Political Life in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury

Parliamentary History, Vol. 23, pt . 2 (2004), p p . 198-224 Political Life in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury T. A. J E N K I N S History o f Parliament The Reform and Redistribution Acts of 1884-5 marked a crucial stage in the movement towards parliamentary democracy in Britain, both through their effects on the size of the electorate and their consequences for the way in which politics was conducted. In the counties, the introduction of household suffrage conferred voting rights on agricultural labourers and other rural groups of workers, such as miners, and the old constituencies were divided into single-member seats. Party organization became more essential than ever before as an instrument for managing the county electorates in these dramatically altered conditions. At the same time, a large-scale transfer of representation from small boroughs to the major towns and cities reflected the increasingly urbanised reality of life for most of the British people. For two decades the Conservatives proved to be the most effective operators within this political dispensation, yet there have been few local case studies with which to underpin an analysis of the party’s ascendancy at the national level.’ Fortunately, the survival of the papers of Sir Gerald Codrington, the Conservative Association chairman in the Southern, or Thornbury, division of Gloucestershire, provides us with a rare insight into party activity in one of the new county seats.2 Thornbury is of particular interest because of the prominent position occupied in the Association by aristocrats and landowners, and it thus serves to illustrate how the traditional ruling Clite strived to maintain its authority over an electorate which, at a stroke in 1885, was ‘more than d ~ u b l e d ’ . ~ As events proved, the period of Conservative success in Thornbury exactly coincided with that of the party’s domination nationally. O n 28 February 1885 a meeting of the West Gloucestershire Conservative Associ- ation resolved to divide itself into two associations for the new Thornbury and Forest ’ J. Lawrence, ‘Popular Politics and the Limitations of Party: Wolverhampton, 1867-1900’, in Currents ofRadicalism, ed. E. Biagini and A. Reid (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 65-85, and F. Coetzee, ‘Villa Toryism Reconsidered: Conservatism and Suburban Sensibilities in Late-Victorian Croydon’, ante, XVI (1997), 29-47, are recent exceptions. R. Shannon, The Age ofSalisbury 1881-1902. Unionism and Empire (1996), provides a detailed account of politics from the centre. * Gloucestershire R.O., D1610 (Codrington MSS, courtesy of the archivist), contains several hundred documents relating to Thornbury, including many pencil copies of Sir Gerald’s letters. All references to this collection are hereafter cited by the catalogue number D1610. GloucesterJoumal, 28 Nov. 1885. As well as householders, there were several other categories ofcounty voters, including 40s. freeholders, 6 5 copyholders and leaseholders, L l 0 occupiers, A10 lodgers and L20 joint-lodgers. In 1886 there were 2,817 ownership, 8,504 occupation (including householder) and 12 lodger voters; by 1901 the respective figures were 1,967, 10,947 and 70: Parliamentary Papers, 1886, LII, 569; 1901, LIX, 115. Political Liji in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury 199 of Dean constit~encies.~ The president of the Thornbury Association was the eighth duke of Beaufort, of Badminton House, one of the county’s largest landowners. His nephew, Sir Gerald Codrington of Dodington Park, near Chipping Sodbury, was appointed chairman, while the vice-chairmen were Codnngton’s neighbour, George Blathwayt of Dyrham Park, and W. H. Harford of Oldown House, Olveston, a member of the prominent Bristol banking family. They, together with the secretary, the chairmen from the various polling districts and up to four co-opted members, formed the executive committee, which was responsible for the association’s general work and expendit~re.~ An analysis of the list of 101 individuals who subscribed to the association’s fund in 1887 serves to emphasize the importance of the landed interest and related groups, which accounted for at least 63 of the names. These comprised seven members of the aristocracy, 23 ‘principal landowners’ (as defined by a local directory), 16 ‘private residents’ with no apparent occupation, 13 clergymen and four military officers. In addition, one subscriber was Beaufort’s land agent and several may have been farmers. Of the remainder, very few can be identified with certainty, but two were probably brewers, two were surgeons and one the proprietor of a lunatic asylum.6 Henry Marsh, a civil engineer and landowner of Winterbourne Park, became the association’s first secretary (and election agent) in 1885 at a salary of LlOO per annum. Whereas Codrington, who doubted Marsh’s competence, continued to argue that a solicitor should fill the position, the prevahg view on the executive committee was that ‘if we appointed a lawyer . . . we should have to pay him a larger salary, as the work takes up a great deal of a man’s time’. As Marsh pointedly observed, there was ‘a very strong section of the party’ opposed to the appointment of a solicitor, ‘so long as a layman like myself, having landed interest in the county’, was willing to do the work. He had ‘over 20 years’ knowledge and connection with elections’ in Gloucestershire and claimed that ‘laymen are recommended as secretaries by the Central Association in London’.’ Marsh’s pride in his social status may help to explain his notoriously self-sufficient and uncommunicative habits, and the conduct towards others, even his chairman and M.P., that sometimes bordered on insolence. An exasperated Codrington complained on one occasion that he ‘never thinks of writing to let me know anything . . . to say the truth I am disgusted’, and others agreed that his ‘extraordinary discourtesies’ tended to diminish the value of his work.8 Following Marsh’s death in 1897, it was felt that his successor must be ‘someone who has other means of livelihood, as we can only afford to pay a very small remuneration’. The man chosen was Peter Thurston, a solicitor in Thornbury, who had previously undertaken Gloucestershire Ckronkle, 7 Mar. 1885; Gloucesterjournal, 2 May 1885. See Stanford’s Parliamentary County D1610/X29: Annual Report, 1886. D1610/X24: 1887 subscription list. Kelly’s Bristol and Gloucesterskire Dimtoties (1897), were used for ’D1610/X27: Codrington to Harford, 14 Feb. 1886, Harford to Codrington; 26 Feb. 1886; Atlas (1885), p. 90 and map 38, for the boundaries of the Thornbury division. identification purposes. D1610/X24: Manh to Codrington, 1 Mar. 1886. D1610/X23: Codrington to Plunkett, 23 Oct. 1887, Plunkett to Codrington, 13, 19 Mar. 1890. 200 T. A. Jenkins work for the association in the registration courts.’ By 1904, however, concern was expressed that Thurston needed help with his duties, as he was ‘such a busy man’. In the event, he resigned later that year and it was finally decided to recruit a professional agent, James Tattersall from Halifax, at an unknown salary.” The voting strength of the Conservatives was concentrated in the predominantly agrarian or pastoral areas around such towns as Thornbury and Chpping Sodbury, where blue colours were ‘extensively worn amongst the agricultural labourers’ at election time, and in Badminton (the ‘Duke’s country’), Hawkesbury, Henbury, Olveston, Westbury-on-Trym and other parishes.” Predictably, the Liberal press condemned the ‘terrorism’ perpetrated on the farmers and labourers by ‘territorial and clerical’ influences, and alleged that there was no constituency where ‘blue beer is more freely and more notoriously set running on . . . pohng day’. The existence of ‘some 500’ outvoters, of whom the ‘vast majority’ were Conservatives, was also identified as an unfair obstacle to the success of the Liberal cause.” On the other hand, the Thornbury division extended southwards as far as the northern and eastern borders of Bristol, and the political complexion of this area was dramatically different. At Kingswood Hill, Hanham and Oldland Common, ‘immense numbers of bootmakers and other classes of mechanics’, along with colliers, were to be found, whose religious nonconformity and commitment to Liberalism was overwhelming. During the 1892 general election a Conservative newspaper described the scene at Kingswood, where Liberal colours ‘adorned the majority of the people met in the streets, they stood boldly forth on every hoarding, and shut out the light &om the front rooms of most of the houses’; the few Conservative posters were ‘obliterated with mud’. Mangotsfield, Warmley and Pucklechurch also lay in the heart of the Bristol coalfield and were equally sterile ground for the Conservatives. It was ‘within this belt’, and to a lesser extent at the Avonmouth docks, in the far south-west of the constituency, that the Liberals were said to obtain ‘the great majority’ of their ~ 0 t e s . l ~ In 1900 the Conservative National Union sent a questionnaire to local associations inquiring as to the state of the labouring population in their respective constituencies. The reply from Thornbury, while confirming that in the agricultural sector ‘all the farmers and their men are as a body Conservatives’, also emphasized the extent of the problems confronting the party in reaching out to other occupational groups. In the coalfields, the owners and men were said to be ‘nearly all radical’, except at Coalpit Heath (near Frampton Cotterell), where the owners were Conservative ‘but the men employed are 75 per cent radical’. The owners of the Pennant stone quarrying company in Mangotsfield were ‘as a rule Conservatives but the men are at least 70 Ibid.: Colston to Beaufort, 6 Jan. 1898; Gloucestershire R.O., D3789 (Thurston MSS), Box 13, includes a large bundle of miscellaneous registration papers. ’” D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 9 May 1904; D1610/X29: Annual Report, 1905. ” Bristol Times aadMinor, 13 July 1892, 24 July 1895; see also BristolMercury, 2 Dec. 1885; Gloucestershire Chronicle, 16 July 1892; Kelly’s Gloucestershire Directory (1897); H. Pelling, Social Geography ofBritish Elections, l2 Brisfol Mercury, 22, 24 July 1895. In 1888 non-residents accounted for 528 ownership and 21 l3 Bristol Times and Minor, 13 July 1892, 24 July 1895; see also Bristol Mercury, 24 July 1895; B. Little, 1885-1910 (1967). pp. 154-5. occupation votes: Parliamentary Papers, 1888, LXXIX, 919. The City and County ofBristol (1967). pp. 262-5, 270. Political L$ in Late Victorian Britain: The Consewatives in Thornbury 201 per cent radical’, and the paper manufacturers, Messrs Sommerville of Bitton, were ‘radical with their men’. Among the boot and shoemakers, ‘both owners and men’ were ‘very radical and dlficult to get at politically by Conservatives’. Only at the Avonmouth docks were ‘politics . . . about equally divided’. It was reported that in the past year strikes had taken place among the colliers, the quarrymen and building labourers, ‘all brought on by the influence of the Labour organisation of each’, but it was admitted that there were no prominent Conservative trade unionists available with whomto counteract the innumerable ‘radical spouter~’.’