BASS, Michael Arthur (1837-1909), of Rangemore, Staffordshire

Heir to ‘England’s premier brewery’, Bass was a silent Liberal during his first parliament.1T. Gourvish and R. Wilson, The British brewing industry, 1830-1980 (1994), 218. Bass’s grandfather had founded the family firm in the late eighteenth century, but it was his father Michael Thomas Bass (1799-1884) who turned Bass, Gretton and Ratcliff into one of Britain’s most successful breweries. Based in Burton-on-Trent, Bass’s father exploited the increasing taste for lighter ales to challenge the traditional dominance of the big London breweries.2R. Wilson, ‘Bass, Michael Thomas (1799-1884)’, www.oxforddnb.com. Michael Bass the elder was a popular Liberal MP for Derby, 1848-83, and one of the leaders of that party in North Staffordshire.

Bass was returned as a Liberal for Stafford at the 1865 general election, after promising support for Palmerston’s government and the total abolition of church rates.3The Times, 21 June 1865. Although he pledged support for a £10 county franchise, he opposed the secret ballot ‘believing that the state of public opinion and the influence of a free press had rendered it unnecessary’.4Birmingham Daily Press, 28 June 1865. After his election, Bass remarked that his experience had convinced him that it was safe to extend the franchise to those non-electors ‘who were qualified by their intelligence and frugality to exercise it’. Responding to the opposition of local teetotallers, he insisted that ‘no man was more opposed to drunkenness’. However, he could not support the permissive bill demanded by temperance reformers, which proposed holding local referendums to close all public houses in a given locality. This was because ‘he could never vote for a measure which would enable him to enjoy his glass of wine at home while robbing the poor man of his beer’, by closing down public houses.5Derby Mercury, 19 July 1865.

Bass supported the Liberal government’s reform bill in 1866, but voted in the opposite division lobby to his father by opposing the ballot, 17 July 1866. In the debates on the representation of the people bill the following year Bass voted with his father for the enfranchisement of compound ratepayers and lodgers, reducing the residency qualification to one year and lowering the copyhold franchise. He also supported the disenfranchisement of small boroughs, and giving extra seats to the largest cities. More conservative than his father, Bass supported Lowe’s amendment to introduce cumulative voting and the minority clause.

Bass sat as a Liberal for East Staffordshire 1868-85 and for Burton from 1885 until his ennoblement as 1st baron Burton, 13 Aug. 1886, having already been granted a baronetcy in 1882. The increasing influence of temperance reformers within local Liberalism and threat of hostile legislation after the Liberal party adopted local option (as the permissive bill was now described) belatedly forced Burton into the Liberal Unionist party in 1894.6Wilson, ‘Bass, Michael Arthur’. Burton was also involved in the National Trade Defence Fund, established in 1888, to counter the temperance campaign and provide a semblance of leadership and unity for a trade, that despite public perceptions, found collective action difficult to achieve due to internal divisions.7D. Gutzke, Protecting the pub: brewers and publicans against temperance (1989), 103, 246; D. Gutzke, ‘Rhetoric and reality: the political influence of British brewers, 1832-1914’, Parliamentary History, 9 (1990), 78-115. He was later a staunch tariff reformer and led opposition in the Lords to the 1908 licensing bill.8The Times, 2 Feb. 1909. Burton was best known, however, as the head of his ‘great brewery firm’. Between 1896 and 1902 Bass and company made huge net profits of £500,000 per year.9Gourvish and Wilson, British brewing industry, 216. Like his father, Burton was a millionaire.10Ibid., 218. He often entertained Edward VII at Rangemore (Staffordshire), Glenquoich (Inverness), and Chesterfield House, his London residence.11Ibid., 218-19.

Burton died in 1909 after a kidney operation.12The Times, 2 Feb. 1909. As he had no male heirs, in 1897 he had been given another barony of the same name, this time with special remainder to his daughter Nellie Lisa (1873-1962), who was married to James Evan Bruce Baillie, Conservative MP for county Inverness, 1895-1900.13G.E. Cockayne, The complete peerage (1912), ii. 439-40; Burke’s peerage (1939), i. 439; M. Stenton and S. Lees, Who’s who of British MPs (1978), ii. 14. She inherited the barony of Burton, of the second creation, while that of the first creation became extinct. The baronetcy passed to his nephew William Arthur Hamar Bass (1879-1952), who like his father, Burton’s brother Hamar Alfred Bass (1842-98), was a gambling addict.14Gourvish and Wilson, British brewing industry, 222. Hamar had been Liberal MP for Tamworth 1878-85 and West Staffordshire 1885-98, and was a Liberal Unionist after 1886.15Stenton and Lees, Who’s who of British MPs, ii. 25.