High Minds

by Simon Heffer

  VIII

  Perhaps the most fundamental and abiding problem that blighted urban life in the 1870s as it had in the 1840s was squalid and disease-ridden housing for the lowest classes. A Conservative MP, Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth, recalled that in the Manchester speech the Prime Minister had enunciated the motto ‘sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas’.81 Kay-Shuttleworth spoke about what he had seen on his walks around the poorer areas of London: narrow courts covered with human excrement, houses poorly built and open to the elements and to vermin; and all of them drastically overcrowded. Yet there was still much derelict land close to the City of London, and he called for compulsory purchase powers to be made available for it to be brought into use for development. The Artisans’ Dwellings Act of 1868 was insufficient in this respect: all it enabled was compulsory repair and demolition, not further building, a provision to that end having been taken out by landowners in the House of Lords. As for raising the money for such purchases, Sir Sydney Waterlow, who seconded Kay-Shuttleworth’s motion, said a penny-in-the-pound rate levied for forty years on property in London would pay the interest on a £2 million loan to cover the cost of demolishing all those houses in London unfit for human habitation. This would reduce the mortality rate and disease rate, which would have a beneficial economic effect.82 Waterlow claimed that for every person who died there were two more unfit for work through disease.

  Cross had been lobbied by both the Royal College of Physicians and the Charity Organisation Society to stimulate the replacement of housing for the poor. He praised the Peabody Trust for building mansion blocks on what land it had managed to purchase in London: but agreed Parliament must do more. He promised a measure as soon as possible: and the Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Bill followed within weeks. It introduced the principle of compulsory purchase by local authorities for slum clearance, and allowed them to rent out or sell land for the building of homes for the lower classes. It also ensured the newly built areas were policed by public health officials and sanitary inspectors, to see that they did not lapse back into squalor, and encouraged the establishment of more mains drainage. And, to avoid too much urban concentration, Cross also ensured open spaces were maintained near all large towns, following on from the example of the Metropolitan Commons Act. The Public Health Act 1875 further regulated food (which had, since the Food and Drugs Act 1860, been free from adulteration), street lighting and markets, and the notification of diseases.

  He introduced the Artisans Dwellings Bill on 8 February 1875. It kept a promise made in the previous session to a backbencher who had asked for the legislative means to clear slums in overcrowded industrial towns. It would become the latest, but by far the most radical, of a number of measures in the preceding thirty years to relieve the insanitary and decrepit condition of much of the housing of the lower classes: such as the 1866 Housing of the Working Classes Act, which enabled landowners or businesses to borrow from the Public Works Loans Commissioners to buy land to build houses. The government had no intention of providing housing itself – public housing was still decades away. But it was resolved to make it easier for private developers to do so, not least by allowing local authorities to clear the land on which they could build.

  Cross emphasised that he proposed a ‘facilitating’ measure.83 He admitted that the government had been stirred to action by a report of the Charity Organisation Society, published the previous year, from which he quoted: ‘That the dwellings of the poorer classes in various parts of the metropolis are in such a condition, from age, defects of construction, and misuse, as to be deeply injurious to the physical and moral welfare of the inhabitants, and to the well-being of the community at large.’84 More telling, the government had had representations from the Royal College of Physicians, who told Disraeli ‘that over-crowding, especially in unwholesome and ill-constructed habitations, originates disease, leads to drunkenness and immorality, and is likely to produce discontent among the poorer portion of the population.’

