Rarely in the history of the North East has there been a truly visionary political leader, who also has enough power to turn at least some of their vision into reality. One exception to that is Joseph Cowen.
Early life
Joseph Cowen (1829 – 18 February 1900) was born at Stella Hall, Blaydon.
He was educated privately in Ryton and at Edinburgh University, where he interested himself in European revolutionary movements.
This was the man who would emerge as the dominant figure in the second half of the nineteenth century in North East radical politics.
Cowen, was greatly influenced by Thomas Paine’s book ‘The Rights of Man’. It gave Cowen and his followers inspiration in the fight for greater democracy, when the franchise was restricted to a small minority of men.
Cowen’s formative years
Another important factor in the radical politics, during Cowen’s formative years, were big meetings on the Town Moor in Newcastle.
One of the largest of these took place on Coronation Day in 1838. On that day a crowd, which some estimates put at more than 80 000, gathered to demand their rights.
It was seen as a particularly important day to be gathering in such huge numbers, rather than gazing at the ‘useless and idle pageant’ of the coronation.
The size of the crowd shows the depth of feelings, which so many in the region had about the desire to improve their position, be it in terms of pay and conditions at work or demands to be given the vote. It was this desire which Cowen would go on to try and meet.
Joseph Cowen Junior went to Edinburgh University, and it was there that he began to be interested in radical politics. On his return to the Northeast, Cowen was to buy the Daily Chronicle, now simply known as The Chronicle and use it to promote radical causes. And there were many of them.
Northern Reform Union petition
In 1858, Cowen used the Chronicle to promote the Northern Reform Union petition, which gathered 34 456 signatures throughout the North East for electoral reform and extending the franchise to more men.
It was the beginning of Cowen’s drive to extend the electorate as part of a wider drive for a fairer society.
This was to be just the start as Cowen and others around would go on to promote many progressive causes over the coming decades, firstly as owner of the Daily Chronicle and from 1874 as a Liberal MP for Newcastle.
Campaign for better housing
Cowen used his position as MP and as owner of the Daily Chronicle to campaign for better housing for people in the region.
In 1850, the Daily Chronicle published an article about social conditions, stating that too many houses were being built for middle class people and not enough for working-class members of society.
The campaign begun by Cowen was further boosted two years later by the reporting of the Cholera Commission into the third outbreak of cholera in twenty years, which highlighted poor housing conditions as a major factor in the outbreak.
Improvements in housing
Subsequently, improvements in housing took place in housing in the 1880s and in 1890, the Housing of the Working Classes Act, meant that real progress could begin to be made.
This act helped the delivery of decent working-class housing, by simplifying procedures and this helped Councillor Riley Lord to take up the baton for working-class housing in Newcastle in his positions as the North East’s principal representative of the Prudential Assurance Company and as councillor for the predominantly working-class district of Byker.
Slowly, but surely, Cowen’s vision of better housing for working people in Newcastle began to be realised, although housing for many residents in the city remained poor, well into the 20th century as prominent members of the council sadly still saw housing improvements as municipal socialism and opposed it.
Campaign against the Death Penalty
Cowen campaigned against the death penalty, through his proprietorship of the Daily Chronicle, 100 years before its final abolition in Britain in December 1969.
It was as early as 6th January 1869, that, “the Chronicle published a leading article against capital punishment, deploying the arguments familiar to present-day abolitionists”.
This leader coincided with the issue being brought before parliament by Charles Gilpin and it is reported that the, “Chronicle confidently predicted: ‘It will be the glory of the first Household Suffrage Parliament to finish the work Sir Samuel Romilly so gloriously inaugurated.’
This wasn’t to be of course; it would take another 100 years and several high-profile cases of innocent people being executed, before the death penalty would be finally abolished in this country.
Helped build the Co-operative Movement
Cowen helped to build the Co-operative Movement so that working people could buy food at a fair price and indeed he could be said to have kickstarted the whole process with his famous reading of Holyoakes book on cooperation at the Blaydon Mechanics’ Institute in 1859.
By 1873, the Co-operative Movement in Northumberland and Durham, had more members as a proportion of the population than anywhere else in the country, with 43 615 members.
This compared favourably with only 128 members in Birmingham out of a population of 343 000, and 600 members out of a population of 240,00 in Sheffield.
The popularity of the Co-operative Movement was so great that membership of the North East Coast Societies by 1900 was proportionately the highest in England at 200 000, of whom 82 000 were from the Durham coalfield and 53 000 from Tyneside.
The development of the Cooperative Society in North East England took place for several reasons. There were certain key societies in places such as Blaydon, West Cramlington, Sunderland and Wallsend and key individuals, one of whom was Joseph Cowen.
Internationalist strand
Cowen was also very much part of the internationalist strand that has run through the North East’s social history.
He supported refugees from other countries, particularly those who were involved in uprisings against tyrannical regimes, such as in Hungary or what was to become a unified Italy. These refugees included Mazzini, Louis Blanc, and Ledru-Rollin, as well as Herzen and Bakunin, while other leaders, such as Garibaldi, Felice Orsini and Lajos Kossuth came to visit him in Blaydon.
To this day there is a plaque on the wall on the corner of Nelson Street and Grainger Street to mark a bookshop frequented by the Italian Unification leader Garibaldi in 1854 and also visited by William Lloyd Garrison, who was something of an American version of Cowen, as he too was a journalist and social reformer and an abolitionist of slavery as well and also Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian social revolutionary.
Garibaldi was also presented with a ceremonial sword during one of his stays on Tyneside and was afforded a procession through the streets of Newcastle when he was met with cheering crowds.
His death
Cowen died in 1900. A fine bronze statue of him stands at the bottom of Westgate Road, in Fenkle Street in Newcastle and his letters were published by his daughter in 1909.
He left an important legacy of radical work and helped the region to become more interconnected as he developed networks such as the Co-operative Movement and the Mechanics’ Institutes.
By his death in 1900, Joseph Cowen had seen the North East become a region, with a vibrant working-class culture and a solidarity, which had helped ordinary working people to articulate their needs and campaign for ways by which they could be addressed.
So, what can we learn from the story of Joseph Cowen and Radical Newcastle?
I think what we can learn is that in the second half of the 19th century there was a self confidence in Newcastle and the North East, which was lost after the end of the First World War and which we have never fully regained. We need to do so.
There was also a sense that people in the region, during Cowen’s time, could change their situation and that sense is also sorely needed today as a sense of hopelessness is all too common and a vicious circle is created, whereby people think that politicians can do little to help them, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The story of Cowen and those around him, shows that change for the better can come and we need that confidence and determination again today.
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