Liberal Divisions and the 1870 Education Act

On 12 June – with the fate of the bill still uncertain – Forster submitted to Gladstone a memo of the rivalling amendments that had been proposed by the representatives of the many sections of the Liberal Party.  Jacob Bright, Member for Manchester favoured limiting ‘the rights of discretion given to the local Boards’ and provided that ‘no religious catechisms or formularies in support of or in opposition to any religious sect shall be taught in the schools, but that the reading of the Holy Scriptures shall not be excluded.’  Forster had no wish to carry his bill by means of the votes of the Opposition against those of his own party, and after much discussion on the amendments he declared himself in favour of the motion proposed by Mr Cowper-Temple, and suggested its implementation.  By this amendment it was made clear that

‘Hereafter, established by means of local rates, no Catechism or religious Formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught.’

On 16 June the debate on the bill was resumed and Gladstone made a statement amplifying Forster’s suggestion.  There was no doubt about government policy when a vote was taken against an amendment proposed by Jacob Bright providing that

‘In any [Board] school in which the Bible shall be read and taught the teaching shall not be used or directed in favour of or against the distinctive tenets of any religious denomination.’

The amendment was soundly beaten by a coalition of the government and the Conservatives.  It must be noted, however, that only 121 of 376 Liberals voted for the government and 132 voted against, with a massive 133 abstaining.  This point illustrates the deep divisions and resentment within the Liberal ranks that denominational teaching in Board Schools was to be sanctioned only as a consequence of Opposition support.

In his statement reopening the discussions on the bill, Gladstone also added a proposal that did not appear in Forster’s memo. He firmly pledged that the local boards should not contribute to the voluntary schools whatsoever, but that instead those schools should be allowed to draw from the Exchequer rather than from the rates, and an increase in the grant of up to 50% should then be paid to the voluntary schools in respect of any assistance from the local boards.  This increase in the state grant to the voluntary bodies was now the focal point of League antagonism towards the bill.  

Nonetheless, by 30 June Forster had become convinced that his bill had passed through its crisis.  When a large majority rejected Sir Stafford Northcote’s amendment, the bill passed into its Committee stage, which lasted until 22 July.  By this stage, Lord Clarendon’s death had created a vacancy in the Cabinet, and Forster’s handling of the bill throughout the crisis was rewarded with an invitation to take the seat.  On July 22, after its third reading, the bill was sent up to the House of Lords, and within the short space of a fortnight it had received the royal assent (9 August 1870).  Many changes had been introduced during its passage, but its fundamental principles still remained faithful to Forster’s original plan.  With the educational wants of each new district in mind, there would be established a national system of elementary education under local management.  It must be noted, however, that ‘Clause 25’ managed to pass through the House of Commons unnoticed and uncontested.  Important changes that were made to the original bill must also be mentioned.  A timetable conscience clause replaced Forster’s original measure after much debate; limiting religious instruction to certain fixed hours, and enabling parents to withdraw their children without affecting their secular education.  The age for compulsory attendance was extended one year – albeit at the discretion of the local Boards.  Thus the ‘permissive powers’ remained, much to the League’s chagrin.  The period of grace – originally twelve months – was decreased to six months, yet in actual fact the last day of 1870 was taken as the final day for making applications for grants towards the building of voluntary schools.  As a result more than three thousand applications were made to the Education Department in the five-month period from the passing of the Act to the end of 1870.  

It must be said that many of those who supported the voluntary system were relieved at the outcome of the parliamentary struggle.  The widespread agitation of the National Education League had led influential Church leaders to feel that any delay in passing the bill would have had dire results for the Church of England.  The Roman Catholics were prepared to accept the Act, though they remained apprehensive on many key points.  Nonetheless, there was immense relief on all sides of those supporting the voluntary system when it emerged that the School Boards were not to influence the amount of financial support for the Church schools.  The first school Board elections took place in November, and in almost every case Boards were elected in order to carry out the provision of education across the land.  However, in most cases it soon became clear that, in general, it was not the state but the Boards who would decide upon the religious instruction given in their schools. In the majority of places there was a gradual shift towards a consensus of opinion to some degree.  Many Boards quickly opted for undenominational teaching of some kind but this resulted in going beyond the rather ambiguous Cowper-Temple clause that had been adopted by the government.  The Sheffield Board instructed its teachers to:

‘not only adhere strictly to the terms of the 14th section of the Education Act … but also to abstain from all denominational teaching.’

In London it was stated that the ‘Cowper-Temple clause be strictly observed, both in letter and spirit, and that no attempt be made to attach children to any denomination.’  This strict regulation was adhered to in many parts of the country – though it was largely a misinterpretation of Cowper-Temple’s intentions.

