528 Henry Fawcett

Constituency : Brighton  1865-74,  Hackney  1874-84

Henry's  victory  reversed  a  by-election   ( which  he  had  contested ) defeat  of  1864.

Henry  was  the  second  most  famous  intellectual  to  enter  Parliament  in  the  1865  election. He  was educated  at  King's  College  School  and  Cambridge  and  became  a  fellow  there. In  1858  he  was blinded  by  his  father  in  a  shooting  accident  but  continued  in  his  studies. He  was  a  noted  supporter of  Darwin's   theories. In  1863  he  published  his  Manual  of  Political  Economy  and  became Professor  of  Political Economy  at  Cambridge  that  same  year. His  subsequent  books  included  The Economic  Position  of the  British  Labourer  and  Labour  and  Wages. He  was  a  populariser  rather  than  a  new  thinker  and  clung  to  old  ideas  like  the  classical  wage  fund  doctrine  despite  his  sympathies  for  the  trade  union  movement.

Henry  had  contested,  or  sought  selection  in,  quite  a  few  seats  before  being  returned  at  Brighton. Henry  was  a   supporter of  women's  suffrage  and  through  that  met  Elizabeth  Garrett  to  whom  he  made  a  rejected  marriage proposal  in  1865. He  then  turned  to  her  younger  sister  Millicent , the  secretary  of  the  London Society  for  Women's  Suffrage, who  did  accept  his  proposal. She effectively  became  his  secretary  although  he  encouraged  her  own  writings.

Henry  was  a  Benthamite  and  secularist,  an  associate  of  Mill  and  Peter  Taylor  in  Parliament. He later  found  that  his  support  for  female  emancipation  compromised  his  support  in  the  trade  union movement  as  the  TUC  feared  cheap  female  labour.

Henry  was  a  meritocrat  and  at  Cambridge  was  a  member  of  a  dining  group  the  Republican  Club. This  might  have  contributed  to  his  eventual  defeat  when  it  came  to  light  in  1871.

Henry  stuck  to  ideas  of  laissez-faire  and  self-reliance  despite  his  own  experience  of  mischance  but  made  an  exception  for  elementary  education. He  had  little  religious  conviction  and  disliked  both  Anglican  elitism  and  Nonconformist  sectarianism. By  the  end  of  the  1860s  he  had  gathered  together  his  own  little  group  of  radicals  the  "Fawcettites"  including  Charles  Dilke, Auberon  Herbert, Walter  Morrison  and  Edmund  Fitzmaurice. He  was  disappointed  by  the  caution  ( from  a  Radical  point  of  view ) of  Gladstone's  administration  and  criticised  it  from  the  backbenches  and  in  the  Fortnightly  Review.  He  lost  the  whip  in  1871  and  led  a  group  of  Liberals  to  defeat  the  Irish  University  Bill  in  1873 because  he  felt  Gladstone  had  compromised  too  much  to  appease  religious  groups. He  made  a  telling  speech  and  was  then  attacked  as  a  fanatic  in  Hartington's  speech. Gladstone  felt  this  seriously  weakened  the  government  in  the  run-up  to the  1874  election.

Henry  was  defeated  in  1874  but  immediately  nominated  and  returned  for  Hackney. He  was  able  to  repair  relations  with  Gladstone  through  support  for  the  anti-Turkish  campaign. He  also  became  involved  in  the  cause  of  effective  administration  of  India  even  though  he had  never  visited  the  country  and  displayed  little knowledge  of  its  culture  or  history. He  was  also  a  strong  supporter  of  proportional  representation.

In  1880  Gladstone  made  Henry  Postmaster-General  in  line  with  Gladstone's  policy  of  giving  prominent  radicals  junior  office  to  keep  them  quiet. He  encouraged  saving  through  the  Post  Office Savings  Bank  by  introducing  the  penny  saving  stamp.  He  allowed  savers  to  convert to  government stock. He  also  introduced  parcel  post  and  postal  orders. He  also  used  his  position  to  start  employing  female  medical  officers. He  was  not  in  the  Cabinet  because  it  was  felt  his  reliance  on  secretaries  would  breach  cabinet  confidentiality.He  advocated  a  royal  commission  on  the  blind  but  it  wasn't  established  until  after  his  death.

Henry  clashed  with  Gladstone  over  a  female  suffrage  amendment  to  the  1884 Reform  Act which  the latter  opposed. Henry  abstained  despite  being  a  government  minister. Gladstone  wrote  that  he regarded  this  as  tantamount  to  resignation  but  he  relented  to  avoid  bad  publicity.

He  died  of  pleurisy , after  an  earlier  bout  of  diphtheria,  in  1884  aged  51. He  was  greatly  mourned, even  by  the  queen, his  triumph   over  disability  having  made  him  a  popular  national  figure.