1873 and in Stroud, the same happened in Jan. 1874. Hardy commented: ‘of political news the winning of Stroud is the main thing & it is a remarkable victory’, Diary, op. cit., Thursday, Jan. 8, 1874. On Gorst, see A. Hunter: A Life of Sir John Eldon Gorst, Disraeli’s Awkward Disciple, (2001). 72. George Henry Chambers, d. 1899; partner, T. Daniel & sons, West Indian traders; chairman, St Katharine’s dock company; vice-consul, West Indies, 1876; High Church Anglican. 73. ‘I wish to say that I should like to pay income tax tomorrow. I mean, of course, that I should like to have the money coming in to pay it’, John Drake, coal carrier, Finzel’s & co., Bristol sugar merchants, in the Western Daily Press, Jan. 29, 1874. 74. Hare had spoken in favour ‘when arrangements could be made’, Disraeli had labelled a present extension as ‘unwise’, ibid., Jan. 26, 1874. Morley had opposed the 25th clause of the Elementary Education Act, 1870, had voted in favour of Miall’s motion to disestablish the Church of England and wanted to end the remaining grievances of the Dissenters over issues such as burials.

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believer in ‘Tory Democracy’.75 His appeal was to moderate Liberals worried about Morley’s views on religion in general and about state education in particular. The discrediting of the opposition’s second candidate was the key for both parties. The Liberals did not have too much difficulty managing this with Chambers who left remarkably little impact. Morley certainly gave hostages to fortune but he was a major political figure, a very good speaker, of impeccable rectitude, if rather humourless, with a great deal of money and the sort of Victorian statesman, of whom it was almost impossible not to approve, certainly on personal grounds.76 These attributes, and the absence of division as in 1870, just carried Morley through, the result being:

Hodgson Liberal 8,888 Morley Liberal 8,732 Hare Conservative 8,552 Chambers Conservative 7,626 Liberal majority 180

A swing to the Conservatives of 6%, on a turnout of 75%, with 17,218 electors out of 22,867 on the register, was not quite enough.77 The comparative general election voting figures were:

1868 1874 Conservative 43.5% 49.5% Liberal 56.5% 50.5% 78 78Liberal majority 13% 1% E.S. Robinson had campaigned wholeheartedly for the candidates after unwritten pledges were made to him about the future. The secret ballot was a non-issue. The drink trade was pro-Tory but ‘gin and beer’ did not swamp the electorate. It was a crucial mistake by the Tories to run a second candidate as Hare’s appeal was as an ‘Independent/Conservative’ not as a half of a double ticket. The twin association with a national party on the one hand, and an unpopular town council in the working-class areas on the other cost Hare the seat. The Bristol Corporation had not done enough

75. The Bristol Times and Mirror unsurprisingly made the claim that: ‘Shaftesbury and Disraeli would be more likely to assist the working classes than would be the cotton lords’, Jan. 30, 1874. 76. In 1868 Morley had written to Carvell Williams: ‘At present the work to do is to disestablish and disendow the Church of Ireland. I have no wish to see a similar scheme originated for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England’. In 1871, he had proclaimed: ‘That it is expedient, at the earliest practicable period, to apply the policy initiated by the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by the Act of 1869, to the other Churches established by law in the United Kingdom’, Bristol Times and Mirror, Jan. 31, 1874. 77. The electorate had only increased to 22,867 (from 21,153) indicating that there were fewer compound householders, who were not registered in 1868 but were then able to do so via Goschen’s Act of 1869, compared to the huge increases between 1868–74, as seen in the industrial centres of the Midlands and the North. Birmingham increased from 42,042–51,361, Liverpool from 39,645–54,952 and Manchester from 48, 256–60, 222. Franchise changes are covered in detail in: J. Davis, ‘Slums and the Vote’, Historical Research, 64 (1991); J. Davis and D. Tanner, ‘The Borough Franchise after 1867’, Historical Research, 69 (1996); K. T. Hoppen, ‘The Franchise and Electoral Politics in England and Ireland 1832–85’, History, 70 (1985). 78. The Conservative performance is put in perspective by R. Shannon, The Age of Disraeli, 1868-81, The Rise of Tory Democracy (1992).

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for the city’s ‘East End’, whilst it had improved, unnecessarily, the ‘West End’. The Council had protected and preserved Durdham Downs ‘so that the rich had a riding place for their horses’.79 Bristol’s fourth by-election in ten years came about at the end of 1878 when Hodgson resigned due to illness, having missed the whole of the parliamentary session for that year and most of the preceding one. There were also doubts about Morley’s continuation and it was rumoured that he had intended not standing again at the next general election due to a mixture of personal reasons and his rather extreme views causing some local party difficulties over foreign policy and religious questions. If one, or both, MPs stood down the expectation was that the replacements as candidates would be the two local figures, Robinson and Lewis Fry, in that order of preference and priority.80 The national situation was that in August the Disraeli government had reached its high water mark in foreign affairs via ‘Peace with Honour’ in Berlin. No general election had then been held and by December the Afghan war had broken out, making Bristol the first large constituency to poll after its beginning.81 The Lords debated the government’s Afghan policy and Whitbread moved a motion of censure against it in the Commons both in early December, approximately a week before the polling in the city.82 A depression in trade was a clear feature of the times: income tax had risen to 5d. in the £, there had been an increase in tobacco duty and the figures for bankruptcies had quadrupled over the previous five years. The direst economic news for the Tories was the collapse of the West of England Bank just before the by-election, the first such occurrence in the city for nearly 50 years. The Liberals had introduced the caucus system for candidate selection in 1877 in an attempt to end some of the difficulties and discords from the previous decade.83 When it met in December Robinson was the only nomination but Fry was then added (in theory, due to popular demand from the floor). The voting went: Fry – 155; Robinson – 153. Fry’s name was then put to the meeting by itself and Fry received 197 with 100 voting against. The party divide over Robinson remained. His lack of formal education, his somewhat belligerent personality, his unofficial candidacy at the beginning of 1870 and his grass roots popularity did not endear him to the local leadership.84 Although liked by the chapel interest, he was disliked by the trade unions because of past business practices at his works. However, in terms of political balance Fry was a better choice for the Liberals: a moderate centrist who was not a member of the Liberation Society, who did not divide the party and who, as a local man, was not a second absentee capitalist. He was an ex-Quaker with a long family history of charitable and philanthropic work in Bristol behind him. Just as their opponents had done, the Tories changed their type of candidate and went beyond the constituency for the first time in six contests, importing Guest, an outsider with a national name, the strongest social connections (married to the daughter of the 6th Duke of Marlborough) and a very large fortune. He was on the evangelical, Low Church wing of the party, certainly by

79. Letter written by ‘A Voice from St Philip’s’, Western Daily Press, Jan. 29, 1874. 80. Lewis Fry; 1832–1921; solicitor; MP (Lib.) Bristol 1878–85; Bristol, North 1885–6; (Lib. Unionist) ibid. 1886–92, 1895–1900; first chairman, Bristol School Board, 1871; Quaker. Fry’s educational interests (Bristol University, Clifton College, Clifton High School for Girls) are covered in ‘The Times’s’ obituary. 81. It followed Liberal by-election victories in 1878 at Tamworth (April 25), Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aug. 26) and Maldon (Dec. 12). 82. Samuel Whitbread, 1830–1915; MP (Lib.) Derby 1852–95. 83. It was known as ‘The Liberal Four Hundred’: at the meeting 308 out of 430 members participated. 84. Known as the ‘Upper Ten’, or ‘Whigs’, by the Liberals’ opponents; Bristol Times and Mirror, Dec. 5, 1878.

