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The Factory Politics of Lancashire in the Later Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Patrick Joyce
Patrick Joyce
Affiliation:
Institute of Historical Research
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Extract

John Morley, a son of Blackburn, wrote of the Lancashire of the 1860s; ‘as a rule in the cotton districts where the trade relations between master and man have been … established on a satisfactory basis, the man, in the truly feudal spirit, takes part with his master, and wears his political colour. This current of things … “esprit de corps” interesting the employed in the triumph of this mill over that, is not likely to change immediately nor for a long while to come’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 525 - 553
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

1 Morley, John, ‘The Chamber of Mediocrity’, Fortnightly Review (Dec. 1868), p. 690.Google Scholar

2 Computed from Blackburn Register of Electors 1868–9, marked with vote and canvass for whole constituency. Two matching copies, 324.8024 used. Blackburn Public Library.

3 Abram, W. A., ‘Social Conditions and Political Prospects of the Lancashire Workman’, Fortnightly Review (Oct. 1868), p. 437.Google Scholar

4 Ibid. p. 439.

5 Harrison, F., ‘The Conservative Reaction’, Fortnightly Review (Mar. 1874), pp. 303–4.Google Scholar

6 See Clarke's, P. F. description of Lancashire politics in the period as based on religion and ethnicity, Clarke, P. F., Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge, 1971), especially pp. 14–19, 53–76, 252–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Hanham's account of factory influence is the best, though the influence he envisages is in fact a rather etherealized one, unconnected as it mostly is to the processes of labour and he culture of the factory; Hanham, H. J., Elections and Party Management (1959)Google Scholar, ch. rv. For a good, account of traditional paternalist leadership, cf. Clarke, op. cit., pp. 220–245Google Scholar, and on Blackburn f Clarke, P. F., ‘British Politics and Blackburn Politics, 1900–1910’, Historical Journal, XII (1969).Google Scholar For other recent work on Blackburn, see also Lowe, J. C., ‘The Tory Triumph of 1868 in Black-burn and in Lancashire’, Historical Journal, XVI (1973)Google Scholar, and Lowe, J. C., Parliamentary Elections in Blackburn and the Blackburn Hundred 1865–1880, unpublished Lancaster M.Litt.Google Scholar

8 Moore, D. C., ‘Social Structure, Political Structure, and Public Opinion in mid-Victorian England’, in Robson, R. (ed.) Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain (1967), esp. pp. 45–6, 56–7.Google Scholar

9 Information on Preston the best: Hewitson, A., History of Preston (Preston 1883), pp. 185–6Google Scholar; other towns‘estimates based on spindle/loom figures in Worrall, W., Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers, and Engineers and Machine Makers Advertiser (Oldham 1882)Google Scholar, published annually after 1882. In the earlier century the Blackburn concentration was even greater, Whittle, P., Blackburn As It Is (Preston 1852), p. 243. Limiteds are not included in these figures, as they did not usually exert a unified political influence. They were not of overwhelming importance overall until the 20th century, though important in some localities from the ’70s and’80s (Oldham above all).Google Scholar

10 On the increase of wives in the industry post mid-century, Hewitt, M., Wives and Mothers in Victorian Industry (1958)Google Scholar, ch. 1. In the seventies it was reported that a man's engagement was often conditional upon his wife working too (Ibid. p. 13). On the mill as a community, Jackson, B., Wording Class Community (1968), ch. v.Google Scholar

11 ‘Driving’ was most often confined to smaller mills, on low profit margins, and especially rife in Burnley. On women's attitudes, cf. Report to the Local Government Board on Proposed Changes in the Hours and Ages of Employment in Textile Factories, P.P. 1873, LV, 822–3.

