VICTORIA'S TWINS: THE RISE OF MANCHESTER AND MELBOURNE

By Barry Smith

VICTORIA’S TWINS

The Rise of Manchester and Melbourne

“Tales of Fighting for Freedoms, Fortunes and Football”

   This is a rich and dramatic historical novel that experiences the flowering of Manchester and Melbourne, two of the most s

• Language: English
• Publisher: BARRY SMITH
• Release date: Jan 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9780995363731

Barry Smith

Barry Smith is, it goes without saying, an islomane. He has spent much of his 60-odd years at work, rest and play on islands all around the world – from Scotland’s Western Isles to Sicily, from Alaska to Cape Horn. To cap it all, he has completed a doctoral dissertation... about islands. He lives in northern Scotland and France.

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VICTORIA’S TWINS

Books by Barry Smith

The Kimberley Trilogy

For Freedom’s Cause

Battle for the North

Kimberley Kill

Victoria’s Twins –

The Rise of Manchester and Melbourne

VICTORIA’S

TWINS

The rise of Manchester

and Melbourne

Tales of fighting for freedoms,

fortunes and football

Barry Smith

Victoria’s Twins

Published by Barry Smith

First published 2017

© 2017 Barry Smith

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

A Cataloguing-in-Publication record is available from

the National Library of Australia.

978 0 9953637 2 4 (pbk)

978 0 9953637 3 1 (ebk)

Cover concept by Ian Dick

Typeset by Blue Wren Books

Printed by Lightning Source

www.faceboook.com/BarrySmithWordSpinner

DEDICATION

My thanks to the great cities of Manchester, where I was born and educated and Melbourne, where I matured and which has been my home for more than forty years.

Both have nurtured my natural curiosity and added degrees of fortitude, perseverance and dreaming that have enabled me to transcend my origins, cope with what life has thrown at me and never cease to seek more of this world’s wonders.

In loving memory of Betty and Frank Smith

My eternal gratitude and love to Francis (Frank) and Elizabeth (Betty) Smith, my strong, proud, loving and long suffering Mancunian, parents. Though they never understood me and the paths in life I have chosen. They believed in me, were always proud of me, did what they could afford to support me and never stood in my way.

Also to my wonderful Grandmother, Beatrice (Beattie) Bevan who gave me the wonderful gift of reading, at an extraordinary young age and taught me strong and enduring values, as I turned the mangle to rinse her hand wash. I regret she died prematurely and was unable to see the flowering of the literate seed she planted in me.

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks to:

Ian Dick who, though far away in his northern Scottish eyrie, gave generously and unstintingly of his design experience and native common-sense, in advising on an arresting cover design.

Dianne Clark, who helped me cut through my timeline confusion, to set the stories in an intelligible chronological order and contributed penetratingly positive suggestions.

Suzanne Blair, for hard-hitting marketing and promotional advice and pulling no punches in challenging my half-baked and amateurish efforts.

Jennifer Oostindie and Coral Brown, who encouraged me when doubts obscured my dream road.

Sandra Bailey (Dee) who sustained and tolerated me during the final weeks of writing, publishing, promoting and launching of the book.

