William Edward Forster

English educator

• Born: July 11, 1818
• Birthplace: Bradpole, Dorsetshire, England
• Died: April 5, 1886
• Place of death: London, England

Forster was most famous for his reform in British education. An “advanced” Liberal, he was responsible for the Education Act of 1870, the Ballot Act of 1872, and advancement of other Radical causes. He was less revered for his policy of coercion in Ireland, where he served as Great Britain’s chief secretary.

Early Life

William Edward Forster grew up in a prominent Quaker family but was expelled from the Society of Friends in 1850 when he married Jane Martha, the eldest daughter of Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby School. His parents, William and Anna Buxton Forster, were Quaker missionaries. His father died on an antislavery mission in Tennessee in the United States in 1854. All William’s formal education was in Quaker schools of Bristol and Tottenham. He traveled in Ireland as a representative of the Friends’ Relief Fund during the famine.

After his marriage, Forster joined the Church of England and became a successful woolens manufacturer. A model employer, Forster was known as the “working-man’s friend.” He was in sympathy with the goals of Chartism and was acquainted with Robert Owen, Thomas Cooper, the Reverend Frederick Denison Maurice, Thomas and Jane Carlyle, Richard Cobden, and John Bright. Between 1861 and 1886, Forster represented Bradford in the House of Commons. Forster remained childless, but he adopted four orphans of his wife’s brother, one of whom, H. O. Arnold-Forster, became a cabinet minister.

Life’s Work

Other nicknames given to Forster were “Education Forster,” “Buckshot Forster,” and the “English Robespierre”—not all were terms of endearment. These names reflect phases of his career: Early in his parliamentary career, on the occasion of the death of Lord Palmerston, he was made undersecretary for the colonies, launching his national political career and representing a continuing interest for the rest of his life. He became a privy councillor in 1868.

During William Ewart Gladstone’s government of the late 1860’s and early 1870’s, Forster became the equivalent of minister of education. His title was Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education. He formulated and guided through Parliament the Education Act of 1870, which provided for the first national system of elementary education for England and Wales. There were later provisions for Ireland and Scotland, as well as universally obligatory and free education provisions. The Forster Education Act did lay the foundation for a comprehensive centralized system of education, and it introduced changes in the concept of the child and the child’s place in society and the community.

Like most other legislation, the bill underwent a process of political compromise. Most controversy centered on the “religious difficulty,” concerns of Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Nonconformists, the latter being especially determined to prevent monopolistic domination by the Church of England, the established religion. The “conscience clause,” the denominational system, and “the Cowper-Temple amendment” excluding the teaching of catechisms all entered into the conflicts. The resulting act pleased no one and especially displeased the Nonconformists and some powerful Radicals, notably Joseph Chamberlain. (Indeed, Gladstone later blamed his defeat of 1874 on the Education Act.) The act provided for a “dual system” of elementary education: side-by-side and separate voluntary schools and local authority schools. Local school boards, elected by secret ballot and under national oversight, were established. They were empowered to provide education for all.

Forster is credited for this unprecedented achievement, but it came at a price. His constituents at Bradford were among those disappointed with the act and censured him. Perhaps more significant, Forster, in effect, was passed over for party leadership. In 1875 Gladstone “retired” for the first time. (He would return to the prime ministership twice.) In the political manipulating within the Liberal Party, Joseph Chamberlain and the powerful Nonconformists made sure that the choice for his replacement was Lord Hartington and not Forster.

Forster’s obituary in The Times included an observation by a contemporary: “The invective of both [extremes] of irreconcilables was mercilessly poured out upon Mr. Forster.” A modern analysis of educational provisions in England during the nineteenth century by Philip Gardner laments the demise of many good working-class private schools, “the people’s schools,” displaced by the state system.

With great tactical ability during the parliamentary sessions of 1871 and 1872, Forster guided the famous secret Ballot Act of 1872 through both houses. Debates were especially lengthy. Moving on to other reforms, he participated in such causes as antislavery, arbitration, and working men’s interests; he was pro-North during the American Civil War and anti-Russian in international affairs. It was Forster’s persistent questioning, in 1876, that elicited Prime MinisterBenjamin Disraeli’s disastrous attempt to explain the Bulgarian atrocities, the murdering of Christians by Turkish authorities. Forster, a former Quaker who obviously was moving toward the political and religious center, was an enthusiastic “volunteer,” a kind of national guard or militia leader.

Gladstone resumed his leadership of the Liberal Party and was returned to office as prime minister in 1880. Forster wanted the Colonial Office but received instead the chief secretaryship for Ireland, a most challenging position at a time when the Irish leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, and his Land League were establishing positions of enormous power within and outside Ireland. Forster determined to suppress crime and violence in Ireland. He formulated and had passed, again despite extraordinary parliamentary obstruction, the Irish Coercion Bill of 1881, which provided for suspension of habeas corpus and arrest of suspects without trial.

