Passive Resistance

This is one of a number of blogs about items in historical byways:

Passive Resistance


In 1901 came one of those contentious legal rulings which, in the Edwardian period, caused great upheavals because they changed the law as it was commonly understood. The Cockerton Judgement declared that instruction in science and fine art could not be described as 'elementary education' which was the only legitimate area of activity on which School Boards were allowed to spend public money. Unless the law was changed, the secondary schooling, into which all over the country they had been quietly but steadily expanding, would have to be abandoned.

This was the excuse for which Arthur Balfour, the nephew of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, had been waiting. After the failure of the Education Bill in 1897 there was still the funding crisis in the Anglican schools, and the government was seeking a solution. The principle of the new Bill was to do away with all the thousands of School Boards and put education in the hands of the much smaller number of local authorities. They would be empowered to fund secondary education as well as primary.

The further difficulty was that there was no government money available as the Boer war was soaking up what was available, so there was no alternative to raising the additional money from the local rates. The quandary was whether they should force the local authorities to support the denomination schools, so that they didn't disappear due to lack of funds. This was bound to cause trouble and the Bill as first submitted to Parliament had a clause allowing the local authorities to opt out. While seeming clever in the House this would have been an administrative nightmare, and in any case it was removed during the Bill's passage.

Joseph Chamberlain, who had been absent at the critical moment due to a cab accident, was appalled. He knew that his Liberal Unionist supporters, mainly Nonconformists, would see the Bill for what it was, partisan in favour of the Anglicans. They would view it as paying for sectarian education as part of their local council rates. There was nothing he could do, as he was largely responsible for the war which had absorbed the available government money. He felt that it was going to destroy Liberal Unionism.

In July 1902 Lord Salisbury suddenly resigned and Balfour became Prime Minister, but he was even more reluctant to listen to Chamberlain's pleas for concessions to the Nonconformists. He was convinced that reform was essential, and most agreed with that, but it was the manner of it that caused the problems. With his Victorian patrician attitudes he saw no reason why the government should not blatantly legislate in favour of its supporters, in this case the Anglicans. The idea that the Church schools should be merged into a unified non-denominational state education system was something he couldn't accept, particularly after strong representations by the bishops.

The Nonconformists were furious and started protesting even before the Act was passed. At the end of September a large meeting in Manchester was organised by the local Free Church Federation, and of course, Charles Leach was present. The Chairman, Rev Dr McLaren made their position clear that though there were good aspects, 'we oppose this bill because it gives public money and does not secure public control – we oppose this bill because it endows the teaching of sectarian creeds; we oppose this bill because it re-establishes religious tests.'

Finally in December the Bill became the Education act of 1902. It established two sorts of school, Provided, and Non-Provided. The former were the previous Board schools, while the latter were the voluntary - mostly those owned by the church. At face value it appeared innocuous, and many Churchmen could not understand what the fuss was about. The devil was in the detail, and particularly the way managers were appointed for Non-Provided schools. Usually this left control, and specifically that of religious instruction, in the hands of the Church. While in theory assistant teachers could be appointed without reference to their creed, heads were subject to the trust deeds of the school which normally defined their religious denomination. The reference in the Act to the bishop being the arbiter in the case of disputes was a giveaway as to its biased nature.

Undoubtedly, the most contentious point was the use of money from the local rates to support these Non-Provided Schools. Though the other issues were of concern to many, and significant numbers thought that the opportunity to create an efficient national education system had been squandered, it was the rates issue that really stuck in Nonconformist throats. There was this sense that the government, and Balfour in particular, had either just let the Bishops have their way, or were unconcerned with the effect of the Act. They seemed unaware that with the coming of the twentieth century the world had changed, and what had been acceptable in Victorian times was no longer so. The Nonconformists were going to fight the Act all the way, and Passive Resistance Leagues sprang up all over the country.

For a while the activity was mostly in huge demonstrations, speeches and letters to the papers. There was no way the government could now say that it was merely the concern of the few. However, while the opposition to the Act was large, not everyone agreed about the tactics, and it was only the 'hard liners' that went for the Passive Resistance. Some thought that the correct way was, as Balfour said, to change it in Parliament, but he knew perfectly well that this would be very difficult. Even should the Liberals have a majority in the House of Commons, it was unlikely to be able to get amending legislation through the House of Lords, with its inbuilt Tory majority, as leading Liberal Sir William Harcourt pointed out. The argument was degenerating into one about the tyranny of majorities over minorities, though whether this referred to Nonconformists, or only their position in Parliament, is not clear.

Then came the first cases of people refusing to pay a proportion of their rates. The authorities responded by sending police to seize some goods from the offenders. These were then taken to auctions and sold to pay the debt. The Passive Resisters would turn up in force and buy back the property of their colleagues, and there the matter would rest. However many of the sales were disrupted and sympathetic auctioneers, when they understood what was happening, refused to conduct further ones. It was more a matter of making life difficult for the authorities, than outright civil disobedience.

On the other hand there were those who took their opposition to its logical conclusion and refused to co-operate at all with the authorities. The courts had no option but to send them to prison. Though the numbers were not large the impact of the threat of a lady being sentenced raised the profile of the protest still further. She was quite prepared for jail, but in the event someone paid her rate and she was spared.

The movement was still spreading and by mid December some 7,000 summonses had been issued and 300 sales had taken place. Two months later the number was over 10,000 and positions were becoming entrenched. By April they had reached 20,000, with 23 men having been sent to prison. At the end of the following month it had reached 45,500 with 1,600 sales, and 108 imprisonments. This was in England, but in Wales a movement led by Lloyd George had rendered the Act almost unworkable, and the Prime Minister was reported to be considering a Bill to deal with the situation.

The Nonconformists were still fighting battles for equality that had been going on for centuries against an entrenched church that was state sponsored. This was the basis for them wanting to disestablish the church; so that they might have a more level playing field. There was also no doubt that Balfour, in the Act, had made no attempt to be fair and reasonable. He seemed unaware that now it was the twentieth century and more egalitarian attitudes prevailed.

In that it did not achieve changes in the Act, the movement seems a failure, but it was just the sort of issue that the Nonconformists and Liberals needed to galvanise them and bring them out of the doldrums that they had been in really since the split in 1885. Once they started to be active again they realised that there was a lot that needed to be done, and that the Tories, particularly under the insouciant Balfour, had no idea of this. When a year or two later the election did come, the result was not in doubt, and the passive resisters had made a considerable contribution to that situation.


For more on this subject see Worsted to Westminster: The Extraordinary Life of the Rev Dr Charles Leach MP by J. B. Williams available from Darcy Press www.darcypress.co.uk.