The magnificently-named Sir Cloudesley Shovell was a post-Restoration admiral whose naval exploits were, in their day, as famous as those of Nelson a century later. In two stints, he was also a member of Parliament.

Shovell had over 30 years’ service at sea when he first entered Parliament for Rochester in 1695. Rochester was heavily influenced by the navy, due to the nearby Chatham Dockyard, and the Admiralty could often effectively nominate one of its two members. Even before the expected dissolution of Parliament by William III, it was announced that the town of Rochester had agreed to elect Shovell to the next Parliament. 

In October 1695 he was returned unopposed. His success may have also been assisted by a generous financial contribution to building of splendid plaster ceilings in the town’s Guildhall. At the 1698 and the first 1701 general elections he retained his seat without a contest. He continued to contribute to other building works in the town, including the Butcher’s Market (now the Corn Exchange) in 1706.

As an active naval officer, Shovell was not a regular Commons attender, being given leave of absence as required. However, his name does appear from time to time, largely on naval matters. Though this era was one of loose political factions, often defined by their connections with the court, rather than of clear parties, Shovell was generally regarded as a Whig rather than a Tory.

As an MP, he was also subject to requests from his constituents for patronage. For example, in April 1697, he had to be suitably obsequious when having to reply in the negative when Rochester’s mayor had asked him to employ a particular person as his naval surgeon.

Shovell’s dealings with Parliament were not just as a member in the Commons. Twice his service at sea was the subject of close and critical scrutiny, with his naval career in peril. The first instance, in 1693 before he became an MP, involved two fellow admirals, jointly commanding the Fleet that year. They were ordered to protect a large convoy of merchant ships sailing from England to the Mediterranean from the enemy French forces, but unfortunately were unable to prevent a strong French fleet destroying much of the flotilla.

The three admirals were heavily criticised, even by King William at the State Opening in November, for their apparent failures, and both Houses began inquiries. Eventually all three were stripped of command, though Shovell, as the sole Whig, was treated far more leniently and able to resume his career.

Three years later, the Commons instituted further inquiries, this time into alleged naval failings in the summer of 1696. Shovell, by then an MP, was critically examined several times by the House that autumn. This time he escaped censure, though these parliamentary criticisms clearly affected him.  One contemporary noted that, “Sir Clowdesley (sic) says there is no storm so bad as one from the House of Commons.”

Shovell did not stand at the second 1701 general election and was out of Parliament for four years. He sought a return at the 1705 election, but matters were complicated by the local custom that Rochester’s two seats were split between a naval officer and a local landowner. Another senior naval officer, Sir Stafford Fairborne, was keen on securing the ‘Admiralty’ seat, and so claimed that Shovell should be regarded not as the sailor but as the country gentleman. Although Shovell refused to go along with this, both were safely returned unopposed on 8 May.

Shovell died in strange circumstances, when his vessel, the flagship HMS Association, was shipwrecked off the Isles of Scilly in October 1707. It was never conclusively determined whether he drowned, like all his crew, and was washed ashore, or survived only to be killed on the beach for his jewellery. 

On his death, Queen Anne described him as the ablest seaman in her service. Shovell was buried with full ceremony in Westminster Abbey on 22 December and there is in the south choir aisle a large monument to his memory, designed by the celebrated sculptor Grinling Gibbons. Curiously for a naval hero, Shovell is depicted sprawled on a couch, wearing Roman armour and a huge wig.

The 1945 manifesto paved the way for the democratic socialist transformation of Britain in Labour’s six years of government from 1945-51. It proposed “jobs for all”, the public ownership of fuel and power, inland transport and the iron and steel industries. It set out plans for the National Health Service to provide healthcare free at the point of need for all.

On housing and land, the manifesto proposed working towards the nationalisation of land, and committed the country to provide “proper social security for all”.

 For any socialist, Let us Face the Future is a delight to read and a reminder of the great achievements of Labour governments in the immediate post-war era. It banished any possibility of a return to the misery of the interwar years, the hungry 1930s, when unemployment was high, poverty was endemic and inequality was extreme. That great document also promised lessons for our times too.

 Successive modern governments have sought to roll back and dismantle the great social advances made in the decades after World War II.

