Durham South

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. It also had rich deposits of coal, iron and lead.1Dod’s electoral facts, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1972), 102-3. The southern division contained the principal market towns of Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, Darlington, Hartlepool, Sedgefield, Staindrop, Stanhope and Stockton. Darlington, the election town, was home to an important woollen industry, the chief employer being H. Pease and Co.2N. Sunderland, A history of Darlington (1967), 67-70. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a spectacular growth in the iron industry of Teesside, in the southern portion of the constituency, which in turn increased demand for the coking coal of the south Durham collieries.3N. McCord and D.J. Rowe, Northumberland and Durham: industry in the nineteenth century (1971), 6-7. To facilitate the shipping of coal to London, West Hartlepool was founded in 1847, and by the 1860s it was the fourth largest port in England, handling more coal than either Newcastle-upon-Tyne or Sunderland.4VCH Durham, iii. 263-285, 348-365; R. Wood, West Hartlepool: the rise and development of a Victorian new town (1969), 56-76. The county had the world’s first passenger trains on the Stockton-Darlington line in 1825, and thereafter rival railway schemes competed for a controlling interest of the routes from the division’s collieries to the coast.5J. Wall, First in the world: the Stockton and Darlington railway (2001), 43-57, 143-153. The Stockton and Hartlepool Railway opened in 1841 and the Newcastle and Darlington Junction Railway, which linked the Thames with the Tyne, in 1844.6Ibid., 145-6.

Electoral history

The 1832 Reform Act created two divisions for the county of Durham, but the original contrast between the agricultural areas to the south and the collieries to the north quickly became redundant.7HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 353; T.J. Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms in reformed England: case studies from the North-east, 1832-74 (1975), 58-9. Rapid industrialisation in the wards of Durham South, particularly in the unenfranchised Teesdale boroughs of Darlington, Hartlepool and Stockton, created a constituency populated by a growing number of urban freeholders.8PP 1852 (4), xlii. 306; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 58. A low rate of land rental reinforced the overall numerical strength of the freeholder franchise, which by 1865 comprised sixty per cent of the total electorate.9PP 187-8 (329), xliv. 558; PP 1860 (227), lv. 89; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 57. In the three decades after reform, however, it was the ‘disposition of the great estates’ that chiefly determined electoral outcomes, although the politics of their influence could shift.10Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 41. The Whig duke of Cleveland, who held extensive interests in the Barnard Castle and Teesdale districts, was the chief influence on the eve of reform, but the succession of his Conservative son in 1842 produced a potential conflict of loyalties that affected both contested and uncontested elections prior to his death in 1864. The bishopric, which exercised an important but historically declining influence, switched from Conservative to Liberal and back again.11R. Lee, ‘Class, industrialization and the church of England: the case of the Durham diocese in the nineteenth century’, Past and Present, 191 (2006), 166. The one consistent influence was the Quaker Pease family, whose expanding commercial network of collieries and iron foundries across Auckland, Darlington, Middlesbrough and Stockton generated a formidable interest which, by 1865, was arguably as great as that of the duke of Cleveland.12M.W. Kirby, Men of business and politics: the rise and fall of the Quaker Pease dynasty of north-east England, 1700-1943 (1984), 47-72; Cf. Dod’s electoral facts, 102-3. The presence of a new Pease candidate accounted for three out of the four contested elections in this period, with the Quakers victorious in each one. The constituency, therefore, ‘was an exemplary case of the politics of influence’, and electoral contests were often more a reflection of competition amongst the landed interests for control over the development of the division’s railways and harbours than a clash of political principles.13Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 64. Party-political issues, however, still permeated the campaigns, particularly agricultural protection, while the Conservative Durham County Advertiser and the Liberal Durham Chronicle fostered partisan rivalries.

