Greater Manchester Politics, Law & Social Reform

William Gladstone PM

(1809-1898)
William Ewart Gladstone, born on the 29th December 1809, the fourth son of Sir John Gladstone in Liverpool (then in the County of Lancashire). William was named after William Ewart, a close friend of his father. John Gladstone's wealth enabled him to give his son a good start in life and William was sent to school at Eton in 1821. In October 1828 he went on to Christ Church College, Oxford, where, in the Oxford Union Debating Society he soon developed a reputation as a fine orator. In time, Gladstone was to become an MP and a successful Liverpool merchant. Initially he considered a career in the church, but in the event decided upon politics and was elected as a Tory Member of Parliament for the Newark Constituency in 1832. His father was a long-time friend of the Duke of Newcastle which no doubt worked to his advantage.
By 1834 the young Gladstone had already made his mark in holding the office of Junior Lord of the Treasury in Sir Robert Peel's government, and within a year had been made up to Under Secretary for the Colonies. In July 1839 he married his wife Catherine, and together they set up a refuge for prostitutes; reputedly, Gladstone walked London streets at night, trying to persuade prostitutes to start a new life. By 1841 Gladstone had become Vice-President of the Board of Trade and became its President in 1843. In 1844 he was responsible for the introduction of the Railway Bill. However, in 1845 he lost the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle who was incensed by Gladstone's support for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. Having lost his parliamentary seat, it was not until the 1847 General Election that Gladstone was re-elected, this time in opposition, as MP for Oxford University.
He remained in the opposition benches until 1859, when Lord Palmerston, the leader of the Whig Party, offered him the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Gladstone was instrumental in creating universal suffrage (for men at least), at a time when it is estimated that only one fiftieth of the working classes had the vote. Gladstone was to become a Liberal Prime Minister four times in all. His first government saw the disestablishment of the Irish church in 1869, reformed the education system in 1870 and established the secret ballot in 1872. His second government passed the Irish Land Act in 1881 and the Third Reform Act in 1884. His last two administrations, in 1886 and 1892-94, were dominated by failed attempts to pass the Irish Home Rule Bill. Even so, in or out of power, Gladstone remained a vigorous campaigner until his death.
Reputedly a severe and humourless man of deep conviction and principle, he was not a favourite of Queen Victoria, who is supposed to have said of him: "We are not amused!" William Ewart Gladstone died of cancer in 1898 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Ernest Jones

(1819-1869)
Born on the 25th January 1819, lawyer Ernest Jones was an important figure in the Chartist Movement in Manchester. He spent his early years on a small estate which his father bought in Holstein in Germany. By the age of nine he had a story published as well as volume of poems which was published in Hamburg in 1830 when he was eleven. By that time, he was showing a clear literary bias and was already proficient in English, German, French and Italian.Born into a wealthy middle class family, he and his parents moved to England in 1838. He married Jane Atherly, the daughter of an old Cumberland family in 1841 and entered the Middle Temple in March of that year, being called to the Bar on 20 April 1844.In 1846 he converted to Chartism and promptly abandoned law for politics. Jones is credited as being one of the first Chartists to be influenced by the works of Karl Marx and he enjoyed a career as a Chartist politician, journalist, novelist and poet. He was also a novelist, radical and lawyer, and colleague of Fergus O'Connor (see below). A fellow solicitor, Jones was first brought to the North West region by O'Connor to speak at an open air meeting on Blackstone Edge. This was a Chartist Camp Meeting on a stretch of wild moorland on the border of Yorkshire with Lancashire.
He was arrested in Manchester on the 6th May 1848 and was subsequently sentenced to two years in prison for delivering a supposedly 'seditious' speech at Clerkenwell Green in London. He was tried together with five other prominent Chartists in July of the same year. On leaving prison, Jones returned to law and opened a practice in Bow Chambers at 55 Cross Street in Manchester city centre - a commemorative plaque marks the site. He settled permanently in Manchester in 1861, returned to a more modest practice of Law and remarried. Jones did however remain active in the campaign for universal suffrage and kept in contact with Marx, with whom he shared the revolutionary principle of drawing the broad mass of workers into the campaign for democratic reform. When he died on the 26th January 1869 his funeral at Ardwick Cemetery was attended by multitudes of his supporters, and the event became known as the 'last great Chartist rally'.

