Mr. Brightman ….. Chorlton-cum-Hardy……… and the election of 1945

 This is the story of the 1945 election, but not the famous one which sent the Labour Party back to power, and led to the creation  of the National Health Service, and other collective reforms which we now know as the Welfare State.

That election had been in the July of 1945, and a few months later in November, the electors of Manchester went back to the polling booths to elect candidates for the City Council.

The Labour Party were so confident of substantial gains, that they decided to contest every seat in the city.  As the Manchester Guardian reported “for the first time since municipal elections were held in Manchester  the Labour party has nominated a candidate for every vacant seat.  Even the small business wards in the central area – Exchange, Oxford and St Ann’s are being contested”.*

And the article went on to report that “it is an open secret that even the most optimistic Conservatives are concerned not so much about how many seats they can gain as about how many of the 28 seats they are defending they can hold”.

The Party’s local election manifesto stressed the importance of giving the Labour Party control of the City Council so that it could support and deliver locally the national programme of reform, arguing “if progressive policies at Westminster are to be interpretated into realities up and down the country it is the people elected to the local authorities who will have to make them effective”, arguing the track record of the Conservatives had been to obstruct those “progressive policies” …… “the simple fact is that the Tories in a majority have always been fighting a rearguard action against the incessant demands of the people expressed by Labour”.

And nowhere more so than in the case of clearing the slums because “three fourths of Manchester’s 200-000 houses are obsolete by modern standards and half of them unfit to live in , [with] only six out of every ten having baths”.**

Here in Chorlton, the local Labour Party had selected Mr. W. H. Brightman, and Mrs Kelsall, from a list of six at a meeting on September 23rd. 

Earlier in the month Mr. Brightman had indicated in a letter that he could not accept the nomination to the selection panel “as he would be engaged in London for a week or more on Trade Union business”.***

Now there is no record of why despite his absence he was selected but it is clear that he had a proven record of service to both the Labour party and the trade union movement.

According to his election address he was known to “many hundreds of Chorlton residents having lived among them for more than 25 years, had played his part in Hertfordshire in the Parliamentary elections of 1906-11. 

Joined the Labour Party in 1914, a member of the Manchester and Salford Co-operative Party  for many years.  

He was first vice chairman of the Manchester Shipping Guild which he helped form, and was a member of the Executive Committee of the Manchester Council of Labour”.****

He had held various posts in the Withington Constituency Labour Party, Chorlton Labour Party, and the City Labour Group.

And here I have his great grandson to thank for much of the material on Mr. Brightman, as well as a brief biography, from which I learned that Mr. Brightman was born in Islington, and moved to Manchester in 1914 with his second wife, finally settling in Albermarle Road in Chorlton.

His election address echoed the Party manifesto , and argued that “unless the Government of the day has the general support of the local council the maximum benefit of existing and future legislation cannot be achieved.  Those enactments must be loyally and capably effected by the local authorities”.

Across the City, the Labour Party did very well, holding on to “all the twenty-one seats it was defending and gained  an additional fourteen  - eleven from the Conservatives and three from the Liberals”.*****

And despite failing to win overall control by just four seats, it was the most successful election “the Labour party has ever fought in Manchester and the Labour members are now for the first time the largest groups in the council”.

Sadly neither Mr. Brightman nor Mrs. Kelsall were successful.  

The Conservative candidates, each gained 66.9% of the vote with Mrs. Kelsall achieving 33.1% and Mr. Brightman 31.4% .

But then Labour had never won a seat in Chorlton.  

In the early 20th century the electors had returned either Tory or Liberal councillors, and after 1945 would continue to elect Conservative candidates until the historic breakthrough in 1986.******

Looking back at the local campaign, the election agent commented that “Chorlton ward had polled well, in spite of the lack of many prominent workers, who were fighting in other wards”, which traditionally was the fate of local elections in Chorlton until the 1970s.********

I doubt Mr. Brightman looked upon the result as poor, given that he and Mrs. Kelsall each polled nearly a third of the vote in what was then a traditional Conservative seat.

He continued living in Chorlton until sometime after 1939.  

At his death in 1950, Manchester Corporation passed a resolution of thanks ….. now that I would like to see.

Leaving me just to thank Mr. MG. Wittard for all his help in writing the story, and a promise that I will go looking for Mrs. Kelsall.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Labour Party Campaign poster 1945, Labour Party, Mr. Brightman, from the Election Address, and City Election News, 1945 and  Golden Wedding announcement , courtesy of Mr. MG. Wittard.

*Labour Challenge In Manchester Tories on the Defensive, Manchester Guardian, October 25, 1945

**Election Issues in Manchester, Labour and Housing, Manchester Guardian, October 20th, 1945

***Minutes of the Chorlton Labour party, September 13t,h 1945

****Election Address, November 1st, 1945

******More Labour Victories in Manchester, Manchester Guardian, November 3rd 1945

*******The first Labour candidate had been Alice McIlwrick in the November of 1928 gaining 14% of the vote.

********Minutes of the Chorlton Labour Party, November 6th, 1945