A Brief History of Britain 1851-2010 Read online

  Wilde’s plays, Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), were ironic and brilliant portrayals of high society. Salome, which was refused a licence in 1892 and first performed in Paris in 1896, was a very different work: a highly charged, erotic account of the relationship between Salome and St John the Baptist. Salome represented Wilde’s willingness to press the boundaries of polite society and conventional culture, and also indicated the range of even one playwright’s work, a point also seen for example in Sir Arthur Sullivan’s music.

  The 1890s also saw the appearance of the first of the plays of George Bernard Shaw, which were far more socially realistic than those of Wilde. Several, Widowers’ Houses (1892), Mrs Warren’s Profession (1892) and The Philanderer (1893), were performed only privately as they were thought unlikely to obtain a licence: the Lord Chamberlain, through the Examiner of Plays, had to give a licence before any public performances on the stage. This, in particular, restricted new and different works. The series of Shaw’s realistic works produced publicly began only with his Arms and the Man (1894). Politically committed, he pushed the notion of the dramatist as a public figure able to turn a searching light on society.

  Art

  Painting reflected the eclecticism and energy of British culture, although, yet again, there is the tension between what was popular at the time and what appears most significant today. A key established figure was Queen Victoria’s (and her subjects’) favourite painter, Edwin Landseer (1802–73), who was knighted in 1850 and offered the presidency of the Royal Academy in 1865. He had the Scottish links that were helpful in British society at the time (far more so than for Irish and Welsh counterparts), and could also offer both a sentimentality and an exemplary image of bravery that appealed to contemporary tastes. In 1851, Landseer exhibited The Monarch of the Glen, a dramatic depiction of a stag, in 1853 Night and Morning, pictures of a duel between stags, and in 1864 Man proposes, God disposes: polar bears amid the relics of Sir John Franklin’s disastrous Arctic expedition. The last, an episode in the attempt to find a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was presented in terms of the selfless, yet disciplined, heroism that Victorian society found exemplary. Engravings of Landseer’s paintings were printed in large number. He was not noted as an explorer of the urban scene, although he left his mark on London when he sculpted the lions at the foot of Nelson’s Column (1867), part of the process by which Trafalgar Square was scripted as the symbolic centre of empire.

  A counterpart of Landseer, Daniel Maclise (1806–70), was much applauded as a great artist, although today he is far less well known. A close friend of Dickens, and an accomplished draughtsman who painted statuesque forms, Maclise illustrated themes from British history, such as The Death of Nelson (1864) for Parliament. Another prominent figure of the period, Sir Charles Eastlake (1793–1865), was President of the Royal Academy from 1850 to 1865 and was noted for portraits, historical scenes and picturesque displays of Mediterranean scenes and people. More generally, animals, sporting pictures and exemplary historical, religious and military scenes were popular with purchasers, as were scenes of rural bliss.

  There were also paintings reflecting the less benign aspects of life, but most of them were tempered in their realism. For example, Thomas Kennington’s (1856–1916) The Pinch of Poverty (1889) did not provide a picture of smiling joy, but poverty was generally far harsher in its consequences than this genteel scene with its charming flower-seller and romantically pale mother.

  The year 1851 saw both the death of J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851), the leading British painter of the early nineteenth century, and the appearance of one of the great Pre-Raphaelite paintings, The Hireling Shepherd by William Holman Hunt (1827–1910). The term Pre-Raphaelite had been adopted in 1848 by a group, or, as they called themselves, Brotherhood, of young English painters, the most prominent of whom were Hunt, John Everett Millais (1829–96) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82). They attempted to react against what they saw as the empty formalism of the then fashionable ‘subject’ painting and, instead, offered a stress on the moral purpose of art. Millais and Hunt in particular sought their own revolution in art.

  The Brotherhood had dissolved by 1855, but its themes remained influential, including among many of those who were not actually members of either the Brotherhood or the second Brotherhood, founded by Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones (1833–98) and William Morris. Thus, Ford Madox Brown, although never a member, was sufficiently impressed to paint in the Pre-Raphaelite manner, most famously Work.

  Among the Brotherhood, Hunt remained faithful to its aims. He travelled on several occasions to Egypt and Palestine, in order to ground his paintings of Biblical scenes accurately. The popularity of these paintings underlines the strong Christian commitment of Victorian society. Yet, as a reminder of variety, Millais followed a different course, becoming a fashionable painter and pillar of the artistic establishment, thanks to undemanding sentimental portraits, for example The Blind Girl (1886) and Bubbles (1886).

  By the time of Millais’ death, the contours of the artistic world were very different. A sense of fin de siècle affected the mood of the 1890s. Paintings such as Circe Invidiosa (1892) by J.W. Waterhouse (1849–1917) illustrate the appeal of the exotic and the erotic; although no painter made as great a success of mixing the exotic with the historical as did Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) with his vast output of highly detailed studies of Roman, Greek and Egyptian life in classical times. Alma-Tadema’s paintings also emphasized the female form in as much detail as was permissible in Victorian society, a trait he shared with Waterhouse.