Very few School Boards were inclined to take advantage of their right to exclude all religious instruction from their schools, though some who reported that none was given added that Bible-reading was permitted without comment.  In Birmingham, home of the League, Radicals, Liberals, and Nonconformists were strong but failed to gain control of the school Board until 1873.  By 1872 the League Executive had decided to continue its existence in the campaign for purely secular instruction, and this policy was incorporated in the working of the Board the following year.  However, it is interesting to note that the policy was largely a failure.

Many have hailed the Elementary Education Act, 1870 as a triumph, whilst others have labelled it a wasteful compromise of a thirty-year struggle.  What is certain is that the Education Act laid firm foundations for a truly national system.  It was not intended to supersede the existing system of voluntary schools.  As Forster stated it was his intention to merely ‘fill up the gaps’.  In order to present a competent study of his measure, one must assess how effective it was in bringing about a national system of education – if, indeed, it did at all, and also to comment upon the forces that served to attempt to obstruct this course.  Just how significant was the Education bill and its critics – such as the National Education League and its opposite number, the National Education Union, in bringing about the Liberal divisions and the election defeat of 1874?  These issues must be considered and are, in themselves, worthy of a separate chapter.

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Chapter Two:

Liberalism Divided: The struggle for a national system.

The National Education League sprang from the Birmingham Education Society, as a result of the perceived insufficiency and quality of education both in Birmingham and in the country at large.  The League was undoubtedly the single largest threat to any form of unity that the Liberal Party may have possessed on questions of national education.  In the period from its birth in 1869 to the Liberal election defeat in 1874, the League was perhaps the most powerful engine of agitation since the Anti-Corn Law League and was founded with the sole object of ‘the establishment of a system which shall secure the education of every child in the country’.  This system was, in the eyes of the League Executive, to be compulsory, national, unsectarian, and free.  Within a few months, George Dixon was elected President and parliamentary representative, Joseph Chamberlain became the Chairman of the Executive Committee, the League had attracted more than 2,500 supporters across the land and had held its first Annual Conference.

According to Francis Adams, the League was composed – in terms of political constitution – without exception of members of the Liberal Party.  Nonetheless, all shades of religious opinion, except Roman Catholicism, were represented on the Committee and amongst its members.  From such evidence it is clear that the League was not a Nonconformist association, but it was a Liberal organisation.  R. W. Dale, a former Vice-President of the League’s previous incarnation, The Birmingham Education Society, and a member of the new Executive Committee, makes this point clear in an article in The Contemporary Review.  Dale is keen to point out that the movement was ‘a purely educational one,’ evidence of this being that a number of clergymen sat on the committee, and that leading Churchmen were contributors to funds.  Nonetheless, that the movement was a Liberal one is particularly important in showing the divisions on education policy within the Liberal Party.  Furthermore, in addition to the Liberal nature of the league, a number of prominent Liberals were involved in a movement wholly designed to oppose and counteract the ‘efforts of the Birmingham League, and others advocating secular training only, and the secularisation of our national institutions’.

The formation of the Manchester and Birmingham ‘Unions’ was the result of the successes of early League operations.  Though these organisations were as Conservative as the League was Liberal, there were feeble efforts made to relieve this aspect of Toryism by showing off the names of Cowper-Temple, Edward Baines of the Leeds Mercury, and other doubtful Liberals.  The National Education Union had two great sources of strength – its beliefs and purposes were strongly supported in parliament, and the very existence of such great numbers of denominational schools made it very difficult for the government to frame policies which ignored the vast capital resources and moral determination represented by such schools.  Regardless, here it is again highlighted that the Liberal Party was by no means united in any way on educational policies – particularly concerning the teaching of religion and financial arrangements, and those who supported the denominational schools, like their opponents in the League, had their divisive differences of opinion.

When Forster first introduced his bill to the Commons he had hoped that the issue of national education would be raised above the region of passion, feeling and self-interest associated with the party system.  That such a bold request was made suggested to practical minds in the House an impossibility, and aroused a feeling of distrust and suspicion among earnest Liberals.  Nonetheless, Forster was a respected member of a party backed by an impressive majority and a nation eager for optimistic legislation.  His introductory speech was otherwise favourably received and passed to its second reading with minimal debate.  Dixon and Fawcett did raise minor doubts, but on the whole everything ran as smoothly as was possible of such a measure, and the precise nature of the bill was not fully interpreted.  As such, it met with approval and satisfaction from the Liberal benches.  

It only took a matter of time for the defects in Forster’s bill to show through, and the League at once issued a circular documenting what was perceived to be defective in order to invite the expression of local opinion.  The bill was certainly strong proof that the League had made an impression on the country but, as Dale states, the concessions made to the Church and to its Conservative sympathisers were ‘of the most pernicious character.’  The main complaints of Dixon and his League friends were that School Boards would be established but they were not to be universal.  The Boards would be granted powers to enforce attendance to schools within their districts, but this power would be permissive and the Boards could quite legally decline to use it.  The entire proposal to extend the denominational system was objectionable.  The bill as it stood contained an inefficient conscience clause and, as such, the Boards could make their schools highly sectarian.  There was also nothing to prevent schools teaching the Church catechism, or the formularies of the Roman Church.  The Boards were able to assist the denominational schools from the rates and, finally, there was no stopping the new denominational schools receiving the same annual grants that were made to the existing schools.  The government, in the wake of the hostile opposition of the League, and the counter-opposition of the Unions, granted some minor concessions to the League – such as the implementation of the conscience clause – but the Conservatives stood to gain much more.

