Durham North

Economic and social profile

A county palatine on the North sea coast between the rivers Tyne and Tees, Durham was agriculturally diverse, producing wheat, oats, barley, peas and beans, and had rich deposits of coal, iron and lead.1Dod’s electoral facts, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1972), 102-3. The northern division contained the newly-created boroughs of Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland, along with the chief election town of Durham. Sunderland was the largest shipbuilding port in the world in the first half of the nineteenth century, while Gateshead was home to a thriving iron industry.2J.F. Clarke, ‘Shipbuilding, 1780-1914’, in G.E. Milburn and S.T. Miller (eds.), Sunderland: river, town and people: a history from the 1780s (1988), 33-6; F.W.D. Manders, A history of Gateshead (1973), 51-97. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a spectacular increase in the output of the county’s northern coalfields, producing a proliferation of small colliery villages north of Durham, and subsequently a considerable immigration of workers into the region.3N. McCord and D.J. Rowe, Northumberland and Durham: industry in the nineteenth century (1971), 6-7. The Durham and Sunderland railway opened in 1836, and the Gateshead to South Shields line reached Monkwearmouth, on the north bank of the River Wear, three years later.4N. Sinclair, ‘Industry to 1914’, in Milburn and Miller, Sunderland: river, town and people, 21-5. The line from Euston to Gateshead was completed by the Newcastle and Darlington Railway Company in 1844.5Manders, Gateshead, 110-18.

Electoral history

The 1832 Reform Act divided the county of Durham into two divisions, separating the largely industrial north from the (at the time) agricultural south.6HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 353. The representation of Durham North was vested predominantly in the heads of the Lambton family of Lambton Castle and the Tempests of Wynyard, whose wealth was founded upon their nearby coal mines, while Lord Ravensworth, of Ravensworth Castle, possessed a lesser but nevertheless important influence.7T.J. Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms in reformed England: case studies from the North-east, 1832-74 (1975), 69. The Lambton interest was led by the Radical Lord Durham, an instrumental figure in the drafting of the reform bill, and the Tempest interest was headed by Lord Londonderry, a belligerent opponent of reform who through his marriage to Frances Anne Vane-Tempest had acquired the family’s extensive coal interests. Prior to 1832, Durham and Londonderry, united by their common coal interest, had worked together to ensure shared representation in the county, but the Reform crisis had shattered this alliance, as the two peers fought to ensure that the new constituency boundaries did not diminish their influence.8A. Heesom, ‘“Legitimate” versus “Illegitimate” influences: aristocratic electioneering in mid-Victorian Britain’, Parliamentary History, 7, pt. 2 (1988), 289-95. Thereafter the competing interests of these great houses dominated parliamentary elections, although the extraordinarily high proportion of freeholders in the constituency meant that deference alone could not deliver electoral success.9P.K.V. Radice, ‘Identification, interests and influence: voting behaviour in four English constituencies in the decade after the Great Reform Act’, unpublished PhD thesis, Univ. of Durham, 1992, 350-1, 512. In 1832 freeholders accounted for 73 per cent of the electorate and over 60 per cent of those who voted resided in a parliamentary borough, proportions which remained constant throughout the period.10Ibid.; PP 1852 (4), xlii. 306; PP 1857-58 (108), xlvi. 574. The absence of any coherent interest or party organisation to bind the freeholders together ensured that, in the five years following reform, it was registration, rather than influence, that shaped electoral outcomes, but after 1837 the sheer cost of mobilising freeholders curtailed the development of long-term alternatives to the influence of the great estates, and three decades of shared, uncontested representation ensued.11Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 69. Local politics remained far from uneventful, however, as internecine battles within Durham Liberalism and Conservatism were frequently a prelude to an uncontested election.

At the 1832 general election Hedworth Lambton, the youngest brother of Lord Durham, offered as a Reformer, and called for ‘the most searching ecclesiastical reform’ and ‘the correction of all those abuses which inflict so much misery on the state’.12Newcastle Courant, 22 Dec. 1832. Unsurprisingly, he insisted that he would seek to follow his more illustrious brother by ‘ardent attachment to the great principles which have been the distinguishing characteristics of his whole political life’.13Ibid. Sir Hedworth Williamson, owner of the Monkwearmouth estate in Sunderland and a son-in-law of Lord Ravensworth who had been returned for the county the previous year, stood again as a Reformer, but refused to give any specific pledges.14Ibid. The Londonderry interest brought out Edward Braddyll, whose only connection to the county was a financial stake in the former’s new harbour at Seaham.15Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 69. Londonderry’s vociferous opposition to reform had made him an unpopular figure in the county, and Braddyll, who was acutely sensitive to any criticism of being the marquis’s puppet, fought a bloodless duel with Williamson following the latter’s assertion that he was Londonderry’s ‘nominee’. Both men fired twice, whereupon Williamson sanctioned a written apology.16Herald of Peace (1831), viii. 521.

