Herbert Vincent Mills (1856–1928) was a British socialist activist. Born in

Accrington Accrington is a town in the Hyndburn borough of Lancashire, England. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, east of Preston, north of Manchester and is situated on the culverted River Hyndburn. Commonly abbreviated by locals to ...

, Mills undertook an apprenticeship as an engineer, but then trained to become a Unitarian minister. In 1884, he became the minister of the Hamilton Road Chapel in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

, then in 1887 he moved to the Market Place Chapel in

Kendal Kendal, once Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria, England, south-east of Windermere and north of Lancaster. Historically in Westmorland, it lies within the dale of th ...

. He became known across Britain as a radical campaigner for reform of the

poor laws In English and British history, poor relief refers to government and ecclesiastical action to relieve poverty. Over the centuries, various authorities have needed to decide whose poverty deserves relief and also who should bear the cost of hel ...

, and for resettlement of the land. In 1886, arguing that

mechanisation Mechanization is the process of changing from working largely or exclusively by hand or with animals to doing that work with machinery. In an early engineering text a machine is defined as follows: In some fields, mechanization includes the ...

inevitably reduced demand for labour, and by creating

unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for Work (human activity), w ...

it then reduced the market for goods, in a vicious cycle that could not be solved by existing Poor Law institutions. For Mills, the

workhouse In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term ''workhouse'' ...

encouraged anything but work: on the contrary, he was impressed by ‘the extraordinary amount of yawning that goes on’ even in the best-managed institutions, by the useless imposition of such tasks as oakum-picking and stone-breaking, and by the disdain with which officials treated the poor. For positive solutions, Mills looked to the independent-minded islanders of St Kilda, and the

vagrancy Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as bums, vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporar ...

colonies of the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, concluding that what was required was an “English experiment” in co-operative land settlement. He created the Home Colonisation Society (HCS) in the following year to pursue his ideas. Mills was taken seriously enough to be invited to give evidence in 1888 to the

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...

Select Committee on the Poor Laws, calling on the government to set up a series of land colonies, on which urban workers would learn to live by practicing their skills and trading with one another. In 1892, the HCS bought a small

farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...

at Starnthwaite, near Kendal, and by 1893 some 22 settlers were living and working on the estate. However, some of the colonists disagreed with Mills on the aims and government of the colony, and fourteen were expelled. The dissidents included

Dan Irving David Daniel "Dan" Irving (31 October 1854 – 25 January 1924) was a British socialist activist and Labour Party Member of Parliament. Born in Birmingham, Irving moved to Bristol in 1875, where he began working on the railways. After he lost ...

, later a Labour MP, and the Bristol socialist and feminist

Enid Stacey Enid Stacy (10 June 1868 – 4 September 1903) was an English socialist activist. Stacy was born on 10 June 1868 in Westbury, Gloucestershire, the eldest of the Irish painter Henry Stacy and his wife Rose Deeley's four children. The family moved ...

. After further disappointments, Mills abandoned the project, handing over the land in 1900 to the

Christian Union for Social Service Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρισ ...

. For many British socialists, Starnthwaite became a symbol of the impracticability of land settlement for the urban

working class The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...

. During the 1890s, Mills also served on

Westmorland County Council Westmorland County Council was the county council of Westmorland in north west England. It came into its powers on 1 April 1889 and was abolished on 1 April 1974. The county council was initially based at the Town Hall in Kendal and then, from 19 ...

as a Liberal-Labour representative.

References

*John Field (1992) Learning through Labour: training, unemployment and the state, 1890–1939. Leeds University Press *H. V. Mills (1886), Poverty and the State, or work for the unemployed: an inquiry into the causes and extent of enforced idleness, Kegan Paul & Tench, London *Francis Nicholson and Ernest Axon (1915), The older nonconformity in Kendal, Titus Wilson, Kendal

References

See also