On its second reading, Dixon, confining himself to the ‘religious difficulty’, made a motion for an amendment, and a number of other amendments were put forward – notably from Jacob Bright and Winterbotham.  Nevertheless other prominent Liberals, including Bright and Winterbotham themselves, seconded Dixon’s amendment, whilst others were inclined to disagree.  Lowe, Mundella, Cowper-Temple, and many leading Conservatives opposed him.  Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth – the man largely responsible for improvements in education in the 1830s and 1840s – also opposed Dixon and he hoped that Dixon, and those who acted with him, would not vote against the second reading of the bill.  Samuelson made clear his intention to vote against the amendment, despite his thorough approval of the principles advocated by the League.  He stated that, despite this, he contended more for the cause of education itself.  Speaking directly of Dixon’s amendment he said that he could

‘never be brought to believe that the mere reading of the Bible and of scripture history could possibly be regarded as sectarian education, because that was a class of religious teaching to which no Christian sect in the country could object.’

Forster himself, backing up what Kay-Shuttleworth had argued, stated:

‘What more can he [Dixon] and his friends of the Education League desire than they obtain in this bill?  With the exception of the principle of free schools, which I think does not meet much acceptation, there is no principle adopted by the League which cannot be carried out in any locality where the majority of the population desire it.’

The debate, and the Liberal divisions, raged on for three days until it was made clear by Gladstone that the question would be reconsidered and amended.  This pledge led to the withdrawal of Dixon’s measure, the adoption of the Cowper-Temple clause, and the outright rejection of Jacob Bright’s proposal.  That Bright’s clause was rejected only by means of a governmental alliance with the Opposition – and with 132 Liberals voting against their own government – should have been notice enough of the dangers of blindly pushing ahead with such a passionately contested measure.  Regardless, Forster and Gladstone remained faithful to the former’s plans.

Upon its third reading Dixon made clear that he would not offer any opposition to delay its progress, but it should not be assumed that he, or his League friends, were satisfied in any way.  He believed that the bill afforded its success not through any form of Liberal consensus, but due to unfaltering support from the Opposition benches, and because of thinly-veiled threats from the government that unless the bill was carried by the traditional supporters of the party it would be lost, to the condemnation of the country.  Concluding debates were also marred by a bitter exchange between Gladstone and Edward Miall, Member for Bradford and a leading Nonconformist.  Miall gave vent to his feelings in terms which drew upon him a most unsparing rebuke from the Premier.  The tense language used on both sides was testament to how intense was the exasperation that existed between Ministers and a large proportion of their supporters, and subsequent events would prove that the Nonconformists were more than ready to take Gladstone at his word.

When the Education Bill received its royal assent in August many Nonconformists were nonetheless bitterly resentful of their ‘betrayal’ by their own Liberal Party.  The National Education League remained in being in order to promote the formation of School Boards wherever possible, to resist any increase of grants to denominational schools, and to campaign for a national system that would be free, compulsory, and unsectarian.  As always, however, the great Nonconformist weakness was the indecision regarding religious instruction.  Gladstone wrote to John Bright:

‘the noncons. [Sic] have not yet as a body made up their minds whether they want unsectarian religion, or whether they want simple secular teaching, so far as the application of the rate is concerned.’

However, Dale, in The Contemporary Review, states:

‘After the Act came into operation new causes of offence arose.  It is affirmed that the Inspectors have discouraged the formation of School Boards, even in districts in which the school-accommodation was insufficient and have endeavoured to stimulate the clergy to cover the ground.  The Department itself has been suspected of delaying the creation of School Boards…The 25th clause opened up a new source of income for the managers of schools connected with the Church of England and the Church of Rome…’

As a result the National Education League and the Central Nonconformist Committee were maintained to up their efforts to force an amendment to the bill.  It was decided that the League would carry the fight into the parliamentary constituencies and to oppose the government at every suitable by-election.  The future legislative reform of the Act was to be sought by supporting none but Members of parliament and candidates pledged to the League’s programme.  At Shrewsbury, where Nonconformist resentment was marked, the government soon lost a seat, and from this stage the by-elections steadily ran against them.  The League made it perfectly clear that they would not fear the destruction of party cohesion in keeping to their principles.  Towards the end of 1870 the School Board elections were held, but helped by the ‘cumulative’ voting system the Church Party and the Catholics topped nearly every poll.  Even Birmingham, the very centre of the League, fell into the clutches of their enemy.  Forster’s system was hated all the more, and Dixon, Chamberlain and the rest of the League derived double resource from defeat.  From Birmingham the agitation spread across the country, the surprising focus of attack being the 25th clause.  

