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V. The Liberal Revival in Northamptonshire, 1880–1895: A Case Study in Late Nineteenth Century Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Janet Howarth
Janet Howarth
Affiliation:
Girton College, Cambridge
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Extract

There can be few fields in modern English history in which the historian is so frustrated by lack of evidence as in the study of elections between the introduction of the secret ballot and the coming of the opinion polls. For threequarters of a century after the Ballot Act was passed there is no precise quantitative evidence relating to movements of opinion or the voting behaviour of different groups within the electorate. We cannot even hope for conclusive evidence of what, in general terms, the determinants of voting behaviour were in this period; how to balance the importance of the national party competition and of local pressures; of the ‘image’ and the leadership of the parties and their programmes; of class loyalties and religious loyalties; of electoral persuasion and the fluctuations of a still unmanaged economy. These questions are strictly unanswerable, for there are no pollbooks from which we can deduce the opinions of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century electors, and they are beyond the reach of questionnaires. The only statistics we possess are the bare figures for votes cast for each party in contested elections, and the number of registered electors in each constituency (from which we can calculate the percentage of voters who went to the poll).

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1969 , pp. 78 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 In Victorian Studies, VII (1963), 35–66Google Scholar, especially pp. 53–64.

2 See Cornford, op. cit. pp. 54–7.

3 See Vincent, J.R., Pollbooks; How Victorians Voted (Cambridge, 1967), p. 21.Google Scholar

4 See e.g. Bealey, F., Blondel, J. and McCann, W.P., Constituency Politics; a study of Newcastle-under-Lyme (London, 1965), pp. 179—86.Google Scholar

5 Except, of course, to explore regional variations in voting behaviour. Dr Pelling uses this method in his Social Geography of British Elections, 1885–1910 (London, 1967)Google Scholar which he very kindly allowed me to read in proof. This second type of comparative election study is most helpful in so far as it describes how different parts of the country voted but, as Dr Pelling recognizes, it does not make us less dependent on literary evidence. To describe is not to explain. It is far from clear what precisely were the politically important characteristics of certain regions; it is easier to arrive at plausible explanations for the idiosyncrasies of Lancashire and Birmingham than for those of, say, the West country. There were, moreover, some equally significant intra-regional variations in electoral behaviour.

6 Channing, F.A., Memories of Midland Politics (London, 1918), p. 31.Google Scholar

7 On the density of country seats in this and other counties, see Thompson, F.M.L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1963), p. 30.Google Scholar

8 See Fox, A., A History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, 1874–1957. (Oxford, 1958)Google Scholar, chapter 2.

9 For a summary of the Liberals' performance in the counties after 1832, see Vincent, J.R., The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857–1868 (London, 1966), p. xxvi.Google Scholar

10 Northampton borough was represented for most of our period by two of the most controversial Radicals in parliament, Bradlaugh and Labouchere, and fear of losing support by associating with these M.P.s, or becoming embroiled in the feuds of the borough Radical party, caused the county Liberals to keep out of Northampton politics as much as possible. Even Robert Spencer, who had about 1,300 constituents among the borough residents after 1885, kept his contacts with Northampton to a minimum.

11 See Forrester, E.G., Northamptonshire County Elections and Electioneering, 1695–1832 (Oxford, 1941), especially pp. 115, 135.Google Scholar

12 North Northamptonshire was not contested between 1859 and the by-election of 1877. South Northamptonshire was not contested between 1868 and 1885.

13 For example, the Northamptonshire Guardian, 1 April 1882.

14 East Northamptonshire (Wellingborough) had a rapidly growing industrial electorate, concentrated mainly in Wellingborough and Kettering and a number of large manufacturing villages. Channing's share of the poll in the four elections 1885–95 never fell below 55 per cent. He was opposed by a different Conservative (or, in 1886, Liberal Unionist) carpet-bagger at each election.

