Lloyd Jones
Patrick Lloyd Jones was born at Bandon, County Cork, on 17th March 1811. He moved in 1827 to Manchester, where he followed his father's trade and became secretary to the Journeyman's Union of Fustian Cutters. (1)
Lloyd Jones was a skilled fustian cutter, who could earn enough in two or three days to support his family for a week, so he had the rest of his time free for working-class activity. Lloyd Jones and a few young friends, had opened a co-operative store in Salford in 1831, but the shop did not last long and the young men turned their hands to education, opening a night school in the town. (2)
Lloyd Jones dropped the name Patrick in 1837 to dissociate himself from his Roman Catholic father. On 19 June of the same year he married Mary Dring at St Mary's Church, Prestwich. (3)
Robert Owen
Lloyd Jones was a supporter of Robert Owen and was an Owenite missionary, lecturer, and propagandist between 1838 and 1844. According to George Holyoake: " For many years these views were vigorously opposed by the clergy, who regarded Owen's theories as immoral. Jones had a good presence and a fine voice, with readiness and courage in controversy, He was the best, public debater of his day, and was in more discussions than any other of Owen's supporters." (4)
After support for Owen's ideas and experiments dwindled, Lloyd Jones migrated to London, where he resumed his old trade as fustian cutter. He could earn enough in two or three years to support his family for a week, so he had the rest of his time free for working-class activity. Jones main concern now was to campaign for parliamentary reform. (5)
Chartism
Lloyd Jones became an early supporter of Chartism. The group drew up a list of six political demands. "(i) A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime. (ii) The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote. (iii) No property qualification for Members of Parliament in order to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice. (iv) Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation. (v) Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones. (vi) Annual Parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in each twelve-month period." (6)
Lloyd Jones was what was known as a Moral Force Chartist and in 1839 opposed the threatened "sacred month's" strike. Jones was appointed to address the chartists of the Manchester district, with whom the strength of the movement rested. An audience of five thousand men assembled in the Carpenters' Hall, and five thousand were at the doors. After Jones's speech the project was abandoned. (7)
Jones joined the communitarian Leeds Redemption Society in 1846 and became director of its flour mill. He then established a business as a master tailor on Oxford Street, London, in 1847, and the following year joined the Owenite League of Social Progress. (8)
Christian Socialist
During the summer of 1848, Charles Blachford Mansfield, Charles Kingsley, Thomas Hughes and John Ludlow would have editorial meetings at the house of Frederick Denison Maurice. Important socialists of the day, including Robert Owen, the owner of the New Lanark Mills and Thomas Cooper, one of the leaders of the Chartist movement, sometimes took part in these discussions. (9)
In 1849 Lloyd Jones, also joined this group that now became known as Christian Socialists. Leaders of the Chartist movement, including Feargus O'Connor and Bronterre O'Brien attended meetings. The Scottish tailor Walter Cooper, introduced two watchcase finishers, Joseph Millbank and Thomas Shorter, to the group. (10)
According to Brenda Colloms Lloyd Jones was an important recruit: "When the Mauricians met him in 1849, he was a mature, self-educated man, and precisely the type of working man the band of brothers hoped to make contact with. Ludlow and Lloyd Jones hit it off immediately and formed an excellent personal and working relationship. Lloyd Jones was nothing like a Christian in Ludlow's meaning of the term, but he was forgiven because Ludlow liked and admired him." (11)
Co-operative Movement
The Christian Socialists discussed the idea of establishing cooperative workshops. An early suggestion was one involving the clothing industry. One member of the group, Charles Kingsley, had been interested in the subject for sometime and at that time he was working on a pamphlet, Cheap Clothes and Nasty and a novel, Alton Locke with the objective of exposing the sweatshop system. (12)
An important figure in the cooperative movement was Edward Vansittart Neale whose wealth helped to subsidize the Tailors' Cooperative Association. Progress was swift in the establishment of other working associations. By the time of the first annual conference of the Society for Promoting Working Men's Associations in the summer of 1852 there were twelve associations up and running, covering tailors, builders, shoemakers, pianomakers, printers and bakers. (13) Lloyd Jones was appointed as manager of a new London Cooperative Store opened at 76 Charlotte Street. (14)
Thomas Hughes was a passionate supporter of the cooperative movement and later wrote: "We were all full of enthusiasm and hope in our work, and of propagandist zeal: anxious to bring in all the recruits we could. I cannot even now think of my own state of mind at the time without wonder and amusement. I certainly thought (and for that matter have never altered my opinion to this day) that here we had found the solution of the great labour question; but I was also convinced that we had nothing to do but just to announce it, and found an association or two, in order to convert all England, and usher in the millennium at once, so plain did the whole thing seem to me." (15)
Leading figures in the Christian Socialist movement toured the country advocating cooperative workshops. This included Lloyd Jones, who was "one of the keenest and most eloquent of cooperators, was put in charge as a missionary for the agency, and for cooperation in the North generally." Also heavily involved was John Ludlow who organised a cooperative conference in Bury on 18th April 1851. He argued that "the idea of a provincial wholesale depot is in the minds of all the Lancashire cooperatives; that the plan for its establishment is already drawn up... and that the only question respecting it is whether it shall be set up in Manchester or Rochdale." (16)
In 1850 Lloyd Jones gave evidence before the committee on working-class savings chaired by Robert Aglionby Slaney. He subsequently undertook several lecture tours and founded the Co-operative Industrial and Commercial Union. (17)