Glenda Jackson CBE MP

(Born 1936)
Celebrated actress and politician Glenda Jackson was born in Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula of Cheshire in 1936, one of four daughters to a charlady and a bricklayer. She was educated at West Kirby County Grammar School and later went on to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). Her professional stage debut was in Terrence Rattigan's "Separate Tables" in 1957. A long-time member of the Royal Shakepeare Company, Glenda had a long, distinguished and successful career as an actress and was known internationally for her various roles.
Performances included stage and television plays like ''The Idiot'' (1962), ''Hamlet'' (1965), ''Three Sisters'' (1967), and "Elizabeth R", (1973), and films including Lindsay Anderson’s "This Sporting Life" (1963), Ken Russel's ''Women In Love'' (1969) for which she was awarded an Academy Award, and ''Mary Queen of Scots''. In 1971 she was nominated for another Academy Award for her role in John Schlesinger’s "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and won a second Oscar for her role in ''A Touch of Class'' opposite George Segal. She was Oscar-nominated once again for her performances in "Hedda" (1975).
Other films have included "Stevie" (1978), "Turtle Diary", (1985), Robert Altman’s "Beyond Therapy" (1985), "Business as Usual" (1986), "Salome's Last Dance" (1988) and "The Rainbow" (1989).
She has been Labour Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Highgate Constituency since 1992, having given up acting for a full time role in politics. In 1994 she was appointed as Labour Transport Team Campaigns Co-ordinator. However, she resigned this position in July 1999 to run for selection as the Labour Party candidate for the Mayor of London but failed to secure the nomination in February 2000. Glenda Jackson lives in South London and is divorced with one son, Daniel. She was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1978.

Hazel Blears MP

(Born 1956)
Hazel Blears was born on 14th May 1956 and raised in Salford. She was educated at Trent Polytechnic and Chester College of Law. Before entering Parliament was a solicitor in private practice and local government from1980-1997. During this period she had a dual career as a senior solicitor and a North West Councillor was Chair of the Salford Community Health Council from 1992 to 1996. She was elected as Member of Parliament for Salford in 1997. Since 2006 she has been Labour Party chair and Minister Without Portfolio. Prior to this she held several important govenment positions including Home Office Minister (2003-06), and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (2001-03).
She is a Trustee of the Working Class Movement Library and National Museum of Labour History in Manchester, a Member of the Co-op Commission, Trustee of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance. Other offices have included Chairperson of Salford Community Health Council from 1994 to 1997, Chair of the Regeneration Partnership, President of the Local Government Association, Chair of All-Party Parliamentary Motorcycling Group, former Leader of the Parliamentary Campaign Team, as well as being a Salford City Councillor from 1984 to 1992. Regarded as a close ally of the former Prime Minister Tony Blair in cabinet and a frequent spokesperson on government matters to the media.
Hazel Blears resigned from Gordon Brown's cabinet in 2009 in the wake of a wide-ranging scandal over members of parliament inflated expenses claims.

Reginald Richardson

(1803-1861)
Born in 1803, Reginald John Richardson was a self taught master carpenter who ran a bookshop in Chapel Street, Salford. In 1826 he took part in demonstrations against the introduction of power looms. By 1837 he had become secretary of the South Lancashire Anti-Poor Law Association and in September 1838 he was the organiser of the Kersal Moor meeting. When the carpenters contributed union funds to build Carpenters' Hall in Manchester, Richardson acted as one of the trustees for the money. He was instrumental in the formation of the Manchester Political Union which later became the Manchester section of the National Charter Association.
Richardson was imprisoned for his radical views on several occasions and his political ideology encompassed Luddism, Chartism, Women's Rights and Trade Unionism. A fierce Luddite by nature, he advocated the use of physical force in demonstrations and was finally arrested on a charge of seditious conspiracy in 1839. He had openly maintained "…that the people of this country had the right to use arms." For this sedition he served nine months in Lancaster Castle and on his release, went to Scotland to work as editor of the 'Dundee Chronicle', a Chartist paper. He died in 1861.

Feargus O'Connor

(1796-1855)
Feargus (sometimes spelt 'Fergus') O'Connor was one of the most popular and formidable Chartist orators of the day. Described as "…a natural-born radical leader who could rouse working men to wrath", O'Connor was born into a Protestant family in Ireland in 1796, and inherited a Cork estate in 1820. From the outset he was politically active, and was instrumental in Daniel O'Connell's winning the Cork seat in the 1832 General Election. His political views included universal suffrage and the adoption of the secret ballot - two of the six points of the Charter that was to occupy so much of his later life. In November 1836, O'Connor joined the London Working Men's Association who framed the Charter, and later he moved to live in Leeds and to open the radical newspaper 'The Northern Star', which he used as an instrument to promote his own ideas of Chartism. He was a friend and mentor to fellow lawyer Ernest Jones.
O'Connor's campaign speeches were full of vehement and powerful rhetoric and of blood and thunder, which soon brought him into conflict with authorities. In February 1840, O'Connor was jailed for 18 months for seditious libel, but he irrepressibly continued to edit the 'Northern Star' from his cell. On release from prison in August 1841 he became leader of the National Charter Association. He was also arrested for implication in the so-called Plug Plot of August 1842, for encouraging workers to strike, but was released through lack of evidence.
Chartism failed to survive the 1840s, and as his power and influence waned, O'Connor's behaviour became increasingly bizarre, possibly as a result of syphilis, and he was committed to a mental asylum in Chiswick. He died there on the 30th of August 1855.