As a result, we now have unemployment ten times higher than in my youth, great public assets have been sold off at rock-bottom prices, enabling privatisers to exploit the public for profit, and inequality has returned with a vengeance. Our modern leaders would do well to look again at what Labour said in 1945. They could learn much, and a modern version of Let us Face the Future would surely win Labour the 2015 general election.

Kelvin Hopkins is Labour MP for Luton North

He was born in Rochester, the younger son of Lt. Colonel John Heaton Lancashire and Elizabeth Henniker of Rochester. Educated at Kent House School, he emigrated to Australia at the age of 16, finding work first as a jackaroo and then as a journalist in Parramatta and Goulburn where, coincidentally, he edited a paper called The Penny Post.

He next moved to Sydney, where he worked for The Australian Town and Country Journal. In 1873, he married Rose, the daughter of the paper’s owner, Samuel Bennett, and within 12 years had acquired sufficient capital to retire from journalism to return to England and enter politics.

Family tradition relates that as a young man in Kent he had witnessed the distress of a widow unable to afford the sixpence cost of a stamp to send a letter to her son in Australia, and this was the inspiration of his lifelong crusade.

Elected as Conservative member for Canterbury, he devoted his energies from the first to harassing the Postmaster-General of the day, laying down endless questions on Post Office administration.

He enumerated the difficulty of framing good questions – they could not involve argument, opinion, inference, imputation, irony or hypothesis. Despite these limitations, and the fact that he was never a good speaker, he used questions as a most effective weapon.

The Manchester Courier wrote: ”Mr. Henniker Heaton’s own particular festival (is) the day on which the vote for the salary of the Postmaster-General comes up for discussion. Nothing happens in the smallest post office of the most remote township of the whole empire but Mr Henniker Heaton hears of it. He collects grievances as another man collects postage stamps.”

He did indeed pay attention to the smallest details. Among his early successes was persuading the Postmaster-General that ‘mother-in-law’ should be counted as one word in telegrams - thus, as he said, “...an additional grievance to the relationship will be removed”.

His greatest ambition was to introduce Universal Penny Postage. Although Rowland Hill had established the Inland Penny Postage as early as 1840, overseas rates remained high.

Henniker Heaton believed that reduced rates were not only a social benefit but a political necessity to strengthen ties with the empire and the world. Lord Salisbury introduced him as “a supporter of mine who is engaged in sticking the Empire together with a penny stamp”.

He was initially faced with public apathy and official indifference. An early resolution inviting the government to enter into negotiations for Universal Penny Postage was opposed on financial grounds, but eventually his calm and reasoned persistence began to gather influential support, particularly from The Times which published a number of leaders advocating Imperial Penny Postage.

Henniker Heaton had a measure of success in 1890 when international rates were reduced from sixpence to two pence ha’penny and 1898 saw the introduction of penny postage for most but not all imperial destinations – throughout his campaigns his problems were exacerbated by the necessity of persuading not only his own government but those of each destination country of the benefits of reform – indeed, Australia resisted introduction until 1905.

One of the hallmarks of his campaigning method was that, as each reform was achieved, he would immediately move on to a new objective, and in August 1905 he announced the establishment of a league to campaign for Universal Penny Postage.

“It is intended to form a league for the establishment of Universal Penny Postage so that any inhabitant of our planet… may be enabled for the sum of one penny to communicate with any other at the lowest possible rate and the highest attainable speed, so that when one soul has something to say to another… no barrier shall stand between them”.

Although this, his greatest ambition, was never fully realised, he achieved some notable victories, including Anglo-American penny postage in 1908.

Henniker Heaton was extremely sociable – he introduced the taking of tea on the Terrace – and a non-partisan politician. He had a remarkably wide circle of political friends, including Lord Randolph Churchill, Lord Salisbury, Charles Stewart Parnell and Lloyd George.

On his retirement from Parliament in 1910 he presented the then Postmaster-General with a list of 62 further reforms he thought desirable, including stamp machines on every pillar box and letter boxes on trains.

He was made a Freeman of the Cities of London and Canterbury in 1899 and a Baronet in 1912.

Although he never sought or received government office, Henniker Heaton was a fine example of what a backbencher may achieve through hard work and determination.

