Friend, humanitarian and pragmatist
Rae Street explores the political career of John Bright
‘Ah, Cobden and Bright’
‘Oh dear, he wasn’t much of a socialist was he… and not very caring about the children working in his own mills?’
There is, of course, truth in both of these comments about John Bright. For a greater part of his political life Bright worked with Richard Cobden. They had a strong and deep friendship and the strength of that could be seen in the positive results of their campaigning, such as their work to prevent Britain going to war with the French. When I am discussing John Bright and his opposition to war I am told that Bright did not actually stop the Crimean War about which he spoke so movingly. The ‘angel of death’ did indeed hover over the land. To this day, when I and other peace activists have opposed the UK’s recent wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, I am told that ‘your demonstrations, your representations, did not stop the war’. Or, as recently as the NATO attack on Libya, when it is said that a military attack was the only way forward – and in the challenging, contradictory, phrase about bombing – we are told ‘we prevented deaths’.
The war that never was
In 1859, a war fever was being stirred against the French, stemming from a belief among some politicians and aristocrats that Napoleon (the third) wanted to invade. The war fever was whipped up mainly, it was said, by Henry Temple and the Times. So, newspapers being pro war is nothing new. The historian George Trevelyan believed that a war was ‘averted by Gladstone, Cobden and Bright’ and, as he said, ‘their struggle to avert war is largely forgotten because it was successful’.
It was Cobden, prompted by Bright, who agreed to a commercial treaty with France. Both supported free trade. Maybe this was the furthering of the beginnings of ‘globalisation’ but, at the time, it stopped Britain getting into a bloody and expensive war. I like Bright’s words about Cobden’s role: ‘Cobden, a simple citizen, unpaid, unofficial, but earnest and disinterested has done all. If our statesmen were such as he, what would not England become!’ And later Bright’s sincerity shines out: ‘such events are compensations for the disappointments and wearisome labours of public life’.
Could we not, today, wish for that same earnestness and disinterestedness on the public stage?
Slavery
Of course, we could have wished that Bright had supported the Ten Hours Act for children. On the other hand, there is no doubt of his keen awareness of the suffering of children or how he loved them. It was clearly revealed when he spoke about slave children. As Trevelyan said: ‘John Bright saw it where the wise were blind; and he made half of England see.’
In 1863, Bright made this statement to the House of Commons: ‘one hundred and fifty thousand children born into the world – born with the badge and the doom of slavery – born to the liability by law, and by custom, and by the devilish cupidity of man – to the lash and to the chain and to the branding iron, and to be taken from their families and carried they know not where.’ Bright then mentioned the joy he had with his own children. He continued, ‘Well, then, if that be so – if, when the hand of death takes one of those flowers from our dwelling, our heart is overwhelmed with sorrow – what would it be if our children were brought up to this infernal system?’
But he didn’t just speak in parliament. He went out to the country, to endless meetings rousing public opinion, and won over a majority in the country to Abraham Lincoln’s cause in the American Civil War, which would bring about the emancipation of the slaves there. This meant enormous sacrifices for the working people of Lancashire, who depended on the cotton from the southern states for their livelihoods in the textile mills, which were then producing seventy percent of the world’s cotton goods.
I believe Bright’s powerful speeches against slavery have their origins in his Quaker background. After all, the Quakers had been seeking the abolition of slavery in America since the mid-eighteenth century and Bright was surely well aware of that.
Votes for women
Bright also used his oratory, and public meetings, to campaign for the extension of the vote. However, his pragmatic self would not go so far as to include in the Franchise Bill votes for women. As he said to a woman who wrote to him, ‘Madam – I know no valid argument against your proposal, but I do not think I should include it in any scheme I might bring before the public… I fear parliament would not be much better in the transaction of business if men and women, equally, had seats there. Your question is somewhat too far in advance, I fear’. This position cannot be dismissed solely on the grounds that he was ‘a man of his time’. It was much more that he wanted to see a bill passed and he judged, probably quite rightly, that with votes for women included it would not get the approval of the house. But I feel he must have let his intelligent sisters and wife, to whom he wrote every day when he was in London, down badly. On the other hand, there is ample evidence in his relations with the women in his family that Bright had a great respect for women – another aspect of his life that it is difficult to reconcile.
Simplicity
There is no doubt that in his understanding of, and empathy with, the poor, the slaves in the southern states and the working families who sent their sons to war, Bright was led by his Quaker principles. Certainly he eschewed pomp and ceremony and it is symbolic that he was buried beneath a simple stone, among his family, in the Rochdale Quaker graveyard.
