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| A meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League in London, 1846 |
This movement achieved a more important place in national life than any previous radical body. Unlike the Chartists, it represented the interests of an urban middle class. Unlike them, too it was well funded and had precise and limited objectives.
The Corn Laws were a generic term for a whole system of legislative protection of agriculture. In 1815 there was a prohibition on the import of foreign agricultural products until the price at home reached a high figure (80s a quarter in the case of wheat). In 1828 this absolute prohibition was replaced by a sliding scale of import duties. This legislation was not solely dictated by class interests – there was also the desire to be independent in time of war.
However there was a strong body of opinion opposed to legislative protection for agriculture. In 1830, Ebenezer Elliott, the Sheffield-based ‘Bard of Free Trade’ published his Corn Law Rhymes.
At first this opposition was local and sporadic, but the situation changed in the depression of the late ‘30s when food prices rose. Elliott declared:
It was born ‘of empty pockets in a respectable neighbourhood’.Manufacturing free traders could argue that the Corn Laws had damaging effects throughout the economy: British workmen would agitate for higher wages, which would be spent on food rather than on manufactured goods. The only beneficiaries would be the aristocracy.
In the late 1830s the topic of the Corn Laws moved to the top of the agenda, because, with the onset of an acute manufacturing depression, the cause attracted support in the country. It was brought annually before the Commons by Charles Villiers, Radical MP for Wolverhampton. But the Whig government refused to support him. Melbourne was against any more radical change and declared ‘before God’ that to leave the whole agricultural interest without protection was
the wildest and maddest scheme that has ever entered into the mind of man to conceive.
The beginnings of the League
The League was founded on 20 March 1839. It provided the rallying point for Radicals, as behind its arguments lay a great deal of class hostility. The Corn Laws were the visible legislative symbol of the predominance of the landed interest, represented by the Tories. The fundamental target of the League was political: the control of the aristocracy.Factors supporting the League
Free trade was the prevailing trend of economic thought. Those who supported protection were behind the times. The League was also well financed, much of the money coming from the factory owners. Protestant Nonconformists saw it as a stick with which to beat the Church of England, which was seen as beholden to the landed interest. It was supported in the areas of greatest population growth, most notably Manchester, whose population rose from 40,000 in the 1780s, to 70,000 in 1801 and 142,000 in 1831.Support for the League was strongly idealistic. Humanitarians were attracted by the plea for cheap bread. The leaders of the League were all sincere Christians. Protectionists were forced into being the party of high prices at a time of great economic distress. There was also an international component. Its leader, Richard Cobden saw free trade as
a means, and, I believe the only human means of effecting universal and permanent peace. … Free trade, by perfecting the intercourse and securing the dependence of countries one upon another must inevitably snatch the power from the governments to plunge the people into wars.
(So did Prince Albert!)
The League's problems
For all the League's rhetoric, the fundamental argument was flawed. Britain was a net importer of grain, mostly from northern Germany and Poland. From the 1830s there was a general European harvest failure. There was no cheap corn ‘out there’ that was only being kept from the people by an unjust law. When the Corn Laws were abolished wheat prices were not markedly affected.At a time when, in spite of the Reform Act, the landed interest remained dominant in Parliament, Repeal did not seem to be practical politics. To Cobden's frustration, the electorate remained obstinately deferential. In the Manchester by-election of 1840 the seat was filled by Milner Gilson, a Suffolk landowner. Cobden wrote:
What wonder we are scorned by the landed aristocracy when we take such pains to show our contempt for ourselves? We save our enemies the trouble of tramping on us by very industriously kicking our own backsides.
In 1843 Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote to an Edinburgh Leaguer:
People who know anything of the way in which this country is really governed know that there is in fact a certain small class of men who have a veto on all public measures which they agree to oppose. … The Corn Laws will not be repealed until a ministry takes the matter up.
He was to be proved right.
The organisation of the League
The formal control rested in a council of the large subscribers. Each subscription of £50 carried one vote. The League organised lecture tours. It had a paper, 'The Anti-Corn Law Circular' – everyone who contributed a pound to the League received it free. Other copies were given away. The paper made a loss, but this was thought worth the price.To a greater degree than in Chartism, women were involved in the movement. Richard Cobden wrote:
We have obtained the co-operation of the ladies; we have resorted to tea parties.At Anti-Corn Law League bazaars customers could buy free trade handkerchiefs, breadplates, teapots and pin cushions.
In January 1840 a temporary wooden building was opened in Manchester (built by 100 men in 11 days). Tw hundred delegates were represented, and 77 towns.
Richard Cobden
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| Richard Cobden Public domain |
Cobden was the acknowledged leader. Born in 1804 at Midhurst, the son of a small farmer, he became a clerk in a London warehouse. In 1828 he set up in business on borrowed capital. He became one of Manchester’s first aldermen. He was single-minded in his attack on aristocracy and deference. When he entered parliament, he was a fiercely confrontational debater and was loathed by the Tory backbenchers.
The election of 1841
The election of 1841 was largely fought on free trade issues. Melbourne's Whigs campaigned on a platform of lower tariffs (though not repeal), but the electorate were not convinced, and Peel’s Conservatives swept back to power with an overall majority of 367/291 and a lead in England of almost 100, winning more than 85 percent of the county seats.The League captured Walsall and both the Manchester seats, and Cobden was returned for Stockport. But some prize northern seats went to the Tories, including Bradford, Leeds, and Warrington. The borough patrons were still influential!
John Bright
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| John Bright Public domain |
In the late spring of 1841 Bright emerged as Cobden’s most able lieutenant. Unlike Cobden he was a northerner. Born in 1811 he was the son of a Rochdale textile manufacturer, and entered his father’s business after leaving school. He was a prominent Quaker. His enemies accused him of being headstrong and impetuous and setting class against class. Friends and supporters saw him as a prophet and one of the great orators of the day. In 1843 he was returned in a by-election as MP for Rochdale.
The advance of the League
In 1841-2, when harvest were bad and unemployment widespread the League made remarkable advances both in propaganda and organisation.No public building in Manchester was big enough to hold League meetings. In January 1843 the Free Trade Hall was built on the site of the Peterloo Massacre and was capable of holding 7,000 to 8,000 people. A gigantic Anti-Corn Law Banquet was held to celebrate the event. The present Free Trade Hall was opened in 1856. By this time the League had a centralised fund of £50,000. By 1844 this had doubled. The Economist was founded in the same year to spread the doctrine of free trade.
In 1843, the League moved its offices to London – a tactical decision. The move had great psychological importance as it helped to win over the London press, who had previously been dismissive of the ‘Cant and Cotton men’.
The Anti-League
In 1843 a Central Agricultural Protection Society – soon known as the Anti-League, was formed, its president the Ultra-Tory duke of Richmond and its vice-president the Tory Duke of Buckingham. It successfully rallied the farmers by painting the League’s lecturers as clever outsiders hostile not only to landlords but to rural society in general.However it is too simple to posit a simple urban/rural, Anglican/Dissenter, radical/Tory split. The urban vote was split on the question of protection, with Tory manufacturers prepared to take the party line. The Manchester Guardian opposed the League.
Conclusion
- The League was the most sophisticated pressure group yet seen in Britain. Yet how successful was it? The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, not because of League pressure, but because Peel no longer believed in them. Was it pressure from the League that brought about his change of mind or were other factors in play?
- The main significance of the League was social and political. The aristocracy were criticised as never before – on economic, social, political, and moral grounds.
- In the long run, the League may have harmed British agriculture.
