Wallace Lawler
Encyclopedia
Wallace Leslie Lawler was a British
Liberal
politician. He was elected a Member of Parliament
(MP) by gaining Birmingham, Ladywood from Labour
at a by-election
on 26 June 1969. However, Lawler only served for one year, as Labour's Doris Fisher
regained the seat from him at the 1970 general election
. He was the last Liberal to serve as a Member of Parliament in Birmingham until Liberal Democrat John Hemming
won election to the Birmingham, Yardley seat in 2005.
, the son of Stephen and Elizabeth Lawler (née Taylor). He was educated at St Paul’s School, Worcester and privately at Malvern, Worcestershire
. In 1943 he married Catherine Letitia Durcan. They had two sons and two daughters .
in 1938 to work as an aircraft engineer. During the Second World War Lawler served in the 8th Battalion, the Worcestershire Regiment
. In 1964 he founded his own plastics business and later took over another established firm called ABCD Plastics, of which he became chairman.
, Dr J L Wilson
. He also worked for the community through the Wallace Lawler Friendship Trust (1969) and Citizens’ Service Ltd (1970)
was dismal.
for nearly 30 years when he won the Newtown Ward. He was re-elected in 1965 not only holding his seat but increasing his majority fourfold. This was despite the fact that Labour worked hard to unseat him and had assigned one of the party’s most experienced agents to work to secure his defeat. He won his Newtown seat again in 1968, and between 1968-1972 he led the Liberal Party’s small group on the Council. In 1971 he was created an Alderman
, a position he held until his death.
as Liberal candidate in Dudley
in the Black Country
at the 1955 general election
coming third with under 10% of the vote and losing his deposit
. He then fought Birmingham, Perry Barr at the 1959 general election
. He again came third but this time scored 14% of the poll and avoided a lost deposit. In 1964
he was the candidate in Birmingham, Handsworth
. Again he came third but this time he achieved 17.6% of the poll.
he switched to Birmingham, Ladywood. In what was by that time one of the smallest constituencies in the country with an electorate of only just over 25,000 (to be compared with electorates of around double that in the rest of the city) Lawler found he was able to make a greater impact at Parliamentary level, campaigning directly with the people who lived in the area. He managed to come second to Labour in 1966, beating the Conservatives
into third place. He gained nearly 24% of the vote to Labour’s 58%. This result, plus the work in the constituency that Lawler did in the next three years, laid the foundation for his attempt on the seat at the Ladywood by-election
in 1969.
. Given his own background of community work and his experience as a city councillor, Lawler involved himself heavily in the problems of the community, championing the underprivileged and their concerns over housing, homelessness and social upheaval. In 1967, in the controversy which followed the screening of the Television play ‘Cathy Come Home
’ he was reported as saying that he dealt with a ‘Cathy family’ every day in his political work in Birmingham. Later that year he organised a mass petition with more than 80,000 signatures to the prime minister to protest against increases in electricity prices and that October he arranged a protest demonstration of mainly Birmingham pensioners to travel to London to hand in letters and petitions at Number 10, Downing Street.
When the sitting Labour MP for Ladywood, Victor Yates
died in January 1969, a by-election was caused. The election writ was not moved until June, giving Lawler time to consolidate his position and when the election was held on 26 June he won the seat with a majority of 2,713 votes over his Labour rival Doris Fisher
with the Conservative, Dr Louis Glass in third place. All three candidates were members of Birmingham City Council. Ladywood was the first Liberal parliamentary success in Birmingham for 80 years.
was a difficult campaign for the Liberal Party. Nationally, with just 7.5% of the popular vote, it was reduced from thirteen to just six seats, back to the level it had achieved in the darkest days of the 1950s and three of those seats were held with majorities of under 1,000 votes. With opinion polarised between Labour and Conservative parties, Lawler could not hold the seat he had gained at the by-election the year before, despite his best efforts at nursing the constituency. One commentator reported that “Wallace Lawler is living proof that personality matters in politics. He is Liberal MP for Birmingham Ladywood. Single-handed, he has revived Liberalism in a city which had long forgotten there was such a thing.....He knows everybody and all their problems and everybody knows him.” However despite his best efforts the seat was won back for Labour by Doris Fisher with a majority of 980 votes.