John Bright was one Cabinet Member who had shared the views of the League, though an incapacitating illness had kept him out of the Ministry and the debates on the Act.  Still in poor health in 1871, he was nonetheless able to express his deep-felt views in a letter to Forster:

‘There is much hot water in Birmingham on the education question.  I wish you would do something to soften the feelings there…I know little of the bill, except that I think the cumulative vote monstrous and intolerable.  Here [Rochdale] we have a Catholic priest at the head of the poll, and the minority in many places are in power, and doing their best to thwart the objects of the bill.  I suspect the haste with which the measure was passed has done much to weaken the Government with the Liberals in the country…’

Agitation against the 25th clause continued, with Chamberlain the chief protagonist.  But the clause was merely the ‘key to a position’ chosen upon which to fight the issue of whether the country was prepared to accept in perpetuity the system of sectarian schools supported by public rates.  The situation was intensified by the partiality shown at the Education Department.  Thus, the Liberals had to contend not only against the Tories, the Church, and the disadvantageous cumulative vote, but also against a Liberal government, an adverse administration of the Education Act, and against the moral weight of the Education Department.  The influence and operations of the League were of a more extended character than they had been in 1870, and at the third annual meeting held in Birmingham in October 1871 there was a gathering of Liberals more numerous and representative than had ever before met to protest against the actions of a Liberal administration.  

When the 1872 session opened the League had held over one hundred meetings in the preceding three months.  Agitation was at its zenith.  Under Chamberlain’s chairmanship of an Executive Meeting in January, the League had opted for a more aggressive policy – the ‘secular’ solution.  The session was a dismal one for the Liberals, who were passing through a gradual process of disintegration which was anxiously watched and carefully promoted by the Conservatives.  Now in its fourth session the Ministry had reached more than the average age of parliaments.  The serious divisions within the party had rendered it the more probable that a dissolution could abruptly arrive.  For such reasons much attention was concentrated upon electoral organisation.  In view of expected amendments to the Act, it was determined that the whole strength of the League should be devoted to assist in carrying them, and at the annual meeting it was resolved that the parliamentary action would be confined to the promotion of universal secular School Boards, compulsory attendance, and the repeal of clause 25.

In the Queen’s speech opening the fifth session the long-awaited amending bill was promised, and it was put forward in June.  However, it produced little and only served to increase the sense of bitterness and betrayal amongst Leaguers, Nonconformists, and Educationists.  The League now went to the extreme length of running its own men against Liberal candidates at the by-elections.  An increasing number of Liberals refused to vote at all and candidates who supported the official policy were regularly defeated.  These guerrilla tactics reached a pinnacle in the summer of 1873, and the credit of the Liberal ministry, once so great, was irretrievably broken.  During three sessions the government had lost twenty by-elections, and the conditions were disheartening for all the Liberals.

Nevertheless, at the Conference of Liberals at the Westminster Palace Hotel, John Bright made his first public appearance after his long illness.  Whilst pouring scorn on the division of the party he still managed to condemn the Act as ‘the worst great measure which the Liberal Party have passed since 1832.’  Towards the end of the year the Radicals enjoyed a brief hour of triumph as Bright re-entered the Cabinet.  His acceptance of Office seemed to imply that governmental policy would be under review and the League at once suspended their electoral action.  Dale noted that ‘The recent changes in the Cabinet encourage the hope that Mr Gladstone and the leaders of the Liberal Party are disposed to reconsider their position.’  Chamberlain was more sceptical of Bright’s return; he remarked ‘I am afraid he has only come back to the House to prop up the Government.’  Bright became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in August, and concerned himself with finding some way of reconciling the Nonconformists with their government, but he was vague as to the means of doing so.  In October, he addressed a vast audience at Bingley Hall in Birmingham and condemned the whole basis of the Education Act as favouring the denominational system.  Nonconformists were mistakenly elated.  They believed their hour of redress was at hand, and that Bright would prove stronger than Forster.  But it was soon made clear that no Cabinet unity or harmony upon the question existed; whilst Bright was denouncing the 25th Section, Forster was busying himself to compel School Boards to adopt bye-laws for its execution.

Although dissolution of parliament had not been expected, its precise timing took everyone by surprise.  Gladstone declared the most erratic dissolution of the nineteenth century in early 1874 and the Education Act was left as it stood.  Liberal dissensions were left as they were.  Compulsory attendance was not enacted and, in spite of Bright’s opinions, the 25th clause went unrepealed.  For a fortnight all was confusion and scramble, out of which came a shattered wreck of a Liberal Party.  The League threw itself into the contest with ferocity.  Out of 425 Liberal candidates, 300 were pledged to the repeal of the 25th clause; Gladstone himself, at the last moment, aligned himself to the same cause without giving a pledge.  But it was too late.  The Party entered the contest bitterly disillusioned, distracted, and divided.  The main wing, composed of the Dissenters was suspicious and sullen – Nonconformity had lost its last fight for the leadership of national politics.  In the end a Liberal majority of 110 had been replaced by a Conservative one of 48.  The Education Act of 1870 had undoubtedly split the Liberals into a number of fractious sections and had led to the defeat in 1874.