~ Although the main industrial and mining districts occupied only a small geographical area, they accounted for approximately 36 per cent of Thornbury’s electorate in 1885, and, with pockets of non-agrarianism elsewhere in the constituency, this was enough to pose a serious threat to the forces of rural Conservatism. The outcome of general elections therefore turned upon the question whether the power of the agricultural vote would prevail over that of the population ‘engaged in mechanical operations unconnected with the land’.15 In the remainder of this article, the course of events at each election will be summarized, before the relations between the M.P.s and the constituency and the methods employed by the Conservative Association are discussed. 1 The natural choice for Conservative candidate in December 1885 was Benjamin St John Ackers of Princknash Park, near Painswick, who had captured one of the West Gloucestershire seats from the Liberals at a by-election in March. On that occasion he had relentlessly exploited the popular anger at General Gordon’s death in Khartoum, by condemning the ‘un-English policy’ of Gladstone’s ministry. He had avowedly fought the contest ‘at his own expense’, with encouragement from the national leadership, and there was perhaps an understanding that he should have the Thornbury nomination as a reward.16 During the protracted autumn general election campaign, Ackers stood forth as a dedicated supporter of the Church of England and of voluntary schools, and he welcomed the decision by Lord Salisbury’s ‘caretaker’ Conservative administration to appoint a royal commission to inquire into the depression in trade and industry. He also favoured a ‘thorough inquiry into the depressed state of agriculture’, advocating allotments for labourers and rating relief for farmers, while inclining towards revived agricultural protectionism.” The Liberals fielded a strong candidate in Edward Stafford Howard of Thornbury Castle, who had previously sat for East Cumberland. Howard was not an easy opponent for the Conservatives to attack directly, as he was a moderate Liberal, loyal to Gladstone, who repudiated most of the radical nostrums being propagated by Joseph l4 D1610/X25: National Union labour committee questionnaire, 1900. l5 Bristol Times and Mirror, 24 July 1895. The Bristol Mercury, 2 Dec. 1885, lists the registered voters in Gloucesterjoumal, 21, 28 Feb., 7, 14 Mar. 1885; Gloucestershire Chronicle, 6 June 1885. Acken defeated each polling district. Sir William Marling by 4,837 votes to 4,426. l 7 Gloucerterjournal, 29 Aug. 1885; Bristol Times and Mirror, 12 Sept., 18 Nov. 1885. 202 T. A. Jenkins Chamberlain and his allies, such as Church disestablishment, graduated taxation and ‘three acres and a cow’ for rural labourers, which ‘no-one in his senses would dream of. Only his enthusiastic commitment, as a teetotaller, to ratepayer control of public house licensing (‘local option’), and his voting record in favour of admitting the atheist Charles Bradlaugh to the house of commons, offered real targets for personal criticism.’* On the whole, Ackers preferred to focus attention on the ‘miserable confederation of factions which represent the Liberal party’, and to emphasize the threat posed by Liberal policy to the nation’s internal stability and external strength. He argued that the foreign policy of Gladstone’s ministry had brought ‘disgrace . . . upon the honour of England’ and called on moderate Liberals to join with ‘the great Conservative party, which was now the national party’, to help ‘stem the tide of infidelity, confiscation and ruin’.’’ Howard nevertheless triumphed by 4,834 votes to 4,689, a majority ofjust 145, with the outcome hinging on the returning oflicer’s decision to accept 269 voting papers from Mangotsfield (220 were for Howard), which had only been ink-stamped on one side. There were 11,333 registered electors, of whom 9,523 cast their votes (discounting 39 spoilt papers), a turnout of virtually 84 per cent, and newspaper reports suggested that in the industrial districts the figures were higher.” At a meeting of the Conservative executive committee, on 22 December, Ackers made what one member described as ‘a most unseemly display of temper’ when it was unanimously decided not to petition against the result. Legal advice that the cost of a petition was likely to be between L800 and &l,OOO, with perhaps another &SO0 to find if the verdict went against them, was obviously a major deterrent. While there was thought to be ‘rather strong evidence of general intimidation’ at Kingswood and Oldland, the most that seemed possible was that the election might be declared void, requiring another contest. This was hardly an attractive proposition when, just a few days earlier, the ‘Hawarden Kite’ had been flown revealing Gladstone’s sympathy for Irish home rule, which pointed to an impending political crisis and the likelihood of an early general election. Ackers, who had made it clear that ‘he would not stand for the division again on any terms if no petition was presented’, accused the committee ofbeing ‘cowardly’ and ‘too niggardly to find L1,OOO’. He brought forward a petition on his own initiative, without the association’s support, alleging bribery, treating, intimidation, personation, and the improper counting of void voting papers, but the court’s decision in March 1886 upheld Howard’s return.’l By May 1886 a new Conservative candidate was in place,22 the Hon. John William Plunkett of Dunstall Priory, Kent, who had stood in the Forest of Dean the previous year. Plunkett, the heir of the sixteenth Baron Dunsany, an Irish peer, was not resident in Gloucestershire, but he had spent his childhood there and his deceased elder brother had sat for the Western division in 1874-80. The dissolution of parliament that shortly followed, after the house of commons rejected Gladstone’s l8 Gloucesterjournal, 1, 29 Aug., 3 Oct. 1885. l9 Bid., 29 Aug. 1885; Brisrol Times and Mirror, 18, 30 Nov., 1 Dec. 1885. 2” Bristol Mercury, 2, 3 Dec. 1885; Bristol Times and Mirror, 3 Dec. 1885; Gloucesterjournal, 5 Dec. 1885. 2’D1610/X27: Harford to Codrington, 5, 22, 29 May 1886. D1610/X27: Harford to Codrington, 23 Dec. 1885; Gloucestershire Chronicle, 6, 13 Mar. 1886. Political L$ in Late Victorian Britain: The Consewafives in Thornbury 203 Home Rule Bill, enabled the Conservatives to launch a vigorous campaign in more auspicious circumstances. During the year, ‘over 20,000 political leaflets and other printed matter’ were distributed throughout the constituency, and around 50 copies of the Conservative weekly newspapers, The People and England, were ‘circulated in the public houses in the most Liberal district^'.^^ Plunkett’s address contained blunt warnings about the serious economic consequences of home rule, with predictions that it would ‘cause all capital to fly from Ireland’ and that Irish labourers would consequently ‘swarm over to England’, forcing down wages and increasing the poor rate. At the same time, he argued that an Irish parliament was likely to impose heavy tariffs on British goods. Playing on the electorate’s sense of national pride, wounded by the home rule agitation, he declared that ‘the laws that have made Old England the freest and mightiest nation on the earth’ should be enforced in Ireland, and he claimed to represent ‘the party of repression Of crime, not the party of surrender to crime’. Placards were displayed reading ‘Vote for Plunkett and Old England’, while another depicted the expulsion of the loyal Ulster Protestants from Ireland by the nationalist leader, ‘King Parne11’.24 Plunkett had told Codrington that ‘I think we ought to win this time’, but his victory over Howard, by 4,935 votes to 4,054, a majority of 881, was more than either side had predicted; 8,989 votes were cast (excluding 37 spoilt papers), a creditable turnout of 79.3 per cent on the old register. Newspaper impressions point to the conclusion that the Conservatives obtained heavy majorities of three to one or more in rural districts such as Chipping Sodbury and Henbury, and a ‘fairly good’ majority in Thornbury, but that the Liberal vote remained solid in its southern strongholds. Published details of the polling in individual districts indeed show above average turnouts in the areas bordering on Bristol, reaching 83 per cent at Oldland and 85 per cent at K i n g s ~ o o d . ~ ~ In a post-election speech defining his political creed, Plunkett maintained that ‘he was not a Tory, because, like the ichthyusaurus, that race was dead and gone; but he was a Conservative’, and they would show that they ‘were not the enemies of the people’. He later endorsed Lord Randolph Churchill’s ‘Dartford Programme’ for reform.26 The election contest in 1892 was widely expected to be a close-run affair. In succession to Plunkett, the Conservatives brought forward Edward Colston of Roundway Park, Wiltshire, a descendant of the celebrated seventeenth-century Bristol philanthropist. Howard, attempting to regain the seat, gave his ‘general assent’ to the National Liberal Federation’s ‘Newcastle Programme’, promulgated the previous autumn, and his personal platform reflected the radicalisation of party policy. He specifically advocated disestablishment of the Welsh Church, abolition of plural voting, local option, compulsory powers of land purchase for allotments and smallholdings, a statutory eight-hour day for miners and some provision of old age pensions.” Colston retorted that Liberal promises made at Newcastle were ‘not 23 D1610/X29: Annual Report, 1886. 24 Gloucesterjournal, 26 June 1886; Bristol Times and Mirror, 3, 14 July 1886. 25D1610/X23: Plunkett to Codrington, 7 June 1886; Bristol Times and Mirror, 14, 15 July 1886; 26 GloucesterJournal, 7 Aug. 1886; Gloucestershire Chronicle, 23 Oct. 1886. 27 Gloucerterjououmal, 2 July 1892. GloucesterJournal, 17 July 1886; Gloucerterrhire Chronicle, 17 July 1886. 204 T. A. Jenkins worth the paper on which they were written’, as Gladstone had made it clear that home rule remained his priority. By contrast, the firm policies to preserve the empire and restore peace to Ireland, pursued by Salisbury’s Conservative government since 1886, had allowed ‘practical attention’ to be given ‘to the wants and requirements of the great wage earning classes’. Colston pointed to local government reform, free education, mines and factories legislation, and provisions for allotments and smallholdings, to prove his case. While his speeches were noted for their ‘candidness’ in rejecting calls for a miners’ eight hour bill, there was the slightest of nods towards the new social politics in his willingness to support a judicious reform of the Poor Law, so that the ‘deserving poor’ might be treated separately fiom the ‘vicious . . . idle and . . . dissolute’, provided the ‘splendid work’ of the Friendly Societies was not undermined. If the Liberals were returned to power, he warned, Ireland would again be ‘plunged into . . . turmoil’ and ‘the consideration of all social and labour questions in this country will be indefinitely postponed’.28 Colston was privately prepared for a ‘desperate fight’, and concern was expressed that the Conservatives might suffer from ‘many of their voters being away on their holidays’,29 but in the event he held the seat by 5,202 votes to 4,978, a reduced majority of 224. The registered electorate had risen to 11,867, of whom 10,180 cast their votes (discounting 58 spoilt papers), an exceptionally high turnout of almost 85.3 per cent: the southern districts again tended to poll above the average, with 90 per cent voting at Hanham and 91.5 per cent at Kings~ood.~’ Howard’s appointment as commissioner of woods and forests, in the autumn of 1893, created new problems for the Liberals, who lacked a suitable local repla~ement.