Wallace Leslie Lawler (15 March 191228 September 1972) was a British Liberal politician. He was elected a Member of Parliament (MP) by gaining the Birmingham Ladywood constituency from Labour at a by-election on 26 June 1969. However, he only served for one year; Labour's Doris Fisher regained the seat from him at the 1970 general election. Lawler was the last Liberal to serve as a Member of Parliament in Birmingham until John Hemming, of the successor Liberal Democrats, gained Birmingham Yardley in 2005.
Early life and career Wallace Lawler was born in Worcester, the son of Stephen and Elizabeth Lawler (née Taylor).Peter Joyce, Wallace Lawler in Brack et al. (eds.) Dictionary of Liberal Biography; Politico’s Publishing, 1998 p216 He was educated at St Paul's School, Worcester, and privately at Malvern, Worcestershire. In 1943 he married Catherine Letitia Durcan. They had two sons and two daughters.Who was Who, OUP 2007
Lawler had an early interest in community projects and youth work in particular. He founded the Worcester Boys' Club for teenagers in 1928, and was involved in youth work until he went to Birmingham in 1938 to work as an aircraft engineer.The Times, 29 September 1972 During the Second World War he served in the 8th Battalion, the Worcestershire Regiment. In 1964 he founded his own plastics business and later took over another established firm called ABCD Plastics, of which he became chairman.
Following up his interest in youth work, Lawler was associated with a wide range of community organisations. In 1943, he founded the Public Opinion Action Association. In 1956, he became Secretary and later Chairman of an emergency accommodation bureau to find homes for homeless people in Birmingham set up after a conference of religious, civic, political and business people presided over by the Bishop of Birmingham, Dr J L Wilson.The Times, 3 August 1956 He also worked for the community through the Wallace Lawler Friendship Trust (1969) and Citizens' Service Ltd (1970).Joyce, DLB p. 216
Local politics At the time of the 1945 general election, Lawler was said to be a man opposed to all political parties,William Harrington & Peter Young, The 1945 Revolution, Davis-Poynter, 1978, p. 108 but during the 1950s he became active in the Liberal Party, even though its electoral record in the West Midlands was dismal.
Lawler's activities in Birmingham had a national reach. Britain's then best-selling newspaper, the Daily Mirror, reported Lawler's campaigning activities, starting with a big splash on his Homeless Bureau in 1956."Platform 1 is their home!", Daily Mirror, 6 September 1956 There was a front-page splash with "Rents: ‘Double or Quit’" in 1960.Daily Mirror, 27 July 1960
There was a 1966 article on fire safety in housing,"Wife and baby died in blaze", Daily Mirror, 10 June 1966 and a long campaign against higher electricity charges saw a petition with 85,000 signatures handed in at No. 10 Downing Street."A mile-long protest letter for Wilson", Daily Mirror, 21 September 1967; "Candle protest to number 10", Daily Mirror, 9 October 1967; "SOS to Wilson over old folk", Daily Mirror, 8 March 1968
There was a 1967 report about an all-night vigil by women in temporary accommodation who were separated from their husbands – this was two weeks after the showing of the TV play Cathy Come Home"Homeless wives wait all night", Daily Mirror, 25 January 1967 – and a 1968 splash about eight houses compulsorily purchased without any compensation."Fred fights a city for his nest-egg", Daily Mirror, 1 January 1968
In 1962, Lawler became the first Liberal to be elected to Birmingham City Council for nearly 30 years when he won the Newtown ward. He was re-elected in 1965, not only holding his seat but increasing his majority fourfold – despite Labour having worked hard to unseat him and having assigned one of the party's most experienced agents to work to secure his defeat.Arthur Cyr, Liberal Politics in Britain, Transaction Books, 1988, p. 107 He retained his Newtown seat again in 1968, and from 1968 to 1972 he led the Liberal Party's small group on the Council. In 1971 he was created an Alderman, a position he held until he died the following year.
Lawler held a number of important Liberal posts in the Birmingham area, including Chairman of Birmingham Liberal Organisation,The Times, 10 April 1961 and became the first chairman of the Birmingham Liberal Federation when it was founded in 1965. The new Federation was established to end dissension between Birmingham Liberal Organisation and the West Midlands Liberal Federation and the ambitious plan was to make Birmingham the spearhead of a campaign to win industrial seats for the Liberal Party.The Times, 30 September 1965
Lawler first stood for Parliament as Liberal candidate in Dudley in the Black Country at the 1955 general election, coming third with under 10% of the vote and losing his deposit.Political Science Resources: politics and government in the UK and the USA He fought Birmingham Perry Barr at the 1959 general election, again coming third, but this time gaining 14% of the poll – thus avoiding losing his deposit.Political Science Resources: politics and government in the UK and the USA In 1964 he was the candidate in Birmingham Handsworth. Again he came third, but achieved 17.6% of the poll.Political Science Resources: politics and government in the UK and the USA
Ladywood At the 1966 general election he switched to contest Birmingham Ladywood. In what was by that time one of the smallest constituencies in the country, with an electorate of only just over 25,000 (to be compared with electorates of around double that in the rest of the city) Lawler found he was able to make a greater impact at parliamentary level, campaigning directly with the people who lived in the area. He managed to come second to Labour in 1966, beating the Conservatives into third place. The Birmingham Post wrote that Lawler waged a "canny campaign": "in his election posters, the fact that he is a Liberal is not mentioned. It just says: 'Back Lawler, Man o’ the People, to Win.'"Birmingham Post, 29 March 1966.