The Irish bill was ruthlessly enforced, gaining for Forster the sobriquets “Buckshot Forster” and the “English Robespierre.” In fact, the bill was counterproductive: Violence increased. It was later determined that several assassination plots were aimed at Forster. In the meantime, Gladstone and the cabinet sought alternative policies. Parnell, in a Dublin prison himself, was secretly approached. Negotiation and promises of conciliation led to an agreement, the Kilmainham (prison) Treaty of May, 1882. Forster mistrusted Parnell, objected, and announced his resignation. Four days later, his successor, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and another Irish official were brutally murdered in Phoenix Park, Dublin.

Forster continued to maintain special interest in colonial matters. He went to great lengths, including personal tours of the area, to become an expert on the Eastern Question (concerning British affairs in Egypt). He increasingly opposed Gladstone, voting for censure of the government in the sensational case of Charles “Chinese” Gordon and the Khartoum disaster (1885). Forster opposed home rule for Ireland. Shortly before his death, he became the first head of the Imperial Federation League, an imperialist pressure group.

While still a Quaker, Forster wrote his first work, an apology for the leader of the Society of Friends, William Penn, in response to a critique by the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay. Subsequently, he contributed to the Leader, Westminster Review, and Edinburgh Review on issues associated with his causes such as right to work, distress in colonial areas, and opposition to slavery. In 1875 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen. There is a revealing exchange between Gladstone and Forster’s biographer, Thomas Wemyss Reid, editor of the Leeds Mercury, in the periodical Nineteenth Century, in 1888. Gladstone summarized the career and contributions of Forster, pointing out that Forster had often stood up for his convictions even when it brought conflict with close friends: “By political creed a Radical, he dissented from the first article of Radicalism… the maintenance of the Church Establishment in England.”

Forster’s funeral was held in Westminster Abbey, and he was buried at Burley-in-Wharfedale. His portrait, by H. T. Wells, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London, and a statue stands on the banks of the Thames near the location of the London School Board building. His widow died in 1890.

Significance

The nicknames given to this Quaker turned Anglican statesman illustrate trends of his career and his political development: “Lond” was an affectionate appellation for a sensitive employer, “Education” signifies his most important contribution, and “Buckshot” indicates his unfortunate and coercive policies as Irish minister toward the end of his life.

William Edward Forster was a brilliant and successful politician and parliamentarian. He was particularly persuasive in debate and particularly effective in manipulating votes. Repeatedly he sacrificed personal political advancement and special interests in colonial-imperial matters to lead controversial and essential reforms. He was the quintessential Victorian reformer.

Bibliography

Armytage, W. H. “The 1870 Education Act.” British Journal of Educational Studies 18 (June, 1970): 121-133. A detailed account of the formative education legislation, describing the areas of dispute and compromise, such as election of boards, the conscience clause, and permissive compulsion. There is a chronology of the legislative process; more than two hundred members spoke in the debates.

Gardner, Philip. The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England. London: Croom Helm, 1984. A modern revisionist critique of Forster’s Education Act. There existed in nineteenth century England a working system of traditional, working-class, private schools, an “alternative educational culture.” Some schools were linked to Chartism and Owenism. They were practical and purposeful, and they had contributed to a relatively high literacy rate. Gardner laments their demise, as they were bureaucratically replaced after 1870.

Jackson, Patrick. Education Act Forster: A Political Biography of W. E. Forster (1818-1886). Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997. Biography examining Forster’s life and career. Explains how Forster was one of the era’s “new men”—a person from a manufacturing background, without public school or university education or connections to the political establishment, who held a significant position in British politics.

Middleton, Nigel. “The Education Act of 1870 as the Start of the Modern Concept of the Child.” British Journal of Educational Studies 18 (June, 1970): 166-179. Forster’s act brought neither free nor compulsory education, but it was quite significant because it introduced fundamental changes: a new type of society that radically altered the place and the concept of the child.

Murphy, James. Church, State, and Schools in Britain, 1800-1970. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971. A chapter is devoted to the impact of the Education Act of 1870 on the church-state and interdenominational controversies in Great Britain during the past two centuries. Good at sorting out the complexities associated with the denominations, radicals, Nonconformists, Anglicans, pressure groups, and other activists.

O’Callaghan, Margaret. British High Politics and a Nationalist Ireland: Criminality, Land, and the Law Under Forster and Balfour. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Scholarly examination of the “land question” in Ireland, describing the role of Forster and others who devised and upheld British policy on this issue, and the Irish response to that policy.

Reid, Thomas Wemyss. Life of the Right Honourable William Edward Forster. 1888. New York: A. M. Kelley, 1970. The standard biography by a close friend, editor of the Leeds Mercury and a political supporter—Forster’s apologist.

Roper, Henry. “W. E. Forster’s Memorandum of 21 October 1869: A Re-Examination.” British Journal of Educational Studies 21 (February, 1973): 64-75. An intriguing and speculative thesis based on new research. Roper claims there were two drafts by Forster outlining the education bill. Gladstone insisted on alterations. The omitted sections related to the two most controversial issues: religion and attendance. Contends that the original version would have forestalled basic objections by critics.