This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  There was another question of power under discussion: the monarchy. In October, a plot to kidnap the Queen was discovered. And shortly before Christmas, the government thought there would be a Fenian (Irish Republican) attempt to capture her at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Nothing happened and Victoria suspected that the plots were imaginary anyway (although there had, by this time, been five attempts on her life). But since Prince Albert’s death in 1861, Queen Victoria rarely visited London and she thought this was a ruse to get her to leave the places she loved, Osborne and Balmoral, and return to her public duties. To many, Victoria had become the invisible Queen.

  And when, in 1870, the Third French Republic was declared in Paris, republican ideas spread, albeit momentarily, to England. A rally in Trafalgar Square demanded that the Queen should step aside. In 1871, some Radical MPs began to question the Civil List. They wanted to know why the people paid for the royal children. In Parliament, they wanted to know the reason for handing out money to Prince Arthur, the ‘princely pauper’ as they called him. In November 1871 the Radical MP for Chelsea, Sir Charles Dilke, said the royal family cost too much and weren’t worth it. The Times, while condemning what Dilke had said, also noted that his definition of royalty as a ‘cumbersome fiction’ was, in fact, received with ‘great enthusiasm’.

  Five months later, Dilke got up in the House to move a motion that there ‘be laid before the House certain returns relating to the Civil List’. This was nothing but a way of getting a republican debate. Dilke got his motion listened to, but only two MPs supported him. Dilke (whose father, incidentally had been a friend of Prince Albert) was not really much of a republican at heart. And by the time he spoke, the mood of the nation had shifted back to the Crown. ‘A certain sympathy’, it was called.

  When, in December 1871, Bertie, the Prince of Wales, was struck down with typhoid – exactly ten years, almost to the day, after his father’s death from the same illness – the nation waited anxiously for news. So serious was the Prince’s illness that the bell ringers of St Paul’s were gathered to toll another royal mourning. The Prince recovered, but the republican cause did not.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  1870–85

  In the 1860s the Industrial Revolution put to sea. For shipping, it was necessary to have high-quality steel, not so much to build ships themselves, but to make boilers that could stand enormous pressures, and which wouldn’t be too big. The secret that engineers needed to unlock was a technique to use the steam not once, but twice – and that could only be done if the steam was pushed through under enormous pressure.

  In 1865, a Liverpool engineer-turned-shipowner called Alfred Holt built three ships fitted with engines that met the criteria and could carry 3,000 tons of cargo – twice as much as the big clippers – as well as plenty of coal, and could steam, at ten knots, for more than 8,000 miles without stopping. This meant that one of these new steamships could get to China and back in about two months. Even in good weather conditions the clippers would take three months, and carry nowhere near that amount of cargo.

  And then, in the year that the Cutty Sark was built, 1869, the Suez Canal was opened. This gave the new steamships an advantage. By the end of the 1870s only the smaller ships were built of wood. A centuries-old tradition had died. Also about to die was one of Britain’s most famous writers, Charles Dickens. In 1868 he returned from a series of gruelling public readings in America. He was in poor health but two years later he began work on his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He did not live to finish it. Dickens was an optimist who believed that human nature would eventually override the power of the institutions in which he had so little trust. The extent to which he was mourned by the vast middle class suggests that he was far from alone in his belief. One of the first demonstrations of a change in social policy came in the same year Dickens died – in education. The minister who introduced the new Education Act was William Edward Forster. His Bill was an important advance. Its purpose was to provide more schools, good and active schools inspectors, and religious freedom – a controversial subject if ever there was one. The Church schools could and did carry on, with increased grants, but no local authority money. Most important, this was to be the first time that local authorities had money for education. Local education boards could now put education on the rates. For the first time, children would not be denied elementary education because they came from impoverished families. It was a beginning.

  The imaginative reforms of the Gladstone government are said to have drawn the template for the twentieth-century State: education, the law, the Civil Service. But the very brilliance of the Gladstonian changes helped bring about his government’s downfall. Real reform means the reform of the institutions that make up the Establishment, and thorough reform creates enemies within the Establishment. So perhaps Gladstone tried to do too much. Certainly the reform of the army came too late to have an effect on the implementation of foreign policy. An illustration of this came in the summer of 1870.

  France had declared war on Prussia. There was plenty of diplomatic posturing, but with a run-down army, there really was little that Britain could have done, and so Britain did nothing. No one supported the French, who lost, and the Emperor, Napoleon III, was captured. The Empress escaped to Britain where she made their home at Camden House in Chislehurst, south of London. But the astonishing military efficiency of the Prussian army reinforced the Gladstone Cabinet’s belief that the British army had to be restructured and re-equipped as a matter of national urgency. And of equal long-term importance, as a result of the armistice treaty negotiations it was decided that all nations should now recognize William of Prussia as the German Emperor. At home, one of the reforms of the Liberal government was about to work against Gladstone. In 1872 he had introduced the Ballot Act. For the first time in British history, men would vote in secret. In theory at any rate, they would not be pressured by lords or masters, landlords or employers. The Conservatives saw the advantage of good party organization, and Conservative Associations began to appear across Britain. The Liberals began to lose by-elections.

  In 1873 Gladstone was defeated in the Commons when he tried to introduce a Bill to set up a new Dublin university at which Roman Catholics and Protestants could study side by side. In January 1874, Gladstone called an election and ran on the platform not simply of tax cuts, but of the abolition of income tax altogether. The voters were not fooled. And so, perhaps thanks to the secret ballot which the Liberals had introduced, the Conservatives came back to majority government for the first time since the collapse of the Tories almost thirty years earlier – which, of course, Disraeli had helped bring about. But, Disraeli, now in his seventies, was tired, gouty and asthmatic, and had wondered aloud to the Queen whether or not he should retire. She persuaded him to stay, but sent him to the Lords as the first Earl of Beaconsfield, which she believed to be a less strenuous place, but from which Disraeli could, as she put it, ‘direct everything’. But he could not direct the news of terrible Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria. What happened after the Bulgars joined the rebellion and the Turkish irregular troops, the Bashi-Bazouks, arrived, was indeed a massacre. It’s been estimated that 12,000 Christian Bulgarians were killed. The exact figure was never known. Gladstone had been in semi-retirement for nearly two years – since his General Election defeat. When the massacre reports began to circulate he was at Hawarden, contemplating the writings of Thomas Aquinas. He was working on the question of religious and philosophical retribution. Bulgaria called him away from his studies and in three days he wrote what was to become his famous pamphlet, ‘Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East’. It was this document, or rather the events which prompted him to write it, that brought Gladstone back to front-bench politics.

  At the end of 1876, a conference was held in Constantinople that agreed Russian proposals for Turkish reform. The problem was the Turks didn’t agree to them. The Sultan, persuaded by the Young Ottoman leader, Midhat Pasha, appears to hav
e believed that recent history would repeat itself – that there would be another Crimean War. Then, in the spring of 1877, the Austrians, ever mindful of the rich pickings of the Balkans, agreed to remain neutral in the inevitable war between Turkey and Russia, as long as they would be given Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that the Russians would promise not to set up a Slav State at the end of the war. So, the war began. The Russians went into the Balkans – the graveyard of so many strategic ambitions. The advance should have been swift but it wasn’t. At a place called Plevnia in Bulgaria, the Turks held out until starved into submission.

  Gradually, the mood in Britain changed. The nasty Turks who had massacred 12,000 innocent Bulgar Christians were now the heroic defenders. It became, for some, a weekend sport to go along to Gladstone’s London house and shout at his windows. By the third week of January 1877, the Russians had reached the gates of Constantinople and the British people resorted to jingoism. In the streets and in the music halls, the strident verses rang out.

  We don’t want to fight, but by jingo, if we do,

  We’ve got the men, we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the money too.

  The Royal Navy was ordered to Constantinople and Disraeli’s government asked for an extra £6 million as a war fund. It all ended at the Congress of Berlin, a conference of the Great Powers. The easy and cynical solution was to carve up the region between them. Russian territory now extended to the mouth of the Danube. Bulgaria received her autonomy. Montenegro, Romania and Serbia were designated principalities. Austria was allowed to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, as it had originally demanded. And in a separate piece of diplomatic trading with Turkey, Britain was given charge of a Mediterranean island called Cyprus.

  When Disraeli returned from the Congress of Berlin, he claimed he had brought ‘peace and honour’, and there was one aspect to the settlement which was to have far-reaching consequences in British history. The Russians believed they had been defeated by Bismarck manipulating the other European partners against the Tsar. Gradually, the friendship between Russia and Germany cooled. Not many years into the future this led to an alliance of France, Britain and Russia – but not Germany.

  If Disraeli had gone to the country after the Congress of Berlin, he would probably have secured a huge Commons majority. But he didn’t because other matters were pressing. And when he did, almost inevitably, the nation forgot Disraeli, the preserver of peace, and Gladstone triumphed. However, Disraeli had cemented a secure place in the affections of the sometimes very affectionate Queen. Disraeli had presented Victoria with the most sumptuous jewel in her Crown. On 1 January 1877, Victoria made a note in her journal that for the first time she had signed herself as Queen and Empress. The imperial Raj was confirmed. In India, it was an occasion akin to the blessing and recognition of a high priestess. The Maharaja of Cashmere, for example, believed it was indeed an auspicious day and the Empire really would be seen as a protective cloak for the people, whatever their caste. Disraeli considered the colonial impression important for Britain’s world standing. Most of all, he loved the pomp of the whole affair and delighted in the pleasure his huge sweet-scented imperial bouquet gave his Queen.

  Yet imperial triumphs could not hide the need for further reform in Britain. Disraeli’s Conservative Cabinet spent much thought on it, and continued the reforms others had started. But, just as Disraeli hadn’t been able to find a solution to the problem of the two nations, the haves and the have-nots, in his fiction, nor could he truly find one in real life.

  And then, once more, war erupted on two fronts – Afghanistan and Africa – and in one year, Disraeli’s popularity had more or less evaporated. There’s some evidence to suggest that, even by the 1870s, with their Queen Empress of India, the British were not necessarily well tuned to the idea of imperialism. Perhaps there was too much depressing news at home. The economy was in a more or less terrible state, and there were continuing unsolved difficulties, especially in Ireland. When the election came in 1880, the result was clear enough: Conservatives 240 seats; Liberals 347. The Queen didn’t want Gladstone as her Prime Minister. She didn’t want anyone but Disraeli and she all but ignored the result of the election. She said that Gladstone would ‘ruin the country’. Gladstone had declared that he was loyal to the Queen, that he was devoted, but the Queen could not for one moment bring herself to believe that. And so it was with enormous reluctance, on St George’s Day 1880, that Victoria accepted the inevitable.

  Gladstone’s fight was against what he called Beaconsfieldism. He wanted to undo everything that Disraeli stood for. Disraeli could do little but watch in growing anger. He still directed his party’s campaign against Gladstone in Parliament, and there were those who believed that this was the old Disraeli, but the cold white winter of 1880–81 and his asthma were killing him.

  On 29 March 1881 he told his friend, Philip Rose, ‘I shall never survive this attack. I feel it is quite impossible . . . this is the last of it.’ On 29 April, the body of Benjamin Disraeli was entombed in the churchyard vault close by his country home, Hughenden, in Buckinghamshire. Three princes – including the Prince of Wales – six dukes, and a crammed bench of lesser nobles mourned him, as the crimson cushion, on which rested his coronet and his insignia of the Garter, was carried before the coffin on which had been placed wild primroses – flowers sent by the Queen. She was distraught. The man she had once loathed had become her closest confidant. ‘The terrible void makes the heart sick,’ she said. In 1881 scarcely remembered men were also dying, for their country in Africa.

  The First Boer War – or, as it’s sometimes known, the Transvaal Revolt – had started. On 16 December 1880, the Boer flag was raised over Heidelberg in South Africa. In February 1881, two months before the death of Disraeli, the Boers cut to pieces the British Army at the Battle of Majuba Hill. In Britain, hardly anyone had expected the revolt of the Boers to be so decisive. There would be some sort of settlement, but only a temporary one. More immediately, Gladstone’s Liberal government was faced with a stiffer problem – Ireland.

  The terrible storms that had swept the summer pastures and arable crops of these islands at the end of the 1870s and the early 1880s had sent the economy into further decline. Irish tenant farmers were destitute. In one year alone, there were 10,000 evictions. Fury translated into violence. The Irish Land League, formed in 1879 to campaign for the security of tenants and for Home Rule, had, as its President, Charles Parnell.

  Parnell was an Anglo-Irish Protestant, who since 1875 had been an MP at Westminster. The strength of the Irish lobby, the ‘Home Rulers’ as they’re sometimes known, was great enough to force the government to agree to put through legislation for compensation for the evicted tenants. But the Bill, at best a half-hearted piece of Parliamentary draughtsmanship, was thrown out by the Lords. The Irish reacted with violence. There were burnings and beatings, and Parnell invented a tactic whose description has remained in the English language. The Irish were not to deal with anyone who dealt with the British. Such a man suffered so effectively that his name slipped into the national dictionary. Captain Boycott could find no one to work for him, no farrier would shoe his horses and no shop would serve him. When he and his family took refuge in the Harman Hotel in Dublin, the manager made them leave. Boycott became a noun and a verb.

  The Home Rule movement wanted to repeal the Act of Union and bring back an Irish Parliament which at least had responsibility for internal government. After the election of 1874, there were nearly sixty Irish MPs sitting at Westminster. After the 1886 election, they held the balance of power. There was, for Gladstone at least, another strand to this. It was the realization that unless some constitutional solution could be found, independence might come about by violent means. The origin of that fear was found not in London, nor in Dublin, but in New York. In the late 1850s, James Stephens formed the Fenian Society in New York. Its aim was Irish independence from Britain. In 1867 the Fenians moved their campaign to Britain. They murdered a policeman and three Fen
ians were hanged. They then blew a hole in the wall of Clerkenwell jail. Twelve people were killed. The Fenians – or the Irish Republican Brotherhood as they became – eventually faded, but only because they were replaced in 1916 by a new organization – the IRA, the Irish Republican Army. By this time, terrorism, as it is now known, was rife. There was still a viceroy in Ireland, just as there was in India. In March 1881 a Coercion Act was passed to give him absolute power – including what was called, in the later-twentieth-century in Belfast, the power of internment.

  Gladstone believed that Parnell remained the key to peace. The majority of the Cabinet believed this was akin to supping with the Irish devil. There were allegations that Parnell had been involved in – or at least approved – the assassinations, but in truth there is little evidence to say that he was. For the next couple of years there was a period of calm, but not for Gladstone. He presided over a Britain trying to recover from economic depression. In 1885, he was defeated on a Budget amendment, and resigned. He then lost the 1885 election to Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, partly because his Liberal Party was split. Yet Gladstone had taken one of the most important decisions in nineteenth-century politics. He had become a convert to Home Rule for Ireland. He realized that for Home Rule to come to anything, supporting the Conservatives was more likely to bring it about than attempting to drag his own people through the lobby. What actually happened was a fiasco of political mismanagement. A new Coercion Bill was introduced, and defeated. Salisbury was forced to resign and Gladstone became Prime Minister again. Within months his Home Rule Bill was before the House. Within days it had been thrown out and so was he. Salisbury was back. The Irish Question was still on the table.