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Temperance and the Liberal Party — Lord Peel's Report, 1899

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

David M. Fahey
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Extract

At the turn of the century the temperance question ranked among the handful of public issues which dominated British politics. It aroused powerful pressure groups which insinuated themselves in the political process at every level from constituency to Cabinet. The politics of drink raises difficult questions about the effectiveness and style of these temperance and trade pressure groups, the internal dissension which sometimes dissipated their influence, and their relationship with political parties and factions at a time of uncertain allegiances and narrow pluralities. The temperance question worried the Conservatives intermittently, the Liberals incessantly. It strengthened the Liberty Party, strained it, and sometimes threatened to shatter it.

Paradoxically at a time of decline in per capita consumption of alcohol, the temperance movement gathered impressive new support and the beleaguered drink trade achieved unprecedented political effectiveness. The dominant tradition in the temperance movement, that of the prohibitionist activists, was rooted in a hatred of drink as innately and infectiously evil, a force destructive of everything good, and in a Christian humanitarian concern for the security of the home. Many moderate reformers who did not look upon drink as sinful in itself or share the ideology of the teetotal home also worried about the effect of heavy drinking on the country.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , May 1971 , pp. 132 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1971

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References

1. Research for this paper was made possible by an Indiana University summer faculty fellowship.

2. Temperance was an Anglo-American crusade, so the meager research on the British movement can be usefully supplemented by studies of the American experience, such as Gusfield, Joseph R., Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana, 1963)Google Scholar; Timberlake, James H., Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sinclair, Andrew, Prohibition: the Era of Excess (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; and Odegard, Peter H., Pressure Politics: the Story of the Anti-Saloon League (New York, 1928)Google Scholar.

3. For a good account of the relations between the trade and the Tories, see Crapster, Basil L., “‘Our Trade, Our Polities’: A Study of the Political Activity of the British Liquor Industry, 1868–1910” (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1949)Google Scholar.

4. Temperance Chronicle, March 27, 1896, pp. 145–46Google Scholar; De Montmorency, James E. G., Francis William Fox (Oxford, 1923)Google Scholar, ch. iii, “Licensing Reform.” See also Temperance Chronicle, Feb. 7, 1896, p. 68Google Scholar; Feb. 14, 1896, pp. 79–82; March 13, 1896, p. 126. The Temperance Chronicle was published by the Church of England Temperance Society.

5. He was a son of the well-known temperance evangelist, Thomas Whittaker. The younger Whittaker was knighted in 1906. The other prohibitionist members were W. S. Caine (1842-1903), former Liberal M.P. and president of the National Temperance Federation; Dr. Frederick Temple (1821-1902), president of the Church of England Temperance Society, then bishop of London and after December, 1896, archbishop of Canterbury; Sir Charles Cameron, Bt. (1841-1924), a physician and Liberal M.P., who represented Scotland; and J. Herbert Roberts (1860-1955), later Lord Clwyd of Abergale, Liberal M.P. and Caine's son-in-law, who represented Wales. The non-prohibitionist temperance members were Sir William Holdsworth, Bt. (1834-1917), Conservative M.P. and President of the National Conservative and Unionist Temperance Association; the Rev. H. H. Dickinson (1827-1905), dean of the Royal Chapel, Dublin, who represented Ireland; and William Allen (1870-1945), Liberal M.P. and member of the Executive Committee of the Tied-House Tenants' League. (Allen embarrassed the temperance party when he was found guilty of fraud in floating stock for a Leeds brewery.) See Times, Dec. 7, 1899, pp. 3–4Google Scholar; and British Museum, Lord Cromer to Herbert Gladstone, Dec. 10, 1899, Add. MSS, 46057/227.

6. Buxton was named to the Commission in 1898 on the resignation of Sir Frederick Seager Hunt, Bt. (1838-1904), Conservative M.P. and head of the London distillery of Seager, Evans. The other trade members were Henry H. Riley-Smith (1863-1911), proprietor of John Smith Todcaster Brewery, in Yorkshire, chairman of the Country Brewers' Society, and later an unsuccessful Conservative candidate for Parliament; George Younger (1851-1929), later Viscount Younger of Leckie, chairman of the Scottish brewery of George Younger and Sons, at the time of his appointment president of the Scottish Licensed Trade Defence Association, and subsequently Conservative M.P. and chairman of the party organization; Samuel Young (1822-1918), proprietor of the Belfast distillery of Young, King, and anti-Parnellite Nationalist M.P.; Henry Grinling (1834-1913), in politics a Liberal and in business a director of W. & A. Gilbey, who represented the whole-sale wines and spirits distributors and their grocer clients; Samuel Hyslop (1830-1901), former president of the Licensed Victuallers' National Defence League, the organization of the provincial publicans; and Charles Walker (1838-1903), president of the Licensed Victuallers' Central Protection Society of London, Ltd., and chairman of the United Parliamentary Council of the Retail Liquor Trade.

7. Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, Buxton to Sir William Harcourt, Nov. 23 and 29, Dec. 7, 1892, Harcourt papers. I am grateful to Viscount Harcourt for permission to consult his grandfather's papers.

8. The other neutral Commissioners were Lord de Vesci (1844-1903), a Liberal Unionist and Lord Lieutenant of Queen's County, Ireland; the Earl of Jersey (1845-1915), a Conservative and Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, who resigned his membership in 1897; he was replaced by Lord Windsor (1857-1923), later Earl of Plymouth, a Conservative, Lord Lieutenant of Glamorganshire, and former Paymaster General; John Lloyd Wharton (1837-1912), Conservative M.P. and chairman of the Quarter Sessions of County Durham; Andrew Johnston (1835-1922), a teetotaler opposed to prohibition, former M.P., and Liberal Unionist, who served as chairman of both the Essex Quarter Sessions and County Council; William Graham (1838-99), a Conservative and barrister best known as counsel for the Times in the Parnell libel case; and Alexander Morison Gordon (1846-1913), a Conservative and Convener of Aberdeenshire.

9. SirWest, Algernon, “The Two Reports of the Licensing Commission,” Nineteenth Century, XLVII (Feb. 1900), 260–74Google Scholar; Whittaker, T. P., “The ‘Temperance’ Reply to Sir Algernon West,” Nineteenth Century, XLVII (March, 1900), 510–25Google Scholar. West's italics. These two articles provide a rare glimpse into the politics of a Royal Commission.

10. T. P. Whittaker, obituary of Lord Peel, in Temperance Legislation League, Monthly Notes, II (Nov., 1912), 1–2Google Scholar.

11. The final Reports were published as C. 9379, 1899 (vol. xxxv). Publication was accompanied by unsuccessful maneuvers for status, a request to have the Minority Report printed first because the chairman was among its signatories and a request that the elected office of vice-chairman held by West be designated in the list of Majority Report signers. Public Record Office, Home Office minute, June 2, 1899, H.O., 45/10151/20998/39.

12. BM, Henry Gladstone to Herbert Gladstone, Feb. 16, 1899, Add. MSS, 46045/193-94.

13. Whittaker, , “The ‘Temperance’ Reply,” Nineteenth Century, XLVII, 514Google Scholar.

14. Times, Nov. 9, 1899, p. 7Google Scholar.

15. Times, Jan. 17, 1901, p. 10Google Scholar.

16. Times, March 9, 1899, p. 6Google Scholar.

17. BM, Gladstone diary, July 20, 1899, Add. MSS, 46483/34. Gladstone held at least three other interviews with Whittaker. BM, Gladstone diary, July 13 and 31, Aug. 3, 1899, Add. MSS, 46483/30, 38, and 40. Gladstone promised Samuel H. Whitbread that his father and Buxton would have an opportunity to consult with Campbell-Bannerman before the Liberal temperance policy was decided. BM, Gladstone diary, Aug. 8, 1899, Add. MSS, 46483/42. The diary in question consists of abstracts of Gladstone's interviews as Chief Whip.

18. Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, Morley to Sir William Harcourt, Aug. 20, 1899, Harcourt papers.

19. Campbell-Bannerman to Gladstone, Aug. 27, 1899, Add. MSS, 45987/14.

20. BM, Whittaker to Gladstone, Nov. 5, 1899, Add. MSS, 46057/206-11.

21. Manchester Guardian, Nov. 16, 1899, p. 9Google Scholar.

22. BM, Whittaker to Campbell-Bannerman, Nov. 17, 1899, Add. MSS, 41235/110-11.

23. BM, Campbell-Bannerman to Gladstone, Nov. 17, 1899, Add. MSS, 41235/141-43.

24. BM, Gladstone to Campbell-Bannerman, Nov. 19, 1899, Add. MSS, 41215/144-50. See also BM, Gladstone diary, Nov. 17, 1899, Add. MSS, 46483/49. The subsequent development of Gladstone's position can be traced in his declaration to his West Leeds constituents, on September 18, 1900, that, “subject to the compensation coming out of the trade and consumers, I am ready to say it should be full compensation to those who are dispossessed by public authority.” Leeds Mercury, Sept. 19, 1900, p. 3Google Scholar. Still later, on January 16, 1901, he was a member of the deputation, led by West, which urged the Home Secretary, Ritchie, to consider a series of licensing reforms, including “equitable compensation.” Times, Jan. 17, 1901, p. 10Google Scholar.

