The general election of 1885 has one major similarity with the one we’re now enduring. Polling day was in December. But in most other respects it was quite different. And although the newly created Mining Division in 1885 had very similar boundaries to the present Camborne-Redruth constituency, nowhere was this difference starker than in the central mining district.
The election saw the Radical Liberal, the splendidly named Charles Augustus Vansittart Conybeare, challenge the former Liberal MP for West Cornwall and local landlord Pendarves Vivian for the new seat. Conybeare was put forward by many of the working men who had been given the vote in 1884, some of them return migrants from the States imbued with notions of democracy. Conybeare stood on the most radical platform in the UK, pledged to abolish the House of Lords, disestablish the Church of England, bring in a graduated income tax, return the land to the people and end the ‘gigantic system of confiscation and robbery of the poor by the rich’.
In a closely fought election between Vivian and Conybeare (the Tories stayed out of it) Conybeare emerged victorious with 2,926 votes to Vivian’s 2,577. For a decade Camborne-Redruth was then represented by Britain’s most radical MP. How times have changed!
Conybeare’s supporters wrote a ditty called ‘The Man for the People’. Here’s an extract.
Maaster Vivian, now so thick,
Longs weth his great friends to stick;
…
We’ll trate’n weth all due respect,
But we ‘one and all’ object
To have a ‘limping’ reer-rank man,
When we c’n have one in the Van
…
The seventeen year ‘pon Committee
Have earnt a rest, I think, quite fitty;
For some reforms he edn ripe,
So we’ll lev’n touch-a-pipe.
…
He’ll git the voters by the thousan’;
Because we’ll go for Working Men,
And not the Lords and Upper Ten.
…
The men of Buller’s Row he’ll meet,
And likewise Tallywarren Street,
And though Dolcoath is very deep,
He’ll git the men all in a heap.
