Parliamentary History, Vol. 16 , p t . 2 (1997) , p p . 185-204

‘The Best Way to Get What He Wanted’: Ernest Jones and the Boundaries of Liberalism in the Manchester

Election of 1868

A N T O N Y T A Y L O R Uriiversity of Wanuick

Recent research in nineteenth-century popular politics has emphasised the continuities between Liberalism, Chartism and earlier movements of mass political protest. This work has proved especially sensitive to the areas of overlap between the old Chartist faith and later politics. Through the work of Patrick Joyce or of Eugenio Biagini a new orthodoxy has emerged that sees Gladstonian Liberalism evolving out of a broader culture of radicalism.’ Here the transition of Chartism into Liberalism is represented as a fluid and relatively harmonious development. Throughout, particular emphasis is placed upon the behaviour of surviving radical figures of the earlier period who became Liberals and who are represented as emblematic of the broader direction of radicalism at mid-century; Patrick Joyce, for example, highlights the role of William Aitkin at Ashton; John Garrard chooses Thomas Livsey ofRochdale.2 All are presented as ‘typical’ of a trend without much explanation of why that should be so. Most are also local leaders, for whom there was no long public profession of Chartist sentiments at a national level to reconcile with Liberalism. Much of this work has omitted the hard process of negotiation behind some of these local compacts. Absent from it is any treatment of the individual compromises and choices an alliance with Liberalism entailed for former Chartists, particularly those who had occupied a prominent position within the m ~ v e m e n t . ~ Nor has this work taken sufficient account of the agendas that continued to divide Chartism and Liberalism, and the unease with which many Liberals viewed former Chartists before memories of the

’ E.F. Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchmenf and Reform: Popular Liberali.vw in &Age ofGladstone 286G1880 (Cambridge, 1992), Chapters 1-5, and P. Joyce, Democratic Subjects: The SeFand the Social in Nineteenth- Century England (Carnbndge, 1994), Chapters 7-11. For a recent study that ernphasises foreign policy as the solvent of the later Chartist/Liberal accord see M.C. Finn, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics 1848-1874 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 31G23. Also see for connexions between political parties and a broader radical culture, J. Lawrence, ‘Popular Politics and the Limitations of Party: Wolver- hampton, 1867-1900’, in Currents .f Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain 1 8 5 G 1 9 2 4 , eds. E.F. Biagini and AJ. Reid (Cambridge, 1991), pp, 65-85.

See P. Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the Question .f Class 1848-1914 (Cambridge, 1991). pp. 37-55; J Garrard, Leadership and Power in Victorian Ind~strial Tom 1830-1880 (Manchester, 1983), pp. 127-9 and M. Hewitt, ‘Radicalism and the Victorian Working-class: The Case of Samuel Bamford’, Histon’calJournal, XXIV (1991), 873-92. ’ The theme is highhghted in a comparative context in J. Breuilly, ‘Liberalism or Social Democracy? A Comparison of British and German Labour Politics, c. 18561875’. in idem, Labour and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Manchester, 1992). pp. 11559.

186 Antony Taylor

movement faded in the post-1880 period. In particular it has ignored the difficulties surrounding the admission of Ernest Jones, the most emblematic and charismatic of the later generation of Chartist leaders, to the Liberal Party.

Ernest Jones joined the Chartist movement in 1846 and became the youngest of its national leaders. In the 1850s he came to typify an intractable Chartist stance that made him a formative influence on a new generation of radicals.4 In 1860 he was still only 41. In contrast to veterans like Henry Hetherington or William Lovett he was young enough to play a further role in the reform agitation of 1866-1867. By 1868 his involvement in the Reform League had led to his admission to advanced Liberal circles, and in the autumn of that year he stood as a Liberal candidate for Manchester under the banner of the party.

Amongst the former national Chartist leadership, only Jones sought to make the transition into the Liberal camp. By embracing Liberalism, he avoided the obscurity of Bronterre O’Brien who was reduced to the role of a peripatetic speaker in London’s clubland, or the exile of other young contemporaries like George Julian Harney. Rivalry between Whigs, Liberals and Tories for the favours of radical veterans who were recruited to endorse their policies became an established feature of platform politics in the 1 8 5 0 ~ . ~ Both Edward Hoosen of Manchester and R.M. Carter of Leeds entered the Liberal mainstream in this way.6 Ernest Jones’ position was, however, different. In contrast to these local Chartist leaders, Jones brought with him a long and very public baggage of adherence to the Chartist cause. He was thus faced with the dilemma they avoided ofreconciling his Chartist past with his newfound attachment to Liberalism, and of accounting in public for his alliance with many of the personalities he had opposed in the 1840s and 1850s. This was a problem faced by other prominent figures within the movement who sought to establish a post-Chartist career. G.J. Holyoake wrote of an unsuccessful by-election candidature for Leicester in 1884: ‘the chances were against me, as I had long been known as one having decided views on public question^'.^ Whereas minor local figures became rapidly absorbed into Liber- alism therefore, Jones hovered uneasily on its margm. In Manchester his 1868 candidature under Liberal auspices occupied the fault-line between the different and sometimes rival groups that gravitated towards the Liberal coalition.

The memories of Chartism evoked by the reform agitation of 1866-1867 revived Ernest Jones’ popularity and he was asked to speak in a number of towns. Amongst radicals and non-radicals alike he was a totem of an older tradition of popular politics. A Peterborough reformer wrote, ‘I tell our party that we want a little more of the old Chartist fire which we had when you were in Peterborough many years ago’. A correspondent from Bristol similarly remarked, ‘there are many here who remember your devotion to the cause in the Chartist agitation and would rejoice to see you

There is still no biography of Ernest Jones, but for the outline of his Chamst career see J. Saville,

See for a discussion of this theme M. Fletcher, Letters to the Inhabitants .f Bury (Bury, 1852), pp.

There are profiles of Edward Hoosen in The Commonwealth, 17 Nov. 1866, p. 4, and The Pioneer,

See G.J. Holyoake, Sixty Years ofan Agitator’s L$, (2 vols.. 1906), 11, 255-7.

Ernest Jones, Chartist: Selectionsfrom the Writings and Speeches .f EmstJones (1952). pp. 13-82.

1-2.

16 Feb. 1889, p. 1; for a sketch of R.M. Carter see The Bee-hive, 27 Feb. 1875, p. 1. ’

Ernestjones and Liberulism 187

8 amongst us’. When the Reform Bill became law he was solicited as a parliamentary candidate in many such boroughs. In view of his past he was wooed particularly as an independent working-man’s candidate, standing outside the structure of the Liberal Party.