The National Education League and its counter-agitator, the National Education Union had aroused Nonconformist and Church interests in the religious and financial settlements of the education question and was largely responsible for the decline and defeat of the government at the General Election.  Liberals contested against Liberals in the League’s battle for secular, compulsory, and free education to devastating effect but the defeat was by no means a result of Conservative successes, only of a Liberal breakdown.  Despite the divisions of the ministry of 1868, Francis Adams states that the defeat was a mixed blessing for the Party, as it taught the Liberals that ‘no Government will be allowed to juggle with great principles with impunity.’  It was felt that no strong Liberal government could again be formed in which the principles of the League were not represented.  In 1877, with the dissolution of the League, arrangements were made to transfer the remaining work to the Liberal associations as part of the general policy of the party and defeat in many ways prepared the way for a more liberal basis for reunion.  That much is indeed certain, as the party re-emerged stronger and much more united, with the education question behind them and their main focus on Irish issues, in the election of 1880.

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Chapter Three:

A Local Angle –

Rochdale and the Elementary Education Act, 1870.

In order to begin looking closer at the operation of the Act I have chosen to focus upon my hometown of Rochdale, Lancashire.  There are a number of satisfactory justifications for focusing on Rochdale – as one must wonder why I have chosen this particular town and not one of the larger cities, such as Birmingham where the League was founded, or Bradford – to focus upon the response to the measure by Forster’s own constituents.  As a native to Rochdale I take great pride in its heritage, and it certainly had a prominent role – though not always directly – in the advance of elementary education in the nineteenth century.  In 1834, for example, Rochdale manufacturing Dissenters supported a British and Foreign school which opened at special hours for the factory children.  Despite the failure of the factory school system to provide anything remotely resembling a national system, the case of the Rochdale manufacturers trying to push the system further seems to have been an exception.  Further to the credit of the town, a number of notable statesmen had important connections with Rochdale, many beginning their political careers here.  Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth was a Rochdale man and the first state official in English education.  Kay-Shuttleworth was the man responsible for the pupil-teacher system under the Minutes of 1846.

John and Jacob Bright are, perhaps, the most famous sons of the town.  John was Member for Birmingham and President of the Board of Trade in Gladstone’s first Cabinet at the introduction of Forster’s Education Bill.  He was a man who shared the views of the National Education League, but an incapacitating illness undermined his participation in the debates on the question and rendered his activities negligible.  Nonetheless, his return to Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1873 instilled in many Radicals a sense that their grievances, felt at the incomplete nature of the Education Act, would be reconsidered and rectified.  Jacob Bright was also very active in the debates on the Education Bill.  Another man who had direct connections with Rochdale was Edward Miall.  One of the bill’s fiercest critics, Miall had been a Rochdale MP between 1852 and 1857 and had led a large number of Dissenters in an effort to exclude religious instruction from schools altogether, on the grounds that to do so would ‘leave the schoolmaster to do his proper work.’ In light of these links I am able to justify my study of the town of Rochdale, and its reactions to the Elementary Education Act, 1870.

Rochdale’s School Board had a ‘unique record’.  It was one of the first educational authorities to be formed under the 1870 legislation.  Rochdale swiftly applied for a School Board to tackle the issue of educational provision in the district.  The Rochdale Observer fondly recalled the formation of the Board in an article in 1906: ‘Rochdale is proud of the unique record of its School Board.  It was one of the first three to be established outside London; Manchester and Liverpool being the other two.’  Additionally, Colonel Fishwick, who was returned at the first School Board election, remained a member of the Board throughout its thirty-three year history, a record that no other man in the country could equal.

The education question was always closely monitored in the Rochdale press.  Soon after Forster’s introduction of his bill, the Rochdale Observer put forward the Rochdale view:

‘… We have never faltered for a moment in expressing it as our conviction that the best scheme of national education as it appeared to us, is that of the [National Education] League.’