he would not be able to make immigration an election issue, saying the electorate had more immediate and pressing issues to worry them such as the cost of living. Despite this stance, Lawler’s reputation inside the Liberal Party locally and nationally was somewhat tarnished by his views on Commonwealth immigration. He advocated a policy of dispersal of immigrants and suggested that most categories of immigrants should be prevented from settling in Birmingham. Councillor Paul Tilsley
was one leading Liberal in Birmingham to express doubts about the choice of Lawler for the Ladywood by-election, given his controversial remarks about immigration in 1968 Tilsley became one of the longest serving Liberal councillors in the country - as of 2011, he is Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council in the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats
which runs the city.
proved a major stimulus in reviving the political and electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party after 1970 and that the techniques of community politics were used to good electoral effects across Britain but especially in the city of Liverpool
and other urban centres. The Liberal Party Assembly at Eastbourne
in 1970 adopted community politics as an electoral and philosophical approach, declaring that ‘Our role as political activists is to help and organise people in communities to take and use power, to use our political skills to redress grievances; and to represent people at all levels of the political structure.” Stuart Mole commented that “The techniques of community politics had first been fashioned in the Newtown area of Birmingham by Wallace Lawler.” This was appropriate according to one historian of the Liberal Party because of community politics’ curious echoes of tactics used by Joseph Chamberlain
and Francis Schnadhorst
to build up Liberal support in Birmingham almost a century earlier.
As one political scientist has commented, “In fact community organisation in Britain was not pioneered by new social movements but by the Liberal Party in Birmingham. Its leader in the 1960s, Wallace Lawler, placed a high priority on organisation in the localities.”
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
politician. He was elected a Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
(MP) by gaining Birmingham, Ladywood from Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
at a by-election
Birmingham Ladywood by-election, 1969
The Birmingham Ladywood by-election, in Birmingham, on 26 June 1969 was held after Labour Member of Parliament Victor Yates died on 19 January the same year. Although the seat had been Labour-held since 1945 it was captured by the Liberals in a defeat for Harold Wilson's government.-Campaign:In...
on 26 June 1969. However, Lawler only served for one year, as Labour's Doris Fisher
Doris Fisher, Baroness Fisher of Rednal
Doris Mary Gertrude Fisher, Baroness Fisher of Rednal, née Satchwell, JP was a British politician.-Early life and education:Born in Birmingham, she was the daughter of Frederick James Satchwell...
regained the seat from him at the 1970 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1970
The United Kingdom general election of 1970 was held on 18 June 1970, and resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, who defeated the Labour Party under Harold Wilson. The election also saw the Liberal Party and its new leader Jeremy Thorpe lose half their...
. He was the last Liberal to serve as a Member of Parliament in Birmingham until Liberal Democrat John Hemming
John Hemming (politician)
John Alexander Melvin Hemming is a British politician, the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Yardley and Group Chair of the Liberal Democrats on the city council of Birmingham, England....
won election to the Birmingham, Yardley seat in 2005.
Family and education
Wallace Lawler was born in WorcesterWorcester
The City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, , is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some southwest of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the...
, the son of Stephen and Elizabeth Lawler (née Taylor). He was educated at St Paul’s School, Worcester and privately at Malvern, Worcestershire
Malvern, Worcestershire
Malvern is a town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England, governed by Malvern Town Council. As of the 2001 census it has a population of 28,749, and includes the historical settlement and commercial centre of Great Malvern on the steep eastern flank of the Malvern Hills, and the former...
. In 1943 he married Catherine Letitia Durcan. They had two sons and two daughters .
Career
Lawler had an early interest in community projects and youth work in particular. In 1928 he founded the Worcester Boys’ Club for teenagers and was involved in youth work until he went to BirminghamBirmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
in 1938 to work as an aircraft engineer. During the Second World War Lawler served in the 8th Battalion, the Worcestershire Regiment
Worcestershire Regiment
The Worcestershire Regiment was an infantry regiment of the line in the British Army, formed in 1881 by the amalgamation of the 29th Regiment of Foot and the 36th Regiment of Foot....