CONTENTS

Historical Note

Brickbats and Bouquets

The Early Years, 1854–1915

1. Going South

2. Guardians of the age

3. A new Age begins

4. Scott and Syme

5. Under the Southern Cross

6. Scott and Syme

7. The hour of trial

8. Frantic Football

9. Tea in Toorak

10. Melbourne’s Shame

11. Cricket-mad Melbourne

12. A letter from Home

13. Marvellous Smellbourne

14. Syme to Scott

15. Scott to Syme

16. Syme to Scott

17. Scott to Syme

18. From Boom to Bust

19. Syme to Scott

20. Victoria at war

21. Women want to vote

22. Scott to Syme

23. Syme to Scott

24. Melbourne, Capital of a Nation

25. Scott to Syme

26. Death of a Hero

27. Women at war

28. Manchester and Melbourne at war

The Later Years, 1967–1985

1. Farewell Manchester

2. It’s not the same

3. Back into the fire

4. It’s time

5. The Spying Game

6. The Raid

7. Dangerous Deceit

8. Double Bluff

9. Manchester Comrades

10. Tender Trap

11. Full Circle

Postscript

HISTORICAL NOTE

In the 19th century Manchester and Melbourne grew from unfavourable origins, to become two of the mightiest metropolises in Queen Victoria’s Empire and cities of wonder in the eyes of the world.

Manchester grew from a small Roman settlement into a minor manorial town, in the Middle Ages and later became the fiefdom of the Mosley dynasty. The abundance of water to power mills and the ideal humidity of the Lancastrian climate led to the start of a cotton spinning industry which, with the application of steam power, large-scale modern machinery, a skilled workforce and the building of canals and railways to transport raw materials and finished goods, turned Manchester into the world’s first industrial city and made it the centre of Britain’s greatest 19th century export industry. But despite this early, economic pre-eminence it had no political representation at the parliament in London and the lives of its burgeoning legion of industrial workers were as beholden to landed gentry and wealthy merchants as were agricultural labourers to their aristocratic landlords. Both skilled workers and an unskilled underclass were denied the right to vote until a partial extension of the franchise in 1832.

Melbourne, until 1854 when gold was discovered in country close to nearby Ballarat, was a sleepy town in the Port Philip district of New South Wales; little distinguishable from the pioneer settlement of 1830, when Messrs. Batman and Fawkner came across from Van Dieman’s Land to exploit the river and bay-side land. The gold boom brought adventurers from all over the world and the sudden wealth created by the discoveries promoted manufacturing industries to parallel its earlier struggling agrarian economy and the establishment of a significant port, connected to the city by the first steam-powered passenger railway in the Australian colonies. Its rapid commercial growth and increasing sophistication justified its separation from NSW and earned it city status in 1847, when Queen Victoria declared it a city, before Manchester achieved this, thus becoming the capital of the newly declared Colony of Victoria in 1851.

As in Manchester, the Legislative government was in the hands of the early squatters (landholders) and traders who denied the working man and woman the right to vote and own land.

Revolt and Rights: A significant protest against social neglect and political suppression occurred in Manchester in 1819, and which was broken up by cavalry leading to loss of life, earning it the satirical name of the ‘Peterloo’ Massacre.

Likewise, on the goldfields near Melbourne a protest against an unfairly levied tax on gold miners, led to an armed clash in 1854 between miners, troops and police, causing death on both government and miners sides. In both events, the demands of the demonstrators were for similar political representation.

The Power of the Press: Both events led directly to the foundation of two, liberally-inclined newspapers, The Manchester Guardian, in 1821, and Melbourne’s The Age, in 1854, which have since become internationally renowned, left-leaning journals. Both papers had long serving editor/owners in C.P. Scott at The Guardian for 57 years from 1872 and David Syme for almost 50 years from 1860. Through their newspapers, they proved highly successful campaigners in support of greater political and economic rights for both disenfranchised men and women, long discriminated against and oppressed by ruling elites. Also, they won legislated improvements in living and working conditions and the provision of universal free education for children. Scott even gained election to the Westminster parliament.

Victoria’s Twins tells the parallel stories of the growth and maturing of these two extraordinary cities in the turbulent years of Queen Victoria’s 19th Century reign and what came after.

BRICKBATS AND BOUQUETS

Manchester

From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilise the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here, humanity attains its most complete development and most brutish; here civilisation works its miracles and civilised man is turned back almost into a savage.

Alexis De Tocqueville, on visiting Manchester in 1835

It is an Amazonian jungle of blackened bricks. You could take a tram in it for hours and hours, never losing it and arriving into broad daylight.