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family background.85 His father had been a nonconformist and his mother complained continually about the Puseyite parson at Canford. Guest was much stronger on policy detail than Hare had been but lacked the latter’s local and personal appeal. The Liberal press had a field day with him, something that its Tory equivalent could not really do, or in quite the same way, with Fry.86 It was, of course, claimed that he had been imposed by the Carlton Club and, no doubt, the local party had ‘taken soundings’ in London. The campaign concentrated much more on national issues than in the previous by-elections and can be seen, therefore, in playing its part as to whether there might have been a dissolution of Parliament in spring, 1879. There was no working-class candidate but there were a number of potentially electorally significant pressure groups seeking pledges. Fry struggled with the drink interest, Guest with the local branch of the Home Rule Association.87 Questions put to the candidates at public meetings, in descending order of importance were on, in the major category: the economic depression, foreign policy, free trade and the sugar bounties question; in the minor key: Home Rule, the Tichborne affair, Church ritualism and disestablishment, compensation for railway servants, burials and the 23rd clause of the 1834 Poor Law. Fry campaigned with moderation and lawyerly reserve and largely allowed time and circumstance to do his work for him. If Bristol had not gone Tory in Jan. 1874, it was most unlikely to do so in much more adverse circumstances for the party in Dec. 1878.88 He did not do very much, which is not the same as saying that he was not most active, but he did it well and impressed with his moderation. It was not quite a non-campaign but it was near enough. So long as he avoided the perhaps acutely aimed Tory slogan of ‘Fry for Russia’ or, even better, ‘The Member for Moscow’, and concentrated instead on ‘the free breakfast table’ and what had, and had not happened, to it then he would hope to be safe enough. No Liberal came to help him from outside the constituency and although it was December this should be seen as a vote of confidence in the likely outcome by the party’s national leadership.89 For Guest matters were much more complex. The by-election was to all intents and purposes unwinnable in 1878 but he had to try (especially if he was really aiming at the Lords). There were four themes for Guest: to establish a local connection with the city and the electorate, to defend the government’s foreign policy, to break the strong perception of a link between it and the state of the rather depressed economy in Bristol and to brand Fry as a radical, beholden to extremist pressure groups. It was an impossible task. The reports of the Conservatives’ large public meetings

85. Sir Ivor Bertie Guest, 1835–1914; succ. to baronetcy, 1852, cr. 1st Lord Wimborne, 1880; defeated as Con. candidate Glamorganshire and Poole 1874, Bristol 1878–80; Anglican; unpatriotic sale of Rembrandts, 1914. 86. He was nicknamed ‘The Iron King’, which was true in a way. More interestingly, one of the lesser Liberal papers wrote: ‘Guest intends to support Lord Beaconsfield and it has even been hinted that he hopes by so doing to get a seat in the Upper House’, Bristol Observer, Dec. 14, 1878. 87. Deputations and questionnaires put to the two candidates leading to their adoption or rejection came from the following local branches: the Licensed Victuallers’ Protection and the Beer and Wine Trade Associations, the Workmen’s Peace and the Working Men’s Reform Associations, the Trades Council, the Tichborne Claimant, the Railway Servants and the Temperance Society; see D.A. Hamer, The Politics of Electoral Pressure: A Study in the history of Victorian reform agitation (Brighton, 1977). 88. On the foreign policy position, see M. Swartz, The Politics of British Foreign Policy in the era of Disraeli and Gladstone (1985). 89. He received a public telegram of support from Samuel Plimsoll and Robinson chaired one meeting in Bedminster on the liquour question in his favour.

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all included reference to the fact that up to a quarter of the audience was to some degree ‘hostile’.90 No Cabinet Minister came to campaign for Guest. The only help came from canvassing visits from two Tory MPs and a couple of letters of support from Berkeley’s son and Chambers, the second candidate from four years earlier.91 Berkeley was indicative of hoped for support from Whigs relating to the government’s foreign policy, whilst Chambers sought to heal the endless internecine party rift over high and low church, local, Anglicanism.92 Of the three most important, or most noisy and public, political pressure groups in the city, two (the Home Rule Association and the Trades Council) supported Fry, one (the Licensed Victuallers, variously organised) Guest. Over Ireland, Fry committed himself to a committee of inquiry into local self-government, Guest did not.93 The drink interest had moved significantly against the Liberals by 1878 partly due to national legislation and also by way of the change in the local candidacy. Hodgson supported ‘the trade’, Fry did not.94 However, he did support all the demands submitted via the trades’ council either outright or via a committee of enquiry.95 The by-election was held on Dec. 14 on a register of 24,851 electors. The result was:

90. The largest Tory meeting held to date in the West of England was at the Colston Hall when five thousand attended but even ticket only gatherings saw plenty of ‘fighting … heckling … and opposition’. The Western Daily Press, Dec. 7, 1878. 91. The visitors were Sir William Grantham, MP (Con.) East Surrey, 1874–86 and W.K. Wait, MP (Con.) Gloucester, May 1873–80. Both were symbolic of past glories: the latter had been the first Tory elected for the city since 1857 and the former the victor of the rightly famous East Surrey (Croydon) by-election of August 1871, the first Conservative victory in the county division for thirty years, which had ended the leadership plots against Disraeli and set him on the way to Downing Street in 1874. 92. He wrote: ‘I was told by some of my High Church friends that, by having acceded to the request to follow the Bishop as president at a meeting of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, I had lost many votes. I am hopeful that in Sir I. Guest we find the man to overcome the effects of that old schism which has so long exercised its baneful influence’,Bristol Times and Mirror, Dec. 10, 1878. 93. The size of the Catholic electorate in Bristol varied from 300–1,500 depending upon the source. The Liberal party chairman suggested the first figure, the local Home Rule association the second. The Conservatives were somewhere in the middle. See the Western Daily Press, Dec. 16, 1878 and the Bristol Times and Mirror, Dec. 28, 1878. 94. Fry was in favour of limited Saturday opening and total Sunday closing and local licensing boards, all of which were vehemently opposed by the various drink pressure groups. The situation in Bristol was as follows: Beer houses 563 Public houses 472 Off licences 150 Beer houses with a wine licence 84 Grocers’ licences 63 Refreshment houses with a wine licence 9 Cider house 1 Total 1,342 Western Daily Press, Sept. 3, 1878. 95. They were about: employers’ compensation, the appointment of magistrates, the codification of the criminal law, jury reform, an extension to the Employers’ and Workmen Act, improvements to the Factory Inspectorate, the state of the patent laws, imprisonment for debt, marine engineering certificates, the county suffrage, polling hours and the payment of the returning officers’ fees.

