Negotiating skills helped to avoid war

Nov 6 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

Its roots stretch back almost 200 years and it counts one of Tyneside’s unsung heroes as one of its founding fathers. Karen Dent finds out about the rich legacy left by Robert Spence Watson and the inspiration it still provides to his successors

DATING to 1811, Watson Burton is one of the oldest law firms in Newcastle and was largely developed by eminent lawyer and philanthropist Robert Spence Watson, whose involvement with the firm started in the 1860s and lasted until his death more than 50 years later.

Spence Watson initially went into practice with his father Joseph and quickly established his reputation as a pioneer in the settling of trade disputes by arbitration.

Between 1884 and 1904, he had the sole say on almost 50 disputes and was described by Earl Spencer as “perhaps the greatest living authority in England on labour questions”.

Watson Burton senior partner Rob Langley, himself a veteran of 120 mediations, said: “He pioneered the idea of conciliation. He had seen all the hardship when the coal owners locked the striking miners out of their homes.”

He put those negotiating skills to good use when he travelled to Scandinavia to arbitrate been Norway and Sweden, and managed to prevent a war between the two countries as Norway tried to break away from its union with its neighbour.

Spence Watson’s foreign adventures didn’t end there. He collected money for Italian rebels seeking independence from Austria and provided rifles for their General Garibaldi.

And he almost ended up as a casualty of war himself when he went to Northern France in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian conflict in 1871. “He went over with money collected on Tyneside to hand out to the starving French peasants,” says Langley. “He was arrested six times and nearly shot by the Prussians as a suspected spy.”

Spence Watson’s philanthropy was very much in evidence in his native North East too, where he was a reformer and campaigned tirelessly for change.

“He used to walk around Gateshead finding areas where there was cholera or bad housing and campaign to get something done about it,” Langley says.

“He has given us a set of values to follow. We respect each other – we are all part of the same operation. Certainly for us that know about him, he’s a material part of our ethos.”

A Quaker and active member of the Liberal party, Spence Watson was also incredibly keen to educate the North East. In 1871, he helped to found the Durham College of Science, which later became Armstrong College and then developed into Newcastle University. He became the university’s first president in 1910.

He was also a leading light in creating the Newcastle Free Public Library and became honorary secretary of the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society in 1862, an office he held for 31 years. As a non-conformist in Victorian Britain, Spence Watson looked to the expanding commercial world to grow his law firm. There was a ready supply of like-minded clients who were developing the booming industries on the Tyne.

“The first three senior partners of the firm were Quakers and a lot of the industrialists on the Tyne were Quakers,” said Langley. “Non-conformists weren’t allowed to go to university or into the army, so a lot of them went into manufacturing industry.”

Appointed to the Privy Council in 1907, Spence Watson continued to practice out of the firm’s offices – by now called Watson Burton and Corder – in Newcastle’s Pilgrim Street almost until his death in 1911.

The first Watson Burton office has been preserved at Beamish Museum, complete with furniture and books from Spence Watson’s day, but while today’s firm tries to retain his values and moral standards, it has gone through a number of physical changes.

The business moved from Pilgrim Street in the late 1960s to Collingwood Street and from there to its current headquarters at St James’ Gate in Newcastle, where some of Joseph Watson’s certificates from 1824 and 1825 entitling him to practice law in the High Court in London are displayed on the walls.

Now employing around 400 people – 320 of which are based in Newcastle – the firm also has offices in Leeds and London.