Share
Early life
East End upbringing
Plaque on the assumed birthplace of George Lansbury in Haleswoth, Suffolk. It incorrectly records Lansbury's death year as 1947.
George Lansbury was born in Halesworth in the county of Suffolk on 22 February 1859. He was the third of nine children born to a railway worker, also named George Lansbury, and Anne Lansbury (née Ferris). George senior's job involved the supervision of railway construction gangs; the family was often on the move, and living conditions were primitive. Through his progressive-minded mother and grandmother, young George became familiar with the names of great contemporary reformers—Gladstone, Richard Cobden and John Bright—and began to read the radical Reynolds's Newspaper. By the end of 1868, the family had moved into the East End of London, the district in which Lansbury would live and work for almost all his life.The essayist Ronald Blythe has described the East End of the 1860s and 1870s as "stridently English ... The smoke-blackened streets were packed with illiterate multitudes [who] stayed alive through sheer birdlike ebullience". Interspersed with spells of work, Lansbury attended schools in Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. He then held a succession of manual jobs, including work as a coaling contractor in partnership with his elder brother, James, loading and unloading coal wagons. This was heavy and dangerous work, and led to at least one near-fatal accident.
During his adolescence and early adulthood, Lansbury was a regular attender at the public gallery at the House of Commons, where he heard and remembered many of Gladstone's speeches on the main foreign policy issue of the day, the "Eastern Question". He was present at the riots which erupted outside Gladstone's house on 24 February 1878 after a peace meeting in Hyde Park. Shepherd writes that Gladstone's Liberalism, proclaiming liberty, freedom and community interests was "a heady mix that left an indelible mark" on the youthful Lansbury.
George Lansbury senior died in 1875. That year young George met fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Brine, whose father Isaac Brine owned a local sawmill. The couple eventually married in 1880, at Whitechapel parish church, where the vicar, J. Franklin Kitto, had been Lansbury's spiritual guide and counsellor. Apart from a period of doubt in the 1890s when he temporarily rejected the Church, Lansbury remained a staunch Anglican until his death.
Australia
In 1881, the first of Lansbury's twelve children, Bessie, was born; another daughter, Annie, followed in 1882. Seeking to improve his family's prospects, Lansbury decided that their best hopes of prosperity lay in emigrating to Australia. The London agent-general for Queensland depicted a land of boundless opportunities, with work for all; seduced by this appeal, Lansbury and Bessie raised the necessary passage money, and in May 1884 set sail with their children for Brisbane.
On the outward passage, the family experienced illness, discomfort and danger; on one occasion the ship came close to foundering during a monsoon. On arrival at Brisbane in July 1884, Lansbury found that contrary to the London agent's promises, there was a superfluity of labour and work was hard to come by. His first job, breaking stone, proved to be too physically punishing; he moved to a better-paid position as a van driver, but was sacked when, for religious reasons, he refused to work on Sundays. He then contracted to work on a farm some 80 miles inland, to find upon arrival that his employer had misled him about living conditions and terms of employment.
For several months, the Lansbury family lived in extreme squalor before Lansbury secured release from the contract. Back in Brisbane, he worked for a while at the newly built Brisbane cricket ground. As a keen follower of the game he hoped to see the visiting English touring team play but, as Lansbury's biographer Raymond Postgate records, "he learned that cricket watching was not a pleasure for workmen".
Throughout his tenure in Australia, Lansbury sent letters home, revealing the truth about conditions facing immigrants. To a friend he wrote in March 1885: "Mechanics are not wanted. Farm labourers are not wanted ... Hundreds of men and women are not able to get work ... The streets are foul day and night, and if I had a sister I would shoot her dead rather than see her brought out to this little hell on earth". In May 1885, having received from Isaac Brine sufficient funds for a passage home, the Lansbury family left Australia for good.