Mid Northamptonshire (Brixworth) was a predominantly rural seat, though like all the county divisions it included a number of shoemaking villages. The freeholders of Northampton borough also voted in this division; they formed an important section of the electorate, as the Northampton Radical Freehold Land Society had enabled an unusually high proportion of the town's working class to buy their own houses (see Arnstein, W.L., The Bradlaugh Case; a study in late Victorian opinion and politics, Oxford, 1965, p. 27).Google Scholar The Spencer estates fell largely within the Brixworth division. Its member, Robert Spencer, became a Whip, and he might best be described as an ‘official’ Liberal; he stood on the right of the party on many issues, but his Liberalism was none the less strongly partisan, and his loyalty to the party line was unvarying. Brixworth was contested in 1885 by Pickering Phipps, a Conservative Northampton brewer; in 1886 by a Liberal Unionist county landowner, W. C. Cartwright; and more successfully in 1892 and 1895 by James Pender, who owned a small estate in the division. Pender won the seat in 1895.

South Northamptonshire (Towcester) was the poorest of the agricultural divisions: it included much of the worst land in the county. Sir Rainald Knightley, a high Tory who had sat for the county since 1852, held the seat by a margin of 60 votes against Sir Maurice Fitzgerald, the Knight of Kerry, in 1885, and by a more comfortable margin against Sir James Carmichael in 1886. In 1892 Sir Rainald was raised to the peerage, and his successor, Thomas Cartwright (the brother of W. C. Cartwright) was defeated by the Liberal David Guthrie. In 1895, however, the Hon. E. G. D. Pennant recaptured the seat from Guthrie with an exceptionally large swing to the Conservatives of 8 per cent. All the Liberal candidates for this division were carpet-baggers; all the Conservatives came from the local landed gentry.

North Northamptonshire (Oundle), another mainly rural division with a scattering of shoemaking villages, was the richest part of the county, the stronghold of the Conservative and Unionist aristocracy. It was represented by a member of the leading Northamptonshire Conservative family, Lord Burghley, till he succeeded to the Marquisate of Exeter in 1895. E. P. Monckton, a country gentleman and barrister, took over as its Conservative M.P. in 1895. This was the only seat that was not regularly contested after redistribution; in 1886 and 1895 the Liberals did not put up a candidate (though they would have done so in 1895 had they known in time that Lord Burghley would not stand). The Liberal candidate in 1885 was Sir James Carmichael, who migrated to the more propitious Towcester division in 1886. In 1892 the Liberals put up, rather desperately, a Kettering corset manufacturer, J. T. Stockburn. The size of the vote for each party in these elections is given in the following table; the details are taken from the Constitutional Yearbook. The percentage of votes polled in each election is calculated from the Parliamentary Returns of registered electors.

15 The elections of 1886, 1892 and 1895 all took place in the summer and were therefore fought on a ‘stale’ register, since the register came into force in January and was compiled six months earlier.

16 Hanham, H.J., Elections and Party Management; Politics in the Time of Gladstone and Disraeli (London, 1959), appendix III, p. 405.Google Scholar

17 Bagehot, W., The English Constitution (World's Classics edition, 1963), p. 145.Google Scholar

18 Salisbury MSS. Exeter to Salisbury, 21 March 1880. The registration had been neglected in the early 1870s, and the inefficiency of the official machinery is apparent from the fluctuations in the size of the electorate recorded in the Parliamentary Returns; in North Northamptonshire, the registered electorate shrank from 5,311 in 1868 to 5,215 in 1874 and 5,033 in 1877. In 1878 the Liberals appointed a salaried registration agent, and by 1880 the register had been increased to 5,833.

19 See Spencer MSS. 1880, especially letters to Lord Spencer from C. R. Spencer, J. Becke and C. C. Becke, written between February and April 1880. As Lord Spencer was abroad during these months there is a great deal of correspondence relating to the 1880 election in his papers.

20 Robert Spencer's majority was small: the result was Spencer, 2,425; Burghley, 2,405; Sackville, 2,316. A small minority of the electors split their votes between Spencer and one or other of the Conservative candidates, but about 93 per cent of Spencer's votes were from ‘plumpers’.