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Fry Liberal 9,342 Guest Conservative 7,795 Liberal majority 1,547 Fry’s vote was 454 up on Hodgson’s and Guest’s 727 down on Hare’s, from four years ago. The swing was c.6%: there would, therefore, be no January general election in 1879, as there had been in 1874. Disraeli’s administration would have to wait for good news from Afghanistan, if it was to be forthcoming and, more importantly, an upturn in both trade and economic prospects. Whilst Bristol, similarly to everywhere else, was suffering in late 1878, it could hardly be termed a hugely depressed area. Anglican division within the city, exacerbated by Guest’s extreme Low Church background, may well have contributed to Conservative abstention. The abysmal result for the Tories converted the party’s paper to campaigning formally for either a third M.P. for the city, or for Clifton to be, at last, made into a separate parliamentary borough.96 This appeared as though it might become a reality in early 1880, when rumours of a Six Seats Bill saw the light of day. Bristol would clearly be one of the six major cities and towns to benefit.97

Electorate, 1880 Population, 1881 1) Sheffield 42,794 284,508 2) Bradford 27,049 180,459 3) Kingston upon Hull 26,193 165,690 4) Newcastle upon Tyne 23,800 145,359 5) Bristol 23,22998 206,874 6) Wolverhampton 22,821 164,332 98 However, the precipitate and hasty decision, for the second general election in a row, to dissolve Parliament ended the possibility of a partial measure of redistribution. Seeking a renewed mandate in early 1880 was neither fish nor fowl, coming between the obvious choice of summer 1878 and the natural one of just before Jan. 1881. Disraeli was misdirected by the three by-elections in the winter of 1879–80 in Liverpool, Sheffield and Southwark.99 The problem over the Metropolitan Water Bill was another important

96. Bristol Times and Mirror, Dec. 16, 1878. 97. ibid., Jan. 20, 1880. Figures are as accurate as possible and at slight variance with the intelligently estimated guesses of the newspaper. 98. This was a decline of c .1,600 in the size of the city’s electorate from the Dec. 1878 by-election. A similar decline can be seen in Manchester where the figure of 62,074 (Feb. 1876) for the by-election precipitated by the death of William Romaines Callender had fallen to 61,234 by 1880 and to 52,831 by Oct. 1883 on the death of Hugh Birley. In both cases, suburbs and commuting were affecting the size of the electorate, given the failure to increase the boundaries properly in 1868. 99. On Dec. 21, 1879 the Liberals held Sheffield on the death of J.A. Roebuck but with a sharply reduced majority; on Feb. 6, 1880 the Conservatives held Liverpool and on Feb. 14 the party gained Southwark. The local factors were: Roebuck’s popularity and his support for Disraeli’s foreign policy, working-class Tory support in Liverpool and the splitting of the Liberal vote in Southwark when a Lib./Lab. stood in addition to the official candidate. The General Election just a few weeks later showed the inherent dangers: there was no contest in Liverpool (two Tories, one Liberal returned), the Southwark by-election gain was lost (two Liberals) and one seat was gained in Sheffield (one Conservative, one Liberal); this being the only occasion between 1832–85 that the Tories returned a Member for the South Yorkshire capital.

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issue. As with most of the rest of the country, Bristol was caught unawares by the timing of the dissolution.100 The economic circumstances were not propitious for the Tories. The number of bankruptcies had risen fivefold, unemployment was much higher than six years before and income tax had increased substantially. Locally, the town council had not made use of the Artisans’ Dwellings Act to alleviate distress by providing labour, nor had it supported a new tramway running from the city’s old dock to the commercial centre, which might have helped stem the burgeoning trade of the new facility at Avonmouth, well outside Bristol’s limits.101 The largely Conservative ship owners preferred Avonmouth and, via the town council, could veto proposed improvements for the city’s dock.102 The city corporation was Conservative from 1836–1906 with the business elite serving Bristol well, albeit in a limited and financially restrictive manner.103 This hegemony, rather at variance with the city’s parliamentary history, was due to the original Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, which had divided the city into ten wards as follows, with a restrictive local franchise:

Ward Number of councillors Expected party affiliation Bedminster 3 L District 3 L St James’s 3 L St Michael’s 3 L St Paul’s 3 L St Philip’s 3 L Redcliffe 6 C St Augustine’s 6 C Central 9 C Clifton 9 C104 104

100. See T.O. Lloyd, The General Election of 1880 (Oxford, 1968). 101. The national bankruptcy figures were: 1875–11,994; 1879–50,915. 102. The trade returns for tonnage with America via the two docks, old and new, were: 1877 1878 Bristol 113,084 81,768 Avonmouth 19,180 c.100,000 On the docks question, see D. Large, (ed.): The Port of Bristol, 1848–84 (Bristol Record Society Publications, 36, 1984), W.G. Neale: At the Port of Bristol, vol. 1, 1848–99, (1968) and C. Wells, A short history of the Port of Bristol, (1909). 103. For the town council see G.W.A. Bush, Bristol and its municipal government, 1820–51 (Bristol Record Society, 29, 1976) and E. Ralph, Government of Bristol 1373–1973 (Bristol, 1973), with particular reference to page 35. On the national context, the starting points are E.P. Hennock: ‘Finance and Politics in Urban Local Government in England, 1835–1900’, Historical Journal, 6, 2 (1963), pp. 212– 25, B. Keith-Lucas: English Local Government in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1977) and J.P.D. Dunbabin, ‘British Local Government Reform: The Nineteenth Century and After’, English Historical Review, 92 (1977), pp. 777–805. 104. In the first election held after the passage of the Act, the Conservatives won more narrowly than expected by 25-23. The local electorate in 1835 was 4,193; for voting requirements, see B. Keith Lucas, English Local Government Franchise (Oxford, 1952).

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Apart from this rather overt gerrymandering, there were also 16 aldermen who helped retain Conservative control. After the Small Tenements Rating Act of 1850 was adopted in the city to alleviate the collection of the rates, the local electorate increased hugely making the original boundaries even harder to justify.105 The Liberals wished for population to be the key determinant over any new settlement, the Conservatives wanted to combine this with rateable value, thus representing the rights of property as well. After many years of indecision the Bristol Municipal Wards Bill passed the Commons by 163–98 on a free vote with 135 Liberals voting in its favour. The East Somerset and West Gloucestershire suburbs were excluded from the new local boundaries.106 The issue had largely been about parochial, city versus rural, Tory politics: county Conservatives wanted the radical suburbs to be incorporated whilst urban ones did not because the Tory majority on the town council would be affected. The mainly, it was supposed, Liberal residents wanted to stay as they were in order to avoid high urban, as against low rural, taxation. Although it was not an overtly national political theme for the general election, the matter added to the council’s and the local Conservatives’ reputation for being the enemy of ‘progress’. The new council wards were as follows:

New/divided ward Number of Rateable value of Number of councillors ward (£) local electors 1) Bedminster E. 3 30,044 2,076 2) Bedminster W. 3 30,562 1,825 3) Bristol 6 110,578 1,873 4) Clifton with Westbury 3 62,015 1,307 5) Clifton 6 135,288 2,222 6) District 3 49,408 2,014 7) Redcliffe with St Philip’s 6 87,903 2,289 8) St Augustine’s 3 48,619 1,030 9) St James’s 3 30,316 1,011 10) St Michael’s with Westbury 3 48,670 1,210 11) St Paul’s 3 35,692 1,554 12) St Philip’s North 3 43,108 2,902 13) St Philip’s South 3 58,830 2,950 Totals 48 771,089107 24,263 107 This sense of elite exclusiveness associated with the City’s corporation was also evident in the fact that many leading Tories were Merchant Venturers, such as Miles and Hare who was Master of

