Charles
Prestwich Scott, the son of Russell Scott, a successful businessman,
was born in Bath in 1846. His grandfather,
also called Russell Scott, had worked closely with Joseph
Priestley to establish the Unitarian
movement in Britain.
Charles was educated at Hove House, a Unitarian
school in Brighton and Clapham Grammar
School. After the passing of the 1854 University Act, Nonconformists
were allowed to study at Oxford and Cambridge.
Individual colleges could now devise their own entry rules. Scott
was rejected by two colleges, Queen's and Christ Church, because he
did not have a Church of England baptist
certificate. However, he was accepted by Corpus
Christi College and he started his studies in October 1865.
While at Oxford, Scott was approached by his cousin, John Taylor,
to write for the Manchester Guardian.
Taylor, the son of John Edward Taylor,
the founder of the newspaper, ran the London office. In 1871 he decided
that he needed an editor based in Manchester,
and appointed the 25 year old C. P. Scott to the post. It was agreed
that Scott should receive a salary of £400 a year and one-tenth
of the profits.
In 1874 Scott married Rachel Cook, the daughter of the Professor of
History at St Andrews University. Rachel
was one of the first students to study at Girton
College and was introduced to the Scott family by Barbara
Bodichon. Over the next few years Rachel had four children: Madeline
(1876), Laurence (1877), John Russell (1879) and Edward Taylor (1883).
Scott took a keen interest in further education and was a trustee
of Owens College and a member of its council
between 1890 and 1898. C. P. Scott was also an advocate of universal
suffrage. His newspaper gave strong support to Jacob Bright's
Bill for Women's Suffrage. Scott also joined
Elizabeth Butler in her campaign against
the Contagious Diseases Act.
John Taylor did not share C. P. Scott's views on parliamentary
reform and ordered him not to use the Manchester
Guardian to support the campaign. On 29th April, 1892, Taylor
wrote to Scott again on this issue: "Your article yesterday for
the Female Suffrage Bill was adroitly done, and your display of the
cloven foot most discreetly managed; still it was quite visible. I
must ask you not to advocate this measure whilst I live."
Although Scott was now receiving 25% of the profits of the Manchester
Guardian, Taylor still controlled 75% of the company and had
the power to over-rule his editor. Scott no longer received a salary
but he did well from this agreement as the profits during this period
ranged from £12,000 to £24,000 a year.
In the 1895 General Election, Scott stood
as the Liberal Party candidate for North-East
Manchester. He won with a majority of 667 and once in the House
of Commons identified himself with the left-wing of the party.
In Parliament C. P. Scott advocated women's suffrage
and reform of the House of Lords.
In 1899 Scott strongly opposed the Boer War.
This created a great deal of public hostility and both Scott's house
and the Manchester Guardian building
had to be given police protection. Sales of the newspaper also dropped
during this period. However, despite holding unpopular views on the
war, Scott managed to regain his seat in the 1900
General Election. With the help of his able lieutenants, C.
E. Montague and L. T. Hobhouse, Scott
continued to edit the newspaper during the period he sat in the House
of Commons.
When John Taylor died in October 1905, he left instructions in his
will that C. P. Scott could buy the Manchester
Guardian for £10,000. The trustees were unwilling to
obey these demands and eventually Scott had to raise £242,000
to buy the newspaper. This was a high price considering the newspaper
only made a profit of £1,200 in 1905.
Scott initially opposed Britain's involvement in the First
World War. Scott supported his friends, John
Burns, John Morley and Charles
Trevelyan, when they resigned from the government over this issue.
However, he refused to join anti-war organizations such as the Union
of Democratic Control (UDC). As he wrote at the time: "I
am strongly of the opinion that the war ought not to have taken place
and that we ought not to have become parties to it, but once in it
the whole future of our nation is at stake and we have no choice but
do the utmost we can to secure success."
Scott did oppose conscription introduced
in 1916 and favoured the attempts made by Arthur
Henderson to secure a negotiated peace in 1917. Scott also thought
it unwise to impose harsh conditions on Germany after the war had
come to an end in 1918.
Although Scott was critical of the way David
Lloyd George handled the peace negotiations at Versailles
he supported him in his struggle with Herbert
Asquith. After the Conservative
victory in the 1922 General Election, Scott
worked hard to unite the Liberal Party.
However, his loyal support of Lloyd George made this an impossible
task.
