Disraeli

John K. Walton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134989836
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Disraeli is a key figure for students of nineteenth-century Britain. He is indelibly identified with the unmaking of Peel's version of the Conservative Party, and with the re-creation of a durable and outstandingly successful new party which retained the loyalty of the squires and the shires while reaching out to newer forms of property ownership and cultivating the attachment of a significant proportion of the urban working class.

John K. Walton here examines the major aspects of Disraeli's career and his legacy, asking how far his actions and policies were governed by principles and how far by expediency. He also enquires how far Disraeli set his own agenda and how far he was a rider of currents out of his control. Finally, Walton takes a careful look at his political, institutional and ideological legacy.

1

The image and the myth

Benjamin Disraeli is one of those rare politicians whose importance adds up to more than the sum of their deeds. His time in office was short, and he headed only one lasting ministry, at the very end of his career, but he remains a figure of compelling interest, to many of today’s practising politicians as well as to historians. The nature and extent of his influence on the long-term development and sustained success of the Conservative Party are matters for highly-charged debate, and the mystique he cultivated was so powerful that mention of his name can still evoke enthusiastic partisan responses, while Conservative leaders continue to squabble over the inheritance of his mantle.

The issues of debate which swirl around Disraeli’s legacy are enduring in their significance. At three points, most obviously, he has a high profile in the political history of Victorian Britain. In the first place, his vituperative rhetoric was displayed to savagely damaging effect in the debates of 1845–6, on Catholics and the Corn Laws, which culminated in the defeat of Peel’s government and the effective destruction of the new flexible Conservative Party which Peel had been constructing during the 1830s and 1840s. This spectacular rift left the Conservatives, shorn of their Peelite leadership and a significant proportion of their rank and file, to wander the wilderness of opposition and occasional minority government for a generation as die-hard defenders of the Church of England and the landed interest. The importance of Disraeli’s part in this is open to question. Was his oratorical contribution an essential, causal element in the course of events, or did his interventions merely affect the language, style and tone of a rift which was bound to occur in some form, at some time in any case? Whatever the conclusion, Disraeli’s place at the vortex of one of the great controversies of modern British political history is secure.

Disraeli again held centre stage at the passing of the Second Reform Act in 1867. With a characteristic combination of sheer effrontery and consummate parliamentary skill, he piloted through the Commons a more thoroughgoing measure of franchise extension than the most radical of his opponents had envisaged, enabling his party to mould the details of Reform to its own advantage, but provoking widespread worry among the propertied classes about the potential power of the new working-class electorates of the towns. Within a few years of Reform, the Conservatives were able to reassert themselves as a party of government: although how far this was due to the Second Reform Act, and how far it was made possible by the death of Palmerston in 1865, the rise of Gladstone, and the consequent vacation of the political middle ground by the Liberals, is again open to question. Whatever line of argument we prefer, this was a critical period in party history, with important implications for future legislative programmes and political stability, and Disraeli indisputably played a central part in the Conservative revival of these years.

In this respect, 1867 is part of a longer process, and the fruits of Reform were not gathered in until 1874, when Disraeli won his only election with a substantial working majority. The Conservative ministry of 1874–80 has been, and continues to be, a fecund source of controversy. Some would see it as expressing Disraeli’s commitment to social reform, making major concessions to working-class needs and binding sections of the new urban electorate to the Conservative Party, helping to extend Conservatism from its rural strongholds and to rebuild it as a truly national organism. It can also be argued that these years marked a crucial stage in the development of the idea of empire, generating values and rhetorical conventions which were to serve the Conservatives well in future campaigns. But neither of these propositions commands general assent, and arguments which emphasize the building of bridges towards the working class may be thought to sit uneasily alongside the widespread notion that the future of Conservatism lay with the creation of an alliance of the propertied classes, and through the detachment of the commercial and industrial middle classes from an increasingly threatening Gladstonian Liberalism.

Disraeli’s activities did not always present such a high profile, but any assessment of the man and his influence must also take account of the formative years of political apprenticeship, before the events of 1845–6 enabled him to thrust himself into the limelight, and of the years of almost unrelieved opposition between 1846 and 1866. He was in his early forties when fame and the front benches claimed him, and hitherto his career had been chequered and, at times, disreputable. He had dabbled in journalism and mining speculation, postured on the fringes of high society, and pursued a parliamentary career under various auspices. Above all, he had written novels, beginning with a high society novel called Vivian Grey in 1826. But the works which have given him a lasting literary reputation, the ‘Young England’ trilogy of Coningsby, Sybil and Tancred, were products of the mid-1840s, and until these suddenly efflorescent years his career could be summed up in Lord Randolph Churchill’s words as ‘Failure, failure, failure’. Churchill saw the years of Peel’s downfall, and of Disraeli’s rise to the leadership of the Conservative rump in the Commons, as a time of ‘partial success’, but it was followed by another long phase of ‘renewed failure’ before the eventual achievement of ‘ultimate and complete victory’ (Jerman 1960: ix). Even so, the earlier years give us insights into Disraeli’s ideas, preoccupations and emotions which should not be neglected, and the journalism and literary ventures, though largely stimulated by a pressing need to generate income, provide particularly valuable windows into the thought-processes of an emergent politician.