12 For the arbitrary, near-total employer domination possible in such places, see Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (1974), pp. 177–181; also 15th Earl of Derby's papers, Stanley notebook 22 June 1855 (920 DER 46/1), Liverpool Record Office (on employers refusing to renew dissident workmen's house leases, one employer even imposing the Maine Law on his people).Google Scholar See also Whibley, C., Lord John Manners and his friends (1925), 1, 100, for several examples of the feudal ruler (much approved by Manners).Google Scholar For a fine, pioneering study of the colony in relation to urban development, sharing many of che concerns and perspectives of this present work, see Marshall, J. D. ‘Colonisation as a Factor in the Planting of Towns in North-West England’, in Dyos, H. J. (ed.), The Study of Urban History (1968).Google Scholar

13 Anderson, M., Family Structure in 19th century Lancashire (Cambridge 1971).Google Scholar

14 Though the 50–60% range remaining over the three-year period has to be compared with Anderson's ten-year period (1851–1861; 14% of males in 1861 living at the 1851 address). While the 1868 electorate is of course unrepresentative of the adult male population of the town (though not greatly), it has the virtue of being a much larger group than Anderson's sample one. Cf. Anderson, op. cit., pp. 41–2. Besides the stable 50–60% there were large numbers in 1871 with exactly similar names living in nearby streets. (As there was no way of ensuring but by exactly similar address that these were the voters of 1866 they had to be left out of the occupational returns.)Google Scholar

15 Anderson, M., op. cit., pp. 101–4. Anderson concludes, ‘the continual residential mobility of these towns seems Co have only rippled the surface of this neighbourhood feeling’.Google Scholar

16 Ibid. pp. 27–9; esp. Table 2 (b), showing increased likelihood, with age, of cotton workers remaining in the industry. (Mule spinning was importantly a father-son trade). The oldest workers however duplicated the movement of the young out of the industry and into other occupations.

17 Blauner, R., Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and his Industry (1964)Google Scholar, ch. IV, ‘The Textile Worker’ See also, Morland, J. K., Milluways of Kent (Chapel Hill 1958), for most of the case material used by Blauner.Google Scholar

18 Martin, R. and Fryer, D. M., Redundancy and Paternalist Capitalism (1975), chs. II–IVGoogle Scholar, on paternalism in a Lancaster mill. See also Lane, T. and Roberts, K., Stride at Pilkingtons (1971)Google Scholar, on St Helens; for historically aware sociologists assailing traditional notions of class solidarity as the concomitant of the occupationally homogenous, one-class industrial community, see The Occupational Community of the Traditional Worker, University of Durham Conference (SSRC 1972). For the effects of the changeover to anonymous capital and management, cf. Werner, W. L. and Low, J., The Social System of the Modern Factory (1947), Yankee City Series No. 4.Google Scholar

19 Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (1974), ch. VII.Google Scholar

20 Turner, H. A., Trade Union Growth, Structure and Policy (1962)Google Scholar, Section in, ch. 11. For engineering and iron trade unionism, see Jefferys, J. B., The Story of the Engineers (1946), Pt. 11Google Scholar; Fyrth, H. J. and Collins, H. J., The Foundry Workers (Manchester 1958), ch. III.Google Scholar

21 Esp. interviews 54, 122 (‘Work’ section), also 67, 72, 95, 131 (‘Work’ and ‘Community and Social Class’ sections): Paul and Thea Thompson, ‘Family Life and Work Experience Interviews’. I acknowledge with gratitude special permission to make use of this private research collection.

22 Abram, , loc. cit., pp. 431–3.Google Scholar

23 While the cultural aspects of sub-grouping cannot be properly considered here, it can be remarked en passant that it does seem doubtful that the two supposedly opposed cultures within the working class were really as internally coherent or mutually exclusive as is suggested, also whether they operated over sufficiently wide social areas. These requirements would presumably have to be met if the two cultures are to provide the mutual repulsion necessary to keep them socially identifiable and intact, and so a real principle of social differentiation between the labour sub-groups.