At the 1832 general election John Bowes, the illegitimate son of the tenth earl of Strathmore and owner of the coal-rich estates of Streatlam, near Barnard Castle, offered as a Reformer, with the backing of the duke of Cleveland.14C.E. Hardy, John Bowes and the Bowes Museum (1970), 37-43. The Conservative bishop of Durham, William Van Mildert, had originally planned for ‘this young gentleman’ to be his ‘rallying point in the county’, but Bowes’s outspoken attack on the ‘crying abuses’ in the established church appalled the bishop, who thereafter focused ‘the whole weight of his secular influence’ against him.15E.A. Varley, Last of the prince bishops: William Van Mildert and the high church movement of the early nineteenth century (1992), 117-8. Robert Duncombe Shafto, owner of Whitworth Park, near Durham, also came forward as a Reformer, but his more moderate stance on the established church secured him Van Mildert’s tacit support.16Hardy, John Bowes, 40. Following a meeting of electors at Darlington, Joseph Pease, the Quaker industrialist who had been instrumental in the building of the Stockton and Darlington railway, became the third Reformer to enter the contest, and immediately offered a dogged defence of his support for agricultural protection, insisting that he was a ‘friend of the farmers’.17W.H.D. Longstaffe, The history and antiquities of the parish of Darlington (1854), 169; Newcastle Courant, 15 Dec. 1832.

Bowes’s election committee, led by his agent Thomas Wheldon, repeatedly denied that they were in coalition with Pease.18Newcastle Courant, 15 Dec. 1832. Although this was ostensibly to underline their candidate’s claim that he was ‘free from party connexions’, it was equally a reflection of the fact that, in a constituency dominated by influence, each interest was anxious to avoid the accusation of abusing their position by seeking a second vote for another candidate.19Ibid., 22 Dec. 1832; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 48. After an intense campaign, Pease topped the poll, becoming the first Quaker to sit in the Commons. Bowes was returned in second place.20On entering Parliament, Pease refused to take the oath. Following the report of a subsequently appointed select committee, he was allowed to affirm: Hansard, 8 Feb. 1833, vol. 15, cc. 387-90; The Times, 12 Feb., 18 Feb. 1833; E. Isichei, Victorian Quakers (1970), 195-6. An analysis of the poll reveals the relative strengths of the competing interests: Pease, who won with 36 per cent of the constituency’s vote, secured a 45 per cent share in his native Darlington and 43 per cent in Stockton, while Bowes, who received 35 percent of the overall vote, gained 53 percent in the Cleveland strongholds of Barnard Castle and Middleton in Teesdale.21W.W. Bean, The parliamentary representation of the six northern counties of England (1890), 106-7. Shafto secured 46 per cent in Bishop Auckland, home of Van Mildert, but his performance elsewhere was lacklustre, confirming the continuing decline of the see’s political control.22Ibid. Pease’s 729 single votes, compared to Bowes’s 341 and Shafto’s 375, suggested a small but decisive level of opposition among the Quaker interest to the influence of the great estates.23Ibid.

On the eve of the 1835 general election Bowes informed his agent that, as he did not intend to spend any money on the election, he expected to be defeated.24Hardy, John Bowes, 48-9. However, although it was rumoured that Lord William Powlett, the second eldest son of the duke of Cleveland who had sat for the county, 1815-31, would offer in the Conservative interest, no opposition materialised, and Bowes and Pease, who were united in their condemnation of the king’s dismissal of Melbourne’s ministry, were re-elected.25Ibid., Durham Chronicle, 19 Dec. 1834, 2 Jan. 1835. At the 1837 general election there was still no opposition forthcoming, and both men, who expressed their confidence in the government, were again returned without a contest.26Newcastle Courant, 4 Aug. 1837.

In response to their successive failures to offer a candidate, local party supporters established the Stockton Conservative Association in February 1838.27P.K.V. Radice, ‘Identification, interests and influence: voting behaviour in four English constituencies in the decade after the Great Reform Act’, unpub. PhD thesis, Univ. of Durham (1992), 357-8. Its secretary, Thomas Grey, immediately solicited the support of Lord Londonderry, who had founded the Durham Conservative Association in 1833, but the marquis, who believed that it would be inappropriate for ‘large landed proprietors’ to be subordinate in such an organization ‘to the gentlemen in the town’, was reluctant to support the venture unless he became president.28Thomas Grey to Londonderry, 14 Feb. 1838; Londonderry to the Stockton Conservative Association, 16 Feb. 1838: Londonderry MSS, Dur. RO, D/Lo/C447/4-5. Without Londonderry’s direct involvement, therefore, the association made little impact in the constituency, and there was no paid political agent until the 1860s. Certainly the absence of parliamentary boroughs in the division curtailed the development of party associations. Liberal party organisation remained rudimentary in the southern division until the Second Reform Act, and registration campaigns were principally carried out by the candidates’ own estate agents.29Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 64. Moreover, the weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings of the Society of Friends provided the Peases with a close and intensely loyal network of political support, further negating the need for the development of formal party organisation in the division.30Kirby, Men of business and politics, 47-72.