. In 1964 he founded his own plastics business and later took over another established firm called ABCD Plastics, of which he became chairman.
Public service
Following up his interest in youth work, Lawler was associated with a wide range of community organisations. In 1943 he founded the Public Opinion Action Association. In 1956 he became Secretary and later Chairman of an emergency accommodation bureau to find homes for homeless people in Birmingham set up after a conference of religious, civic, political and business people presided over by the Bishop of BirminghamBishop of Birmingham
The Bishop of Birmingham heads the Church of England diocese of Birmingham, in the Province of Canterbury, in England.The diocese covers the North West of the historical county of Warwickshire and has its see in the City of Birmingham, West Midlands, where the seat of the diocese is located at the...
, Dr J L Wilson
John Leonard Wilson
John Leonard Wilson KCMG was an Anglican bishop. He was Bishop of Singapore from 1941 to 1949 during the time of Japanese occupation and subsequently Dean of Manchester and Bishop of Birmingham.-Education:...
. He also worked for the community through the Wallace Lawler Friendship Trust (1969) and Citizens’ Service Ltd (1970)
Politics
At the time of the 1945 general election, Lawler was said to be a man opposed to all political parties but during the 1950s he nailed his colours to the mast of the Liberal Party, even though its prospects were poor and its electoral record in the West MidlandsWest Midlands (region)
The West Midlands is an official region of England, covering the western half of the area traditionally known as the Midlands. It contains the second most populous British city, Birmingham, and the larger West Midlands conurbation, which includes the city of Wolverhampton and large towns of Dudley,...
was dismal.
Local politics
In 1962 Lawler became the first Liberal to be elected to Birmingham City CouncilBirmingham City Council
The Birmingham City Council is the body responsible for the governance of the City of Birmingham in England, which has been a metropolitan district since 1974. It is the most populated local authority in the United Kingdom with, following a reorganisation of boundaries in June 2004, 120 Birmingham...
for nearly 30 years when he won the Newtown Ward. He was re-elected in 1965 not only holding his seat but increasing his majority fourfold. This was despite the fact that Labour worked hard to unseat him and had assigned one of the party’s most experienced agents to work to secure his defeat. He won his Newtown seat again in 1968, and between 1968-1972 he led the Liberal Party’s small group on the Council. In 1971 he was created an Alderman
Alderman
An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members themselves rather than by popular vote, or a council...
, a position he held until his death.
Local party jobs
Lawler held a number of important positions in the local Liberal organisation in the Birmingham area. He was Chairman of Birmingham Liberal Organisation and became the first chairman of the Birmingham Liberal Federation when it was set up in 1965. The new Federation was established to end dissension between Birmingham Liberal Organisation and the West Midlands Liberal Federation and the ambitious plan was to make Birmingham the spearhead of a campaign to win industrial seats for the Liberal Party.Parliamentary candidate
Lawler first stood for ParliamentParliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
as Liberal candidate in Dudley
Dudley (UK Parliament constituency)
Dudley was a parliamentary constituency centred on the town of Dudley, which was historically in Worcestershire, before being transferred into Staffordshire in 1966 and since 1974 has been in the West Midlands....
in the Black Country
Black Country
The Black Country is a loosely defined area of the English West Midlands conurbation, to the north and west of Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton. During the industrial revolution in the 19th century this area had become one of the most intensely industrialised in the nation...
at the 1955 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1955
The 1955 United Kingdom general election was held on 26 May 1955, four years after the previous general election. It resulted in a substantially increased majority of 60 for the Conservative government under new leader and prime minister Sir Anthony Eden against Labour Party, now in their 20th year...
coming third with under 10% of the vote and losing his deposit
Deposit (politics)
A deposit is a sum of money that a candidate must pay in return for the right to stand for election to certain political offices, particularly seats in legislatures.-United Kingdom:...
. He then fought Birmingham, Perry Barr at the 1959 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1959
This United Kingdom general election was held on 8 October 1959. It marked a third successive victory for the ruling Conservative Party, led by Harold Macmillan...
