Andrews Smooth Operator

The Life and Times of Cyril Lakin, Editor, Broadcaster and Politician
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-913640-85-9
Verlag: Parthian Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 350 Seiten

From a humble background in Barry, where his father was a butcher and local politician in the formative years of the new town, Cyril Lakin studied at Oxford, survived the First World War, and went on to become a Fleet Street editor, radio presenter and war-time member of parliament. As literary editor of both the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times, Lakin was at the centre of a vibrant and radical generation of writers, poets and critics, many of whom he recruited as reviewers. He gained a parliamentary seat and served in the National Government during World War II. The different worlds he inhabited, from Wales to Westminster, and across class, profession and party, were facilitated by his relaxed disposition, convivial company, and ability to cultivate influential contacts. An effective talent-spotter and catalyst for new projects, he preferred pragmatism over ideology and non-partisanship in politics: a moderate Conservative for modern times.

Geoff Andrews is a historian and biographer with wide interests, his previous books have been on the history of British communism, Italian politics, the Slow Food movement and the Cambridge Spies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Andrews, Geoff

Leseproben

Chapter 1

A Man from Somewhere

In common with many of the families who helped to build modern Barry, the Lakins had their origins in England. In their case it was the Midlands. Cyril Lakin’s father Henry (‘Harry’) was born in what is now the Birmingham suburb of Erdington (then classified as Warwickshire) in 1870, the son of James Lakin, a wire drawer, and Eliza Jones, born in Herefordshire to a farmer originally from Cardigan, West Wales: Farmer Jones, Cyril Lakin’s great-grandfather, was in fact his sole Welsh ancestor. James’s father Joseph was an agricultural labourer who set up home with his wife Elizabeth and their seven children in Bell Lane, then part of a hamlet where most of his neighbours worked on local farms. In the late 1860s Bell Lane was renamed after the huge orphanage built there by Josiah Mason, the self-educated industrialist and philanthropist, who also constructed almshouses nearby as a further contribution to the well-being of the poor. At the top of the orphanage was an enormous 250-foot tower, from which Sir Benjamin Stone, a notable documentary photographer and later Conservative MP, compiled his panoramic images of the surrounding area. Stone, who would become the first mayor of Sutton Coldfield, embodied the civic and entrepreneurial spirit of Victorian Birmingham that had a lasting influence on Harry Lakin.

After Joseph’s death in 1860, Elizabeth worked as a registered nurse while her children supported the family through their work as labourers and dressmakers. James found regular work in local industry and, after his marriage to Eliza, moved a couple of streets away to Easy Row, Sutton Road, a working-class thoroughfare in Erdington village where their neighbours were a mixture of skilled and semi-skilled labourers and small shopkeepers. Here Harry Lakin was born, their only son among six children. His upbringing suggests an importance given to a stable family life, with religion playing an important part in the shadow of St Barnabas Church (where he was baptized). His schooling was brief but adequate in its basic instruction to enable him to decide on a trade as a butcher. Beyond his trade he had wider ambitions, including an early interest in civic affairs inspired by the example of Joseph Chamberlain, whose tenure as Birmingham’s Liberal mayor had brought a range of municipal reforms such as slum clearance, libraries, parks and museums, and encouragement for local artisans. Nineteenth-century Birmingham was at the centre of transformations in local government, though by the time Harry Lakin had begun work Chamberlain was already an MP, representing the Liberal Unionist wing and disaffected with Gladstone and the Home Rule legislation. From Harry Lakin’s subsequent brief political career in Barry it appears that Chamberlain’s evolution from entrepreneur to civic champion had left a marked impression on him, though he did not share Chamberlain’s Nonconformity, earlier ‘gas-and-water socialism’, or support for the temperance movement. He was proud that his first apprenticeship was in the butcher’s shop patronized by the Chamberlain family, a story that he would later recount in his appeal to the Barry electorate. The Chamberlains would continue to hold significance for his family: many years later, in the turbulent years of interwar British politics, Cyril Lakin would get to know Joseph’s sons Austen and Neville, who were then on opposite sides of the appeasement debate.

