No. 7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 December 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n Welcome to the December edition of Lancashire Loominary, an occasional update for readers and friends of Lancashire Loominary publications. It\u2019s probably not too early to wish you a very happy Christmas. If you have bought any of my books over the last year, a particular thanks. It hasn\u2019t been an easy time to be a small publisher (but when is?). Next year I\u2019m hoping to bring out a new book on the history, present state and possible future of \u2018Greater Lancashire\u2019 as well as a collection of my local history features from The Bolton News<\/em>, if they don\u2019t mind, to be called Our Bolton<\/em>.<\/p>\n This edition features an extended version of my article on Victor Grayson \u2013 the socialist MP who disappeared, almost without trace, after the First World War. His links to Bolton are highlighted, with scope for a bit more digging. There is a print version (a bit shorter but with pictures) in the current Big Issue North<\/em> \u2013 which also carries a good piece by Chris Moss on Northern regionalism and the Hannah Mitchell Foundation (which is holding a conference on \u2018Real Levelling Up\u2019 on Saturday December 4th<\/sup> (www.hannah-mitchell.org.uk<\/a> for details). Please buy BIN if you get the opportunity.<\/p>\n There\u2019s what I hope is an attractive \u2018readers\u2019 offer\u2019 for my books \u2013 see below. I also have a bit to say about HS2 and its partial cancellation. As usual, I don\u2019t go with the tide!<\/p>\n I currently have four books in stock \u2013 the full cover price is shown in brackets and details of the very generous (!) reductions for Loominary readers are given at the end of this newsletter:<\/p>\n Some of these, as you\u2019ll see from my website, are already available direct from me at a discounted price. Up to the end of the year I\u2019m doing some further special offers which include:<\/p>\n A young socialist firebrand called Victor Grayson shot to international fame in 1907 by winning a by-election in the Yorkshire textile constituency of Colne Valley, on an uncompromising left wing programme. Early years<\/strong><\/p>\n Grayson was born in the Scotland Road district of Liverpool, of working class parents, in 1881 \u2013 though even this fact has been questioned, as we shall see. He had an adventurous boyhood, leaving home at the age of 14 to see the world, as a stowaway on board a ship bound for Chile \u2013 though he only got as far as Tenby, after being discovered.<\/p>\n Not much is known of his teenage years. He was an intelligent and resourceful lad with a strong social conscience and was apprenticed in an engineering works. He experienced poverty at first hand in the Liverpool slums and wanted to do something about it. In 1904 he enrolled as a student at the Unitarian college in Manchester to train as a minister; however he became increasingly involved in the socialist movement which was sweeping the North of England, inspired by the Clarion <\/em>newspaper, edited by Robert Blatchford who was to become a close friend.<\/p>\n A popular socialist orator<\/strong><\/p>\n By the following year, Grayson had become a popular figure on the socialist lecturing circuit across the North of England. He was a regular speaker at meetings of the Independent Labour Party and the Labour Church, both of which had a strong presence in the industrial North. Many meetings were held in the open air and attracted large crowds, such as in Farnworth on Sunday July 28th<\/sup> 1905. He spoke in Bolton\u2019s Temperance Hall on several occasions during 1905, to huge audiences.<\/p>\n Revolution in the Colne Valley<\/strong><\/p>\n In the Spring of 1907 the sitting Liberal MP for Colne Valley, near Huddersfield, resigned his seat following his elevation to the House of Lords. A by-election was set for July 18th<\/sup>, with the Liberals expecting an easy win. How wrong they were. The socialists got to work with enthusiasm and Grayson \u2013 a young man of 26 \u2013 was invited to apply to be the \u2018Labour and Socialist\u2019 candidate, narrowly beating a local man.<\/p>\n He had huge charisma – a handsome and flamboyant figure who could captivate his audience. \u201cI am appealing to you as one of your own class. I want emancipation from the wage-slavery of Capitalism. I do not believe that we are divinely destined to be drudges. Through the centuries we have been the serfs of an arrogant aristocracy….the time for our emancipation has come. We must break the rule of the rich and take our destinies into our hands..the other classes have had their day. It is our turn now!\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the looms in the weaving sheds of the valley had red ribbons tied to them, showing the weavers \u2013 mostly women \u2013 where they stood. Local children wore red rosettes and sang socialist songs when Grayson spoke.