21 Granville MSS. Spencer to Granville, 23 March 1880 (PRO 30/29/30 A).

22 See e.g. Spencer MSS. R. G. Roe to J. T. Stockburn, 1 November 1879: ‘the farmers are in a state of revolt and never more independent of territorial influence’.

23 Northampton Mercury, 13 September 1879 and subsequent editions, and 20 March 1880.

24 Spencer MSS. C. R. Spencer to Spencer, 10 April 1880.

25 On Stopford Sackville see Adkins, W.R., Our County (London, 1893), p. 31.Google Scholar Burghley was said to have admitted during his first election campaign in 1877 that he did not know what ‘County Boards’ were; see Northampton Mercury, 20 September 1879.

26 Spencer MSS. J. Becke to Spencer, 27 March 1880.

27 The Association was formed during the Bulgarian atrocities agitation; Schnadhorst advised on its constitution. South Northamptonshire had no Liberal Association in 1880, and this was the chief reason why Spencer decided to promote a contest in the North rather than in the division where his family influence lay. Voluntary party workers were considered more reliable as well as cheaper than paid canvassers.

28 Stockburn, J.T., quoted in Northampton Mercury, 1 May 1880.Google Scholar

29 Granville MSS. Spencer to Granville, 23 March 1880; PRO 30/29/30 A. Spencer MSS. C. C. Becke to Spencer, 28 March 1880. Howard had £3,000 promised from various sources, including £500 from the Duke of Bedford, who wanted ‘to get Mr Howard away from Bedfordshire’.

30 Spencer MSS. T. Judge to Spencer, 11 February 1881, and draft of Spencer's reply.

31 Harcourt MSS. Spencer to Harcourt, 15 July 1892.

32 Spencer MSS. S. Ward to Spencer, 17 March 1893, and copy of Spencer's indignant reply, 18 March 1893.

33 Ibid. Spencer to Jeyes, 8 February 1895. Northampton Mercury, 11 January 1895. The Mercury does not name the parish in which this incident took place, but in the edition of 14 December 1894 it does list several parishes where there were contests between the ratepayers and the labourers.

34 Channing described the Oundle division as ‘that dim, silent wilderness of feudalism—the “North pole of the county”’ (Memories, p. 146). The Exeter and Sackville estates lay in this division, as well as those of the Fitzwilliams, who were from 1885 active against the Liberals.

35 Adkins, Our County, p. 116. On the lack of resident gentry in the south of the county see Haggard, H. Rider, Rural England (London, 1902), 11, 126–7.Google Scholar

36 Before 1885, North and South Northamptonshire each had a constituency organization; the latter, founded 1882, was a makeshift affair run by an ill–assorted collection of local Whigs and Radicals with some help from the Spencers and Charles Becke. In 1885, the Wellingborough Radicals insisted that there should be separate, self-sufficient constituency organizations rather than a Liberal Association covering the whole county.

37 On the Wellingborough Association and methods of electioneering, see Channing, Memories, especially pp. 10–11, 47–50, 80–2, 157–8, 161.

38 Ostrogorski, M., Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties (London, 1902), 1, 364—9.Google Scholar The information about organization and electioneering in the Brixworth, Oundle and Towcester divisions is pieced together from the Spencer MSS. and local newspapers.

39 Spencer MSS. C.C. Becke to Spencer, 5 November 1892. On registration in the 1870s see above, note 18.

40 Spencer MSS. C. C. Becke to Spencer. 19 July 1895.

41 Ibid. J. Becke to Spencer, 1 July 1886; C. C. Becke to Spencer, 13 August 1886. Harcourt MSS. Spencer to Harcourt, 15 July 1892.

42 It was usual to have a show of hands for the candidate at the end of each meeting, and the results were rarely unanimous.

