Anyone who picks up Bill Cash’s new book assuming that it will inevitably be about the European Union is in for a big surprise. There is not a single reference to the EU in the index.
Cash has a second life as a fine, dedicated historian. The subject of this book, John Bright, was one of the giants of the Victorian era, ranking alongside Gladstone and Disraeli. Karl Marx got it right (for once) when he hailed Bright as “one of the most gifted orators that England has ever produced”.
He was the leading radical politician of his time, though never a wild, left-wing ideologue. He possessed, as Cash perceptively notes, a strong vein of conservatism in his character which brought him first into temporary alliances, and finally into a firm association, with the Conservative Party. He helped strengthen the Party as a progressive force in British politics.
Bright was the first English politician to attract and retain an immense personal following throughout the country, numbered in tens of thousands, outside a mainstream party political organisation. He acquired his mass support by arguing with tremendous power for a variety of specific far-reaching reforms, ranging from the extension of the franchise to the protection of human rights in India. He mounted the first well-organised campaigns in modern British history, Cash writes, “with an energy and commitment, and on such a scale and range of matters, that has scarcely, if at all, been emulated by any other politician”.
Bright campaigned hardest of all to secure the repeal of the Corn Laws, which imposed taxes on foodstuffs, and to get the vote for working-class men. These two great changes were implemented by Conservative governments with which Bright worked in the national interest. In Cash’s words, “Bright put conscience, conviction, the working man and the country before party or any personal interest”. He heaped praise on Sir Robert Peel for removing taxes on food in 1846, and wept when he heard of the death of “this great statesman”.
Twenty years later Bright’s influence on the left of the Liberal Party brought Disraeli, governing without a Commons majority, the extra votes he needed from the Opposition to pass the legislation which conferred voting rights on working men in urban constituencies. “Whatever happens, you and I will always be friends”, Disraeli told him.
When he died in 1889, Bright was a leading member of the newly formed Liberal Unionist Party which worked closely with the Conservatives as part of a Unionist alliance against Irish Home Rule until 1912- exactly a century ago – when the two Parties merged to form the Conservative and Unionist Party. Bright’s ideals thus passed into the bloodstream of the Tories, reinforcing their vision of One Nation, particularly in social affairs ,to which Bill Cash himself who is distantly related to Bright has always adhered.
In this fine, richly documented biography, Cash ends the neglect into which his forebear has been allowed to fall, and restores him to the pinnacle of nineteenth century political history where he belongs.
John Bright: Statesman, Orator, Agitator by Bill Cash is published by I.B.Taurus & Co. Ltd. at £25. Alistair Lexden is the official historian of the Conservative Party. For information about his publications and other historical writings, visit his website: www.alistairlexden.org.uk
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