As soon as the Act came into being it was resolved, at a meeting of the Town Council on 1 September 1870, to apply to the Education Department to request the formation of a School Board.  Because of such prompt action the Department sanctioned the election of the local School Board, to be held on 26 November 1870.  At the first meeting on 15 December, Mr Edmund Ashworth, J. P., was appointed as the first chairman of the Board, and Mr John Petrie – a notable figure in the education controversies of the time – became the first Vice-Chairman.  The Board was made up of eleven members – six Liberals and five Conservatives – and representative of all creeds.  With the Board established, the inhabitants of the town began to contribute toward the support of national education, through local rates as well as through national taxes.  Acting through their elected representatives they also began to exercise the powers of providing, maintaining, and managing schools within the area.  The Board was an independent body, directly elected by the burgesses, and its income was confined from school fees, certain small grants, and local rates.  Here was a fine breeding ground for trouble.  In the early years of its existence there was furious disputation about the contentious 25th clause of the Act, under which school authorities paid from the rates the fees of poor scholars at denominational schools.  To this there was determined resistance.  Ratepayers had their goods sold rather than contribute to what they thought was sectarian endowment; there were also violent scenes at the Board’s meetings; and in 1873 the Town Council – along with Birmingham and Barrow – refused to honour the Board’s precept until compelled to do so by governmental mandate.  The incident was reported in the Rochdale Observer:

‘One of the most remarkable incidents in the early working of the Education Act of 1870 was the spirited protest by certain Rochdale gentlemen against precisely the same form of injustice [to] which Nonconformists rebel against today, to pay rates in support of other people’s religious opinions… The Rochdale Board, much against the public feeling of the town, adopted the 25th clause, and in 1872 issued a precept on the Town Council to cover estimates which included payments to voluntary schools of the kind described.  There was at once an indignant protest, and when the poor rate (including the School Board rate) came to be levied, several well known gentlemen refused to pay it all, deducting a proportion representing their share of the School Board rate.  The assistant overseers summoned them, and the magistrates before whom the case came had no option but to issue warrants for distraint…’

In 1876, under Sandon’s Act, the 25th clause was quietly repealed.

Despite these rare occasions there were relatively few signs of party feeling in these early years, and the School Board system developed with the general good will of an overwhelming majority of the townspeople.  Interestingly enough, The Rochdale Board was the only educational authority in any large town upon which the Unitarian or Progressive Party commanded a majority without break from 1870 until its demise after the 1902 Education Act.  With the Act passed and the Rochdale School Board established, other Rochdale folk had plenty to say on the matter.  In a book entitled Rochdale – Past and Present; A History and Guide, William Robertson states what he felt about the impact of the Act on the children of the district:

‘With reference to the operation of the Education Act in this district, we may observe that previously to its introduction, children, who are now compelled to attend school, were in the habit of running wild in the public streets, (which, in fact, they made into playgrounds), in course of training for vagrancy and crime.  The absence of these ‘Street Arabs’ from public view is very apparent; and it is satisfactory to know that they are now properly cared for and are receiving the elements, at least, of an education which will fit them to become useful members of society, and not a terror to all who come into contact with them.’

Shortly after its inception the Board was called upon by the Education Department to investigate and report upon the requirements of the town and borough regarding public school accommodation, and ‘the manner in which those locally interested in the question wish that any ascertained deficiency should be met.’  Regarding the first point, application was made to the Registrar General who supplied the particulars of every child of school age (three to thirteen) in the district, from the recently completed Census returns.  It was found that there were in total 9,559 children of school age in the town and borough, but suitable deductions were calculated on the basis of those attending other schools, the short-timers in the factories, those under six years who were exempt from compulsory clauses, and those who were excused due to sickness.  The net total was worked out to be roughly 7000, and the Board could see no deficiency of accommodation in existing or projected school provision.  Rochdale was well endowed with schools having eighteen in total in 1870 (eight of these were Church of England Schools; five were British and Foreign Schools).  When, in 1872, the Rochdale Improvement Act was passed other important schools came under the jurisdiction of the Board.  Due to the adequate provision of schools in the district it was not necessary for the Board to establish any school of its own.  Of the schools in existence, only those belonging to the Anglicans and Roman Catholics were instituted with a view to propagating the faith to which they owed allegiance.  All others were constructed on strictly sectarian principles.

In practice, Rochdale being a town comprised largely of Protestant Dissenters, much criticism was levelled against the Establishment and against these measures which would be in the slightest way seen to give support to one particular denomination at the expense of another.  The question of rate aid to voluntary schools in Rochdale was from the outset an important issue, because the Board determined to have compulsory education in schools under Section 74 of the Act, which gave the Boards the powers to frame bye-laws.  Having decided upon compulsory education for children aged five to thirteen, the Board had to invoke Section 17 of the Act.  Although the Rochdale Observer saw that without the compulsory clauses the ‘Act would be a dead letter’, it also saw the School Board resolution of 16 March 1871 as ‘practically and substantially a new Church rate…under the name of an education rate.’  Petrie, Vice-Chairman of the Board, refused to vote on the motion to introduce compulsory education and when his name had been put forward for membership of the School Attendance Committee, he demanded that it be erased because he saw the ‘appropriation of public money for denominational purposes as a gross violation of civil and religious liberty…’ 

The School Board had been anxious from the beginning to have a school of its own as a means of providing that choice which they knew would be required, but also as a means of providing a model of a good school.  They knew, however, that no such school could be built as it was beyond their powers to do so when there were no deficiencies in existing provision.  As a result, much of the Board’s early work was dedicated to increasing the school attendance, and remitting money to cover the unpaid school fees of those children whose parents had either abandoned them, or were unable to find the necessary money.  The only means around the situation was to urge the voluntary schools to transfer to the Board.  The opportunity to own a school came early in 1871.  The managers of Penn Street Infant School approached the Education Department to enquire whether it was suitable to transfer to the Board.