The years of ‘renewed failure’ are also important. After the fall of Peel’s government, Disraeli’s rapid recognition as leader of the Conservatives in the Commons was achieved in circumstances which reduced its value: he owed his eminence to the lack of alternative front-bench talent in a party which had lost almost all its leadership. And the overall leadership remained firmly in the hands of Lord Stanley, who in 1851 became the fourteenth Earl of Derby. The Conservative remnant, though never clearly defined at its fringes, was always the most numerous group in the faction-ridden parliaments of the post-1846 generation, but to stand a chance of holding office for any length of time, a working collaboration with another group was inescapable. Much of the political activity of these years therefore revolved around attempts to forge a Commons majority by attracting former supporters of Peel (who died after a fall from his horse in 1850), or aristocratic advocates of moderate Reform from the Whig persuasion, into a Conservative cabinet. Hopes of such a development were regularly canvassed, without ever coming to anything, and when a Conservative-dominated coalition was not in prospect, Disraeli’s energies were devoted to obstructing and dividing the government in power, scoring party points on every possible issue, and even allying with the radical reformers, who were Conservatism’s natural enemies on most issues, when there seemed to be some scope for embarrassing or threatening the current incumbents. It was often alleged that Disraeli himself, for various reasons, was the major obstacle to the building of bridges between Conservatives and Whigs or Peelites: some regarded him as an opportunist, others as less than a gentleman, and the internecine conflicts of 1845–6 had left their legacy of distrust and even hatred. In fact, the conditions of these years almost imposed flexibility and opportunism on him. Whether this means that he was really lacking in principle, and involved in politics only for power, fame and glory, is another question, and one to which we shall return.

Many contemporaries were ready to impute ignoble and unprincipled motives to Disraeli, but his eventual success ensured that the image he bequeathed to posterity was very different. Frank O’Gorman crisply expresses the way in which a Disraelian myth has been created and sustained by ‘generations of party propaganda, rhetorical exaggeration, literary romance and sheer political nostalgia’. He quotes Arthur Bryant, the quintessence of popular Tory historiography: ‘It was left to Disraeli to recreate Conservatism and to lead the crusade of an ancient national party to restore the rights and liberties of the people’ (O’Gorman 1986: 30). Above all, Disraeli became identified with the idea of the Conservative Party as the ‘national party’, providing distinterested and responsible leadership which could rise above class loyalties and represent the British (or, more plausibly, the English) people as a whole. It was in this context that the phrase ‘One Nation’ became a familiar formula, which was used especially to signpost a Conservative concern with ‘social reform’. Such reform was always ameliorative rather than redistributive, of course: it involved protecting groups within the working class from the worst of the abuses which arose from the unfettered operation of a laissez-faire economy, but it stopped well short of taxing the rich to improve the conditions of the poor. Even so, quite a respectable pedigree of Conservative support for such measures as Factory Acts, and opposition to the New Poor Law, could be traced back to the 1830s, and here Disraeli’s flirtations with various kinds of radicalism in the early years of his parliamentary career could be turned to account.

Two other themes, apart from this concern to ‘elevate the condition of the People’, became (mainly retrospectively) attributed above all to ‘Disraelian Conservatism’. As stated by Charles Bellairs in a Conservative Political Centre propaganda tract, they were ‘To maintain our Institutions’, and ‘To uphold the Empire’ (1977: 17). The protection of the established constitution in church and state, with due reverence for the monarchy and respect for aristocratic government in general and the House of Lords in particular, is thus part of the perceived Disraelian legacy, although here Disraeli merely clothed in attractive phrases, most famously in a much-quoted speech of 1872, a Conservative theme which went back to Burke and Bolingbroke in the eighteenth century. Similarly, the idea that Britain had a special imperial mission, to govern and civilize distant races and to spread British settlement and influences to the remotest parts of the globe, was neither peculiar to Disraeli nor originated by him, but it has nevertheless become part of the aura he bequeathed to posterity.

