C. P. Scott

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C. P. Scott
Scott in 1919
Born
Charles Prestwich Scott

(1846-10-26)26 October 1846
Bath, Somerset, UK
Died1 January 1932(1932-01-01) (aged 85)
Alma materCorpus Christi College, Oxford
Occupation(s)Journalist, editor
SpouseRachel Cook (1874–1905)
ChildrenMadeline Scott
Laurence Scott
John Russell Scott
Edward Taylor Scott

Charles Prestwich Scott (26 October 1846 – 1 January 1932), usually cited as C. P. Scott, was a British journalist, publisher and politician. Born in

Liberal
Member of Parliament and pursued a progressive liberal agenda in the pages of the newspaper.

Biography

Early years

Educated at Hove House and Clapham Grammar School,

Greats in the autumn of 1869,[1] then in 1870 went to Edinburgh to train on The Scotsman. While at Oxford, his cousin John Taylor, who ran the London office of The Manchester Guardian, decided that the paper needed an editor based in Manchester and offered Scott the post. Scott already enjoyed a familial connection with the paper; its founder, John Edward Taylor
, was his uncle, and at the time of his birth Scott's father, Russell Scott, was the paper's owner, though he later sold it back to Taylor's sons under the terms of Taylor's will. Accepting the offer, Scott joined the paper as their London editor in February 1871 and became its editor on 1 January 1872.

As editor Scott initially maintained The Manchester Guardian's well-established moderate Liberal line, "to the right of the party, to the right, indeed, of much of its own special reporting".

Home Rule and ultimately the "new liberalism"[citation needed
].

Parliamentary career

C. P. Scott c. 1895
Bust of Scott in the offices of The Guardian, London

In 1886, Scott fought his first general election as a Liberal candidate, an unsuccessful attempt in the Manchester North East constituency; he stood again for the same seat in 1891 and 1892.[4] He was elected at the 1895 election as MP for Leigh,[5] and thereafter spent long periods away in London during the parliamentary session. His combined position as a Liberal backbencher, the editor of an important Liberal newspaper, and the president of the Manchester Liberal Federation made him an influential figure in Liberal circles, albeit in the middle of a long period of opposition.[6] He was re-elected at the 1900 election despite the unpopular stand against the Boer War that the Guardian had taken,[7] but retired from Parliament at the time of the Liberal landslide victory in 1906, when he was occupied with the difficult process of becoming owner of the newspaper he edited.

Taking ownership of The Manchester Guardian

In 1905, The Manchester Guardian's owner, Edward Taylor, died. His will provided that the trustees of his estate should give Scott first refusal on the copyright of the Manchester Guardian at £10,000, and recommended that they should offer him the offices and printing works of the paper on "moderate and reasonable terms". However, they were not required to sell it at all, and could continue to run the paper themselves "on the same lines and in the same spirit as heretofore". Furthermore, one of the trustees was a nephew of Taylor and would financially benefit from forcing up the price at which Scott could buy the paper, and another was The Manchester Guardian's manager, but faced losing his job if Scott took control. Scott was therefore forced to dig deep to buy the paper: he paid a total of £240,000, taking large loans from his sisters and from Taylor's widow (who had been his chief supporter among the trustees) to do so. Taylor's other paper, the Manchester Evening News, was inherited by his nephews in the Allen family. Scott made an agreement to buy the MEN in 1922 and gained full control of it in 1929.

His politics and relations with Government

While in London, he stayed at the central location of Nottingham Place from where he could gather news intelligence on European developments. Would the government declare war? Scott recorded that the German ambassador had been deceived into believing that Britain would stay outside the conflict. But liberal policy always accentuated one of "continuity" of free radicals at its heart.[further explanation needed][8] But for Scott the Cabinet remained too reticent to act, too timid, clearly an indication of his movement towards MacDonald and Labour. They espoused a pacifist position in Britain, which he was warned was "pro-German".[9] He was a friend of the radical Charles Hobhouse MP, who was not in the War Cabinet.

Scott turned his paper into a pacifist weapon against entering the war, and he lobbied the cabinet as well. His leaders denounced a "conspiracy to drag us into a war against England's interests", arguing that it would amount to a "crime against Europe" and warning that it would "throw away the accumulated progress of half a century".[10] On Tuesday, 4 August 1914 – the day the king declared war – David Lloyd George told Scott, "Up until last Sunday only two members of the Cabinet had been in favour of our intervention in the war but the violation of Belgian territory had completely altered the situation".[10]

Although a lifelong liberal, Scott had a troubled relationship with Lloyd George. Perhaps most instructive of his communicating skills was the introduction he made of

Sir Roger Casement. His story was linked to Michael Collins' Dublin builder Batt O'Connor, who more than any Irishman had served to hide Collins's presence from the RIC.[12] In Ulster Joe Devlin warned the Left of the impending violence should they not heed the warnings contained in the newspapers about the coming military occupation. The Curragh incident had profoundly shocked the establishment in Ireland; on 27 July 1916 Scott would hold just a one-off meeting with General Macready, Lord Reading and Lloyd George in the aftermath of the Easter Rising.[13]

Scott was gregarious and frequently met at the

G. Lowes Dickinson, but his closest political intimate was Irish leader John Dillon. They shared a socialist ambition for home rule, pacifism, conscriptionism[clarification needed
] and feminism.

