Gladstone and the nonconformists: a religious affinity in politics

Nonconformists had an attitude of veneration for Gladstone. They admired his political skills; they were grateful for the legislative benefits he had brought them like the abolition of compulsory church rates and the opening of higher degrees at the ancient universities; and they were roused by his displays of oratorical power. Yet their respect for Gladstone went far beyond what was due to the able leader of a political party. There was amongst nonconformists by 1890 what a correspondent of The Times called a ‘fascination, amounting to fetishism, of the great name and personality of Mr Gladstone.’ This was not primarily a result of sympathy in political policy, despite a general concurrence of nonconformists with Gladstone in the principles of peace, retrenchment and reform. In many other areas of policy there was disagreement. The overriding aim of political dissent, the aim of religious equality, was not shared by Gladstone; he was usually absent from parliamentary debates on the contagious diseases acts against which nonconformist feeling was high; and as temperance political pressure gathered momentum among nonconformists in the later years of his life, Gladstone stood aside. Nonconformists were always more wholeheartedly behind Gladstone in opposition, when he was denouncing the wrongs of conservative administrations, than behind Gladstone in office, when he was ignoring the wishes of nonconformist electors. Yet, despite policy differences, from at least 1868 until Gladstone’s death thirty years later nonconformists as a whole were enthusiastic Gladstonians, supporters of the man. The explanation lies in the fact that undergirding the political relationship was a religious affinity. At a meeting of ten leading nonconformist ministers in 1889, according to the diary of the baptist John Clifford, when the prospects of the liberal party were under discussion, ‘the conversation turned chiefly on the religious fibre of the prospective leaders. Suppose Gladstone gone, what have we to look to? The outlook was thought to be very unpromising.’ It was the ‘religious fibre’ of Gladstone that brought him esteem. It was primarily religion that bound the nonconformists in personal loyalty to Gladstone.