Halley Stewart

Stewart followed his father in preaching the Christian message, although he was never ordained as a minister. From 1863–1874 he was the pastor of Croft Church, Hastings in East Sussex and from 1874–77 of Caledonian Road Church in Islington, north London.

Stewart started his working life in banking and for some years was employed in a London banking house,[5] Robert Davies and Co. in Shoreditch as a clerk. He then worked as a clerk in a coal factors and at Smith & Co. brewers in Hastings.[6] In 1870, Stewart set up a business venture, Stewart Brothers and Spencer, oil-seed crushers and refiners based in London and Rochester in Kent. He sold this company in 1900 and transferred his business interests to the manufacture of bricks, first through the firms of B J H Forder Ltd. originally a small works on the Gault at Westoning, later taking larger premises at Wootton Pillinge, later renamed Stewartby after the Stewart family. In 1923 Stewart merged Forders with the London Brick Company, of which he eventually became the vice-chairman.[7]

Stewart maintained his connections with Hastings, however, and in 1877 founded and became the first editor of the newspaper the Hastings and St Leonards Times. He did not sell the paper until 1883.[8]

Stewart had a reputation as an advanced Liberal and Radical.[2] He was a supporter of women's suffrage, land reform, the abolition of the hereditary element from the House of Lords and ending state aid to teaching of religious education in schools, being sometime president of the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control,[3] and president of the Secular Education League.[1] He also strongly supported the Gladstonian policy of Irish Home Rule.[15] He spoke in favour of the establishment of a Parliament for Ireland at a meeting of the British Home Rule Association in 1886 with other notable Liberals including Henry Labouchère[16] and later travelled in Ireland and spoke on the subject and the need to redress other Irish grievances .[17][18][19]

Stewart felt his Congregational pulpit was a suitable place from which to expound his political views, acknowledging the overlap of religious and political objectives in the improvement of social conditions and the duty of religious teachers to inform their congregations on public affairs, so they could better influence the lawmakers. The church did not agree however and Stewart moved into direct political activity.[20] His first duties were as an election agent for Liberal Party candidates in East Sussex in the campaign leading to the 1880 general election. He was involved in the organisation of campaigns but also, no doubt drawing on the experience of years of preaching, as a speaker on behalf of candidates. Thanks to his success as a public speaker, he was invited in the spring of 1884 to make a speech at Boston in Lincolnshire in support of a friend William Ingram.[21] Through this connection, Stewart was later associated as one of the Liberal candidates at Boston.[22] He never fought the seat because it lost its two member status for the 1885 general election. He was also linked with the other south Lincolnshire seat of Stamford[22] before transferring his allegiance to new seat of Spalding[23] where he stood unsuccessfully at the general elections of 1885 and 1886.

However, in 1887, the sitting Unionist MP, Murray Finch-Hatton, went to the House of Lords as Earl of Winchelsea in succession to his brother, causing a by-election.[24] Stewart won the contest by an unexpectedly comfortable margin of 747 votes compared to his loss by 288 in 1886,[25] delighting party colleagues who thought it a great blow to the government.[26] His opponent, admiral George Tryon had returned from a 2-year tour of duty in Australia only one month before and it was considered his lack of agricultural experience had counted against him.[27][28] Stewart held the seat at the 1892 general election with a reduced majority[29] but lost in 1895.[30]

In May 1900 Stewart was selected as the Liberal candidate for Peterborough, in preference to the former Peterborough MP Alpheus Morton,[31] who had been nursing the seat since his defeat in 1895.[31] Stewart was unsuccessful at the 1900 general election,[32] but three years later he was selected as Liberal candidate for the Scottish constituency of Greenock in the historic county of Renfrewshire[33] and contested the 1906 general election there. He was elected[34] and remained as MP for the constituency until he retired from the House of Commons at the January 1910 election.[35]