105. By 1879, the figure was 24,263 (the electorate for the Dec. 1878 parliamentary by-election was 24,851). 106. They were, with estimated populations: Suburb County 1867 1880 1) Bedminster Somerset E. 4,400 7,500 2) Bishopston Gloucestershire W. 1,763 4,065 3) St George’s ’’ ’’ 12,500 25,000 Totals 18,663 36,565 Bristol Observer, March 6 and April 3, 1880 and Bristol Times and Mirror, Feb. 16, 1880. 107. In the three joint wards (numbers four, seven and ten), the individual sub-totals for rateable value were: Clifton 22,010, Westbury 40,005; Redcliffe 81,873, St Philip’s Marsh 6,120; St Michael’s 21,800, Westbury 26,870. The details are in the Western Daily Press, Dec. 6, 1878. On city matters in general, see J. Garrard, Leadership and Power in Victorian Industrial Towns, 1830-80 (Manchester, 1983), E.P. Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons: Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth Century Urban Government (1973) and R. Morris (ed.), Class, Power and Social Structure in British Nineteenth-Century Towns (Leicester, 1986).

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the Society in 1866–7.108 If they were still in effect merchants they continued to reside in Clifton but too many local Tories had their seats in Shirehampton, Sneyd Park or Stoke Bishop in South Gloucestershire (on the north side of Durdham Downs) for the local candidacy tag to quite ring true. Being resident outside the borough boundaries and, therefore, avoiding the need to pay local taxation on their main residences chimed poorly with the concept of civic improvement. By way of contrast Liberals were more neighbourly and likely to be found living within the city’s limits, rather than beyond them.109 Morley and Fry were unanimously adopted by the Liberals in 1880, the former reluctantly so. The leadership in London wanted him to stay as he was a valued link to the backbenches, whilst locally his candidacy was necessary to thwart Robinson. As chairman of Herbert Gladstone’s campaign in Middlesex there were heavy demands upon his time.110 The only other official name put forward was that of B. Coleridge from the Working Mens’ Reform Association: hardly a son of toil and labour, he was educated at Eton College and Oxford University, but was of high judicial and radical, west country, family.111 The candidacy was not taken further. The party preference for Robinson from 15 months previously had evaporated and was due to a purge, by the party leadership allied to his working-class and teetotal opposition, of his supporters from the caucus.112 Nevertheless, Robinson was not to be denied his place in the sun and, citing previous pledges, he decided to stand as an ‘Independent’, a potentially disastrous intervention for the second Liberal candidate.113 He issued four separate election addresses during the course of the campaign in which the dominant issues were: foreign policy, Home Rule, the sugar bounties question and drink (in favour) versus local option (against).114 However, whereas in 1870 he had been heavily endorsed by leading Bristol Liberals, ten years later he stood alone. Robinson said: ‘If A.B. was a candidate who proposed to impose slavery again in the West Indies, to return to the rotten borough system, to re-enfranchise Old Sarum, to disfranchise Birmingham and other large towns enfranchised by the Reform Bill; if, in addition to this, he would advocate a return to the closest and severest days of protection, I believe that they, the Trinity of Thomas’s, would vote for that man in preference to E.S. Robinson’.115 These developments amongst their opponents left the Conservatives in something of a quandary. The original intention seemed to be not to fight at all. Such an outcome could not seriously be

108. On the Society in general, see P. McGrath, The Merchant Venturers of Bristol (1975). There is a small error on p. 255 which covers the 1868 Elections (by- and General), where P.W.S. Miles is mentioned as being the Conservative candidate in the Nov. contest replacing J.W. Miles, whereas the latter stood twice as outlined above on p. 249. 109. Robinson, too, lived in rural arcadia in a magnificent mansion in Sneyd Park and it did not help endear him to the Liberal leadership. 110. Gladstone lost heavily to Lord George Hamilton and O.E. Coope, the brewer. 111. Bernard John Seymour Coleridge, 1851–1927, 2nd Baron Coleridge, 1894; MP (Lib.) Sheffield Attercliffe 1885–94; judge; great-grand nephew of the poet. 112. ‘I believe that many of the Four Hundred who supported Robinson have been removed for that reason, notwithstanding their having loyally worked and voted for Fry at the last election; my own name being among the number’, letter from ‘J.C. Withers’, Western Daily Press, April 1, 1880. There were other similar letters, both named ‘W.R. Scott’ and unnamed ‘One Who Canvassed to the Last’. 113. About the Morley and Robinson complications, an unnamed Liberal said: ‘To get Elisha to quit the field that is not our difficulty so much as to get Sam to stay in’,Bristol Times and Mirror, March 16, 1880. 114. He produced his own broadsheet newspaper, The Redcliffe Review. 115. The ‘Thomas’s’ were Bristol’s leading Liberal family; Christopher James Thomas, 1807–94, businessman, was mayor in 1874 and chairman of the party during the Robinson apostasy; see J. Somerville, Christopher Thomas, soap maker of Bristol (Bristol, 1991).

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countenanced by the party leadership, either in London, or locally. Of the other 15 major towns and cities with which Bristol stood comparison all fought the 1880 contest, some successfully. It then became a question of whether to run one or two candidates, assuming that they could be found, or to adopt Robinson as a crypto-Tory, hoping that he would stay the course. Hare was approached but declined on grounds of ill-health caused by an accident and after one other local man was considered, G. W. Edwards, the party inevitably turned to Guest, who required some persuading but who finally consented after being tracked down and waited upon in London. Guest mounted a coherent and sturdy defence of the Beaconsfield government’s record both over the economy and foreign affairs. Not having been a MP in the 1874 Parliament gave him a disassociation from the administration’s errors and he had a noted paternalistic record as a major employer. He was a liberal Tory, on the mercantile and urban wing of the party, with much to offer the city as a Member. This was acknowledged by the Liberals.116 On the two pressing parochial concerns of local option and protection for the sugar trade, Guest was obviously against the first and for the second if need be. He agreed with the view that neither refining in bond, nor negotiations with foreign governments, had worked and that if Ritchie’s committee of enquiry came out in support of countervailing duties, he would support it and temporarily, therefore, drop his free trade principles.117 Guest’s achievement was to have maximised Conservative support in the city, as evidenced by the size and reports of his meetings, the party’s satisfaction with the registration and the great lessening of the divisions over Anglicanism.118 However, criticism of the Liberal candidates did not really work. The best that could be levelled against the lawyerly Fry was to deride him as a ‘trimmer’.119 This was because of the pledges into which he appeared to have entered in 1878 over the various pressure group issues of (in descending order of importance) the sugar duties, Home Rule, Ritualism and the Tichborne Claimant, for the purposes of electoral advantage. Morley was, in many ways, an easier target for the Conservatives but he was very popular amongst the Liberal party in Bristol because he gave it a national dimension, healed the local divisions and kept the leadership out of Robinson’s clutches. Nevertheless, Morley, too, trimmed his sails. There is no mention in the tombstone hagiography of either his support for countervailing sugar duties and fair trade, if necessary, or his having left the Liberation Society.120 By 1880, Morley was not quite the radical of the early 1860s: apart from the two issues above, he had compromised, or moved to the right, for reasons of local electoral convenience over both teetotalism and secular education and was to do the same in the early 1880s over the Bradlaugh case. The Conservatives never quite reconciled what message they wanted to give about Robinson.

