1579 Harold Cox

Constituency : Preston  1906-10

Harold  took  Preston  from  the  Tories  in  tandem  with  Labour's  John  MacPherson  who  topped  the  poll.

Harold  was  a  judge's  son. He  was  educated  at  Tonbridge  School  in  Kent  and  Cambridge. He  became  a  lecturer  on  political  economy. He  also  spent  a  year  as  an  agricultural  worker  to  experience  the  conditions. He  started  a communistic  farm  which  quickly  failed,  turning him  against  socialism  for  life.  In  1885  he went  to  India  where  he  spent  two  years  teaching  maths  before  returning  to  the  UK to  become  a  barrister. He  swiftly  decided  to  become  a  journalist  instead. He  was  Secretary  to  the  Cobden  Club  from  1899  to  1904. Herbert  Gladstone  thought  he  was  "a  bad  egg". He  warned  the  local  Liberal  Association  that  he  had  no  desire "to  become  one  of  those  walking  automata  on  two  legs, who  come  in when  the  division  bell  rings  and  vote  as  they  are  told".

Harold  was  an  ardent  Free  Trader  but  an  old  school  Manchester  Liberal. He  was  a  member  of  the  Navy  League .He  opposed  the  Liberal  reforms  on  old  age  pensions, school  meals  and  unemployment  benefit. In  his  1907  book  Socialism  in  the  House  of  Commons  he  lamented  the  withering  of  individual  responsibility. The  radical  G  P  Gooch  wrote  of  him  "While  we  saw  in  the  state  an  indispensable  instrument  for  establishing  a  minimum  standard  of  life  for  the  common  man, he  dreaded  the  slackening  of  moral  fibre  as  a  result  of   getting  "something  for  nothing" On  pensions,  he  pointed  out  that  a  man  "might  have  spent  his  life  not  in  helping  his  country but  in  injuring  his  country  by  his  own  vicious  conduct : he  might  have  been  an  idle  drunken  blackguard , yet  when  he  reached  the  age  of  65, he  was  entitled  to  draw  five  shillings  a  week  out  of  the  pockets  of  hard-working, sober  and  thrifty  men". Only  one  other  Liberal  voted  with  him  against  the  Bill.

Harold  was  against  extending  the  franchise  to  the  residuum " A  man  has  no  natural  right  to  govern  his  neighbours  or  to  vote  away  public  funds  to  which  he  does  not  contribute....The  cause  of  public  extravagance  is  the  adoption  by  all  political  parties  of  a  policy  of  spending  money to  provide  the  individual  with  things  which  he  should  buy  for  himself". He  supported  birth  control.

Harold  was  part  of  the  Liberal "cave"  opposing  the  land  clauses  of  the  People's  Budget. The  Labour  Leader  described  him  as  a  "nineteenth  century  individualist  and  an  early  Victorian  one  at  that.. No  man in  the  House  of  Commons  has  been  a  more  inveterate  opponent  of  advanced  measures".

By  the  January  1910  election  the  local  Liberals  had  repudiated  Harold  and  he  stood  as  an  independent  Liberal  though  he  had  strong  support  from  the  Unionist  Free  Traders. He  came  fifth  as  the  Tories  re-took  both  seats.

Harold  accepted  nomination  from  the  Conservatives  as  an  alderman  for  London  County  Council   However  he  then  stood  in  the  Cambridge  University  by-election  of  1911  as  a  Free  Trader. He  did  quite  well  in  the  absence  of  an  official  Liberal  candidate  but  failed  to  win  the  seat.

In  1912  Harold  became  editor  of  the  Edinburgh  Review.

Philip  Snowden  described  him   as  " a  very  polished  speaker  and  stated  the  case  with  which  he  was  dealing  with  great  intellectual  force".

He  died  of  pneumonia  in  1936  aged  76.