Lawler gained nearly 24% of the vote to Labour's 58%.Political Science Resources: politics and government in the UK and the USA This result, plus the work in the constituency that Lawler did in the next three years, laid the foundation for his attempt on the seat at the Ladywood by-election in 1969.
1969 Ladywood by-election Against the backdrop of massive redevelopment in Birmingham city centre, the electorate of Ladywood had shrunk, the constituency suffered from significant deprivation and its population would today be classified as socially excluded. Given his own background of community work and his experience as a city councillor, Lawler involved himself heavily in the problems of the community, championing the underprivileged and their concerns over housing, homelessness and social upheaval.
In 1967, in the controversy which followed the first screening of the television drama Cathy Come Home the previous December, Lawler was reported as saying that he dealt with a "Cathy family" every day in his political work in Birmingham.The Times, 12 January 1967 Later in 1967, he organised a mass petition with more than 80,000 signatures to the prime minister to protest against increases in electricity prices,The Times, 21 September 1967 and that October he arranged a protest demonstration of mainly Birmingham pensioners to travel to London to hand in letters and petitions at 10 Downing Street.The Times, 9 October 1967
After the sitting Labour MP for Ladywood, Victor Yates, died in January 1969, a by-election fell due. However, the election writ was not moved for months, giving Lawler time to consolidate his position. When the election was held on 26 June, he won the seat with a majority of 2,713 votes over his Labour rival Doris Fisher, with the Conservative, Dr Louis Glass, in third place. All three candidates were members of Birmingham City Council.The Times, 27 June 1969 Ladywood was the first Liberal parliamentary success in Birmingham for 80 years.
1970 general election Patrick Brogan in The Times reported during the 1970 general election campaign that "Wallace Lawler is living proof that personality matters in politics. He is Liberal MP for Birmingham Ladywood. Single-handed, he has revived Liberalism in a city which had long forgotten there was such a thing.....He knows everybody and all their problems and everybody knows him".
During the campaign, "A huge set of placards was displayed along one floor of a block of council flats reading “Back Lawler's rents and rates – down fight”."David Butler and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970 (1971), p. 313
Lawler did not retain the seat he had gained at the by-election; Doris Fisher regained it for Labour, with a majority of 980 votes.Political Science Resources: politics and government in the UK and the USA
Immigration and race In 1958, Lawler said that immigrants had "preference" in the housing market, while local families with young children lost out."Immigrant family gets preference in house sale", Birmingham Post, 7 March 1958
Six months after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, Lawler chaired a meeting in Birmingham addressed by the Information Attaché at South Africa House, London, which was reported under the headline "Apartheid aims at civilising peoples".Birmingham Post, 6 September 1960
In 1961 Lawler spoke alongside other local political figures at a solidarity meeting in Birmingham, timed to coincide with three days of non co-operation protest by black people in South Africa."Racial discrimination protest meeting", Birmingham Post, 29 May 1961
Lawler advocated immigration controls in his 1961 election address for the city council's Sandwell Ward. He took 1,025 votes (21.9%) and Harry Jones of the Birmingham Immigration Control Association took 1,002 (21.4%).Birmingham Post, 19 and 23 June 1961. Lawler's Liberal running mate G. J. Dandy took 846 votes (18.0%), the Labour candidates with 693 and 660 averaged 14.4%, and the Conservatives won easily with 3,130 and 2,870 (64.0%). Lawler and Jones ran third and fourth behind the two winning Conservatives in this two-seat by-election, pushing Labour to the foot of the poll. Lawler was certainly keenly aware of public concerns about immigration at this time.For more detail on immigration debates in the West Midlands at this time, see Paul Foot, Immigration and Race in British Politics (Penguin Special, 1965), ch. 9.
Immigration was a major theme of Lawler's 1964 general election campaign in Birmingham Handsworth. Lawler called for government financial compensation to householders for the depreciation in house prices in "hardship cases such as elderly people who suddenly found that immigrants were living next door". This replicated the most notorious theme of the campaign in the neighbouring constituency Smethwick in the 1964 general electionAdoption meeting, Birmingham Post, 16 September 1964; United Nations Association hustings debate, Birmingham Post, 23 September 1964 On the eve of polling, the Birmingham Post carried a lengthy article on Handsworth, in which the Liberals advocated deportation for immigrant criminals "without the option of fine or imprisonment". Lawler called for "a tightening-up of the employment voucher system so that immigrants were prevented from drawing national assistance soon after arriving"."Liberal urges stiffer policy on deportation", Birmingham Post, 14 October 1964