~‘ It was only shortly before the dissolution of parliament in June 1895 that Arthur Acland Allen, the son of a late proprietor of the ManChester Guardian, was drafted in from outside. Nevertheless, Marsh feared that he would be a troublesome opponent, ready to pledge himself to anything in return for Allen endorsed the Liberal leader, Lord Rosebery’s, call for reform of the house of lords, which he regarded as an essential preliminary to the enactment of the tradtional Liberal programme. He appealed specifically to labour interests by supporting the payment of M.P.s, one man one vote (also promising not to oppose the equalization of voting rights for men and women), a miners’ eight hour bill, nationalization of mineral royalties, a comprehensive employers’ liability measure and pensions for the ‘deserving poor’.33 Colston, for his part, denounced the Liberals for seeking to ‘mutilate or destroy’ ancient institutions that had served the nation well, such as the house of lords, which had ‘precisely fulfilled its constitutional function’ by rejecting the second Home Rule BilI of 1893. Moreover, the Liberals’ obsession with ‘revolutionary measures’ 28 Brisfol Mercury, 4, 11 July 1892; Gloucestershire Chronicle, 9 July 1892; Bristol Emes and Mirror, 13 July 1892. 29 D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 11 July 1892; Bristol Times and Mirror, 13 July 1892. Unreliable canvassing data added to the difficulty of predicting election results: D1610/X29: a canvassing return from 1892, calculated that the Conservatives must have received 834 false promises from voters. 3” Bristol Mercury, 13 July 1892; Gloucestershire Chronicle, 16 July 1892. 31 D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 26 Dec. 1893. 32 Ibid.: Marsh to Codrington, 25 June 1895. Bristol Mercury, 1, 5, 8, 12, 18 July 1895. Political Life in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury 205 was diverting attention from other ‘pressing questions’ with whch the people were more concerned. He therefore looked forward to the new Salisbury administration restoring business confidence, building a strong navy, pursuing a ‘forward colonial policy’, extendmg local government to Ireland and providing rate relief for agriculture. In an interesting sign of the extent to which the new social reform agenda was takmg hold, he also advocated measures to promote conciliation in industrial disputes, extend the Factory Acts, deal with the issue of workmen’s compensation, facilitate home ownership for working men and make ‘better provision for the aged poor’. He struck another populist note by dismissing Sir William Harcourt’s Local Veto Bill as ‘an insidious attempt to close public houses and . . . interfere with the liberties of the working A remark allegedly made by Allen, that Conservative working men were ‘fools and idiots’, conveyed an unfortunate sense of arrogant elitism, and it prompted some suitable doggerel verse: ‘Fools and idiots’, ‘fools and idiots’, give us power we implore; Vote to scuttle, and beg pardon, in the face of every foe. Vote to ruin every interest, vote to lower England’s fame, Vote to run away from all men, never heeding English shame. ‘Fools and idiots’ ‘fools and idiots’, ‘fools and idiots’, vote once more. Vote that Ireland’s wants, not England’s, shall be always to the fore. Vote that factions, fads and violence shall prevail on every hand; Vote that pillage, fraud and scheming shall control the Fatherland.35 Colston’s majority of 1,089 votes - 5,727 to 4,638 - exceeded Conservative hopes. Of the 12,195 registered voters, 10,365 exercised their right (discounting 47 spoilt papers), a turnout of almost 85 per cent. Once more, some of the highest turnouts were in the Liberal areas, with approximately 90 per cent voting in Kingswood, Oldland and Soundwell, which confirms the point that Conservative successes in this constituency cannot be attributed merely to Liberal voter apathy.36 In the autumn of 1900 the Thornbury Liberals, like many others, were unprepared for the ‘Khaki election’, held while the Boer War continued in South Africa. It appears that a meeting of ‘trade unionists and socialists’ at Staple Hill considered nominating J. H. Alpass, a member of the Independent Labour Party, but according to a Liberal newspaper this idea was rejected as there was ‘far from an unanimous desire for a labour candidate on the part of the working-class ele~torate’.~’ Thornbury therefore became one of the 138 seats won by the Conservatives without a contest. Colston’s campaign stressed the importance of re-electing Salisbury’s government which, unlike the opposition, was united in its determination to ‘uphold British supremacy in South Africa and see this matter through’, and which had ‘welded the 34 Brisfol Times and Minor, 11 July 1895; Brirfol Mercury, 17 July 1895. P. Readman, ‘The 1895 General Election and Political Change in Late-Victorian Britain’, HistoricalJournal, XLII (1999). 467-93, emphasizes the importance of social reform in the platform of many Conservative candidates. 35 Bristol Mercury, 24 July 1895. 36 Ibid., 25 July 1895. See J. Lawrence and J. Elliott, ‘Parliamentary Election Results Reconsidered: An Analysis of Borough Elections, 1885-1910’, ante, XVI (1997), 18-28, for further evidence of turnout in Conservative seats. 37 Gloucesterjoumal, 29 Sept. 1900. 206 T. A. Jenkins empire together in a way . . . never . . . accomplished before’. He also commended the ‘essentially sober, useful and practical’ measures of social reform implemented since 1895, such as the act to help working men buy their own homes and thereby ‘secure a stake in the country’. On the outstanding issue of old age pensions, though, he admitted that he had ‘never been greatly in love with them’ and preferred to make a distinction between the ‘deserving and n~n-deserving’.~’ Following Colston’s return, Codrington publicly congratulated him on having converted the seat from ‘an uncertain one into a stronghold of Con~ervatism’.~~ 2 In the evolving political world pushed forward by the third Reform Act, the increasing demands made upon M.P.s were turning a parliamentary career into much more of a full time occupation. Partisan conflict in the house of commons was so firmly established, by the late-l880s, that M.P.s were subject to stricter discipline from their leaders and whps, who expected constant and loyal attendance. Indeed, members sometimes resembled conscript troops in a system of parliamentary trench warfare.40 This trend was reinforced by the equally strong partisan spirit manifested in the constituencies, even substantially rural ones like Thornbury, where the concomitant desire for participation and recognition meant that M.P.s were required to pay a continuous, flattering attention to the needs and opinions of the new mass electorate. Ultimately, the resulting strains proved intolerably oppressive for P l~nket t ,~’ and he gave way to a more dedicated, professional politician. Late Victorian M.P.s were well aware that their voting records were reported in the local press, almost in the form of league tables, and closely scrutinised by their constituent^.^^ Regardless of frequent poor health, Plunkett knew that he had to be seen to be supporting the Conservative government in major divisions. In March 1890, for instance, he ignored doctor’s orders and attended the ‘vital division’ on the Parnell commission, driving from Sevenoaks to Westminster ‘in a close carriage . . . although I was in bed till 3 next afternoon in con~equence’.~~ Beyond this, however, he felt the absurdity of a culture that made Members ‘ambitious of voting on every question as if each . . . were a perfect encyclopedia of knowledge’. To illustrate his point he recalled how, during his first parliamentary session we divided seven times on the Sutton [Surrey] waterworks bill, the local member was away, ill, and the Irish members talked before every division. I believe I was 38 Bristol Times and Mirror, 2, 4, 5 Oct. 1900. See P. Readman, ‘The Conservative Party, Patriotism, and j9 Gloucestershire Chronicle, 6 Oct. 1900. 4” T.A. Jenkins, Parliament, Party and Politics in Victorian Britain (Manchester, 1996), pp. 81-5, 111-41. 4’ He succeeded his father as Lord Dunsany in February 1889, but I shall refer to him throughout as 42 E.g. Gloucestershire Chronicle, 25 June 1892; D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 3 Feb. 1894, expressed 43 D1610/X23: Plunkett to Codrington, 13 Mar. 1890. British Politics: The Case of the General Election of 1900’,Journal ofBritish Studies, XL (2001), 107-45. Plunkett to avoid confusion. concern that Thornbury’s member had the lowest voting figure of any Gloucestenhire M.P. Political Lfe in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury 207 about the only member in the House who thoroughly knew the district and I doubt whether one tenth of the speeches came from members who even knew where Sutton was, and certainly in each division 80 per cent of those who divided had not heard the debate.44 Constituency correspondence imposed an additional burden of work. In February 1888 Plunkett claimed that he received an average of 100 Thornbury letters each week, ‘some of them very craftily designed’ and ‘evidently intended to catch me’, and he complained on one occasion that ‘three times this week, my correspondence after the debauched hours the House has been indulging in, has only allowed me to crawl into bed at 3 a.m’. It was impossible, he told Codrington, to imagine the ‘ceaseless worry’ given by importunate correspondence, which ‘haunts me day and night’. He faced an ‘interminable stream of begging letters’, requesting subscriptions for innumerable good causes (his replies were seldom acknowledged), while the disposal of a single piece of local patronage at Kingswood prompted a bombardment of 300 letters.45 The greatest problem of all was how to reconcile the demands of parliamentary attendance with the regular appearances in Thornbury that Plunkett’s supporters expected of him. He advised Codrington in 1889 that it was impossible for him to visit the constituency ‘more than say 30 times a year’.46 When parliament was in session, pairs could not always be obtained for important divisions, and the government whips would not accept constituency engagements as an excuse for n~n-attendance.~~ Flying visits were sometimes arranged: ‘I was in the House Monday from 3 till 8 then caught the mail, got to bed [in Bristol] after 1, got to Chipping Sodbury about 11.45, in time to see the vast majority of the farmers off to the sale at Yate . . . [after a public meeting] . . . I was in the House again by 9.’48 But the preferred solution was to conduct political tours during the recess, and Plunkett dutifully spent several weeks in Thornbury in the winters of 1886 and 1887.49 From 1888 onwards, however, a succession of problems led to mounting local dissatisfaction with the M.P. and finally to accusations that he was fatally neglecting the constituency. Early that year a heart complaint forced him to take a long sea voyage, and subsequent plans for a compensatory political tour were continually delayed owing to his father’s final, lingering illness.50 Marsh’s impatience was embarrassingly disclosed when some indiscreet remarks he had made disparaging Plunkett found their way into a Liberal ne~spaper .~’ By the spring of 1889, Codrington was compelled to offer a tactful warning that public meetings were essential in order to counteract the campaign by Howard, who was ‘all over the division perpetually . . . often with his wife, and is 44 Ibid.: Plunkett to Codrington, 1 Apr. 1891. 