LAIRD, John (1805-1874), of 63 Hamilton Square, Birkenhead, Cheshire

The ‘principal founder of Birkenhead’, and a man of ‘great talent and force of character’, Laird, a noted shipbuilder and moderate Conservative, was the indefatigable defender of his constituency’s interests, who generally limited his parliamentary contributions to maritime and naval issues.1Liverpool Mercury, 30 Oct. 1874. Although his criticisms of naval spending were in part an attempt to secure trade for his business and constituency, they were based on a hard-headed analysis and wide-ranging knowledge of the issues at stake.

In 1824 Laird’s father, William, a Liverpool shipowner, recognised the natural advantages possessed by Wallasey Pool, on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, and with a team of engineers drew up a dock plan. The scheme was not realised as Liverpool corporation bought up land in the area to block their potential rival.2W.R.S. McIntyre, ‘The first scheme for docks at Birkenhead and the proposed canal across the Wirral’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire, (1973), cxxiv. 108-27 (at 108-21). Even so, William Laird established Birkenhead Ironworks, part of a new shipbuilding enterprise William Laird and Son, in 1824, which was renamed John Laird in 1833 when his eldest son took over.3F. Boase, Modern English Biography (1897), ii. 280. The firm were pioneers of iron shipbuilding, constructing their first iron ship in 1829, and between that date and Laird’s death in 1874, they built 429 vessels of all types, including many iron ships for the royal navy, foreign governments and the great commercial shipping companies.4Illustrated London News, xxxix. 74 (27 July 1861); Cheshire Observer, 7 Nov. 1874. Birkenhead expanded with the ‘colossal business’ of Laird’s shipbuilding and engineering enterprise and by the time the firm moved to new premises in the mid-1850s, Laird employed 4,000 to 5,000 people.5Liverpool Mercury, 30 Oct. 1874.

Laird was elected a member of Birkenhead’s new street commission in 1833, and in 1843 he purchased 50,000 square yards of land from Liverpool council with a view to reactivating his father’s dock scheme.6S. Bagshaw, History, gazetteer and directory of the county Palatine of Chester (1850), 675-6; T. Webster, The ports and docks of Birkenhead (1848), 40-1, 51-3. Liverpool still attempted to block the docks scheme, but having bought a large amount of land with borrowed money in the 1820s, which had sat idle and generated little income since, they were in no position to refuse the offers of Laird and others in the 1840s: Macintyre, ‘Docks at Birkenhead’, 123. A consortium including Laird and William Jackson, Liberal MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme 1847-65 and North Derbyshire 1865-8, bought up the remaining land and secured an Act in 1844 to construct docks, but the scheme was beset by many problems, notably the opposition of Liverpool and a commercial depression in the late 1840s.7Bagshaw, History of Chester, 676; Illustrated London News, xxxix. 74 (27 July 1861); Liverpool Mercury, 30 Oct. 1874. At the same time, there was a split on the street commission between the Jackson and Laird factions, and Laird was excluded from the body for a short period.8Liverpool Mercury, 30 Oct. 1874. However, the dire financial position of the commission, which risked losing Birkenhead Park and the lucrative Woodside Ferry to creditors, prompted his return in 1850. Under Laird’s stewardship, and as chairman from 1855-61, these issues were resolved and his services were acknowledged by the presentation of a ‘magnificent service of plate’ from the inhabitants in 1857.9Ibid. Laird was appointed as a member of the Mersey Dock and Harbour Board established by the government in 1858, and thereafter acted as the indefatigable champion of ‘the Cheshire side of the Mersey’, successfully blocking attempts to borrow large sums to spend on Liverpool until the board had fulfilled their obligations to complete Birkenhead docks.10Ibid.

On Birkenhead’s enfranchisement as a parliamentary borough in 1861 Laird stood as a Liberal Conservative at the inaugural election in December of that year. After expressing support for a non-interventionist foreign policy, an efficient navy and national defence, non-denominational education and a compromise solution to the church rates issue, Laird was elected against a Liberal, and resigned from the street commission and his business, which was carried on by his sons as Laird Brothers.11The Times, 21 Feb. 1861, 10, 11 Dec. 1861; Liverpool Mercury, 8 Jan. 1862, 30 Oct. 1874. As an employer, civic leader, philanthropist who funded a local hospital and a school of art, property-owner, government contractor and representative of his town on the Dock Board, Laird possessed ‘immense local influence’.12Liverpool Mercury, 13 July 1865, 6 July 1865. He tended to downplay political and partisan issues at election time, focusing on his record and attention to local interests. Although Laird was an Anglican, unlike Conservatives across the Mersey, he did not attempt to exploit anti-Catholicism for electoral purposes. His moderation and prestige meant he gained the votes of Liberals, Catholics and Dissenters as well as Conservatives.13‘A voter’, letter, Liverpool Mercury, 19 July 1865.

A Conservative loyalist, in 1867 Laird divided in favour of the disenfranchisement of small boroughs and providing extra representation for large towns, although he also supported the minority clause. An active committee man, Laird was also diligent in his attention to local duties, informing Birkenhead’s inhabitants that:

I shall always be ready and glad to see any of my constituents upon any subject they may wish to talk to me about – high or low, rich or poor. In the morning, from nine to eleven o’clock, when I am not in London on parliamentary business, I shall be at the service of my constituents.14Liverpool Mercury, 13 July 1865.

In the chamber, Laird concentrated on his area of expertise, explaining to constituents at the 1865 general election, when he was re-elected, that the gibe that he

seldom or never spoke except upon questions affecting the naval estimates … was not quite true, but his experience in the House had taught him that if a gentleman went into the House of Commons and began to speak upon every subject, he would be listened to upon none.15Liverpool Mercury, 20 June 1865.

