John
Williams Benn,
the son of Julius Benn and Ann Taylor, was born in Hyde near Manchester
in 1850. He was named after John de Kewer Williams, the Congregational
minister who converted Julius Benn to Christianity. In 1851 the family
moved to London after Julius and Ann were
offered work at the London City Mission in Stepney. The couple eventually
opened the Home in the East, an institute for homeless boys in the
East End of London.
The Home in the East was so successful that in 1856 Julius Benn was
invited by the government to take charge of the first Reformatory
and Industrial School in Britain at Tiffield in Northamptonshire.
Benn was asked to resign after five years at Tiffield when it was
discovered that he was heavily in debt after investing unwisely in
a company that produced agricultural equipment.
The family moved back to London where Julius
Benn became a missionary with the East London Congregational Evangelistic
Association. With a salary of only £100 and with a family of
eight children, it took Benn seventeen years to pay off his debts.
John received little formal education and was mainly taught at home
by his parents. As the eldest child, John was expected to contribute
to the family income. He started a part-time stamp-business and by
the time he was fourteen he had made a profit of £80.
In 1867 John was employed by T.
Lawes & Co, a wholesale furniture company. He initially worked
as a office clerk but later began designing furniture for the company.
By 1873 he had married Lily Pickstone, a distant relative of Josiah
Wedgwood, and was earning £300 a year as designer and manager
of what was now known as Lawes Randall & Co. Over the next few
years the couple had six children, including two who were later to
become national figures, Ernest Benn and William
Wedgwood Benn.
After visiting the Art
and Industrial Exhibition in Paris in 1878, Benn wrote an article
about what he had seen. He sent the article to The
Furniture Gazette.
Benn was so disappointed when the editor rejected the article that
he decided to establish his own trade journal. With his life-savings
of £800, John formed the publishing company
Benn
Brothers. The first
edition of The
Cabinet Maker,
an illustrated monthly journal dealing with the artistic and technical
aspects of furniture, first appeared in July 1880. After a slow start
it gradually established itself as the main journal for the furniture
trade in Britain.
While running the business, John
Benn was involved in charitable work in London.
William was deeply influenced by his father's attitude to the poor.
He recalled how on one occasion they were walking to chapel when they
saw a man carrying a placard that said: "I have suffered a great
injustice". Turning to his son, John remarked, "Will, I
have suffered many injustices. Let's give him a couple of shillings."
In 1883 John's brother, William
Benn, suffered a mental breakdown shortly after marrying Florence
Nicholson. He became a patient at the Bethnal House Asylum and after
six weeks his doctors recommended that he be taken home. Julius, who
was now the pastor of the Gravel Lane Congregational Meeting House
in Wapping, decided to take his son for a holiday to Matlock Bridge
in Derbyshire. On 26th February 1883, while Julius was sleeping, his
son killed him with a single blow to the head with an earthenware
chamber-pot. Afterwards, William tried to kill himself by cutting
his throat. William was not charged with murder and instead was locked
away in a lunatic asylum.
The London County Council (LCC) was created
in 1889 as a result of the 1888 Local Government
Act. The LCC was the first metropolitan-wide form of general local
government. A group of Liberals and leaders
of the Trade Union movement in London
got together and formed the Progressive Party. John Benn accepted
the invitation to stand as the progressive candidate for East Finsbury.
Elections were held in January 1889 and Benn and his fellow members
of the Progressive Party, won seventy of the 118 seats.
The new council met under the chairmanship of the Earl
of Rosebery. Members of the ruling group included Sidney
Webb (who became chairman of the Technical Instruction Committee),
Will Crooks (chairman of Public Control
Committee, John Burns and Ben
Tillett. On the London County Council
Benn became a strong advocate of the municipal control of London tramways.
In 1889 John Benn also became involved in the successful London
Dock Strike. Later William Wedgwood Benn
recalled how Tom Mann, John
Burns and other strike leaders had breakfast in the house after
addressing members at open-air trade union meetings.
In 1891 John Benn was told that his brother, William Benn, had fully
recovered from his mental illness. Benn now approached Henry Matthews,
the Home Secretary, and promised to be personally responsible for
his brother if he was released. Matthews agreed and after nine years
in an asylum William joined his wife at home in Balham. It was decided
to change his name to William Rutherford. The following year Florence
Rutherford gave birth to a daughter, Margaret. Many years later Margaret
Rutherford was to become one of Britain's leading stage and screen
stars.
In March 1891 Benn was adopted as the Liberal
Party parliamentary candidate for Wapping. The sitting member
was C. J. Richie, the President of the Board
of Trade, in the Conservative
administration headed by the Marquess of
Salisbury. In the 1892 General Election
Benn defeated Richie by 398 votes. In the House
of Commons Benn's concentrated on the issue of public transport.
In 1894 Benn visited America with John Burns
where the two men studied how different cities were organising their
transport facilities.
After Benn's election to the House
of Commons he ceased to be active in the family publishing business.
His eldest son, Ernest Benn, now became managing
director of Benn
Brothers. He increased the number of trade journals the company published.
Later, he was to change the name of the company to Ernest Benn Ltd
and expanded into art books and novels.