After a particularly acrimonious campaign, Lambton decisively headed the poll, and Williamson was returned a comfortable second. 90 per cent of the registered electors voted.17Newcastle Courant, 24 June 1864. An analysis of the poll reveals the relative strengths of the competing estates. Lambton, who secured a 40 per cent share of the vote, received a split from over two-thirds of the electorate, confirming the dominance of the Lambton interest.18W.W. Bean, The parliamentary representation of the six northern counties of England (1890), 102-3. He later recalled, ‘I was unknown; but in every part of the county where I went to canvass, only this simple observation was made to me – “you are Lord Durham’s brother, and that is enough”’.19Durham Chronicle, 8 Nov. 1833. Williamson, who gained a 34 per cent share of the vote, received only 26 per cent in his native Sunderland, reflecting the unpopularity of his north docks scheme, with the town’s inhabitants favouring a dock on the south side of the Wear.20A. Heesom, ‘Parliamentary politics: 1830 to the 1860s’, in G.E. Milburn and S.T. Miller (eds.), Sunderland: river, town and people: a history from the 1780s (1988), 93. He secured 1,937 split votes with Lambton, however, reflecting the strength of the Reformist platform, leaving Braddyll to rely largely on his 1,038 plump votes.21Bean, Parliamentary representation, 102-3.

In response to this defeat, Londonderry established the Durham Conservative Association at the beginning of 1833. The object of the organisation, which Londonderry boasted was the first of its kind in the country, was ‘to form a bond of union between individuals of every rank in society, resident in the county professing Conservative principles’, though with its headquarters in Durham City, its immediate attention was given to the borough.22Report of the speeches delivered at the third anniversary of the Durham Conservative Association (1836), 25. It was also resolved that ‘the registration of voters be particularly attended to by the Association, and that the expenses thereof be defrayed out of the general funds’, and with the northern part of the county electorate dominated by freeholders with floating votes, an extremely active registration campaign began.23Ibid., 26; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 70. The Liberals, however, were equally assiduous in attending to the registration, and they enjoyed a clear majority on the 1834 register on which the unexpected general election of January 1835 was held.24P. Salmon, Electoral reform at work: local politics and national parties, 1832-1841 (2002), 82. The Conservatives, therefore, declined to put up a candidate, and Lambton and Williamson, who both openly challenged the king’s dismissal of Melbourne, were returned without a contest.25Parliamentary test book (1835), 93-4; Morning Chronicle, 5 Jan. 1835.

At the 1837 general election, however, Conservative registration efforts were rewarded. Nearly one-third of the electorate were new voters who had come on to the registers since 1832, and the speakers at the Conservative annual dinners in 1835 and 1836 zealously championed the importance of registration.26Radice, ‘Identification, interests and influence’, 414; Salmon, Electoral reform, 82. Moreover, their chosen candidate, Henry Thomas Liddell, a hero of the epic 1826 by-election in Northumberland where he had defeated two Whig candidates, was an extremely able politician who had been canvassing extensively.27HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 768-70; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 72-4. Londonderry unambiguously backed Liddell, calling him his ‘excellent and valued friend’, and in the so-called ‘Wynyard Edict’, he called upon Liddell to ‘report to us those who answer zealously our call, and those who are unmindful and indifferent to our earnest wishes’.28Quoted in Heesom, ‘“Legitimate” versus “Illegitimate” influence’, 300. Although the Liberal-supporting Durham Chronicle made much of the edict, it was not a threat aimed at Londonderry’s workforce, but rather a wake-up call to his agents, and whatever Londonderry’s opponents alleged, coercion was not an efficient or much-used instrument.29Heesom, ‘“Legitimate” versus “Illegitimate” influence’, 300; Radice, ‘Identification, interests and influence’, 350-51. Liberal unity in the county, in contrast, was in a parlous state, and on the eve of the election, William Beckwith, Lord Durham’s chief organiser in the county, reported that the Whigs had withdrawn from the reform committees, no longer willing to support the return of two Liberal candidates.30Beckwith to Durham, 29 Feb. 1836 and Beckwith to Lambton, 29 Mar. 1836, quoted in Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 72-3; Radice, ‘Identification, interests and influence’, 332. The weakened state of Liberal organisation was further exposed when, following the dissolution, Williamson, whose stubborn conduct in promoting his north docks scheme had alienated many electors, announced his retirement.31HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 796; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 73. Party leaders subsequently consulted in London about a suitable candidate for the division, but none could be found until Sir William Chaytor, who had sat for Sunderland, 1832-35, came forward at the last minute.32Radice, ‘Identification, interests and influence’, 334; Newcastle Courant, 4 Aug. 1837.