116. ‘Guest is a gentleman who has inspired his supporters with enthusiasm and has gained the respect of his opponents’, Bristol Evening News, April 3, 1880. 117. Charles Thomson Ritchie, cr. 1st Baron Ritchie of Dundee 1905; 1838–1906; MP (Con.) Tower Hamlets 1874–85, St George (Tower Hamlets) 1885–92, Croydon May 1895–1905; defeated St George 1892, Walsall February, 1893; secretary, Admiralty 1885–6, president, Local Government Board 1886–92, president, Board of Trade 1895–1900, Home Secretary 1900–02, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1902–3. Tower Hamlets contained several large sugar refineries. 118. Guest’s achievement or otherwise may be put in perspective via E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism: the Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (1995), J. Lawrence, ‘Class and Gender in the Making of Urban Toryism, 1880–1914’, English Historical Review, 18 (1993), pp. 628–52 and M. Pugh, The Tories and the People (Oxford, 1985). 119. As after George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, 1633–95. 120. Western Daily Press, March 20 and 30, 1880. See E. Hodder, The Life of Samuel Morley (1887) and J.P. Parry’s entry for him in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004–10).

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The party’s Working Mens’ Association wished for him to be unofficially adopted as the second candidate but at rallies ‘Plump for Guest’ was the more usual cry. Guest, himself, was no more than lukewarm in support, partly for tactical considerations (he would fare better on his own) and because over religion, sugar and, to a lesser degree, drink the two men had starkly differing policies.121 Election day in Bristol was April 1, by which time other west country boroughs had already polled. At Bath, Exeter, Gloucester and Plymouth, all two member seats, the Conservatives lost one MP apiece, as they also did in the county constituency of West Gloucestershire.122 The city’s result was:

Morley Liberal 10,704 Fry Liberal 10,070 Guest Conservative 9,395 Robinson Independent 4,100 Liberal majority 675

Compared to the by-election of 1878 there was a swing back to the Conservatives of c. 2.5% but on a like for like comparison with 1874, the movement in favour of the Liberals was c. 3.5%. Approximately 30% of the working-class electorate voted Tory, made up from the sugar workers, shipwrights, non-unionised and unskilled labour and ‘processions and ribbons’ voters.123 For Guest, two issues remained difficulties for the party: the state of the registration, which was always a legitimate cause for blame, and the continuing divisions over religion.124 Guest was created Lord Wimborne on April 13th. Robinson ended his political career in the city defiant to the end.125 The Liberals, particularly Morley, benefited from two-thirds support from the working class, the swing of the pendulum and the economic stagnation of the times.126 An opposition voter told the Tory paper: ‘You won’t win, the Liberal candidates will be carried by a good majority and for this reason: working men as a rule know no more about foreign policy than my dog does, but they do understand bad trade and low wages. They have got to believe that this is the result of Tory government’.127 The national outcome indicated that ‘Hard Times’ had won:

121. ‘I am the only Conservative in the field and I do not have a second string to my bow’. Guest in the Western Daily Press, April 1, 1880. 122. By contrast, Taunton evinced an almost unique Conservative gain in the region with the return of one MP. 123. Bristol Mercury, April 5, 1880. 124. ‘If both High and Low Church made it a sine qua non that the candidate should uphold their views then good bye to all cohesion amongst the Conservatives. Gentlemen should refrain from speaking on Church matters: it was not fair to make the religious question a test … to a candidate who was a moderate man’, Western Daily Press, April 5, 1880. 125. ‘This election makes manifest what is the opinion of Bristol on the great question at issue: more than 9,000 out of over 19,000 electors having recorded their votes in favour of the foreign policy of her Majesty’s Government’, ibid.. 126. ‘The lowest class of voters regard every Government in turn as their natural enemy’, T.E. Kebbel: Nineteenth Century, May, 1880. 127. Bristol Times and Mirror, April 6, 1880.

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1874 Conservative Liberal Home 1880 Conservative Liberal Home Rule Rule England 286 173 205 254 Ireland 37 15 51 27 16 60 Scotland 18 42 8 52 Wales 10 20 3 27 Totals 351 250 51 243 349 60 Majority Conservative 50 Liberal 46 The 1885 Redistribution Act altered Bristol’s constituencies by both extension and division and doubled the number of MPs, whilst still leaving the city under-represented. The extended borough boundary took the population up as follows: 1881 – 206,874; 1885 – 253,906. The 1883 electorate was 26,779. The extensions were, to all intents and purposes, the ones foreshadowed in 1867–8. The sizes of the new seats with their additions, and likely outcomes, were:

Constituency Population Additions Likely Outcome 1) East 61,986 St George Safe Liberal 2) North 64,713 Stapleton Safe Liberal 3) South 66,333 Knowle (part of Bedminster) Highly marginal 4) West 60,874 Bishopston and Horfield Safe Conservative128 128 Given that 28 seats from the West of England were transferred to the Home Counties, London and the North, that the median figure for the new constituencies was 53,000 (population) and that each new Bristol division was larger than the whole of Bath, which still was a double member seat, the city was most scurvily treated. However, the reason for the under-representation was obvious. By limiting matters to four constituencies only, huge and wasted Liberal majorities could be achieved in East, particularly, and North, which would be revitalised if a fifth constituency was created. The Conservatives had wanted to bring into Bristol, West, Sneyd Park, on the other side of Durdham Downs from West Gloucestershire and a special Boundary Commission inquiry was held to consider this. Many of Bristol’s leading citizens lived, or had resided there (E.S. Robinson) and the area was noted for the number of its widows who had moved across from Clifton. There was also a more Machiavellian political point: those Clifton electors who retained a second, business or freehold franchise, in highly marginal Bristol, South would be free to vote there, if Sneyd Park and its overwhelmingly Tory majority was incorporated into Bristol, West. It did not happen. However, both parties could be pleased with the outcome: the Liberals would hope to retain their advantage, now by 3–1, rather than as before by 2–0; the Conservatives because they were finally, 18 years too late, guaranteed a share in the city’s parliamentary representation.129 Local political developments worthy of note before 1885 were the ‘Bitter Cry’ agitation of 1883 and the evidence submitted by the Chamber of Commerce to the Royal Commission on Trade Depression. In response to the former, a committee of forty notables under Bishop Ellicott was

128. The newspapers provide the best guide to the nature of the individual constituencies in the mid- Victorian period up to 1885. On the Third Reform Act and afterwards, see M.E.J. Chadwick, ‘The Role of Redistribution in the Making of the Third Reform Act, Historical Journal, 19 (1976), pp. 665–85, P.F. Clarke, ‘Electoral Sociology of Modern Britain’, History, 57 (1972), pp. 31-55 and H. Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections (1967). For the city, in particular, see Bristol Times and Mirror, Jan. 10, 1910. 129. Parliamentary Papers: Report of the Boundary Commissioners for England and Wales, 1885.