King held the seat at the 1951 general election but decided to swap to the safer Southampton Itchen division in 1955. Within four years of becoming an MP, he had been appointed to the Speaker’s Panel of Chairmen of committees, which enabled him eventually to become Chairman of Ways and Means and deputy Speaker in November 1964.

King found his new responsibilities extremely tiring – since Speaker Hylton-Foster relied heavily on his deputies.

 Despite finding the workload of the deputy role difficult, King became the first Labour Speaker on 9 September 1965 following the shock death of Hylton-Foster. The physical demands and political pressures at the time made the prospect of the Speakership daunting. Nonetheless, King did accept the office and the 151st Speaker proved to be very popular in the chair and ensured that more questions were answered at the despatch box.

On 31 May 1966, during his period as Speaker, Dr King’s wife, Florence, died suddenly from a heart attack. King had been visiting the US at the invitation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John McCormack, and was given the news by British Embassy staff. Mrs King had been a politician in her own right, having served as a Labour councillor and then alderman on Southampton City Council for 36 years. She did not give up her political activism while her husband was Speaker, and so it could be said that Speaker’s House was not as impartial as it should have been. Lord Hooson recalls that, “Horace King was famous because he always used to march in front of his wife. She came up behind him.” It is doubtful whether this was the case with his first wife, Alderman Mrs Florence King, who, as well as holding down a political career, was also the mother of his only daughter. Lord Hooson is referring to King’s second wife – his secretary Una Porter, whom he married in 1967 – who did not have the same civic and political background.

King was known as being “partial to the ladies”, according to Baroness Fookes, but it was another tendency that actually marred his tenure somewhat: alcohol. The strains of the office and the loss of his first wife combined to foster a fondness for the bottle. Lord Weatherill commented that, “Dear old Horace was under the misapprehension that sherry was a non-alcoholic drink”. Sir Richard Body recalls that King “gave the impression sometimes at 10 o’clock at night he’d drunk rather more than he should have done”. Sir Robin Maxwell-Hyslop remembered going to Speaker’s House and seeing how much King would drink: “He didn’t say, ‘What would you like?’ He said, ‘I expect you drink the same as I do’, hence my amazement. He poured about four fingers of brandy into a lager glass and then filled it up with the best part of half a pint of sherry!”

Sir Robin Chichester-Clark remembers an episode when King was drunk on a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association visit to Northern Ireland:

“Someone gave a dinner… it got going and he [King] tickled the ivories quite a bit and knocked back quite a few. At the end, he was left by himself, for some reason, to walk back to the hotel. When he got back to the hotel, it was all barred down for the night, it was 2 o’clock in the morning, so he battered at the door and eventually the porter appeared, saying, ‘What the hell do you want?’ sort of thing. Horace said, ‘Will you please let me in?’ ‘Well who are you, sir?’ ‘I’m the Speaker of the House of Commons, London.’ ‘Well, if you’re the Speaker of the House of Commons, I must be William of Orange!’”

Fortunately, the porter let King in and the Speaker, ever the good sport, did not mind recounting the joke. However, Lord Weatherill remembered what effect King’s drinking had on him while presiding over the Commons chamber:

“He was unwise enough to say, ‘I will always be present for the adjournment.’ Now, that didn’t always take place at 10 o’clock. I mean, it could be 12 o’clock, half past one, sometimes two o’clock. Poor old boy used to sit upstairs, putting back the sweet sherry and was not absolutely sober when he got to the chair. Walter Harrison and I looked after him… we helped the old boy out. But one day, he was in his cups… and faced a very difficult point of order and found himself saying [in a slurred way], ‘Before I rule on this matter, I would like to consult the Table of clerks.’ The next day, having consulted the Table, he ruled very wisely but, by that time, the boys and girls had had him and so, whenever he got up and hesitated for a moment, a buzz started round, ‘Have a word with the Table, Mr Speaker’, ‘Why don’t you talk to the Table, Mr Speaker, sir?’ and he had to go.”

Sir Robin Maxwell-Hyslop recalled a time when King was so drunk that he could not climb the few steps to get to the Speaker’s chair:

“Horace came in at 9.25am and he had two goes at getting up into his chair… and the second time he fell to the right across the Clerks’ Table with his wig 45 degrees to the left and Bob Mellish [government chief whip and Labour MP]… called out, ‘You’re a disgrace, Horace, and I’ll have you out of that chair within three months’. Horace turned round so abruptly that his wig was then 45 degrees out the other way, and he gave a brilliant riposte: ‘How can you get me out of the chair, Bob, when I can’t get myself in to it?’”