Edward Vansittart Neale was another important figure in the Christian Socialist movement. Matthew Lee has suggested: "Neale was central in shifting the focus of the movement from promotion of self-governing workshops to co-operation on a larger scale. He funded and founded the first London co-operative stores in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, and advanced capital for two unsuccessful builders' associations. Initially ignorant of northern co-operation on the Rochdale and redemptionist models, Neale became a swift convert to consumers' co-operation and became allied with many former Owenites." (18)
Neale's support of cooperative stores brought him into conflict with other Christian Socialists like John Ludlow because he challenged the assumption that all associations had to be producer co-operatives rather than consumer ones. Lloyd Jones and Thomas Hughes supported Neale, but Ludlow was furious seeing it as a betrayal of the fundamental principles of the Society. Ludlow presented an ultimatum at the Promoters' Council meeting, that either Neale and Hughes went or he did. However, Frederick Denison Maurice, managed to persuade Ludlow to withdraw the threat. (19)
Lloyd Jones was one of the most popular Christian Socialist speakers. In December 1850, gave a talk in Ashton-under-Lyne and during the meeting he made the Christian Socialist point that Roman Catholicism had increased in England because so few Anglican ministers cared about the needs and wishes of the English people. If Anglican clergymen, by supporting co-operation, showed a true desire to help the working class, that would be the best possible defence to foreign encroachment. This upset some members of the audience and he later commented he was "attacked by clergymen and gentlemen, and all sorts of men: I was collared and cuffed" and only escaped because a stranger helped him. (20)
Frederick Denison Maurice had always been more interested in education than economics and was especially interested in establishing a Working Men's College. Maurice drew up more concrete plans for a people's college that was to be founded in the premises of one of the failed associations at 31 Red Lion Square. In June and July a series of fund-raising lectures was given, and the college was ready for business in time for October, with a wide range of subjects and an interesting set of lecturers. The college was to be aimed specifically at the manual workers, and Maurice agreed to be Principle of the Working Men's College. (21)
It opened on 31st October 1854, with some 176 students. The most popular classes were Languages, English Grammar, Mathematics, Drawing whereas History, Law, Politics and the Physical Sciences attracted smaller attendance. (22) Lloyd Jones became one of the lecturers at the college. (23)
A prolific journalist, Jones wrote on co-operation, unionism, social politics, and industrial subjects in various newspapers including Bee-Hive, The Leeds Times, Glasgow Sentinel and The Newcastle Daily Chronicle. (24)
Last Years
Along with John Ludlow, Jones wrote the Progress of the Working Classes (1867). The book made it clear that between 1832 and 1867 the condition of the working class had improved partly through working-class campaigns and partly through action in the House of Commons like the legalization of savings banks, friendly societies, co-operative associations and partnerships in industry. The men rejected the theories of Karl Marx and argued that the remedy for a better society was class co-operation and not class warfare. (25)
In 1869 he became the first secretary of the Labour Representation League and in 1871 joined the first parliamentary committee of the Trades Union Congress. From 1874 he was frequently appointed arbitrator in trades union disputes, particularly in mining districts. Standing as an independent miners' representative for the constituency of Chester-le-Street in the 1885 General Election, he was defeated by the Liberal Party candidate, James Joicey. (26)
Lloyd Jones died of cancer at home, 14 St Michael's Road, in Stockwell, London on 22nd May 1886, nine days before his wife, who was then sixty-nine years old. His Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen, was published posthumously in 1889. (27)
Primary Sources
(1) Brenda Colloms, Victorian Visionaries (1982)
Lloyd Jones came from the north of England, where he had become a disciple of Robert Owen. With a few young friends, Lloyd Jones had opened a co-operative store in Salford in 1831, but the shop did not last long and the young men turned their hands to education, opening a night school in Salford which did quite well for six years or so. By the mid-1840s Lloyd Jones had become a typical Owenite missionary, an effective speaker and writer and an experienced organizer. After support for Owen's ideas and experiments dwindled, Lloyd Jones migrated to London, where he resumed his old trade as fustian cutter and turned to Chartism in place of his Owenite work.
(2) George Holyoake, Lloyd Jones: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (1900)
Lloyd Jones came to Manchester in 1827, where he followed his father's trade of fustian-cutting. It was then a comparatively well-paid trade, exercised by independent workmen in their own houses. When there was some expectation of another Peterloo massacre, Lloyd Jones, like many thousands of others in the north, provided himself with arms, with a view to active resistance. He joined a co-operative society in Salford in 1829, and subsequently became the chief platform advocate of Owen's plan of village communities. For many years these views were vigorously opposed by the clergy, who regarded Owen's theories as immoral. Jones had a good presence and a fine voice, with readiness and courage in controversy, He was the best, public debater of his day, and was in more discussions than any other of Owen's supporters. When the chartist proposal of a month's holiday was put forward in 1839, with a view to showing practically the importance of the labouring classes, Jones was appointed to address the chartists of the Manchester district, with whom the strength of the movement rested. An audience of five thousand men assembled in the Carpenters' Hall, and five thousand were at the doors. After Jones's speech the project was abandoned. No sufficient provision had been made, and the dangers were obvious.
From 1837 to his death in 1886 Jones was officially connected with the co-operative movement, and had a chief part in its organisation and development. He largely contributed to political and co-operative journalism. He edited periodicals in Leeds and London, and wrote many pamphlets. Jointly with Mr. J. M. Ludlow, he wrote the Progress of the Working Classes (1867). His Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen, was published by his son in 1889. He was president of the Oldham Congress, 1885, the seventeenth annual meeting of the co-operative society. He was frequently appointed arbitrator in trades union disputes.