C. E. Montague, who was married to C.
P. Scott's only daughter, Madeline, died in June, 1929, after working
for the Manchester Guardian for
thirty-five years. The following month, Scott, after fifty-seven years
as editor, decided to retire. Scott had initially expected his eldest
son, Laurence Scott, to succeed him as editor. However, while involved
in charity work in the Ancoats slums, he caught tuberculosis
and died. It was therefore, Edward Scott, the youngest son, who took
over from his father. Although officially retired, Charles Prestwich
Scott kept a close watch over the newspaper until his death on 1st
January, 1932.
C.P.
Scott on his daily ride to the Manchester
Guardian.
(1)
Charles Prestwich Scott, letter to his father while at Oxford
University (1st May, 1866)
On Sunday morning immediately after breakfast, I was summoned for
the first time into the awful presence of the dean in his official
capacity. He asked my name (being a great philosopher, whose lofty
gaze does not usually descend as low as first year men) and desired
to know why I had not been in Chapel. I pleaded temporary indisposition,
and was dismissed with an injunction not to repeat my offence.
(2)
C. P. Scott, wrote to his brother about working on the Manchester
Guardian (April, 1871)
With the other people in the office I am on a very pleasant and friendly
footing. Acton takes three leaders a week, Couper one, and there is
an odd leader (we have two long ones on Wednesday) which may fall
to the lot of any one of us. My hours are pretty much as follows -
I get up at 7.30, breakfast, read the Guardian thoroughly and
walk into town, arriving soon after ten o'clock. I work on all day
and walk back for dinner about six o'clock. Read and write in the
evening and go to bed soon after ten.
(3)
In his diary, C. P. Scott recorded details of a meeting with David
Lloyd George about the decision of the WSPU
to disrupt meetings held by leading figures in the government. (2nd
December, 1911)
We talked almost entirely of the Women's Suffrage movement and the
damage done to it by the militant outrages. I urged that the militants
should be ignored and the Suffrage campaign pressed on as though they
didn't exist. That's all very well for us," said Lloyd George,
"though it's difficult; I don't mind and it doesn't put me out
much at meetings or irritate me. I'm used to the rough and tumble
and have had to fight my way; so is Churchill, but it's different
with Grey; he isn't accustomed to interruption. But what really matters
is the effect on the audiences and the public.
(4)
C. P. Scott, Manchester Guardian
(9th July, 1912)
We do not know whether the present House of Commons will be prepared
to do justice to women. A few months ago there can be little doubt
that it would, and nothing that has since happened supplies any adequate
reason for a change of purpose. The follies and excesses of a small
section of women, deeply resented and regretted by the vast majority
of women, ought not to be allowed to weigh in the balance against
a claim which has been admitted to be just.
(5)
C. P. Scott, letter to Manchester and Salford Trades and Labour Council
(7th August, 1914)
I am strongly of the opinion that the war ought not to have taken
place and that we ought not to have become parties to it, but once
in it the whole future of our nation is at stake and we have no choice
but do the utmost we can to secure success.
(6)
C. P. Scott, editor of the Manchester
Guardian, wrote a letter to Charles
Trevelyan suggesting that he should not publish a pamphlet he
had written that raised doubts about the reported atrocities being
committed by the Germans in Belgium (5th September, 1914)
It would be expedient to hold back the pamphlet. The war is at
present going badly against us and any day may bring more serious
news. I suppose that as soon as the Germans have time to turn their
attention to us we may expect to see their big guns mounted on the
other side of the Channel and their Zeppelins flying over Dover and
perhaps London. People will be wholly impatient of any sort of criticism
of policy at such a time and I am afraid that premature action now
might destroy any hope of usefulness for your organisation (Union
of Democratic Control) later. I saw Angell and Ramsay MacDonald yesterday
afternoon and found that they had come to the same conclusion.
(7)
On the 4th September, 1914, C. P. Scott,
recorded details of a meeting he had with David
Lloyd George that day.
He (Lloyd George), Beauchamp, Morley and Burns
had all resigned from the Cabinet on the Saturday (1st August) before
the declaration of war on the ground that they could not agree to
Grey's pledge to Cambon (the French ambassador in London) to protect
north coast of France against Germans, regarding this as equivalent
to war with Germany. On urgent representations of Asquith he (Lloyd
George) and Beauchamp agreed on Monday evening to remain in the Cabinet
without in the smallest degree, as far as he was concerned, withdrawing
his objection to the policy but solely in order to prevent the appearance
of disruption in face of a grave national danger. That remains his
position. He is, as it were, an unattached member of the Cabinet.
(8)
C. P. Scott, letter to Arthur Balfour
about the threaten introduction of military
conscription (2nd January, 1916)
You know that I was honestly willing to accept compulsory
military service, provided that the voluntary system had first been
tried out, and had failed to supply the men needed and who could still
be spared from industry, and were numerically worth troubling about.