In towns where a measure of co-operation between Liberals and plebeian reformers had evolved, the same memories that rallied former Chartists to Jones also alienated members of the local middle-class Liberal Associations. At Peterborough Alderman Hankay attacked Jones for his ‘extreme opinions’. Elsewhere, however, some Liberals proved capable of a more pragmatic approach. They also found Jones’ politics abhorrent, but many were preoccupied by the size of the new working-class electorate in the wake of the 1867 Reform Act. Liberal electoral calculations, which had been predicated upon the smaller reform measure framed by Gladstone, were thrown into confusion by the Tones’ wider franchise bill. Working-class voters remained an unknown quantity and fear of the potential they wielded to elect their own repre- sentatives outside Liberal control led to renewed attempts to harnass them to the party’s election machine. Liberals therefore adopted a conciliatory approach, solic- iting the influence of an older generation of reform leaders to recruit the remnants of the Chartist movement and the younger Reform League into the ranks of the Liberal alliance. Ernest Jones was a vital figure in this strategy. Although his past actions and opinions created suspicion in Liberal circles, no one else held such a commanding position with regard to the old Chartist faithful. His role in the defence of the Manchester Martyrs meant that he could also enlist the Irish vote in their cause. As early as June 1867 a member of the Liberal Reform Club at Blackburn suggested Jones as a potential candidate for the town to ensure the re-election of the sitting Liberal: ‘this “champion of democracy” would secure the confidence of the great bulk of the working people and I believe make Mr. Potter’s return more certain’. Similar considerations prompted the executive of Manchester’s Liberal Party to enlist Jones as the city’s third candidate. In Manchester Liberalism was badly divided between a Whig/Palmerstonian faction who had links with local Tones, the descendants of the Anti-Corn Law League machinery, and the Northern Department of the Reform League which looked to Ernest Jones for leadership. In early 1868 there was an attempt to weld these groups together which resulted in the creation of the United Liberal Party.’* There were, however, tensions between the different wings of the alliance that raised problems for the unity of the Liberal coalition. Each had to be appeased by the selection of a candidate to its liking. In this sense the strategy adopted in Manchester was akin to the pattern already established in such

Columbia University Library, Seligmaii Collection, Ernest Jones Correqpondence, Peterborough Reform Association to Jones, 11 Jan. 1867, and the Bnstol Reform League to Jones, 9 Feb. 1867. My thanks to Dorothy Thompson fix sight of these references. See for Jones’ speech at Peterborough in 1867 the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle. 2 Feb. 1867, pp. 3-4.

9

10 .

*

Report of Jones’ visit to Peterborough in the Manchester Examiner and Times, 5 Feb. 1867, p. 5. The Liberal hostility towards independent candidatures in the 1860s and 1870s is examined in L.L.

Witherell, ‘Direct Parliamentary Representation of Labour and the Controversy of 1872’, ante, XII, (1993). 14343.

Blackburn Times, 8 June 1867, p. 1. See A.D. Taylor, ‘Modes of Political Expression and Working-class Radicalism. 1848-1 874: The

London and Manchester Examples’ (University of Manchester Ph.D., 19Y2), Chapter 7.

188 Antony Taylor

cities as Leicester and Leeds where a broad raft of candidates, each reflecting an interest group within the Liberal coalition, was brought forward in tandem.13 Ernest Jones was a vital figure in this strategy. It was felt that only he was in a position to consolidate the Liberal Party’s electoral base in Manchester by drawing working-class electors into the Liberal fold. This was not gesture politics, but a serious attempt to maximise the Liberal vote. The Manchester Examiner and Times recalled on the eve of the hustings: 14

At a great crisis the leaders of the old Liberal Party wisely resolved to shun anything like dictation or arbitrary choice, and to accept as their third candidate that gentleman who after the most careful inquiry should appear to possess in the highest degree the confidence of the hitherto unenfianchised portion of our fellow citizens-that gentleman was Mr. Ernest Jones.

There were shared concerns between Liberalism and Chartism that made this alliance possible. A similar attempt to negotiate a compact with G.J. Holyoake in Birmingham also included an appeal to the Chartist past.” Where they occurred such ententes frequently grew out of a common respect for Gladstone amongst former Chartists and Liberals alike.16 Gladstone’s concern for Ireland, policy of Irish Church disestab- lishment and plans to extend rights of ownership to tenant farmers in Ireland, created a bridge into the middle-class Liberal camp which Jones used to attach himself to the radical flank of the Liberal Party. The Irish question, reform of the land laws and the attacks upon the power and position of the Anglican Church which disestablishment in Ireland implied were traditional Chartist rallying cries that provided an entry into Liberal circles for many advanced radicals in this period. Marx acknowledged this movement of ex-Chartists into Liberalism, and saw the Liberal Party profiting from the collapse of initiatives towards independent labour representation in 1 868:17

The Irish Question predominates here just now and it has been exploited by Gladstone and company only in order to get into office again and above all to have an electoral cry at the next election. The intriguers among the workers who want to get into the next parliament have now a new excuse for attaching themselves to the bourgeois Liberals.

The concerns of both Chartist and Cobdenite land reformers also fused around the issue of the Tories’ monopoly of land and a broader assault upon the social forces that sustained them. Jones expressed this view strongly in a speech in Salford in 1868: ‘he looked upon the Tories as not merely a political party. They were a social power which lived and obtained its strength by means of a terrible monopoly. Toryism meant a landed aristocracy.”* Many of Jones’ Chartist opinions, however, made his

l3 For a recent treatment of the same phenomenon in Leicester in the 1860s see A. Little, ‘Chartism and Libedsm: Popular Politics in Leicestershire, 1842-1874’ (University of Manchester Ph.D., 1991), Chapter 6.

l4 Mancbester Examiner and Times, 17 Nov. 1868, p. 4. l5 Holyoake, Sixty Years ofan Agitator’s L& 11, 149-51, and The Bee-hive, 14 Nov. 1868, p. 1. l6 Jones appealed to Gladstone to put himself at the head of the people’s cause in a letter in The

l7 Marx-Engels Collected W o r k (Moscow, 44 vols., 1988), XLIII, 3. l 8 Manchester Guardian, 11 Nov. 1868, p. 6.

Times, 30 Apr. 1867, p. 6.

ErnestJones and Liberalism 189

position within this Liber,al consensus difficult to maintain. In particular, like many ex-Chartists, he remained ambivalent about free trade; by arguing for the legality of trade unions and the economic benefits they conferred upon their members under a laissez-faire system he put himself at odds with many Liberals over a central plank in their platform.’’ Moreover, Jones and other former Chartists were condemned by the Liberal press for an excess of zeal in their defence of the Irish Manchester Martyrs in 1867.20 Jones failed to influence public opinion on their behalf, and the hostility aroused by his outburst over the handcuffing of the Fenian prisoners demonstrates that he had misjudged the strength of popular feeling against them.2’ Above all, Jones’ isolation within Manchester Liberalism was compounded by his social exclusion from the respectable ‘associational’ life of the city. Despite his past literary endeavours, his reputation was such that he was not invited to join the city’s ilite literary circles.

The divisions amongst Manchester’s Liberals over the adoption of Ernest Jones reflect the problems thrown up by the Liberal alliance with former Chartists. In theory the Liberal executive was already committed to such a course. In November 1867 it had obtained the support of the Northern Department of the Reform League

22 during a by-election by agreeing to field Jones as a candidate in a general election. In August 1868 it dropped its previous choice, Mitchell Henry, a local surgeon, and replaced him with Jones. Subsequently the party vacillated. Some of its members felt there must be a more acceptable choice than Jones who could fulfil the same function, and for a while Abel Heywood, a former Chartist and radical democrat, was mooted. In September 1868 a committee of the United Liberal Party, working in conjunction with the Northern Department of the Reform League, consulted a cross section of the city’s trades with reference to the merits of the two candidates. A canvass of one street in each of the city’s working-class wards was also organised. The results demonstrated that the city’s plebeian electors were in favour of Jones as the United Liberal Party choice,23 and criticism of his candidature within the Liberal ranks subsided. In its final form the compact provided for three candidates, each appealing to a different interest group. The standing Whig/Palmerstonian M.P., Thomas Bazley, acted as the moderate anchor of the alliance whilst John Bright’s brother, Jacob, represented the forces of the old Anti-Corn Law League and the National Reform Union. Ernest Jones’ candidature was conceived primarily as appealing to the work- ing-class, trade union and Irish constituency. The Liberal platform reflected these cross-currents and converged around the points of similarity. It supported state-spon- sored, non-sectarian education, disestablishment of the Irish Church, tenant rights in Ireland, and a limited measure of parliamentary reform that included standardisation of the county and borough vote and a secret ballot.24 These issues addressed the

l9

’O See Jones’ speech ‘Labour and Capital’ in ibid., 29 Oct. 1867, p. 5 . See for a personal account of the hosthty towards radicals who spoke out on behalf of the Fenians,

J. Finlen, Mr.]. Finlen’s Defence ofHimselfAgainst the Parliament and Press ofEngland, (1868). pp. 6-16. There is an account of this episode in The Bee-hive, 28 Sept. 1867, p. 1. Ibid., 16 Nov. 1867, p. I . Manchester Examiner and Times, 26 Sept. 1868, p. 5. See speeches reported in the Manchester Guardian, 17 Nov. 1868, p. 6, and election addresses ‘The

Representation of Manchester: Addresses of the Candidates’ (10 Aug. 1868) in Manchester Reference Library, Broadside Collection.

”

22

23

24

190 Antony Taylor

grievances of both Liberal Nonconformists, and Chartists and ultra-radicals traditionally opposed to the state Church’s monopoly of land and education.

For Ernest Jones there were undoubted advantages in seeking shelter within the ranks of the Liberal Party. Most important was the access it gave him to Liberal Party coffers. Manchester’s United Liberal Party agreed to pay all his election expenses for the 1868 campaign.25 Equally it afforded him the opportunity of making inroads into the middle-class Liberal vote. Conversely it forced him to straddle two mutually opposed positions: the basis of his former Chartist following allied with the reformers of the Northern Department of the Reform League, and the middle-class United Liberal Party and its voters. To reconcile the two was made difficult by clauses in his treaty with the Liberals stipulating that in return for financial backing he was expected to tour the country, speaking on behalf of WhigILiberal candidates in constituencies where they were hard pressed. In practice this meant that he was required to speak in towns like Carlisle where the sitting M.P., Edmund Potter, was closely linked to Manchester’s Liberal machine and faced opposition from an inde- pendent radical candidate backed by ex-Chartists and the trades.26 By fielding Jones the Liberals aimed to spike the guns of such candidates.

In Manchester this f i ance created a profound dissonance in the public utterances of the United Liberal Party. Jones needed to stress just enough of his Chartist past to retain his old Chartist following whilst omitting, or denying outright, those elements that might alienate potential middle-class Liberal voters. To achieve this he set out to re-write much of his personal history under the guise of setting the record straight about his past activities. The result was a pamphlet: Ernestjones: w h o Is He? W h a t

27 Has He Done? which if not actually written by Jones was extensively revised by him. This work posthumously provided the basis for the many hagiographical studies of him that appeared at the end of the century.

The inconsistencies resulting from Jones’ attempts to tailor his image to suit the expectations of two entirely separate groups of voters exposed him to attack by Mitchell Henry, who refused to stand down and fought the election as an independent Liberal. The circumstances surrounding his exclusion from the final slate of candidates bred considerable antagonism towards Jones amongst his supporters. Mitchell Henry therefore concentrated his fire on Jones’ Chartist past, in part to highlight the incompatability of his Chartist politics with Liberalism, but also to refute charges that he himself was a ‘Tory in disguise’, paid to take votes away from the Liberals. It was thus important for him to appear as a champion of Liberalism. Most of his election material mirrored the programme of the United Liberal Party, with the emphasis on reform of the poor law and the sewerage system.29 He succeeded in mobilising support from Liberals who disliked the element of coercion in the selection of Jones

25 Jones always denied this, but the details of his compact with the Liberals were reported in The

26

*’ J.W. Crossley, ErnestJones: Who Is He? Whaf Has He Done! (Manchester, 1868). This is usually

28

29

28

Democrat, 10 Oct. 1868, p. 1, and after his death in Reynolds’s Newspaper, 31 Jan. 1869, p. 1. See Reynolds’s Newspaper 24 Oct. 1868, p. 3

attnbuted to the Reform League leader, James Crossley; see Saville, Emestjones, Chartist, p. 279. Manchester Guardian, 28 Aug. 1868, p. 5. See speeches in the Manchesfer Evening News, 17 Oct. 1868, p. 2, and the Hulme Advertiser, 14

Nov. 1868, p. 5.

ErnatJones and Liberalisin 191

over Henry, but his opposition to the ballot and to trade unions meant that he attracted relatively few radical adherents. His only special claim was to the Irish constituency. Born in Ardwick of Irish parents, he had carefully cultivated the local Irish community and was well known in Galway where he owned an estate. His strong Irish connexions meant that he gravitated towards a Home Rule position and spoke out strongly for tenant rights in Ireland.30 His campaign was, however, primarily a personal rather than issue-based one, and much of his election propaganda was directed towards exposing Ernextlones: Who Is He? What Has He Done? as a sham.31 In this he was extremely successful, founding the Manckester Evening News to publicist his candidature and gaining the support of G.W. Mason, editor of the Hulme Advertiser, which was one of only a small number of weekly district papers in the city. Jones’ Chartist affiliations consequently over-shadowed other issues during the election, and as the campaign developed it became increasingly apparent that there were few areas of his past in which he was not vulnerable to Mitchell Henry’s attacks. The election gained momentum fiom this rivalry and for Liberals revolved around the inconsistencies between Jones’ fornier Chartist and current Liberal positions.

The local Toiles enjoyed Liberal discomfiture over Ernest Jones and exploited it to the full. Their campaign was a sectarian one in opposition to Gladstone’s proposals to disestablish the Church of Ireland. For the Conservatives, Jones’ presence on the Liberal platform was significant for the heightened sectarian tensions he generated in the city following his defence of the Fenian martyrs the previous year. This allowed them to mount an appeal to Orangeism. The Protestant backlash produced by the Fenian outrages had revived the apparatus of militant Orangeism in Lancashire, and prompted a candidature in Manchester by the ultra-Protestant demago e William Murphy who came forward in opposition to Jones and the Irish interest. His atternpt to contest the seat was the climax of a campaign that had caused riots at Ashton and

34 Bacup in the summer and was the signal for disturbances in Chorlton and Stretford. After a series of disorderly meetings Murphy left Manchester and the support he had attracted transferred to the Conservative candidates, Birley and Hoare. The Tories denied allegations that they had courted the Orange vote or were linked to his decision to retire. The Manckester Examiner and Times, however, unearthed details of ‘negotiations’ between the two factions in which the Conservatives agreed to pay Murphy’s election expenses in return for his endorsement of their programme.35 The Tory focus on Jones’ legal defence of the Fenians reinforced doubts amongst some Liberals about the wisdom of allying with former Chartists and opened up old wounds

32

3.P

30 Mitchell Henry became Home Rule M.P. for Galway in 1871; see his obituary in the Manchester

See, for example, G.W. Mason, Mr Ernest Jones and His Candidature: A Reply to ErnestJones,

See J. Breuilly, ‘Liberahi in Mid Nineteenth-Century Hamburg and Manchester’, in idem, Labour

33 See The Bee-hive, 12 Sept. 1868, p. 1. 3‘ The Ashton and Bacup riots are described in J. O’Dea, The Story qf the Old Faith in Manchrster

(Manchester, 1910). pp. 184-5. There is an account of the Marichester disorders in The Times, 7 Sept. 1868, p. 6.

Guardian, 24 Nov. 1910, p. 12.

Who Is He? What Ha He Done? (Manchester, 1868), p. 4

and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe, pp. 197-227.

31

32

J5 hfanchester Examiner and Times. 17 Nov. 1868.

192 Antony Taylor

about Liberal policies towards Ireland which Jones had predicted the previous year might imperil his candidature within the United Liberal Party.