43 Adkins, Our County, p. 110. Northampton Mercury, 15 June, 1894 and 26 July 1895.

44 Spencer MSS. C. R. Spencer to Spencer, z September 1894.

45 Guttsman, W.L., The British Political Elite (London, 1963), p. 150.Google Scholar

46 Spencer MSS. C. R. Spencer, 10 July 1886.

47 See below, pp. 113–4.

48 In Northampton Central Library, box labelled ‘Northampton Elections, 1885–1920; Handbills, Broadsides, Cuttings’.

49 Wallas, G., Human Nature in Politics (London, 2nd ed. 1910), p. 84;Google Scholar quoted in Trenaman, J. and McQuail, D., Television and the Political Image (London, 1961), p. 238.Google Scholar

50 Spencer MSS. C. C. Becke to Spencer, 10 January 1885.

51 Adkins, Our County, p. 1. In local politics especially, the Radicals gained much from their association with Spencer: as Lord Lieutenant, he dispensed county magistracies, and as leader of the Liberals on the County Council he was able to unite Liberal Unionists and Gladstonians for local purposes, a feat which no lesser man could have achieved.

52 Broke, Lord WiUoughby de, The Passing Years (London, 1924), p. 101.Google Scholar Northampton Mercury, 20 March 1880. Spencer MSS. J. Becke to Spencer, 6 April 1880; C. R. Spencer to Spencer, 14 October 1885.

53 Channing, Memories, pp. 42, 51, 143, 160.

54 Northampton Mercury, 7 November 1885.

55 The material relating to Liberal propaganda in these divisions is taken from reports of speeches in Channing, Memories, and reports and comment in the Northampton Mercury, the only local Liberal weekly newspaper which stayed in publication throughout this period.

56 Channing, Memories, pp. 19 and 60. Northampton Mercury, 28 November 1885 and 23 November 1894.

57 Northampton Mercury, 2 December 1882.

58 Channing, Memories, p. 14. Northampton Mercury, 7 December 1894.

59 Channing, Memories, pp. 60, 132–3.

60 Ibid., pp. 14 and 165. Northampton Mercury, 23 February and 23 November 1894.

61 Northampton Mercury, 6 July 1894.

62 Ibid. 23 November and 7 December 1894. Channing, Memories, p. 204.

63 See e.g. Lord Spencer's speech at Rugby, 1 July 1887: ‘Coming from that Upper Chamber where breezes of popular feeling never entered, he welcomed a political demonstration.’ Quoted in Channing, Memories, p. 69.

64 It was said that the anti-vaccination movement had much popular support in the Towcester division in 1892.

65 Channing, Memories, p. 117.

66 Spencer MSS. C.R. Spencer to Spencer, 16 October 1885 and 19 July 1895.

67 This was H. O. Nethercote, squire of Moulton. See Northampton Mercury, 24 October 1885.

68 Charming, Memories, pp. 19 and 36. Northampton Mercury, 3 October and 7 November 1885.

69 See Royal Commission on Labour, Reports from Assistant Commissioners on Agricultural Labour, 1893, XXXV, Part IV, p. 39.

70 Channing, Memories, p. 117.

71 Ibid. pp. 37 and 153.

72 Ibid. p. 115.

73 Spencer MSS. Nethercote to Spencer, 9 June (1886).

74 Ibid. Calverley to Spencer, 9 May 1885; C. R. Spencer to Spencer, 4 July 1886; R. Parnell to Spencer, 24 August 1895. Northampton Mercury, 12 and 19 December 1885. Conservative politicians also found that farmers resented their attempts to win over the labourers; see Salisbury MSS. H. Chaplin to Salisbury, 31 January 1892: ‘the Farmers…can't bear anything being done, for the Labourers, and are inconceivably stupid about it, except the Best of them’. As farmers' profit margins were falling in this period over most of England while real wages were rising, this was not altogether surprising.

75 Northampton Mercury, 1 August 1885 and 9 November 1894. The Bishop of Peterborough had advised the parish clergy of his diocese to call such meetings.

76 There were one or two exceptions on the Anglican side too; John and Charles Becke, and Willan Jackson, another Liberal lawyer, were all Anglicans. But the generalization otherwise holds good. It is based on Adkins, Our County, and anon. Northamptonshire Leaders, Social and Political (Exeter, 1898);Google Scholar where these publications do not give details of religious affiliations, they can be discovered from newspaper accounts of the annual meetings of the various local Nonconformist churches.