The possibility of acquiring another school came in April the same year when the Committee of the British school at Baillie Street enquired on what terms the Board would take over.  Nonetheless, the transfer of the Penn Street school was not completed until June 1874, and the Baillie Street school until September 1872.  Another opportunity arose to have a Rochdale School Board school, and thus provide that choice which the objectors to rate payment so badly wanted, came in June 1872 when Petrie suggested that the Board buy the Milkstone Road school which was to be sold by auction.  A sum of £550 was offered and accepted.  In September 1874 the Education Department sanctioned alterations to Milkstone.  From the Anglican point of view these transfers were ill omens for the future, as the Board’s policy was to make their own schools more efficient and attractive using the monies already available to them.  By providing schools under the control of the Board, they hoped to modify, and in some instances, remove opposition to the operation of the Board.

Following the question of rate assistance the Board now wished to know which schools were willing to accept ‘free’ pupils.  Clover Street School intimated that they would accept twenty children whose fees were paid by the Board ‘providing there was no objectionable conduct.’  Throughout the next few years the work of the Board continued to arrange the transfer of other Rochdale voluntary schools, until in 1878 the first Board School was built at Halifax Road.  Others soon followed at Cronkeyshaw (1879) and Derby Street (1882).  The formation of the School Board in England was seen by many as the beginning of a social revolution.  Yet the Act of 1870 and the new Boards did not transform the situation immediately.  The religious problems – especially relating to the 25th clause – were by no means solved.  Additionally, the complex ‘cumulative vote’ system of election to the Boards often encouraged manipulation by parties and factions.  In Rochdale, as everywhere else in England – this could not be avoided.

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Conclusion:

Consequences of the Elementary Education Act, 1870.

According to prominent Radical Liberal statesman, John Bright, the Elementary Education Act, 1870, was in many respects ‘the worst great measure which the Liberal Party have passed since 1832.’  Indeed, to contemporaries, the Act of 1870 was not a resounding success and it produced a variety of reactions in the country and in the popular press, ranging from moderate support to outright hostility.  As the debate progressed in parliament and Forster’s bill was considerably amended, opinions and positions kept changing.  In such a welter of opinions the Education Act of 1870 began on its way with very limited objectives.  To later generations it might have seemed to initiate the dawn of socialism, and the foundations of the modern Welfare State.  Without doubt the Act was the beginning of state paternalism, but in 1870 it was viewed as incomplete, advocating Church endowment, and a wasted compromise of a thirty-year struggle.

In terms of the fortunes of the Liberal Party itself, the Education Act proved to be a mixed blessing.  As Francis Adams states, the defeat of the Liberals in 1874 was largely due to the problems that the Act could not solve and, indeed, additional problems that it gave rise to.  Furthermore, the highly organised agitation provided by the Act’s staunch opposition, the National Education League, taught the country that no administration would be allowed to tinker with such great principles and expect impunity.  Though the Liberal Party had been soundly defeated through its own over-confidence and internal divisions, the seeds were sown for a party reunion on much more united grounds, on a much more liberal basis, with more assumed purposes and superior organisation.  Forster had been highly confident of his measure when he had presented a memo to the Cabinet in late 1869.  He had remained confident in 1870 as the debates on his bill reached near boiling point.  His confidence was unwavered at the first School Board elections in November 1870.  What he missed, however, was the growing alienation of his colleagues within his own party, and the resentment that was created as a result of steering his bill through the Commons with Conservative support.

The National Education League was a highly organised body, perhaps the most effective since Bright and Cobden had founded the Anti-Corn Law League, and as such its views were made very public.  The fight for universal, compulsory, and free education was met by a receptive public, and the Liberal government, in pressing full ahead with Forster’s plans – making only token concessions to those advanced Liberals of the League – inevitably brought upon themselves their own defeat in 1874.

The 1870 Act introduced secular, rate-supported elementary schools, administered by approximately two thousand School Boards, and occasioned a renewed impetus in school building.  Yet it hardly created the elementary school system in England.  The measure was more of a foundation.  Indeed, as Forster himself had explained to the House on introducing his bill, he intended not to revolutionise but to supplement the existing system.  Nonetheless, by the end of the nineteenth century it had become clear that a new education measure was needed.  In spite of the problems that it had encountered along the way, the 1870 Act was one of the most important events in British history.  By 1900 it had laid firm the foundations of a truly national system of elementary education, and had even proven possible the establishment of a similar system in secondary education.

