Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet

Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet — latest news, discussion & facts — IJR

Early political influences

With limited access to his intellectual peers, Lawson received his political convictions from his father and a constant stream of influential household guests. In 1840, the family explored the consequences of adopting free trade and the repeal of the iniquitous Corn Laws. They eagerly digested the speeches of Granby, Disraeli, and the Duke of Richmond on one side and of Cobden, Bright and Villiers on the other, with the caricatured comments of Mr. Punch, to enrich the subject.

The Lawsons shared the opinions of radicals, who argued that aristocrats were parasites of the state raising the price of the people's bread as a means of helping the landed interests and to add revenue to the state coffers which could be used for the anti-Christian purposes of corruption and foreign war. In 1843, after attending a series of travelling lectures given by Chalmers and Candlish, they re-enacted the prominent debates relating to the question of Church and State and discussed the Scottish church and its recent schism, when 451 ministers seceded, leaving the Kirk to form the Free Church of Scotland. In 1843, they debated the Rebecca Riots; and after Daniel O'Connell electrified Ireland with his desire to repeal the union they consumed endless hours debating the everlasting Irish Question. In 1848, they contemplated the events surrounding the revolution, when the morning newspapers reported some fresh upheaval, spreading relentlessly across Europe, shaking kingdoms and thrones, causing terrific slaughter in France, provoking Chartist riots in England, and bringing home lessons of deep political importance. Throughout the 1840s, they debated the morality of war, with particular reference to the Afghan and the Chinese Opium Wars. As the wars concluded the question of peace came to the fore. The leaflets of Elihu Burritt' a leading peace campaigner were awaited and absorbed on publication, while another apostle of peace, Henry Richard made a lecturing visit to Brayton. Lawson completed his education by reading The Nonconformist, edited by Edward Miall. Many of these early Whig refrains forged his character and formed his opinions and convictions pushing him along a path that led from romanticism and Evangelicalism to Cobdenism.

1874 Carlisle election

As the 1874 general election approached, Lawson had good cause to feel satisfied with the progressive reforms introduced by the outgoing Gladstone government. They had gone some way to pacify Ireland by disestablishing the Irish church and introducing the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870. They had introduced an Education Bill, which Lawson welcomed with a few reservations. They had introduced the Local Government Board Act 1871, which put the supervision of the Poor Law under the Local Government Board. They had repealed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act and abolished the Religious tests in the universities. They had introduced much-needed army reforms, instituted the abolition of the sale of commissions in the army and made peacetime flogging illegal. In foreign affairs they had settled the Alabama Claims by international arbitration to the benefit of the United States; and kept Britain out of the Franco-Prussian War. They had introduced the Secret Ballot notwithstanding the serious opposition from the Tory party. Although parliament had passed the 1872 licensing act, Lawson had failed miserably to enact his Permissive Prohibitory Bill. In 1870, he had without success, introduced a resolution condemning the Opium traffic, which he compared to the problems associated with alcohol: "We go on to this day merrily poisoning the Chinese with opium as we do our own people with alcohol." Lawson also voted in a minority division of two in support of Sir Charles Dilke when heavily censured by parliament after seeking returns relating to the expenditure on the British Royal family. On 2 August 1870, at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, Lawson had opposed Gladstone, who sought parliament's permission to increase the army estimates by £2,000,000 and 20,000 men. Lawson saw the vote as a danger to Britain and represented the first step in a direction away from a policy of non-intervention, war when not a necessity, as he emphasised, a crime and no war was justified unless strictly defensive. Although he threatened to walk through the lobbies unattended he received support from six radicals. During the election, Lawson expressed his opposition to the ongoing Ashanti war which he saw as a continuation of the drive to open out Africa "We are opening out Africa to progress, civilisation and religion. I don't believe in the souls of a few being saved by destroying the bodies of many more out there. I don't believe in civilising and Christianising by the sword." Unlike many of his Liberal colleagues, Lawson was re-elected and would spend the vast majority of his time in the forthcoming parliament opposing Beaconsfieldism and what he saw as unnecessary conflict.

