[BITList] Virile, eager, rollicking

[John Feltham]

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Curran,  Peter Francis  [formerly Patrick Francis]  (1860-1910), trade unionist and politician, was born in Glasgow on 28 March 1860, the son of George Curran, a causey layer, and his wife, Bridget, nee McGinty. He was named Patrick by his parents who were Irish Catholics, but became known as Pete. After a national school education, he began work in the blacksmith's shop of a steelworks. He assisted the hammer-driver, later rising to that job himself. He was initially active in the Irish Land League, but, influenced by the ideas of Henry George, joined the Scottish Land Restoration League. Not long after he again shifted his allegiances, becoming a member of the Social Democratic Federation. In 1881 he married Mary, daughter of Peter McIntyre, an egg dealer.

In the late 1880s Curran left Glasgow for London where he found work at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich. He soon began to appear on socialist platforms and took a full part in the upsurge of the 'new unionism' of 1889, so much so that, having worked with Will Thorne and others to establish the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers, by September 1889 he had become a full-time official, the secretary of the union's west of England district. There he gained some notoriety when with two other union leaders he was convicted of intimidation at Plymouth and ordered to pay a fine. The case, Curran  Treleaven, became a landmark when in 1891 it reached the Court of Appeal and the earlier verdict was overturned. In 1891 Curran returned to London as the national organizer of the gasworkers. At about this time, he joined the Fabian Society in which he took an active part until 1900 when he resigned because of the society's failure to denounce the South African War. At meetings of the Trades Union Congress he was associated with the younger socialist delegates who called for a collectivist programme and greater political action. In 1893 he supported James Macdonald in a successful amendment requiring the parliamentary committee of the TUC to give financial aid to candidates accepting the principle of collective ownership; and at the 1894 TUC he was among the delegates who secured the replacement of Charles Fenwick (described by Curran as a round peg in a square hole) as secretary of the parliamentary committee.

By the early 1890s Curran was politically close to those socialists involved in the creation of the Independent Labour Party (ILP). In 1893 he attended the founding conference of the ILP and sat on its national administrative council until 1898. At the general election of 1895 he was the ILP candidate at Barrow, where he was a poor third in the poll. In the autumn of 1897 he again represented the ILP, at a by-election in the Barnsley constituency notable for the way in which the leaders of the Yorkshire Miners' Association, particularly Ben Pickard, supported the Liberal candidate and denounced the socialists. Curran was again at the bottom of the poll, his campaign not helped by rumours that he had deserted his wife. Whatever the truth of these, in 1897 or 1898 he married his second wife, Marian Barry. He took a leading role in the General Federation of Trade Unions, which formally came into being in 1899, and became its chairman, a post he held until his death.

Curran worked with Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald in preparing the ground for what was to be the inaugural conference of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in February 1900. At the conference he spoke in favour of an independent party of labour and was elected to the executive committee of the LRC. Three years later he moved the resolution requiring officials and organizations affiliated to the LRC strictly to abstain from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any section of the Liberal or Conservative parties. For three or four years before the general election of 1906 he nursed the Jarrow constituency, but he was defeated in a straight fight with the Liberal candidate, Sir Charles Palmer. The death of Palmer caused a by-election in July 1907 when Curran again contested the seat, along with Liberal, Conservative, and Irish nationalist candidates. Though accused of playing down his socialism, Curran was able to gain Jarrow for Labour. He had taken an active part in the 'right to work' agitation of the National Unemployed Committee, which was formed in 1903, and made the question of unemployment one in which he specialized in the House of Commons. As well as a 'right to work' bill and the eight-hour day, he advocated a system of state insurance.

All who knew Curran acknowledged the genial and convivial side of his personality. In February 1909 he suffered the embarrassment of an appearance in court, where he was fined 10s. for being drunk and incapable in the street. By the general election of January 1910 his health was ruined, a factor which probably contributed to his narrow defeat, by sixty-seven votes, at Jarrow. On 14 February 1910 he died at his home, 1 Pretoria Avenue, Walthamstow; the principal cause of death was certified as cirrhosis of the liver. He was survived by his wife, Marian Curran, also a trade unionist, and by his two sons and two daughters.

Pete Curran's funeral took place on the afternoon of Saturday 19 February 1910 and was made the occasion of a great demonstration of mourning. According to The Times report (21 February 1910), thousands followed the hearse to Leytonstone Roman Catholic cemetery, a journey of 2 miles through 'thick lines of sympathising spectators'. The procession was led by the Stepney gasworkers' brass band and as well as his widow and four children the mourners included several Labour MPs and trade union officials. One of those present, Ben Tillett, writing in Justice (26 February 1910) described Curran as a man of 'courage, mingled with ambition, and some egotism; virile and eager with an Irishman's rollicking humour and optimism and notable for the sturdy frame, the square determined jaw, the small alert eyes of the man of action'.

D. E. Martin 

Sources  H. Pelling, 'Two by-elections: Jarrow and Colne Valley, 1907', in H. Pelling, Popular politics and society in late Victorian Britain (1979) + D. Rubinstein, 'The independent labour party and the Yorkshire miners: the Barnsley by-election of 1897', International Review of Social History, 23 (1978), 102-34 + W. Thorne, My life's battles (1925) + H. A. Clegg, A. Fox, and A. F. Thompson, A history of British trade unions since 1889, 1 (1964) + B. C. Roberts, The Trades Union Congress, 1868-1921 (1958) + F. Bealey and H. Pelling, Labour and politics, 1900-1906: a history of the Labour Representation Committee (1958) + L. Barrow and I. Bullock, Democratic ideas and the British labour movement, 1880-1914 (1996) + The Times (16 Feb 1910) + The Times (21 Feb 1910) + Justice (26 Feb 1910) + Labour Leader (4 March 1910) + DLB + WWBMP, vol. 1 + CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1910) + m. cert. + d. cert.
Archives JRL, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, papers + Ruskin College, Oxford, by-election papers | BLPES, corresp. with the independent labour party
Likenesses  photograph, 1893, repro. in H. Pelling, The origins of the Labour Party, 1880-1900 (1965), facing p. 176 · A. Weston, photograph, People's History Museum, Manchester [see illus.] · photograph, repro. in Labour Annual (1898), 102 · photograph, repro. in Rubinstein, 'The independent labour party and the Yorkshire miners', 125
Wealth at death  £119: administration with will, 23 March 1910, CGPLA Eng. & Wales




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