Work and Wealth in a Modern Port

An Economic Survey of Southampton

P. Ford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351792868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

This survey, first published in 1934, was designed as a contribution to our knowledge of poverty, its incidence and causes. Poverty is a product of many variables, and it needs to be understood as an expression of a complex of economic and other social forces. This study therefore goes beyond the immediate facts, and investigates some of the factors which have influenced the growth of population, the earning strength of families and the economic life of the town and port.

Work and Wealth in Southampton

Chapter I
History

THE Southampton of to-day and that of a century and a half ago present a remarkable contrast. At the earlier date, through its various representative bodies, the town owned or controlled the immediate sources of its prosperity. It owned both the foreshore and its mudlands, as far as its boundary (near the West Station); it owned its docks, controlled and drew annual revenue from its harbour. To-day these are in private hands, and the vital decisions affecting the town’s economic future are made by non-local companies.

The alienation of the foreshore arose from the failure of the town to develop the docks and harbour, and from the intervention of private enterprise for the purpose. In 1803 an Act was passed for extending the quays and making docks, but the powers were not used, nor were renewed projects in 1810 any more fruitful. The real impulse did not come until a group of persons had considered the construction of both railroad and docks. Since important property rights were concerned, it is useful to trace the development in the minutes of the Council’s own proceedings. The record for November 22, 1830, contains the following entry: “The Council received a deputation of subscribers of the intended railway and docks,” and it resolved “That the Corporation is willing to treat with the said committee or with any respectable company for making liberal arrangements with a view to the extension of the port.” It was the railway which first made progress. Any line which had its terminus near the dock would have to pass over land under the control of the town, and in order to interest the Council in its plan, the railway company took the unusual step of inviting the Town Council to send the Mayor as ex officio director¹ of the company during his year of office and the next, a form of liaison doubtless well devised to promote co-operation of the two bodies in furthering the project. In March 1832 the Council granted the company leave to pass over the Marsh, according to a plan presented. The next important stage as far as the Council was concerned, did not come until 1835, when the company sent its chairman and solicitor to request the Council to grant six acres of the Marsh for a station and line, and to sanction a readjustment of the route. The Council had earlier resolved that it would make “liberal arrangements,² and it certainly lived up to its word, for at its next meeting on October 16, 1835, the following remarkable resolution was passed: “It is resolved that this Corporation do approve and consent to the deviation of the line of the railroad… and are willing to execute a conveyance of the land applied for both the road and the station for the purpose of the Act for the sum of one guinea; and that the company may take gravel from the shore between the land demised to the late Mr. William Lintot and the shore demised to the proprietors of the baths by the Corporation until Christmas next for the use of the company, they paying five pounds.” There were present the Mayor and nine councillors. It was almost the last act of the unreformed Council.

The reformed Council met on the 28th December, and consisted of thirty councillors. It had straight away to tackle the other portion of the project, the dock scheme, now fostered by a separate company. Technically it was fortunate for Southampton that the two schemes had in some measure been conceived together, and that the dock company employed the same engineer, Mr. Giles, as the railway company,³ for it implied a unity of conception and convenience of layout which might otherwise have been absent. Nevertheless, the dock scheme received a much more critical treatment in the reformed Council than the railway scheme had in the unreformed one. In 1836 the dock company applied to the Corporation for the sale of the Mudlands. The struggle over this alienation was as dramatic as the consequences of both dock development and of loss of control of the foreshore were important, and the charges made by the dissenting minority were so unusual that the intensity of feeling breaks through even the cold form of Council minutes. The first statement appears in the minutes of February 19, 1836, when the company asked approval for its plans; on that date the Council resolved that while the whole scheme was of great advantage to the town, it dissented from the application because the plan embraced a larger proportion of the Mudlands than it thought necessary for the scheme, and because sufficient data had not been supplied. A month later, however (March 18th), a deputation of the provisional committee of the intended dock company met the Council. A motion that the Council dissent from the proposals was amended to read that it was willing to assent provided that suitable terms could be arranged. Without further ado, a committee of five was appointed to confer with the deputation, and brought back to the same meeting agreed terms. The Corporation was to receive a rent charge equal to the dividend on 100 shares, which were to be regarded as fully paid up and free from all liability for calls; if the dividend paid were 10 per cent, the rent charge was to equal the dividend on 120 shares; if 20 per cent, to the dividend on 140 shares. The Corporation was to be entitled to ten votes at all meetings of shareholders. In lieu of shares, the Council was to have the option of receiving £5,000, provided that in addition an annual rent charge should be paid if the dividend reached 10 per cent. Thirty members were present at the meeting and the scheme was agreed to, but the depth of feeling of the minority was such that five dissentients took the unusual course of recording in the minutes a personally signed protest at the decision. Four, Messrs. Whitchurch, Hill, Rubie, and Brady, argued as follows:

We protest against the resolution in this day’s Council because, in our opinion, the lands and privileges of the town entrusted to the Town Council have been hastily and inadvisedly given away, because the value of the land far exceeds the consideration offered, and because we will not be participators in a scheme which will benefit the company without giving the burgesses of the town those advantages they have a right to expect from their valuable property.

The fifth protest, by Admiral Tinling, was made on the ground that it would be a great misfortune for the docks to come into the hands of a private company whose main interest would be, not low dock rates, but the maximum return on capital; that the Corporation was giving up the only improvable land in their possession, that the Council had enough resources to do the work themselves, and finally that the steps had been hastily taken, and the scheme hurried on by interested persons. The committee appointed at the next Council meeting to scrutinize the clauses of the Bill did not include any protesting member.¹ When their report came before the Council, the dissentients proposed that the opinion of the law officers of the Crown should be taken on a case to be drawn up by a committee of Council as to the course to be adopted. This was negatived, and three of the dissentients, Hill, Rubie, and Whitchurch, again signed a protest against the negativing of this resolution.² In May³ it was proposed that “the Corporation seal be affixed to the Bill now before Parliament.” Despite a hostile amendment, this was carried and the seal affixed, whereupon a protest was again entered in the minute book, and personally signed by eight members: J. Lankester, D. Brookes, C. Tinling, J. Joliff, J. Whitchurch, J. Hill, R. Young, and J. Rubie. They protested:

Because no member of the Town Council nor any one on behalf of the Council, has collated the points of the amended Bill with the Bill settled in committee of the House of Commons; because no member of the Town Council has assured that the letter of the Bill carries into effect the alterations agreed to; because the dock committee has not abandoned the claim to purchase the whole of the Mudlands at a very inadequate price of £5,000.

In June¹ the dock company applied for actual purchase of the Mudlands, and the proposal to confirm the sale was met by a series of hostile amendments, for example, that the Corporation was not prepared to accept money or shares until the whole proceedings of the Council with the dock company were laid before the Lords of the Treasury, and their sanction as to the quantity and price was made known. These were negatived, however, and the original proposition carried by seventeen votes to ten. This was followed by another signed protest, which recorded the “determined opposition of the signatories to the proposed gift or sale of the most improvable lands of the burgesses.” The sale was declared to be a hasty and improvident bargain, which alienated lands held in trust for the present and future inhabitants, without the consent of the majority of the burgesses. Consent of the burgesses should be obtained at public meetings after free, fair, and open discussion. Objection was also made that “nothing was known” of the chief promoters of the scheme; that the company had insufficient capital to develop the land transferred, and finally, “that because a majority in the Council, including many members who were directors, shareholders, or otherwise interested in the company have voted away property of the town without calling in the aid of any engineer or surveyor to assist their judgment or bear out their proceedings.” Eight members signed this vigorous protest: Whitchurch, Hill, Joliff, Lankester, Young, Rubie, Brady, and Tinling. In the next Council meeting a more direct attack was made by the dissentients, who moved “that in the late meetings of Council, many members who were shareholders and directors of or otherwise interested in making a most advantageous bargain for themselves and the company with whom they were connected, have been the means of causing majorities to vote away inconsiderately and inadvisedly the property, rights, and privileges of the burgesses… the Council, not wishing to establish a precedent so dangerous, hereby record their opinion that no member of the Council should vote in any decision at any meeting of Council or committee of Council, should be an applicant of any grant or privilege for himself, or when the decision may interest him as lessee or yearly tenant, or if he should in any other way be directly interested in a pecuniary manner in any application so made.” This was naturally negatived.¹