4s Ibid.: Plunkett to Codrington, 15 Feb. 1888, n.d. [spring 18891, 14 July 1891. 4h Ibid.: Plunkett to Codrington, n.d. [spring 18891. 47 Ibid.: Plunkett to Codrington, 24 July 1889, 7 June 1890. 4* Ibid.: Plunkett to Codrington, 24 Nov. 1888. 49D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 28 Mar. 1887; D1610/X23: Plunkett to Codrington, 22 50 D1610/X23: Plunkett to Codrington, 15 Feb., 31 Aug. 1888; D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, ” D1610/X23: Codrington to Plunkett, 18 Nov. 1888. Nov. 1887. 22 Feb. 1889. 208 T. A.]enkins undoubtedly gaining a very strong hold’.52 Plunkett nevertheless postponed a summer tour, insisting that family and estate matters must take priority over meetings that were ‘sometimes scantily attended’. He proposed to summon a general meeting of the association in the autumn, to discuss how much constituency work he should be expected to undertake, although Codrington discouraged this idea, fearing that ‘the other party would rejoice and make a good deal of Before the matter could be resolved, illness struck again and Plunkett departed on a Mediterranean holiday for four months, during which time he suffered a bizarre series of ailments possibly unique to medlcal hi~tory.’~ Shortly after his return to England, in March 1890, Plunkett informed Codrington of his intention to retire at the next general election, explaining that his duties as a county M.P. meant that he was in danger of becoming an ‘absentee Irish landlord’. Only a local man, in his opinion, could satisfjr the demands of the con~tituency.~~ Harford and others privately welcomed Plunkett’s decision, convinced as they were that he had ‘thrown away the game entirely by mere want of tact and attention’ and had no chance of re-election. Indeed, it was hoped that his departure might infuse new spirit into the party, as he had ‘for some time . . . been a damper to all enthusiasm and caused . . . splits in the camp’.56 An immediate search produced two possible candidates: Captain Middleton, the central party agent, responded to a request for advice by suggesting Thomas Bucknill, Q.C., while Codrington sounded out Edward Colston, whose 4,000 acres in Gloucestershire included a share in the Coalpit Heath colliery.” It is clear that the over-riding considerations in the selection were, as Codrington put it to Harford, tfinancial ability’ and a willingness to devote time to cultivating the constituency. Ackers and Plunkett had paid all their election expenses, which were expected to amount to between A1,300 and A1,500 next time, but it was recognized that in Thornbury’s neglected state the party had to offer some financial assistance. Bucknill was willing to give A100 per annum for registration expenses and A700 for the election itself, leaving a similar sum to be raised locally, whereas Colston offered the same subsidy for registration as Ackers had provided, A50 per annum, and set a limit of A1,200 on his election expendi t~re .~~ Proximity also worked in Colston’s favour, and Harford expressed what was probably a generally held fear that Bucknill might ‘contest the division entirely with a view to his own political advancement’ and prove incapable of ‘satisfjring the often unreasonable requirements 52 Ibid.: Codrington to Plunkett, 11 Apr. 1889. 53 Ibid.: Plunkett to Codrington, 10, 24 July 1889, Codrington to Plunkett, 30 July 1889. 54 Ibid.: Plunkett to Codrington, 23 Nov. 1889, 13 Mar. 1890. The original diagnosis was ‘suppressed gout’, but this was later changed to Bright’s disease. During the sea voyage he contracted typhoid fever, which miraculously ‘removed the Bright’s disease altogether’, although he was later ‘racked with neuralgia owing to my hair coming off after the typhoid’. 55 Ibid.: Plunkett to Codrington, 19 Mar., 5, 28 Apr. 1890. He returned to parliament in 1893 as an Irish representative peer but died in 1899, aged 46. 56 D1610/X27: Harford to Codrington, 22, 26 Mar. 1890, Beaufort to Codrington, 20 Mar. 1890. 57 D16101X28: Middleton to Codrington, 16 Apr. 1890; D1610/X23: Codrington to Colston, 22, 27 Apr. 1890. 58D1610/X27: Codrington to Harford, 19 Apr. 1890, Harford to Codrington, 21 Apr. 1890; D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 10,27 May 1890; D1610/X29: Annual Reports, 1886, 1894, show the annual registration expenses rising from around 6 5 8 to 685. Political Liji in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury 209 of the constituents’. Consequently, a meeting of the executive committee in late May voted ‘by a large majority’ in favour of C ~ l s t o n . ~ ~ Bucknill was in fact returned for the Epsom division of Surrey in 1892, but, as if to prove Harford’s point, he resigned seven years later on becoming a high court judge. There was no doubt that Colston faced a formidable task in attempting to retain the Thornbury seat, for as Beaufort observed, ‘His adversary is indefatigable. He has never let up since the election of 1886 and is always canvassing. He goes to every chapel, every tea meeting and every gathering in the constituency.’60 Colston made it known at once that he intended to ‘carry on a systematic campaign’, designed to recover lost ground, and this continued for almost two years until the general election. Personal visits to influential people, public dinners and formal political meetings filled the spring and autumn months, while in the summer a long round of appearances at village fetes, bazaars, flower and cattle shows was believed to be the most effective strategy. Such was the personal cost of obtaining a parliamentary seat towards the end of the nineteenth century.61 3 Codrington’s papers are a rich source of information concerning the financial affairs, organizational methods and electioneering activities of the Thornbury Conservative Association. In what was, essentially, a marginal Conservative seat, the party could never afford to relax its efforts, particularly in the critical sphere of registration, on which the outcome of elections was understood primarily to depend.62 The picture that consequently emerges is one of a local association which, for all its achevements, remained conscious of the fragility of its position and was subject to periodic alarms whenever the forces of Liberalism showed signs of regrouping. The crucial importance of voter registration was highlighted by the outcome of the revision court proceedings in October 1885, when the Liberals achieved a net gain of 217-a figure that exceeded their subsequent election majority. Some of these gains had occurred, predictably enough, in the southern polling dstricts, and included 22 at Oldland, 12 each at Kingswood and Mangotsfield, and nine at Hanham, but the Liberals had also made advances in rural and residential areas, gaining 16 each at Thornbury and Chipping Sodbury, 14 at Hawkesbury and nine at Westbury-on-Trym. Marsh was well aware that Codrington blamed him for the loss of the election and had opposed his reappointment as party secretary, almost to the point of re~ignat ion.~~ Having captured the seat in 1886, therefore, steady attention was given by the Conservatives to the autumn revisions in order to prevent another 5yD1610/X27: Harford to Codrington, 30 Apr. 1890; D1610/X23: Codrington to Colston, 2 June 1890. D1610/X27: Beaufort to Codrington, 8 June 1890. ‘l D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 9 June, 29 Sept., 12 Oct., 15 Nov. 1890: 23 Jan., 3 Mar., 22 June, 14 July 1891: 3 Feb., 12 Mar. 1892; D16101X24: Marsh to Codrington, 22 Aug. 1892, shows that the election costs were only A1.134 19s. 10d. 62 D1610/X27: Harford to Codrington, 5 May 1890; D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 17 July 1892. 63 Glouresferloumal, 10 Oct. 1885: D1610IX27: Codrington to Harford, 14 Feb., 4 Mar., 9 Apr. 1886. 210 T. A.]enkins reverse. Marsh scored a notable triumph in October 1886, when he sustained 46 out of 54 occupancy claims made on behalf of officers and men living in married quarters at the Horfield army barracks, Westbury-on-Trym, who were sometimes absent on Further, quiet progress was made over the next few years, with Marsh reporting modest net gains of 30 to 40 votes each autumn.65 However, there was concern at the end of 1890 that Howard was ‘stirring himself in a dispute at Wick, where the local sanitary authority had ignored an application from labourers wanting allotments. Colston, who had visited the area and been made aware that this issue ‘meant 30 or 40 votes to us’, deplored the ‘suicidal’ attitude of landowners in failing to act spontaneously when the demand for allotments existed, and he looked to the board of guardians for action in the matter. 66 Shortly afterwards, disturbing news came from Horfield that the solders were ‘as wild and savage as possible against the . . . government’, which had docked half of their allowances, and that they were threatening to ‘vote radical to a man’. Howard was said to be ‘making capital’ out of the situation, aided by certain non-commissioned officers who were ‘teetotallers’, and Marsh, fearing the loss of 80 votes, alerted Middleton at Central Office to the need to arrange some form of redress. In the meantime, he was ‘trying to get a pensioner to work the men for us’. While the soldiers were thought likely to remain sound provided ‘Home Rule is made the principal question at the next election’, Marsh worried that if ‘the labour question is . . , brought to the front in this division by the Liberals . . . the result may be as in 1885’.67 Despite these occasional alarms, the Conservatives continued to gain ground on the registration, and the 1891 revision was ‘very successful all through’, yielding a net gain of about 80 votes.68 Prior to the 1892 election, steps were also taken to strengthen certain unsatisfactory district associations. For instance, Marsh complained that Westbury-on-Trym ‘should be a Conservative stronghold’ but had only polled ‘about half and half on the last occasion, and a new chairman was therefore installed.69 Special measures were being adopted at this time to build Conservative support in the unpromising southern portion of the constituency. Privately, Conservative leaders would have been glad to see areas like Kingswood and Mangotsfield attached to Bristol, for electoral purposes,” but in the circumstances they had to strive to make at least some inroads into these increasingly populous Liberal strongholds. Plunkett, in 1886, had been prepared to ‘take the bull by the horns’ and campaign in Kingswood and other ‘hostile districts’, but his meetings became increasingly stormy, he was often unable to obtain a hearing, and the windows of his supporters at Kingswood were 64 Bristol Times and Mirror, 23 Oct 1886. 65 D16101X24: Marsh to Codrington, 29 Oct. 1887, 17 Oct. 1888,7 Oct. 1889; see the patchy reports 66D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 8 Dec. 1890; D1610/X23, Colston to Codrington, 15 Jan., 22 O7 D1610/X24: Henry Meade King to Marsh [May 18911, Marsh to Codrington, 19 May, 17 June 1891. 68 Ibid.: Marsh to Codrington, 17 Oct. 1891. 69 Ibid.: Marsh to Codrington, 26 Apr. 1891, 2 Feb. 1892. 