George Lansbury - 1859 – 1940
August 2019
George Lansbury, the son of a railway contractor, was born in Suffolk in 1859. When George was 9 years old the family moved to the East End. George started work in an office at the age of 11 but after a year he returned to school where he stayed until he was 14. This was followed by a succession of jobs as a clerk, a wholesale grocer and working in a coffee bar.
Lansbury started up his own business as a contractor working for the Great Eastern Railway. This was not a success. He married his teenage sweetheart, Bessie Brine, in 1880 and decided in 1884 to emigrate to Australia. The Lansbury family found it difficult to settle in Australia and the following year returned to England and he began work at his father-in-law's timber merchants.
In the 1886 General Election, Lansbury joined the local Liberal Party and was elected General Secretary of the Bow & Bromley Liberal Association. However, Lansbury became disillusioned with the Liberals and became a socialist. From 1892, he was a member of the Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF) for 10 years. For a short time, he was the SDF National Organiser – “the best organiser the SDF ever had” according to its founder Henry Hyndman.
In the 1890s Lansbury became a Christian Socialist and was later to play an important role in converting people such as James Keir Hardie to Christianity.
In 1892 Lansbury was elected to the Board of Guardians that ran the Poplar Workhouse. Lansbury and his colleagues decided to use their power to change the system. Lansbury, unlike most Guardians, did not believe that the generous treatment of paupers would encourage more people to seek refuge in the workhouse. Over the next few years the Guardians dramatically improved the conditions in their workhouse although George’s ultimate aim was to smash the inhumane system of the workhouse.
In 1903 Lansbury left the Social Democratic Federation and joined the Independent Labour Party. He became MP for Bromley and Bow in December 1910.
Lansbury was a supporter of women’s suffrage and an ally of Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. However, he was most involved with the East End campaigning of Sylvie Pankhurst. Before the First World War, Lansbury and his children, Annie and Bill, had all been to prison for the cause.
Lansbury, along with James Keir Hardie, led the campaign in Parliament for votes for women. Lansbury was especially critical of the Cat and Mouse Act and was ordered to leave the House of Commons after shaking his fist in the face of Herbert Asquith, the Prime Minister, and told him that he was "beneath contempt" because of his treatment of WSPU prisoners.
Lansbury resigned from Parliament in 1912 to fight a by-election on “Votes for women”, but even with Emmeline Pankhurst speaking on his behalf, he lost the election by 731 votes. In the following 10 years he founded and edited the militant and pacifist newspaper, the Daily Herald. He was re-elected to parliament in 1922 and remained an MP until his death. Lansbury was unhappy with the way the Daily Herald became more conservative in its reporting after being taken over by the Labour Party and the TUC after 1923.
Lansbury served in local government on Poplar Council and as Mayor in 1919 and 1936. In 1921 he led the “Poplar Rates Rebellion” – when 30 Labour councillors went willingly to prison in defence of their local community and in defiance of the government, the High Court and the national Labour Party leadership. This came about because in 1921 the government required all boroughs to pay to a central fund to pay for municipal expenses. Poplar Council refused to pay the money on the grounds that they were one of the poorest areas in Britain and that they were being asked to subsidise the richer boroughs. Poplar had a rateable value of £4m and 86,500 unemployed to support. Other more prosperous councils could call on a rateable value of £millions more than Poplar and much lower jobless figures.
As the new mayor of Poplar, Lansbury proposed that the Council stop collecting the rates for outside, cross-London bodies. This was agreed and on 31st March 1921, Poplar Council set a rate of 4s 4d instead of 6s 10d. The mayor and councillors were summoned to appear in court for non-payment. On 28th August over 4,000 people held a demonstration at Tower Hill. The banner at the front of the march declared that "Popular Borough councillors are still determined to go to prison to secure equalisation of rates for the poor Boroughs." The 30 councillors were arrested on 1st September and sent to to Brixton prison.
Instead of acting as a deterrent to other minded councils, several Metropolitan Borough Councils announced their attention to follow Poplar's example. The government negotiated a settlement and on 12th October, the councillors were set free. Although the Poplar council were widely condemned for their stand, their action was the catalyst which caused the introduction of a fairer system of assessing the rates. The councillors issued a statement that said: " We feel our imprisonment has been well worth while, and none of us would have done otherwise than we did. We have forced public attention on the question of London rates, and have materially assisted in forcing the Government to call Parliament to deal with unemployment."
Lansbury was elected Chairman of the Labour Party in 1928. The following year he became Commissioner for Works in the Labour government led by Ramsay McDonald. Lansbury was one of the ministers who opposed severe cuts to unemployment benefits in 1931. At the urging of King George V, McDonald agreed to form a National Government and was subsequently expelled by the Labour Party. At the election, held on 27th October, 1931, MacDonald led an anti-Labour alliance made up of Conservatives and National Liberals. It was a disaster for the Labour Party with only 46 members winning their seats. Lansbury won his seat for Bow and Bromley and became the leader of the Labour opposition.
Lansbury made a considerable contribution to restoring morale of the Labour movement by his speeches and meetings.
As a life long pacifist, Lansbury spent his final years trying to prevent a second World War. He travelled in Europe meeting political leaders including Hitler. His efforts ended in failure and he died on 7 May 1940, just months into the war he had tried so hard to avoid.
Solidarity
Brian Madican
August 2019
Below is the mural by the East India Docks Road which was painted as part of the protest against Maggie Thatcher's Poll Tax. The council paid the artist's expenses.