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Fig. 3

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set up to make recommendations.130 Its conclusions were mixed: wages were reasonable, adequate housing was available at low rents and the city had a commendable number of wealthy, charitable and voluntary, societies. However, there were obvious major social problems: too many brothels, courtyards and poor quality homes were highlighted. The biggest danger was the movement of the elite away from the city to the suburbs and the surrounding countryside, thus ignoring the problems. The solutions put forward were to re-integrate the upper and middle classes back into Bristol, to make full use of the available voluntary legislation, specifically the Artisans’ Dwellings and the Common Lodging Houses Acts and to get the Sanitary Authority to become more interventionist. Bristol’s economic submission to the Royal Commission identified sugar refining, mechanical engineering and construction as the trades which were suffering the most, with the first seeing the highest level of depression.131 The dates given when decline began were 1870, 1873 and 1880, respectively. The trade returns did not offer an overwhelming sense of difficulty and decline, suggesting instead nervousness as to the future: the diversity of the local economy saved the city from the severe problems suffered in the north. The Avonmouth and Portishead docks had been purchased by the city in 1884, the first step of the many necessary improvements, if they were to regain their former pre-eminence.132 The main conclusion from the Chamber of Commerce was that the city had little direct export trade and that most manufactures and imports were for the domestic market only. The remedy submitted for increasing the city’s wealth and restoring the local economy was for there to be major reforms in agriculture, with cultivation and ownership, particularly the laws of entail and primogeniture, of great concern. The Nov. 1885 General Election was rather unusual. It was fought by a recently appointed, minority, Tory government attacking the record of the Liberal majority administration from April 1880-June 1885. The situation of the Irish electors on the mainland was also turned on its head. Apart from the new constituency boundaries, both local parties had changed their structures and the 1883 Corrupt Practices Act had outlawed the ceremony and ritual of early and mid-Victorian elections. Out went balloons, bands, beer, breakfasts and bribery; in came lawyers as professional agents and women as voluntary helpers (on the Conservative side). The Primrose League made its electoral debut in the city. The predominant national issues were the state church, Gordon, the Empire, Home Rule, the Liberal reform programme and ‘Fair Trade’. Sugar and shipping were important local additions. Protectionism was not official Tory policy, nor Disestablishment, Liberal.

130. Charles John Ellicott, 1819–1905; Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, 1863–1905. 131. The sugar tonnage decline, in tons, was as follows: 1876 – 66,473; 1877 – 32,081; 1884 – 21,838. 132. The total tonnage figures for the relevant years, collated from Wright’s ‘Bristol Directory’ were: Avonmouth Bristol Portishead Totals 1882 258,384 900,528 60,124 1,219,036 1883 233,734 967,496 46,744 1,247,974 1884 183,975 964,505 59,818 1,208,298

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The electorates of the four new constituencies were as follows:

East 9,506 North 9,002 South 10,384 West 7,657 Total 36,549133 133 The ultra-safe, industrial, East seat saw the Liberals adopt the radical coal-owner Handel Cossham as their candidate.134 Something similar happened in the nearby Forest of Dean (ex- West Gloucestershire) constituency, where the old Whig families of Berkeley and Kingscote, were replaced by a very different kind of party nominee. It was not likely that there would be a challenge: no local Tory wished to stand but eventually ‘a Devonshire gentleman’, J.B. Bissell stood.135 Cossham campaigned on his Chamberlainite programme and his record as a beneficent local employer. He emphasised his commitment to free trade, his opposition to sugar duties (in a constituency where this was not a great economic issue) and his hostility to aristocratic, hereditary, landed and royal privilege. The major economic interests were the boot and shoe industry, mining and the railways. There was some support for republicanism in St George: how far this went is impossible to say. Bissell effectively ran as an ‘Independent’: as far to the left of his party as Cossham was of mainstream liberalism. Bissell advocated a major scheme of national insurance in order to avoid the workhouse, female household suffrage, peasant proprietorship, free trade and fundamental changes to the Church of England. He was rather in advance of the New Social Movement of 1871 and his ‘One Nation’ manifesto of 1885 may be seen, though on a rather lesser and unimportant scale, along the lines of Harold MacMillan’s alternative Toryism of the early 1930s.136 With 7,500 working-class electors in Bristol, East the Liberals expected a vote in excess of 6,000. The result was:

Bissell Conservative 2,383 Cossham Liberal 4,647 Liberal majority 2,264 The North constituency was more varied. There was a Liberal inner core centred on the District ward balanced by Tory leaning Stapleton.137 Nonconformity was strong. Liberal expectations were for a majority in the region of 700 (according to the papers). Fry was the obvious choice for the party as a moderate with family and business connections to the seat, whilst the Tories selected Edward Colston, of the local 17th-century family.138 The two main slogans can be taken as highlighting the respective party appeals: ‘Liberty, Empire and Constitution’ for Colston and ‘Free Trade and Free Land’ for Fry. The latter remained fastidious in his commitment to party policy, avoided error and bearing in mind the excessive promises of 1878, was unpledged as to the future. The reputation for trimming had now largely

133. The figures are for the General Elections, 1885–6. 134. Handel Cossham, 1824–1890, MP (Lib.) Bristol, East 1885-May, 1890; defeated Nottingham, May 1866, Dewsbury 1868, Chippenham 1874. See S. Dean, The Cossham story (1994, privately printed). 135. Western Daily Press, Aug. 17, 1885. 136. Bissell had written a pamphlet entitled ‘National Insurance’; MacMillan’s ‘Reconstruction: A Plea for a National Policy’ was published in 1933. 137. Stapleton included both the Bristol Union workhouse and the city Lunatic Asylum. 138. C.E.H.A. Colston, cr. 1st Lord Roundway, 1916; MP (Con.) Thornbury, Gloucestershire 1892–1906.

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gone due to the passage of time and his exemplary seven years’ service on the backbenches. As for Colston he took Salisbury’s Newport address as his overall standard but adding, similarly to Bissell, a necessary liberalism and attention to economic detail. The highlights were a reduction in tea and an increase in sugar duties, simplified land transfer and local option. Colston was supported at three of his election rallies by Walter Long, who would not have taken time off from his own close run campaign in Devizes unless the Conservatives felt that they were in with a realistic chance of victory.139 However, it was not to be and the result, though somewhat surprising, was so for the successful Liberals not the unsuccessful Tories:

