W. E. GLADSTONE: Scots in UK Politics (11)

It may surprise some that a figure so imbued with the English establishment ethos and with High Anglicanism should be claimed as a Scot, but in fact the great Mr Gladstone was a pure-bred Scot. His father Sir John Gladstone was born and raised in Leith, the port of Edinburgh, while his mother Anne McKenzie Robertson was the daughter of a solicitor and erstwhile Provost of Dingwall in Ross-shire. Mr Gladstone’s Scots ancestry may partly account for his principled mind-set and strong work ethic, but perhaps also for his religiosity and his suppressed sexual obsessions. Although his father lived most of his life from 1787 and prospered as a Liverpool merchant, John Gladstone retained a family seat, Fasque House in Kincardineshire, bought in 1829 and dying there in 1851.

Fasque House in Kincardineshire

William Ewart Gladstone, (1809-1898) the most eminent of Victorian Prime Ministers, was born in Liverpool, the 4^th and youngest son of his parents, who had also 2 daughters. His father, later Sir John Gladstone, 1^st baronet, had made a fortune in the corn, cotton and sugar trades and was a Canningite Tory MP. W.E. was sent to Eton like his brothers and then he went up to Christ Church, Oxford, where he won a double first in Classics and Mathematics. His views were uncompromisingly Tory and he spoke against the Reform Bill. Entering Parliament in 1832, he opposed the abolition of slavery and was famously described by Macaulay as “The rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories”. Gladstone was gradually to move from Right to Left, far across the political spectrum.        

                        

W.E. Gladstone in the 1830s

Gladstone also originally held extreme religious opinions arguing in his 1838 The State and its relations with the Church, that the State had a duty actively to support the Church of England to the exclusion of Catholics and Non-Conformists. This divisive view was not taken seriously by Peel or other Tories though it led to Gladstone’s brief resignation from Peel’s 1841-46 ministry over the Maynooth grant to a Catholic seminary in Ireland. Gladstone held cabinet office and was a loyal Peelite, indeed a strong admirer of Peel, supporting the repeal of the Corn Laws, which split the Tories in 1846. Gladstone became an apostle of free trade and follower of the cheap food programme of Richard Cobden and John Bright together with their championing of the aspirations of the working classes.

The Peelite Tories drifted over to the Whig party under Russell and Palmerston with Gladstone becoming 3 times Chancellor of the Exchequer. “Gladstonian” finance was one of the pillars of his fame, consisting of a balanced budget, the reduction in indirect taxes, economy in government and a determination to cover expenditure by adjusting the rate of income tax. In 1860, he famously abolished paper duties (“taxes on knowledge”) and he became a hero of the working class, credited with keeping down the cost of food. By 1859 the Peelites, Whigs and Radicals merged into the Liberal Party with Gladstone the heir apparent.

Gladstone in his 1861 prime

After Disraeli stole the Liberals’ clothes by passing the Second Reform Bill of 1867, Gladstone became Prime Minister for the first time in 1868-74, leading one of the great modernising ministries. The Civil Service and the Universities were opened to merit, the purchase of Army commissions was abolished, a seminal Education Act was passed, election ballots became secret and the local authority management of the Poor law was overhauled. Public drunkenness was limited by new Licensing laws, upsetting the powerful brewing interest and when the Liberals lost the 1874 election Gladstone complained that he had been “borne down in a torrent of gin and beer”. Yet the achievements of his first ministry had been immense. 

At the beginning of this ministry, cutting wood as was his hobby and pleasure at his wife’s family estate at Hawarden in Flintshire, North Wales, he had made the oracular pronouncement “My mission is to pacify Ireland”. This became a central prop (and blind alley) of his political life from 1874 and one which he drove on with eloquent persistence. He disestablished the episcopal Church of Ireland, initiated important land reforms and in time embraced the fraught policy of Home Rule – fraught because it was likely to split his party. His watchword remained “Retrenchment”, strict economy, small government and no overseas adventures as the age of Imperialism dawned. Queen Victoria was no admirer of Gladstone (“a half-mad firebrand”, she opined) and was much gratified when his adversary Disraeli, had her proclaimed Empress of India in 1877.

Gladstone soon showed his mettle by storming back to office in 1880 after his “Whistle-stop” Midlothian Campaign of 1879 on the American electoral model, exciting his audiences with his domestic programme but also by his denunciations of the “Bulgarian Horrors”, the brutal Ottoman suppression of Balkan insurrection. His Second Ministry was less successful: Ireland loomed large with rural terrorism and the Phoenix Park murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, chief Secretary for Ireland in 1882.  Entanglement with the governing of bankrupt Egypt contradicted Liberal principles and Gladstone’s government was blamed when odd-ball General Gordon succumbed to the fanatical warriors of the Mahdi in Khartoum in 1885. The suffrage was further extended to many rural inhabitants in the 1884 3^rd Reform Bill. 

