1324 Joseph Wilson

Constituency  : Middlesbrough  1892-1900 ( originally  Independent  Labour )  , 1906-10, South  Shields  1918-22

I've  left  Joseph  until  last  of  the  1892  crop   because  he  wasn't  elected  as  a  Liberal  but  made  an  instant  conversion  once  he  got  into  Parliament.   Joseph's  candidature  on  the  retirement  of  Isaac  Wilson  was  pushed  by  locally  strong  trade  unions  who  played  on  his  support  for  Samuel  Plimsoll's  loading  reforms.  It  was  resisted  by  the  shopkeepers  and  business  barons  which  split  the  local  Liberal  Association  down  the  middle. His  opponents  backed  the  former  South  Shields  MP  William  Robson  who  became  the  official  Liberal  candidate. Another  former  MP, Lowthian  Bell  contested  the seat  for  the  Liberal  Unionists. Once  in  the  Commons  aligned  himself  with  Lib-Labbers  like Thomas  Burt  and  John  Wilson  and  was  strongly  critical  of  McDonald  and  Hardie. His  former  foes  accepted  his  election  as  a  fait  accompli  and did  not  resist  him  standing  in  1895.

Joseph  was  born  in  Sunderland  and  went  to  sea  as  a  boy.  He  spent  some  time  in  the  USA  and  claimed  to  have  helped  build  the  Brooklyn  Bridge.  In  1882  he  returned  to  set  up  a  Temperance  Hotel  in  Sunderland. Despite  no  longer  being  at  sea  he  got  involved  in  the  local  union. Their  leaders  were  not  very  interested  in  expansion  so  he  set  up  his  own  National  Sailor's  &  Firemen's  Union  in  1887. He  was  involved  in  the  London  Dock  Strike  of  1889.  Joseph  was  generally  a  moderate  seeking  formal  conciliation  procedures  to  prevent  strikes  and  lockouts. The  employers  recognised  his  union  in  1911.  He  was  autocratic  in  style  and  cared  nothing  for  exploited  foreign  labour  on  ships.  He  brooked  no  rivals  and  Manny  Shinwell   claimed  that  Joseph  had  him  beaten  up  for  being  an  officer  of  a  rival  union. He  contested  Bristol  East  as  an  Independent  Labour  candidate  at  a  by-election  in  1890  but  did  poorly.

In  1893  Joseph  narrowly  avoided  being  declared  bankrupt.

Joseph  held  his  seat  as  a  Liberal  in  1895  but  was  defeated  in  1900.  In  1906  he  easily  won  the  seat  back  despite  the  intervention  of  George  Lansbury  as  an  Independent  Labour  candidate.

Joseph's  parliamentary  contributions  were  mainly  restricted  to  matters  in  which  is  union  was  interested  and  there  were  none  after  1907. He  was  dissatisfied  with  Lloyd  George's  Merchant  Shipping  Bill.

Joseph  stood  down  in  January  1910. That  July,  Joseph  organised  a  protest  against  the  use  of  Chinese  labour  in  British  ships  and  threatened  a  strike  of  200,000  seamen. He  thought  that  the  language  test  could  be  used  against  them.

 He  was  active  in  the  First  World  War  which  he  strongly supported, liaising  with  the shipowners  to  aid  the  war  effort. He  stopped  a  ship carrying   Labour delegates  to  a  Peace  Conference  in  Stockholm  in  1918  from  leaving  port.  This  did give him   a reputation  as  a  "bosses'  man"  and  his  reputation  in  the  labour  movement  declined in  the  1920s.

Joseph   was  persuaded  to  return  to  Parliament  by  Lloyd  George. He  helped  set  up  the National  Democratic  Party  for  the  premier's  Labour   supporters  but   stood  as  a  Liberal  when he won   a  by-election  at  South  Shields  in  1918. He  held  the  seat  as  a  Coalition  Liberal  in the general  election  later  that  year  but  was  well  beaten  in  1922  coming  third  with  just  20%  of the  vote.

In  1923  Joseph  secured  exclusive  rights  for  his  union  on  the  National  Maritime  Board.

Joseph  regarded  the General  Strike  of  1926  as  a  "red  revolutionary  plot".

He  died  in  1929  aged  70.

We  now  move  to  the  by-elections  of  the  1892-5  Parliament.