The controversy over Jones’ Chartist past was thus an internal United Liberal Party feud that spilled over into the broader context of the election as a whole. The local party’s decision to back Jones meant that it was forced into an embarrassing position. Its alliance with him made it incumbent upon the other candidates to defend his Chartism. Most Liberal committee members, uneasy about the wisdom of this course of action, avoided any public reference to the movement at all. In the 1860s memories of the 1840s in the city were too strong to allow Liberalism to adopt Chartism as part of its historical baggage as it did after 1880. Only Jacob Bright, the most radical member of the Bright family who had forged some Chartist connexions in this period, was prepared to take up the cudgels on Jones’ behalf and honoured the traditions of the Charter in a number of public speeches3’ Ultimately, there was such disharmony between the candidates that they ran, in effect, three entirely separate campaigns. Bazley discussed Indian cotton and the Bessemer process of converting iron into steel; Bright expounded the cause of education reform, and Jones campaigned for the enfranchisement of agricultural labourers.38 Obvious tensions arose over Bazley’s opposition to trade unions-‘freedom of industry’-and frequent digressions u on the evils of Spanish republicanism following the overthrow of Queen Isabella?’At the height of the election joint appearances between the three candidates were becoming untenable and Jones, more often than not, appeared by himself at open air meetings (like that at Brindle Heath, Pendleton) which recalled the Chartist rallies of the 1 8 4 0 ~ . ~ ~

Jones, however, made as much political capital as he could from those aspects of his career that appealed to both his Liberal and ultra-radical supporters. Throughout he sought to stress the antiquity of his pedigree, his privileged aristocratic background and his connexions to the court of his godfather King Ernest I of Hanover. Moving away from his earlier republicanism he also emphasised that he had been received at court by Queen Victoria in 1841. By reminding middle-class Liberals of his aristocratic credentials he hoped to regain something of his former respectability in their eyes. For working-class reformers and ex-Chartists, reiteration of his noble lineage and of the circumstances surrounding his renunciation of the family inheritance revived the glamour of the selfless ‘gentleman reformer’, who refused all monetary remuneration and endured privations for the cause, yet remained loyal to his principles and supporters. Mitchell Henry sympathisers were openly contemptuous of these aristocratic con-

% See his remarks to FJ. Farraday recalled in a letter at the time of his death in ibid., 2 Feb. 1869, p. 3.

37 For example, a speech at the Free Trade Hall in October; see the Manchester Guardian, 10 Oct. 1868, p. 5. There is an obituary of Jacob Bright that mentions his close fiiendship with Jones in ibid., 9 Nov. 1899, p. 3.

38 These different themes were noted in reports in the ManChester Courier, 8 Oct. 1868, pp. 4, 5. Jacob Bright was actively involved in the Manchester campaign for free, non-sectarian education which played little part in the election but became of greater significance the following year; see S.E. Maltby, Munchester and the Movement for National Elementary Education l80&1870 (Manchester, 1918). pp. 95-1 12.

39 See his speech at the Free Trade Hall in the Manchester Guardian, 5 Oct. 1868, p. 5. 4” Ibid., 9 Nov. 1868, p. 3.

36

ErnestJones and Liberalism 193

nexions. Their campaign song pointed out that Jones was now ostracised by the same aristocratic society in which he had moved with such ease: 41

Jones’ friends they do ;dl sing, His godfather was King,

Of some little petty humbug German State, His connections are so high,

But poor Jones they all deny, For his politics like poison they do hate.

Jones similarly used his career as a poet to further camouflage the contradictions inherent in his position. The benefits of this were twofold. By appearing as a distinguished man of letters he aimed to shore up his flagging respectability in middle-class eyes, whilst at the same time reviving memories amongst his radical admirers of his position as the most popular of the Chartist poets.42

Jones found other aspects of his past more difficult to re-write in a manner that appealed to both former Chartists and Liberal voters. His two-year imprisonment by a Whig government after a physical-force speech in 1848 meant that he had an especially strong claim 011 the affections of the Chartist faithful; Jones’ campaign in 1867 against the handcuffing of Fenian prisoners evoked strong memories of this episode.43 As Patrick Joyce has shown, in the 1860s political martyrdom remained an essential element in the appeal of the ‘ d e r n a g ~ g u e ’ . ~ ~ Such martyrdoms seldom, however, extended beyond Bright’s claim that he had accumulated his various illnesses in the service of the people and never went as far as breaking the law or imprisonment. Nevertheless, Jones referred to his solitary confinement often whilst Ernestjones: w h o Is He? What Has He Done? featured an extended treatment of his suffering.“ At the same time, in order not to offend polite sensibilities, the pamphlet avoided the details of his arrest, merely remarking that in 1848, ‘he was arrested for a speech delivered in Bonner’s Field, London, the strongest expressions of which did not equal those made by Earl Russell prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 and would now be considered perfectly moderate and admi~s ib le ’ .~~ Mitchell Henry fastened upon this theme as proof that Jones’ radicalism was too extreme to be accorded a place within the Liberal consensus. Surmising that this was an issue that could divide Jones’ plebeian support from his Liberal allies, the Hulrne Advertiser re-printed extracts from his trial in 1848, with a verbatim transcript of his speech at Bonner’s Field.47 This issue opened up a broader debate about the excesses of the Chartist past. The H u h e Advertiser saw Chartism as a movement to be execrated, and described its leaders as ‘roughs, prize

41 See enclosure in the volume ‘Pamphlets, Cuttings and Funeral Speeches of Ernest Jones’ (BR 923.2

See the literary reviews in Crossley, Ernest Jones. pp. 8-13. Editorial in the Manchester Examiner and Times, 28 Sept. 1867, p. 5. See for John Bright’s re-working of this theme Joyce, Democratic Subjects, pp. 85-136. Crossley, ErnestJones, pp. 7-8, and a letter from Jones describing his experiences in The Common-

The Commonwealth, 20 Oct. 1866, p. 7. 7he Trial ofMr Ernestjones at the Central Criminal Court, London, ed. G.W. Mason (Manchester,

JI4), Manchester Reference Library, Ernest Jones Collection.

43

44

45

46

47

wealth, 20 Oct. 1866, p. 4.

1868). p. 1.

194 Antany Taylor

fighters, discontented tailors, and professional agitators [who] disgusted all in whom there was the spark of right feeling or chivalry’.48

Other examples of the inconsistencies between Jones’ past and present political postures were exploited by Henry to discredit his campaign. In another move intended to drive a wedge between his supporters and the United Liberal Party’s middle-class voters he stressed Jones’ condemnation of the Cobdenite reform movement in the 185Os, supporting the slurs with the use of surviving contemporary material. Attacks on the old Anti-Corn Law League position from the People’s Paper were re-printed and fly-posted around the walls of the city.49 Henry also used material from radical newspapers that were critical of Jones’ decision to ally with Manchester’s Liberals. At a meeting at St George’s and Medlock Ward he quoted horn the Carlisle Democrat which featured an article by Jones, dating from the early 1850s, in which he condemned the middle-class reform movement outright: ‘the monied classes and the Manchester Liberals would sell God or man for gold. If they repudiate a state church it is because it is too dear and they don’t share it. If they hate royalty it is because it is too dear not because they are opposed to privilege and class legi~lation.’~’