<\/p>\n The election result was announced on July 19th and it astonished the country. Grayson received 3,648 votes beating the Liberal with a majority of 153. The Conservative came a close third. When the vote was announced at Slaithwaite Town Hall, in the words of a local journalist, \u201cpandemonium prevailed…the wild scene of enthusiasm which followed the announcement of the figures is indescribable.\u201d<\/p>\n The result shook the political establishment to its foundations, with many fearing \u2013 or hoping \u2013 that a socialist revolution was imminent. Yet it wasn\u2019t to be and Grayson\u2019s parliamentary performance was erratic. He preferred touring the country speaking at socialist meetings than the dreary work of being a back-bench MP, though on one notable occasion he was expelled from the House of Commons for disrupting proceedings in support of the unemployed \u2013 an action that won him warm support amongst grassroots socialists but further alienated him from mainstream Labour MPs who were besotted with parliamentary procedure. He continued to visit Bolton and in February 1909 was the guest of honour at Bolton Socialist Party\u2019s \u2018Merrie England Bazaar\u2019.<\/p>\n A darker side<\/strong><\/p>\n There was a darker side to his behaviour. Possibly through the stress of his campaigning, he developed a strong taste for whisky and reached the point where he was consuming a full bottle every day. He enjoyed the social life of the London clubs and was always something of a hedonist, enjoying \u2018the good life\u2019. He was hugely attractive to women but also had several affairs with men, which seem to go back to his early 20s. Homosexuality was still a crime and Grayson had to tread carefully to avoid being exposed.<\/p>\n Grayson remained an MP for just three years. He lost the seat in 1910 but continued his socialist campaigning activities. On October 23rd<\/sup> he was speaking to a packed meeting in Bolton\u2019s Temperance Hotel, no doubt amused by the irony of the location. By then, he was making a tenuous living from his speaking engagements though finding it difficult to maintain his lavish lifestyle and increasingly heavy drinking.<\/p>\n Marriage to Ruth<\/strong><\/p>\n In November 1912 he married Ruth Nightingale, an actress whose stage name was \u2018Ruth Norreys\u2019. She was the daughter of an affluent Bolton family. Her father, John Webster Nightingale, was a banker and he shared a substantial house in Smithills with his wife Georgina and housekeeper\/maid Jane Mackereth. Victor and Ruth had a daughter, Elaine, in 1914. The relationship with the Nightingales was to become increasingly important for Grayson over the next eight years.<\/p>\n By 1914 his health had deteriorated and he found himself in the Bankruptcy Court. Friends and supporters, helped by his father in law, assisted. Everything changed when war broke out in November of that year.<\/p>\n Most left-wing socialists were bitterly opposed to the war. Grayson took a very different stance, not only publicly supporting the Allies but advocating conscription and demonising the German people as a war-mongering race. Grayson spent some time in Australia speaking on pro-war platforms, then returned to Britain and continued to support the war effort, possibly with some financial help from the Lloyd George government. In 1917, he and his wife Ruth went to New Zealand where she had some theatrical engagements. Whilst there, he was involved in socialist activity but continued to support the war effort, joining the New Zealand armed forces (ANZAC) in 1917.\u00a0 He took part in some of the heaviest fighting of the war and was wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele, one of the bloodiest encounters in the whole conflict.<\/p>\n He returned to England in 1918 and was devastated by the death of his wife in childbirth, in February of that year. The baby was stillborn. Grayson agreed with the Nightingales for them to look after the four-years\u2019 old Elaine, who lived at the family home. By then, the family had moved to \u2018Ellerslie\u2019, a large house in The Haulgh. Grayson, living in London, was a regular visitor to Bolton, each weekend, with his own room and even pet dog which he named \u2018Nunquam\u2019, the pen name of Robert Blatchford. He kept a hidden supply of whisky under the floorboards of his room. His visits were ostensibly to see his young daughter. I wonder if there were other motives?