Related chapters
The Politician Radical Liberal
First campaigns On his return to London, Lansbury took a job in Brine's timber business. In his spare time he campaigned against the false prospectuses offered by colonial emigration agents. His speech at an emigration conference at King's College in London in April 1886 impressed delegates; shortly afterwards, the government established an Emigration Information Bureau under the Colonial Office. This body was required to provide accurate information on the state of labour markets in all the government's overseas possessions.[ Having joined the Liberal Party shortly after his return from Australia, Lansbury became first a ward secretary and then general secretary for the Bow and Bromley Liberal and Radical Association. His effective campaigning skills had been noted by leading Liberals, including Samuel Montagu, the Liberal MP for Whitechapel, who persuaded the young activist to be his agent in the 1885 general election. Lansbury's handling of this election campaign
The Politician Socialist reformer
Social Democratic Federation Lansbury's choice of the SDF, from several socialist organisations, reflected his admiration for Hyndman, whom he considered "one of the truly great ones". Lansbury quickly became the federation's most tireless propagandist, travelling throughout Britain to address meetings or to demonstrate solidarity with workers involved in industrial disputes. Around this time, Lansbury temporarily set aside his Christian beliefs and became a member of the East London Ethical Society. One factor in his disillusion with the Church was the local clergy's unsympathetic approach to poor relief, and their opposition to collective political action. In 1895 Lansbury fought two parliamentary elections for the SDF in Walworth, first a by-election on 14 May, then the 1895 general election two months later. Despite his energetic campaigning he was heavily defeated on each occasion, with tiny proportions of the vote. After these dismal results, Lansbury was persu
The Politician National prominence
Campaigner for women's suffrageIn the general election of January 1906 Lansbury stood as an independent socialist candidate in Middlesbrough, on a strong "votes for women" platform. This was his first campaign based on women's rights since the LCC election of 1889. He had been recommended to the constituency by Joseph Fels, who agreed to meet his expenses. The local ILP leadership was committed by an electoral pact to support the Liberal candidate, and could not endorse Lansbury, who secured less than 9 per cent of the vote. The campaign had been managed by Marion Coates Hansen, a prominent local suffragist. Under Hansen's influence Lansbury took up the cause of "votes for women"; he allied himself with the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), the more militant of the main suffragist organisations, and became a close associate of Emmeline Pankhurst and her family.The Liberal government elected in 1906 with a large majority showed little interest in the issue of
The Politician Parliament and national office
Labour backbencher In May 1923 the Conservative prime minister, Bonar Law, resigned for health reasons. In December his successor, Stanley Baldwin, called another election in which the Conservatives lost their majority, with Labour in a strong second place. King George V advised Baldwin, as leader of the largest party, not to resign his office until defeated by a vote in the House of Commons. Defeat duly occurred on 21 January 1924, when the Liberals decided to throw in their lot with Labour. The king then asked Labour's leader, Ramsay MacDonald, to form a government. Lansbury caused royal offence by publicly implying that the king had colluded with other parties to keep Labour out, and by his references to the fate of Charles I. Despite his seniority, Lansbury was offered only a junior non-cabinet post in the new government, which he declined. He believed that his exclusion from the cabinet followed pressure from the king. At the 1923 Labour Party conference, while declarin
The Politician Party leader
Although defeated in the election, Henderson remained the party leader while Lansbury headed the Labour group in parliament—the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). In October 1932 Henderson resigned and Lansbury succeeded him. In most historians' reckonings, Lansbury led his small parliamentary force with skill and flair. He was also, says Shepherd, an inspiration to the dispirited Labour rank and file. As leader he began the process of reforming the party's organisation and machinery, efforts which resulted in considerable by-election and municipal election successes—including control of the LCC under Herbert Morrison in 1934. According to Blythe, Lansbury "represented political hope and decency to the three million unemployed." During this period Lansbury published his political credo, My England (1934), which envisioned a future socialist state achieved by a mixture of revolutionary and evolutionary methods. The small Labour group in parliament had little influence over eco
The Politician Final years
Lansbury was 76 years old when he resigned the Labour leadership; he did not, however, retire from public life. In the general election of November 1935 he kept his seat at Bow and Bromley; Labour, now led by Attlee, improved its parliamentary representation to 154. Lansbury devoted himself entirely to the cause of world peace, a quest that took him, in 1936, to the United States. He addressed large crowds in 27 cities before meeting President Roosevelt in Washington to present his proposals for a world peace conference. In 1937 he toured Europe, visiting leaders in Belgium, France and Scandinavia, and in April secured a private meeting with Hitler. No official report of the discussion was issued, but Lansbury's personal memorandum indicates that Hitler expressed willingness to join in a world conference if Roosevelt would convene it. Later that year Lansbury met Mussolini in Rome; he described the Italian leader as "a mixture of Lloyd George, Stanley Baldwin and Winston Churchill".
Latest chapter