Harry Lakin’s horizons were broader than Birmingham, however, while his shrewd business sense, an attribute that would bring many advantages to his family, was already evident. His decision to move to South Wales was a recognition of the transformational impact of the coal industry, and informed by both an awareness that the prosperity of the communities depended upon on the migration of new tradesmen, and an optimism for the new business opportunities presented. At the beginning of the 1890s he moved to Tredegar, South East Wales, then in the county of Monmouthshire, and one of the early centres of the Industrial Revolution. The Circle was the heart of the town, with its central core – a meeting point for businesses – leading out to adjoining streets, and it was here (at number 10) that he took up employment as an apprentice butcher for Enoch Woodward. The same building would later be a local landmark as the home of the Medical Aid Society, so inspirational for Aneurin Bevan – Tredegar’s most famous resident and the founder of the National Health Service – who served on the committee that provided health assistance to the town. When Harry Lakin moved there as a live-in servant and apprentice it had different concerns, however. The master butcher and head of the house, Enoch Woodward, was a Wesleyan Methodist, a member of Tredegar Council, a Poor Law Guardian and a strong supporter of local charities and temperance causes. He was keenly involved in the life of the town, including its literary and musical societies, and as a notable local figure and entrepreneur was likely an early mentor for Harry Lakin.

After his apprenticeship in Tredegar, Harry Lakin was ready to establish himself as a butcher. Convinced by now that the coalfields of South Wales afforded new opportunities to ambitious tradesmen, he sought to be at the heart of it. He made a very wise choice in Barry, which was already heralded as the most significant emerging industrial town in South Wales, often compared with American frontier towns where new migration settlements laid the basis for new urban communities and civic cultures. When he arrived in 1891 to live at 11 Vere Street, Cadoxton, Barry was in the process of merging its three villages – Cadoxton, Barry and Merthyr Dyfan – to form an industrial centre founded on the docks, which had been opened just two years earlier. After much parliamentary and legal wrangling, The Barry Dock and Railway Act in 1884 had finally been approved by Royal Assent on the grounds that the nearby Cardiff and Penarth docks were insufficient to meet the rising demand for coal following the construction of new pits in the Rhondda Valley. The opening of Barry Dock in 1889 was the culmination of a campaign launched by the big colliery owners, notably David Davies – or David Davies Llandinam as he was known – and John Cory, who wanted to extend the facilities for transporting and exporting their coal. Both Cory and Davies were major coal owners in the Rhondda who held other extensive business interests, and their influence extended to politics, a host of philanthropic causes, temperance and Wesleyan Methodism. They received the backing of other prominent businessmen, including Archibald Hood, another Rhondda coal owner, and J.O. Riches, the president of the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce, who had first pursued the Barry Dock scheme in 1881 (though David Davies is credited with leading the battle to get legislation through Parliament).1 Initially, they had faced local opposition from the Windsor estate, the owners of Barry Island, who were concerned about protecting their business at Penarth Dock, fearing that the island, rather than Penarth, could be the prosperous Cardiff suburb; at one point the Windsors even closed Barry Island to deter tourists. However, after Penarth was established as the retreat for the Cardiff bourgeois, and the Windsors saw increased profits in the unrelenting demand for coal, there was a volte-face and they went into business with David Davies and the other coal owners.2 Moreover, the siting of Barry Dock was enhanced by the island being situated in an area that was thought to be ideal for loading coal.

In 1881 the combined villages of Cadoxton, Barry and Merthyr Dyfan had shared a population of 478; as small agricultural communities they were isolated from each other in an area still defined by the big landowners, notably Windsor, Romilly, and Jenner. After the Barry Railway Company succeeded in achieving Royal Assent to build the docks, railway stations were opened at Cadoxton and Barry Dock in December 1888 (Barry Station was opened in February the following year) along the Cogan line, with the first coal delivered in July 1889. The opening of the docks – to great fanfare and approximately 2,000 spectators – precipitated an enormous migration into Barry from other parts of Wales, and particularly from England (including many from the West Country), with Irish and Scottish immigrants moving south. The influx of navvies to work on the docks and railways provided the strong working-class core of the town. By 1896 it had grown to a population of around 20,000, only a quarter of whom were of Welsh origin.3 As a result, the population underwent significant social and cultural transformation, with the task of building its infrastructure – including its civic and political institutions – still in its early stages when Harry Lakin arrived. Urbanization had been so rapid that the living conditions were chaotic, crime was endemic and disease common. Initially, Cadoxton was intended to be the main hub of the new town and received the majority of the first inhabitants and building work, and this may have been the reason he chose Vere Street, which together with Main Street was one of two principal centres of trade. In addition to commercial premises – butchers, drapers, chemists, confectionery and newsagents were starting up – by the mid-1890s Vere Street also accommodated two banks and the Royal, Cadoxton and Wenvoe Arms hotels as well as the Cadoxton Conservative Club.

One of the consequences of the influx of dockworkers and railway workers was that it turned previously rural Cadoxton into a working-class district. The Barry Trades Council had been founded in 1891 amid the turmoil of labour...