Joseph Chamberlain’s cult of personality
He’s the mayor who transformed Birmingham from a sleepy and ignorant city into something great - but is there more to the myth?
By Jon Neale
A few years ago, I was at a conference on cities and urban development in London, with plenty of the great and good in attendance. One of the headline speakers was erstwhile Edgbaston Labour MP and full-throated Brexiteer Gisela Stuart. She began her talk with a reference to Joseph Chamberlain, providing what has become the standard biography of the man who has become the legendary father figure of Birmingham.
The story goes like this: in the 1850s, a keen young businessman looking to expand his uncle’s screw-making business Nettlefolds (the precursor to GKN), arrived in what was then a squalid mess of a city. By the next decade, he had moved into politics and begun the heroic task of giving Birmingham the sort of institutions and amenities befitting a place of its size. This culminated in his famous mayoralty of 1873 to 1876, in which he reshaped the city by force of will alone.
It’s a familiar narrative, one that still features in grander speeches and promotional blurbs. A reference to Chamberlain, and Chamberlain alone, seems a checkbox necessity for any discussion of the city’s past and future. In his recent (and rather fragmentary) history of Birmingham, Second City, the historian Richard Vinen performs the same trick, providing a typically heroic biography of Chamberlain without much mention of the broader context from which he emerged.
Chamberlain himself would no doubt be happy with all of this. As the academic Roger Ward notes in City-State and Nation, his own history of Birmingham politics, he was not often guilty of modesty. He was perhaps the greatest self-publicist of the era. This nurtured “a cult of personality… an ‘official myth’ by which Chamberlain was identified as the founding father of modern Birmingham to whose inspiration all improvement and progress can ultimately be traced”. But to accept this at face value would be to overlook the deeper radical history of Birmingham, as well as the efforts of a whole group of remarkable men and women who made the city what it is. It does a great disservice to the city, and to them, to simplify an astonishing era in its history to the work of one ‘great man’.
Birmingham had been an urban innovator before. Its industrial growth spurt had begun before even the centres of the North, and by the 1700s it was the third largest city in England (after London and Bristol). It acquired a planned Georgian new town around what is now the cathedral, up the hill from the medieval settlement. As late as the 1830s, it was being compared favourably with other fast-growing cities. When the French writer and aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville toured the emerging industrial centres of Britain, he noted: “At Manchester, stagnant water, streets ill-paved or not paved at all. Too few public privies. These conditions are almost unknown in Birmingham.” The city had also played a pivotal role in the agitation for the First Reform Act of 1832, which gave working men the vote for the first time.
By the middle of the 19th century, though, Birmingham had fallen behind. The council had been taken over by a penny-pinching group known as the “economists”, who were sceptical of any public initiatives. They met in a pub — the Town Hall being purely a concert venue. The contrast with Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, where grand council chambers and libraries had been built, was stark. These cities also had a far better public health infrastructure; some had even municipalised their water or gas supplies, something usually claimed as a radical step taken by Birmingham in the Chamberlain era (when the city was in fact late to the party).
Despite these problems, mid-Victorian Birmingham was not some sleepy and ignorant city, waiting to be awoken and educated by a great leader. It was already alive with the need for a radical renewal, as well as something more — an almost religious belief that cities could become the crucible of a new civilisation. This was already becoming known as the ‘Civic Gospel’. For almost 20 years before Chamberlain’s mayoralty, nonconformist firebrand preachers such as George Dawson and Robert Dale had been criticising the ‘economists’, imploring their congregations — largely composed of the city’s elite — to take an interest in civic affairs, arguing that it could become the modern equivalent of renaissance Florence.
Dawson’s speech at the opening of the Reference Library gives a flavour of the sort of rhetoric that the young Chamberlain would have heard in Birmingham:
“The opening of this glorious library, the first fruits of a clear understanding that a great town exists to discharge towards the people of that town the duties that a great nation exists to discharge towards the people of that nation — that a town exists here by the grace of God, that a great town is a solemn organism through which should flow, and in which should be shaped, all the highest, loftiest, and truest ends of man’s intellectual and moral nature... We are a Corporation, who have undertaken the highest duty that is possible to us; we have made provision for our people — for all our people — and we have made a provision of God’s greatest and best gifts unto Man.”
Fast forward to the early years of the 20th century, and the impact of this gospel was evident. Birmingham, now the second largest city in England, had become internationally renowned as ‘the best governed in the world’. Other cities, from Lancashire to London, looked to it as a model to follow, while some national politicians even saw a template for national renewal. It had museums, art galleries, new streets, grand civic buildings, technical colleges, a school of art, the first municipal orchestra and the first red brick university. It was about to expand its borders to take in adjacent boroughs — such as Aston, which had hitherto proudly regarded itself as independent, and perhaps even superior. Many have clearly been tempted to attribute all these changes to Chamberlain, but in fact only a handful of these initiatives can be traced directly back to the great man himself.