  The generosity of private philanthropists – Cross singled out the Peabody Trust, which had by then spent £600,000 on buildings in London – had made a start on addressing the problems of the Metropolis. Together with other philanthropists, Peabody had provided housing for around 30,000 people: but London had grown by 40,000 a year for each of the preceding ten years, and ‘much more must be done if we wish to reach the root of the evil to be remedied’.85 The COS had suggested to the government that it constitute public bodies in urban areas with powers of compulsory purchase: something similar had happened in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Liverpool. Cross had an ideological objection to public housing, which he outlined specifically: ‘I take it as a starting-point that it is not the duty of the Government to provide any class of citizens with any of the necessaries of life, and among the necessaries of life we must include that which is one of the chief necessaries—good and habitable dwellings. That is not the duty of the State, because if it did so, it would inevitably tend to make that class depend, not on themselves, but upon what was done for them elsewhere, and it would not be possible to teach a worse lesson than this—that “If you do not take care of yourselves, the State will take care of you”.’86 He also argued against large charities, such as the Peabody Trust, offering dwellings at rents below the market rate. If supply increased, rents would in any case fall.

  He justified his proposals as being within the State’s remit because it came under the heading of sanitary reform, which no one disputed was one of government’s functions. He argued that health was wealth: that if Britain wished to continue to grow in prosperity and power, it had to ensure the fitness of its people. That required, fundamentally, better housing. He spoke of the wastes of life and strength among the existing population. The death rate was 22.5 per thousand nationally: yet in London it was 24.5, in Manchester 30, and in Liverpool in the previous ten years 38. Parts of Liverpool were hotbeds of disease, and in one district of Manchester the prevalence of fevers had put the death rate up to 67 per thousand. In another Manchester district there were 49.7 deaths of children under five per 100 total deaths.87 The national mortality rate for this age group was 18 per hundred.

  He had seen for himself the squalid courts of London areas such as St Giles, and was categorical that the only thing to be done with them was to demolish them. ‘Family after family goes into a house, and it is certain to catch the fever which has killed off the previous occupants,’ Cross said. ‘And unless you step in and interfere this will go on for ages.’88 He had also been to Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, where local Acts of Parliament had allowed compulsory purchases, to see what mistakes had been made, in order to seek to avoid them in the national legislation he was proposing. In Liverpool expense had been higher than necessary because of complications about compensation. Edinburgh had had more extensive clearances, breaking up many dens of crime, and reducing the number of brothels from 204 to twenty in the three years from 1870 to 1873.

  The government proposed to confine legislation to London and other large towns. Powers would be vested in the Metropolitan Board of Works in London and in corporations elsewhere. No longer would local authorities need a private bill, and the agreement of their ratepayers, to take over slum properties, clear them and improve them. An arbitrator would be appointed locally to agree the price of the land to be compulsorily purchased. The council would also be given the power to build houses, to ensure that no cleared land remained empty in what Cross considered the unlikely event of no commercial builder being interested in developing an empty site. For that reason, there was also provision for the Public Works Commissioner to lend money to the councils at a certain rate of interest.

  Cross said that the measures, if enacted, would have no immediate effect. But he proclaimed:

  The evil we desire to root out has been the work of generations; and though I believe the ratepayers will be more than fully recouped in the long run, yet for a time, at least, the measure must be worked at some expense. Neverthele
ss, considering the state of the people at the present time, considering how little has been done for them, and considering also the absolute necessity of raising this almost degraded class, who have been brought up in sickness, and who will perpetuate disease, if we do not afford them the means of improving their conditions, I ask you on those dens of wretchedness and misery to cast one ray of hope and happiness; I ask you on those haunts of sickness and of death to breathe, at all events, one breath of health and life; and on those courts and alleys where all is dark with a darkness which not only may be, but is felt—a darkness of mind, body, and soul—I ask you to assist in carrying out one of God’s best and earliest laws—“Let there be light”.89

  The Opposition sought to have the provisions extended to towns of only 10,000 inhabitants instead of the proposed limit of 25,000. Cross objected, saying smaller towns tended to have spare land nearer to the centre where new dwellings could be built that was nearer to the centre than was the case in larger ones: and therefore they did not need the same compulsory purchase powers as larger ones to remain properly sanitary. Cross had already made a concession, lowering the limit from 50,000: he was reluctant to extend powers such as compulsory purchase any further, in case the extreme burden it would put on ratepayers made what should be a great reforming measure unpopular. Also, Disraeli had been determined not to make the legislation compulsory in case it was perceived as an attack on landlords, who were predominantly supporters of his party.