  Middle-class Culture

  The drive for interest and self-improvement did not only focus on sport, reading, listening to music and visiting art galleries. In addition, many enthusiasts were committed to natural history, astronomy and geology. Such activities were also institutionalized with numerous natural history societies and observatories around the country. Interest in geology and natural history helps explain the public engagement with the controversy over Darwin’s theory of evolution, which was expounded in his The Origin of Species (1859).

  Politics was part of this world of individual enthusiasm, group activity, civic concern and entrepreneurialism. Indeed, in his novel The Moonstone (1868), Wilkie Collins wrote ‘The guests present being all English, it is needless to say that, as soon as the wholesome check exercised by the presence of the ladies was removed, the conversation turned on politics as a necessary result … this all-absorbing national topic.’ The growth of middle-class culture and consciousness, notably in the great northern cities, such as Leeds and Newcastle, followed by the rise of a self-consciously radical working-class politics, represented new political worlds that were not dominated by the traditional interests, and where the focus was change, reform and innovation.

  The Growth of Newspapers

  The way to a new politics was opened up by the growth of the press and the expansion of the franchise. Newspaper taxes had helped limit sales, though the total annual sale of copies of stamped papers rose from 48 million in 1837 to 85 million in 1851, a rise greater than the rate of population increase. The removal of the advertising tax in 1853 was followed by the end of stamp duty in 1855. There was concern about the radical religious and political views of the supporters of reform, as well as that competition for cheapness would lower the general character of the press. In response, the Prime Minister, Henry, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865), declared his confidence in the people; although, in practice, his liberalism was of the condescending type and he was a noteworthy opponent of any extension of the franchise, Palmerston’s years as Prime Minister (1855–8, 1859–65) saw no advance in parliamentary reform. Instead, foreign policy dominated his attention, as Palmerston robustly defended Britain’s expanding international interests while avoiding compromising alliances with foreign powers.

  The final repeal of the newspap
er taxes, that of the paper duties, was carried through in 1861. The newspapers responded by cutting their prices, helping to lead to a major broadening out of public culture. The first provincial dailies in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield appeared in 1855, in Newcastle in 1857, and in Bristol in 1858. The Saturday Evening Post launched in Birmingham in 1857 was specifically designed to fulfil the needs ‘of the great body of the working classes’. By 1885, forty-seven English towns had daily papers.

  The press became the prime source outside the family of ideas, images and comparisons through which people could understand their lives. This process was accentuated by the tremendous mobility of mid-Victorian society as massive urbanization drew on extensive migration within the country. This mobility challenged, indeed frequently undermined and dissolved (in a process that provided a basic theme in novels) earlier patterns of communal and family control or at least influence, not that these patterns had been without strain.

  A newly expanded urban world that owed relatively little to traditional social patterns of behaviour searched for new ways to communicate, and the press provided the news, comment and advertising material that were required. The fast tempo of the daily press with the resulting rapid changeability of news matched a swiftly altering society. The scale of demand for the press offered a prospect of profitability that encouraged investment.

  The capitalization of both newspaper and periodical production increased greatly in the second half of the nineteenth century. As equipment and staffing costs rose, this process was in part driven by the needs of the industry, but the opportunities for profit were also important, and these attracted investment capital. For financial reasons, it was best to avoid radical political views as they might inhibit advertisers, but it is wise to temper any quasi-conspiratorial account of capitalism by noting the degree to which much of the working class apparently sought the entertainment and human interest that was offered them, rather than seeking campaigning commitment.

  Commercialization was scarcely new, and was not necessarily incompatible with the role of newspapers as vehicles for opinion. There is a parallel with the impact on television of advertisements (and of television advertisements) after the Television Act of 1954: commercial television transmissions began in the following year. It might have been possible for a regulated society drawing on Second World War practices of state control, notably conscription, to contain consumerism, but once television advertising was available, then it became difficult to prevent development of what was truly a consumer society. A century earlier, in the case of newspapers, legislative changes had combined with technology and economic expansion to create a major discontinuity in public culture, one that looked forward to the expansion of the franchise.

  Expanding Franchise

  The passage of the Great or First Reform Act in 1832 was a key step in this expansion. From the late 1820s, as both cause and result, the essence of British politics became that of a dynamic, evolving system that tapped into people’s desires and engaged in debate about future direction. The Liberal Party which developed from the earlier Whigs was a major beneficiary, notably in the person of William Gladstone, under whom Liberalism became a movement enjoying mass support. A formidable and multi-faceted individual of great determination and integrity, Gladstone was a classical scholar and theological controversialist, a hewer of trees and a pious rescuer of prostitutes. Able to present himself more easily as the ‘People’s William’ because he came from a commercial and not an aristocratic background, his appeal ran from Parliament to the public. He benefited from the extent to which much of the working class felt that Liberalism expressed their ideals and advanced their interests.