<\/p>\n Post-war uncertainties<\/strong><\/p>\n Grayson had little involvement in post-war politics. His estrangement from the Labour Party was virtually complete. Harry Taylor quotes a letter from parliamentary journalist Sidney Campion suggesting that Grayson \u201cwas a disillusioned socialist turned Tory\u201d and his father-in-law approached Tory leader Bonar Law to employ him as a propagandist. The source of this came from Charles Sixsmith, who was part of Bolton\u2019s \u2018Walt Whitman\u2019 circle which included another Nightingale \u2013 Fred, who lived, on Chorley Old Road. Whether Fred and John were related isn\u2019t clear but they may have been closer in their politics than historians have given them credit for. John W. Nightingale was a friend of Sixsmith\u2019s, who was a prosperous capitalist, with mills in Farnworth. He was a socialist and also, like Grayson, bi-sexual. Did Grayson and Sixsmith know each other? John W. Nightingale, certainly in later years, was a member of the Swedenborgian church which had much in common with the mystical beliefs of the Whitmanites.<\/p>\n Disappearance<\/strong><\/p>\n The strangest part of the \u2018Grayson Story\u2019 comes next. In September 1920 he left his apartment in London accompanied by two men, telling his landlady that he would be away for some time. In fact, he was never seen again, at least definitively. Some accounts suggest he was murdered, others that he left the country to start a new life. At the time, there was a \u2018cash for honours\u2019 scandal brewing which Grayson may have threatened to expose and there are suggestions that he was \u2018removed\u2019 by a shadowy character called Maundy Gregory, who had links to the intelligence services.<\/p>\n His daughter Elaine was devastated by his disappearance, being told by Jane, the family maid, that her father \u201cwill never come again because he\u2019s going to travel…but he\u2019ll never forget you…and one day perhaps he may come back.\u201d<\/p>\n There are several accounts of him being seen, in places as varied as Melbourne, Madrid and on the London tube. However, there seems to be strong evidence that he was living in Maidstone, Kent, in the 1930s.<\/p>\n He was not in communication with his parents in Liverpool or his Bolton in-laws. However, Elaine\u2019s grandmother Georgina seems to have been convinced that Grayson might return to Bolton and \u2018kidnap\u2019 the young girl. She lived a cosseted life being driven to and from school in the family car \u2013 a rare luxury at the time \u2013 and only being permitted a very limited social life.<\/p>\n During the Second World War there was a government-sponsored investigation into Grayson\u2019s disappearance, led by the well-respected Chief Inspector Arthur Askew, of Scotland Yard. The report was never published but subsequently, after his retirement, Askew sent a short note to his biographer Reg Groves saying \u201cGrayson married \u2013 settled in Kent\u201d.<\/p>\n There seems to be a possibility that Grayson died in an air raid in 1941. Certainly, his mother-in-law\u2019s almost hysterical fear of Grayson\u2019s re-appearance had diminished by the early 1940s. Georgina herself died in 1942.<\/p>\n Parentage questions<\/strong><\/p>\n There is one final twist to the story, relating to Victor\u2019s parentage. There had long been suggestions that his parents in Liverpool were not his biological parents. As Georgina lay on her death bed, accompanied by maidservant Jane and her grand-daughter Elaine, she kept muttering the name \u2018The Marlboroughs\u2019. Elaine was puzzled by this, but after Georgina\u2019s death, Jane said to her \u201cElaine, don\u2019t you realise your grandmother was telling you who your father really was?\u201d<\/p>\n Amongst Grayson historians this story is treated with different emphasis. Harry Taylor rejects the possibility that Grayson was the illegitimate child of the powerful Marlborough family, whose members included Winston Churchill \u2013 with whom Grayson enjoyed a friendly relationship whilst in the\u00a0 Commons, and after. David Clark is not so sure and offers evidence that the story might be true.<\/p>\n There are so many \u2018known unknowns\u2019 in the Grayson story, above all what happened to him after 1920 and the riddle of his parentage. As Jeremy Corbyn writes in his foreword to Harry Taylor\u2019s book, says \u201cthe ever-secretive British state knows the answer, somewhere in Scotland Yard or the Home Office, the truth is known.\u201d He\u2019s right, and I think there is more to be discovered about his Bolton links, including the role of his father-in-law John W. Nightingale and the maid who seemed to know much, Jane Mackereth.<\/p>\n I am indebted to Lord David Clark, Harry Taylor, Sheila Davidson and Julia Lamara (Bolton History Centre) for their assistance. Harry Taylor\u2019s book Victor Grayson: in search of Britain\u2019s lost revolutionary<\/em>, is published by Pluto (2021), David Clark\u2019s Victor Grayson – the man and the mystery <\/em>is published by Quartet (2016). <\/strong><\/p>\n As well as being able to order directly, my books are available in a number of shops across the North-West and beyond. At the moment they are:<\/p>\n The response to the Government\u2019s \u2018Integrated Rail Plan’ (IRP) has been almost universally hostile. The chopping of the \u2019eastern leg\u2019 from Birmingham to Leeds and \u2018scaling back\u2019 of the east-west line (Northern Powerhouse Rail\u2019) has invoked particular ire, with cries of \u2018betrayal of the North\u2019 coming from an unlikely coalition of so-called \u2018red wall\u2019 Tories and Labour.