. He again came third but this time scored 14% of the poll and avoided a lost deposit. In 1964
United Kingdom general election, 1964
The United Kingdom general election of 1964 was held on 15 October 1964, more than five years after the preceding election, and thirteen years after the Conservative Party had retaken power...
he was the candidate in Birmingham, Handsworth
Birmingham Handsworth (UK Parliament constituency)
Birmingham Handsworth was a parliamentary constituency centred on the Handsworth district of Birmingham. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom...
. Again he came third but this time he achieved 17.6% of the poll.
Ladywood
At the 1966 general electionUnited Kingdom general election, 1966
The 1966 United Kingdom general election on 31 March 1966 was called by sitting Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Wilson's decision to call an election turned on the fact that his government, elected a mere 17 months previously in 1964 had an unworkably small majority of only 4 MPs...
he switched to Birmingham, Ladywood. In what was by that time one of the smallest constituencies in the country with an electorate of only just over 25,000 (to be compared with electorates of around double that in the rest of the city) Lawler found he was able to make a greater impact at Parliamentary level, campaigning directly with the people who lived in the area. He managed to come second to Labour in 1966, beating the Conservatives
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
into third place. He gained nearly 24% of the vote to Labour’s 58%. This result, plus the work in the constituency that Lawler did in the next three years, laid the foundation for his attempt on the seat at the Ladywood by-election
Birmingham Ladywood by-election, 1969
The Birmingham Ladywood by-election, in Birmingham, on 26 June 1969 was held after Labour Member of Parliament Victor Yates died on 19 January the same year. Although the seat had been Labour-held since 1945 it was captured by the Liberals in a defeat for Harold Wilson's government.-Campaign:In...
in 1969.
Ladywood by-election, 1969
Against the backdrop of massive redevelopment in Birmingham city centre, the electorate of Ladywood had shrunk, the constituency suffered from significant deprivation and its population would today be classified as socially excludedSocial exclusion
Social exclusion is a concept used in many parts of the world to characterise contemporary forms of social disadvantage. Dr. Lynn Todman, director of the Institute on Social Exclusion at the Adler School of Professional Psychology, suggests that social exclusion refers to processes in which...
. Given his own background of community work and his experience as a city councillor, Lawler involved himself heavily in the problems of the community, championing the underprivileged and their concerns over housing, homelessness and social upheaval. In 1967, in the controversy which followed the screening of the Television play ‘Cathy Come Home
Cathy Come Home
Cathy Come Home is a 1966 BBC television play by Jeremy Sandford, produced by Tony Garnett and directed by Ken Loach, about homelessness. An industry poll rated it as the best British television drama ever made. Filmed in a gritty, realistic drama documentary style, it was first broadcast on 16...
’ he was reported as saying that he dealt with a ‘Cathy family’ every day in his political work in Birmingham. Later that year he organised a mass petition with more than 80,000 signatures to the prime minister to protest against increases in electricity prices and that October he arranged a protest demonstration of mainly Birmingham pensioners to travel to London to hand in letters and petitions at Number 10, Downing Street.
When the sitting Labour MP for Ladywood, Victor Yates
Victor Yates
Victor Francis Yates was a British pacifist Labour politician.He was Member of Parliament for Birmingham, Ladywood from 1945 until his death in 1969. In the subsequent by-election the seat was gained by the Liberal candidate Wallace Lawler.-External links:...
died in January 1969, a by-election was caused. The election writ was not moved until June, giving Lawler time to consolidate his position and when the election was held on 26 June he won the seat with a majority of 2,713 votes over his Labour rival Doris Fisher
Doris Fisher, Baroness Fisher of Rednal
Doris Mary Gertrude Fisher, Baroness Fisher of Rednal, née Satchwell, JP was a British politician.-Early life and education:Born in Birmingham, she was the daughter of Frederick James Satchwell...
with the Conservative, Dr Louis Glass in third place. All three candidates were members of Birmingham City Council. Ladywood was the first Liberal parliamentary success in Birmingham for 80 years.