Those, I think, are not unreasonable conditions, and I thought that
in the conversation I had with you last September you agreed with
them. I cannot feel that they had been fulfilled, and I do feel very
strongly that compulsion is now being forced upon us without proof
shown of its necessity, and I resent this the more deeply because
it seems to me in the nature of a breach of faith with those who,
like myself - there are plenty of them - were prepared to make great
sacrifices of feeling and conviction in order to maintain the national
unity and secure every condition needed for winning the war.
(9)
C. P. Scott, recorded in his diary comments made by David
Lloyd George after he had heard Philip Gibbs
speak at a private meeting on 27th December, 1917.
I listened last night, at a dinner given to Philip Gibbs on
his return from the front, to the most impressive and moving description
from him of what the war (on the Western Front) really means, that
I have heard. Even an audience of hardened politicians and journalists
were strongly affected. If people really knew, the war would be stopped
tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know. The correspondents
don't write and the censorship wouldn't pass the truth. What they
do send is not the war, but just a pretty picture of the war with
everybody doing gallant deeds. The thing is horrible and beyond human
nature to bear and I feel I can't go on with this bloody business.
(10)
After the 1922 General Election, the wife
of Herbert Asquith, wrote to C. P. Scott
criticizing his decision to support David Lloyd
George in his campaign to be re-elected (21st November, 1922)
I feel very bitter about Lloyd George; his is the kind of character
I mind most, because I feel his charm and recognize his genius; but
he is full of emotion without heart, brilliant with intellect, and
a gambler without foresight. He has reduced our prestige and stirred
up resentment by his folly - in India, Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Russia,
America, and France.
(11)
C. P. Scott, letter to Henry Nevinson
(7th September, 1927)
Will you kindly write us a signed review of this book about Northcliffe.
He would be important if only because his rise is the rise of the
vast popular press. The tragedy of his life seems to me to lie in
the fact that though he knew how to create the instruments not only
of profit but of power he had not the least idea what to do with his
power when he got it.
(12)
Kingsley Martin joined the Manchester
Guardian in 1927. Martin later wrote an account of his editor.
C. P. Scott was a remarkable figure. At the age of eighty he was bent
nearly double, blind in one eye, but more fierce in expression than
any other man I have known. He still rode his bicycle through the
muddy and dangerous streets of Manchester, swaying between the tramlines,
with white hair and whiskers floating in the breeze, equally oblivious
of rain and traffic. Unconsciously, I am sure, he thought that no
one in Manchester would hurt him.
(13)
King George V, letter to C.P. Scott on
his retirement (July, 1929)
For fifty-seven years you have been responsible for the conduct of
a great newspaper, and his Majesty, while regretting your resignation,
congratulates you on an achievement which must surely be unique in
the annals of journalism.
(14)
Kingsley Martin, Father Figures
(1966)
When C. P. Scott died, the innumerable tributes to him all emphasized
his courage and integrity, his humanitarianism and his championship
of unpopular causes. They omitted comment on his remarkable astuteness,
his diplomatic gift, his caution, his capacity for compromise, his
knowledge of when to strike and when to forebear.
He could claim, above all, that he had been right - right about the
Boer War, right about Home Rule, right about Women's Suffrage, right
about the Versailles Peace Treaty, right about a host of other smaller
causes which we have forgotten because they have been won. The influence
of the Manchester Guardian was due to the fact that the causes
it took up were never run as stunts, taken up in the hot mood and
dropped in the cold; they were clearly imagined lines of policy, consistently
and moderately pursued year after year, boldly urged in season, persuasively
advocated out of season, but never abandoned until victory was achieved.
(15)
The New Statesman (January, 1932)
Every newspaper lives by appealing to a particular public. It can
only go ahead of its times if it carries its public with it. Success
in journalism depends on understanding the public. But success is
of two kinds. Northcliffe had a genius for understanding his public
and he used it for making money, not for winning permanent influence.
He became a millionaire because he was his own most appreciative reader;
he instinctively appealed in the most profitable way to the millions
of men and women whose tastes and prejudices were the same as his
own. He lived by flattering. He did not educate or change his public
in any essential; he merely induced it to buy newspapers.
C. P. Scott succeeded in a different way. He had just as much flair,
just as acute an understanding of his public as Northcliffe. But his
relationship to it was a professional, not a commercial relation.
He taught his public to trust his integrity, to rely on the facts
he told them, to respect his judgment, and to listen to his criticism.
He offered his undivided services. I remember his saying that there
was a definite moment in his life, the equivalent of a religious conversion,
when he dedicated his life wholly to his paper and the causes it served.
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