King announced his retirement on 10 December 1970, just six months after the general election which saw Edward Heath and the Conservatives win power. He could have retired at the general election and allowed a new House of Commons to select its Speaker in the same way as after the 1951 and 1959 elections. King did say in his resignation speech that:

“Some 18 months ago I indicated to the then leader of the House [Fred Peart] and the then chief opposition whip [William Whitelaw] that if I were re-elected to a new Parliament, I would hope to remain in the chair for only a short time in order to see the new Parliament in. When the House did me the honour of re-electing me as Speaker, I again indicated through the usual channels that I would seek to retire some time during the first year of this Parliament. In October I reaffirmed that it was my intention to retire during the Christmas recess.”

An incident in July 1970, when a disgruntled Belfast man threw two canisters of CS gas onto the floor of the Commons chamber during a statement on the Common Market, helped to shuffle him towards retirement.

King remembered: “While the minister Tony Barber was making his statement, a man stood up in the Strangers’ Gallery and threw two objects on to the floor of the House, close to the front benches. Members with military experience immediately scattered or ducked. I sat tight, imagining it to be some minor nuisance. But the draught carried the fumes to the chair and I was almost overcome… I heard, faintly, somebody moving that the sitting be suspended – murmured myself, ‘Sitting suspended’, but by then was unable to move. I learned later that the deputy Speaker and the clerk of the House dragged me out of the chair.”

For someone who suffered badly from the strains of the Speakership, such an attack would have affected King badly. Sir Robin Maxwell-Hyslop said that, in the end, Speaker King “was ‘persuaded’ to retire” because of his sometimes drunken state and Stan Newens confirms this, adding that it was orchestrated by the Labour chief whip, Mellish. King himself described the responsibilities of the role as “unimaginable” and often stated he would retire before he became too weak for the job. If this is the case, then King’s assertion that he had planned to go was a face-saving exercise because it was the stresses of the office causing the excessive drinking which eventually led to him having to retire slightly earlier than expected. King himself wrote: “I had been a happy Chairman of Ways and Means. The burden I assumed on becoming Speaker took away some of that happiness.”

The sudden death of Speaker Hylton-Foster had propelled King into the chair with less than a year’s experience as deputy. He had not expected to become Speaker at that time and so was totally unprepared to take up the role. The fact that he had found the deputy Speaker role a strain should have forewarned him that the full Speakership was going to be difficult. That he was unhappy in the role, had lost his wife and found the job exhausting meant that it was to his credit that he lasted more than five years in office.

On being replaced as Speaker in January 1971, King was given a life peerage, taking the style Lord Maybray-King which incorporated his middle name, the maiden name of his mother. He was the first Speaker not to be given the customary hereditary viscountcy because Harold Wilson had stopped the practice and tradition of creating hereditary peers, and the new PM, Edward Heath, did not see fit to re-introduce it. Only Margaret Thatcher created further hereditary peers when Harold Macmillan was granted an earldom and Willie Whitelaw and George Thomas were given viscountcies.

While in the House of Lords, King served as a deputy Speaker although his obituary in The Times notes that it was “a position whose duties he tended to find onerous as the years went by and he found it increasingly difficult to attend the House”. King married twice more before passing away on 3 September 1986.

This is an excerpt taken from Mr Speaker: The office and the Individuals since 1945 by Matthew Laban (Biteback, £20)

I can remember the stir that Wilson caused at his first party conference: he promised a Britain “forged in the white heat” of a new revolution.  Science would transform industry and people’s prospects would be decided on merit rather than their social class. Within a year, Labour overturned a Tory majority of 99 and took power for the first time in 13 years. The Wilson era had begun. All the talk was of the prospect of change:  more equality, opportunity and prosperity for all. And when Wilson thrashed the Tories in a second election 17 months later – in March 1966 – he looked like a man with the power to become a great prime minister.  

So why is it that we look back at what Harold Wilson and his governments achieved with such disappointment? Why is it that the man who won more elections than any other prime minister in the 20^th century is seen to have achieved so little?