Durham’s decision to back both Lambton and Chaytor was immediately seized upon by Liddell, who declared that it was ‘the boldest and most audacious attempt ever made upon the endurance of a free constituency’.33Newcastle Courant, 4 Aug. 1837. Chaytor insisted that ‘Durham would not dare to ask him to give a vote contrary to his conscience’ and therefore he would be ‘independent’, but in a constituency dominated by influence, an interest seeking a second vote for another candidate was seen as an abuse of position, and Liddell’s accusation was a damaging one.34Ibid.; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 48. Following a hard-fought and expensive contest, Lambton narrowly headed the poll, and Liddell was returned in second.35Newcastle Courant, 11 Aug. 1837; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 73. 83 per cent of the registered electors voted.36Newcastle Courant, 24 June 1864. An analysis of the poll reveals how evenly matched the Lambton and Londonderry interests now were. Lambton received a 35 per cent share of the total vote, compared to Liddell’s 34 per cent, and while the former triumphed in the polling districts of Chester-le-Street and Sunderland, the latter was victorious in Durham City, Lanchester, South Shields and Whickham.37Bean, Parliamentary representation, 102-3. Significantly, Lambton and Liddell received 408 split votes, underlining the weakness of Chaytor’s candidature.38Ibid. The explanation for the Conservatives’ reversal of fortunes since 1832 lay in their successful attention to registration: 44 per cent of the 1,406 voters new to the register in 1837 (who comprised nearly one-third of the total number of those who voted) backed Liddell, while 40 per cent supported the Liberal candidates, a slight but decisive lead.39Radice, ‘Identification, interests and influence’, 414; Salmon, Electoral reform, 82.

Following the 1837 general election, while Londonderry refused to engage with the Durham Conservative Association, Liddell informed him that he felt compelled to consider the feelings of ‘the mercantile and shipping interest’ and ‘the large and independent portion of the constituency’ who had elected him. 40Liddell to Londonderry, 27 May 1841, quoted in Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 75. Liddell’s particular willingness to engage with the numerous urban freeholders offended Londonderry, who subsequently announced his intention to bring forward a caretaker until his son, viscount Seaham, came of age, as he believed that his financial sacrifices for the county entitled him to ‘a right to look at his son’s claims to representation above all others’.41Quoted in Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 75. The gutting by fire of Londonderry’s Wynyard home coupled with the failure of his artificial harbour at Seaham, however, paralysed his capacity to defend his proprietorial position, and mindful of the expense of the 1837 contest, he reneged on his threat.42Ibid., 120. At the 1841 general election, therefore, Liddell and Lambton, who was now under the patronage of his nephew, George, who had succeeded to the earldom in 1840, were re-elected unopposed.

At the 1847 general election the ‘unpopular doctrine of aristocratic nomination’ took centre stage.43Ibid., 30-31. With Seaham now of age, Londonderry demanded that Liddell stand down in his favour.44Morning Post, 7 July 1847; Heesom, ‘“Legitimate” versus “Illegitimate” influence’, 298. Liddell protested that ‘in these days it was impossible to expect that a great county could be handed over from one individual to another at any man’s bidding’, but the marquess, who was now financially secure, was unmoved, and began actively campaigning against Liddell.45Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 75. Londonderry had already essentially severed his ties with the Durham Conservative Association in July 1843 when he had backed John Bright in the Durham City by-election, but in 1847 the county party was itself divided over Peel’s repeal of the corn laws, thus depriving Liddell of united support against the marquess. 46Londonderry to Peel, 25 July 1843, BL Add Mss 40531, f. 291; Heesom, ‘“Legitimate” versus “Illegitimate” influence’, 298. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Liddell withdrew, leaving Seaham, who declared his opposition to repeal of the navigation laws but insisted that he would ‘not make any other pledges’, as the sole Conservative.47Morning Post, 16 July 1847.

