Disraeli

Disraeli/interpretations

What motives for social reform are suggested by the following source?

Disraeli comments on government legislation in a letter to Queen Victoria in July 1875.

• ... “they will greatly content the mass of the people; and reduce the materials for social agitation.”

• ...”that a very great and benevolent change had come over the feelings of the working classes;”

• “the object of all the measures of the present Ministry is really to elevate their condition and mitigate their lot.”

In what ways do the historians qualify the view that D’s second ministry was ‘more designed to appeal to the voters than to secure social improvements’?

• . Not until 1872 did he [Disraeli] seriously attempt to make political capital out of support for the improvement of the social condition of the people.
• .. but he understood the need for caution to reconcile its pursuit with the interests and prejudices of his existing and potential followers of the propertied classes,
• and knew that the emphasis of the Conservative platform must like rather on the furtherance of the common cause of all classes than on the special promotion of the welfare of one ...

• ... To some extent, these achievements were the product of a deliberate intention to use social improvement as a means of gaining working-class favour.

•  But very largely they were semi-enforced responses to problems which ministers could not ignore, shaped principally by the results of formal inquiry, the pressure of public opinion, and the promptings of the civil service.

•  They implemented no programme and embodied no philosophy Nearly all were cautious and limited, and some were weak and ineffectual

• ... Only the labour laws of 1875 went substantially beyond what the immediate situation demanded ... as a whole, the measures ... form an impressive corpus of work ... but what they symbolise is less Conservative zeal for social reform than Conservative empiricism in the face of concrete problems.

P. Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform, 1967.

• Disraeli's motives were hard-nosed as well as romantic.

• He feared for the future of the race, if the slums were to continue to breed teeming new generations with inferior bodies, minds and morals.

• He was anxious to win the assent of the working class to the established economic and political order, without making concessions which might actually damage the position and resources of his propertied supporters ...

•  To this end, he sought to remove unnecessary grievances and to restore and sustain the state of harmony between rich and poor, employer and employee, which he held to be the natural state of society. The social reform programme of 1874-6 was a sustained gesture in that direction ...

J.K. Walton, Disraeli, 1990.

Comment

• The credit for most of the practical details rests with Cross. The other ministers responsible for domestic departments were largely ineffective.

• After 1876 Disraeli's attention was diverted into foreign and imperial affairs which he found much more congenial.

• The great difficulty was the possible cost of social reform. A government hoping to win the propertied classes to its side could not be seen to be increasing taxes and rates. In their early years of government the Conservatives matched the Liberals in the savagery with which expenditure was slashed.

• It is significant that the most successful pieces of legislation were the labour law reforms of 1875. Disraeli backed Cross in his willingness to adopt the proposals of the minority report from the 1874 Royal Commission on Trade Unions against the misgivings of the rest of the Cabinet. The two acts gave the trade unions everything they had demanded before the general election, but even here there was a fair degree of agreement with the Liberals who had been considering similar proposals in 1873.

• The Conservatives did not reap the political reward Disraeli had anticipated. By removing a point of difference between the Liberal leadership and their working class followers, the legislation contributed to that party's reunion.

• Yet Disraeli was an outsider who reached the premiership, in spite of the political system, as the consequence of a series of accidents. He made his own political creed which was not based on inherited values and attitudes -'all my opinions ... have been the result of reading and thought.'

• His opponents only saw the unprincipled opportunist whilst his friends frequently doubted the firmness of his political opinions. To what extent was he a cynical charlatan deviously working out a powerful sense of personal ambition?

• Primrose League1883 adopted his slogan of ‘One Nation’ & provided many activists for the age of mass politics

Disraeli – Success or Failure?

Soon after Disraeli’s defeat in 1880 Gladstone crowed ‘the downfall of Beaconfieldism is the like the vanishing of some magnificent castle in an Italian romance’. Did Disraeli’s career have any lasting effect on British politics or was Gladstone right? Opinions are divided:

• Blake, among others, believes that Disraeli's great and lasting achievement was to hold the Conservative party together through a difficult period and then to demonstrate that it was still capable of forming an effective government. After all, when a political party has failed to win a general election for over 30 years, even its staunchest supporters could be forgiven for writing it off.
• He also made it the party of the Empire and the party with a strong foreign policy, i.e. the party of British nationalism.
•  By showing concern for the social conditions of the poor, Disraeli enabled the Conservatives to attract a large enough slice of the working-class vote to keep them in existence as a major party

            .

• Some other historians feel that Disraeli's impact has been overestimated. Paul Smith claims that Peel had already made the Conservatives a modern party when they won the 1841 general election, and that Disraeli actually retarded its development by leading the attack on Peel over the Corn Laws.
• The next leader of the party, Lord Salisbury, abandoned the social reform policy, so that aspect of Beaconsfieldism certainly did not survive long.

• But whichever view one accepts, there is no escaping the fact that Disraeli was a first-rate parliamentarian; Blake calls him 'an impresario, an actor manager . . . there is a champagne-like sparkle about him which has scarcely ever been equalled and never surpassed among statesmen'.
• From the memoirs of R. A. Cross, Disraeli’s Home Secretary from 1874-1880.

When the Cabinet came to discuss the Queen's Speech [in 18741, 1 was, 1 confess, disappointed at the lack of originality shown by the Prime Minister. From all his speeches, I had quite expected that his mind was full of legislative schemes; but this did not prove to be the case. On the contrary, he had to rely on the various suggestions of his colleagues, and as they themselves had only just come into office, there was some difficulty in framing the Queen's Speech.