It is a fact that the Act did indeed have to undergo significant modifications, both on its passage through parliament and in its implementation in the decades after 1870, but it had ultimately acknowledged state responsibility for the education of the people.  It had also made it possible for those with very different standpoints to supply education in ways generally in accordance with their principles and consciences.  Forster’s Act was a massive step towards creating a common level of education beneath which no child was allowed to fall.  Though the Act was essentially a compromise between the two paths of secularism and Church control it cannot be argued that the Act was not a major landmark.  Although the Act only gave the School Boards permissive powers of compulsion, and did not even consider making the system free, the foundations were laid for future legislation to fill up these gaps.  Indeed, in 1880 universal compulsion was established, but it was not until 1891 that elementary education became entirely free.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of the Act was that, as Forster had hoped and predicted, it enabled a solution to be found to the problem of providing a generally acceptable form of religious instruction for schools wholly supplied and maintained from public funds.  Indeed the most uncertain part of the Act seemed to be the religious settlement and yet, in general, this survived until 1944.  After 1874 there seemed to be a period of agreement in the national debate over education.  Local controversy was often fierce as Church and chapel contended for control of the School Boards (as in Rochdale in 1873), but no more than echoes of the battles of 1870-74 were heard at Westminster.  Part of the explanation surely lies with the repeal of the 25th clause in 1876 and thus the removal of the Nonconformist’s main bone of contention.  However, more fundamentally, there seemed to be a national acceptance of a truce over education.  Contemporary politicians may not have known what they had established, but the foundations laid in 1870 were strong enough for a super-structure which, to Forster, Gladstone, and their Cabinet colleagues, would have seemed a mighty tower and a monument to national extravagance had they lived for the next hundred years.

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Bibliography.

Unpublished Manuscript Collections – Government Records.

House of Commons Debates, Series 3, Vols. 199-203.

Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State of Popular Education in England, [The Newcastle Report], 1861.

Report of the Royal Commission known as the Schools Enquiry Commission, [The Taunton Report], 1868.

Official Publications.

The Borough of Rochdale School Board, Report of the Proceedings of the Board, 26 November 1870 to 29 September 1873 (Collingwood & Co., 1873).

‘The Nonconformists and the Education Policy of the Government’, in The Contemporary Review, (Vol. 22, September 1873), R. W. Dale.

The Struggle for National Education, (London, 1873), J. Morley.

The Rochdale Observer, Select dates including: 19 February 1870, 3 December 1870, 18 March 1871, 25 March 1871, 19 August 1871, 18 November 1871, and 8 September 1906.

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Published Books & Articles.

Adams, F., History of the Elementary School Contest in England, (Chivers, 1882).

Adelman, P., Gladstone, Disraeli, and Later Victorian Politics, (Longman Seminar Studies, Ed., 1983).

Bebbington, D., The Nonconformist Conscience, (London, 1982).

Biagini, E., Liberty, Retrenchment, and Reform, (Cambridge, 1992).

Evans, E., J. The Forging of the Modern State, Early Industrial Britain, 1783-1870, (Longman, 2nd Ed., 1996).

Garvin, M., Life of Joseph Chamberlain, Vol. I, (Macmillan, 1932).

Hamer, Liberal Politics in the Age of Gladstone and Rosebery, (Oxford, 1972).

Henriques, U., Before the Welfare State, (Longman, 1979).

Hirst, F. W., Early Life and Letters of John Morley, (Macmillan, 1927).

Jenkins, R., Gladstone, (Papermac, 1995).

Jenkins, T. A., The Liberal Ascendancy, 1830-86, (Macmillan, 1974).

Matthew, H. C. G., Gladstone, 1809-98, (Oxford, 1997).

Murphy, J., Church, State, and Schools in Britain, 1800-1970, (London, 1971).

 Murphy, J., The Education Act of 1870, Text and Commentary, (Newton Abbot, 1972).

Reid, T. W., Life of the Right Honourable William Edward Forster, (London, 1889).

Robertson, W., Rochdale Past and Present, A History and Guide, (Schofield and Hoblyn, 1875).

Walling, R. A. J., The Diaries of John Bright, (New York, Morrow & Co., 1930).

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Articles.

Fishwick, Lt. Col. H., Souvenir of the Rochdale Municipal Jubilee, 1856-1906, (Falkner, 1906) – Pamphlet.

National Union Of Teachers, ‘Educational Provision in Rochdale and District, 1769-1981.

Research Theses.

Morris, B. K., ‘Religious Movements and Voluntary Schools in Rochdale in the Nineteenth Century,’ (M.Ed., University of Manchester, 1972).

Taylor, A. F., ‘Birmingham and the Movement for National Education, 1867-77,’ (Ph.D. University of Leicester, 1960).

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Acknowledgements.

I would like to thank Dr Stuart Ball and Dr Graham Smith for their assistance and guidance throughout the course of framing this work.

I would also like to extend my gratitude for the kind help offered by all staff at the Rochdale Local Studies Library, The Manchester Central Reference Library, and the University of Leicester Library.

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