The Liberal camp, meanwhile, was similarly divided. Following the dissolution, the Lambton interest, headed by the second earl of Durham, who did not share his father’s radical instincts, declared that they were no longer willing to spend money on an advanced Liberal, and replaced Hedworth Lambton with the moderate Robert Duncombe Shafto, owner of Whitworth Park, near Durham, who had unsuccessfully contested Durham South as a Reformer in 1832, when he had been backed by the Conservative bishop of Durham.48C.E. Hardy, John Bowes and the Bowes Museum (1970), 40. In response, William Beckwith, who had been the late Durham’s electoral organiser in the county, came forward on an unambiguously Radical platform, calling for repeal of the game laws and a reform of inheritance law.49Daily News, 3 Aug. 1847. The Lambton interest, however, controlled the purse strings, and Beckwith, who denounced the ‘open treachery’ of the Lambton family who, he alleged, were ‘determined to oust all those who will not bow down and worship them’, subsequently withdrew.50William Beckwith to William Brockett, 1 July 1847, quoted in Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 76; Heesom, ‘“Legitimate” versus “Illegitimate” influence’, 298; Daily News, 3 Aug. 1847. At the nomination William Hutt, Liberal MP for Gateshead, generously introduced Shafto as the successor to the county’s previous MPs who ‘were the foremost champions of the people’s cause’, while Liddell, in a magnanimous speech, endorsed Seaham, but there was little doubt that aristocratic dominance had prevailed. Shafto, who insisted that he would be an ‘independent representative’, and Seaham, who claimed that he came forward as ‘a large proportion of the constituency were associated with the same undertakings as those of his family’, were returned unopposed.51Newcastle Courant, 6 Aug. 1847.

The 1852 general election, which witnessed the uneventful and uncontested return of Shafto and Seaham, heralded ‘a hiatus in the electioneering in the northern division’ and confirmed the re-establishment of the aristocratic domination of parliamentary elections that had existed before 1832.52Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 77. Moreover, with the financial muscle of the Lambton and Tempest interest founded upon their coalmines, the industrialisation and urban development of the mid-nineteenth century entrenched rather than weakened their control of county politics.53Ibid. When Seaham was elevated to the peerage following Londonderry’s death in March 1854, therefore, the unopposed return of Adolphus Vane-Tempest, Seaham’s younger brother, at the April by-election was swift and seamless.54Derby Mercury, 5 Apr. 1854.

Thereafter Londonderry’s widow, Lady Frances Anne Vane-Tempest, assumed responsibility for her family’s interest, and remained watchful of the county’s political affairs until her death in 1865, though the first two general elections following her husband’s death were unremarkable. In 1857 there was little sense of protest within Durham Conservatism at Vane-Tempest’s vote for the government on Richard Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, and Shafto’s unwavering support for Palmerston’s foreign policy ensured that there was little to separate the two candidates concerning the Chinese war, over which the premier had appealed to the country.55Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 22 Mar. 1857; Newcastle Courant, 27 Mar. 1857. The two men were subsequently re-elected without a contest. At the 1859 general election, it was reported that Hedworth Williamson, the son of Sir Hedworth Williamson and the nephew of Lord Ravensworth, would offer in the Liberal interest, but nothing materialised, and Shafto and Vane-Tempest were again returned unopposed.56Daily News, 13 Apr. 1859.