• A.J. P. Taylor, Dizzy, in Essays in English History, Penguin, 1976.

Disraeli had a flighty mind which drifted from smart triviality to adolescent day-dreaming and back again . . . He was first and last a great actor, watching his own performance and that of others with ironic detachment. He cared for causes only as a means of combat ... His novel Sybil is supposed to contain a profound social analysis. In fact it says no more than that the rich are very rich and the poor very poor - by no means a new discovery. His own policy, when he came to power, turned out to be nothing more startling than municipal wash-houses . . .         His only genuine emotion in politics sprang from personal dislike - of Peel in his early career, of Gladstone even more strongly towards the end.

• R. Blake,Disraeli,

Disraeli lacked the administrative and legislative ability of Peel, Gladstone and Balfour. His mind was like a catherine wheel shooting out sparks - most of them fell on damp earth ... Where he excelled was in the art of presentation. He was an impresario and an actor manager. He was a superb parliamentarian, one of the half dozen greatest in our history ... but another side of him was a slightly mocking observer surveying with sceptical amusement the very stage on which he himself played a principal part. To him, more than to most, politics was 'the great game'.

• Extract from BH Abbott – “Gladstone & Disraeli”

Disraeli's speech in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester in April 1872. marks the end of his defensive period as leader of the party and the beginning of his more positive struggle for survival and success. In his speeches of 1872 and 1873 he emphasised his support for the monarchy and the established Church in a restatement of traditional Toryism, and such a re-statement took up the greater part of his speeches. But Disraeli did have more to say. His support for the Empire seemed a new and unconventional policy. From the viewpoint of the twentieth century, however, it seems more obvious that Disraeli had simply put on the cloak discarded by Palmerston. It is Gladstone's seeming weakness in foreign affairs which appears as the new departure. Disraeli's real innovation was the platform of social reform as official Conservative party policy. He sketched only the outlines of such a policy without the inconvenience of details, but this was still Disraeli's personal contribution to making the Conservative party a bond between the different social classes of the nation. Gladstone might offer participation in government to the masses, but Disraeli more practically offered amelioration of their living conditions. Thus the policy which Disraeli offered was a mixture of his personal political views, which he had always held, tempered by reality and the traditional views common to all Conservatives. Innovation could be only, and he himself intended it to be only, a part of his programme.

The Election of 1880 – why did the Conservatives lose?

For the first time militant farmers through the Farmers' Alliance Supported the Liberals, and with unemployment at eleven per cent the working classes forgot the material concessions made to them before 1876. Gladstone was quick to point out also the failures in domestic matters: 'At home the ministers have neglected legislation, aggravated the public distress by continual shocks to confidence, which is the life of enterprise, augmented the public expenditure and taxation for purposes not merely unnecessary but mischievous, and plunged the finances, which were handed over to them in a state of singular prosperity, into a series of deficits unexampled in modern times.' Disraeli's failure to follow Gladstone's example and 'stump the country' is an indication not only of his ill-health, but also shows that he was less aware than Gladstone of the need to woo the new electorate he had helped to create.

Disraeli and the Conservative revival [Martin]

In 1868 Disraeli failed the only test of political leadership that mattered he lost a general election. He was blamed for a Reform Act that had apparently given the electoral advantage to the Liberals. Ill-health, and a realisation that there was little the opposition could do about Irish church and land reform, led to him making infrequent appearances in the Commons. The old antipathy to his background and distrust of his flexible policies re-surfaced. A proposal that Lord Salisbury, who as Lord Cranborne had been his most vociferous Conservative opponent in 1867, should become leader of the party in the Lords, was a direct challenge to the party leader's authority In January 1872 serious consideration was given to a plan to move the liberal-conservative Lord Derby into the party leadership.

1872 saw Disraeli once again taking the lead in the Commons. Two major public speeches followed which reasserted his position and silenced his critics.

Source A The Conservative programme- extract from Disraeli's speech in Manchester, 3 April 1872.

... The Conservative Party is accused of having no programme of policy. If by a programme is meant a plan to despoil churches and plunder landlords, I admit we have no programme. If by a programme is meant a policy which assails or menaces every institution and every interest, every class and every calling in the country, then 1 admit we have no programme. But if to have a policy with distinct ends ... be a becoming programme for a political party, then, 1 contend, we have an adequate programme...

The programme of the Conservative Party is to maintain the Constitution of the country ... The Constitution of England is not merely a Constitution in State, it is a Constitution in Church and State ...

Source B Social reform -extract from the Manchester speech.

... in attempting to legislate upon social matters the great object is to be practical - to have before us some distinct aims and some distinct means by which they can be accomplished.

... 1 think that public attention as regards these matters ought to be concentrated upon sanitary legislation. That is a wide subject, and, if properly treated, comprises almost every consideration which has just claim upon legislative interference. Pure air, pure water, the inspection of unhealthy habitations, the adulteration of food, these and many kindred matters may be legitimately dealt with by the Legislature ... It is impossible to overrate the importance of the subject. After all, the first consideration of a minister should be the health of the people ...

Source C The Conservative Party and the Empire - extract from his speech to the National Union of Conservative Associations at the Crystal Palace, 24June 1872.

... there is another and second great object of the Tory Party. If the first is to maintain the institutions of the country, the second is ... to uphold the Empire of England. If you look to the history of this country since the advent of Liberalism ... you will find that there has been no effort so continuous, so subtle, supported by so much energy, and carried on with so much ability and acumen, as the attempt of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the Empire of England.