70D1610/X27: T. Seymour to Codrington, 31 May 1891. in the Bristol Times and Mirror, 15 Oct. 1887, 28 Sept. 1889, 27 Sept. 1890. June 1891. Political L i j in Late Victorian Britain: The Conseruativer in Thornbury 21 1 smashed on election night.71 Within a few years, however, there were signs of gradual progress, especially at Kingswood, where Marsh was encouraged by the 1890 revision proceedings to believe that ‘there is not that bitter feeling amongst the radicals that used to exist’.72 Several public meetings were held there, one of which, addressed by the leading Conservative Walter Long, ‘went off capitally’ according to C ~ l s t o n . ~ ~ On local advice, care was taken to distribute leaflets emphasizing the party’s commitment to free trade.74 In 1891 the practice was established of inviting members of the Kingswood Association to an annual entertainment, usually held at Dodington Park, which Colston saw in retrospect as marking a turning point in the party’s fortunes in that With the organization in better shape under a new chairman, the solicitor Charles Wasbrough, and with over 100 members recruited, the Thornbury Association’s annual report for 1892 boasted of a ‘determined advance of Unionist principles’ at K i n g s ~ o o d . ~ ~ It was recognized, none the less, that the industrial districts would continue to be natural opposition territory, and after a boisterous reception at Kingswood during the 1892 election campaign Colston doubted the wisdom of attempting another appearance, concluding that ‘we should only be mobbed, and expose our weakness’. He was convinced of the expediency of ‘quiet working in these radical districts’, and claimed that his friends at Mangotsfield had asked him not to speak there, as they feared it would ‘undo the good they were doing, by stirring-up bad feeling’.77 Polling reports in a Conservative newspaper suggest that party workers in Kingswood, Oldland, Hanham and elsewhere knew that they were ‘playing an uphill game’, but that they were fairly pleased with the results they managed to achieve: even so, the Liberal majorities in these areas were estimated to be of the order of three or four to one.78 In many respects the years between 1892 and 1895, which the Conservative party nationally spent in opposition, were anxious ones for the Thornbury Association. Finance became a recumng problem at this time, as a mixture of complacency and the effects of agricultural depression made income from subscriptions highly erratic. Only L195 7s. 6d. was raised in 1892, and expenditure of A261 18s. 0td. in that election year wiped out earlier balances and left A18 11s. owing to the trea~urer.’~ Marsh warned Codrington that unless the subscription list could be expanded, ‘it will be quite impossible to carry on the work of the Association properly after this 71 D16101X23: Plunkett to Codrington, 7 June 1886; GloucesterJoumal, 3,10, 17 July 1886; Gloucestershire 72 D1610IX24: Marsh to Codrington, 5 Oct. 1890. 73 DlhlO/X23: Colston to Codrington, 22 June 1891,3 Feb. 1892. 74 D1610/X27: W. H. Atchley to Codrington, 2 Jan. 1891. D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 2 Feb. 1892, states that when he asked Central Ofice for 1,000 ‘fair trade’ leaflets to circulate at Hanham, ‘they replied they had none and did not recommend their circulation except under special circumstances’. 75D1610/X24: Codrington to Marsh, 18 Feb. 1891; D1610/X27: A. Amos to Codrington, 31 July 1894; D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 9 May 1904. 76D1610/X29: Annual Report, 1892. The Bn’stol Times and Mirror, 26 Sept. 1891, reported that the Conservatives had done well in the revisions for Hanham and Oldland, considering their ‘radical complexion’. Chronicle, 17 July 1886. 77D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 5 July 1892. 78 Bristol Times and Minor, 13 July 1892. 79 D1610/X29: Annual Report, 1892. 212 T. AJenkins year’. Printed circulars were sent out appealing for additional contributions, which temporarily had the desired effect, as A289 7s. was subscribed in 1893, enough to clear all debts and expenses and leave a small balance. However, the next year income fell back to A225 0s. 54d. and the treasurer was owed A12 15s.*’ In the spring of 1895 Colston expressed concern that the association’s finances were ‘in a very bad way’, and he and Codrington shared the task of writing private letters to selected individuals requesting their support, although it was acknowledged that there were limits to what could be expected given ‘the awful times on which landlords have fallen’. No doubt the general election a few months later helped to focus many minds, and subscriptions of Q48 14s. 6d. temporarily restored the accounts to the black.*l So narrow was the Conservatives’ margin of victory in 1892 that organizational matters thereafter assumed even greater significance. In the autumn of that year, Marsh reported that ‘the last election seems to have put new life into the Liberal party’, which had spent ‘a lot of money in forming . . . clubs &c’, and the following summer he discovered that the Women’s Liberal Federation had taken the task of re-organization in hand, with plans to place ‘women secretaries in all the polling districts’.82 More ominously still, in the spring of 1893 the Liberals embarked upon a bold strategy of invading the Conservatives’ rural strongholds, employing a farmer’s son named Smith as a ‘missionary’ to move about among the agricultural labourers. By July, Marsh was seriously alarmed at the impact this initiative was having in the Badminton, Hawkesbury, Marshfield, Pucklechurch and Chipping Sodbury districts: I find that great efforts are being made by the Radicals on the hills to set the labouring class against us . . . they are holding cottage meetings and personal conversation with voters. Mr Howard is busy in getting about the district. In the present depressed times hundreds are out of employ and found upon the highways and ready to listen to any humbug which may be told them. Countermeasures were essential, he argued, if the seat was not to be lost at the next election.83 Colston agreed that ‘we must fight our opponents with their own weapons’ and was wding to help pay for a Conservative missionary, although the search for a suitable man revealed differences of approach between the local party and Central Ofice. Whereas Marsh felt that an unaccredited agent acting as a ‘mole’ would be preferable, Captain Middleton strongly argued that it was ‘all important that our men should see someone openly championing their cause’, since Conservative working men tended to be ‘retiring and quiet’.84 Central Ofice supplied a ‘political working man missionary’, W.E. Edwards, who was engaged at intervals during the *” Ibid.: Annual Reports, 1893-4; D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 13 Nov. 1892, circular letter, *’ D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 30 Apr. (two letters), 31 May 1895; D1610/X29: Annual 82 D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 13 Nov. 1892,27 Aug. 1893. *‘ Ibid.: Marsh to Codrington, 13 May, 9 July 1893; D1610/X27: Codrington to Beaufort, 17 July 1893, noted that the Liberals were targeting Hawkesbury, where the new vicar, Mr Moseley, was ‘a declared radical and one of these “temperance” men’. H4 D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 19 July 1893; D1610/X28: Codrington to Middleton, 1 A u ~ . 1893, Middleton to Codrington, 2 Aug. 1893. 22 Feb. 1893. Report, 1895. Political L$ in Late Victorian Britain: T h e Conservatives in Thornbury 213 summer and autumn, and Marsh was keen to employ him for longer.*5 The autumn revision proceedings turned out better than expected, but Marsh noted that Smith had done ‘considerable . . . harm’ at Hawkesbury and Chipping Sodbury, by supplying ‘wonderfully correct’ information for claims and objections, and in the latter district 25 Conservative votes were lost from the register.*6 Early in 1894 an appeal was launched for a special missionary hnd, which raised L86 7s. from 20 subscribers, falling some way short of the ,El50 target that would have permitted a man to be engaged for a whole year. Two working men were given trials and rejected as unsuitable, but, with the executive committee instructing Marsh to employ a missionary for as long as funds lasted, the services of the esteemed Edwards were again secured that autumn and the following spring, until he was suddenly recalled by Central Ofice for work in Mid-Norfolk.*’ Marsh was convinced that Edwards had ‘done us a vast amount of good among the working men and [he] reports very favourably of these districts generally’.** Additional assistance was forthcoming from a number of external sources, and the summer and autumn months of 1893 must have been an unusually lively time in the villages and hghways of South Gloucestershire. The National Union’s ‘Salisbury Van’, equipped with magic lanterns and a staff of lecturers, toured the endangered hill districts; 11 missionaries from the Ulster Loyalists Union spent a week holding meetings in various parts of the constituency, and were apparently well received; the National Trade Defence Fund‘s Van, the ‘Fair Play’, visited as many villages as possible, and the Liberal Unionist Association sent an agent, Mr Thomas, to make house-calls on Marsh still had misgivings about some of the methods employed by these outsiders, complaining that the Salisbury Van was rushing through its hdl tour and making little individual contact with voters, and later observing that ‘the men supplied by Central Ofice think of little else but holding meetings and spouting, which I am sure does not do much good-in this division quiet steady mission work is what is wanted’.’’ In fact, the Thombury Association had decided by this time that the formation of village committees within each district offered the best means of countering Liberal influence, but this was inevitably going to be a long-term project, extending beyond the next general election. According to the 1895 annual report, committees had been set up in six polling districts and were being formed in one more; by 1896, on the other hand, half of the 26 districts had them.” Initiatives such as these could not conceal a state of nervousness in Conservative circles early in 1895, which was not eased by a report in The Times claiming that Thombury was ‘deficient in up-to-date organisation’ and that Colston’s seat could not be considered safe. Marsh submitted a wish-list of improvements, particularly at the village level, but Codrington ruled that the association was doing all it possibly ” D16101X24: Marsh to Codrington, 20 Aug., 29 Oct. 1893; D1610/X29: Annual Report, 1893. 86 D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 7 Oct. 1893, 3 Feb. 1894. 87 Ibid.: circular letter, 17 Feb. 1894, Marsh to Codrington, 14, 24 Oct., 17 Nov. 1894; D1610/X29: ’’ D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 14 Oct. 1894. 89 Ibid.: Marsh to Codrington, 9, 21 Oct. 1893; D1610/X29: Annual Report, 1893. 9” D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 11 July, 7 Oct. 1893. 9’ D1610/X27: Harford to Codnngton, 27 Aug. 1893; D1610/X29: Annual Reports, 1894-6. Annual Report, 1894; D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 31 May 1895. 214 T. A.]enkins could with the resources available, apart from allowing Marsh to hire a conveyance for travel around the const i tuen~y.~~ Contrary to the appearance of a comfortable election victory that summer, energetic efforts were in fact required to mobilize fully the traditional sources of Conservative strength. Fortunately, the party was ‘liberally supplied with vehicles’, borrowed from supporters and used to convey voters, especially the out-voters, to the poll. W.E. Budgett, who had secured the use of ‘about 70’ carriages in the Stoke Bishop area, also arranged for a squadron of 50 cyclists to tour the constituency, assuring Codrington that they were ‘nearly all gentlemen who have been working in the Bristol divisions’. In the days immediately before polling, as the Liberal Bristol Mercury observed with dismay, the out-voters ‘simply swarmed into the division’. There was still what a Conservative paper described as an ‘inexplicable’ feeling, on election morning, that the outcome might not be as favourable as canvassing returns predicted, and though these doubts were largely dispelled once voting commenced, the Liberals claimed to have made headway in the Thornbury and Chipping Sodbury districts.93 The small contribution made to the Conservative victory in 1895 by the industrial areas reflected the party’s ongoing efforts to build on its recent gains in this part of the constituency, which now accounted for some 42 per cent of the ele~torate.‘~ A Conservative working men’s club with a reading room was opened at Kingswood in 1893, but local officials were soon pressing for financial assistance in order to acquire larger premises and purchase a billiard table. Only by offering such facilities could they hope to counteract the appeal of a similarly equipped Liberal club, which was ‘filching our men’, and thus ‘retain our present hold upon the neighbourhood’. Colston promised to give A10 and five guineas per annum, and on Marsh‘s recommendation the association offered an annual subsidy of Al0: the ‘few workers’ at Kingswood, he observed, were ‘worthy of all the assistance we can give them’, as it was ‘the one place which wdl in future either win or lose us the seat’.95 In Mangotsfield, where friction existed between the organizations in the three recently created polling districts, Mangotsfield, Downend and Soundwell, it was decided to amalgamate them under one president in the hope of improving their effectivene~s.’~ Evidence from the 1895 election campaign indicates that the Conservatives may at last have reaped some reward for their labours, Colston was reportedly ‘treated with the utmost friendliness’ in all the ‘localities where rachcalism predominates’, such was his ‘personal popularity’. At Mangotsfield, Downend, Soundwell and Hanham, the party claimed to have achieved ‘better results . . . than at any previous election’. In Pucklechurch, a district with a significant mining population, it was thought that the Conservatives might even have obtained a majority of the votes cast, proving that ‘a 92 The Times, 11 Feb. 1895; D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 20 Feb. 1895, Codrington to Marsh, 93 Briifol Mercury, 22 July 1895; Brisfol Times and Mirror, 24 July 1895; D1610/X27: Budgett to 94 Brisfol Mercury, 25 July 1895. 95 D1610/X29: Annual Report, 1893; D1610/X27: Wasbrough to Codrington, 27 Dec. 1893,27 Feb. [1894], Amos to Codrington, 6Jan. 1894; D16101X24: Marsh to Codrington, 5Jan. 1893 [sic 18941, 27 Feb. 1894; D1610/X25: Thurston to Codrington, 13 Dec. 1900, confirms the subsidy arrangement. 21 Feb. 1895. Codrington, 22July 1895. 96D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 29 Jan., 26 Feb. 1893. Political L i j in Late Victorian Bn’tain: The Conservatives in Thornbury 215 change has come over the place’. The crowd gathered at Chipping Sodbury to hear the declaration of the poll witnessed a novel sight when a four-horsed break entered the main street carrying ‘a party of Kingswood voters, all wearing blue favours’, and Colston was delighted to receive several congratulatory letters from working men.” I t remained the sober reality that the Liberals enjoyed overwhelming support in the south of the constituency (according to Marsh, Soundwell was ‘the most solid against us’, with no more than 85 or 90 Conservative votes out of 650 on the register), and the secretary’s simple message was that ‘we must keep going on at [Soundwell] Kingswood, Hanham, Oldland and Downend, as these are the growing districts and require more attention than any others’.98 Immediately after the 1895 contest the Liberals renewed their challenge in earnest, re-structuring their organization along Conservative lines and raising enough money to pay their secretary 4300 per a n n ~ m . ~ ~ The following summer Marsh learned that they planned to ‘enter wholesale objections to our ownership voters on the register with the hope of getting off between 500 and 1,000 votes’. Many of these would have been out-voters, whom the Liberals blamed for their election defeats. During the ensuing revision proceedings, the ‘energy displayed and money expended’ by the opposition was unprecedented, in Marsh’s experience, but he went into the court well prepared and managed to ‘upset about 90 per cent of their objections and substantiated 95 per cent of our own claims and objections’. Nevertheless, the disappointed Liberal agent informed him that they were ‘going to make a final effort at the next election to win back the seat’.’”’ There seemed to be a distinct possibility that the Liberals might succeed in their ambition, as the Conservative Association was facing its most serious financial crisis to date. The annual report for 1896 regretfully announced a ‘considerable falling off of subscriptions’ (down to 4206 lOs.), which had ‘caus[ed] the organisation to be much crippled’. With expenditure cut to L184 6s. 7d. , Marsh was confined to performing ‘absolutely necessary work’, neglecting many of the polling districts, while the distribution of leaflets was curtailed and that of free newspapers stopped altogether. Marsh blamed ‘our large majority at the last election’ for the prevailing state of ‘apathy’ among local Conservatives, and Codrington advised Colston that: It appears to be the general opinion that if the organisation is kept up the seat is safe, but the moment that goes down there will be danger.. . I can only say that I can do no more to improve the subscription list . . . If Marsh has to curtail the pecuniary assistance he sends every year to Kingswood I am afraid the result may be serious . . . On the other hand I . . . believe you have a strong hold upon nearly all the districts, and Edwurds tells me you are very popular in most of them. He thought it was ‘useless’ to look to the landed interest for further support, but felt that more might be raised from residential areas near Bristol such as Westbury- on-Trym, Stoke Bishop, Olveston, Henbury and Hambrook, which were ‘certainly 97 Bristul Times and Mirror, 24, 25 July 1895; D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 28 July 1895. 9R Brirtol Mercury, 23, 24 July 1895; D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 10 Aug. 1895. 9y D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 10 Aug. 1895. ’” Ibid.: Marsh to Codrington, 10 Aug., 31 Oct. 1896; Bristol Times and Mirror, 3, 10, 17 Oct. 1896 216 T. A . Jenkins . . . where the money is'.''' Precisely what measures were taken on this occasion is impossible to ascertain, but it is quite likely that another appeal was launched: by 1899 subscriptions had risen to L237 5s. and there was a healthy balance in hand."I2 It was perhaps fortunate for the Conservatives that their opponent's registration initiative of 1896 exhausted itself very quickly, allowing them to consolidate their position. The revision work in 1897 was found to be unusually light, gains were made the following year on the ownership portion of the register, and before the 1900 election lodger claims, 'chiefly for farmer's sons' who were eligible to vote as well as their fathers if the holding was worth A20 per annum, became a priority for Th~rston. ' '~ There was encouraging news from the revision courts in 1899, when the party sustained 13 claims at Downend, 11 at Kingswood and three at Mangotsfield. In the revision completed immediately before the dissolution of parliament in 1900, the Conservatives substantiated 71 new ownership and 19 new lodger claims, and achieved a net gain of 106.'04 Conservative finances prospered sufficiently before the 1900 election for the party to embark upon a very modest venture into the world of press subsidy. Thurston was concerned by the poor coverage given to the constituency in local newspapers, particularly the Bristol titles, while the Dursley Gazette, which had 'a large circulation among the poorer classes', was 'nothing but the organ of the Independent Labour Party'. To counteract t h s malign influence he proposed that a rival paper, the South Gioucestersizire Chronicle, should be offered pecuniary support, in return for which it would be placed 'entirely at the disposal of our executive'. The resulting agreement with the editor involved an initial subsidy of A25, with more to follow if required, so that the paper could be doubled in size and about 100 copies sent each week to public houses in the con~tituency. '~~ It is not known for how long this arrangement continued, and the fact that the election was uncontested of course meant that its efficacy was never tested. 4 In national terms, the late-Victorian Conservative ascendancy might not have occurred without the accession of strength provided by the Liberal Unionists. They had formed themselves into a third party in 1886, to resist the Gladstonian policy of home rule, and gave independent support to Salisbury's administration of 1886-92. A Liberal Unionist Association was set up for the whole of Gloucestershire, and by 1891 it reportedly had 'close on 1,000 members'.'06 Among these were several prominent ''I D16101X29: AnnualReport, 1896; D1610IX24: Marsh to Codnngton, 10Aug. 1896; DlhlWX23: lo' DlhlO/X23: Colston to Codrington, 9 Nov. 1896; D1610/X29: Annual Repon, 1899. Io3 D16101X24: Henry Meade King to Codrington, 9 Oct. 1897; Bristol Times and Minor, 1, 8 Oct. 1898; D1610/X25: Thurston to Codrington, 14 Sept. 1898,6 Sept. 1899, 16 Mar. 1900. I"' Brisrol Times and Minor, 7 , 14 Oct. 1899; D1610/X25: pnnted revision list, 1900. In5D1610/X25: Thurston to Codrington, 20, 27 Nov. 1899; D1610IX27: T.W. Chester Master to '06 Cloircesrershire Clironicle, 10 Oct. 1891. Codrington to Colston. 2 Nov. 1896. Codrington, 25 Feb. 1900. Political L$ in Lute Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury 217 landowners, including the second Baron Fitzhardinge of Berkeley Castle, the fourth Baron Sherborne of Sherborne Park, Sir Wilham Guise of Elmore Court and Sir William Marling of Stonehouse. In Thornbury, the leading Liberal Unionist was the third Earl Ducie, Lord of the Manor of Wickwar, whose seat at Tortworth Court was situated across the border in the Stroud parliamentary division. During the 1886 election campaign several dissident Liberals appeared on Conservative platforms, notably Francis Tagert of Old Sneyd Park, Stoke Bishop (the unsuccessful candidate for Mid-Somerset in 1868), and C. E. A. George of filmondsbury. Indeed, Plunkett claimed to have received promises of support from several hundred former Liberal voters, more than enough to wipe out Howard's majority of 1885.107 It is impossible to quantify the impact of Liberal Unionism, in an age of secret ballots, and such an exercise would in any case have to take account of abstentions by Liberal voters, unwilling to give positive support to another party, as well as the votes of decided Liberal Unionist adherents."' Liberal fragmentation in the late-nineteenth century was a protracted affair which drew in issues other than home rule. In 1895, for instance, it was believed that the 'Church in danger' cry had induced some Liberal voters in Thornbury to stay at home."' On the other hand, the evidence of high turnouts in the industrial districts raises doubts as to whether there was a sizeable Liberal Unionist presence in this part of the constituency. It seems likely that Liberal Unionism was located chiefly in those rural and residential areas, such as Thornbury, Westbury-on-Trym and Stoke Bishop, where the Conservatives were already strong."' Communications between the parties in 1890 over the question of a successor to Plunkett serve to illustrate the delicacy of Conservative-Liberal Unionist relations. So long as the Liberal Unionists were anxious, for tactical or emotional reasons, to preserve their separate political identity, it was natural for Conservatives like Harford to take the view that co-operation with them should be sought 'without yielding too much'.''' Beaufort's opinion was that Ducie's eldest son, Lord Moreton, had a better chance of holding the seat than any Conservative, but Harford was convinced that his Liberal antecedents (he had been Liberal M.P. for West Gloucestershire, 1880-5) would make him unacceptable to 'the general Conservative body'. Moreton was also reckoned to be 'a very feeble speaker', hardly suited to the rigours of campaigning in areas like Kingswood, and there was perhaps some relief when it became known that he had no ambition to resume his parliamentary career. '12 Extraordinarily enough, the idea was mooted that Howard might be persuaded to stand as a Liberal Unionist, in the hope of avoiding a contested election. It was clear to the Thornbury leadership, however, that rank-and-file Conservatives would never give their wholehearted support to such an arrangement, and the surprising thing is that the proposition was lo' Ibid.: 26 June, 3, 10 July 1886; cf. Eristo! Mercury, 8 July 1892. '08 Cloucesterjoumal, 17 July 1886. '09 Brisfol Mercury, 25 July 1895. 'lo Cf. Brisfol Times and Mirror, 14 July 1886; Brisfol Mercury, 8 July 1892. 'I ' D1610/X27: Harford to Codrington, 22 Apr. 1890. Ibid.: Beanfort to Codrington, 20 Mar. 1890, Harford to Codrington, 26 Mar. 1890, Fitzhardinge to Codrington, 29 Mar. 1890. 218 T. A. Jelenkins even d i s c ~ s s e d . ' ~ ~ Eventually, a joint-committee was formed comprising Codrington and Harford for the Conservatives and Moreton and Ormstone Pease of Henbury for the Liberal Unionists. The Liberal Unionist delegates were invited to attend the meeting of the Conservative executive committee, at which the appointment was due to be made, but this was evidently seen as a step too far in the direction of amalgamation and therefore declined, after some hesitation.' l 4 When Colston was chosen, his name was instead submitted to the Liberal Unionists for approval before the Conservative polling &strict chairmen were notified and canvassing could begin, a procedure that the new candidate considered 'most essential' as 'the Liberal Unionists may not be numerous [but] they are certain to be influential Yet this did not satistjr the Liberal Unionists, who requested a meeting of the joint-committee to confirm the selection, which the Conservatives felt obliged to agree to.116 Following the dissolution of parliament in 1892, the Gloucestershire Liberal Unionist Association issued a circular to its supporters advising them to vote for Conservative candidates irrespective of policy differences, on the grounds that main- tenance of the Union with Ireland remained the paramount issue and that Salisbury's government had always given fair consideration to Liberal Unionist views when formulating its general legislation. '" Conversely, there was a rueful feeling among traditional-minded Conservatives that their leaders had paid a high price for Liberal Unionist co-operation. As the Rev. Alfred Pontifax of Yate Rectory, a subscriber to the Thornbury Association, observed after the election: T o my mind Conservatism is as dead as Julius Caesar - but there is no help for it I suppose as long as Conservatives and Liberal Unionists are allies. The difference between Conservatives and Liberals now appears to be only a question of rate of progress. The last government no doubt was the best possible under the circumstances - but more radical measures were passed during their tenure of office than any Liberal government would have passed in the same period.'" Nevertheless, the course of national events was gradually drawing the two parties closer together in common opposition to a Liberal government committed to Gladstone's home rule crusade. This period coincided with the onset ofthe Thornbury Association's financial difficulties, and in the autumn of 1892 Marsh raised the question of whether the Liberal Unionists might be willing to contribute to the cost of registration work, which fell entirely upon the Conservatives. The Liberal Unionist leadership ruled out any such assistance, explaining that their own fund was 'small . . . the chief part of the burden falls upon a few individuals', and that their work was 'somewhat costly. We have to cover the whole county.' If money were given for registration purposes in Thornbury, the same rule would have to apply elsewhere in l t 3 [bid.: Harford to Codrington, 30 Apr. 1890, Beaufort to Codrington, 23 May 1890. l i 4 Ibid.: Beaufort to Codrington, 23 May, 8 June 1890. '15 D1610/X23: Codrington to Colston, 2 June 1890, Colston to Codrington, 6, 9 June 1890 "6D1610/X27: Harford to Codrington, 12, 19 June 1890. '" Gloucestershire Chruaicle, 18 June 1892. 11* D1610/X27: Pontifax to Codrington, 14 Sept. 1892. Political Liji in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury 219 Gloucestershire, with the inevitable consequence that 'our own organisation would cease to exist, as our funds would be quite inadeq~ate'."~ However, in an important gesture that was entirely characteristic of the way relations between the parties were developing, the Liberal Unionist secretary furnished Codrington with a list of subscribers who could be approached as individuals for financial support, provided it was made clear that they were only being asked to help with registration expenses.12" Such distinctions remained necessary, to respect Liberal Unionist sensitivities, but the formation of Salisbury's coalition government in 1895 finally sealed the connexion between the two parties and no trace of independent Liberal Unionist activity in Thornbury has been found after this date. Colston had expressed the wish in March 1895 that Ducie would 'send us his subscription-as our Association does all the work', and from 1896 the earl was indeed giving A20 per annum.'21 5 Another valuable resource available to the late-Victorian Conservative party was the Primrose League, a social organization with a serious political purpose. The Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, which imposed strict limits on election expenditure by candidates, combined with the reform and redistribution measures of 1884-5 to create a powerful incentive for the formation of local organizations dedicated to harnessing the energies and desire for commitment of the new electorate. A network of Primrose League 'habitations', each with its hierarchical internal structure, offered a variety of social activities while simultaneously instructing members in the traditional Conservative values of loyalty to the crown, the empire and religion. The virtue of the League, according to a Conservative newspaper, was that 'it knits rich and poor together in determined resistance to the spread of movements perilous to society and injurious to the welfare of the country'. Its methods, as the same source explained, were adapted to fit in with the realities of an age of mass-participation politics: There are thousands of Englishmen, and especially many women, who have neither the leisure nor the inclination to interest themselves in the dry details of politics. But the veneration of religion, love for the throne and regard for the constitution under which we live, are things which everyone can understand. It was, and is, the aim of the Primrose League to bind together all who respect these principles. The failure of our political adversaries, in their attempts to imitate the Primrose League, is mainly due to the fact that they have no such common ground to stand on. 122 '19 D1610/X24: Marsh to Codrington, 3 Sept. 1892; D1610/X27: Ducie to Codrington, 7 Oct. 1892, D1610/X27: Wethered to Codrington, 29 Oct. 1892; D1610/X24: Codrington to Marsh, 9 Nov. D1610/X23: Colston to Codrington, 11 Mar. 1895; D1610/X24: Henry Meade King to Codrington, E. Wethered [Gloucestershire L.U.A. secretary] to Codrington, 4 Oct. 1892. 1892, circular letter, 16 Nov. 1892. 1 Feb. 1898. l Z 2 Bristol Timer and Mirror, 19 Apr. 1892, 20 Apr. 1891. 220 T. A. Jenkins Ultimately, the League was meant to function as ‘a great political engine’, generating a supply of unpaid volunteers ready to participate in canvassing work during election^.'^^ Of the 13 habitations that are known to have existed in the Thornbury constituency, some information survives for two, providing a few glimpses of the ways in which the League’s operations helped to preserve the cohesion and discipline of rural society. The Sodbury or ‘Codrington’ habitation, founded in July 1885, prior to the first election under the new representative system, was originally an exclusively male organization. In 1890 it boasted 40 knights (paying a 2s. 6d. tribute) and 65 associates (paying 6d.), and though only 35 knights were recorded in 1892 the number of associates had risen to 94.lZ4 Judging from the available evidence, political education was considered to be the habitation’s primary role, and by-laws issued in 1894 stressed that all members should be ‘at the disposal of the council for the execution of political work’. William Memck, the secretary, advised Codrington in 1889 that a more formal admission procedure was desirable, involving an oral declaration made before a general meeting, in order to make membership seem more binding and so ‘preclude traitors’. He also wanted to set a minimum age for members of 16 or 18, since it was ‘useless having mere children with us . . . who . . . care little for politics but join more for the purpose of going to our entertainments on the cheap’, but there is no sign that this suggestion was adopted. Interestingly, the Codrington habitation operated in a very modest way as a benefit society, through payment of a subscription to the West of England sanatorium at Weston-super-Mare, where its members could stay while convalescing. 