Following the death of Vane-Tempest in June 1864, the detente between the heads of the great estates was broken. Although Vane-Tempest’s death was sudden, his arrest for disorderly conduct and subsequent transfer to a lunatic asylum in March 1861 had alerted local Liberals to the possibility that a replacement would have to be sought, and preliminary moves were made to bring forward Sir Hedworth Williamson, who had succeeded his father as eighth baronet the previous year.57Tempest was arrested in Coventry Street, London, after being found ‘in a very excited state and very violent’, throwing cigars and money to an assembled crowd. Upon appearing before the magistrate, he declared that he was a member of the House of Commons and began ‘singing a tune from a popular opera’. His friends took him to a ‘private lunatic asylum’ the following day, ‘there being little reason to doubt that his lordship’s mind has become deranged’: The Times, 8 Mar. and 9 Mar. 1861. Thomas Edward Taylor MP, the Conservative chief whip, had also made inquiries into the possibility of bringing out a replacement, which prompted Disraeli to reprimand him for interfering in county politics. Disraeli warned him that if he persisted, Lady Londonderry would ‘withdraw [her] influence from the party’ and that without her ‘the Conservatives can do nothing, either in the county or city’.58Disraeli recounts his letter to Taylor in his correspondence with Lady Londonderry, 14 Dec. 1861, quoted in Benjamin Disraeli letters: 1860-1864 (2009), ed. M.G. Wiebe, M.S. Miller and A.P. Robson, 292. He also insisted that the Conservatives ‘need not alarm themselves about Sir Hedworth Williamson, or anyone else’.59Ibid. Disraeli then reassured Lady Londonderry that ‘he, who gains time, gains everything. We shall gain time, and the rest depends on Adolphus’.60Ibid. Tempest returned to the Commons in 1862, and the crisis passed, though there remained grave doubts as to his ability to adequately represent the county.61Ibid. The correspondence between Disraeli and Lady Londonderry, however, revealed the continuing importance attached by the parliamentary leadership to her family’s interest, despite the damage caused by the dictatorial behaviour of Lord Londonderry prior to his rapprochement with the Durham Conservative Association in 1852, and, more generally, the relative decline of the family’s financial muscle since the 1840s. Lady Londonderry’s desire to avoid an expensive contest, however, became clear in 1864 when the Conservatives did not put up a candidate at the Durham City by-election in January, and following Tempest’s death, they offered no opposition when Sir Hedworth Williamson finally came forward. A staunch advocate of non-intervention in American and Danish affairs, he was returned unopposed, and for the first time since 1835, the Liberals secured both seats.62Newcastle Courant, 17 June 1864; Leeds Mercury, 20 June 1864.

The 1865 general election entrenched the Liberal hold on the constituency. With Londonderry’s youngest son, Ernest McDonnell Vane-Tempest, unwilling to contest the seat, local Conservatives brought out George Barrington, the eldest son of Lord Barrington, Conservative MP for Berkshire, 1837-57.63Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 77. He had little connection to the constituency, however, prompting Williamson to declare that the Liberals would ‘thwart Mr Barrington’s southern gold, and send [him] back to the gentlemen who sent him down here, with an empty pocket and an empty nest’.64Newcastle Courant, 7 July 1865. This stance was largely rhetorical, though, as Barrington was Williamson’s cousin, and the whole campaign was a tame affair compared to the bitter contests of the 1830s.65Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 77. Williamson and Shafto, who were both unwavering in their support for the Liberal ministry and backed the abolition of church rates, were comfortably returned.66Daily News, 22 July 1865. Williamson headed the poll with a 37 per cent share of the vote, with Shafto gaining 35 per cent. The Liberals’ 80 per cent share of the vote in Gateshead and 70 per cent share in Sunderland underlined their strong support amongst the urban freeholders in the county’s most populous polling districts.67Bean, Parliamentary representation, 102-3.

At the 1868 general election the Conservative George Elliot, a native of Gateshead and one of the region’s most powerful coalowners, headed the poll and although Williamson remained for one more Parliament, the northern division’s parliamentary elections were thereafter dominated by the county’s new generation of leading industrialists.68Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 79-94. After 1868, Elliot, along with the Liberals Isaac Lowthian Bell, who commanded a vast ironworks empire, and Charles Mark Palmer, a coalowner, ironmaster and shipbuilder, competed for electoral supremacy. This lasted until the constituency’s abolition in 1885, whereupon the county was split into eight single-member divisions.69Ibid., 79-104. At the 1885 general election all eight divisions returned Liberals, including John Wilson and William Crawford, two working-class candidates backed by the powerful Durham Miners’ Association.70E.F. Biagini, Liberty, retrenchment and reform: popular Liberalism in the age of Gladstone, 1860-1880 (1992), 364-5. Durham North and its electorate are analysed in detail in Thomas Nossiter’s Influence, Opinion and Political Idioms in Reformed England: Case Studies from the North-east, 1832-74 (1975). Alan Heesom’s ‘“Legitimate” versus “Illegitimate” influences: aristocratic electioneering in mid-Victorian Britain’, Parliamentary History, 7, pt. 2 (1988), uses the constituency as its main case study.