Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received
The Editor
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© F.Coakley , 2026
[from A.M Harrision's Descriptive List of Insular Societies]
The contemporary impasse between Council and House of Keys, the Island's worsening political situation and the steps to be taken in order to bring about reform, were first discussed by a group of six people on 3 October 1903, a month before the November General Election of the House of Keys. Samuel Norris, a journalist from the North of England working in the Isle of Man since 1894, two of his personal friends, one an Onchan Village Commissioner and three active Socialists, R.C. Callister, J.D. Fell, president of the Douglas Trades and Labour Council, and W.S. Weigh, a former lawyer's clerk from England, the Secretary of the Manx Socialist Society and later, leader of the Manx Independent Labour Party.
Norris's outline programme and policy for a National Reform League, starting from the basis of the preservation and extension of Manx Home Rule and the constitutional right of the Manx nation to regulate its internal affairs, and running into eleven specific reform headings, starting with reform of the Legislative Council and the securing of Tynwald control of taxation and expenditure,was considered and it was unanimously agreed that a Reform League should be started on the basis of the policy set out . The retiring members of the House of Keys were circulated with the programme, which met with varying responses, and an invitation to a National meeting to be convened. The League then went public, established its headquarters in Douglas and branches in all the towns and bigger villages and set up a committee, which contained three newspaper editors, J.A. Brown, Isle of Man Times , William Cubbon, Manx Sun, and S.K. Broadbent, Isle of Man Examiner, to draw up a programme, to be, after approval at a National meeting 'pressed on every candidate for the House of Keys, those conforming to receive the support of League members irrespective of party .
About 400 people took part in the National Public Meeting in Douglas on 13 November to which Hall Caine, the Manx author, M.H.K. for Ramsey, elected president of the League, sent 'a message of thanks and inspiration' and resolutions affirming the League's foundation, calling for patriotic electors to assert themselves by returning Reform candidates, and soliciting help for Reform candidates 'in the battle line'. The result of the November general election was a House with 23 out of 24 Reform candidates 'pledged to secure reform'. 'There had never been such a degree of unanimity on any common policy put forward in the Isle of Man in any previous General Election'
M.N.H.L.Isle of Man newspapers, passim
Samuel Norris, Manx Memories and Movements ( Douglas, 1938), reprint
of third edition, 1994.
The above precis is taken from this, technically self-centred, account of the
Manx Reform League, pp.103 -109, and the League's complete programme is printed
as Appendix A
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Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received
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