Colston Conservative 3,046 Fry Liberal 4,110 Liberal majority 1,064

The Liberal strongholds in the inner city were too much for the Conservative suburbs.140 The marginal seat of Bristol, South saw the best contest in the city and was the sole election where the result was uncertain, in normal circumstances. It was the constituency least affected by boundary changes, with only c. 1,000 new voters being added from North Somerset, many of them being coal miners. The seat was really a contest between the Liberal inclined suburb of Bedminster and the Conservative city centre, which contained both the religious and business establishments with the additional vote for the latter of importance in helping to decide the outcome until 1918. On the Liberal side the electorate was more Robinson than Cossham and the candidate, the city’s mayor from 1880–3, J.D. Weston, reflected this.141 Weston had a formidable local record, beginning his municipal career in 1865. His mayoralty had seen both the purchase of the Avonmouth docks and the development of public libraries. The Tories chose the Cardiff ship owner E.S. Hill, on the right of the party in terms of religion, who advocated vigorous expansion of the city’s docks. The economy and religion were the key issues. The record of the second Gladstone administration was certainly not an unmixed blessing for Weston and the decline of the local boot and shoe industry was an albatross which was never entirely laid to rest. For Hill, the Cardiff association was perhaps more in the nature of a rivalry than partnership but the real difficulty for him was church division. As an ‘advanced Ritualist’ the Bristol Protestant League withheld its support though its importance can be overstated.142 The result was:

Hill Conservative 4,121 Weston Liberal 4,217 Liberal majority 96

139. Walter Hume Long, 1st Viscount Long, 1854–1924; MP (Con.) North Wiltshire 1880–5, Devizes 1885–92, Liverpool, West Derby, Jan. 1893–1900, Bristol, South 1900–06, Dublin County, South 1906-Jan. 1910, Strand (Middlesex), Jan. 1910–18, St George’s, Westminster, 1918–21; parliamentary secretary, Local Government Board 1886–92, president, Board of Agriculture and Fisheries 1895–1900, president, Local Government Board 1900–5 and1915-16, chief secretary, Ireland, March-Dec. 1905, Colonial Secretary 1916–19, First Lord of the Admiralty 1919–21. 140. ‘The District contributed very materially to the Liberal majority at the last two elections’, Charles Townsend, president, Bristol Federal Liberal Association, in Western Daily Press, Oct. 16, 1885. 141. Sir Joseph Dodge Weston, 1822–95; knighted, 1886; MP (Lib.) Bristol, South 1885–6, East, 1890–5; ironmaster; director or chairman of six companies, three in South Wales, three in Bristol. 142. See G. Best, ‘Popular Protestantism in Victorian Britain’ in R. Robson (ed.), Ideas and Institutions in Victorian Britain (1967).

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The West constituency saw the arrival of Hicks Beach as Tory candidate from the now marginal agricultural Gloucestershire division of Cirencester.143 The Conservative strongholds were Clifton, Horfield and St Augustine’s wards, Liberal strength lay in St Michael’s and, to a lesser extent, Hotwells. As a sitting MP and ex-Cabinet minister he gave the local Tory party a dimension which had previously been absent. No Liberal challenge was expected but in August a Scottish banker, J.B. Nixon, appeared in order to dilute the Tory effort in Bristol, South. Church disestablishment featured quite prominently because Nixon was unclear about where he stood, which was unwise given the strongly Anglican nature of the seat. A feature of the Conservative campaign was the part played by the Primrose League, which helped to generate the very high turnout in the Tory areas.144 The result was:

Hicks Beach Conservative 3,876 Nixon Liberal 2,463 Conservative majority 1,413

No doubt some Conservatives, where applicable, voted in the South division to try and aid Colonel Hill. The aggregate party totals for 1885 do not indicate much of an urban Tory swing in Bristol. In fact, matters appeared to have rather gone the other way:

Conservative Liberal Liberal majority 1880 9,395 10,070145 675 1885 13,426 15,437 145 2,011 If Irish voters did as Parnell requested in the city and voted Tory then the performance was even worse. The Liberal hold of ‘Free Trade and Nonconformity’ was too strong for the Conservative alternative of ‘Anglicanism and Reciprocity’. The changes of 1883–5 did not appear to have unduly altered either established political culture or normal electoral practice in the city. Fortunately for the Tories ‘normality’ was broken the next year. What turned out to be, in effect, a referendum on Home Rule was marked by some of the worst weather of the century in February, a noted depression in trade, generous outdoor relief from the Tory Board of Guardians and a Lord Mayor’s distress fund. The economic downturn was not as severe as in the winter of 1879 and did not bear comparison with the suffering in the Midlands and the North. Partly as a consequence there was none of the rioting seen in London or some other big cities. There was not very much point the Conservatives standing in the East constituency except to divert Liberal attention from their more marginal neighbours and until the last week of the campaign no Tory had come forward. Cossham found the same difficulty apparent as in other safe, radical seats, which was that Home Rule held little or no appeal for coal miners. He won easily enough, with the same two thirds proportion of the ballot but lost c. 1,000 votes in the process on a low turnout, down from 74%–59% from the previous year. The Conservative total also fell so that the decline in the majority was held to c. 500.

143. The seat was gained by the Liberals in 1885. 144. In St Augustine’s 920 out of 975 electors voted. 145. The figure is the lower one for Fry: Morley’s vote was 10,704, doubling the Liberal majority to 1,309.

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The figures were:

Cossham Liberal 3,672 Inskip146 Conservative 1,936 Liberal majority 147 146147 1,736 In the Northern Division, Fry left the Liberals over Home Rule and stood as a Liberal Unionist. He was challenged by the official party choice, Alfred Carpenter, a London nonentity because of the absence of first rate, local, Gladstonian candidates and, at least to begin with, a ‘labour’ representative, Marshall, possibly subsidised by ‘Tory gold’, who later withdrew. The Conservatives endorsed Fry for one election only. The result again showed a decline in turnout by c. 10% with the voting as follows:

Carpenter Liberal 2,737 Fry Liberal Unionist 3,587 Liberal Unionist majority 850

If the majority of Colston’s 3,046 voters ignored Fry’s Quaker beliefs and did as expected, he gained about 600 cross-over Conservative votes. Carpenter’s dreadful total of 2,737 (1886) compared to Fry’s 4,110 (1885) was brought about not just by the above switching but also by a large abstention from core working-class Liberal electors. Four factors were behind this easy Liberal Unionist victory. They were: Fry’s local and constituency popularity, Conservative loyalty to the Unionist cause particularly in Fishponds, working-class dislike of the mistreatment of Marshall’s putative candidacy, especially in St Paul’s (with its numerous Scottish voters) and the District and the inability of Home Rule as an issue to set the Avon on fire in any notably positive way for Gladstone’s party. The Southern Division saw what happened when the sitting Liberal MP supported the Government’s Home Rule legislation. Weston had voted in favour of the Second Reading and argued for amendments in committee, stating that if these were not forthcoming then he would not support the Third Reading. There was a Whig revolt in the constituency and Weston also lost the support of the Wills tobacco interest, with its workforce concentrated in the key ward of Bedminster.148 By contrast, Hill was no longer seen as a Cardiff renegade and the internal Anglican disputes of the previous year had faded. He appealed to Nonconformists over the future of Ulster and to the working class over fair trade, particularly in relation to both shipping and sugar. The result was:

146. James Inskip; 1839–1909; defeated Bristol, East 1886 & May, 1890; member, Bristol School Board, 1877–86; banker, solicitor, chairman, Taff Vale railway company, 1882-91; Protestant evangelical. The official Liberal paper described him as follows: ‘Inskip is a strong Conservative candidate and is justly respected. But he represents an intolerant sectarian spirit … he might fitly represent some Ulster constituency but he would be strangely placed as the representative of an English working-class population’, Western Daily Press, July 1, 1886. 147. The constituency remained Liberal until the Great War, though at a by-election in March 1895 an Independent Labour candidate lost by 182 only (3,740–3,558) with no Tory standing. 148. William Pethick, the president of the local party resigned and became the first chairman of the Bristol Liberal Unionist Association; approximately one third of the executive committee of 250 went as well; see B. Alford, W.D. & H. O. Wills and the Development of the United Kingdom Tobacco Industry, 1786–1965 (1973).

