Northern PMs are nothing new, as our political premier correspondent Angus Young reports, but few were top dog as long ago or far away as this one.
In case you have noticed it, we’ve now got a Northern Prime Minister. Andy Burnham was born in Aintree in Liverpool and, until his recent elevation, was best known for being Mayor of Greater Manchester for the last nine years. Not since Harold Wilson has the Westminster lobby made so many jokes about flat caps and whippets.
Of course, Hull’s own John Prescott came close to being Prime Minister when he served as Tony Blair’s deputy. However, despite often being portrayed as a non-nonsense straight-talking Northerner, Prezza actually hailed from Prestatyn in Wales.
So who was the son of Hull who made it all the way up the political ladder to become a Prime Minister?
The answer to this very good pub quiz question is Sir John Hall. Never heard of him? There are probably two good reasons for that. For a start, Hall was born in Hull just over 200 years ago so he’s not exactly still on the tips of everyone‘s tongues in the city. Secondly, his political career took off on the other side of the world.
Hall was born in St. Mary’s parish of Hull in 1824 , the third son of a Navy captain called George Hall who had become a prominent shipowner. His father would later become Warden at Trinity House. Young John was initially sent to a boys’ boarding school in North Ferriby run by Presbyterians who refused to conform to the Church of England It seems the Hall family weren’t short of a bob or two because he was later sent to school in Switzerland at the age of ten and then continued his education in Hamburg and Paris.
He returned to England to work in London for a German shipping agent before joining the General Post Office but later decided to emigrate to New Zealand at the age of 27. The move was said to be triggered by a book he had read on sheep farming and job opportunities offered by officials in the Canterbury region, which encouraged immigration from Britain and Ireland. John persuaded two of his brothers to join him and they eventually established a large sheep farming business.
In his new home, he also became active in local politics in Christchurch, becoming a local councillor before being elected as a Member of Parliament in 1850. He found time to return to Hull in 1860 for a couple of years, marrying the sister-in-law of one of his brothers at Holy Trinity Church. The bride’s father was an attorney who also owned the Duke of Cumberland pub in Cottingham.
In 1879 he became New Zealand’s Prime Minister, holding the position for three years. He was knighted at the end of his time in office and briefly retired from politics only to return as an MP in 1887.
In New Zealand, he remains best known as a champion for the women’ s suffrage movement, personally presenting a petition to the country’s parliament in 1893. Sir John made a great spectacle of it, bringing the petition written on a continuous sheet of paper in a wheelbarrow into the main chamber before theatrically unrolling it down a central aisle until it thumped into a wall. He later steered the bill through parliament, making New Zealand the first country in the world to give women the vote.