New people new ideas, Chorlton in 1895

“The influx of a new population of lower middle class city workers who have to find room to live in the new houses erected on open spaces where a few years ago there were green pastures and golden corn fields.  These people have brought with them a new political outlook consistent with the great advance of Labour in recent years.”*

It was of course one of the outcomes of the expansion of housing across south Manchester at the end of the 19th century  that new political ideas would follow the new people settling here.

Now I have no doubt that radical politics had long been discussed in the township.

For a while the radical politician Thomas Walker had lived at Barlow Hall at the end of the 18th century and there would have been plenty of people who travelled into Manchester who would have been aware of the torrent of ideas circulating during the years after the French Revolution and well into the middle of the 1800s and at the very least would have discussed them in their homes and the pubs and beer shops.

The radical journalist Alexander Somerville walked through the lanes of Chorlton in 1847 talking to our farmers and in the decade before had been charged by the Anti Corn Law League with the task of arguing for an end to trade protectionism and may have made other visits.

Thirty years before his visit there is evidence that people had walked from Urmston and Stretford to Peterloo in 1819** and I am sure they would have been joined by weavers and labourers from Chorlton, Withington and the other townships on the southern edge of the city.

But at present all that is conjecture, although we do know that in the 1835 General Election the Whigs got 27% of the vote against the Tories here in Chorlton.  Of course the total male population was only 26 men and neither of the Whig candidates were radicals, but on the other hand they were the “progressive party” and faced an onslaught of voter intimidation from the Tories during the campaign and on the day of the election.

Sixty years later and the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Socialist Society was active.  In 1895 they had complained bitterly to the Manchester Guardian that they had been prevented from holding a meeting in the Public Hall which was a “hall built for the public, consecrated to the common good, free from the trammels of faction, open for the use of all” and following this had met the same response from “every other room belonging to a public body.”***

And so were forced to meet “on certain nights around lamp posts”**** to spread their political message.

By 1906 they at least they were afforded the same rights as other political groups and had been given permission to hold two meetings on the village green.

But it was not till 1928 that the Labour Party contested its first local election here in Chorlton achieving 1,457 votes with 14% of the total vote, and still managed 12% a month later when a second election was run.

Now this is about it.  There will be election material, more reports and stories out there which will help throw a light on how the township developed politically in the early years of the last century.

Picture; Solidarity, Walter Crane, 1887, and Percentage  of the total vote in the Chorlton Local Election November 1928

.
*Davies, Rhys. J., Socialism in Surburbia, 1930
** On an August day in 1819, anything between 60,000 and 80,000 men, women and children had assembled in St Peter’s Field to listen to the case for reforming the representation of Parliament.  Just before 2 in the afternoon a unit of Cavalry charged into the crowd with their sabres.  The deaths resulting from that charge have never been exactly established but sources claimed between 11 and 15 people were killed and up to 700 injured.
*** C. Fletcher, Chorlton-cum- Hardy Socialist Society, Manchester Guardian, October 23 1895
****, Davies, p7