The drab fact is that Harold Wilson’s only clear claim to greatness is that he was a great survivor. He secured power for Labour that was to last for a total of 11 years. He was in office for eight of them until his surprise resignation in March 1976. No one doubts he could have stayed until 1979 and – who knows? – with his knack for winning elections he might even have beaten Margaret Thatcher.

To be fair, there is no doubt that Britain under Harold Wilson did experience real social change.  Comprehensive schools ended selective secondary education over most of the country.  There was a narrowing of the gap between rich and poor. Hikes in direct taxation led to a substantial redistribution of income. Laws on homosexuality, divorce and abortion were relaxed and the death penalty was abolished. 

But these developments took place against the background of a Labour government lurching from crisis to crisis. The high hopes people had of Wilson when he took office in 1964 were soon reduced to a public perception of a Prime Minister muddling on with his party increasingly divided on principles and policies. Much of the failure was due to events and forces Wilson could not control; much of it was Wilson’s own personal fault.

His main fault was that he failed to recognize and adapt to the speed of Britain’s economic decline.  He clung for far too long to the delusion that Britain could remain a world power with a strong pound. He was overwhelmed and humiliated by the devaluation that was forced on him in 1967. He threw his weight behind a national plan for industrial development in the mistaken belief that the socialist planned economies were pointing the way to prosperity. He vacillated on the Common Market and only when he inherited membership from Edward Heath’s government in 1974 did he show forthright leadership in helping to deliver a decisive Yes vote in a referendum.  

Wilson, the man, was a curious enigma. He had few close friends.  He was obsessed with suspicion that his ministers and even the secret services were conspiring against him. It is hard to discern a single issue that he was deeply passionate about. Denis Healey, his defence secretary and chancellor of the exchequer, said Harold Wilson never gave the Labour party any sense of direction.      

It has been a fascinating exercise surveying the Wilson years in such detail for BBC Parliament’s extended Valentine’s Day programme. Perhaps the most touching moment in a whole series of television performances that viewers will see him carry out with such skill is his last one as prime minister. The day he announced his surprise resignation in 1976, he said “I wish I could have been prime minister in happier times.”

Peter Snow presents Harold Wilson Night on Thursday 14 February, from 6pm-11pm on BBC Parliament

The Kirkcaldy Beer Duties Act 1741 was one of the earlier modern-day pieces of legislation to tax the brewing of British beer. All beer brewed and traded in Kirkcaldy was levied at two Scots pennies per Scots pint, or around three normal pints to you and me. The mark of the problem was in the measures, clearly.
Appropriately, it was a notable son of Kirkcaldy, Gordon Brown, who presided over the recently historic tax hikes on the nation’s tipple. Beer duty is 60 per cent higher than it was in 2004.
Great British beer-backing parliamentarians want the government to scrap the inflation-busting ‘beer duty escalator’ that is driving pubs to the wall, yet in a debate in November, the Treasury minister Sajid Javid admitted the tax was too lucrative, as it was projected to yield over £100m over the next two years. Hardly small beer when times are tough, goes the line.
It was also the line of the chancellor in 1895, Sir William Vernon Harcourt (Lib, Derby), with Britain facing “an estimated deficit of about £300,000” (£32bn today). An extra sixpence on a barrel of beer (roughly £2 on a pint today) would yield £500,000 (now £54bn), so wiping out the nation’s deficit with surplus to spare. Britain would drink its way out of the mire.
George Goschen (Con, St George’s Hanover Square), a former chancellor, congratulated his successor on “the most orthodox practice” and confined himself to quibbling about whether fewer people had died annually since the introduction of death duties – history shows that people will do anything to get out of paying taxes.
The backbenches were filled with displeasure. Arthur Jeffreys (Con, Basingstoke) decried the decision to reduce the duty on spirits, “which were made chiefly in Scotland and Ireland”, yet increase the duty on beer, “almost exclusively an English product”. Donald MacGregor (Lib, Inverness-shire) however, thought it a marvellous idea, alleviating an “indefensible disproportion” of tax on Scottish whisky.
Edward Heneage (Lib Unionist, Grimsby) said the duty would force brewers to shop for cheaper raw materials abroad. Sir William Cuthbert Quilter (Lib Unionist, Sudbury) had introduced a private member’s bill 10 years previously on the subject of purer beer, and, like a proper pub bore, could not resist butting in. “This extra beer duty was paid out of the pockets of the agriculturalists”, and feared “the brewer would seek other ingredients”. The real ale would suffer.
Sir George Trout Bartley (Con, Islington North), a temperance campaigner, deplored the regressive move “because beer was a much more wholesome drink for the masses than spirits”.
Everywhere in the annals of British political history, alcohol tax has always been a magnet for chancellors in need of a few pennies. Yet despite the present pains, brewers and publicans might be thankful for this silver lining: at least Osborne doesn’t see beer duty as the sole answer to our economic malaise.