Disraeli was not the only Conservative leader to become a cult figure after his death. Indeed, it could be argued that Conservatism has historically needed such heroes, as part of its concern to emphasize the importance of long-term continuities and the sublime antiquity of the constitution. A mythic interpretation of party history requires a heritage of noble warriors to sustain it. Thus Pitt the Younger, the ‘pilot that weathered the storm’ of the French wars, was commemorated for many years after his death by Tory dining clubs. Sir Winston Churchill is a much more obvious recent example. Even Sir Robert Peel, not the most obviously charismatic of leaders, was remembered by a spate of statuebuilding, by a penny subscription fund from 400,000 working men, and by extensive issues of medals and pottery. But this sustained show of gratitude was to Peel as statesman rather than party leader, and it was inspired particularly by the Repeal of the Corn Laws: the very measure which had alienated the bulk of the Conservative Party. And Professor Read concludes that, ‘Thanks to a tuneful song, it does seem that John Peel, the huntsman, is now better remembered than Robert Peel, the statesman’ (1987: 312). In terms of myth creation, and of lasting identification of policies and attitudes with personality, Disraeli surely stands alone, with only Churchill as a potential long-term rival.

Why did Disraeli, after so long in the wilderness, become a lasting embodiment of a powerful brand of popular Conservatism? Some clues may be obtained from the obituaries which appeared when his death in 1881 produced a remarkable display of national mourning for a politician whose government had been roundly defeated at the polls in the previous year. He was presented as dignified, noble, unselfish in his last hours, and the adjectives which were applied to his career and political personality included ‘adventurous’, ‘imaginative’, and above all ‘brilliant’ (Jerman 1960: 18–20). Disraeli had captured the popular imagination: he had brought romance to politics. He was, after all, an exotic figure: a baptized Christian from a Jewish family, and from a comfortably-off literary background which was still a world away from the aristocratic families who provided most of the general staff of high politics. The social gaffes in Disraeli’s first high society novel made this all too clear. His Jewishness, of which he was always highly conscious, made him the regular butt of anti-Semitism in his own party. Indeed, his immediate successor as leader, the third Marquis of Salisbury, referred to him in 1868 as ‘a Jew adventurer’ (quoted by Steele 1989: 189). Punch regularly caricatured him as a shady, wheedling Shylock figure. But, ultimately, his dark and distinctive looks were assimilated into a widely attractive image which encompassed the wit, the ladies’ man, the dandy and the virtuoso of debate. Even the cartoonists began to emphasize the romantic rather than the disreputable side of his exotic demeanour. His position as (eventually) a bestselling novelist, unique among prime ministers, helped him to build his own image and cultivate his own air of mystery. The very fact of being a published and much-discussed author also conferred a desirable air of authority, although the really magisterial tone that came from Gladstone’s works on theology and other topics of high seriousness remained beyond his rival’s reach. But Disraeli went in for inspiration rather than gravitas, and as part of this process his origins were often presented as more obscure than they really were, to point up the ‘true-life romance’ aspects of his rise to power and fame. From the later 1860s, too, his sustained gladiatorial combat with Gladstone helped him to build up a distinctive identity which stood out all the more sharply through the contrast with his rival. The high regard in which Queen Victoria came to hold him, overcoming the utter distrust which she displayed in the early years of his front-bench career, also played its part in the creation of the Disraelian myth: it was she who propagated the romantic notion that the primrose was his favourite flower. In the end, Disraeli contrived to combine the best of all worlds by pulling together a reputation for statesmanship with dash, glamour and literary renown.

It took a long time for Disraeli to turn his liabilities into assets in this way, and to cast off, or remake in acceptable guise, his earlier incarnations as Regency dandy, unprincipled orator and place-seeker on the make, and dissembling political opportunist. Full acceptance did not come until the last few years of his life, when he sat in the Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield, and even Salisbury mellowed towards him. But Gladstone, and the cohorts of high-principled nonconformist Liberalism who took their cue from him in the 1870s, never softened towards him. Even as Disraeli laid claim to the status of European statesman, with his prominent role at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Gladstone was harrying him as a cynically immoral endorser of Turkish atrocities against Bulgarian Christians. Thus, the controversies about Disraeli’s political motives and morality, about the relationship between principle and opportunism in his career, continued to rage at the end of his life. Indeed, they have pursued him beyond the grave.

It thus becomes important to assess Disraeli’s motivation, and to evaluate his policies. How much substance is there behind the Disraelian ideal? And how much credence should we give to those who argue that he was interested in presentation rather than principles, and that his overriding concern was with the pursuit, and retention, of place, prestige, patronage and power? Should we regard him as a convinced Conservative standard- and tradition-bearer: and if so, of what sort? Or should we see him as an opportunist who, having hitched his waggon irrevocably to the wrong party at the beginning of his career, was committed to making the best of a bad job and making what he could, at a personal level, out of a difficult situation? It was not just Disraeli’s enemies who had doubts about his sincerity and commitment. His friend and close political associate Edward Stanley, the future fifteenth Earl of Derby, frequently expressed reservations in his diary. In July 1850, for example, he commented, ‘there is certainly a very prevalent impression tha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The image and the myth
• 2 Disraeli and the landed interest
• 3 Church and queen
• 4 Nation and empire
• 5 Social reform
• 6 Legend and legacy
• Bibliography