Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

Sir Wilfrid Lawson exchanged his Permissive Bill this year for an abstract resolution declaring the right of the inhabitants of any district to decide for themselves on the subject of the grant and renewal of the publicans’ licences in that district, and in favour of this resolution he made on Tuesday a very clever speech, in which he insisted on the Sunday Closing Bills of Ireland and Scotland as proofs that the principle of “local option” had been adopted by the legislature in relation at least to these larger areas. He quizzed Mr Wheelhouse, the Member for Leeds, for his advocacy of the cause of the Licensed Victuallers, quoting a speech of his in which he had said that beer and hops and episcopacy were all very well, in their way, but that in the performance of his duty a Member of Parliament does not care very much “for anything but the Bible.” “It would be one of the most interesting and exciting political episodes of our time, to see the honourable and biblical member for Leeds leading his bibulous majority to victory.” He pointed out that this drink difficulty was not a party question, for though he was a Radical, Mr. Birley, who seconded him, was a Tory; and “a man must be of some politics, now-a-days, unless he be a Home-ruler.” The saying last session used to be, “We are patriots first, and Liberals afterwards;” all he asked of the Members of the House was to be “patriots first, and publicans afterwards.”

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

See Hansard. Wheelhouse

was long opposed to Free Trade and the Prohibitory Liquor Bill. As a spokesman for the working class he argued that the public house was the only place available for them. He asked, ‘If it was right to shut up public houses, why was it not right to shut up the clubs in Pall Mall and the refreshment rooms of the Houses of Parliament?’

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Original

Sir Wilfrid Lawson exchanged his Permissive Bill this year for an abstract resolution declaring the right of the inhabitants of any district to decide for themselves on the subject of the grant and renewal of the publicans’ licences in that district,— and in favour of this resolution he made on Tuesday a very clever speech, in which he insisted on the Sunday Closing Bills of Ireland and Scotland as proofs that the principle of “local option” had been adopted by the Legislature in relation at least to these larger areas. He quizzed Mr. Wheelhouse, the Member for Leeds, for his advocacy of the cause of the Licensed Victuallers, quoting a speech of his in which he had said that beer and hops and episcopacy were all very well, in their way, but that in the performance of his duty a Member of Parliament does not care very much “for anything but the Bible.” “It would be one of the most interesting and exciting political episodes of our time, to see the honourable and Biblical Member for Leeds leading his bibulous majority to victory.” He pointed out that this Drink difficulty was not a party question, for though he was a Radical, Mr. Birley, who seconded him, was a Tory; and “a man must be of some politics, now-a-days, unless he be a Home-ruler.” The saying last Session used to be, “We are patriots first, and Liberals afterwards;” all he asked of the Members of the House was to be “patriots first, and publicans afterwards.”

256 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Alcohol (drug) (59) ·
• Bible (15) ·
• Class conflict (11) ·
• Class discrimination (3) ·
• Classical radicalism (9) ·
• Conservative Party (1834-) (22) ·
• House of Commons of the United Kingdom (11) ·
• Humour (26) ·
• Leeds (UK Parliament constituency) (1) ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• Liberal Party (UK) (10) ·
• Licensed Victuallers Association (2) ·
• Magistrates’ court (England and Wales) (4) ·
• Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet, of Brayton (2) ·
• Teetotalism (6) ·
• Temperance movement (10) ·
• Tory radicalism (6) ·
• Wheelhouse, William St James (1821-86) (1), Tory barrister, Leeds MP 1868-80 ·

All tags.

Similar

• 17 January 1865: At Leeds, temperance advocate Wilfrid Lawson MP calls for the sale of alcohol to be banned
• 21 February 1835: The Spectator summarises the respective preoccupations of Leeds’s Tory and Whig establishments – partying, and preventing implementation of the child labour provisions of the Factory Act
• 2 October 1880: The Leeds Mercury reproduces a typographical intemperance tree from the 1840s origins of the Band of Hope
• 17 July 1844: Tory Radical Joshua Hobson tells Leeds council that Liberal mayor Hamer Stansfield was wrong to prohibit public meetings on the semi-privatised Kirkgate market
• 18 February 1934: Leeds Labour triggers the first rent strike against a council by announcing higher rents for well-off tenants and possible free housing for ex-slum-dwellers
• 24 April 1688: At Pontefract, the new Catholic and Dissenting members of the judiciary send James II thanks for permitting freedom of conscience, leading him to believe it has popular support
• 30 April 1872: MPs discuss drink, proverbial curse of the working class, with James Wetherell, Leeds’s chief constable
• 21 November 1958: Norman Harding and fellow Trotskyite Labour Party members from East Leeds ambush their MP, Denis Healey, during a rigged live TV debate with his Tory neighbour, Keith Joseph
• 19 September 1835: The Leeds Mercury attacks property valuations under the recent Municipal Corporations Act, which facilitate the political careers of men from the centre of town
• 18 January 1966: Barbara Castle (Lab.) swings the crucial Hull North by-election by promising a bridge over the Humber