24 On which much more needs to be known. Cf. Turner, op. cit., section III, ch. 1, esp. p. 128Google Scholar, for a somewhat different account of how the spinners maintained the manning ratios on the new self-acting mules (their exclusivist militancy important, not employer collaborationism). For employer incursions in this area, and union opposition, in the later period, Chapman, S. J., ‘Some Policies of the Cotton Spinners Trade Unions’, Economic Journal, vol. x, no. 40 (Dec. 1900).Google Scholar

25 Cf. evidence of Mawdsley on the piecers, R. C., on Labour, , P.P. 1892, xxv, 746–7Google Scholar, also Pelling, H., Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain (1968), pp. 46–7Google Scholar; Mills, W. H., Sir Charles Macara, Bt. A Study of Modern Lancashire (Manchester 1917), p. 79, on the piecers' attitudes, motivated by ’social hopes and ambitions’.Google Scholar

26 The development of piecework in engineering, ultimately the profit-sharing gang, parallels the retention of the manning ratio on the SAM as the means by which technological change (and employer intervention) produced the new ‘pro-employer’ grades, cf. Foster, , op. cit., pp. 224–229.Google Scholar Piecework was by no means universal outside Oldham. For the real Lancashire piecework situation and opposition to it, see Jefferys, J. B., op. cit., pp. 100–101, 63–64Google Scholar; for the definitive condemnation based on Lancashire experience, John Burnett's letter to The Times of London, 15 Jan. 1876 (Sec. of ASE); on continuously maintained craft status of foundry workers and piecework attitudes, Fyrth and Collins, op. cit., ch. III. See also First Report, R. C., on Trade Unions, P.P. 1867, XXXII, pp. 30–31, 34–7 (evidence of William Allan, Secy, of A.S.E.), and P.P. 1867–8, XXXIX, 505; R. C. on Labour, P.P. 1893–4, XXXII, p. 163, and Appx. XLVI, p. 491; Manchester Central Library, pamphlet collection, The Piecework Question in Engineering and Iron Founding Shops (1876). For the piecework battle fought in a local setting, Letter columns Ashton Reporter 15, 22 Jan., 19 Feb. 1876.Google Scholar

27 The Bury Pollbook was printed (Bury Public Library). In all Blackburn wards the votes of a small proportion were not entered in the register of electors (about 3%). Names and addresses are given in the books (also property qualification in the Blackburn register).

28 Political identification of employers from Blackburn and Bury pollbooks for 1865 and 1868 (both towns, books in local libraries). Location of industry from pollbooks, directories, O.S. maps. Size is the great difficulty: good information on number of employees from census enumerators‘schedules 1871 (but incomplete), also cotton trade directories, town histories, local press (cf. cotton famine years and strikes for accounts of size). No exactitude is possible for the year in question but given the stability of the large employers the situation is clear.

29 In the factory context, the possibility presents itself that the ‘unknown’ 45% or so of the vote may be predominantly composed of the anti-employer less ‘skilled’. This would be a more challenging difficulty if the simple voting majorities in the areas within the town were not so great, and majorities at street level, as indeed amongst occupations in general and grades of factory workers, were likewise not so overwhelmingly indicative. However, the returns on the Liberals in St. John's (48%) and in the Tory ‘area’ of Park ward (50%, compared to 70% of Tories) may indicate a recalcitrant anti-employer minority moving on I to friendlier country (though it also indicates the stability of the majority employer-inclined pre-sence). At the same time, this ‘screwing out’ - if it was such - would if anything have settled I the local fiefdoms, making them even richer grounds for influence after 1868. There are no L indications of these differences in Bury, nor in the Liberal ‘area’ of Park ward.