  As Cross had said, the provisions took time to make a difference. The Artisans’ Dwellings Act was designed to begin slum clearance: but Blake observed that by 1881 only ten of the eighty-seven English and Welsh towns to which it applied had begun to implement its provisions. The quality of housing in England was improved by the spread of prosperity, thanks to England’s commercial and mercantile successes, which led to the creation of middle-class and lower-middle-class suburbs and a mass of speculative building from 1870 until the Great War. Cross’s judgement was that the Act had made a start, but in the nation’s capital rather than in the squalid northern industrial towns. ‘All the really large old rookeries in London’, he wrote in 1903, ‘were swept away under this Act.’90 It was also, however, the measure that enabled Joe Chamberlain to clean up the slums of Birmingham. At a cost of roughly £1.5 million, the council bought nearly 50 acres of slum housing, and the scheme was driven through largely because of the confidence Chamberlain inspired as a municipal leader. His biographer, J. L. Garvin, wrote: ‘From that day the centre of Birmingham began to be Haussmannised. Where the jumble of slums had stood Corporation Street rose into being. Twenty-two yards wide, it was; with tall shops, offices and institutions on both sides, creating a new architectural vista.’91 Behind the street on both sides were built streets of new, improved housing, and the death rate in the area tumbled year upon year. In one street, Bailey Street, there had been 97 deaths per thousand of population in 1873–85. By 1879–81 it was 25.6. ‘The children did not perish nor become withered and stunted, as they used. Good lighting, pure water, fresher air, cleansed streets, more space within and without, sanitary measures of strict vigilance – all these benefits were brought into the reconstructed quarter.’

  IX

  When in June 1876 the Queen learned, through her private secretary, of Disraeli’s mounting infirmity – he was seventy-two – she offered him an earldom. ‘She knows how valuable he is to herself and the country,’ she wrote, making the offer. ‘The Queen throws this out, as she feels the immense importance he is to the Throne and country and how – more than ever now – she wishes and hopes his Govt may be long maintained.’92 The intensity of her feeling was not remotely constitutional, but cannot be explained by her fearing a return of Gladstone, who was no longer leading the Opposition.

  Disraeli’s instinct was to retire altogether. He was still a martyr to gout, increasingly afflicted by bronchitis, and prone to exhaustion. He claimed not to be interested in a peerage, having no heir. However, the Queen persuaded him to stay as her minister, but in the Lords. He consulted the Duke of Richmond, who led in the Lords (and would be displaced by Disraeli’s going there). Richmond told him what he wanted to hear, that it would be ‘fatal’ to the party for him to retire, and that going to the Lords was the obvious solution. Derby and Salisbury supported him too.93 The Queen had earlier made his late wife the Viscountess Beaconsfield in her own right; when Disraeli decided to go upstairs he chose the title of Earl of Beaconsfield, which he insisted on being pronounced BEAconsfield, not BECConsfield.

  Once it was clear to her that he would continue, the Queen was relieved, telling her daughter the Crown Princess of Prussia that ‘his retirement would be a very serious calamity’.94 He laid it on with an even larger trowel than usual: ‘They’, he said, talking of his peerages (he had also been created Viscount Hughenden), ‘would not be mean distinctions, even for the most exalted, but what enhances them to him beyond all price, is that your Majesty has condescended to express your Majesty’s personal gratification in rewarding a servant who, whatever his deficiencies, is, he hopes, from his very heart, devoted to your Majesty.’95

