Yorkshire Almanac Following a miners’ strike, an anonymous Yorkshire vicar says that only parliamentary reform will bring industrial peace

21 March 1890: Following a miners’ strike, an anonymous Yorkshire vicar says that only parliamentary reform will bring industrial peace

Yorkshire Vicar. 1890/03/22. Strikes and Their Remedy. Leeds Mercury Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

STRIKES AND THEIR REMEDY.
TO THE EDITORS OF THE LEEDS MERCURY.
GENTLEMEN,
Your correspondent “J.F.C.,” regarding the coal strike from a householder’s point of view, has, naturally, little sympathy with the increased price of coal. He gives credit to Trades Unions for turning to good account their powers “in the matter of sick funds and other benevolent objects.” This attempt, however, to regulate the wages question by strikes he condemns. He thinks “they ought to have worked towards the formation of sliding scales and Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration.” The remedy for the evils he deplores is an Act of Parliament “rendering all strikes and lock-outs illegal, and arbitration in all trade disputes compulsory.”
From a capitalist and lawyer’s point of view, as well as from that of the consumer, such suggestions are excellent; but does he imagine that the wage-earning classes have no opinions on such subjects? Who made the laws which at one time rendered Trades Unions illegal? A Parliament of capitalists. Who upholds the present legislation which retains for the landed proprietor his profit from the lease of his minerals free of all risks, and throws on the masters and the men the vexed questions of proportionate profits according to the rise and fall of the markets? A Parliament of capitalists.
Trades Unions and other kindred organisations are only temporary makeshifts to protect labour against capital; and strikes, like all wars, bring evil as well as good in their train. The real remedy for strikes, and the only way of ensuring for the general public reforms which are necessary for the national weal, is a return to the old English method of paid Members of Parliament. If Trades Unions, in addition to struggling to secure for the wage-earning classes shorter hours of labour and better wages, would also use their powers in favour of triennial Parliaments and paid Members, they would not only greatly aid the working classes, but by helping to make Parliament truly representative of the nation they would remove many of the social evils we are now suffering from, and add greatly to the strength, contentment, and stability of the country.
Yours truly,
A YORKSHIRE VICAR.
March 21st, 1890.

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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.

Comment

On the same page, the Leeds surgeon T. Pridgin Teale delivers more immediate value by reminding readers of his techniques for reducing coal consumption by DIY improvements to fireplaces.

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Comment

On the same page, the Leeds surgeon T. Pridgin Teale delivers more immediate value by reminding readers of his techniques for reducing coal consumption by DIY improvements to fireplaces.

Something to say? Get in touch

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27 August 1754: The (Tory) Leeds Intelligencer calls on Holbeckers to accept the appointment by Samuel Kirshaw, Vicar of Leeds, of a new curate, Richard Fawcett Snr, to St Catherine’s Chapel

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Comment

Via Roy Wiles (Wiles 1965).

Events

“Sunday last” is 25 August, but Fawcett managed to get in by 11 September:

On Wednesday last Mr. Fawcett for the first time performed Divine Service in the chapel of Holbeck, but was escorted to and from the chapel by a party of Dragoons, who kept guard at the doors during the service. Notwithstanding this precaution, some evil-disposed people found means to break the windows and throw a brickbat at Mr. Fawcett while he was in the reading- desk. The Sunday following he went through the service unmolested. And on Sunday last he preached a most excellent sermon, 46th verse of 13th chapter of Acts… The same night some prophane sacrilegious villains broke into the chapel and besmeared the seats with human excrements.

On 22 September he was able to conduct a reduced Sunday service in peace:

On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. Fawcett was received and behav’d to by his congregation at Holbeck with great decency… One of Mr. F.’s friends admitted their favourite preacher to his pulpit in the town-by this means the tumultuous part of the people were mostly drawn away from Holbeck, and the curate left at liberty to perform his duty amongst the peaceable and well-disposed inhabitants of the chapelry.

However, on 22 October we read that

In the night between the 16th and 17th inst., the windows of the chapel of Holbeck were again broken. No wonder, when Holbeck contains such a nest of vermin whom neither the laws of God or man can confine within the bounds of decency, etc.

For which John Robinson, a “Houlbecker,” was in November sentenced to be whipped and to pay a fine of £5 (Griffith Wright 1895).

In the summer of the following year he published his first Sunday’s sermon and and his resignation letter. I think that in the following Fawcett is quoting things actually said to him:

A man might oftentimes, by due Care and Watchfulness, perhaps very safely defeat the Schemes, and discourage the Practices of the private Pilferer; and yet, whenever this is done, it is commonly suspected to be done rather for the Preservation of his own Property, than out of a pure Regard to the Public-good: But when he is attack’d in his house, or upon the road by open Plunderers, and requir’d to deliver, or suffer himself to be rifl’d of what he is possess’d of, with some one of these dreadful Alternatives, of having his Brains immediately blown out,” or their hands “wash’d in his hearts Blood,” or “having bis “Entrails pull’d out at his Mouth,” or “being “buried alive,” it will Then surely be accounted highly Romantic in him to reject their demands, out of a Pretence to prevent the bad Influence of their Example; and he will be generally suspected of giving a Proof of his Fool-hardiness or his Avarice, rather than of his public Spirit, by such a Refusal.

In the resignation letter he says that he

perform’d the Duty of the Curacy for near Three Months after he gain’d Admission into the Chapel, and this too, rather to prepare a Say for the peaceable Reception of any other Person whom the Patron shou’d think proper to nominate, that out of any Prospect of reconciling the People to himself.

Fawcett declines to attribute responsibility (“Who the Incendiaries were, the Sufferer neither Pretends to Know, nor Desires to be Inform’d”). He also explicitly excuses the lord of the manor, who at this juncture I take to be Lord Irwin (aka Henry Ingram, 7th Viscount of Irvine) rather than the Whiggish Scholey family, as well as other leading citizens (Fawcett 1755).

Was Fawcett a lousy preacher, or was the mob’s alternative, whoever he was, utterly adorable? Was there a Whiggish or Radical element at work? Was there some element of revenge for Samuel Kirshaw’s victory over James Scott in the struggle from 1745-51 for the vicarage of Leeds (Taylor 1865)? Perhaps you know.

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