The first major Chartist organisation in Durham South was in Darlington. By June 1839 there were signs of ‘considerable’ activity in the town, and in July that year the Darlington Women’s Charter Association was formed.31Northern Star, 6 June 1839; R.P. Hastings, Chartism in the North Riding of Yorkshire and South Durham (2004), 4-6. Stockton also witnessed large outdoor meetings in 1839-40, and local Chartists carried out an effective lecturing programme in the North Riding, but in Middlesbrough, where restrictions imposed by the owners of the Middlesbrough Estate prevented any legal open-air assemblies, Chartists had to resort to meeting in each other’s houses.32M. Chase, ‘Chartism, 1838-58: responses in two Teeside towns’, Northern History, 24 (1988), 146-71. Although the movement enjoyed reasonable support in Teeside, the lack of any strong regional centre equivalent to Newcastle-upon-Tyne or Sunderland hampered attempts to coordinate activities in the southern part of the county. By 1841 the main impetus came from the pit villages centred around Bishop and West Auckland, but with finances scarce it was difficult to maintain an active lecturing programme, and after 1842 the movement petered out.33Hastings, Chartism, 17-25.

On the eve of the 1841 general election Pease admitted that he was suffering from the ‘fatigues and responsibilities of my present position’, and retired to concentrate on his commercial concerns.34Joseph Pease: a memoir (1872), reprinted from the Northern Echo, 9 Feb. 1872; Newcastle Courant, 9 July 1841. With his extensive interests in the Stockton and Darlington railway, Pease’s retirement created a new opportunity for rival landed interests to secure a greater parliamentary influence over the development of the critical railway routes from the county’s coalfields to the coast. Londonderry, who had built up a fighting fund of £4,000, brought forward James Farrer, a lawyer from Ingleborough, Yorkshire, on behalf of the Conservative Lord Eldon, who owned 15,000 acres in the crucial Auckland and Hartlepool areas, and was still a minor.35Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 66. In response, the duke of Cleveland persuaded his youngest son Lord Harry George Vane to stand as a Liberal. It was therefore local commercial rivalries, rather than political issues, that shaped the campaign. Commenting on the apparent insignificance of political issues, William Thackeray, who accompanied Bowes on his canvass, witheringly observed that some men were ‘green and white, as other men in the county were pink; and I do believe the candidates might have changed their opinions, and a vast body of the electors would have been pink and green and white still’.36Original emphasis. William Thackeray’s Notes on the north what-d’ye-callem election. Being the personal narrative of Napoleon Putnam Wiggins, of Passimaquoddy, which was published in Fraser’s Magazine (1841), xxiv. 352-8, 413-27. The growing number of urban freeholders, though, meant that estate owners could not simply rely on proprietorial loyalties, and over £30,000 was spent by the candidates, mostly on drink and refreshments.37Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 67; PP 1837-8 (329), xliv. 558.

