John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn, (24 December 1838 – 23 September 1923), was a British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor.
Initially a journalist in the North of England and then editor of the newly Liberal-leaning Pall Mall Gazette from 1880 to 1883, he was elected a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Liberal Party in 1883. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1886 and between 1892 and 1895; Secretary of State for India between 1905 and 1910 and again in 1911; and Lord President of the Council between 1910 and 1914.
Morley was a distinguished political commentator, and biographer of his hero, William Ewart Gladstone. Morley is best known for his writings and for his "reputation as the last of the great nineteenth-century Liberals". He opposed imperialism and the Second Boer War. He supported Home Rule for Ireland. His opposition to British entry into the First World War as an ally of Russia led him to leave the government in August 1914.
Background and education Morley was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, the son of Jonathan Morley, a surgeon, and of Priscilla Mary (née Donkin). He was educated firstly at Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Blackburn where he is regarded as the school’s most distinguished old boy. He then attended Cheltenham College. While at Oxford, he quarrelled with his father over religion, and had to leave the university early without an honours degree; his father had wanted him to become a clergyman.D. A. Hamer, John Morley: Liberal Intellectual in Politics (Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 1 He wrote, in obvious allusion to this rift, On Compromise (1874).Hamer, p. 2.
Journalism Morley was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1873, before deciding to pursue a career in journalism. He later described his decision to abandon the law "my long enduring regret". He edited the newly Radical-Liberal Pall Mall Gazette from 1880 to 1883, with W. T. Stead as his assistant editor before going into politics.
Political career Morley first stood for Parliament at the 1869 Blackburn by-election, a rare double by-election held after an election petition led to the results of the 1868 general election in Blackburn being voided. He was unsuccessful in Blackburn, and also failed to win a seat when he contested the City of Westminster at the 1880 general election.Craig, page 21
Morley was then elected as Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Newcastle upon Tyne at a by-election in February 1883.
Morley and Newcastle Morley was a prominent Gladstonian Liberal. In Newcastle, his constituency association chairman was the effective Robert Spence Watson, a leader of the National Liberal Federation and its chairman from 1890 to 1902. Newcastle, however, was a dual member constituency and Morley's parliamentary colleague, Joseph Cowen, was a radical in perpetual conflict with the Liberal Party, who owned the Newcastle Daily Chronicle. Cowen attacked Morley from the left, and sponsored working men candidates on his retirement from the seat, showing favour to the local Tory candidate, Charles Hamond. Morley, with Watson's machine, withstood the Cowen challenge until the 1895 general election, when the tactics caused the ejection of Morley and the loss of Newcastle to the Tories.
Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1886, 1892–95 In February 1886, he was sworn to the Privy Council and made Chief Secretary for Ireland, only to be turned out when Gladstone's government fell over Home Rule in July of the same year and Lord Salisbury became prime minister. After the severe defeat of the Gladstonian party at the 1886 general election, Morley divided his life between politics and letters until Gladstone's return to power at the 1892 general election, when he resumed as Chief Secretary for Ireland.
He had during the interval taken a leading part in parliament, but his tenure of the chief secretaryship of Ireland was hardly a success. The Irish gentry made things as difficult for him as possible, and the path of an avowed Home Ruler installed in office at Dublin Castle was beset with pitfalls. In the internecine disputes that agitated the Liberal party during Lord Rosebery's administration and afterwards, Morley sided with Sir William Harcourt and was the recipient and practically co-signatory of his letter resigning the Liberal leadership in December 1898. He lost his seat in the 1895 general election but soon found another in Scotland, when he was elected at a by-election in February 1896 for the Montrose Burghs.
Opposition to eight hours working day From 1889 onwards, Morley resisted the pressure from labour leaders in Newcastle to support a maximum working day of eight hours enforced by law. Morley objected to this because it would interfere in natural economic processes. It would be "thrusting an Act of Parliament like a ramrod into all the delicate and complex machinery of British industry".Hamer, p. 257. For example, an Eight Hours Bill for miners would impose on an industry with great diversity in local and natural conditions a universal regulation. He further argued that it would be wrong to "enable the Legislature, which is ignorant of these things, which is biased in these things—to give the Legislature the power of saying how many hours a day a man shall or shall not work".Hamer, pp. 257–8.