J.B. Priestley, English Journey, 1934

Manchester means … a people’s city, a radical city that invented the computer, Das Capital, Suffragettes, modern vegetarianism, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, The Fall, The Smiths, Oasis, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and a million others.

John Robb, Musician and writer

Melbourne

Marvellous Melbourne—I found Melbourne a really astonishing city, with broad streets full of handsome shops and crowded with bustling well-dressed people.

George Augustus Sala, London Journalist, 1885

I think Melbourne is by far and away the most interesting place in Australia, and I thought if I ever wrote a novel or crime novel of any kind, I had to set it here.

Peter Temple, Crime writer

The perfect place to make a film about the end of the world.

Neill Jillett, Sydney Journalist

(falsely attributed to Ava Gardner)

And always Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, over and over the same photo in glaring greens and reds, of a tram, huffy, blunderous, manoeuvring itself with pole akimbo round the tight corner where Bourke Street enters Spring.

Helen Garner, Author

Magnates on the role of their newspapers

A newspaper has two sides to it. It is a business, like any other, and has to pay in the material sense in order to live. But it is much more than a business; it is an institution; it reflects and it influences the life of a whole community. It plays on the minds and consciences of men.

A newspaper’s first duty is to give the news and to give it whole, without suppression or half concealment and without bias. The most insidious and wicked thing a newspaper can do is to suppress or pervert facts essential for its readers’ judgement. A newspaper has no right to be merely the organ of the private opinions of the owner or owners.

Comment is free, but facts are sacred.

C.P. Scott, reflecting on 100 years of The Guardian

We have within a quarter of a century effected a social and industrial revolution (in Victoria) which it has taken many centuries to achieve elsewhere.

It’s my business interests which absorb my attention. I’m a man with few friends.

David Syme, on The Age

From the beginning on, newspapers have prospered for one reason: giving readers the news that they want.

Journalists should think of themselves as outside the Establishment.

I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir ’em up.

When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies— and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.

Rupert Murdoch

Churchill on The Guardian

"Twenty years hence, people would no more think of doing without their Labour Exchanges than of doing without their Manchester Guardian."

Winston Churchill, on opening a

Manchester Labour Exchange in 1910

Montague on Scott

"Just as he was a great man without any of the airs of great men, so he sought to create a great paper without any of the airs of a great paper."

C.E. Montague, 1932

THE EARLY YEARS

1854–1915

1

GOING SOUTH

Melbourne, 1854

The crowded migrant ship slipped its hawsers and set sail down the Mersey, leaving Liverpool and his Manchester home behind. A long voyage to the Australian colony of Victoria lay ahead and whilst he had no certainty about the future he was glad to be escaping his old life.

Fred Smith was not migrating to escape the law, nor under sentence for any misdemeanour. Manchester, like Melbourne, was thriving as a result of its trading success and world leading manufacturing and technological prowess, flowing from its pre-eminent cotton industry. But the social conditions of the underclass, especially the Irish peasantry who fled poverty and famine, only to find themselves in an even worse state, were appalling and had stirred the consciences of a few enlightened mill owners, writers and politicians. He had the benefit of a sound basic education and had completed an apprenticeship as a compositor in the printing trade. It was his daily exposure to the ideas and outbursts of the radical, would-be reformers, who depended on the printed word to influence the opinions of the educated but landless wealth creators who propped up the power of the landed few that made him seek freedom in another land.

On the ship he found numerous like-minded people and spent many a storm-tossed night sharing stories and debating the merits of the new philosophies coming out of Europe and the American states.

So what’s driving you away Fred? You have a trade and looked fare to make an adequate living? asked a tall, dark-visaged young man with a marked Scottish accent.