In many ways, Dawson should be considered the more important figure for Birmingham. He had been kicked out of his original Baptist ministry for his tendency to read out Shakespeare or Schiller, and to talk more about urban affairs than about God. He set up his own nondenominational chapel with the assistance of his monied, but angst-ridden, fanbase. His belief in the urban as the foremost expression of human civilisation, one that should serve the health and intellectual needs of all its inhabitants, stood out in a Victorian England that tended to view cities as unfortunate necessities that should be avoided where possible. “Brummagem Dawson” became one of the most famous orators in the English-speaking world, founding both the city’s first library and its world-class Shakespeare collection along the way.
The Gospel had had other material effects long before Chamberlain’s rise to power. Local MP George Dixon had begun the meetings that would lead to the Birmingham-based National Education League. The campaign for free, secular, compulsory education for all children was ultimately unsuccessful, but Chamberlain’s subsequent leadership of the movement Dixon started would build the base that sent him to power, first in Birmingham and then in Westminster.
But by the time Chamberlain took the position of mayor, the first Reference Library had been built and the architectural competition for the Council House already started. Some of the other grand buildings that Birmingham gained in the late 1800s also owe little directly to Chamberlain, having begun construction after his mayoralty. The School of Art was built at the bequest of hydraulics tycoons the Tangyes, who also helped support the Museum and Art Gallery, largely through the efforts of later mayor and MP Jesse Collings, who also secured free libraries in the city.
Chamberlain was of course a deeply impressive figure. In a mayoralty lasting just 30 months, the city took over its water and gas supply and began the building of a new boulevard, Corporation Street. He helped create a Liberal ‘caucus’ that would dominate Birmingham and transform its image. It is unlikely that so much would have changed without him as a catalyst. But he was also standing on the shoulders of others.
The architect John Henry Chamberlain (no relation) was responsible for the designs that most embody the spirit of the Civic Gospel. He embraced the aesthetics of the Arts & Crafts movement while rejecting its anti-urbanism; he believed modern cities could be at the heart of a new civilisation. This uniquely Brummie urban version of that aesthetic can be found in the fine buildings to the west of Colmore Row, created either by him, his partners the Martins, or likeminded peers such as William Bidlake. Chamberlain and Martin were also responsible for 41 of the Board Schools built in the city after the 1870 Education Act, the most per head anywhere in England. Many are still immediately recognisable today, including the Ikon Gallery, once Oozells Street Board School.
As for Birmingham’s reputation as the ‘best governed city in the world’, a phrase often associated with Joseph Chamberlain. That tag comes from an article written by Julian Ralph in a magazine in 1890, some 14 years after his mayoralty ended. Birmingham’s achievements and international image had clearly continued to develop after Chamberlain had moved on to the national stage. Indeed, the administrative staff of the council became renowned for their competence and diligence compared to other cities, while a variety of less self-publicising dignitaries kept up the momentum.
Brum’s Chamberlain monomania also obscures the relatively high-profile role women played in the civic gospel; after all, at the time, this was a city determined to shake up the social order and usher in a better society. George Dawson’s fame and influence — and the fact we have his speeches preserved verbatim — was at least partly due to Marie Bethell Beauclerc. She taught herself shorthand aged 12 and was engaged by the Birmingham Morning News at 18; a significant step, as no newspaper had previously employed a woman as a reporter. She became Dawson’s stenographer, recording all his speeches, and also went on to teach at the Birmingham & Midland Institute (the foundation of which was another pre-Chamberlain achievement of the Civic Gospel).
The great philanthropist of late Victorian Brum — ranking perhaps higher than the Tangyes — was Louisa Ryland, the inheritor of a family fortune made in industry and property. She granted Cannon Hill and Small Heath Parks to the city as well as being instrumental in the founding of the School of Art, the Museum and various hospitals. Her total donations are estimated at £180,000 (£132m in today’s money, although this may be an understatement, as she often insisted on anonymity.
Other figures include Catherine Osler, later President of the Birmingham Women’s Suffrage Society; that society’s secretary, Mary Showell Rogers, who founded the Women’s Hospital and set up a home to prevent poverty-stricken women being forced into prostitution; and Alice Beale, who helped set up that hospital as well as the Birmingham Settlement, which supported women in St Mary’s, the most deprived ward of the city (now Newtown).