125 Codrington regarded the Sodbury habitation as an extension of his territorial control in the area, and he was therefore apt to resent any intrusion by the authorities in London. His irritation was made plain in the spring of 1890 when the General Council sent an agent, Major Barnett, on a mission to encourage the formation of a new council for the whole of the Thornbury division, which was part of a wider campaign to improve Primrose organization in the North Wessex region. In so doing, Barnett summoned a meeting in the Sodbury &strict without obtaining Codrington’s consent, and after the consequent explosion George Lane Fox, the League’s vice-chairman, was obliged to offer mollifying assurances that there had been no intention of encroaching on Codrington’s jurisdiction.126 Memck was disgusted by the ‘cool cheek’ of the interfering central agents, and maintained that among habitation members there was a widespread feeling that ‘General Council is not up to much and is merely an association for funding employment for a lot of half-pay army officers’. While the formation of a Thornbury divisional council went ahead, by May 1893 the Codrington habitation had still not affiliated to it. Merrick also regarded the payment of tributes to the Grand Council as ‘a great waste of 123 Ibid.: 21 Apr. 1890; M. Pugh, 7 k e Tories and the People, 1880- 1935, (Oxford, 1985). pp. 102-3,221. lZ4 D1610IX31: statement, 19 Apr. 1890, Merrick to Codringon, 20 Oct. 1892. lZ5 Ibid.: Merrick to Codringon, 3 May 1889, Codrington habitation by-laws, Apr. 1894. The Bristol ‘*f~ D1610/X31: Lane Fox to Codrington, 24, 31 Mar. 1890, Codrington to Lane Fox, 29 Mar. 1890, Times and Minor, 30 Oct. 1886, has an article on the sanatorium, one of the largest in England. H.H. Justice to Codrington, 2 Apr. 1890. Political Lij2 in Late Victorian Britain: The Conservatives in Thornbury 221 money’, which presumably explains why London experienced repeated problems in collecting its dues from Codrington habitation members.’27 In October 1887 Codrington informed Plunkett that a separate women’s division of the Sodbury habitation had been established. This was presided over, naturally enough, by his wife, Lady Evelyn, and was going to ‘organise a winter campaign’.lZ8 The surviving balance sheets reveal that female membership stood at 20 dames and 168 associates in 1894, peaked at 19 dames and 210 associates in 1897, and fell slightly to 17 dames and 198 associates in 1899. Apart from expenditure on entertainments and outings, the Codrington ladies were also making a two guinea annual subscription to the Weston-super-Mare sanatorium in the late 1 8 9 0 ~ . ’ ~ ~ It was unusual to have separate branches for the two sexes, and more typical in this respect was the Thornbury habitation, also formed in 1885, which was run by Mrs Pierrepont Mundy of Thornbury House. Here, the main focus of Primrose League activities seems to have been on providing social entertainments, including tea parties, theatricals, a summer outing and an annual soiree and dance (a special one was organized in 1897 to commemorate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee). The minute book kept from 1887 only briefly mentions electioneering arrangements, and the intermittent entries after 1899 suggest that the Thornbury habitation, like many others, sank into the doldrums during the Edwardian period. In October 1902 a clerk from the General Council wrote to Mrs Pierrepont Mundy expressing the hope that her habitation might show ‘some signs of activity . . . at this crisis’, surrounding the Balfour nunistry’s Education Act, and offering any help that was needed, ‘There is such a thing’, he observed, ‘as the swing of the pendulum, and that pendulum often swings against the party in power.’’30 6 The pendulum indeed swung decisively against Balfour’s government in the early 1900s, assisted by the inglorious conclusion to the Boer War, and the subsequent controversies over education, licensing, ‘Chinese slavery’ in the South Afirican mines and, above all, Chamberlain’s tariff reform proposals, which challenged the country’s orthodox free trade policy. In 1906 this trend culminated in the heaviest defeat in the party’s history, and Colston was one of the many casualties, succumbing to a rejuvenated Liberal organization which held the seat until the 1920s. Codrington’s decision to resign the Thornbury chairmanship in 1904, which stemmed from mounting private financial dificulties and had no connexion with the tariff reform issue,I3’ unfortunately means that his papers are of diminishing value for the purposes 12’ Ibid.: Merrick to Codrington, 7 Apr. 1890, W.H. Deazeley Lprovincial secretary] to Codrington, 14 12’ D1610/X23: Codrington to Plunkett, 23 Oct. 1887. lZ9 D1610/X31: ladies’ division annual balance sheets. 13” Gloucestershre R.O., D1578 (Thurston MSS): unlisted Thornbury habitation material, including a 13’ D1610/X23: Codrington to Colston, 3 May 1904. D1610/X27: Codrington to Dr Stewart, 23 Nov. 1891, 13 May, 18 July 1893. minute book, 1887-1911, and Reginald Bennett to Mrs Pierrepont Mundy, 20 Oct. 1902. Sept. 1903, confirms his support for Chamberlain’s policy. 222 T. A. Jenkins of this study. It is therefore possible only to provide a brief ‘epilogue’ covering the final years of the Conservative ascendancy in this constituency. Towards the end of 1902 the Thornbury Liberals, determined to avoid a repetition of the Khaki election, invited Athelstan Rendall, a Yeovil solicitor, to contest the seat at the next ~pportunity.’~’ His selection marked the beginning of what became a relentless three-year campaign in the constituency. Tariff reform of course provided an ideal issue with which the Liberals could rally their supporters and reach out to other voters, and in the autumn of 1903 Thurston reported that they were ‘flooding the district with their publications’. The following spring he predicted a ‘stiff fight’ ahead, made more perilous by the ‘apathy of our own party’, and Colston agreed that the Liberals were ‘working with such desperate energy that our present prospects are . . . anything but sati~factory’.’~~ Renewed financial worries compounded the Conservatives’ difficulties. In January 1904 Harford, the treasurer, issued a circular drawing attention to the ‘serious and continuous falling off in the number of subscribers’, which he attributed partly to deaths and removals but also to the lengthy period that had elapsed since the last contested election, and in 1905 and 1906 special funds had to be raised in order to clear the association’s accumulated l iabil i t ie~.’~~ If there was one encouraging sign, in a generally dismal outlook, it was that the new secretary, Tattersall, had reportedly done good work in the revision When the election finally came, in January 1906, Colston offered a robust defence of his party’s record in office. The union with Ireland had been maintained, a ‘generous’ peace in South Africa had secured that colony’s loyalty to the empire, and a ‘profoundly statesmanlike’ foreign policy had saved Britain ‘from our former dangerous isolation’. In the domestic sphere, ‘many measures of practical utility’ had been carried, including the Shop Hours Act and legislation to deal with aliens, and the Conservative leaders had ‘courageously’ tackled the treacherous issues of education and licensing reform. O n the great question of the day, Colston declared that he was ‘wholly opposed to our present system of so-called free trade’, which he held ‘largely responsible’ for recent unemployment, and he argued that retaliatory tariffs should be available as a weapon with which to combat unfair trading practices by other governments. Britain, he observed, was no longer the ‘workshop of the world’, and it had to adjust its commercial policy in accordance with changing circumstances. This defiant stand proved futile, and Colston fell victim to what he described as ‘the tremendous torrent of Liberalism passing over the country’. Rendall emerged victorious by 7,370 votes to 5,240, a majority of 2,130: there were 14,096 registered electors, of whom 12,610 cast their votes (another 34 were rejected), producing an impressive turnout of almost 90 per The key to the Liberals’ success was identified as the rapid growth of population in the industrial areas around Bristol. The Times, 3 Dec. 1902. ‘”Dl610/X25: Thurston to Codrington, 12 Oct. 1903, 19 May 1904; D1610/X23: Colston to 134 D1610/X29: Hatford’s circular, 1 Jan. 1904; Annual Reports, 1905-6. ‘35 Bristol Times and Minor, 1 Oct. 1904, 7 Oct. 1905. 136 Ibid.: 12, 18, 29 Jan. 1906. Codrington, 9 May 1904. Political Lij2 in Late Victorian Britain: f i e Conservatives in Thornbury 223 Whereas these districts’37 had accounted for about 36 per cent of the electorate in 1885, and 42 per cent in 1895, by 1906 the figure had reached just under 47 per cent. Moreover, it was precisely among groups of workers like the shoemakers of Kingswood, and the dockers of Avonmouth, that fears about the detrimental effects of tariff reform on overseas trade made the Liberal party’s defence of free trade so compelling. To a lesser extent, the outcry against ‘Chinese slavery’ also played well for the Liberals, in terms of their appeal to trade unionist voters.138 The Thornbury Conservatives responded to their catastrophic defeat with an inquiry, carried out by the Association’s organization committee, which reported in December 1906. It found the state of affairs in the southern polling districts to be generally unsatisfactory: some local committees, such as those at Kingswood and Mangotsfield, needed strengthening; others like Hanham and Bridge Yate seemed to be sunk in apathy; Downend and Pucklechurch were virtually moribund, and Soundwell had had no organization for years. In some cases, organizational weakness extended to ‘what should be the most Conservative districts’. At Stoke Bishop, for example, ‘things [had] been allowed to slide’, the same was true of Marshfield, and Chipping Sodbury, Codrington’s fiefdom, was mentioned as a &strict where re-organization was required so that ‘new blood’ might be introduced. Even in the well-run Badminton district it was felt that the committee was insufficiently representative of the agricultural labourers, of whom ‘we fear a large number . . . voted against Mr Colston at the general e l e ~ t i o n ’ . ’ ~ ~ For the Conservatives in Thornbury, as for the party nationally, the processes that had worked to their advantage in the late-nineteenth century were operating in reverse by 1906. The home rule crisis of 1886 created an opportunity for the party to identify itself with a popular cause, upholding the union with Ireland and the integrity of the empire, and it was possible to present this as the key to other issues of concern to the mass electorate, by arguing that the Liberals’ obsession with constitutional tampering was the greatest obstacle to social progress at home. In this way, the Conservatives staked their claim to electoral support by appearing to transcend barriers of class and party and to stand for the interests of the whole nation. At the same time, in Thornbury and elsewhere, the Unionist crusade gave a necessary stimulus to morale among local party members, and the momentum was generated to effect improvements in the election machinery. If the Thornbury Conservatives had some organizational problems of their own during the 1890s, these were more than offset by the near hopeless state of disarray among their opponents. By the early 1900s, on the other hand, the party was associated with a cause which may have been popular with many of its hard-core supporters, such as the farmers, but which 13’ Bridge Yate, Hanham, Kingswood, Mangotsfield (now three polling distncts, Mangotsfield, Downend and Soundwell), Oldland (also three districts, Oldland, Bitton and Cadbuty Heath), Puck- lechurch and Shirehampton. 13’ E n d D d y Mercury, 27, 29 Jan. 1906; Eristul Timer arzd Mirror, 17, 19 Jan. 1906; D1610/X26: 1906 polling district voters list. D16?0/X26: organization committee report, Dec. 1906. The personal criticism implied in this document caused considerable offence to Codringon, who resigned altogether from the Association in 1909: ihid.: Chester Master to Codrington, 1 Feb. 1907, Tattersall to Codrington, 16 Mar. 1907, 17 June 1909. 224 T. A . Jenkins had less appeal to the wider electorate and helped to galvanise the Liberal opposition. While there is no sign in Thornbury of the political fragmentation that afflicted the Conservative party at the national level, the association was evidently ill prepared to face a serious electoral challenge, and tariff reform proved to be a particular handicap in a constituency where it was essential to win votes in the expanding industrial areas. Ultimately, it was the fatal combination of an unpopular policy with organizational shortcomings and adverse demographic trends that undermined the Conservatives in Thornbury, turning this constituency into a safe Liberal seat until after the First World War.