The Formidable Grand Old Man

In a brief Third Ministry in 1886, Gladstone introduced his first Irish Home Rule Bill. Gladstone pleaded for support in a 3-hour oration but he failed by 30 votes to carry his Bill in the Commons. His Liberal Party was split as feared with the Liberal Unionists led by Lord Hartington and by Radical Joseph Chamberlain voting with the Tories. In his final undaunted attempt and 4^th ministry in 1892, aged 82, the Home Rule Bill passed the Commons but was decisively blocked by the Lords, leaving one of history’s great “What ifs?” Gladstone could have, but did not, put the conflict between Commons and Lords to an electoral test in 1894.

The mere outline of Gladstone’s political life does him scant justice. He had a mesmeric hold on the House of Commons and on many of his colleagues. He believed he was God’s instrument to reform his nation and improve the world. He was happily married for 59 years to almost aristocratic Catherine Glynne but in a wildly indiscreet fashion he wandered the streets of London from 1848 onwards seeking out and trying to help prostitutes (“fallen women” in the jargon of the time) to change their lives. This may have been the evangelical pull of doing good works but there may have been a prurient element of getting close to the purveyors of forbidden pleasures. He could be a sanctimonious brother too, chasing after his neglected sister Helen, an opium addict, but much worse, a Catholic convert. He was not a bigot, being an admirer of the poetry of Cardinal Newman.

Gladstone, by modern standards, was not well travelled but he went on a European Grand Tour in his youth and later was appalled by the poverty he saw on a visit to Naples. His profound classical scholarship was rewarded by his becoming for 3 months in 1858-9 the Extraordinary British High Commissioner to the Ionian Islands over which Britain had a Protectorate and he seriously applied himself to the problems of Corfu. Happily by 1862 the Ionian Islands were united to the Kingdom of Greece. He was a tremendous bibliophile, supposedly having read 20,000 books in his time; he read Homer for pleasure – “serve him right”, quipped unclassical Winston Churchill. 

His ministries were epoch-defining as may also be said of those of Attlee and of Thatcher. His emphasis on government economy, on self-help, laissez-faire and on small government were echoed most recently by Margaret Thatcher, who is one of his residual legatees. Gladstone was many-sided, complex and a thunderbolt-wielding Thor dominating two generations of British political history: his Scottish antecedents add lustre to his great name.

SMD

8.07.2014

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014.

  

MAXTON AND RED CLYDESIDE: Scots in UK Politics (10)

The City of Glasgow has a very distinctive character. For all the 19^th and much of the 20^th centuries, she has been an industrial power house, with a population in excess of 1m, hosting notably engineering, textile and shipbuilding industries with coal-mining too in the surrounding area. We can now enjoy her elegant Georgian and Victorian terraces and her fine townscape along the River Clyde. But that is the result of relatively recent renewal – traditional Glasgow was a place of smoke, pollution, poor housing, hardship and poverty. The Second City of the Empire spawned radical politicians especially in the 1910-35 period. The City was nicknamed Red Clydeside, striking terror and alarm into the heart of bourgeois Britain. Her most charismatic leader was schoolteacher James Maxton (1885-1946), with his hatchet face and flowing locks, whose oratory thrilled the Glasgow working class and impressed even Winston Churchill and others in the Commons at Westminster.

James Maxton, spellbinder

Red Clydeside was the product of several currents. The Labour movement, intellectuals, trades unionists and activists, with many Glaswegian adherents, was trying to establish an identity distinct from the Marxist Continentals. Macdonald was a gradualist like the Fabians, but others wanted to encourage a more revolutionary programme. Macdonald’s views prevailed and 29 Labour Party members entered Parliament in 1906 willing to work alongside the Liberals. The Independent Labour Party (ILP) had been formed earlier and was affiliated to, but not controlled by, the new Labour Party. It was more left-wing than the national party. Locally in Glasgow the key problems were appalling working conditions and inferior housing but any party had to be able to accommodate not only Scots Presbyterians or atheists but also a significant Catholic minority originally from Ireland, which was politically radical but socially conservative.

The scene was set in 1911 with a major strike at the large Singer sewing machine factory, when 11,000 workers walked out in protest at a time and motion study changing working practices and requiring more productivity for no more wages. The strike ultimately failed and 400 militant workers were sacked by the employer, the usual consequence in those days. Between 1910 and 1914 the number of days lost through strikes in embittered Glasgow quadrupled. 

With the outbreak of the First War the Labour Party was split but Macdonald and Maxton were conscientious objectors. Maxton organised a shipyard strike and was imprisoned for 6 months for sedition. With most of the men joining up to the Army, the Glasgow landlords pushed up rents believing the wives would be an easier touch. A rent strike was organised, mainly by Mary Barbour, evictions were obstructed by large crowds and the government had hurriedly to introduce a rent freeze in Glasgow and most other British cities.

