13 - A Trial Run

Summary

The University’s case for parliamentary representation had been looked on favourably in the early 1850s, and supported in principle by both major parties. Derby and Disraeli had approved the notion when in office in 1852, but had made it clear that the new University, whose graduates were not yet legally recognised as an integral part of the institution, was too immature. Subsequently, the Crimean War, a decade of shifting parliamentary opinion, and a long spell of Palmerstonian indifference, delayed further change to the representative system until the Second Reform Act of 1867. But the second Derby/Disraeli Government, coming into power at the beginning of 1858, removed one of the legal obstacles to the University’s enfranchisement by approving the Charter which brought Convocation into existence. There was, henceforward, a potential constituency.

Convocation, from the beginning, kept their eyes on the possibility of the University’s obtaining a seat in the House of Commons. At the end of November, 1858, they set up a committee, which included Foster and Storrar, to prepare a case to be put forward; and in January, 1859, they announced that William Nathaniel Massey, MP for Salford, who had been Under Secretary at the Home Office in ‘the late Administration’, had ‘undertaken the case of the interests of the University during the coming session of Parliament’. A month later, a Representation of the People Bill was introduced which, among Disraeli’s ‘fancy franchises’, provided that, henceforward, graduates of any University of the United Kingdom would be entitled to vote. However, the Government was defeated on another provision of the Bill, and fell in June.

The new Palmerston Administration, which took over, was prepared to go much further. On 1 March 1860, they introduced a Bill which contained specific provisions whereby ‘In all future Parliaments the University of London shall return one Member to serve in Parliament.’ As soon as the Bill was launched, the Senate moved quickly to produce a memorial to Government and to Parliament, using a committee which included all its parliamentary members – Devonshire, Monteagle, Macaulay, Overstone, Wodehouse and the Bishop of St Davids (Connop Thirlwall), in the Lords; Baines, Heywood, Sir James Graham, Cornewall Lewis, and Stanley in the Commons – and also Foster, Osler and Storrar, the last two having only just become Fellows.