The most damning condemnation of Jones’ candidature for respectable Liberal electors, emerged, however, fiom Mitchell Henry’s revelations about his financial instability. In a trading and commercial centre with an established mercantile culture this was a cause of much concern. Traditionally Manchester’s M.P.s were members of the Liberal hlite. Mitchell Henry’s campaign articulated worries in the business community that Jones was not of sufficient wealth or social standing to undertake this role. His supporters regularly paraded Henry’s commercial achievements alongside Jones’ insolvency and lack of business experience. In the 1860s his attempts to revive his legal career were never very successful and he was forced to take some unpalatable cases which were highlighted in a pamphlet by the veteran Peace Society activist William Stokes, who became a strong Mitchell Henry adherent.51 Jones’ recurrent financial difficulties were a legacy of his Chartist past. He had renounced all claims to his family inheritance during the 1850s in the period in which he was the national leader of the Chartist movement. His political style derived from his experiences during these years. The Chartists had learnt to live with a chronic lack of funds; Jones’ poverty had thus not inhibited his Chartist career and in the 1860s reinforced his appeal to a generation offormer Chartists who believed he had given up everything for the people’s cause. It did, however, constitute a barrier to his full adoption by Liberalism, casting doubt upon his ability to provide for himself in Parliament. Ernest jones: Who Is He? What Has He Dane? tried to provide reassurance on this score, commenting ‘he is not a rich man, but even thus he is not poor’.52 Much of this was unconvincing. At the time of his death Jones was insolvent and his family was

48

49

j1

Hulrne Advertiser, 17 Oct. 1868, p. 4. Manchester Examiner and Times, 16 Nov. 1868, p. 4. Manchester Guardian, 12 Nov. 1868, p. 5. See W. Stokes, 771e Representation .f Manchester: w h o Shall Be Its Third Member? (Manchester,

1868). pp. 5-6. There is an account of Stokes’ career by D. Nicholls, ‘William Stokes 1803-81’, Manchester Region History Review, VI (1992). 59-61. ’* Crossley, Ernestjones, p. 15

ErnestJones and Liberalism 195

dependent upon his admirers for support.53 Schemes put forward by his Liberal supporters to maintain him in Parliament were fanciful and impractical, fuelling allegations that Manchester would return a pauper M.P. Stokes wrote of one such suggestion: 54

Rumours are widely spread that the friends of one of the candidates console themselves with the avowed expectation that their favourite will be able to eke out a living by being put upon committees at A5 each sitting. It is perfectly proper that a man should be paid for his public services, but it will be a novel thing in the commons to see a Marichester member dependent upon such employment for his daily bread.

Moreover at the height of the campaign Jones was embarrassed by revelations that his poverty had led him to mistakenly accept donations from a local Tory leader, W.R. Callender.55 Mitchell Henry’s allegations about Jones’ financial incompetence were undoubtedly the most damagmg of his claims against his candidature and badly destabilised his position with regard to the middle-class electorate in the city. Whilst not adversely affecting his position in relation to his former Chartist support, the potential for him to capitalise on this issue by posing as a popular tribune in opposition to corrupt business interests was limited while he remained yoked to the Liberals.

Further doubt was cast upon Jones’ fitness to represent Manchester by Mitchell Henry’s references to the traditions of the mass platform in which his career was rooted. Again these attacks were intended to discredit Jones in the eyes of the city’s middle-class Liberal voters who were resistant to memories of Chartism. The Mitchell Henry camp suggested that experience of the mass platform made Jones ill-equipped to occupy a seat in Parliament. Stokes reminded Liberals of the inept parliamentary performances of other platform agitators who were elected to the House:”

Such men are the educators of the people and the true school-masters of the nation. But their proper sphere is among their ‘scholars’ and not in the senate. In their natural vocation the services of such men are invaluable, but the moment they enter the Commons they are as good as lost. It was so with Henry Hunt, the elder Cobbett and to no mean extent also with the eloquent George Thompson.

These sentiments reflected the doubts of many mainstream Liberals who remained unconvinced that there was a useful role for Jones to fulfil within Liberalism.

As well as emphasising those issues that accentuated the gulf between Jones and the majority of the United Liberal Party’s middle-class voters, Mitchell Henry also tried to discredit his campdign in the eyes of his plebeian followers as well. The aspect of his radicalism he particularly stressed was his involvement in Feargus O’Connor’s Land Plan. Henry’s main concern was to tarnish Jones’ name by emphasising his

See an article by G.J. Hamey, ‘The Late Ernest Jones’ in The Social Economist, 1 Jul. 1869, pp. 3-4, and for details of a fund-raising drive on behalf of his family, ?he Bradford Obxerver, 1 Apr. 1869, p. 1. Jones’ financial position in the 1860s is considered in T.W. Porter, ‘Ernest Jones and the Royal Literary Fund’, Labour History Keview, LVII, (1992), 84-94.

54 Stokes, The Representation cf Manchester, p. 6. 55 The episode was recalled in the Manchester Examiner and Time$, 5 Feb. 1874, p. 4. 36 f i id . , p. 2.

53

196 Antony Taylor

involvement in a financially corrupt venture that had ruined many rank and file Chartists. At a public meeting in October he remarked that his ideas on land reform ‘were the fallacies which Feargus O’Connor published in 1847 when he instituted the small farms which caused so much misery to a considerable number of indiv id~als ’ .~~ In the face of these attacks Jones tried to distance himself fi-om the Land Plan. It is well known that he was a trustee of the National Land Company and also a legal adviser to Land Company official^.^^ Nevertheless EmestJones: W h o Is He? What Has He Done? denied these connexions outright. The pamphlet declared: ‘he had not any connections whatever with Mr. O’Connor’s Land Company. He was without his knowledge or consent elected one of the trustees, but immediately had his name withdrawn and his election ~ a n c e l l e d . ’ ~ ~ Moreover Mitchell Henry exploited long- standing tensions between the trades and an older generation of political radicals to suggest that Jones was a liability for his trade union supporters during a period of legslative reaction against the position of the unions. Jones’ own history of opposition to the state meant that he was an undesirable ally for trade societies seeking to distance themselves from violent and coercive methods in the workplace. He thus remained a highly divisive presence for the movement. In 1868 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers refused to support his candidature on these grounds.60 Much trade union discontent with Jones in the Manchester area also stemmed from his legal defence of William Dodd, secretary of the Operative House-Painters’ Society, who absconded with L800 of the society’s money in January 1868.‘l This episode was an important test case in the attempts of trade unions to validate their legal position following the Hornby v. Close decision of the previous year. The man was successfully prosecuted, but although Jones had taken on the case out of financial necessity some trades unionists never forgave him for his role in the affair. Despite support for his position in the Liberal press on the grounds that as a barrister he had no option but to set aside his personal feelings and defend the man to the best of this abilities, bitterness against him was still apparent at the time of the election.

During the final weeks of the 1868 election campaign tensions between Jones and Mitchell Henry and their supporters became increasingly bitter. Here strong echoes of Chartism were revived by the running fights which developed between the two factions. In this issue the conflict between Chartism and Liberalism became a question of campaigning style. Using tactics reminiscent of the confrontations between Chartists and Anti-Corn Law Leaguers, Jones’ election committee recruited parties of ‘Jonesites’ to take over the platform at Mitchell Henry’s ward meetings and pass motions of support for their candidate.63 This conduct went much further than routine electoral

62

57 Manchesfer City News, 3 Oct. 1868, p. 2. 58 See for his role in an inquiry into the murder of a land company official in a brawl the Northern

59 Crossley, ErnestJones, p. 6. 6o

Star, 28 Aug. 1847, pp. 2, 4, 8.

Letter in the Manchester Courier, 3 Sept. 1868, p. 5. The background to the Dodd affair is described in The Bee-hive, 4 Jan. 1868, p. 4, and 14 Mar.