Senior political journalist

Under his stewardship the Guardian continued to grow with Lloyd George's influence overseeing its place at the top table. In one such famous interview the new Prime Minister gave his "fight to the finish" speech. Scott was responsible for recruiting the correspondent

Quai D'Orsay and Bureau Anglais in a weekly column called "From Our Correspondent, Paris, Friday". Despite Lloyd George's objection to the reporter's anonymity there remained little chance of compromising their French colleagues in a city already renowned for prostitution. To the contrary, Thomas Spring Rice his friend suggested that it had "a most excellent effect here."[14] Scott became friendly with Churchill, a Liberal, and dined with Lord Fisher
but remained essentially anti-Conservative. Nonetheless the War Office acknowledged the utility of civilians as contacts on the ground; Scott's opinion was solicited on anything from the strength of Irish war opinions to whether Churchill should be removed from office.

Views

In a 1921 essay marking the Manchester Guardian's centenary (at which time he had served nearly fifty years as editor), Scott put down his opinions on the role of the newspaper. He argued that the "primary office" of a newspaper is accurate news reporting, saying "comment is free, but facts are sacred". Even editorial comment has its responsibilities: "It is well to be frank; it is even better to be fair". A newspaper should have a "soul of its own", with staff motivated by a "common ideal": although the business side of a newspaper must be competent, if it becomes dominant the paper will face "distressing consequences".

While supporting

Easter Uprising in Dublin, he wrote that 'it is a fate which they invoked and of which they probably would not complain'.[17]

Scott was a supporter of Zionism.[18]

Final years

Scott remained editor of the Manchester Guardian until 1 July 1929, at which time he was eighty-three years old and had been editor for exactly fifty-seven and a half years. His successor as editor was his youngest son, Ted Scott, though C. P. remained as Governing Director of the company and was at the Guardian offices most evenings. He died in the early hours of New Year's Day 1932.

Family

In 1874, Scott married Rachel Cook, who had been one of the first undergraduates of the College for Women,

Scott Trust
. Youngest son Ted, who succeeded his father as editor, drowned in a sailing accident after less than three years in the post. John and Ted Scott jointly inherited the ownership of the Manchester Guardian & Evening News Ltd.; after Ted's death John passed it on to the Scott Trust.

In 1882, having built a new house in

The Firs in Fallowfield in Manchester to his friend C. P. Scott.[19] After Scott's death the house became the property of the University of Manchester, and was the Vice-Chancellor's residence until 1991. Scott used to travel into his Cross Street office by bicycle.[20]

Scott was the grandfather of Evelyn Montague (1900–1948), the Olympic athlete and journalist depicted in the film Chariots of Fire. Montague, like his grandfather, wrote for the Manchester Guardian, and became its London editor.

Honours

Scott was made a Freeman of the City of Manchester in 1930.[20]

References

  1. ^ a b c "C P Scott:: A Chronology". Adam matthew Publications. Archived from the original on 15 July 2010. Retrieved 13 November 2010.
  2. ^ "History of Corpus Christi College". Corpus Christi College Oxford. Retrieved 13 November 2010.
  3. ^ Ayerst (1971)
  4. ^ Moore, James. "Manchester Liberalism and the Unionist Secession 1886–95" (PDF). Manchester Centre for Regional History. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 13 November 2010.
  5. ^ "Authors, Novelists, Writers & Poets". Writers and novelists of Greater Manchester. Archived from the original on 11 December 2010. Retrieved 13 November 2010.
  6. ^ Jones, Brendan. "Manchester liberalism and the 1918 general election" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 13 November 2010.
  7. S2CID 159550361
    .
  8. ^ Letter to E. D. Morel, 18 Aug 1914; Wilson (ed.), Scott's Diaries, p. 101
  9. ^ From: Sir Otto Trevelyan, 13 Sep 1914; p. 105
  10. ^ a b Alan Travis, "First world war: how the Manchester Guardian fought to keep Britain out of conflict: A hundred years ago this weekend, on the eve of war, the newspaper argued passionately in a series of editorials for UK neutrality", The Guardian Aug. 2, 2014
  11. ISBN 978-0812976038
    .
  12. ^ Wilson (ed.), Diary, 15 March 1915; Wilson (ed.), pp.119-121
  13. ^ Diary entry; pp. 222–3
  14. ^ LG to Scott, 23 Oct 1916; Wilson (ed.), p.231
  15. ^ Leader, 18 November 1911
  16. ^ Leader, 14 May 1926
  17. ^ 4 May 1916, in David Ayerst (1971) The Guardian: Biography of a Newspaper; p. 392
  18. ^ Bloom, Cecil. "Josiah Wedgwood and Palestine". Jewish Historical Studies, vol. 42, 2009, pp. 147–172. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/29780127. Accessed 29 January 2020.
  19. ^ History (Faculty of Life Sciences – The University of Manchester) Archived 7 October 2006 at the Wayback Machine
  20. ^ a b Manchester Evening News; Manchester's Greats. 30 April 1977

Bibliography

Primary sources
  • Hammond papers
  • Lloyd George papers - contains a large number of letters and correspondence - British Library (BL).
Secondary sources
  • Ayerst, David (1971). The Guardian: Biography of a Newspaper. London: Collins.
  • Hammond, J. L. (1934). C.P. Scott of the Manchester Guardian. London: Bell.
  • Lejeune, C. A. (1964). Thank You for Having Me. London: Hutchinson. (the author's mother was a friend of Scott)
  • Scott, C. P. (1946). 1846–1932: the making of the Manchester Guardian. London: Frederick Muller. (5 extracts from Scott's writings; 18 other contributions)
  • Wilson, Trevor, ed. (1970). The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911–1928. London: Collins.

External links

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Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Leigh
1895–1906 		Succeeded by
Media offices
Preceded by Editor of
The Manchester Guardian
1872–1929 		Succeeded by
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