Egyptian crisis

In 1880, the Carlisle constituency returned Lawson to parliament with an increased majority, while the country as a whole returned a Liberal government led by Gladstone. Lawson supported the claim of the atheist Charles Bradlaugh, who sought religious freedom. In relation to Irish affairs, he supported Gladstone's introduction of the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881, only to oppose the government after Gladstone introduced the Protection of Person and Property Act 1881, which Lawson described as "starting once more on the hopeless, miserable, never-ending attempt to settle the Irish difficulty by force." In January 1881, Lawson became a leading spokesman for the Transvaal Independence Committee, from where he denounced the belligerence before applauding the negotiated settlement to end the First Boer War. The Egyptian crisis followed.

The British occupation of Egypt was the most important single act of British foreign policy during Gladstone's second administration and according to many historians has since become one of the classic case studies of the partition of Africa and of late nineteenth-century informal imperialism in general. Lawson's agitation against intervention in Egypt was completely in harmony with his support for the Transvaal Boers in their struggle against British rule; his support for Afghan tribesmen seeking to retain their independence; and his wish to see justice spread to encompass the needs of the Irish people. Underlying all of these policies was an inherent distrust of the concept of empire and a cardinal belief in the traditional assertions of Cobden, that Britain should promote peace, and avoid interference in the political institutions of other nations. In many respects, Egypt was Lawson's defining moment as an anti-imperialist radical. He not only led the agitation but he disagreed with the opinions of many of his radical contemporaries, and colleagues he had and would later stand shoulder to shoulder with in agitating against similar imperialist concerns. For three long years he criticised British diplomats and argued against a government of his own making; against the European bondholders' control of the country; against the bombardment of Alexandria; and against the British armies destruction of the Egyptian force under Ahmed Orabi at the Battle of Tel el-Kebir. He argued against parliament awarding a Vote of Thanks for Britain's military leaders; and in conjunction with Wilfrid Scawen Blunt campaigned for the release of Ahmed Orabi. On one occasion, in a blistering attack on the Government's forward policy, Lawson reminded his colleagues of their probable response had the bombardment occurred under a Conservative and not a Liberal administration.

They would have had his right hon. friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir William Harcourt), (laughter and cheers) stumping the country and denouncing Government by ultimatum. They would have had the noble Marquesss, the Secretary of State for India (Lord Hartington) moving a Resolution condemning the proceeding's taken behind the back of Parliament. (Cheers from the Irish Members.) They would have had the President of the Board of Trade (Joseph Chamberlain) summoning the caucus. (Cheers and laughter.) They would have had the other right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Birmingham, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (John Bright) declaiming in the Town Hall of Birmingham against the wicked Tory Government; and as for the Prime Minister, they all knew there would not have been a railway train, (cheers and laughter) passing a roadside station, that he would not have pulled up to proclaim the doctrine of non-intervention as the duty of the Government. (Laughter and cheers from the Irish Members). It was perfectly abominable to see men whom they respected, whom they believed in, whom they had placed in power, overturning every principle they had professed, carrying out a policy that was abhorrent to every lover of justice and of right.

As quickly as Gladstone began to solve one problem another arrived in the Sudan. In 1881, an obscure tribesman and religious zealot named Muhammad Ahmad, proclaimed himself the Mahdi, who initiated a Jihad against the Egyptian military occupation. After 50,000 Mahdist tribesmen annihilated a 10,000-strong Egyptian army under the command of a reluctant British mercenary, general William Hicks Pasha, the Cabinet fully understood the serious nature of their involvement in Egypt. This resulted in the dispatch of General Charles George Gordon to oversee the evacuation of Khartoum. After supporting a policy of "rescue and retire" Lawson quickly withdrew his support; he could find no relationship between what was described by Gladstone as "a small service to humanity," and the killing of thousands of Arabs. After the death of Gordon, Lawson applauded Gladstone's decision to evacuate Sudan.