25. Times, Nov. 22, 1899, p. 11Google Scholar. According to a pro-Peel source, “the numbers were not so great as we had hoped, but in view of the increasing difficulty of obtaining an audience, and the unpopularity of the Temperance cause, there was every reason for satisfaction.” Temperance Chronicle, Dec. 1, 1899, p. 600Google Scholar.

26. Manchester Guardian, Nov. 25, 1899, p. 5Google Scholar. This text seems more probable than that in the Times.

27. Times, Dec. 7, 1899, p. 6Google Scholar. The signatories were: W. S. Caine, H. J. Wilson, M.P., R. A. Allison, M.P., Thomas Burt, M.P., John Wilson, M.P. (Durham), Robinson Souttar, M.P., John Colville, M.P., J. Herbert Roberts, M.P., John Wilson, M.P. (Gowan), William Crosfield, Fred Maddison, M.P., Joshua Rowntree, David Lloyd George, M.P., Samuel Woods, M.P., Dr. R. Spence Watson, the Rev. Charles Garrett, Alderman George White, Robert Cameron, M.P., F. A. Channing, M.P., Dean F. W. Farrar, the Rev. Dr. Alexander McLaren, Prebendary William Barker, the Rev. Dr. John Clifford, Canon Edward Lee Hicks, the Rev. C. F. Aked, J. Herbert Lewis, M.P., Samuel Pope, Q.C., the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, Alexander Guthrie, and Thomas P. Whittaker, M.P.

28. BM, Lawson to Campbell-Bannerman, Dec. 7, 1899, Add. MSS, 41235/130-33.

29. BM, West to Gladstone, Dec. 7, 1899, Add. MSS, 46057/225-26. “Of course,” West concluded, ‘I only send you this as an old friend who was once interested in the success of the Liberal Party.”

30. BM, Asquith to Gladstone, Nov. 27, 1899, Add. MSS, 45989/26-27.

31. BM, Gladstone to Campbell-Bannerman, Dec. 8, 1899, Add. MSS, 41215/ 158-61. Both Reports recommended that grocers' licenses be made subject to the local justices. In 1899 the only license a grocer needed was an excise license from the Inland Revenue. In April the senior member of the Gilbey firm had urged Gladstone to intervene with the Liberal prohibitionists, Whittaker, Roberts, and Caine, on behalf of grocers' licenses, which Gladstone's father had created in 1860. Henry Grinling, a partner in the Gilbey firm, was one of the trade Commissioners. Before the Commission broke up, Lord Peel's draft proposal to abolish grocers' licenses had been defeated thirteen votes to nine, with the reluctant support of the publicans and brewers who had small love of their grocer competitors. Lord Peel and the temperance minority revived the proposal in their Report. BM, Sir Walter Gilbey to Gladstone, April 19, 1899, Add. MSS, 46057/154-57. See also the letter of the W. & A. Gilbey firm to the editor, April 25, 1899. Times, April 27, 1899, p. 12Google Scholar. The Gilbey firm, founded in 1857, included four intermarried families, the Gilbeys, the Grinlings, the Golds, and the Blyths. See Maxwell, Herbert, Half-a-Century of Successful Trade, being a Sketch of the Rise and Development of the Business of W. & A. Gilbey, 1857–1907 (London, 1907)Google Scholar.

32. BM, Campbell-Bannerman to Gladstone, Dec. 9, 1899, Add. MSS, 41215/165-67. Supposedly Campbell-Bannerman had committed himself to the abolition of grocers' licenses in a letter to the editor of the Sunday Reader more than six months earlier. Sunday Reader, Dec. 22, 1899, as cited in Temperance Chronicle, Dec. 29, 1899, p. 659Google Scholar. The concern over drinking by women provides one of the recurrent themes in temperance literature at the turn of the century.

33. BM, Gladstone to Campbell-Bannerman, Dec. 12, 1899, Add. MSS, 41215/169-72. Gladstone's italics. Gladstone held an interview with Whittaker on December 7. BM, Gladstone diary, Dec. 7, 1899, Add. MSS, 46483/53.

34. BM, Campbell-Bannerman to Gladstone, Dec. 14, 1899, Add. MSS, 41215/178-79. Gladstone replied that Whittaker had argued that in earmarking a tax on drink the Government would merely be facilitating self-compensation by the trade. Gladstone added that the possibility of earmarking a tax should not be mentioned in public. BM, Gladstone to Campbell-Bannerman, Dec. 16, 1899, Add. MSS, 41215/180-83.

35. BM, Wodehouse to Gladstone, Dec. 16, 189$, Add. MSS, 46057/232-35.

36. BM, Gladstone to Campbell-Bannerman, Dec. 18, 1899, Add. MSS, 41215/185. Gladstone's italics.

37. BM, Gladstone diary, Dec. 18, 1899, Add. MSS, 46483/55.

38. Times, Dec. 20, 1899, p. 6Google Scholar.

39. BM, Campbell-Bannennan to Gladstone, Dec. 21, 1899, Add. MSS, 41215/186-87; BM, Campbell-Bannerman to Lawson, Dec. 21, 1899, Add. MSS, 41235/157-59.

40. BM, Gladstone to Campbell-Bannerman, Dec. 22, 1899, Add. MSS. 41215/188-89. Wbdehouse acknowledged that “personally I cannot see that Campbell-Bannerman's Aberdeen speech alters his position much, but I suppose he must do it gradually.” BM, Wodehouse to Gladstone, Dec. 22, 1899, Add. MSS, 46057/244. Gladstone's defence of grocers' licenses culminated in his declaration to his West Leeds constituents, on September 18, 1900, that “for my part I accept the recommendation of the majority [Report], which is to put the grocers who hold licenses under the licensing authority, and I believe that position is generally held by the leaders of the Liberal party, and by the rank and file as well.” Leeds Mercury, Sept. 19, 1900, p. 3Google Scholar. That is to say, the licensed grocers could stay in business. Significantly the Liberals spared the grocers in the Licensing Bill of 1908.

41. BM, Gladstone to Campbell-Bannerman, Dec. 23, 1899, Add. MSS, 41215/190-91.

42. Buxton, to a deputation from the Licensed Victuallers' Central Protection Society of London, Ltd. Licensed Trade News, Feb. 10, 1900, p. 11Google Scholar.

43. See among other studies Carter, Henry, The English Temperance Movement: A Study in Objectives (London, 1933)Google Scholar; Longmate, Norman, The Waterdrinkers (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Lee, J. M., “The Political Significance of Licensing Legislation,” Parliamentary Affairs, XIV (Spring, 1961), 211–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrison, Brian H., “Drink and Sobriety in England: A Critical Bibliography, 1815–1872,” International Review of Social History, XII (1967), 204–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrison, Brian H., “‘A World of Which We Had No Conception.’ Liberalism and the Temperance Press: 1830–1872,” Victorian Studies, XIII (Dec., 1969), 125–58Google Scholar; Harrison, Brian H., Drink and the Victorians (forthcoming, 1971)Google Scholar, for the period 1828-72, and the thesis on which it is based (Oxford, 1965); and Brown's, James B. unpublished Ph.D. thesis on the Liberals and temperance, 1880–95 (U.C.L.A., 1969)Google Scholar.

44. Times, Nov. 22, 1899, p. 11Google Scholar.

45. Peel, at Dundee, October 2, 1901. Alliance News, Oct. 10, 1901, p. 642Google Scholar.

46. Peel, at the conference of the Ely Diocesan Temperance Society, Cambridge, March 1, 1900. Abstainers' Advocate, April, 1900, p. 43Google Scholar.

47. The Methodist Times, edited by one of the Manifesto signers, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes, wrongly dismissed Lawson's opposition as “not a fact of serious significance. He has never been the real leader of the United Kingdom Alliance, though he has made a very amiable and witty figurehead.” Quoted in Temperance Witness, March, 1900, pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

48. Most of the vehement opponents of Lord Peel's Report were Good Templars, including Tom Honeyman (1858-1934), J. Martin Skinner (1852-1926), John Kempster (1836-1916), Guy Hayler (1850-1943), and E. Tennyson Smith (1850-1925).

49. BM, Whittaker to Gladstone, Dec. 9, 1899, Add. MSS, 41235/135.

50. Lawson to Hicks, Nov. 2, 1900. Quoted in Fowler, J. H., Life and Letters of Edward Lee Hicks (Bishop of Lincoln 1910–1919) (London, 1922), p. 197Google Scholar.

51. United Kingdom Alliance, Alliance House, 12 Caxton Street, London, S.W. 1, Kempster to James Whyte, April 9, 1900, in minute-books, Executive Committee, April 11, 1900. I am grateful to the United Kingdom Alliance and particularly to Mr. T. Garth Waite, General Secretary, for permission to consult the Alliance minute-books.

52. United Kingdom Alliance, London, joint meeting of the Executive Committee and the District superintendents, Dec. 3, 1900, in minute-books, Executive Committee.