See letter from a trade umonist in the Manchesfer Guardian, 27 Aug. 1868, p. 7. 63 For two accounts of the same disruption at Mitchell Henry’s ward meetings in the pro-Jones

stronghold of New Cross Ward see ibid., 28 Aug. 1868, p. 3, and The Freelance, 29 Aug. 1868, p. 280.

1868, p. 6.

ErnestJones and Liberalism 197

disorder and was condemned by respectable Liberal voters who witnessed the violence. The correspondence columns of the Manchester newspapers testified to the outrage of polite opinion it caused and to the organisation and effectiveness of these pro-Jones mobs. One elector

Having heard Mr. Jones, I attended the meeting of Mr. Henry’s last night in the Chorlton Town Hall. 1 had not been there long before I found out that there was a party of Jonesites in the building determined, if possible, to stop the meeting- youths from sixteen to eighteen who appeared to be led by a little elderly man, bald headed, with a small quantity of grey hair and slight grey whiskers. At any rate he made himself very conspicuous in leading the bawling, shouting and hooting.

The hostihty with which Henry opposed Jones and the issues he raised with regard to his Chartist past meant that the legacies of Chartism dominated the 1868 election, more so even than during Abel Heywood’s two previous candidatures for the city in 1859 and 1865. The persistence of the Chartist tradition was remarkable and proved sufficiently durable amongst working-class electors to make mainstream Liberal poli- ticians reluctant to condemn the movement outright. Even Mitchell Henry was loath to attack the demands and the traditions of the Charter. He confined himself to pointing out the contradictions apparent between Jones’ past and present political positions and warning both former Chartists and Liberals about his consistency. When the Jones camp retaliated and accused him of anti-Chartist lecturing activities in 1848, both he and his supporters denied the charge. William Cleary, spokesman for Irish Catholic opinion in the city and a Mitchell Henry adherent, declared in an address to the Irish electors of Manchester, ‘a base assertion has been made to the effect that Mr. Mitchell Henry took an active part against the Chartists in 1848. This invention is utterly false. At the time referred to Mr. Henry was studying his profession in college in London.’65

With the question of his Chartist past to the fore, Jones made a determined effort to conciliate both his former Chartist support and the middle-class adherents of the United Liberal Party, by directing his campaign towards those issues which occupied the middle ground where Chartism and Liberalism converged. Here his demands were the staple fare of the majority of radical Liberal candidatures mounted during the course of the election. Most marked was his espousal of temperance. In the past he had proved sympathetic to the aims of temperance advocates, but had cautioned Chartists against too unswerving a devotion to the temperance cause alone. In a speech in Manchester in 1850 he warned, ‘some tell you that teetotalism will get you the Charter, the Charter doesn’t lie at the bottom of a glass of water’.66 In 1868, however, a purely tactical alliance with local temperance organisations placed him in touch with their electoral machinery and provided a neutral plank

64 Manchester Courier, 5 Sep. 1868, p. 5. 65 Broadside, ‘Mr Mitchell and Ireland An address to the Irish Catholic Electors of Manchester’ in

‘Pamphlets, Cuttings and Funeral Speeches of Emest Jones’ (BR 923.2 JI4), Manchester Reference Library, Emest Jones Collection.

Reproduced in C.A. Glyde, Liberal and Tory Hypocrisy During the Nineteenth Century (Keighley, 1922). p. 19.

198 Antony Taylor

in his platform designed to disguise the divisions amongst his follower^.^' Jones was never convincing in this moderate guise. His speeches were erratic,

reflecting the contradictions in his position. In unguarded moments his Chartist radicalism resurfaced. Henry castigated his early campaign speeches as, ‘mere milk and water addresses so thin everyone can see through Others betrayed a trace of his old fire. At a public meeting at the Free Trade Hall in October he proposed the abolition of the unpaid m a g i ~ t r a c y . ~ ~ This was an old Chartist demand which sat uneasily alongside the existing Liberal programme. After Henry’s supporters indicted the speech7’ he made no further mention of the issue. Nevertheless on occasion he made public pronouncements on an eight-hour working-day, the Game Laws and the Charter itself. Henry alleged that Jones was forced to tailor his public utterances to suit the temper and composition of his audiences, and suggested that the speeches he gave outside Manchester, which were not reported in the local press, were more radical than those he gave inside the city. He said of his campaign address, ‘if they wanted to know what were in truth the principles of Mr. Ernest Jones they must follow him to Edinburgh. He said on that occasion that he was: “proud to look back on the People’s Charter. He was proud of having been a Chartist before and of being a Chartist now”. ’71

Mitchell Henry was not the only one to point to the anomalies in Jones’ position. By tailoring his appeal to two mutually opposed groups of voters, Jones created as situation for himself in which it was impossible to remain true to either camp. His twin allegiances exposed him to accusations of duplicity and betrayal by both sides. Even prior to the campaign he appreciated that the best prospects for election lay in furthering his connexions with middle-class Liberals. He was thus especially eager to ingratiate himself with his Liberal allies, to the detriment of his former radical affiliations in the old Chartist heart-land of the West Riding. With his prospects so bright in Manchester, where he could expect to enlist the support ofthe local Liberal association, Jones made it apparent that he would only stand as an independent working-man’s candidate in a seat of exceptional promise where his return could be guaranteed beforehand. At both Halifax and Dewsbury he declared that he would go to the poll as a working-man’s representative if requisitions were provided signed by a majority of the electors of the town pledging themselves to support his candidat~re.’~ In both towns campaigns were initiated on this basis. At Dewsbury, however, he reneged on his promise at the last moment, disappointing his followers and wrecking the chances of his successor. Despite this his supporters remained loyal. The radical faithful refused to condemn him for his actions and he was represented as an unwitting pawn, unscrupulously manipulated by the corrupt middle-class Liberal associations of the

73 two towns. This view is reflected in Benjamin Turner’s comments many years later: 67

69

70

71

72

73

Alliance News, 29 Aug. 1868, p. 278. Mason, ErnestJones and His Candidature, p. 8. Manchester C i t y News, 10 Oct. 1868, p. 2. Mason, Emestjones and Hi5 Candidature, p. 7 . Manchester C i t y News, 3 Oct. 1868. p. 2. See election intelligence in the Manchester Guardian, 8 July 1868, p. 5; 23 July 1868, p. 5; 30 July

B. Turner, ‘Ernest Jones: A Tribute Gladly Given’ in The Labour Leader, 23 Jan, 1919, pp. 6-7; 1868, p. 5.

Turner expressed similar sentiments in his autobiography About M y 4 (1930), pp. 28-9.

ErnestJones and Liberalism I99

Alas! He was jockeyed out of it by the money power of that day. He had many supporters and many adherents but the mill lords did not want him! They journeyed to Manchester to try to find a way to get him away. By collusion with Manchester men they raised the issue that his chances for parliament were better in Manchester. They skilfully elbowed him out and he was encouraged to accept Manchester. There was bitter feeling over it. People left the Liberal Party over it.

In contrast at Carlisle Jones was strongly criticised for his involvement with Liberalism. His decision to visit the town on behalf of the Whig candidate in accordance with his pact with the Manchester Liberals raised a storm of condemnation from former Chartists and erstwhile colleagues. An audience of reformers who had expected to hear him speak on behalf- of an independent working-man’s candidate booed and jeered him. The local radkal paper, The Democrat rep~r ted : ’~

The attention of working men is especially directed to the fact that after what the Whigs have promised to do for Mr. Jones that gentleman undertakes to bolster up the Whigs. The claims of the Trade Unions are now to be abandoned. Mr. Jones is now opposed to extreme measures and extreme men. The new gospel ofJones is to do nothing to jeopardise the Whigs, they have taken my case in hand.