Even before entering the House, Laird had urged the admiralty to abandon wooden ships for iron, which were ‘stronger, more durable, and less costly to keep in repair’, and had pressed for a naval dockyard to be established at Birkenhead.16J. Laird, Letter to “The Times” in 1859, on iron & wooden ships of war (1859), qu. at 2; idem, Letters to “The Times” on iron ships of war and coast & harbour defences (1859); idem, Letters on naval arsenals and dockyards, &c. (1860). He condemned the government’s plan to commission iron-clad wooden ships, 27 Feb. 1862, especially as the amount of metal such ships would have to carry would make them increasingly unseaworthy.17Hansard, 27 Feb. 1862, vol. 165, cc. 827-8; 17 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 408-9; 19 July 1864, vol. 176, cc. 1768-9. Commercial shipping companies had switched to iron, argued Laird, and so must the royal navy, urging that the country ‘could not go on in our old-fashioned way; we must adapt our ships to the requirements of the age’.18Ibid., 23 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 699-700. He lobbied for the suppression of the smaller naval dockyards, and the use of docks, whether private like Birkenhead, or new public docks, better able to accommodate the new, larger heavier vessels of the era.19Ibid., 12 June 1862, vol. 167, cc. 482-4; 22 July 1864, vol. 176, cc. 1973-4; 6 Mar. 1865, vol. 177, cc. 1119-20; 9 Mar. 1865, vol. 177, cc. 1423-5. Laird’s arguments perhaps reflected his local and commercial interests, yet he was always consistent in his opinion that it was better to spend large sums of money upfront on clear-sighted long-term solutions than piecemeal, patching measures which would prove to be a false economy.20Ibid., 31 Mar. 1862, vol. 166, cc. 268-9; 12 June 1862, vol. 167, c. 483; 23 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, c. 700; 25 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, c. 1143; 3 Apr. 1865, vol. 178, c. 712; 26 May 1865, vol. 179, cc. 927-9.

In 1862 Laird Brothers built a wooden sailing ship for the Confederacy, later infamous as the C.S.S. Alabama, which was subsequently rearmed in the Azores to terrorise Federal shipping during the American Civil War, until sunk in 1864. Although modern scholars have vindicated the claims of Laird Brothers and the British government to be acting within international law and free of any wrong-doing in the ship’s escape from Merseyside, ‘there can be no doubt that for a long time much odium was attached to the name of Laird’.21Liverpool Mercury, 30 Oct. 1874 (qu.). The definitive account is F.J. Merli, The Alabama, British neutrality and the American Civil War, ed. D.M. Fahey (2004); see also R.C. Jarvis, ‘The Alabama and the law’, Trans. of the Historic Society of Lancs. & Ches., (1960), cxi. 181-98. Laird insisted, 27 Mar. 1863, that the ship had ‘left Liverpool a perfectly legitimate transaction’, and responding to the criticisms of John Bright, he declared:

I would rather be handed down to posterity as the builder of a dozen Alabamas than as the man who applies himself deliberately to set class against class, and to cry up the institutions of another country which, when they come to be tested, are of no value whatever, and which reduce the very name of liberty to an utter absurdity.22Hansard, 27 Mar. 1863, vol. 170, cc. 68 (first qu.), 71-2 (second qu.).

Laird’s main legislative achievement was to introduce a system whereby all chains, cables and anchors had to be impressed with an official proof-mark to demonstrate that they had been tested. He first proposed the measure as an amendment to an 1862 bill.23Ibid., 19 June 1862, vol. 167, c. 740. He introduced his own bill the following year, but withdrew after opposition from the president of the board of trade, Thomas Milner Gibson, and William Schaw Lindsay, MP for Sunderland, on behalf of the shipping interest, even though Laird cited petitions from a number of trade bodies and companies in its favour.24Ibid., 8, 15, 20 July 1863, vol. 172, cc. 398-408, 844-9, 1136-8; PP 1863 (95), i. 81-6. A modified bill was passed the following year after being referred to a select committee (27 & 28 Vict., c. 27) and the Act apparently reduced the loss of vessels.25Hansard, 17 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 682-95; 2 Mar 1864, vol. 173, cc. 1360-3; 6 Apr. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 503-16; PP 1864 (9), i. 161-6; 1864 (46), i. 167-70; 1864 (103), i. 171-7; 1864 (139), viii. 2; Liverpool Mercury, 30 Oct. 1874.

‘Never a robust man’, Laird suffered a serious fall in 1873, but attended Parliament the following year until diarrhoea and ‘exhaustion consequent on many years of overwork’ forced his return to Birkenhead, where he died in October 1874.26Birmingham Daily Post, 30 Oct. 1874 (qu.); Cheshire Observer, 31 Oct. 1874. His passing was marked with an ‘immense funeral cortege’.27Cheshire Observer, 7 Nov. 1874. Laird had been active in the volunteer movement and was vice-president of the National Rifle Association.28Liverpool Mercury, 31 Oct. 1874; Illustrated London News, xxxix. 74 (27 July 1861). His eldest son, William, declined to stand at the subsequent by-election, but with his brothers carried on the business, known as Cammell Laird after 1903.29Liverpool Mercury, 31 Oct. 1874. The family had ceased its connection with the company by the 1920s.30‘The Laird family & Birkenhead’, http://www.birkenheadhistorysociety.org.uk/page5/page14/page12/page12.html. A statue of Laird, funded by public subscription, was erected in Hamilton Square, Birkenhead in 1877.