John Bedford Leno - Working Class Liberal

Working Class Liberal

In 1868 John Bedford Leno and William Worley helped Gladstone and the Liberal party assess which boroughs would have strong support for working class Liberal candidates. They visited thirty-three boroughs in all. The Liberal Whip thanked them in a letter stating that "none had gauged events with equal accuracy". At the time of the General Election Leno was rewarded by being chosen as the parliamentary agent of the former secretary of the Reform League, George Howell, in the Aylesbury division. Unfortunately, they were faced by millionaire bankers, John Abel Smith and Lionel de Rothschild, who could afford to transport all of their voters to the poll, and Howell lost by two hundred votes.

John Bedford Leno also strove hard for the abolition of liability of the goods of poor tenants for rent, for limited liability with regard to investments, for the spread of education, for the abolition of drunkenness, although he was not an abstainer, and rushed to the assistance of Joseph Arch in his support for the agricultural labourer in 1872.

He thought there was justice underlying Socialism, but felt that it was coming piecemeal and that its advocates were too eager.

Whenever it was thought advisable to send deputations on questions affecting the working classes he was generally chosen, and so would meet with Palmerston, Disraeli, Derby and Gladstone. He was intimate with almost all of the working class leaders of the day and stood in the foremost rank of those selected as future working class members of the British House of Commons, although he never took up this post.