The strong political connexions binding Manchester and Carlisle meant that the issue of Jones’ defection received widespread publicity there and added fuel to the attacks upon his consistency. Mitchell Henry ensured that it received maximum exposure at his election meetings.”

Conversely Jones needed to rally as much of his former Chartist and Reform League support as practicable whilst retaining the mantle of respectability he hoped to assume in Liberal eyes. Those elements which endeared Ernest Jones to a work- ing-class radical audience did not, however, have the same appeal for a respectable Liberal one, and in just the same way as he failed to satisfy the expectations of his plebeian supporters, so too he never managed to fully appease the United Liberal Party’s middle-class voters. By 1868 Jones had travelled some distance along the road towards respectability. His death brought tributes from Alderman Grave, the Con- servative Mayor of Manchester, who was present at his f~ne ra l ’~ and he was also honoured with an obituary in The Times by Shirley Brookes, editor of Punch, which made a contribution to the fund to support his wife and family.77 Disraeli, Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Charles Dickens were amongst those who contributed to the cost of a monument to Jones in Ardwick Cemetery in 1871.78 Yet the indications are that Ernest Jones was still not respectable enough to obtain the full endorsement of Manchester’s middle-class electorate. The Manchesttv Examiner and Timts wrote at the time of his death, ‘ “that Chartist” was too often the summary appreciation which

The Democrat, 10 Oct. 1868. p. 1. There is an extended treatment of this episode in the Curlirk Patriot, 2 Oct. 1868, p. 4 and 9 Oct. 1868, p. 5, and in the City .f Carlisle Liberal Club Circular, 10 Oct. 1868, p. 4.

74

”

’‘ 77

78

E.g. at ward meetings reported in the Manchester Evening News, 4 Now 1868, p. 2. ManChester Courier, 1 Feb. 1869, p. 3. See The Times, 27 Jan. 1869, p. 7. Munchester Examiner and Times, 10 Apr. 1871, p. 4.

200 Antony Taylor

was ready on the lips of ladies and gentlemen who had occasion to name him’.79 The resurrection of his Chartist past at the height of the election campaign reinforced this view, leading to the sort of questions that were repeated at the time of his funeral: ‘is the Earl Russell of today, the adviser of the present ministry, the same noble lord whom Ernest Jones wanted to send to Baffin Bay immediately after he had secured, by unlawful means, the return ofJohn Frost to England?’” During the election Jones’ charisma also conspicuously failed to translate into Liberal political terms. Manchester’s satirical organ, The Freelance, expressed distaste at the nature of his oratory and the content of his speeches. His oratorical style, however, reflected the link forged between the ‘demagogue’ and the ultra-radical community by the mass platform. This style was never intended for the consumption of a non-radical audience and appeared vulgar to bourgeois tastes. The Freelance remarked ‘is it dignified, is it even decent to fling in the face of sensible men at whose hands he seeks the highest delegated power a sub‘ect can possess, a litter of beggardly jokes which would disgrace a

These divisions within Manchester Liberalism overshadowed Tory party efforts to unseat a sitting Liberal M.P. The Tory campaign failed to gain momentum, stirred few currents of interest and profitted only fiom the divisions within the Liberal camp. By the end of the election it was beginning to flag. Its greatest reverse came in October when Hoare and Birley flouted convention and tried to address the Manchester business community at their place of work in the city Exchange. By long-standing agreement the Exchange was neutral territory from which politics was excluded on the grounds that it might lead to factional in-fighting that was disruptive of trade. This agreement was safe-guarded by Exchange regulations. By violating this rule the Tories flouted the sacred canons of the business community and harmed their cause in the business districts immeasurably. The Bee-hive reported that the candidates were jostled and Birley’s hat knocked of182

The attacks upon Jones by Mitchell Henry and others who detected the anomalies in his position were not, however, the only impediment to his successful return as Member for Manchester. The 1867 Reform Act’s minority clause provided another barrier to Liberal hopes of securing the election of all three candidates. The minority clause was a purely tactical measure built into the act by Disraeli to aid the election of urban Tory M.P.s. Under the guise of widening existing franchise arrangements, it gave each of Manchester’s electors two votes and was intended to stretch Liberal electoral machinery to the point where the return of a third Liberal became impossible. The Tones reasoned that in such cities as Manchester and Birmingham, Liberal electors would use up all their double votes on the two most popular Liberal candidates, impeding their third choice and providing the Tory Party with the opportunity of making gains in the urban centres. Faced by this threat the United Liberal Party in Manchester pinned its hopes for a return of all three candidates on a strict marshalling of its supporters. The scheme it proposed provided for a system of ‘levelling up’ on

schoolboy?’8 r‘

79 Ibid., 27 Jan. 1869, p. 5. Manchester Courier, 3 Feb. 1869, p. 7.

81 T h e Freelance, 24 Oct. 1868, p. 337. Bee-hive, 7 Nov. 1868, p. 1.

ErrtestJones and Liberalism 20 1

polling day whereby Liberal voters who had not voted until the late afternoon were asked to support the two Liberals who had the lowest proportions of votesE3 The success of this venture depended upon the willing co-operation of the entire United Liberal Party machine in the city. A similar system worked well in Birmingham in the 1870s and 1 8 8 0 ~ . * ~ Those Liberals who remained unreconciled to Jones were, however, reluctant to give it their wholehearted support. The Manchester Guardian, the organ of the Whig/Palmerstonian flank of the alliance, remained lukewarm about the project, and despite the dangers of undermining the Liberal vote was prepared to talk up Mitchell Henry’s candidature until the very eve of polling.85 Ultimately, therefore, the strategy of managing the electorate proved ineffective, and even with Jones’ undoubted popularity amongst Manchester’s plebeian electors he was still beaten ignominiously into fifth place by the undistinguished second Tory candidate, Joseph Hoare:

Hugh Birley (Conservative) 15,482 Thomas Bazley (Liberal) 14,210 Jacob Bright (Liberal) 13,497 Joseph Hoare (Conservative) 12,688 Ernest Jones (Liberal) 10,746 Mitchell Henry (Ind. Liberal) 5,234

Nevertheless the Conservatives topped the poll only by default. This was their best electoral performance since the 1840s and an especially strong showing in comparison to 1865 when they were incapable of fielding their own candidates. The Tories, however, showed only a modest advance on the basis of their own energies and policies. The only real card they had to play was the Orange one. It was the intervention of Mitchell Henry that allowed them to gain first place. Henry’s presence focussed opposition on Jones, both from within, and from without Liberalism; this is demon- strated by the unusually large number of ‘plumpers’ who voted only for him (1,283 as opposed to 63 for Bright). Had these and the remaining votes he harvested been redistributed amongst the United Liberal Party candidates, they would have denied Birley his place at the head of the poll and secured a tripartite Liberal victory. In particular, Mitchell Henry fragmented the Irish vote which against the sectarian background of the election would, as in the past, have united behind the Liberals, and especially Jones. It was therefore Henry who denied Ernest Jones a seat in Parliament.

The results ofthe 1868 Manchester election also reflect the failure ofJones’ attempts to tailor his campaign in such a way as to reconcile his Chartism and his new found attachment to Liberalism. Even with the support of the Liberal Party’s ‘levelling up’ tactic he was unable to make any real inroad into the middle-class Liberal vote, coming consistently bottom of the poll in more fashionable residential and commercial districts of the city such as Exchange or St John’s Wards.86 Here, with Mitchell *’ 84

*’ Hh

For the final form of the scheme see the Manchester Guardian, 18 Nov. 1868, pp. 4, 6. See P.T. Marsh, Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics (New Haven, 1994). See the Manchester Guardian, 17 Nov. 1868, p. 4. The paper also devoted more space to covering

Mitchell Henry’s meetings than those of Bazley, Bright and Jones; see ibid., 4 Nov. 1868, p. 5. Manchester’s pollbook for the 1868 election has not survived, but official retums for the various

wards appeared in the city’s newspapers; see, for example, the Manchester Courier, 24 Nov. 1868, p. 5.