<\/p>\n But..there were good arguments for a fundamental review of HS2, particularly in the light of Covid, which many people in transport think will lead to long-term changes in people\u2019s travel behaviour \u2013 in particular, less business travel and commuting and more leisure journeys (less time sensitive).<\/p>\n HS2 as originally conceived – a very high-speed route (speeds of up to 225 m\/ph or 360 km\/h) from London to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, represents a particular approach to transport and wider spatial planning, which prioritises the major cities, at the expense (unless there is a complementary plan in place) of smaller towns and cities. In his Foreword<\/em> to the IRP Boris Johnson recognises the adverse effect that HS2 to Leeds would have had on other places currently served by fast and frequent trains: \u201cUnder those plans,\u00a0 many places on the existing main lines, such as Doncaster, Huddersfield, Wakefield and Leicester would have seen little improvement, or a worsening, in their services<\/em>..\u201d The same applies to the \u2018western leg\u2019 to Manchester, which is still going ahead: so – tough on Stockport, Stoke-on-Trent, Macclesfield, Stafford and Rugby.<\/p>\n The thinking behind HS2 reflects a particular approach to transport which I would argue is 20 years out of date. It is a move away from the earlier car-led approach of the 1960s which saw motorway building, rail closures, and towns and cities carved up for the motor car. The \u2018Very High-Speed Rail\u2019 approach prioritises the needs of major cities and \u2018out of town\u2019 development with huge parkway developments, in the case of HS2 at Birmingham Interchange. The proposed \u2018dead-end\u2019 stations at Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds would have been poorly connected with the rest of the rail network but developers would (or still will) have a field day with opportunities for major development schemes around the three termini. And anyone who knows much about railways will recognise that terminal stations are bad news, soaking up capacity, limiting the full opportunities of fast, long-distance trains.<\/p>\n The \u2018very high-speed\u2019 thinking behind HS2 means that you can\u2019t bother with serving even quite large towns and cities along the route as it slows everything down creating longer end to end journeys which \u2018the model\u2019 hates. And of course the other big down side of \u2018very high speed rail\u2019 is that the need for such high speeds means you have to build a railway that is very straight \u2013 either a lot of tunnelling which is costly and very destructive on the environment, or ploughing through established communities and sensitive landscapes. Running long trains at 225 m\/ph sucks up a lot of energy.<\/p>\n There is a further argument against HS2 which is more difficult to prove but has certainly been raised in some academic papers. High-speed rail, or any transport corridor, is a two-way street. The pro-HS2 hype is full of talk about how HS2 will \u2018level-up\u2019 the North. Equally, it could do more to benefit London and the south-east. Why should firms bother to maintain a major regional office in Manchester or Birmingham when you can be in London in next to no time? A far more likely economic generator would be better inter and intra-regional rail links across the North and Midlands, which happens to be what most people say in opinion polls, when asked.<\/p>\n This approach of \u2018very high speed rail\u2019 can work if you\u2019re a country the size of France, China or the United States. The German approach is more nuanced with significant stretches of high-speed rail but part of a well integrated network of inter-regional and local services. It is less suitable to a smaller country such as Britain, with densely populated areas. One of the most trumpeted-arguments in support of HS2 has been the idea that it \u2018frees up capacity\u2019 permitting freight and regional passenger services. That\u2019s only true up to a point and the main capacity benefits of HS2 will be south of Rugby. Where it frees up capacity in the North it is at the expense of existing InterCity services being re-routed via HS2 meaning that major centres like Stockport and Stoke will lose out. If we\u2019re told that the existing InterCity services (3 an hour Manchester \u2013 London, pre-Pandemic) will continue, you wonder a) what the point of HS2 is in the first place, and crucially b) where all the extra passengers wanting to get to and from London in 71 minutes will come from.