Political principles, however, still permeated the contest. Bowes’s advocacy of a sliding scale on corn duty, rather than a fixed one, was strongly criticised by a group of Darlington’s leading Liberals, who urged him to modify his stance.38Strathmore MSS, Dur. RO, D/St/C1/16/292-93; Hardy, John Bowes, 56. Although Bowes maintained his position, insisting that ‘there had been no compromise’ with his fellow Liberals, his political opponents focused all their energies on him, and during his canvass he frequently had to speak over a constant noise of ‘hooting, roaring, and bellowing, in such a manner as totally to prevent any below the platform hearing a single sentence’.39Newcastle Courant, 9 July 1841; Longstaffe, The history and antiquities of the parish of Darlington, 170. Vane also supported ‘a moderate graduated scale of duties’, but backed by his father’s considerable interest and a fighting fund of £14,000, was thought to be safe, and his views on agricultural protection faced less scrutiny.40Newcastle Courant, 9 July 1841; Hardy, John Bowes, 57. As ‘an outsider’, Farrer’s candidature was consistently attacked by Bowes, who argued that the Londonderry interest was attempting ‘to impose a stranger’ on the constituency.41Newcastle Courant, 9 July 1841. In response, Farrer cited Bowes’s fondness for visiting France as evidence that he ‘spent but little of his time in the neighbourhood’ and, unsurprisingly, he criticised the Cleveland interest, declaring to the electors that ‘in nine years you have sufficiently supported them; and now you have a right to speak for yourselves’.42Ibid.; Strathmore MSS, Dur. RO, D/St/C1/16/281. Following a bitter campaign that was punctuated by rioting in Darlington, Vane topped the poll and Bowes came in second.43Longstaffe, The history and antiquities of the parish of Darlington, 170. The result was a decisive one. Farrer gained 41 per cent of the vote in Stockton (which included Hartlepool), but with the bishopric in Liberal hands, he secured only 26 per cent in Bishop Auckland (the same as his total share) and was defeated in all other polling districts.44Bean, Parliamentary representation, 106-7. Vane’s victory underlined the reach of the Cleveland interest, while Bowes, who was nominated by Joseph Pease, undoubtedly benefitted from the Quaker influence, though both men had spent heavily to secure their return.45Vane was reported to have spent £14,000; Bowes spent £13,000: Hardy, John Bowes, 65. Moreover Vane and Bowes received 2,087 shaared votes, while Farrer gained 1,148 single votes, reflecting the unity of local Liberalism in the face of a Conservative opposition.46Bean, Parliamentary representation, 106-7.

In 1842 the duke of Cleveland was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry, which placed Vane in the delicate position of being the Liberal nominee of a Conservative patron, and raised the prospect of Cleveland having to choose between party and family loyalties.47Henry Vane, viscount Barnard, had been MP for County Durham, 1812-15, Winchelsea, 1816-18, Tregony, 1818-26, Totnes, 1826-30, Saltash, 1830-31, and South Shropshire, 1832-42. At the 1847 general election, however, Bowes informed his agent that due to the financial burdens of campaigning, he had no intention of standing again, and with the Quaker interest declining to bring forward their own candidate, a potentially divisive contest was avoided. 48Bowes, Hardy, 72. Farrer, who offered again as a Conservative, and Vane, who had threatened to retire if a contest was got up, were returned without opposition.49Daily News, 3 Aug. 1847. There also appeared to be little appetite for a contest at the 1852 general election. Both Vane and Farrer insisted that while they regretted the ‘great losses to individuals’ that had followed corn law repeal, there was no use in returning to protection, and they were re-elected unopposed.50Daily News, 21 June 1852.

At the 1857 general election the candidature of Henry Pease, younger brother of Joseph, critically undermined Cleveland’s ability to satisfy both family and party interests. Pease, who had visited Russia as part of a deputation from the Society of Friends to urge tsar Nicholas to abstain from intervening in the Crimea, committed himself against the Chinese war, over which Palmerston had appealed to the country.51‘Henry Pease: a memoir’, Northern Echo, 31 May 1881. Backed by his family’s expanding estates, however, he withstood the national tide of jingoism and was returned at the head of the poll.52Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 63. Vane, who had supported Richard Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, was criticised by Farrer, who insisted that the nation owed Palmerston a debt of gratitude for his handling of the Crimean War, and therefore he ‘would not and will not endeavour to turn out any man so long as he does his duty’.53Northern Echo, 19 June 1879. For all Farrer’s attempts to appeal to the Liberal electorate by insisting that he would give Palmerston his ‘independent support’, however, the Cleveland interest backed the duke’s Liberal brother over his Conservative nominee, and Vane finished a comfortable second.54Ibid. An analysis of the poll reveals the extent to which Farrer failed to secure the support of the Cleveland interest. He gained only 22 per cent of the vote in Barnard Castle, and the fact that Vane and Pease received 1,939 split votes, compared to Farrer’s 1,324 plumpers, reflected the futility of Cleveland instructing his interest to divide evenly between Farrer and Vane.55Bean, Parliamentary representation, 106-7; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 53. Farrer did gain 44 per cent in the Eldon stronghold of Hartlepool (now a polling district in its own right), but even in neighbouring Stockton, where Eldon also had interest, he was outpolled by Pease, underlining the strength of the Quaker industrial vote.56Bean, Parliamentary representation, 106-7.