There’s no singular reason Hamish I can cite to explain why I am migrating. Since my boyhood I have been raised on stories of the people who gathered in eighteen nineteen at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester, to listen to Orator Hunt speak in support of greater liberties for the masses of disenfranchised people. There were all manner of causes represented and one must admit that there were even some French revolutionary sympathisers whose aim was to undermine and overthrow the established government. Although a limited reform to the electoral franchise was granted in eighteen thirty two, there was still considerable dissatisfaction with the remaining restrictions and this led to the start of the Chartist movement with which I sympathise.

The Chartists were the ones who caught my imagination too, Fred, so much so that even though their movement and demonstrations began before I was born, I can still quote the key points of their charter of rights.

An Irish voice broke through the hubbub of general agreement urging Hamish to do so.

Come on then Hamish let us hear you recite your Chartist catechism.

Hamish took no offence at the challenging tone and with a steadfast look in his eyes and in clear, resounding, tones, began to recite the Six Points of the People’s Charter:

• A vote for every man

• The Ballot

• No Property Qualification for MPs

• Payment of MPs

• Equal Constituencies

• Annual Parliaments

This was acclaimed with universal cries of well done Hamish.

It would seem Hamish that you had an education similar to mine, Fred concluded.

Aye, my father was a nonconformist minister and also my school teacher and much of my philosophy and attitude to my fellow man comes from him.

"Thank you for that and for those who don’t know what happened next on that day in eighteen nineteen, this is why it came to be known as the Peterloo Massacre. The meeting was called to hear Orator Hunt speak on Liberty, at St Peter’s Fields in the heart of Manchester on the sixteenth of August. Previous meetings in other localities had created wide interest and the magistrates were frightened by rumours that it would be a violent and potentially revolutionary gathering. On the day thousands of people marched to the venue carrying banners and flags but there was no report of pikes and firearms being present.

The Manchester Magistrates called for the military to stand by with fifteen thousand troops, consisting of regular army, Hussars and volunteer Yeomanry recruited from manufacturers, merchants, shopkeepers and publicans. It was decided that the police would arrest Hunt and other speakers and disperse the meeting as a danger to the town. The special constables were unable to get to their quarry and called for military assistance. Sadly, the Yeomanry, many of whose hot-headed members had been drinking heavily, responded first, knocking down a woman and trampling her child to death on their way and drawing sabres to cut a path to the hustings. The arrests were made by the accompanying constables but then the Yeomanry became separated from each other, panicked and lashed out with their sabres. The arrival of the Hussars led to the dispersal of the meeting and within ten minutes it was achieved. Eleven people died and six hundred were injured, as a result of the day’s action. The Hussars had fought at Waterloo in eighteen fifteen as well as had some of the victims, hence this infamy became for ever known as the Peterloo Massacre.

The subsequent enquiry conducted by Taylor, the founder of The Manchester Guardian, exposed the outrages and named the culprits, but nothing much was achieved by this. As you know, over time, there was a relaxation of the franchise, partial repeal of the Combination Act, allowing some freedom for Trade Unionists to meet and take action regarding employment matters and the repeal of the Corn Laws favoured the working people over the landowners. But change was too slow and still falls far short of the basic rights of the charter. So I am hopeful that I will enjoy greater freedoms in the new crown colony of Victoria."

A chorus of Well said Fred! and Good luck to you! broke up the informal gathering and Fred went on deck for a breath of fresh air before retiring.

That was a fine and heart-felt speech young man, said a tall, conservatively attired man, who joined him in strolling along the deck. But, whilst I have some sympathy with your views on civil liberties, as a citizen of Melbourne for a number of years, I would be pleased to give you some useful advice based on my experience of living and building a business there.

Thank you sir. I appreciate that Melbourne is booming but I know little of its political and social life and I would be glad to hear your opinions on these matters.

"I will be happy to do that but I must forewarn you that whilst I am somewhat of a liberal persuasion, I am also a man of business and have strong views about protecting my property and my freedom to act in commercial matters. The first and most important thing you must realise about Victoria is that it is not completely independent of the mother country yet, nor is it totally similar in laws and attitudes.