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St Katherine’s Hall, December 21st: The debate had ended and the vote just counted when the gas lights went out. Pandemonium erupted in Aberdeen’s Parliament with agitated members striking matches so the Speaker could decipher the results of the division. Liberal complaints that it was too dark for accuracy were overruled and their motion lost by a solitary vote; then to a cacophony of cheers and hoots of derision … victorious Conservatives and dejected Liberals… groped their way to the street along dark staircases. Evening Express, 22 December 1881
A few months before this press account the Parliamentary Debating Society had been inaugurated at a meeting in the Coffee Hall of the Shiprow Café: with this, the second such parliament in the city got under way.
For the next half century it was to prove a popular forum for North-East people debating everything from the Soviet Union to unemployment, and the League of Nations to foreign fishing in the Moray Firth.
Modelled on the Westminster parliament, each season’s debate began with a reading of the king’s speech outlining proposals for the forthcoming session. The party in ‘government’ presented motions for debate and the ‘opposition’ submitted amendments which, if won, would force the resignation of the ‘prime minister’ and the other side would take over the government benches.
Aberdeen Parliament took its role seriously. Members would select a constituency to ‘represent’, often English ones, possibly coinciding with their own Westminster favourites – for example, W. Clark Mitchell sat as a Liberal for Carlisle and later West Leeds. He wrote a newspaper column as The Young Parliamentary Hand, (an allusion to Herbert Gladstone, son of William Ewart, the actual MP for West Leeds, and an old parliamentary hand).
Mitchell valued Aberdeen Parliament as a vehicle for free and informed debate open to everyone. Along with MPs there were the other offices of state: the prime minister, a chancellor, ministers for the main government departments, a speaker of the house, and so on.
There was an appetite for political debate, set up along democratic principles, at a time many adults were still denied the franchise. The Great Reform Act (1832) having failed most of the population led to revived struggles for universal suffrage throughout the remainder of the 19th into the 20th century.
It was during the periods of greatest activism that that the Aberdeen Parliaments were established: 1865 – two years before the 1867 Act; 1881 – three years ahead of the 1884 Act. Self-Help by Smiles
Participation in political decision making was recognised by those excluded from it as the only way to improve their lives: dangerous working practices, appalling housing, poor health, low wages and inadequate schooling ending for most at 14.
Without the welfare state we have today people either turned to friendly societies, trades unions or study and self-improvement (with a helping hand from Self-Help, written by Scot Samuel Smiles, hugely influential in the second half of the 19th century).
Self-improvement must have been a motivating factor for many attending the Aberdeen Parliament with its opportunities to learn committee protocol, formal meeting procedures, public speaking and the like. Members had to keep on top of wide-ranging topics to avoid being shown up before their peers.
Thomas Corall was one such Aberdeen parliamentarian keen to ‘better himself’, as he confided to his notebook. As a young man he enrolled with the International Correspondence School, studying subjects from arithmetic to public speaking over many years.
Son of an iron moulder who worked on the casting of the Duthie Park gates, he was apprenticed to the baker James Wood at 14. Having served his time, he followed his trade in America before returning to marry Harriet McHardy from Braemar and take up a job as a ‘small bread’ (shortbread) baker with Mitchell & Muill until 1914 when he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. By 1916 he was a stretcher bearer at the Somme.
His notebooks reflect the suffering, loss and loneliness of those trapped in that man-made nightmare – treatments for injuries, pain management, lice, dysentery, sleeplessness. In his wallet, along with Hetty’s photograph and four tiny milk teeth belonging to their children, were addresses of wartime comrades and a note:‘Short Blast or Wavering Blast, Air Raid; Long Blast, Air Raid finished; Hand Rattles, Poison Gas; Hand Bells, Poison Gas Cleared’.
After the war Thomas was active in the Bakers’ Union as well as being a committed Conservative and Unionist. His political views drew him into the Aberdeen Parliament and by 1926 he had held various offices, including minister of agriculture and president of the board of trade.
An inveterate accumulator of information, he saved articles from newspapers and journals and purchased booklets such as those produced by the right-wing Anti-Socialist Union to provide him with debate ammunition against the socialists across the chamber.
Diversity of opinion was surely a reason for the longevity of the parliament, but not all views were tolerated in the city. While the Duchess of Atholl – dubbed the Red Duchess for her anti-fascist views – was given a hearing, no invitation was extended to the British Union of Fascists. Their tour of the UK began and was halted, unheard, when 2,000 Aberdonians packed the Music Hall, and jeered and sang the Internationale until the Blackshirts slunk away.
Taxation is a great divider of views. During one budget debate in the Aberdeen Parliament its chancellor of the exchequer, H.M. MacLeod, proposed raising motor spirits by 1½d (0.5p), adding 5% to cigarette papers and removing tax from foods such as tea, cocoa and currants. Capt. Wedgwood Benn
Thomas generally regarded taxes as harmful to the empire, but on this occasion he argued it should be applied to food so the poor could make their small contribution to society. As for alcohol, he proposed duty should go up on beer and spirits by 25% and the levy increased on furs, which he deemed nothing but swank.
He dismissed MacLeod’s proposed poll tax of £1, fearing it would lead to civil war. Shame one M. Thatcher had not taken note of the Aberdeen Parliament of 1927.
General elections provided opportunities to get actual MPs to visit. Conservative & Unionist MP for Aberdeen South, Sir Frederick Thomson, was particularly supportive. It is likely Capt. Wedgwood Benn, Labour MP for North Aberdeen, appeared before it: he and the Aberdeen parliamentarian J. G. Burnett fought the election of 1931, both suffering humiliation on the stump from local anarchists and railwaymen.
In its time Aberdeen Parliament provided an outlet for political debate and a springboard for fledgling politicians.
A member from the 1890s who went on to become a Westminster MP and Privy Councillor was Tom Kennedy from Kennethmont. Both he and his wife were members of the Social Democratic Federation as well as being active in the Aberdeen Parliament.
Robert Boothby, MP for East Aberdeenshire turned down appeals to appear, pleading competing social engagements.
Boothby’s reluctance aside, the parliament must have welcomed involvement from Westminster MPs to add gravitas to their proceedings, but it should not be supposed that the advantage was all one way. Such was its reputation for quality speakers, members of the parliament received invitations from far and wide. Lively sessions
There were lighter moments – socials, whist drives, teas, musical programmes and dances. In 1925, the 60th anniversary of the first parliament was celebrated in the West-End Café at which a Mr A. Murray called on local young people to get involved so they might ‘cultivate a taste for good books, not the rubbish of the present day’, for the parliament ‘would help them to fit themselves for work’.
At a commemorative dinner in the Caledonian Hotel in 1931, Thomas used the opportunity to catch colleagues in postprandial good humour, noting, ‘17 subs paid’ on the back of his invitation card. But 17 could not sustain the parliament and despite this being an election year, support for it was declining.
Despite lively sessions, particularly those involving Aberdeen United Trades Council, the parliament’s days were numbered. It asked much of its participants and enthusiastic as he was, Thomas decided it was too arduous. In 1930 he resigned as clerk to the house, although he continued to support it.
Published in Leopard Magazine May 2011
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