<\/p>\n A third approach would be a more integrated rail-based strategy with a core InterCity network which would aim for speeds of up to 160 m\/ph and link major centres across the country, with good connections to regional, local rail and light rail services. This would be a bit more like the German approach, taking greater account of the needs of large towns and cities between the main centres, with good connectivity to all parts of the rail network. Such an approach would be a hybrid of new and existing, upgraded, lines and it would go through to Carlisle, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh.<\/p>\n It could be argued that the newly-published IRP does that, though I\u2019d say it\u2019s more of a \u2018politics-led\u2019 plan than anything that is strategic. It tried (and failed) to satisfy politicians in the North with a mix of new and upgraded lines and electrification schemes, notably the Midland Mail Line taking electric trains beyond the south Midlands to Derby and Nottingham, Chesterfield, Sheffield and Leeds.<\/p>\n Bradford is the big loser in the IRP, so as a concession the short section of line from Leeds to Bradford via New Pudsey will be electrified, shaving a few minutes of journey times. Quite what the trains do when they get to Bradford isn\u2019t said, presumably they\u2019ll speed back to Leeds. Yet all trains from Leeds to Bradford go beyond the city, to Halifax, Hebden Bridge, Rochdale and Manchester or across to Burnley, Blackburn and Preston. Any sensible strategy would have seen those lines fully electrified as part of the Bradford scheme. Even better would be a \u2018Bradford CrossRail\u2019 for existing regional and additional InterCity services, joining up the two separate routes into the city and permitting a \u2018scissors\u2019 shape network north-west of Leeds which would permit new journey options and improved capacity into and out of Bradford.<\/p>\n The \u2018core\u2019 of HS2\u2019s western leg, to Manchester, will be a major engineering challenge and aims to link up with \u2018Northern Powerhouse Rail\u2019 and serve Manchester Airport. The route to Scotland and further north is likely to be re-considered with the proposed new \u2018Golborne Loop\u2019 scrapped. A sensible strategy for the \u2018West Coast Main Line\u2019 north of Crewe would see maximum use of the existing route with more capacity, track realignment to get faster speeds and some new sections, north and south of the border, to improve overall journey times but still serve main centres such as Warrington (with interchange with Northern Powerhouse Rail as per IRP), Wigan, Preston, Lancaster, Oxenholme (for the southern Lakes) Penrith and Carlisle.<\/p>\n I remain unconvinced that a terminal station at Manchester Piccadilly is the right solution. Termini are operationally difficult and soak up capacity. A through station that would help solve the \u2018Castlefield Corridor\u2019 dilemma, perhaps underground, would have been a better solution.<\/p>\n Perhaps the biggest criticism is the length of time the proposals will actually take \u2013 with completion of the Manchester parts of the scheme being well into the 2040s. So I won\u2019t be around to see them!<\/p>\nReaders\u2019 offers for Christmas<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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Feature article:\u00a0 <\/strong>the mysterious Victor Grayson<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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He was defeated in 1910 and ten years later vanished, almost without trace. The story of his meteoric rise, and subsequent disappearance, is a fascinating chapter in British political history, very ably explored by the work of historians David Clark and more recently Harry Taylor whose biography Victor Grayson: in search of Britain\u2019s lost revolutionary<\/em>, was published recently. Bolton features prominently in the story of his life and subsequent disappearance.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/lancashireloominary.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/grayson-election-speech-300x207.jpg\")
Even in small mill villages like Golcar, Honley and Delph Grayson was able to attract audiences in the hundreds and sometimes even more. Grayson\u2019s eve of poll message \u2018to the electors of the Colne Valley\u2019 pulled no punches:<\/p>\nUse your local shop<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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HS2: the wrong mindset<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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most prolific \u2013 and interesting \u2013 writers. Allen Clarke (1863-1935) was the son of mill workers and began work in the mill himself at the age of 11. It is a completely new edition of the 2009 edition, and includes an entirely new chapter on his railway writings which include Horwich Loco Works, \u2018The Club Train\u2019 and the adventures of Ginger the Donkey.<\/p>\n