202 Antony Taylor

Henry reminding them of his past, he could never hope to make public atonement for the excesses of his Chartist career. Nor did he do especially well in the south worlung-class districts of the city. In Medlock and St George’s Wards, where the large Birley spinning mills were situated, Jones’ support was not strong enough to override the influence of the Birleys, the most powerful employers in the area, in an open poll. Elsewhere in the city, however, the base of Jones’s working-class support held firm, particularly in the old working-class dstricts of Miles Platting, New Cross and St Michael’s Wards where the Chartist tradition was deeply rooted. By itself the plebeian vote in such areas was not strong enough to return Jones as one of the city’s representatives in November 1868, but it did play a very significant part in securing his victory over the prominent Cobdenite Milner Gibson in an experimental Test Ballot in January 1869 to decide a Liberal by-election candidate for the city. New Cross and St Michael’s Wards not only fielded the highest individual turnout of voters in the city, they also provided almost one third of all Jones’ final total of votes, tipping the balance decisively in his favour and demonstrating that he was only capable of mounting a challenge to mainstream political figures in a two horse race.87 Taken as a whole the results of the 1868 elections and of the subsequent Test Ballot indicate that the nature and extent ofJones’ support in the city since the 1850s had changed very little, if at all, despite his attempts to present a much more moderate face to the electorate. He remained shackled by his Chartist past even in the final months of his life, drawing the majority of his followers fkom the ranks of those radicals who revered the old Chartist tradition, whilst being shunned by respectable middle-class opinion within the United Liberal Party itself.

The recriminations following the election meant that the gulf existing between Jones and the respectable majority of the party widened still further. Those Liberals who believed that there had never been enough Liberal votes in the city to sustain three candidates and the Whigs who had always opposed Jones’ selection, united in blaming him for Birley’s return at the head of the poll:88

Mr. Jones had not the slightest chance from the outset and yet votes were wasted upon him in obedience to the mistaken directive to vote for the two lowest of the Liberal candidates. In this way, some 2,000 votes were thrown away after Mr. Henry retired which given to Mr. Bazley would have placed him at the head of the poll.

Jones stated publicly that his candidature had been sabotaged by these elements, citing a rumour current on polling day, and which he claimed originated within the executive of the Liberal Party, that he had retired fkom the contest and his votes should be transferred to his Liberal partners.89 Manchester Liberalism’s relationship with Jones had only ever constituted a marriage of convenience and the party now distanced itself from him. When Hugh Hornby Birley was accused of using government contracts to fund his campaign and a petition was filed against his return, Jones was deliberately passed over as the potential Liberal candidate for a by-election. Rather than putting

For the part played by Jones’ supporters in the New Cross and St Michael’s wards during the Test Ballot, see the Munchester City News, 23 Jan. 1869, p. 2.

Manchester Guardian, 18 Nov. 1868, p. 6. Munchester Examiner and Times, 1 Jan. 1869, p. 4.

*’ 88

89

Emestjones and Liberulistn 203

his name forward as the defeated general election candidate, the local party organised an experimental Test Ballot of the city’s Liberal voters to decide who would be the most appropriate choice, Jones, or Milner Gibson, who had been deposed at Ashton- under-Lyne. In Manchester the issue created a breach between Ernest Jones’ former Chartist and Reform League support and the main body of the party. At public meetings there were interventions from the floor on his behalf and Jones himself admonished his followers, declaring that he would abide by the result of the ballot even if Milner Gibson were elected, ‘and he trusted that his friends would do him the honour of following his example’.’’

In the event he routed his opponent, although the failure of the Liberal Party’s petition meant that there was no possibility of him contesting Manchester in the hoped for by-election. Nevertheless, the issue was significant, highlighting the areas of disagreement between the former Chartist and middle-class Liberal wings of the party, and contributing further to Jones’ increasing isolation within the Liberal ranks. By 1869 he was drifting and thinking of contesting Greenwich as an independent candidate against the Liberal Party.

Ernest Jones’ death and funeral in January 1869 allowed Manchester’s Liberals to conciliate his followers and appropriate the trappings, if not the substance, o f Chartism without the inconvenience of a living, breathing Chartist leader on their p l a t f~ rm.~’ Nevertheless the episode of his 1868 candidature bequeathed a mixed legacy to his supporters. In the eyes of some radicals, Jones’ appearance in Manchester on a Liberal ticket conferred Chartism’s posthumous blessing on Liberalism and allowed him to be elevated to the status of a precarious Liberal icon. From the 1880s onwards this verdict was disputed by a new generation of radical and I.L.P. leaders who sought to annex him as an ancestor of‘ so~iaiism.~’ The controversy over this issue provoked a bitter dispute in the West Riding press between Benjamin Wilson, a long-standing Chartist/Liberal, and the infant I.L.P. Even Wilson, how- ever, acknowledged that Jones’ alliance with the Liberals represented a hardheaded tactical decision to move away from the fringes of politics and enter the political mainstream: ‘when Mr Jones joined the Liberal Party he did not change his opinions. He joined the Liberal Party because he knew it was the best way to get what he wanted.’” For many contemporaries the Liberals’ decision to embrace Jones denoted the poverty of their politics in the 1860s. ‘An Old Chartist’ writing in the Carlisle Democrat saw the arrangement as both one-sided and hypocritical: ‘the Whigs and their hangers-on [who] have ever treated Mr. Jones with sneers and contempt.. . now turn round and profess to admire him in order that they may gain a position in the political world to which they are totally unsuited.’94 For many ultra-radicals who remained wary of the Liberal Party machine the results of the 1869 Test Ballot confirmed the survival of a constituency outside Liberalism. Reynolds’s Netupuper

90 Ibid., 21 Jan. 1869, p. 5. There is an account of Jones’s funeral cortege, which included a number of veteran Chartists. in

the Mancheder Examiner and Times, 1 Feb. 1869, p. 3. This theme emerges very strongly &om the various commemorations of Jones’ life during these

years; see the HaliJax Courier, 31 Jan. 1891, p. 7. ‘The Independent Labour Party and Mr Ernest Jones‘, in ibid., 16 Mar. 1895 and 23 Mar. 189.5. The Democrat, 1 Apr. 1869, p. 44.

”

93

y4

204 Antony Taylor

concluded, ‘that there is a creed among intelligent working-men the borders of which extend beyond the domain of Liberalism is now e~tablished’.~~

Ernest Jones’ decision to stand as a Liberal candidate in the 1868 election marked the climax of his post-Chartist career and ushered in a confusing and contradictory period of his life. Although he was never to fully renounce his Chartist past, his decision to embrace Liberalism forced him to reconcile his Chartism with his new found attachment to Liberalism during an election campaign that highlighted the many areas of disagreement existing between the two political positions. This task was a formidable one, and its magnitude may be gauged from the toll it took on his health in the weeks before his death. The results of the Manchester election, however, indicate that his efforts were unsuccessful. He did manage to befriend a very small number of his former Liberal opponents, losing some of his Chartist following as a result, but in the main the electorate’s perception of him was still coloured by his long past record as leader of the Chartist movement alone. Accordingly, whilst former Chartists and Reform League supporters rallied to his banner in droves, he was overwhelmingly rejected by the city’s Liberal voters.

95 Reynolds’s Netuspaper, 31 Jan. 1869, p. 1.