The ‘principal founder of Birkenhead’, and a man of ‘great talent and force of character’, Laird, a noted shipbuilder and moderate Conservative, was the indefatigable defender of his constituency’s interests, who generally limited his parliamentary contributions to maritime and naval issues.
In 1824 Laird’s father, William, a Liverpool shipowner, recognised the natural advantages possessed by Wallasey Pool, on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, and with a team of engineers drew up a dock plan. The scheme was not realised as Liverpool corporation bought up land in the area to block their potential rival.
Laird was elected a member of Birkenhead’s new street commission in 1833, and in 1843 he purchased 50,000 square yards of land from Liverpool council with a view to reactivating his father’s dock scheme.
On Birkenhead’s enfranchisement as a parliamentary borough in 1861 Laird stood as a Liberal Conservative at the inaugural election in December of that year. After expressing support for a non-interventionist foreign policy, an efficient navy and national defence, non-denominational education and a compromise solution to the church rates issue, Laird was elected against a Liberal, and resigned from the street commission and his business, which was carried on by his sons as Laird Brothers.
A Conservative loyalist, in 1867 Laird divided in favour of the disenfranchisement of small boroughs and providing extra representation for large towns, although he also supported the minority clause. An active committee man, Laird was also diligent in his attention to local duties, informing Birkenhead’s inhabitants that:
I shall always be ready and glad to see any of my constituents upon any subject they may wish to talk to me about – high or low, rich or poor. In the morning, from nine to eleven o’clock, when I am not in London on parliamentary business, I shall be at the service of my constituents.
Liverpool Mercury, 13 July 1865.
In the chamber, Laird concentrated on his area of expertise, explaining to constituents at the 1865 general election, when he was re-elected, that the gibe that he
seldom or never spoke except upon questions affecting the naval estimates … was not quite true, but his experience in the House had taught him that if a gentleman went into the House of Commons and began to speak upon every subject, he would be listened to upon none.
Liverpool Mercury, 20 June 1865.
Even before entering the House, Laird had urged the admiralty to abandon wooden ships for iron, which were ‘stronger, more durable, and less costly to keep in repair’, and had pressed for a naval dockyard to be established at Birkenhead.
In 1862 Laird Brothers built a wooden sailing ship for the Confederacy, later infamous as the C.S.S. Alabama, which was subsequently rearmed in the Azores to terrorise Federal shipping during the American Civil War, until sunk in 1864. Although modern scholars have vindicated the claims of Laird Brothers and the British government to be acting within international law and free of any wrong-doing in the ship’s escape from Merseyside, ‘there can be no doubt that for a long time much odium was attached to the name of Laird’.
I would rather be handed down to posterity as the builder of a dozen Alabamas than as the man who applies himself deliberately to set class against class, and to cry up the institutions of another country which, when they come to be tested, are of no value whatever, and which reduce the very name of liberty to an utter absurdity.
Hansard, 27 Mar. 1863, vol. 170, cc. 68 (first qu.), 71-2 (second qu.).
Laird’s main legislative achievement was to introduce a system whereby all chains, cables and anchors had to be impressed with an official proof-mark to demonstrate that they had been tested. He first proposed the measure as an amendment to an 1862 bill.
‘Never a robust man’, Laird suffered a serious fall in 1873, but attended Parliament the following year until diarrhoea and ‘exhaustion consequent on many years of overwork’ forced his return to Birkenhead, where he died in October 1874.