The illegal member

He was born in Barnard Castle in 1813. His father was a soldier who served at Waterloo. He, as befits a Barney boy, was a carpetweaver. A carpetweaver with attitude.

Chartism ran from 1838 to about 1850. It started with a six-point charter which demanded universal male suffrage, plus fair, secret ballots, and payment for MPs. Although it was seen outrageously radical in 1838, five of the six points had been introduced by 1918 – annual parliaments, to prevent the wealthy from being able to afford to bribe their way to success in every seven year election, was the one that didn’t make it. Nevertheless, the movement fizzled into failure in the early 1850s.

Mr Bragg was an early convert. In May 1840, he was involved in some sort of incident in Darlington Market Place which resulted in him being sentenced to three months inside for causing an obstruction and public nuisance. In 1841, he was seriously considering standing as a Chartist candidate in the election against Joseph Pease, the sitting Liberal MP. In fact, Tory supporters actively encouraged him to stand in the hope that he would split the leftish vote and let their man in. He withstood the temptation, but his antipathy towards Mr Pease grew to gargantuan proportions.

He ran a Chartist bookstore as well as a grocery and off-licence at No 21, High Row (which one is that?).

In 1856, he formed the Darlington Ratepayers Association which led the opposition to the Peases and the Backhouses, never missing an opportunity, however trivial, to singe their beards.

The biggest opportunity came in 1864 when he noticed that Mr Pease, as Returning Officer in the Local Board of Health election, had committed a technical misdemeanour which had no effect whatsoever on the result yet rendered the whole proceedings illegal. Mr Bragg’s annoyance was no doubt magnified by the fact that he had come eighth in the poll and had failed to be elected, whereas all six of Mr Pease’s men had been returned.

The poll was topped by Alfred Backhouse of Pilmore Hall, Hurworth, whom Mr Bragg labelled “the illegal member” and the court case, Regina versus Backhouse, rumbled through the courts for a couple of years like a Dickensian sub-plot. Everytime the judge agreed that the election was illegal because Mr Pease had not personally been present to validate the result, Mr Backhouse appealed to a higher court.

I can’t find a final conclusion to Regina versus Backhouse, but I reckon this is because the case faded into irrelevancy in 1867 when another of Mr Bragg’s anti-establishment campaigns bore fruit. Because the Board of Health – effectively Darlington’s first council – was so dominated by the Peases and the Backhouses and their Quaker pals, he successfully managed to get Darlington incorporated as a municipality. This meant it had to have a town council headed by a mayor and elected more democratically. His triumph seemed complete when his bugbears Mr Backhouse and Mr Pease both failed to stand for the new council.

Then the results came in, showing that they had merely handed the Liberal Quaker baton to the next generation, and so everything had changed in terms of the council yet everything had stayed the same in terms of the levers of power.

Somehow around this time, Mr Bragg made what seems to me to be a great leap. In 1868, he formed the Darlington Working Men’s Conservative Association – the first formal political party in the town – and in the 1865 and 1868 elections he was a “Conservative plumper”. From the comfort of my bed, I’ve yet to discover a proper definition of “plumper”. It seems to mean that he plumped enthusiastically for the Conservative candidate whoever he may be. I think it was more usual at this time to vote for a candidate’s character: someone you knew or liked or who employed you.

I guess Mr Bragg’s great leap to Conservatism was that he realized that the Tories were the only force who could make any impact on the might of the local Liberal Quaker establishment.

He died in 1873. His contribution to local politics was highlight in 1885 when William Wooler received his illuminated address – you remember, the one Mr Wooler said ought to say that he “had earned the undying envy and malice of the Northern Echo”.

In his reply, Mr Wooler bigged up Mr Bragg so much that other people who read his remarks have concluded that Mr Bragg was “the founder of modern Conservatism” in Darlington.

Mr Wooler said: “At one time this locality and district were wholly dominated over by a self-seeking insatiable, power-loving band. The only person who made any efforts to stem their grasping action was that Chartist, the late Mr Nicholas Bragg, who was too truthful to his tolerant principles to abide in the then false abode of Liberalism and who under the conviction, arrived at by experience, came to the determination that the Conservative Party were the real friends of the working classes. So it came to pass that Mr Nicholas Bragg not only voted 20 years ago for Colonel Surtees but advised us and aided us out of the stores of his accumulated facts.

“Darlington owes to Mr Bragg primarily its municipality, for he worked single handed for years in preparing the way to overcome the overbearing opposition which was headed by Messrs Arthur Pease, John Pease and others.”

My Alfred was one of the others, and now I understand why Mr Bragg went to such great lengths to have him branded “the illegal member”.