77 The historians of the late nineteenth-century temperance movement argued that it was only in the elections of 1892 and 1895 that the drink interest became a powerful political force. In Northamptonshire this was not so; and it is therefore impossible to accept their suggestion that the drink interest won Oundle for the Tories in 1892 and the Brixworth division in 1895. See Rowntree, J. and Sherwell, A., The Temperance Problem and Social Reform (London, 1899), pp. 97.Google Scholar 103. 506, 513.

78 Adkins, Our County, pp. 10, 43. Adkins was a barrister, resident in Northamptonshire and prominent in local Liberal politics.

79 Spencer MSS. Watson to Spencer, 8 March 1882; Wake to Spencer, 7 March 1882. Hadley, W.W., ‘Northamptonshire Memories’, in Northamptonshire Past and Present, II, no. 4 (1957), p. 176.Google Scholar

80 Adkins, Our County, pp. 110–11.

81 Spencer MSS. Wilkinson to Spencer, 21 October 1891. Northampton Mercury, 23 November 1894. On the association of Nonconformity with Liberalism generally in this period, see Glaser, J.F., ‘English Nonconformity and the decline of Liberalism’, in American Historical Review (1958).Google Scholar

82 Spencer MSS. Bury to Spencer, 24 December 1885.

83 See Northampton Mercury, 7 and 14 December 1894.

84 Channing, Memories, p. 24. Spencer MSS. C. C. Becke to Spencer, 22 May 1894.

85 Quoted in Fox, History of N.U.B.S.O. pp. 78–9.

86 Channing, Memories, pp. 28, 35–6, 172.

87 Bridges, J.A., Reminiscences of a Country Politician (London, 1906), p. 132.Google Scholar

88 Northampton Mercury, 14 March and 14 November 1885. Spencer MSS. Bury to Spencer, 26 October and 16 November 1885; Calverley to Spencer, 9 May 1885.

89 Spencer MSS. J. Becke to Spencer, 5 July 1886; C. R. Spencer to Spencer, 24 June and 14 July 1886. Channing, Memories, p. 56.

90 Channing, Memories, pp. 58, 172.

91 See Fox, History of N.U.B.S.O. chapters 14–22.

92 Channing, Memories, p. 161.

93 The material on the Brixworth Union is taken from the evidence given by Sidney Ward and Canon Bury before the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor in 1895, the Spencer MSS., Adkins, Our County, and the Northampton Mercury, in which the Poor Law controversy was given much publicity.

94 Adkins, Our County, p. 50.

95 Spencer MSS. W. R. Adkins to Spencer, 17 July 1892; C. R. Spencer to Spencer, 14 July 1895; R. Parnell to Spencer, 24 August 1895.

96 Evidence given by Sidney Ward of Brixworth to the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, XV (1895), 847. Ward was a lamp-lighter, formerly a labourer, and a member of the Salvation Army.

97 See Fox, History of N.U.S.S.O. pp. 202–3, and Allen, A.C. and Bartley, J.C., An Epic of Trade Unionism (Rushden, 1934), p. 13.Google Scholar

98 Charming, Memories, p. 173.

99 Spencer MSS. Parnell to Spencer, 24 August 1895.

100 Spencer MSS. Adkins to Spencer, 17 July 1892. Channing, Memories, p. 173.

101 It was these issues which aroused most discussion in the 1894 local elections. See Northampton Mercury, issues of December 1894.

102 Much of which applied equally to industrial districts which fell within the administrative county.

103 Channing, Memories, p. 172.

104 I have to acknowledge the kindness of Earl Spencer in allowing me to use and quote extensively from his uncle's papers. I owe also a debt of gratitude to Miss A. Ramm, Mr M. C. Hurst, Professor D. M. Joslin and Mrs M. Bowker for their valuable criticism of the text of this article.