Nick Brown MP

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of Peter Curran’s election as Member of Parliament for Jarrow – the first Labour MP in the North East. Nick Brown gave this speech at a dinner held by Jarrow Labour Party to commemorate the event

100 yrs ago this year, in August 1907, the general workers in Belfast went on strike

The strike wasn’t specific to a particular industry, nor, for once, was it wholly sectarian in nature

The UK Liberal Govt met the strikers, peaceful pickets, with troops, rifles and fixed bayonets

The peaceful pickets became less peaceful, and threw stones and bottles at the soldiers

A month previously, two new Members of Parliament had been elected for Jarrow and, a fortnight later, Colne Valley

It was Jarrow’s Peter Curran who led a ferocious parliamentary onslaught on the use of armed troops against striking workers, and whose Parliamentary activity and leadership brought about an enduring change in public attitudes and the attitudes of parliamentarians to the responses to peaceful industrial disputes

It is the memory of a great Parliamentarian, and a great trade Union leader, that we are celebrating today

In his Parliamentary work, Peter Curran was disciplined and persistent

He had the strength of character, and determination to take on difficult, not always glamorous, organisational tasks, and to see them through to an effective conclusion 

And he was not to be the last Member of Parliament for Jarrow about whom that could be said

In researching the events of the 4^th July 1907, I found much that I expected, and almost as much that I did not

In spite of coming from a very large Irish family, Peter Curran did not get the bulk of the Tyneside Irish vote in the 1907 election

It was an important vote – the Jarrow party still fights in green

When I first fought Newcastle East, just the other side of the river, the party colours were green, red and white

Green for the ground that was fought for

Red for the blood that was spilt

And white for purity of the cause

Needless to say we had to change our colours

It was also made very clear to me that the green was emerald green 

What seems to have happened is that the Irish Nationalist Party – the constitutional Irish National Party of the day – endorsed Sir Charles Mark Palmer, the long-serving Liberal MP 

Palmer was the Palmer of Palmer’s Yard. He was responsible for much of the ship-building enterprises growing up on the south of the river Tyne, and indeed for much of Jarrow town itself

He had defeated Peter Curran at the 1906 election, but Curran continued to work the seat, having shrewdly noted that Palmer was 85 yrs old and no doubt calculating that he, Curran, could fight the seat next time, or that there might be a by-election, as indeed there was, when Palmer died the following year

I thought I’d find that the shipyard workers of Jarrow carried Peter Curran to office in the by-election, but this isn’t what happened either

The shipyard workers vote split between the Irish Nationalist Party with Tyneside Irish Shipyard workers voting for the Constitutional Irish National Cause.

The Nationalist Candidate was himself a shipyard worker

The traders in Jarrow, and the freeholders in South Shields who had votes in Jarrow in those days, voted Unionist

It was the mining community of West Bouldon and Bouldon Colliery that voted solidly for the Labour candidate – the other votes split four ways and Peter Curran won, thus becoming the first Labour MP for the North East of England

I thought I would find that in the election campaign he emphasised his Labour credentials, as he would have had every right to do

In fact he fought the campaign more as a trade unionist than as a political activist, emphasising his 20 yrs as a full time Trade Union official with the Union that he, Will Thorne and others, helped to found.This was the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers

There is even an irony here – Peter Curran began his working career in a Steelworks’ Blacksmiths Shop, first by assisting the hammer driver, and then doing the job himself

A generation later this is something he couldn’t have done because he would have been in the wrong union

Peter Curran is the Curran in the court of appeal case Curran vs Straleven in 1891

The case overturns Curran’s earlier conviction and fine for intimidation which was imposed on him during an industrial dispute at Plymouth 

He was one of the first National Leaders of our Union in the days when Labour leaders like Curran, Clynes and Thorne were able to lead Trade Unions and serve in Parliament as well

They saw no contradiction in this and indeed there wasn’t 

Nowadays its hard to imagine anyone leaving the Fabian Society, except perhaps because of the annual fee

Peter Curran left the Fabian Society because he was against the war. The Boer War.

He was clearly a strong-willed man with drive, courage and by all accounts having an extrovert good nature 

He was a born leader and political organiser.

He died in 1910, and it’s a measure of how much he was admired that thousands of people turned out for his burial at Leytonstone Roman Catholic Cemetary

A gas-worker’s union man to the very last, the funeral procession was led by the Stepney Gas-worker’s brass band.