30 The necessary crudity of the general comparison of the returns with information on occupational structure is indicated by the Bury material: the 1881 abstracts are the first available for the town, and give occupations only for males and females of all ages. Information supplemented by partial indications of adult male work-force size in 1871 enumerators' schedules (Bury and Black burn); 1871 census abstracts for Blackburn; cf. also Anderson, M., op. cif., p. 27Google Scholar on social/occupational composition of Preston 1851 for corroboration of electorate's representativeness; also S.C. on Parliamentary and Municipal Elections, P.P. 1868–9, VIII evidence Johnston, F., pp. 150–151, and Blackburn Times, 12 Dec. 1885 (both claiming that 4/5 of the electorate were manual workers on weekly wages).Google Scholar Information on the structure of the cotton and engineering workforces is sparse and scattered (it indicates that the bias in the electorate in favour of ‘skill’ and supervision was not a great one). On cotton: Wood, G. H., The History of Wages in the Cotton Industry in the past 100 years (1910)Google Scholar, Appx. p. 149 (for 1886); Foster, J. O., Capitalism and Class Consciousness in earlier 19th century Oldham (Cambridge Ph.D. 1967)Google Scholar, Table 5; von Schulze Gaevernitz, G., The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent (1895), pp. 96Google Scholar, no. On engineering: Foster, , Class Struggle… p. 327 n. 65Google Scholar; Bowley, A. C., Wages in the United Kingdom in the 19th century (1900), p. 122 (for 1886).Google Scholar

31 See e.g. Tory dialect attack on ‘Screw Club’, Ashton Standard, 8 Nov. 1879. (Hereafter: Ashton Standard = AS Ashton Reporter = AR Blackburn Times = BT Blackburn Standard = BS)

32 Hanham, , op. cit., pp. 77–79, 81–82; and p. 84 for subjectivism of the experience (also Oldham Chronicle, 21 Nov. 1868).Google ScholarP.P. 1868–1869, VIII, evidence on other Lancashire towns for lack of intimidation (Bolton, Warrington, etc.). Reform League Reports on Lancashire constituencies, Bishopsgate Institute.Google Scholar

33 Oldham Standard, 28 Nov. 1868 on Platt's influence; Reform League reports, Macclesfield.

34 P.P. 1868–1869, VIII, evidence for the three towns, esp. pp. 112, 115, 123, on duration of coercion in the south east, also AS, 14 04. 1866 (Letters)Google Scholar; and in Blackburn, BT, 1 May 1869 (Letters)Google Scholar; see also Willes', Justice report on Blackburn P.P. 1868–9, VIII, pp. 5867Google Scholar, and for a Tory version of things the Blackburn correspondent in Manchester Courier, 6, 10 Nov. 1868. See also Lowe, J. C., Historical Journal, XVI (1973).Google Scholar

35 Thompson interviews, ‘Political Attitudes’, 122 (quoted) and 131 especially; also 32, 47, 86, 87, 135 (all on pressure in the later period, though these a minority of respondants asked). Instances found in Wigan Press 1874, 1880, 1881 also.

36 Abram, , loc. cit., p. 432.Google Scholar

37 Cf. Seabrook's bleak picture of modern Blackburn, Seabrook, J., City Close-Up (1971), esp. ‘Family Relationships’, pp. 129–134Google Scholar. On the depth and potency of ‘colony mindedness’, see Marshall, J. D., loc. cif., passim.Google Scholar

38 P.P. 1868–9, VIII, pp. 458–9 (Qs. 10718, 10724), 586–7.Google Scholar

39 Hanham, , op. cit., p. 83, Justice Willes‘description of the operative's partisanship, P.P. 1868–9, VIII (Qs. 10720, 10730–1); for a similar instance, BT Leader 1 Nov. 1873 (the municipal elections dividing Blackburn into two warring factory camps).Google Scholar

40 Manchester Daily Examiner and Times, 24 Nov. 1868.

41 BT, 20 July 1864.

42 Hanham, , op. cit., pp. 77–81; also P.P. 1868–9, vin (Qs. 2306,3098).Google Scholar

43 Eckersley was the largest cotton master in Wigan. For description of his Poolstock colony see biog. Wigan Examiner, 20 Sept. 1892. On Crawfords cf. Wigan Observer, 10 Jan. 1891; on Glossop, Perkin, H. in Birch, A. H., Small Town Politics (1959)Google Scholar, ch. II; for distribution of the employer dominated vote in Oldham, showing Platt (Werneth/Westwood) and Tory employer outtownship areas holding steady 1868 to 1874, cf. Oldham Standard 21 Nov. 1868, 7 Feb. 1874; Hanham, , op. cit., pp. 69–70, 318–20Google Scholar on Preston and Manchester; for Clitheroe factory influence, Clarke, S., Clitheroe in its Railway Days (Clitheroe 1900), pp. 67–8.Google Scholar

44 Information on some ten such mill-connected activists in Blackburn Public Library biographical files and cuttings books.