  Disraeli had prided himself on passing ‘permissive legislation’. The Artisans’ Dwellings Act was a prime example: legislation that kept the State at one remove, by making it possible for individuals, institutions or local authorities to make improvements instead. Disraeli’s line was that such an approach was more appropriate to the democratic mood of the times. In 1875, on a bill to reform agricultural tenancies, he said: ‘It may be all very well for hon and right hon Gentlemen to treat with affected contempt the notion that our legislation should be founded on permission, but permissive legislation is the characteristic of a free people. It is easy to adopt compulsory legislation when you have to deal with those who only exist to obey; but in a free country, and especially in a country like England, you must trust to persuasion and example as the two great elements, if you wish to effect any considerable change in the manners and customs of the people.’96 By the time Beaconsfield’s government fell, Cross had successfully ‘decontaminated’ the Tory brand, and had made it clear to the aristocrats who still ran the party that only by constant attention to the conditions of the poor would they hope to avoid civil unrest. Nonetheless, and for all these great advances, Beaconsfield would find he could not win.

  His move to the Lords coincided with a new emphasis in British politics on foreign affairs. The Eastern Question, which would culminate in the Congress of Berlin in 1878, dominated the government’s considerations: and Gladstone’s condemnation of Britain’s foreign policy after the Bulgarian atrocities – the persecution of Christians by the Muslim Ottoman Empire – would inspire not only his Midlothian Campaign before the 1880 election, but also make inevitable his restoration to the leadership of his party and to the position of the Queen’s first minister. After forty years of being a country forced by circumstances to manage the massive and urgent social questions that sprang from industrialisation, the spread of wealth, a population explosion and a revolution in communications, Britain now once more looked abroad. Despite a dozen years of governments of both parties delivering profound social reform, the 1880 election would, ironically, be decided on a question of foreign policy.

  Gladstone objected that it was immoral for the British government to lend economic support to the Turks, to help maintain the Ottoman Empire as a force against the Russians after the Crimean War. At a time when it was still unusual for senior politicians to make big speeches outside Parliament – though Palmerston had done it, and Disraeli had had conspicuous one-offs such as the Manchester and Crystal Palace speeches – Gladstone caused a sensation by doing so: a sensation intensified by the assault on government policy, the language in which it was couched, and in the way that it repudiated the notion that Gladstone had retired. He had assiduously courted lobby journalists when Chancellor and Prime Minister. He was adept at what we would now call media management. He also saw that by making a sensational speech
he would command enormous press coverage. One consequence of the Midlothian campaign was that it changed the nature of the conduct of British politics, with other leading politicians increasingly seeking to secure exposure by the same means. The campaign was an inevitable consequence itself of the extension of the franchise in 1867, and it set the template for the conduct of British politics during the succeeding century.

  Over the next three-and-a-half years he became ferocious, and indeed almost messianic, on the immorality of Beaconsfield’s foreign policy. Beaconsfield had never liked Gladstone: now, the attacks on his foreign policy incensed him. Those so high-minded as to believe that politics, particularly foreign affairs, had a moral dimension had, in Beaconsfield’s view, no place in public life. He wrote to Derby, his Foreign Secretary, in October 1876 describing Gladstone as an ‘unprincipled maniac’ who was an ‘extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy and superstition’.97 A Conservative just held Beaconsfield’s former seat of Buckinghamshire at the by-election caused by his elevation; it was clear Gladstone’s passionate attacks were already having their effect, and the theme would become louder and clearer for several years.

  Other foreign issues besides the Eastern Question dominated the last two-thirds of the administration. There was the possibility of war with Russia, a war in Afghanistan, unrest in Egypt and the Zulu War in southern Africa. However, it was unrest in Ireland, and obstruction in the Commons by Irish Home Rulers, that finally caused an exhausted Beaconsfield to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament in March 1880. Gladstone had taken his attack on foreign policy around his constituency of Midlothian in Scotland; but as the election neared he spoke all over the country. Thousands attended his rallies; the press reported him widely. Among the messages of support that poured in were some from Florence Nightingale. ‘All through this Eastern controversy, the most painful of my life’, he wrote to her in January 1879, ‘it has been a consolation to learn that I was in sympathy with you.’98