1970 General Election
The 1970 general electionUnited Kingdom general election, 1970
The United Kingdom general election of 1970 was held on 18 June 1970, and resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, who defeated the Labour Party under Harold Wilson. The election also saw the Liberal Party and its new leader Jeremy Thorpe lose half their...
was a difficult campaign for the Liberal Party. Nationally, with just 7.5% of the popular vote, it was reduced from thirteen to just six seats, back to the level it had achieved in the darkest days of the 1950s and three of those seats were held with majorities of under 1,000 votes. With opinion polarised between Labour and Conservative parties, Lawler could not hold the seat he had gained at the by-election the year before, despite his best efforts at nursing the constituency. One commentator reported that “Wallace Lawler is living proof that personality matters in politics. He is Liberal MP for Birmingham Ladywood. Single-handed, he has revived Liberalism in a city which had long forgotten there was such a thing.....He knows everybody and all their problems and everybody knows him.” However despite his best efforts the seat was won back for Labour by Doris Fisher with a majority of 980 votes.
National Liberal politics
Lawler was active for the Liberal party at national level. He was Vice-Chairman of the Liberal Party Council (1967) and Vice-President of the Liberal Party Executive in 1968. While he was in Parliament, he was Liberal Party spokesman on housing and pensions and he served as a Member of the Select Committee on Race Relations and used this platform to warn Enoch PowellEnoch Powell
John Enoch Powell, MBE was a British politician, classical scholar, poet, writer, and soldier. He served as a Conservative Party MP and Minister of Health . He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made the controversial Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to mass immigration from...
he would not be able to make immigration an election issue, saying the electorate had more immediate and pressing issues to worry them such as the cost of living. Despite this stance, Lawler’s reputation inside the Liberal Party locally and nationally was somewhat tarnished by his views on Commonwealth immigration. He advocated a policy of dispersal of immigrants and suggested that most categories of immigrants should be prevented from settling in Birmingham. Councillor Paul Tilsley
Paul Tilsley
Councillor Paul Tilsley MBE is deputy leader of Birmingham City Council and the senior Liberal Democrat in the council's ruling Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition. He was previously Lord Mayor of Birmingham, in 1993-4....
was one leading Liberal in Birmingham to express doubts about the choice of Lawler for the Ladywood by-election, given his controversial remarks about immigration in 1968 Tilsley became one of the longest serving Liberal councillors in the country - as of 2011, he is Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council in the coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats are a social liberal political party in the United Kingdom which supports constitutional and electoral reform, progressive taxation, wealth taxation, human rights laws, cultural liberalism, banking reform and civil liberties .The party was formed in 1988 by a merger of the...
which runs the city.
Community Politics
Political commentators and historians of the Liberal Party usually agree that the development of community politicsCommunity politics
Community politics is a movement in British politics to re-engage people with political action on a local level.Most developed amongst the Liberal Democrats but adopted to some extent by the British Greens, other parties, and Independents....
proved a major stimulus in reviving the political and electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party after 1970 and that the techniques of community politics were used to good electoral effects across Britain but especially in the city of Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and other urban centres. The Liberal Party Assembly at Eastbourne
Eastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...
in 1970 adopted community politics as an electoral and philosophical approach, declaring that ‘Our role as political activists is to help and organise people in communities to take and use power, to use our political skills to redress grievances; and to represent people at all levels of the political structure.” Stuart Mole commented that “The techniques of community politics had first been fashioned in the Newtown area of Birmingham by Wallace Lawler.” This was appropriate according to one historian of the Liberal Party because of community politics’ curious echoes of tactics used by Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain was an influential British politician and statesman. Unlike most major politicians of the time, he was a self-made businessman and had not attended Oxford or Cambridge University....
and Francis Schnadhorst
Francis Schnadhorst
Francis Schnadhorst was a Birmingham draper and Liberal Party politician. He briefly held elected office on Birmingham Council and was offered the chance to stand for Parliament in winnable seats but he found his true metier was in political organisation and administration both in his home town as...
to build up Liberal support in Birmingham almost a century earlier.
As one political scientist has commented, “In fact community organisation in Britain was not pioneered by new social movements but by the Liberal Party in Birmingham. Its leader in the 1960s, Wallace Lawler, placed a high priority on organisation in the localities.”