With the end of the War, Glasgow activists agitated for a 40-Hour Week. This was a device to share out whatever work was available, as it was realised that with demobilisation and the drastic reduction in the munitions and shipbuilding industries there would be wide-spread unemployment. A mass demonstration was called for George Square, Glasgow in January 1919 and some 60,000 people assembled. The police were heavy handed and disorder broke out. The union leaders, Manny Shinwell, David Kirkwood and Willie Gallacher were arrested. The crowd could not be controlled and the Sherriff was unable to read the Riot Act, as was then required: it was torn from his hands. The police continued to be defied but eventually the crowd dispersed. Fearing revolution (the Bolsheviks were taking over in Russia and Europe was ablaze) the government panicked and sent in troops and tanks to lock down the city and deter further agitation. The local army units, notably the Highland Light Infantry at Maryhill, were confined to barracks for fear they would join the workers. In truth, there was little revolutionary spirit evident and the government had over-reacted.

Manny Shinwell (1884-1986) was a leading Red Clydesider. Born in Spitalfields, London to a Polish Jewish father, a tailor, and a Dutch Jewish mother, the family moved to Glasgow when he was a child. He educated himself at public libraries, never losing his broad Glasgow accent, and became a trades union organiser for the seamen, leading a strike in 1911. Fond of boxing, he was a political bruiser, imprisoned for 6 months for his part in the 40-Hour Movement and the George Square riot. He was an MP 1922-24, 1929-31 and 1936 – 1970, when he became a life peer. He famously crossed the floor of the Commons to punch a Tory member who had in 1938 told him to “Go back to Poland”.

Manny Shinwell

Willie Gallacher

Shinwell was a relentless critic of Macdonald’s moderation (he unseated Macdonald at Seaham in the 1935 election) and a dedicated class warrior. On becoming Minister of Fuel and Power in 1945, he presided over the nationalisation of the coal industry and in an act of rancour opened a mine at Wentworth Woodhouse at the back door of Lord Fitzwilliam’s stately home, despite mine-owner Fitzwilliam being notably philanthropic to the local miners for many years. He was much criticised for his handling of coal shortages and black-outs in the severe 1947 winter. He was moved to Defence, where he did better, though his MI6 file suspected him of leaking information to Irgun, a Jewish organisation fighting Britain in Palestine. Shinwell was honoured in his old age – he died aged 101 – but he was a nasty bit of work in his prime. 

Willie Gallacher (1881 – 1965) was another militant Red Clydesider. Jailed with Shinwell after the George Square riot, he was jailed again for 12 months in 1925 for inciting troops to mutiny. Gallacher was more overtly revolutionary, moving to the Communist Party and being one of only 3 communist MPs ever, representing West Fife from 1935-50. He was unsurprisingly an avid supporter of intervention and of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.

In Macdonald’s first ministry 1923-4 Clydesider John Wheatley was appointed Minister for Health and he piloted through an important Housing Act, much increasing the availability of council housing, a vital issue in Glasgow. Wheatley was a Catholic miner turned printer and was considered the brains behind the ILP. Maxton, the ILP leader, and Wheatley became increasingly critical of Macdonald and his policies of austerity in the Depression; he was not offered a job in Macdonald’s 1929-31 ministry. Wheatley died in 1930 and he had actually achieved something with his Housing Act. Working through Parliament, not street politics, was the way forward.

John Wheatley

In 1931, Labour was devastated by the defection of Macdonald in the economic crisis to a National government dominated by the Tories. Their numbers were much reduced in the subsequent election. The ILP, still strong in Clydeside, disaffiliated from Labour in 1932, but its membership plummeted. Macdonald continued as National Prime Minister, his powers failing. As he meandered incoherently through his last Commons speech, Maxton called out “Sit down, man, you’re a bloody tragedy!”

Maxton continued in the 1930s to espouse socialist causes. He published a biography of Lenin and with fellow-traveller Fenner Brockway supported various Communist Front organisations. In truth Red Clydeside had run out of steam and when Maxton died in 1946, Red Clydeside and the ILP died with him. He was never more than a marginal figure and it is surprising Gordon Brown later made him his hero.

Jimmy Reid

   

Jim Sillars

              

Alex Neil

The contrarian spirit of Glasgow politicians lived on with the likes of Jimmy Reid (1932 – 2010), charismatic communist leader of the 1972 Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in and later SNP supporter. Jim Sillars, erstwhile Labour hero and then SNP enthusiast, until he fell out with Alex Salmond, is another. Alex Neil is similar, moving from Labour to the SNP and the Scottish Assembly cabinet. There is a whiff of Red Clydeside about all three.

As I am a Scottish middle-class Tory, I am not really on the same wavelength as Red Clydeside. Yet I do not doubt their sincerity nor their talent. However, W B Yeats' lines inevitably come to mind;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

SMD

6.10.13

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013