Marking 100 Years since Darlington’s first Labour MP was elected

“The Socialist supporters went frantic at their victory, and for the next hour or two they made noise enough for 40 victories,” said the Conservative-supporting Darlington & Stockton Times.

Arthur Shepherd, Darlington’s first Labour MP

The new MP was Arthur Shepherd, the headmaster of the Quaker primary school at Reeth who motored into Darlington every day after lessons to campaign in a “motorcycle combination” (it had a sidecar for his wife) which the local Labour Party had bought him.

“When Mr Shepherd emerged from the Market Hall,” said The Northern Echo, which had supported the Liberal candidate, “his supporters pounced upon him and, raising him shoulder high, carried him through the thickly-populated streets to the residence of his host, the Reverend Theodore Gobat (of St James’ Church) in Haughton Road, a distance of about a mile from the town centre.

“The triumphant procession, about 5,000 strong, alternated between the singing of ‘The Red Flag’ and ringing cheers for ‘Good Old Shepherd’, who had to be protected from the enthusiasm of his own followers by a stout bodyguard of local police.

“Labour’s adherents were intoxicated with the excitement of success, and they resolutely refused to leave the streets while they had a single cheer of victory left.”

The Northern Echo from February 18, 1926

This was a seismic election. “Darlington kicks over the Pease traces”, said the Echo’s main headline, with underneath: “Pease family’s long monopoly brought to an end.”

Since Joseph Pease had been elected after the Great Reform Act of 1832, practically every MP to represent the town, be they Liberal or Unionist or Conservative had the backing of the celebrated family.

William Edwin Pease (1865-1926), of Mowden, as Darlington mayor in 1902. His sudden death in January 1926 sparked the by-election. He was the last of the Peases to represent Darlington

But William Edwin Pease, of Mowden Hall, was the last of the line. Having been elected in 1923 in a two horse race against Mr Shepherd with a 2,166 majority, he died suddenly at his home on January 23, 1926, aged 62, sparking the by-election.

His son, Captain Ernest Hubert Pease, was expected to inherit the seat and was adopted as the Conservative & Unionist candidate. Mr Shepherd, for Labour, also stood, and a third candidate, Captain John Dickie, the former Liberal MP for Gateshead, entered the fray.

Capt John Dickie’s front page address on the Northern Despatch on polling day 1926

Despite the Liberals’ fortunes being in terminal decline, Capt Dickie, and his loud supporters in The Northern Echo and its evening sister paper, the Northern Despatch, believed he had a chance. There was still a real fear among voters that left-wing Labour would make the country Communist, but there was also dismay about the performance of Stanley Baldwin’s government. The country was plunging into the Great Depression and the General Strike, which presaged the Great Depression, was only weeks away.

To add to the Conservative woes, shortly before polling day, Chancellor Winston Churchill announced a £200,000 grant – worth more than £100m today – to provide playing fields for civil servants. Labour portrayed this is a Conservative government looking after its middle class supporters while the working class were starving, but the D&S Times said that such wanton spending at a time of economic crisis roused many of Capt Pease’s natural supporters to the “white heat of anger” and prevented them from backing him.

Electioneering in Darlington in February 1926: Capt John Dickie (Lib) meets men at the LNER Stooperdale works and Arthur Shepherd (Lab) on Albert Hill

Polling day, Darlington, February 17, 1926: An elderly lady is assisted to the ballot box by men wearing their party colours, and, right, Mrs Shepherd ties a mascot on the front of a Labour car

The turn-out was 86.6 per cent, the seventh highest for any by-election since 1918.

Mr Shepherd won by just 329 votes, with those opposing him divided between the Conservatives and the Liberals.

The D&S Times’ headline of 100 years ago, including the election result

“It is to that split in the anti-Socialist ranks that Mr Shepherd owed his victory,” spat the D&S furiously. It was so angry that it couldn’t bring itself to use the word “Labour”, opting instead for the pejorative “Socialist”. Much of its anger was aimed at the “flabby flatulence” of the Liberals.

“It is something in the nature of a tragedy that the Liberal Party should have presented the Socialists with yet another seat in Parliament, and all the more tragic that Darlington should be the constituency with its traditional association with the Pease family, the pioneers of industrial development,” said the D&S.

“It is a matter of profound regret,” continued the D&S, “that such a town should, even for a time, be represented in Westminster by a member who, as an adherent of Socialism, must keep step, as best he may, with the rest of the curiously assorted army which marches behind ‘The Red Flag’ which is the emblem also of Communism.”

Arthur Lewis Shepherd (1884-1951), Darlington’s first Labour MP

Mr Shepherd wasn’t quite a Communist. He was born in Birmingham and said his proudest moment of his life was when, as an eight-year-old, a train driver had stopped and given him a 100 yard ride at Kings Norton – exactly what a railway town like Darlington would like to hear.

He had attended Birmingham University, become a teacher, and had served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War until he was invalided out after the Dardenelles campaign in 1916.

A Northern Despatch cartoon from 1927 mocking Mr Shepherd’s undercover days as a vagrant

Then he had toured the country’s workhouses disguised as a vagrant to learn about the life of the underclass, and had worked with street urchins at Leeds before being driven out of his job as a master of a large industrial school by politics.

He’d ended up at Reeth, in that school above the village with wonderful views over the Swale, where he was also a useful fast bowler in the village cricket team.

“I am extremely loth to leave the children at the little school,” he said, “but I must obey the will of the multitude.”

Several thousand of that multitude were still awake when dawn broke on February 18, 1926, and they carried him, still singing The Red Flag, to catch the 8.55am train to London to take his seat as Darlington’s first Labour MP.

An Evening Despatch cartoon from October 1926 when the Labour Shepherd is, by hook or by crook, winning over many areas of the town in the council election

In the 1929 General Election, he increased his majority to 1,465 when the Conservatives fielded a very aristocratic candidate Viscount Castlereagh and a Liberal again split the anti-Labour vote. After the election, Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority Labour government which, as the Great Depression bit deep, became so unpopular that Mr Shepherd lost his seat in a two-horse race against the Conservatives in the 1931 General Election.

He then became a teacher in East Ham in London, and he died in 1951 in Abergeit in North Wales, aged 67, leaving a widow and three daughters.

• At the 1926 by-election, because only property-owning women over the age of 30 were allowed to vote, it was reckoned that in Darlington there were 14 female voters to 19 male ones. The 1929 General Election was known as the “flapper election” because women aged 21 to 29 were allowed to vote for the first time.
• In the 100 years since Darlington elected its first Labour MP, the party has represented the seat for about 59 years whereas the Conservative Party has represented it for about 41 years.

Darlington in March 1926, when the first of the trolleybuses arrives on High Row

1926 Darlington by-election
Arthur Shepherd (Lab) 12,965 (44.5%, down 1.7% on 1923)
EH Pease (Con) 12,636 (43.3%, down 10.5%)
John Dickie (Lib) 3,573 (12.2%)
Majority: 329
Turnout: 29,174 (87.6%, up 1.5%)
Swing to Labour from Con: 4.4%