The contest was now carried to the Treasury. Memorials were presented to it by the Corporation, asking for authority to carry on the scheme, by the dock company in support, and by certain town councillors and burgesses “objecting that too large an area was being transferred, and that the price was too low.”² In view of the importance and difficulty of the case, the Treasury sent an officer to survey the land and to confer with the deputations and others. His report, which the Treasury accepted, was to the effect that the whole of the 216 acres was necessary, and that the sum agreed upon was an ample price, when it was considered that the ground was of no real value until considerable sums of money had been spent upon it; but he also stated that a prompt payment of the £5,000 should be insisted upon. The Treasury’s decision respecting the proposed methods of payment suggest the frame of mind induced by an economy campaign. Calling for a return of the Borough finances, the Treasury noted that the annual expenditure of the Corporation was £3,783, and that the income was £1,860, leaving the remainder to be raised by rates. The debt of £9,235 was amply covered by the Corporation property and lands. The Treasury argued that “whatever might have been their view in other circumstances, My Lords consider that they should not be justified in acceding to the proposals of sale for shares when, in additon to a considerable debt, there exists a large annual deficiency which must be met out of the Borough rate.” With certain stipulations the Treasury therefore sanctioned the sale.

There were further alienations of considerable importance. Some was transferred to a rival railway company for a proposed new main station and jetty; another area of eleven acres was leased at £500 per annum for ninety-nine years for the construction of cable works.¹ As regards the dock undertaking, additional Mudlands were transferred for the purpose of dock extension between 1892 and 1896, but these were adjacent to the existing dock property, and involved no fresh sale of the foreshore itself. The transfer of the foreshore and Mudlands which the present dock extension² required was in a different category. For not only did it involve the alienation of the remainder of the foreshore and the loss of the amenities of the water front for a considerable portion of the town’s inhabitants, but this reclamation will make available some hundreds of acres of land for industrial development, and will also shift the focus of the town in a marked degree. With the passing of the Southern Railway Act of 1924 and this final sale of the foreshore, Southampton completed its transformation from the ancient port and harbour controlled by the town itself to the modern type of control by non-local enterprise.

The relaxation of corporation control which marked the development of the docks showed itself also in the management of the harbour. The principle of outside influence had been conceded as early as 1803, when an Act was passed establishing, after the fashion of the day, a special statutory body, which consisted of the entire membership of the Borough Council with the recorder and ten specific members.³ Under the Act of 1803 these specific commissioners were Ufe members, with power to fill vacancies as they occurred. Into the detailed changes of qualifications, etc., for specific members it is not necessary to enter, but in the latter part of the century such a member was required to have a property qualification in the borough, to be a householder and assessed for the poor-rate to the amount of £30, and in the same year to have paid rates and duties as an importer of goods from any legal quay within the borough. In the middle of the nineteenth century it was alleged of this, as of other local special bodies similarly constituted, that its specific commissioners were lax in attending the Board’s meetings, one reason given being that the Council members were always in the majority, and so could and did continually outvote the special members.¹ On the other hand, at a 1912 enquiry² into the Board’s constitution, it was stated on behalf of the Borough Council that this majority was given to it because it had always claimed the right to receive harbour dues, had never relinquished that right, and had agreed to accept one-fifth only of the dues as part of a bargain.³ It appeared to be admitted, however, that sometime before the ’nineties it was the Council members who took little interest in the meetings.⁴

In many other ports the question of the appropriateness of local control of a port of national importance serving ...