  While respectful of established institutions, Gladstone had a strong sympathy for progressive causes, and he was willing to present his support for often modest proposals in bold language. In a Commons debate of May 1864, on extending the franchise, Gladstone rejected the existing situation in calling for an inclusiveness that in fact at that stage was still limited in its implementation:

  … every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution. Of course, in giving utterance to such a proposition, I do not recede from the protest I have previously made against sudden, or violent, or excessive, or intoxicating change; but I apply it with confidence to this effect, that fitness for the franchise, when it is shown to exist – as I say it is shown to exist in the case of a select portion of the working class – is not repelled on sufficient grounds from the portals of the Constitution by the allegation that things are well as they are.

  The rival Tory Party was also transformed in the second half of the century. Far from becoming a landed, reactionary rump on the margins of politics, the Tories became the Conservatives, a national party, representing significant elements of the new urban middle classes as well as a large working-class constituency. Having done badly in the mid-nineteenth century after their division over the repeal of the Corn Laws, the Conservatives, between Benjamin Disraeli’s victory in 1874 and John Major’s in 1992, were easily the most successful party when it came to winning elections, and thus saw themselves as the natural party of government.

  Passed by a minority Conservative government, with Disraeli, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Conservative leader in the Commons, doing most of the parliamentary work, the Second Reform Act (1867) nearly doubled the existing electorate, giving the right to vote to about 60 per cent of adult males in boroughs. Hopeful of the effects of redistributing parliamentary seats, and correctly gambling on the idea that working-class Conservatism would arise from the expansion of the franchise and that ‘One Nation’ Conservatism could work, Disraeli needed Liberal votes to get the legislation through the Commons. Liberal amendments were responsible for all borough ratepayers gaining the vote, a measure that, in practice, enfranchised many manual workers. Indeed, right-wing Conservatives, among whom the future Prime Minister, Robert, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was prominent, complained about the radicalism of Disraeli’s legislation.

  In turn, Gladstone’s Liberal government passed the Third Reform Act in 1884, which extended this franchise to the counties, so that about 63 per cent of the entire adult male population received the vote, although the percentage who could vote was closer to 40 per cent than 63 because so many people changed address, and because a voter needed eighteen months’ continuous residence before he could vote.

  Reform movements helped politicize those who now held electoral power. As in 1868, the Conservatives in 1885 were defeated in the first election held with the new franchise; many rural electors voted against their landlords. Democracy indeed challenged the existing social politics, and, in particular, the rural strongholds of Conservatism. Thus, in East Denbighshire, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn (1820–85), whose family had long dominated the area, was defeated. But the defeats were not only in the countryside. The Tories were routed in County Durham, winning only the City of Durham, a more conservative constituency. Working-class Liberal-Labour candidates were more successful there, two of the Durham Miners’ Association agents winning seats, although, as yet, Labour sympathy was mostly contained within Liberalism.

  The Politics of Reform

  Worried about the potential radicalism of the new, far larger electorate, and mindful of the challenge posed by the radical Chartist movement of the 1840s, politicians sought to respond. Yet, while politicians increasingly found they had to appeal to their voters’ different interests and views, they also tried to shape the process by creating a new unity behind a better Britain. A self-conscious process of reform was a key element in both processes: reform as an attempt to forestall radicalism, and reform in order to ensure a better Britain, which was seen as likely to facilitate the first goal.

  Reform meant government intervention, and this intervention linked the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century; and did so more clearly than th
e late nineteenth was linked to the less interventionist stance of government in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, 1800–25. This contrast is a reminder of the danger of thinking of centuries as distinct and distinctive units separated by a clear process of change. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, there was economic transformation and social change without comparable political shifts, something which owed much to the ideological and political hostility to radicalism that stemmed from the hostile reaction to the French Revolution.

  Yet, for most of the rest of the nineteenth century, the emphasis was on reform as both means for progress and goal. Governments from both sides of politics were committed to reform; the distinction was simply that of how much change was desirable and how far reform was also intended to ensure continuity. The governments of both the Liberal William Gladstone (1868–74, 1880–5, 1886 and 1892–4), and, albeit less centrally, the Conservative Benjamin Disraeli (1868, 1874–80) pushed for social improvement, a policy already prefigured in mid-century, notably when Henry, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, was Home Secretary from 1852 to 1855 in the Earl of Aberdeen’s government. This government was a coalition of political groups born out of the failure of both Liberal and Conservative governments to sustain a parliamentary majority in 1852, and it proved unequal to the political strains posed by the difficulties Britain faced in the Crimean War (1854–6).

  In turn, Palmerston became Prime Minister in 1855, and he played an important part in developing some of the themes of which the late-Victorian Liberalism associated with Gladstone was to be composed. Prime Minister for most of the period until his death in office in 1865, Palmerston led the Liberals to victories in the elections of 1857, 1859 and 1865. While he focused on foreign policy, Gladstone, as his Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1859, became an increasingly vigorous focus of radical hopes and a proponent of parliamentary reform (the extension of the franchise). Palmerston was succeeded by the principled John, 1st Earl Russell, who had been Prime Minister from 1846 to 1852, but he held office again only to 1866 as he was defeated over the issue of parliamentary reform. In 1867, Russell retired as party leader, to be succeeded by Gladstone.