Sir Edward Coke was one of the most influential legal figures of the late Elizabethan and early Stuart period. Over a span of nearly 40 years, he also served in six parliaments as an MP for various constituencies.

Already a successful lawyer, he became an MP when returned unopposed for Aldeburgh in 1589. Active in various House committees, his main contribution was the investigation of abuses in the Exchequer. This angered the Queen, so Coke searched for precedents to bolster Parliament’s position. This worked, and Elizabeth agreed to remedy the abuses.

He sat for Norfolk in the 1593 Parliament, and was chosen as its Speaker. As such, Coke was a key link between Parliament and Crown, especially when the Queen thought Parliament was meddling in sensitive affairs of state, like religion and the royal succession.  

He was very interested in procedural matters and in keeping order. He once reprimanded some members for whispering among themselves in the chamber, because, in Parliament, “only public speeches are to be used”.

Coke was out of the House for nearly 30 years. He was one of England’s most senior and controversial judges during the growing constitutional crisis over royal prerogative powers. He supported the courts against both Crown and Parliament, even suggesting that judges could strike down acts of Parliament. Eventually, the Stuart King James dismissed Coke from the bench in 1616, but when James decided to hold another Parliament, Coke found a seat at Liskeard, after failing at Bossiney.

In the 1621 Parliament ,Coke emerged as a major opponent of the king, criticising policy on business monopolies and on sensitive constitutional and ecclesiastical issues. He proposed a committee on grievances, and was made its chair. Coke campaigned against many senior officials, including the lord chancellor Francis Bacon.

James grew exasperated with Parliament’s attacks on him, and bluntly warned it – and Coke in particular – that it was subordinate to the Crown. Eventually, when the Commons drew up a ‘Protestation’ asserting its rights and privileges, the king reacted. He ripped the document out of the journal, dissolved Parliament and sent Coke to the Tower.

When, three years later, the monarch summoned a new Parliament, he tried to keep Coke out by sending him on a mission to Ireland. However, this ploy failed when Coke secured a seat at Coventry and the mission was postponed. This 1624 Parliament was a less fractious and more productive affair, and Coke managed to secure enactment of three of his bills which had fallen at the previous dissolution.  

He was again returned for Charles I’s first Parliament in 1625. In April, he won one of the Norfolk seats after a hard contest, but, concerned that the result might be challenged, tried elsewhere, and was also successful in his old constituency of Coventry. He took his time deciding which seat to take, only choosing Norfolk in early July.  

The new king was as much troubled by Coke as had been his predecessor, specifically on the issues of royal finances, foreign policy and religion. On the first, Coke lectured Charles in some detail on necessary reforms, which resulted in Charles dissolving Parliament a week later and seeking to prevent the Norfolk MP from entering the next one by making him sheriff of Buckinghamshire. Ignoring this, Coke was returned for Norfolk at the 1626 election, but could not take his seat while holding the office of sheriff.

His final Commons stint came in the momentous 1628 Parliament. Returned for both Buckinghamshire and Suffolk, he chose to sit for the former. King and Parliament were in deep conflict over the Crown’s increasingly arbitrary rule, which Coke feared threatened the rule of law. He seized an opportunity to reassert the basic liberties of Magna Carta by promoting the Petition of Right, which Charles reluctantly accepted. For the aged Coke, this was his last and greatest parliamentary success.

In one of his legal works, Coke described the necessary attributes of an MP.  He “should have three properties of the elephant”:  first, have no gall – that is, be “without malice, rancour, heat” – secondly, be inflexible and do not bow; thirdly, be of a most ripe and perfect memory. He added two further qualities, sociability and philanthropy. To what extent Coke himself displayed all these is, as the lawyers might say, a moot point.