Temperance

Although Lawson did not enter the House of Commons on behalf of the Temperance movement he became their chief parliamentary spokesman. In 1863 he spoke in favour of a Bill to introduce the Sunday closing of public houses. Later that year he proposed that "the Laws under which Licences are granted for the sale of Intoxicating Liquors are eminently unsatisfactory and deficient in power to protect the public, and therefore require immediate alteration." After the resolution was heavily defeated he was encouraged to introduce his Permissive Bill. On 8 June, Lawson rose in front of a packed House of Commons to deliver a speech of great ability that filled four pages of Hansard, to move the second reading of the first of several Permissive Bills. A policy that later became known as Local Option and eventually Local Veto, The Bill was fashioned to embody the convictions but not the policy of the United Kingdom Alliance. he did not propose to prohibit the sale of liquor by enactment. The Bill provided that on the application of any district, be that parish, town or borough, the votes of the ratepayers should be cast on the question of whether the trade in alcoholic beverages should exist in that district or not; where a majority of two-thirds of the ratepayers would be required to decide the outcome. The Bill was heavily defeated by a majority of 257. He reintroduced the bill again in 1869, 1870, 1871, 1873, 1874, 1876, 1878, In 1879, he varied his attack on the drink trade by proposing a Resolution in place of the Permissive Bill. Taking the words from a recommendation of the Convocation of the province of Canterbury, he asked that inhabitants of districts, being the persons most interested in the licensing of Public Houses, should themselves have the power of stopping such licensing, if they objected to having the trade forced upon them. In the following year he moved his resolution on two occasions, In the first, he was defeated by a majority of 114 votes, whereas on the second occasion he carried his motion by 26 votes. Although he carried the motion again in 1881 and 1883 with majorities of 42 and 87, Gladstone's government failed to enact the policy.

Memorials

On 21 April 1908, the Earl of Carlisle, unveiled a memorial, designed by Louis Frederick Roslyn, in the form of a drinking fountain surmounted by a bronze group of St. George and the dragon. The monument, financed by public subscription, stands in the town of Aspatria. On the front of the fountain is a portrait of Lawson, inscribed with dates of birth and death. On the right-hand side is a bronze panel representing Temperance, in which is portrayed a young girl offering a traveller a drink of water, drawn from an adjoining well. On the left-hand side a third panel depicts Peace, on which appears a tribesman dressed in savage garb, clasping the hand of friendship held out by a warrior kneeling at the feet of a winged Angel, which crowned by a halo is rising in the background. The fourth panel bears the following inscription:

Remember

Wilfrid Lawson

2nd Baronet of Brayton & Isel

In whose honour this fountain is erected by his many friends and admirers. Beloved for the integrity of his life and the height of his ideals. An example for all time for one who gave himself for others, believing in the brotherhood of man. A lover of truth and mercy, a brave and strenuous advocate of temperance, which sacred cause he championed in the House of Commons for forty years with gay wisdom and perseverance.

On 6 June 1908, the Lawson family installed a stained glass window dedicated to the memory of their late patriarch, in the east end of Aspatria Church. The window is large and beautifully ornate, and symbolises the characters and scene of the last chapter of Revelations.

On 20 July 1909, the members of the United Kingdom Alliance and other Temperance organisations erected a second memorial in the Victoria Embankment Gardens in London, close to Cleopatra's Needle. It was unveiled, amidst continuous interruptions by suffragettes, by the then prime minister, H. H. Asquith, who said:

"Sir Wilfrid Lawson was one of the most remarkable and certainly one of the most attractive political characters of the times. He was an apostle not of lost but of gaining causes, content for most of his life to be in the minority, but watching year by year the minority slowly developing into the majority of the future. I doubt very much whether we shall ever see again in our time a combination in one and the same man of such fearlessness and courage, such a passionate love for freedom, such a single minded independence and self devotion, such an enduring and strenuous assiduity in pursuit of the cause once taken up, and never by him to be laid down; such a combination.".

The bronze statue, designed by David McGill, is striking, life-like and shows Lawson, in an attitude of debate. On the front of the pedestal on which it stands is the inscription: – "Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., of Brayton, Cumberland; born September 4th, 1829: Member of Parliament for Carlisle, Cockermouth, Camborne, 1859 1906; president of the United Kingdom Temperance Alliance, 1879 1909." On one side of the pedestal are the words. "A true patriot, a wise and witty orator, a valiant and farseeing reformer, he spent a long life as the courageous champion of righteousness, peace, freedom and temperance." On the other side, the inscription runs. "Erected by his friends and followers in grateful remembrance of his splendid leadership, and of his pure and unworldly life, July 20th, 1909."

Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet

Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet

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Early days

Family

Early political influences

Political style

Political career

Entry into politics

1859 Carlisle election

1865 Carlisle election

1868 Carlisle election

1874 Carlisle election

Beaconsfieldism

Egyptian crisis

West Cumberland

The Newcastle programme and the second home rule bill

Boer war

Camborne

Temperance

Death

Memorials

Related journals