Then there is the problem of Chamberlain’s later political career as national politician. Not only did he reject the civic activism of his youth, expressing opposition to the Elan Valley water scheme, Birmingham’s early attempts at council housing, and the municipalisation of the tram network. As a young man, he was sceptical of parts of the Empire venture, but he later became an ardent imperialist. He was one of the great backers of the Boer War (‘Joe’s War’), in which Britain adopted a ‘scorched earth’ policy and introduced concentration camps for the Afrikaners. At the time there was also a very contemporary-feeling scandal around how the contracts for munitions were given to a small set of Birmingham firms all associated with him.
Against the backdrop of a city which had a much smaller Irish community than today — indeed there were far more Irish people not just in Manchester or Liverpool but also in the Black Country — he vehemently opposed Home Rule, to the extent that he split the Liberal party. The political history of Britain and Ireland in the 20th century might have been quite different if he had not risen to prominence.
Most infamously, he agitated for what he called ‘imperial preference’, a customs union within the empire that would exclude German and American products with tariffs. It is this policy that echoes most down the years, with Brum often painted as inherently protectionist (and inward-looking) compared to free-trade, internationalist Manchester. Birmingham was certainly more diverse in its economic thinking than Lancashire. For example, during the recession following the Napoleonic Wars, figures associated with the city had called for monetary policies that would support the economy; a radical ‘Birmingham School’ that predated the more orthodox ‘Manchester School’.
But the city had been generally economically liberal before Chamberlain’s conversion. There was once a Free Trade Hall in Birmingham, albeit not on the scale of Manchester’s. The campaign to end the Corn Laws was supported by Joseph Sturge, the prominent anti-slavery activist commemorated in a statue at Five Ways, while John Bright, one of its leaders, became MP for the city, serving for almost two decades, having lost his Manchester seat (and been in burned in effigy in its streets) owing to his pacifist opposition to the Crimean War. Later, the Birmingham Post, once practically the house journal of city elite, was opposed to protectionism while several local Liberal politicians were so disgusted by it (and by Chamberlain’s bullying) that they left political life for good.
This later, aggressive imperialism is perhaps what Chamberlain is best known for by those not familiar with the earlier history. It enables some to draw a line to later racial tensions, the views of Enoch Powell and the city’s pro-Brexit vote in 2016. Yet as with all these more contemporary events, the reality is far more complex. Even praise for the earlier, more radical figure can imply, if given without context, that he was a remarkable man in a mundane and unremarkable city.
Of course, in an era of mayors such as Andy Street and Andy Burnham, the most iconic municipal figure of Britain’s golden age has an understandable appeal. It is admittedly hard to excite a modern audience about a collection of whiskery white Victorians when their colourful, monocled frontman had such name recognition. But beatifying St Joseph not only does a disservice to the rich, radical and nation-shaping history of our city — it also helps enable some crude stereotypes about the city’s alleged ignorance and backwardness. It is high time for Birmingham to rediscover the breadth and richness of its nation-shaping history and legacy and stop obsessing over one sometimes problematic character.
What a fantastic, well written and informed article by Jon Neale. The article was so good that it persuaded me to make the plunge and subscribe to The Dispatch. So well done to Jon and doubly well done to Kate for hosting this article. It would be good to have a byline on the article on who Jon Neale is; I assume he an academic historian.
Coming to the article itself, Jon Neale is quite right to put forward a critical and refreshing perspective of Joseph Chamberlain. I have wondered if Mr Chamberlain is similar to Winston Churchill, insomuch that he was a complex character who had views that are unacceptable in modern eyes, but when you weigh his career in the balance, the good far outweighs the bad.
I also agree with Jon’s view that “beatifying St Joseph not only does a disservice to the rich, radical and nation-shaping history of our city.” His article correctly refers to the huge influence of likes of George Dixon, John Bright and George Dawson. May I add, the John Bright MP was hugely influential on US history, since he contributed to persuading President Abraham Lincoln to make the emancipation of ALL slaves – not just the slaves in the northern states – a central theme of the US Civil War. Indeed, President Lincoln had a portrait of Mr Bright on the mantlepiece of his office in the White House.
Finally, well done to Jon for referring to the influence of Birmingham’s female Victorians, such as Catherine Osler, Mary Showell Rogers and Alice Beale. Look around our city centre – where are the statues or memorials to these great women? All the statues and memorials in Birmingham are great Victorians men – where are the Victorian women?
What the article about Chamberlain told me is that ideas and political forces are more powerful than any one person - but powerful people can sometimes seize them and reflect that zeitgeist as their own political careers progress. I believe Birmingham already has what it needs to move beyond the large industrial scale that defined it in the last century, into an era more defined by local community and connection. Birmingham has always taken in people and ideas and made the best of them. I think that’s the way Forward.