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IV. The Effect of the Second Reform Act in Lancashire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John Vincent
John Vincent
Affiliation:
Peterhouse, Cambridge
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Extract

The remarkable gains made by the Conservatives in the general election of December 1868 in Lancashire have lately been widely recognized. Their extent may have suggested to some, either that there was a general movement of opinion in the area towards the Conservatives between the general election of 1865 and that of 1868, or that the newly enfranchised electors were more favourable to the Conservatives than the old constituency had been, or that some combination of the two elements was at work. It is the purpose of this article to ascertain what grounds exist for these explanations.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1968 , pp. 84 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1968

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References

1 For the best general discussion, see Hanham, H. J., Elections and Party Management (1959). pp. 284–322,Google Scholar ‘A Lancashire Election: 1868’. Also valuable, though not directly on the limited problem dealt with here, is Searby, P., ‘Gladstone in West Derby Hundred: The Liberal Campaign in 1868’, Trans. Hist. Soc. of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. III (1959), 139–66.Google Scholar

2 Lancaster returned 2 Liberals in 1865 in an election which was later declared void. The borough was disfranchised by the Act of 1867.

3 Stalybridge is partly in Lancashire and partly in Cheshire.

4 This is the basis on which the table in Vincent, J., The Formation of the Liberal Party, (1966), xxvii, is calculated.Google Scholar

5 Hanham, op. cit. 289. Calculating on this basis, I arrive at a result giving one more seat to the Liberals than Hanham allows. This is because Hanham's table for the status quo ante takes account of Clitheroe changing hands at a by-election under the old franchise in 1868: there is thus no discrepancy.

6 Such as the excision of Burnley, with its Liberal majority, from the old North Lancashire constituency, to form a new seat.

7 See Hanham. op. cit. 319.

8 Clitheroe, which returned a Liberal in 1865, had in any case passed to the Conservatives in an uncontested by-election on 13 July 1868, when the old suffrage still operated.

9 Bean, W. W., The Parliamentary Representation of the Six Northern Counties (Hull, 1890), p. 247, appears to state that the hamlets of Chatburn, Mearley, Twiston, and Worston were added by the Act of 1868.Google Scholar

10 31 & 32 Vict. c. 46.

11 According to Dod, and Bean, op. cit.; McCalmont Parliamentary Poll Book (1910 ed.), wrongly lists Hopkinson as Liberal.

12 I am indebted to the Rt Hon. the Lord Clitheroe, P.C., for the information contained in this paragraph.

13 Figures are from the Report of the Boundary Commissioners, Parl. Papers (1867–8), xx.

14 Boundary rectifications involving a few houses at Preston and Macclesfield are ignored.

15 Lyulph Stanley MSS., letter from S. Broome, 23 September 1872: John Rylands Library.

16 The Conservatives won the municipal elections in Ashton, while not contesting the parliamentary elections, which were fought over the same area but under a different and probably more restrictive franchise. See Hanham, op. cit. 313,Google Scholar n. 2. See also Beaven, A. B., Bristol Lists, municipal and miscellaneous (Bristol, 1899), for a permanently Tory municipality with Liberal M.P.s.Google Scholar

17 Bennett, Richard, Conservative agent. A record of elections, parliamentary and municipal, for Liverpool, Birkenhead, Bootle, south and south west Lancashire... 1832 to 1878... (Howell, Liverpool, 1878).Google Scholar

18 Bolton is probably the chief case, and perhaps the only one, where obnoxious candidates and an openly-split party affected the outcome. Allowing for this, the 4% Conservative increase in the share of the vote in Bolton can hardly be regarded as striking. For a good account of the Liberal handicap, see Hanham, op. cit. 312.

19 Birkenhead was Conservative from its creation in 1861 till 1906, when it passed to Labour. The member from 1861 to November 1874 was John Laird, the shipbuilder.

20 The Secretary of the Birkenhead Conservative Association wrote to Disraeli pleading with him to uphold the Commissioners’ extensions of their parliamentary boundaries. The (eventually quashed) extensions into the villages and villadom were ‘exactly what we wanted’ (Smith, F. B., The Making of the Second Reform Bill, 1966, p. 224). The implication is that contemporary expert opinion in Birkenhead did not believe that working-class Conservatism, however strong, was adequate to bring off victory unaided.Google Scholar