This article is from the February issue of Total Politics
John Bright: Statesman, Orator, Agitator
Bill Cash
IB Tauris, £25
Bill Cash is well known in the House of Commons for his relentless opposition to British membership of the EU. Not for him the cool, analytical approach of the new generation of eurosceptics who are bringing the word back to its true meaning as they search for opportunities to redefine British membership in Gaullist terms. Cash sees nothing to praise and everything to denounce.
Something of the same passion pervades his very readable biography John Bright: Statesman, Orator, Agitator (IB Tauris, £25) – Bright was a cousin of his great-grandfather. It is right and attractive to show a proper respect and indeed affection for one’s forebears, but admiration carried beyond a certain point can topple over into hero worship. Surely, one thinks, Bright must have made some mistakes, must have revealed some flaws of character in his long political life. The relentless flow of praise is in danger of becoming monotonous. I was reminded of the work of GM Trevelyan in his youth – not his life of Bright, which I have not read – but his total and unsparing admiration of Garibaldi. As the gallant triumphs multiply, one begins to long for the occasional wart to make the portrait more human and real.
Yet when we get down to actual cases, we find ourselves driven to the conclusion that Bright was almost always on the right side. He was right to support Peel over the Corn Laws, though perhaps Cash exaggerates slightly the role of the Anti-Corn Law League in that success. He was right to oppose the Crimean War and use in that context his most vivid phrase: “The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.” He was right to criticise Palmerston’s foreign policy, which was “jingoistic” before the phrase was even coined. He was right to back the North in the American Civil War. He was right to campaign passionately at mass meetings up and down the country for the extension of the franchise, though it was Disraeli who actually achieved the parliamentary triumph and dished the Whigs in 1867. He was arguably right to resign from Gladstone’s cabinet over the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882.
In all these matters, Bright followed a consistent liberal line. He was an outstanding speaker in the Commons and developed a style of his own: “No effort, no haste, no anger. The broad comely Saxon features were lit up by a genial and good humoured smile.” But otherwise, while the House roared, in every other sentence was the signal for a burst of laughter, prolonged beyond usual limits of duration. The orator stood bland, calm and unmoved. In 1866, for example, he gave speech after speech at hugely attended mass meetings in the open air. Around 150,000 people gathered to hear him at Woodhouse Moor in Leeds, and he was speaking again in the Victoria Hall that evening. A week later he was speaking in Glasgow. Earlier, he had attracted great numbers to a speech in his own constituency of Birmingham and a little later at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. Bright consistently argued against any violence at these meetings and they all passed without serious trouble.
Towards the end of his life there was a change that no one could have foreseen, for though in earlier years he had roundly denounced the British aristocracy, he was a strong monarchist and had no time for Charles Stewart Parnell and his supporters in Ireland. As Cash writes: “Instead of showing loyalty to Great Britain they had thrown it back in his face and voted for Parnell and national independence.” Bright kept in close touch with Joseph Chamberlain, his colleague in the representation of Birmingham, and in June after much coming and going he voted with 92 other Liberal members against Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill, which was defeated by 341 votes to 311. Walter Bagehot had earlier detected what he described as “the Conservative vein in Mr Bright”, and in the end this loyalty to the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament prevailed and he was counted as a Liberal Unionist. As Cash brings out, the final irony was that Bright found himself on the same side as Lord Salisbury who had been the most vigorous of his opponents in the great cause of his life, namely the enfranchisement of the British working class.
Douglas Hurd was foreign secretary from 1989-1995 and home secretary from 1985-1989
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