At the 1859 general election ‘the pressures of party proved stronger than the ties of blood’.57Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 53. Cleveland, reportedly under pressure from the region’s Conservative landowners, instructed his tenants to plump for Farrer, prompting Vane, who had been canvassing the constituency until late April, to swiftly retire without explanation, and offer instead for Hastings, where the family also had influence.58York Herald, 23 Apr. 1859; Leeds Mercury, 28 Apr. 1859; Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 53. Pease and Farrer were subsequently returned unopposed. In 1864, however, Vane succeeded as the fourth duke of Cleveland, returning the family interest to the Liberal fold.

The 1865 general election was contested by three new candidates. Pease, whose parliamentary service ‘did not suit his health’, retired at the dissolution, and was replaced by his nephew, Joseph Whitwell Pease, while Farrer, who had become unpopular with local Conservative leaders due to his ‘independent’ support for Palmerston, made way for Charles Surtees, a former army captain whose family owned substantial estates in the county.59M.H. Pease, Henry Pease: a short story of his life (1897), 78; Northern Echo, 19 June 1879; Wood, West Hartlepool, 102. They were joined by a second Liberal candidate, Frederick Beaumont, an army captain from the Northumbrian Blackett-Beaumont dynasty. Although the Cleveland interest was again Liberal, the bishopric was now held by Charles Baring, a Conservative. A key factor in the electoral outcome, therefore, was the vote of the urban freeholders, whose numbers had recently swelled following a new wave of expansion in the Tees valley towns of Darlington, Hartlepool and Stockton.60Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 68. During a fractious campaign both Joseph Pease, who insisted that ‘South Durham was not to be represented by a Conservative’, and Beaumont, who was nominated by Henry Pease, called for the abolition of church rates and franchise extension, while Surtees, whose speeches were regularly interrupted by volleys of abuse, declared that ‘he had yet to learn that the feeling of independence had entirely vanished from the breasts of the electors’.61York Herald, 22 July 1865. The result was decisive. Pease comfortably topped the poll and Surtees was returned in second place, defeating Beaumont by over 200 votes. Pease’s victory underlined the strength of his support amongst the urban freeholders of the Teesside coal and iron trades: he gained 38 per cent of the vote in Darlington and 36 per cent in Stockton.62Bean, Parliamentary representation, 106-7. Cleveland, who had instructed his tenants to back Pease, largely ignored Beaumont, who polled fewer votes than Pease in every district.63Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 53. Surtees, who headed the poll in Bishop Auckland, clearly benefitted from the support of the Conservative bishopric, but his 42 per cent share of the vote in Hartlepool, whose electorate had doubled in size since 1857, was equally significant.64Ibid. The new urban freeholders of West Hartlepool, which had been founded by the Conservative industrialist Ralph Ward Jackson on land owned by Eldon, united firmly behind Surtees.65Wood, West Hartlepool, 102.

The 1867 Reform Act left the boundaries of the Durham South seat unchanged, but created the single-member boroughs of Darlington, Hartlepool and Stockton, all of which were held by Liberals for the following two decades, save for Ralph Ward Jackson’s tenure as Conservative MP for Hartlepool, 1868-74. At the 1868 general election Pease and Beaumont were returned for Durham South, and thereafter the Liberals dominated parliamentary elections, with Pease holding his seat until the constituency’s abolition in 1885, whereupon the county was split into eight single-member divisions. 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. Pease represented the Barnard Castle division until his death in 1903 and was replaced by his agent Arthur Henderson, who stood as an independent Labour candidate. Durham South 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). The politics and religion of the southern part of the county’s miners are examined in Robert Samuel Moore’s Pit-men, preachers and politics: the effects of Methodism in a Durham mining community (1974).