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Hill Conservative 4,447 Weston Liberal 3,423 Conservative majority 1,024 The decline in the turnout was only 4.5% (compared to 15% in Bristol, East, 9.2% in North and 9.4% in West). Hill had increased the Conservative vote by just over 300 and the share by 7%. For the Liberals, Weston had lost 800 electors, with c. 500 party supporters abstaining.149 In the Tory pocket borough of Bristol, West there was a pretend contest, the aim of which, so far as the Liberals were concerned was to divert Conservative attention, effort, time and volunteers from the South, in exactly the same way that the Tory campaign in the Eastern Division diverted Liberal concentration from ousting Lewis Fry in the Northern constituency. The local party lost its Whig leaders and they were replaced by radicals and, in some cases, members of the Liberation Society.150 A London printer, James Judd, was the nominal candidate: he found it difficult to get much attention paid to his manifesto, drowned out, as it was, by the debate over Home Rule. The result was:

Hicks Beach Conservative 3,819 Judd Liberal 1,801 Conservative majority 2,018

The decline in the turnout, the antiquated register and the need to make the South contest the priority helped to explain why the West constituency was the only one in the city in 1886 to see a small decline in the actual Tory vote. However, the Liberals lost c. 25% of their 1885 total, which abstained. The aggregate voting figures for 1885–6 were:

1885 1886 Total vote % Total vote % Conservative 13,426 46.7 13,789 53.9 Liberal 15,437 53.3 11,633 46.1 Majority L2,011 6.6 C2,156 7.8

The swing to the Conservatives in 1886 was 7.2%. It would be incorrect to claim too much for Bristol’s electoral politics in the Disraeli and Gladstone era. The city’s great days, when it helped to create the political weather in the 18th century, based on trans-Atlantic trade, slavery and the presence of Edmund Burke as MP had long gone. The Industrial Revolution had changed the country’s focus northwards and Birmingham and Manchester, and to a lesser extent, Leeds, as the key regional, or economic, capitals rather put Bristol in the shade. The decline of the port, unable to compete with Glasgow, Liverpool and

149. There were only c. 250 Irish voters in the constituency helping Hill (until 1900) and then W.H. Long to hold the seat for the Unionists until 1906. Sir Edward Stock Hill; 1834–1902; MP (Con.) Bristol, South 1886–1900; shipowner; firm began ‘City’ line of steamers, Bristol to New York, 1880; president, United Kingdom Chamber of Shipping, 1881; High Sheriff, Glamorganshire, 1885; member, English Church Union and advanced ‘Ritualist’. 150. The Bristol, West president for the Liberals, who led the resignations was F.J. Fry. Nixon, the beaten candidate from 1885, stood as a Liberal Unionist in Dundee in 1886 (defeated again) and wrote a private letter of support to Hicks Beach, who read it out at a public meeting.

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London, was the major factor. The city reflected, rather than contributed to, the main developments of the period. No Cabinet minister represented Bristol in the period 1832–85 and neither Disraeli nor Gladstone visited. Nevertheless, the Liberal MPs were mostly worthy backbenchers and the urban Tories who contested radical dominance came from the mercantile and trading elite, both of whom made a contribution to an age of improvement and civic development. Liberal dominance lasted from 1852–85 (with the sole exception of Miles’s brief tenure in 1868) covering seven general elections. The party’s support, based on the strength of Nonconformity was not affected by any particular electoral or political change before the 1885 Redistribution Act.151 That measure immediately gave the Conservatives one seat in Bristol, West and opened up the strong possibility of another in the highly marginal South constituency.152 The accidental addition of a third Unionist MP in the North division was due to national, not local, developments.153 In conclusion, Bristol’s politics during the period 1865–86 did, to a limited extent and almost entirely without Conservative success, confirm some of the ideas behind the concept of ‘Tory Democracy’. The party’s leaders showed an awareness of the need for a new approach to the post-1867 electorate, be it via the selection of politically moderate candidates, the use of women in canvassing, or by questioning free trade shibboleths and advocating a limited, reciprocal protection. This, plus support for the freedom to drink and to think imperially made ‘the angels in marble’ a reality, if not an election winning one: that had to wait for the emergence of Home Rule under a new electoral system. The comparison as to Conservative fortunes in the same period with the other towns and cities mentioned at the beginning of the study, excluding the somewhat different circumstances in Ireland (Belfast and Dublin) and Scotland (Edinburgh and Glasgow), is as follows (two MPs per borough except where indicated otherwise):

151. Two religious censuses indicated this, the first the national one of 1851, the second undertaken by the Western Daily Press on Oct. 30, 1881. The first had advance warning, the second did not; the first used the boundaries of the city’s three Poor Law Unions, the second the municipal boundaries. The main details were as follows: 1851 1881 Population 182,000 206,000 % of above at worship 53.79 56.23 Anglicans (%) 43.90 40.59 Nonconformists (%) 56.10 59.41 Anglicans (numerical) 47,427 47,140 Nonconformists (numerical) 54,578 69,008 152. Bristol West remained Conservative until 1945, after which it was renamed North West before the next contest in 1950. There was no additional graduate vote involved before the Great War because the University was not founded until 1909 and the institution’s enfranchisement came with the Fourth Reform Act in 1918; see T. Lloyd Humberstone, University Representation (1951). Bristol, South remained Conservative from 1886–1906, after the latter date only in 1931 did the party win the constituency again before the alterations of 1948. 153. For Tory resurgence elsewhere see J.P. Cornford: ‘The transformation of Conservatism in the late nineteenth century’, Victorian Studies, 7 (1963–4), pp. 35–66.

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City/Town Conservative MPs, 1867–85 1) Birmingham (x3) 0 2) Bradford 1: 1874 [1: 1835–7, 1841–7, 1852–7, 1865–8] 3) Hull 1: 1873 (by-election); [0: 1847–85, except 1859 (by-election)] 4) Leeds (x3) 1: 1868; 2: 1874; 1: 1880; [1: 1835–7; 1: 1841–52; 1: 1857–68] 5) Liverpool (x3) 2: 1868, 2: 1874; 2: 1880; 1: 1880 (by-election) 6) Manchester (x3) 1: 1868; 2: 1874; 1: 1880 [0: 1832–67] 7) Newcastle 1: 1874 [0: 1847–74] 8) Norwich 1: 1874 9) Nottingham 1: 1868; 2: 1874 10) Sheffield 1: 1880 [0: 1832–80] 11) Wolverhampton 0 By contrast the Liberals rather rested on their laurels thinking that the increase in the city’s electorate would only benefit them and never really coming to terms with the whole concept of the Tory working man. As Bristol’s majority party, it could indulge in internecine faction fighting between local notables over temperance, in particular, and religious differences, in general, without compromising its pre-eminent position.

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