A serious, sometimes courageous, Radical, Walmsley used his ‘extraordinary energy’ to keep parliamentary reform on the political agenda between the late 1840s and the outbreak of the Crimean War.
Once he was well-established in business by the late 1820s, Walmsley became active in the local anti-slavery and parliamentary reform campaigns, and from 1837 was president of the Tradesmen’s Reform Association, the main organisation of Liverpool’s Liberals.
He was elected to Liverpool’s town council in the inaugural elections in 1835.
In March 1840, Walmsley agreed to be the Liverpool Liberals’ prospective parliamentary candidate, and he maintained a high profile in the run up to the 1841 general election through his involvement in the anti-corn law campaign.
The result was a bitter disappointment for Walmsley, who quit his native town, and settled at Ranton Abbey, Staffordshire.
Although his administrative abilities were of a ‘high order’, Walmsley was not a natural speaker.
I could not at that late period acquire the facility of quick debate – so important to a public man, and which can be successfully cultivated only in the flexible years of youth – but I was up to the toil and drudgery such a life imposes on whoever conscientiously enters into it. Whenever I addressed the House, I invariably obtained a patient hearing, for I was careful always to master the subject upon which I spoke.
Walmsley, Life, 350.
Before the new session opened, Walmsley spent much time listening to the grievances of the framework knitters, and became a consistent supporter of efforts to improve their lot, beginning with Sir Henry Halford’s unsuccessful attempt to establish an inquiry.
Walmsley’s return to Parliament, after filling a vacancy at Bolton, 9 Feb. 1849, ‘seemed to infuse new vigour into the Reform movement’, which had been founded the previous year by Joseph Hume to campaign for the ‘little Charter’ of the ballot, household suffrage, triennial parliaments, and more equal electoral districts.
Despite his support for political reform, on other issues such as financial and foreign policy Walmsley gave general support to the Aberdeen and Palmerston administrations.
Walmsley secured an easy victory over two Whigs at Leicester at the 1852 general election, finishing with the same number of votes as his Radical colleague.
The popular movement for parliamentary reform having petered out, Walmsley lowered his sights. Having dismissed the Whig government’s 1852 reform bill as ‘a small measure’, he was more welcoming to Russell’s 1854 proposal, whilst maintaining that it did not go far enough.
On the death of Hume in 1855, Walmsley took up what was to have been his friend’s next campaign, and made the first in a series of motions in favour of Sunday opening of the British Museum and the National Gallery.
Walmsley’s opposition to the 1856 police (counties and boroughs) bill, which he believed strengthened central government at the expense of local control, contributed to its revision into something less objectionable to many Liberals.
At the 1857 general election he failed to secure re-election, losing out to a local Liberal backed by Dissenters who objected to Walmsley’s stance on Sunday opening.
Although he received many invitations, Walmsley did not seek a return to Parliament, instead retiring from public life.