Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/249

 unrest of the time brought into being a renewed political agitation in favour of labour legislation, such as the removal of objectionable provisions in the conspiracy and master and servant laws, and in that agitation Broadhurst was prominent. In 1873 he was elected secretary to the Labour Representation League, formed to send trade unionists to parliament. That year he tried to enter the London School Board for Greenwich, but failed. Workmen had been candidates for parliament before the league's days, but it produced the first list of labour candidates at any election that of 1874 and succeeded in returning two of them, Alexander MacDonald for Stafford and Thomas Burt for Morpeth. Broadhurst himself stood for High Wycombe on a day's notice, but only polled 113 votes. In 1875 the trade union congress elected him secretary of its parliamentary committee.

At this time the leading members of the parliamentary committee were prominent supporters of programmes of radical reform, like the extension of the franchise, the abolition of property qualifications for office on local governing bodies the first subject upon which Broadhurst had to draft a bill (1876) and the Plimsoll merchant shipping bill [see, Suppl. I]. Above all the committee had begun to lobby in parliament, to send deputations to ministers and leading politicians on labour questions, and to interfere in parliamentary elections. The agitations for the repeal of what the trade unionists considered the unjust laws relating to conspiracy, masters and servants, and the legal status of trade unions had been so far successful [see, Suppl. II], but Broadhurst and his friends brought within the scope of their urgent activity questions like employers' liability and work-men's compensation for industrial injuries and amendments to the Factory Acts. Broadhurst was also the secretary of the workmen's committee of the Eastern Question Association, which stimulated public opinion in England against the conduct of the Turks in Bulgaria (1875-1880). He promoted international trade union con- ferences, like that of Paris in 1883, which was one of the beginnings of the present International Socialist Congresses.

After the general election of 1874 the Labour Representation League ceased to move the interest of trade unionists, and gradually collapsed. Broadhurst thenceforth identified himself with the liberal party, and in 1878 was chosen one of the two liberal candidates for Stoke-on-Trent. He was elected in 1880 with a poll of 11,379 votes. In the House of Commons Broadhurst at once engaged in miscellaneous but most useful work. He supported employers' liability bills (1880-1) and proposed amendments in factory legislation. He investigated the hardships attending the employment of women and children in the heavy industries of the Black Country (producing in the House of Commons in 1883 one of the nail-making machines to illustrate his speech on the subject). In 1884 he moved for the first time the appointment of working-men to the bench of justices and in 1885 the inclusion of a fair wages clause in government contracts. At that time all his income, which came to him as secretary of the trade union congress parliamentary committee, was 150l. a year, from which he had to pay for clerical help at his office ; he could only afford clothes made by his wife. From 1882 Broadhurst took an active interest in leasehold enfranchisement, which rapidly became a popular radical demand, and was the subject of a memorandum attached to the report of the royal commission on the housing of the working classes (1884). Of that commission he was a member. In 1882 he was offered an assistant factory inspectorship, and in 1884 an inspectorship of canal boats, but declined both.

In 1884 Broadhurst, as secretary of the trade union congress parliamentary committee, became the leading spirit on the workmen's side in the final phase of the agitation for an extension of the franchise. At the election, which followed the Franchise and Redistribution Acts of 1885, Broadhurst declined to contest either of the new Pottery constituencies, into which Stoke-on-Trent bad been divided, and stood for the Bordesley division of Birmingham, which he won with 5362 votes. On the formation of Gladstone's liberal ministry in February 1886 he accepted office as under-secretary in the home department. This necessitated his resignation of the secretaryship of the parliamentary committee. Queen Victoria agreed to excuse him from attending levees, and he was the first minister to whom such permission was granted.

On the defeat of the liberal government in the autumn, Broadhurst retired from Bordesley, and contested West Nottingham, which he won, polling 5458 votes, and in September 1886 lie again was elected secretary to the trade union congress parliamentary committee. A steady drift towards an independent political position had set in