53. Lawson to the editor of the Manchester Guardian, Aug. 11, 1900. Reprinted in Alliance News, Aug. 16, 1900, p. 520Google Scholar.

54. Lawson, at the Metropolitan Templar Federation, London, August 10, 1900. Alliance News, Aug. 16, 1900, p. 518Google Scholar.

55. Caine to the editor, Feb. 15, 1900. Alliance News, Feb. 22, 1900, p. 115Google Scholar. Caine and John Colville, M.P., at the Scottish Temperance League, Glasgow, March 23, 1900. League Journal, March 31, 1900, p. 196Google Scholar.

56. For instance, see the criticism of A. Cameron Corbett, M.P., president of the Scottish Permissive Bill and Temperance Association, for serving wine to his non-abstaining guests. Edwin Scrymgeour to W. J. Allison, March 8, 1906. Prohibitionist, April, 1906, p. 18Google Scholar.

57. Hayler, Guy, “The Present Crisis,” Temperance Witness, March, 1900, pp. 4–5Google Scholar. The Temperance Witness was published by the North of England Temperance League. The United Temperance Bill which Hills advocated, like the subsequent Minority Report, featured a scheme for the reduction of the number of licensed premises, with a warning period during which license holders who retained their licenses for this period compensated those who did not. None of Hills' four Conferences accepted this limited compensation scheme. Both the Bill and the the Report popularized the licensing authority by providing that half of its members be elected by local government councils. Both proposed that grocers' licenses be abolished. Among the important differences between the two, the Bill included Local Veto for England after five years and one of Hills' favorite reforms, mandatory Sunday Closing. See Hills' testimony on July 12, 1898, C. 9075, 1899 (vol. XXXIV), quests. 77,099-72,461; and printed abstracts of the four Conferences, in Temperance Tracts, vol. 16, in the Guy Hayler collection, University of Wisconsin, Memorial Library. I am grateful to Mr. Erwin K. Welsch, Social Studies Librarian, for assistance with the Hayler collection.

58. Newton, John, W. S. Caine, M.P. (London, 1907)Google Scholar. In 1900 Newton (1864-1916) was employed by the United Kingdom Alliance as a district super-intendent; later he was its parliamentary agent.

59. Good Templar, May, 1900, Supplement, p. 1Google Scholar. The tract also appeared as an article in the Good Templar, April, 1900, pp. 54–55Google Scholar, over the initials of the office of Past Grand Chief Templar. For the date of the Kilmarnock resolution, see Honeyman, Tom (ed.), Scottish Temperance Annual, 1901, (Glasgow, n.d.), p. 26Google Scholar. The Good Templar for 1900 is available at the Livesey Library, British National Temperance League, Livesey-Clegg House, 44 Union Street, Sheffield. I am grateful to the League and particularly to its secretary, Miss Muriel Daniel, for access to the Library.

60. Caine, at Scottish Temperance League, Glasgow, March 23, 1900. League Journal, March 31, 1900, p. 195Google Scholar.

61. Honeyman to the editor, March 3, 1900. Alliance News, March 8, 1900, p. 148Google Scholar.

62. Caine to George Young, district electoral superintendent, March 26, 1900. Highland News, as quoted in League Journal, April 7, 1900, p. 217Google Scholar. Good Templar supporters of the Report in England included John Hilton (1820-1908) and the Rev. Dawson Burns (1828-1909), both of them sometime honorary secretaries of the Central Temperance Legislation Board. Hilton was the parliamentary agent of the United Kingdom Alliance, while Burns previously had been its metropolitan superintendent.

63. Caine to Wyllie, James, n.d. Kilmarnock Standard, April 7, 1900, p. 5Google Scholar. At the end of the letter Caine added an additional reason for his withdrawal, the unpopularity of his criticism of the South African war. According to Honeyman this was actually Caine's principal reason. Good Templar, May, 1900, Supplement, p. 1Google Scholar. Caine's successor as Liberal candidate eventually secured Good Templar support even though he too advocated legislation on the lines of Lord Peel's Report. Mrs.Rainy, A., Life of Adam Rolland Rainy, M.P. (Glasgow, 1915), p. 165Google Scholar.

64. League Journal, March 31, 1900, pp. 194–203Google Scholar; April 7, 1900, p. 217.

65. Alliance News, Dec. 7, 1900, p. 799Google Scholar.

66. For Whittaker's limited role in 1903 and much larger one in 1905, see the obituary article by Sherwell, Arthur, in Temperance Legislation League, Monthly Notes, IX (Nov.-Dec., 1919), 56Google Scholar.