Morley told trade unionists that the only right way to limit working hours was through voluntary action from them. His outspokenness against any eight hours bill, rare among politicians, brought him the hostility of labour leaders.Hamer, p. 259. In September 1891, two mass meetings saw labour leaders such as John Burns, Keir Hardie and Robert Blatchford all calling for action against Morley.Hamer, p. 276. In the election of 1892, Morley did not face a labour candidate but the Eight Hours League and the Social Democratic Federation supported the Unionist candidate.Hamer, pp. 276–7. Morley kept his seat but came second to the Unionist candidate. When Morley was appointed to the government and the necessary by-election ensued, Hardie and other socialists advised working men to vote for the Unionist candidate (who supported an Eight Hours Bill for miners), but the Irish vote in Newcastle rallied to Morley and he comfortably kept his seat.Hamer, p. 279.
Morley’s stance put him at odds with other members of his party who supported legislative limitations on hours of work.THE LIBERAL PLATFORM. HISTORIC FACTS AND CURRENT PROBLEMS: A HANDY BOOK OF REFERENCE, THE LIBERAL PUBLICATION DEPARTMENT, 1895, P.328 After a vote on an Eight Hours Bill in the Commons in March 1892, Morley wrote: "That has taken place which I apprehended. The Labour party—that is, the most headstrong and unscrupulous and shallow of those who speak for labour—has captured the Liberal party. Even worse—the Liberal party, on our bench at any rate, has surrendered sans phrase, without a word of explanation or vindication".
Ideological positions In 1880, Morley wrote to Auberon Herbert, an extreme opponent of state intervention, that "I am afraid that I do not agree with you as to paternal government. I am no partisan of a policy of incessant meddling with individual freedom, but I do strongly believe that in so populous a society as ours now is, you may well have a certain protection thrown over classes of men and women who are unable to protect themselves".Hamer, p. 158. In 1885, Morley spoke out against those Liberals who believed that all state intervention was wrong and proclaimed: "I am not prepared to allow that the Liberty and the Property Defence League are the only people with a real grasp of Liberal principles, that Lord Bramwell and the Earl of Wemyss are the only Abdiels of the Liberal Party".'Mr. John Morley at Glasgow', The Times (11 February 1885), p. 10. Later that year Morley defined his politics: "I am a cautious Whig by temperament, I am a Liberal by training, and I am a thorough Radical by observation and experience".Hamer, p. 160.
By the mid-1890s, according to one study, Morley adopted a doctrinaire opposition to state intervention in social and economic matters.Hamer, p. 307. He repeatedly expressed his hope that social reform would not become a party issue and warned voters to "Beware of any State action which artificially disturbs the basis of work and wages".Hamer, pp. 306–7. Politicians could not "insure steady work and good wages" because of "great economic tides and currents flowing which were beyond the control of any statesman, Government, or community". Morley also opposed the state providing benefits for sections or classes of the community as the government should not be used as a tool for sectional or class interests. The Unionist government had proposed to help farmers by assuming some of their rates and wanted to subsidise West Indian sugar producers. Morley viewed these as dangerous precedents of "distributing public money for the purposes of a single class" and he asked voters: "How far are you going to allow this to take you? ... If you are going to give grants to help profits, how are you off from giving grants in favour of aiding wages?" The end of this process, Morley warned, would see "national workshops to which anybody has a right to go and receive money out of your pockets".Hamer, p. 308.
Despite this, Morley nevertheless expressed sympathy towards the underprivileged and was supportive of certain reform proposals and measures including provisions for old age.Routledge Library Editions: The History of Social Welfare, 2021, P.165 In an 1892 address, Morley declared himself to be animated “as I have been all my life, by an earnest and heartfelt desire to soften the vicissitudes and ease the hardships of the host of manual toilers who do so much for the service of the world, and who, as yet, have so scanty a share of the world’s heritage.”THE GLASGOW HERALD, TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1892, P.8 In the early 1900s, Morley believed (as one study has noted) “that the main problems facing Britain were not imperial but social.”Morley of Blackburn A Literary and Political Biography of John Morley By Patrick Jackson, 2012, P.361 In a later speech he delivered to businessmen in 1910, Morley commented positively on how (as noted by one journal at the time) “One of the most remarkable and moving features of our time in England was the intense wave of sympathy and feeling for the lost or the unfortunate.” The Glasgow Herald 3 Dec 1910
Nevertheless, Morley deeply distrusted (according to one study) “most types of social reform.”From left to right? The career of John Morley by Ian Packer, Journal of Liberal History 47 Summer 2005, P.17 An example of this can arguably found in his concerns over proposals for old age pensions under the Liberal government, 1905-1915: