 Part 7: The Age of Empire, continued
1901: The End of an Era
In 1897, Queen Victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee. She died in 1901. Britain had undergone enormous changes in the 60 years of her reign. It had become the workshop of the world, yet, to many of its inhabitants, the days of prosperity and optimism were over, the future was uncertain. Commerce was flourishing, industrial productivity was booming, exports were soaring, the nation led the world in manufacturing, the Empire had expanded across the globe. Yet there were many cracks in the wall and skeletons in the closet.
The great movement in population from the countryside to the towns and the urban squalor and poverty it created has been well-documented by such writers as Charles Dickens. Not even the Royal family could escape the dreaded cholera, rampant in London due to its tainted water supplies. Victoria's uncle, William IV's had two daughters die in infancy and disease was rampant in the squalid slums of the rapidly growing cities and manufacturing towns.
The constant refusal of landlords to improve their properties, install proper sanitary facilities and relieve the burden of high rents was matched by the indifference of the factory and mine owners to the terrible working conditions of those they employed. Those who did care about their workers, such as Robert Owen, were few and far between. The government was forced to step in; only law could change the intolerable conditions.
Reforms had tentatively begun under the Tory Party, which dominated in Parliament from 1812 to 1827 and under the dynamic Robert Peel as Home Office Minister. Peel reformed the criminal code, abolished the death penalty for over 100 offences, improved prison conditions and created the London Police force, the so-called "Bobbies."
It was only a beginning. Reforms were greatly needed in every sector of British society. Not everyone had benefited from the improvements in agriculture and industry. Increasing enclosures of land had thrown hundreds of thousands of small landowners onto the mercy of the Parish or drawn them into the fast-growing cities to replenish the stock of poor and unemployed. Lord Byron, a hereditary peer in the House of Lords was not the only one to speak out against the evils of industrialization. The poor had no representation in Parliament, for the system had long ago failed to represent anyone except a small privileged class. It was time for major changes.
In 1832, the Duke also had to acquiesce in the passing of the great Reform Bill of 1832 that, while doing nothing for the poorer classes, at long last recognized the right of the new manufacturing magnates and the middle-classes to govern England. It was a right long overdue, for the manufacturers and merchants had long been the chief factors in the economic life (and success) of England. Their agitation was their demand to be admitted into the elite of the ruling set. As the first formal change in electoral law, however, since an Act of 1430, it heralded further inevitable changes in the relationship between the old aristocratic oligarchy and the new men from the boroughs and manufacturing towns.
The British working classes were still without representation in Parliament: they turned to Chartism to redress their grievances. Early attempts at forming workers' unions had failed miserably, their leaders denounced as "gin-swilling degenerates" and their members expelled from their work places. The workers then turned to violence, forming groups such as the "Scotch Cattle" that destroyed property and threatened workers. The great depression of 1829, with its massive unemployment and wage cuts led to the great Merthyr Rising in South Wales, now heavily industrialized and influenced by many of its Irish immigrants. Order was brought into the area by the military and punishment was severe. Dic Penderyn was hanged for wounding a soldier, becoming a martyr for the Welsh workers.
The Chartists now began to recruit in earnest. The movement was named after the radical London reformer William Levett, who drafted a bill known as "The People's Charter" in May 1838. The Chartists hoped to bring about a democratic parliament and an enfranchised working class. They staged demonstrations in many towns and when the government refused to consider the six points of the Charter presented in June 1839 took to arms. The biggest demonstration took place in South Wales, at Newport, where thousands of marchers, coming into the town in columns from the coal-mining valleys, were shattered by well-directed volleys from a body of troops (chiefly recruited in Ireland) stationed in the Westgate Hotel.
The repeal of the infamous Corn Laws in 1846 and the consequent availability of cheap bread meant that people were less inclined to revolution. The Chartist Movement, faced with the might of the British military and a recalcitrant government, was fading by the late 1850's. In 1857 an Act declared that property qualifications were no longer necessary for a seat in Parliament, and the first great democratizing point of the Charter had been conceded by the government.
Not to be overlooked, was the introduction of canned foods, created for the Royal Navy, but sold commercially by the London firm of Donkin-Hall in 1814 that eventually helped alleviate shortages caused by bad harvests (the industry took advantage of the vacuum pan recently invented by Edward Howard). In 1867, the Great Reform Bill finally ended the Chartist Movement, for in that year, nearly one million voters were added to the register, nearly doubling the electorate. Forty-five new seats were created, and the vote given to many working men as well as tenants of small farms. From henceforth, governments had to heed the voice of the middle and lower classes; its resources had to be used to benefit all of society, not just the privileged few, and the State came to play a leading part in the lives of Britain's citizens.
The Continuing Problem of Ireland
One of the major cracks in Britain's armor was Ireland, a country so near and yet so far. A country that remained an enigma to most Britons, unable to understand the depth of nationalist (and Catholic) feeling that kept their neighboring island out of the mainstream of the Empire in so many ways. Even the revolutionary effects of the coming of industry to Britain had little effect upon Ireland, which remained rural and agricultural. Anglo-Irish relations had been bitter ever since the ruthless policies of Cromwell. The Ulster Plantations of James I, and the failure of the Jacobite rebellions had not helped matters. In 1791 Wolfe Tone and others established The Society of United Irishmen to follow the lead of the Americans to agitate for independence from Britain. A French fleet set sail for Ireland in December, 1793 to aid the Irish rebels. A mighty storm dispersed the ships and no invasion took place, but the French tried again in 1795, after the Battle of Vinegar Hill had broken Irish resistance to British rule. Once again, however, they were defeated; this time by troops under Cornwallis.
On January 1, 1801, the Act of Union of 1801 created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, establishing one single Parliament. Primarily due to the obstinacy of George III, who did not wish to give full emancipation to Irish Catholics, the union had little chance of success. Catholics could vote in elections, but only for Protestant candidates, no Catholic could be a Member of Parliament, nor become a minister or servant of the Crown. The problem could not be continually put on the back burner by the Parliament in London; the work of Daniel O'Connell saw to that.
O'Connell gave voice to the political aspirations of the Irish people. In 1823, he founded the Catholic Association, to provide the funds for a national movement, and in 1823 a Catholic Relief Bill was passed by the Commons. Its rejection by the Lords, however, meant further agitation by O'Connell who returned unopposed from County Clare, and in 1829, the Catholic Emancipation Bill was pushed through Parliament by the Duke of Wellington over strong Tory opposition. The Bill opened up the right to sit in Parliament and to hold any public office (with few exceptions) to Catholics.
The Act settled one grievance, but it did nothing to settle the major one: that of the unpopular Union of 1801. O'Connell wanted nothing less than the restoration of an Irish Parliament. Despite the Irishman's eloquent oratory and strong support in Parliament, however, Robert Peel refused to budge on the question, and in time-honored fashion, sent troops to Ireland to quell disturbances. O'Connell's activities had him convicted for conspiracy, but the verdict was reversed on appeal. His influence waning, he died in 1847.
Meanwhile, Peel's proposals to alleviate the problems in Ireland, were met with hostility from both Protestants and Catholics alike. A Bill introduced in 1845 to give Irish tenants the right to compensation for improvements to their holdings was opposed in Parliament. The Great Famine prevented its implementation for over thirty years.
There had been many warnings of the problems that could result for the Irish from their reliance on a single food crop. Potatoes had come to their country in 1586, planted on his estate near Cork by Sir Walter Raleigh. They seemed to be an admirable food to supplant wheat, so dependent upon the weather. They were easily grown, easily stored, easily cooked. In 1770, they were sold publicly in London. In less than one hundred years, their value as a food source had helped fuel a population increase in many parts of Europe but especially in Ireland, an increase that was most dramatic after 1800. By 1841, there were almost eight and a half million people in Ireland depending upon potatoes, but as early as 1830 William Cobbett had warned of over reliance on the crop.
In 1845, over one half the Irish potato crop, mostly grown on nearly 2 million acres in spade-cultivated plots of less than one acre, was lost to a fungus. The harvest failed, and the peasants saw their winter food supplies go to rot. A greater tragedy came with the second failure a year later. The British government did very little; it believed that economic forces must work themselves out with as little interference as possible and threw the burden of relief onto the local Irish Poor Law authorities. The repeal of the Corn Laws (passed to aid the British farmer) in 1846 did practically nothing to solve the problem.
For the majority of the Irish, the answer was starvation or emigration, and between 1848 and 1851 over a million left for the United States, taking with them their resentment of the British government and its feeble attempts to solve the mass starvation in Ireland. Unlike the Scots, bereft of their lands in the Great Clearances, they did not remain loyal to the Empire. Meanwhile, the "Problem of Ireland" intensified for successive British governments during the second half of the century.
In the 1860's a new force entered Irish politics, the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, founded in the USA, that became known as the Fenians. Its aims went a lot further than those of O'Connell, for it sought nothing less than complete separation from Britain and the setting up of an independent republic. It also promoted violence as a means to achieve its aims. In 1868, Gladstone promised to "pacify Ireland," and began a program of moderate reforms including the disestablishment of the Protestant Church of Ireland.
In 1870, Gladstone enacted a Land Act to prevent eviction of tenants (except for non-payment of rent), and to give compensation for the improvements made to land or property. The only problem was that landlords consequently raised their rents (and could thus have an excuse for evictions). The Prime Minister responded to the resulting violence by the Coercion Acts that further antagonized the poor Irish. Gladstone's desire to give the Irish Catholics their own university was defeated by a narrow margin in Parliament.
Disraeli was not married to a Welsh girl as was Gladstone; he had less sympathy to the people of Ireland. During his 1874-80 ministry, the Irish Home Rule League was founded, to demand repeal of the Union of 1801 and the restoration of an Irish Parliament at Dublin. It was supported by 59 Home-Rulers elected to the Commons in 1874. When Parnell took over the reigns, the League became a powerful political force. In 1879, another movement began: the Irish National Land League was founded by Michael Davin to boycott landlords and to work for ownership of all Irish land by Irish peasant farmers. Like the Home Rule League, the INLL was backed by huge sums of money raised in the US by Fenian societies.
Between 1880 and 1895, at the height of its imperial powers, Britain suffered the humiliation of having four out of six governments being defeated as a direct result of Irish affairs. Parnells' power block of 80 or so Irish M.P.'s was a crucial factor. Determined to press for Home Rule for Ireland, their constant side switching in an attempt gain their aims led to the Irish Home Rule Crisis of 1886 which split the Liberal Party in two and kept the Conservatives in power. Unfortunately, despite their passage of a Land Purchase Act in 1891, the government implemented strict measures to try to improve law and order in Ireland, all of which were vigorously opposed by Parnell. After Parnell's disgrace in 1891 (over an affair with a divorcee), Gladstone continued to press for a Home Rule Bill. His final attempt passed the Commons in 1893 but was rejected by the stubborn, myopic House of Lords. Ireland's problems, and the inability of the English government to deal with them continued well into the next century, one in which the accomplishments of Britain began to be matched by other countries, and one in which its mighty empire disintegrated.
Resource Information
Part 8: The 20th Century
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