After entering the House of Commons Benn
retained his seat on the London County Council.
John Benn lost his seat
in the 1895 General Election to the Conservative
candidate, Harry
Marks,
by four votes. Benn was unhappy about the way Marks had behaved during
the campaign and decided to petition under the 1883
Corrupt and Illegal Practice Act. He claimed that Marks "before,
during, and after the election" had been "guilty of bribery,
treating, undue influence, and of aiding, abetting, counselling and
procuring the offence of impersonation". Benn lost the court
case held in February 1896 and as a result had to pay legal costs
of £6,000. The judge ruled that Benn could not be a candidate
for the Wapping constituency for seven years.
Benn was determined to return to the House
of Commons and in 1897 he became the Liberal
candidate at a by-election at Deptford. Howard
Marks, now used his recently acquired newspaper, The Sun, to
campaign against Benn. Although Benn reduced the size of
the Conservative majority, he was
defeated by 324 votes.
For the next seven years John Benn concentrated
on his work on the London County Council.
As Chairman of the Highways Committee, Benn pioneered the idea of
a cheap, efficient and integrated municipal transport system. In 1903
Benn was responsible for the introduction of London's electric tramway.
It was not until a by-election at the dockyard town of Devonport in
1904 that Benn was able to return to the House
of Commons. In the 1906 General Election
Benn retained his seat. He also had the satisfaction of being joined
in Parliament by his twenty-eight year old son, William
Wedgwood Benn, who won his father's old seat at Wapping.
John
Benn was defeated in the January 1910 General
Election and failed to win at Clapham in December 1910. Benn,
who was created a baronet in 1914, made no further attempts to return
to the House of Commons and for the next
few years led the Progressive Party on the London
County Council. He resigned as leader after being struck down
by pneumonia in February 1918.
The following year Benn became a supporter of the Liberals
in Parliament who opposed David Lloyd George
returning as leader of the party. The group led by William
Wedgwood Benn, became known as the Wee Frees, a name was given
to them by John Benn. The
Wee Frees had been a small group of Free Church of Scotland members
who refused to accept the union of their church with the United Presbyterian
Church.
John Benn, remained a member of the London
County Council until his death on 10th April, 1922.
(1)
In the early 1880s John Benn gave over a thousand lectures on a wide
variety of different subjects. He later recorded in his journal why
he spent so much time doing this.
I never regarded this platform work as more than
an artistic sheet anchor and an accessory, but it brought me into
contact with some of the most interesting men of the day, ranging
from the Earl of Shaftesbury to the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. It gave me
a practice in public speaking which few men can get in private life.
(2)
In his unpublished memoirs, Joys of Adversity, John Benn recalled
his parliamentary election campaign in 1892.
Because of the work my father had done, there
was a friend in every alley, and a welcome in every court. "This
young man", said my opponents, "had no supporters among
the respectable people in the leading thoroughfares." My reply
was, "I aspire to the honour of being the member for the back
streets". I had seen sufficient of overcrowding and house-farming
in the district of Cable Street to lead me to favour improved sanitary
laws and better homes for the working-classes. My knowledge of common
lodging-houses, and personal experiences therein, led me to plead
for the erection of poor men's hostels by the County Council. An acquaintance
with the ins and outs of a business in which sweating is not, alas,
unknown, prompted me strenuously to favour the cause of trade unions.
(3) Beatrice
Webb, diary entry (30th July, 1893)
There is no one man in the London County
Council who dominates the organisation. The LCC is really run by various
groups of county councillors circulating round the three officials
- the chairman, vice-chairman and deputy chairman - of the Council.
Of these the most prominent are the group who direct the parliamentary
and political policy of the County Council - Frank Costelloe, Sidney
(Webb) and John Benn.
(4)
Herbert Asquith sent a letter of condolence
to William Wedgwood Benn when he heard about
the death of his father.
I have a vivid memory of your father in the early
County Council days, when we have often stood on the same platform
and fought for the same causes. That is a long time ago - measured
by the mechanics of the calendar; but he never seemed to grow older,
and was among all the public men I have known the one whom I should
select as the incarnation of perennial youth. It is a splendid and
rare gift to live and fight, and work and die, with an undiminished
faith in great ideals; and that gift was his.
(5) William
Wedgwood Benn wrote about his father after his death in 1922.
It is no easy task to dissect our family life
and describe my father's share in it. We are all so knit together
and his influence (and my mother's too, for to us, as to themselves,
they seemed one) and something inseparably essential and pervasive.
My father was first a man of feeling, next a tenacious man. These
are the ingredients of the fighter. They ripened with experience into
those wise, yet forceful qualities which made him a natural guide
and protector. With him, this posture of responsibility and defence
came all too early. From adolescence, even from childhood, he was
a high tower to his parents and his brothers in the struggles and
tragedies of their lives. To his own children, on their much easier
road, he was a guardian companion.
(6) John
Clifford, letter to Lady Benn, (April 1922)
He fought mightily for the welfare of our vast
population, and with a wisdom that gave full sway to spiritual as
well as material conditions. The Christian conception of citizenship
has had no finer exemplification in my time, and the results of his
labours will enrich millions for years to come.