45 See sketch of George Whiteley's life Blackburn Weekly Telegraph, 7 Oct. 1899.

46 At Preston, , Northern Star, 10 Nov. 1838Google Scholar.

47 BS, 22 Sept. 1852.

48 BT, 7 Jan. 1865 (Editorial).

49 As in Blackburn 1875, in one of the periodic scrambles for the representation on the Tory side when a Hornby was not standing, cf. BT, 11, 18 Sept. 1875; see also, e.g. BT, 2 Jan. 1867, BS, 28 Oct. 1868, Ashton News, 15 Apr. 1871.

50 AR, 1, 8 May 1880 (election strategy was explained, and operative support pledged at these congregations); for another Ashton batch, AR, 6, 20 Mar., 3 Apr., 8 May 1869.

51 The situation in these towns differed from that of Oldham, see Foster, J., op. cit., pp. 182–6.Google Scholar

52 AR, 24, 31 Jan. 1880; for other comings-of-age, AS, 5 Mar. 1870, Rochdale Pilot, 11 Aug. 1866; Mason on himself, AR, 3 Apr. 1880 (Stalybridge Liberal meeting); for other treats AR, 28 Feb. 1880, 22 Apr. 1876, AS, 5 Jan. 1885 (on Oldham); funerals were also an important occasion for reinforcing employer dynastic continuity and corporate mill feeling, cf. BT, 9 Sept. 1868.

53 Possibly more. AR, 24 Apr. 1869 on Whittaker; P.P. 1868–9, VIII, evidence of Ashton witness that it common for the Lancashire employer to house his workers, p. 127.

54 Blackburn Rate Assessment Book, Blackburn Town Hall. House ownership traced in each decade from 1850s to 1900s. Occupier-ownership was negligible in the town into the 20th century. On. employer housing see also Marshall, J. D., loc. cit., pp. 221, 225–6.Google Scholar

55 For this as Tory policy, BT, 13 Mar. 1869; for a club (Trinity) patronized by employers, cf. BS, 29 Apr. 1868.

56 See BS, 22 Jan. 1868, BT, 18 July, 31 Oct. 1868. Information on club committees through register of electors from census (also directories). The clubs were by no means dominated by factory elements.

57 Based on a study of the Philanthropic, ’60s to’80s. Information on committees, BS, 27 Dec. 1871, 1 May 1875.

58 Rept. S.C. H. of Lords into the deficiencies of means of Spiritual Instruction and Places of Divine Worship P.P. 1857–8, IX, XIV–XV, 482–3.

59 For some examples of this activism, AR, 7, 24 Nov. 1868, 17 Apr., 5 June 1869; BT, 6 Nov. 1880.

60 See Rose, E. A., Methodism in Ashton-under-Lyne, 1797–1914 (Vol. 2, Manchester, 1969), chs. 1 and v, esp. pp. 20, 54–7Google Scholar; for a marvellous account of Ashton Congregationalism, Mills, W. H., Grey Pastures (1924).Google Scholar The Mills family had themselves risen through the mill-chapel hierarchies. Cf. also, Rogers, J. Guiness, An Autobiography (1903). Rogers was the minister of Hugh Mason's Albion chapel. See pp. 105–119 on employer chapel involvement.Google Scholar

61 BT, 2 Sept. 1865 (Letters).

62 See ch. XI (in Blackburn Public Library). On overlookers as Sunday school teachers, AS, 19 Feb. 1870; see also Thompson interview 67 (p. 13), an overlooker on Anglican church attendance and the work career, Davies, S., North Country Bred (1963), p. 28Google Scholar, on Methodism and work advancement. For further southern USA cotton parallels cf. Pope, L., Millhands and Preachers (Mill Haven 1942), on religion in action as a means of social control and industrial discipline.Google Scholar

63 Holden, S. M., The Ups and Downs of William Gregson (1887). Gregson, the local temperance firebrand and pillar of the Liberal party for three decades, described the Pilkingtons' chapel constellation as the mainstay of Liberalism in the 1860s.Google Scholar

64 AR, 13 Nov. 1869. Rogers, J. G. on Working Men's Class op. cit., pp. 110–111; for the Albion Young Men's Class turned into a Young Men's Reform Association, AR, 13 Feb. 1869. For Rochdale employers (especially G. L. Ashworth) and Sunday schools, Rochdale Observer, 31 Mar. 1866.Google Scholar

65 Factory Inspectors Report, P.P. 1867–8, XVII, 172 (quotation from Rev. A. V. Hadley, HM Inspector of National Schools).

66 Cf. BT, 26 Feb. 1870, 3 Dec. 1870, 28 Mar. 1874, BS, 27 Mar. 1880, AR, 17 Mar. 1883, Report on the Working of the Factory and Workshops Act, P.P. 1876, xxx, 443, 506–501; clerical complaint about Nonconformist Blackburn employers, Rev. H. Wescoe to National Society, 1 Sept. 1870, National Society, London.

67 P.P. 1876; xxx, 444.Google Scholar

68 Free Lance (Manchester), 12 Oct. 1867.

69 Report of the soirée AR, 14 Jan. 1871.

70 BT, 14 Mar. 1868, and 18 Jan. 1868 (Letters).

71 For accounts of Mason: Hanham, , op. cit., p. 72Google Scholar; Mills, W. H., Grey Pastures, pp. 35–9 (sharply but sympathetically seen by Mills).Google Scholar

72 Account of baths opening AR, 18 May 1867; Mason on their benefits AR, 18 Apr. 1868.

73 AR, 14 Apr. 1870.

74 AS, 2 July 1870.

75 Description of Mason in City Jackdaw (Manchester), Dec. 1875; see also Momus (Manchester), 11 Apr. 1878.

76 Abram, , loc. cit., p. 437.Google Scholar

77 Mills, W.H., Sir Charles Macara (1917), pp. 66–7.Google Scholar

78 Ashton’Sews, 28 Jan. 1871 (Letters).

79 Biography in BT, 23 Jan. 1904.

80 BS, 8 July 1868. Report of inauguration of Bank Top Working Mens Conservative Club.

81 In; Blackburn Public Library, biographical files, n.d., from Gossip, a satirical magazine edited in the town in the 1860s. There is a similar operative's memory of the squire remaining too, cf. Hornby family file, Blackburn Public Library, Notes of interview with Mr Hulme, W., 28 Oct. 1929. For another description of the family, especially ‘Sir Harry o’Google Scholar, see Clarke, P. F.‘British Politics and Blackburn Politics, 1900–1910’, Historical Journal, XII, 1969.Google Scholar

82 See Jeremy Seabrook's beautiful evocation of the meaning of that which the countryman brought into the town; desires, memories and feelings, surviving over decades, Seabrook, J., The Unprivileged (1967), pp. 40–1.Google Scholar See also Marshall, J. D., op. cit., pp. 223–5.Google Scholar

83 Description in Blackburn Weekly Telegraph, 18 Nov. 1899, also Hornby family file, Blackburn Public Library, Notes of interview with MrLivesey, W. S., 28 Sept. 1929.Google Scholar

84 For a full account of factory politics, and popular politics in general, Joyce, P., Popular Toryism in Lancashire, 1860–1890 (Oxford Univ. D.Phil. 1975).Google Scholar