10) Why Poverty Exists; With Help From Benjamin Disraeli
Benjamin Disraeli
It is a remarkable coincidence that two books written to highlight the horrific conditions of the working classes in England were published in the same year.
In 1845 Friedrich Engels published The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Engels was a close friend and admirer of Karl Marx and so very much on the left of the political spectrum.
In 1845, Benjamin Disraeli published Sybil or The Two Nations. It was meant to provoke a serious reaction to the appalling conditions in which three-quarters of England’s population lived.
Disraeli was not on what most would think of the left in politics. Disraeli was a member of the Conservative Party and rose to become Prime minister and, indeed, the favourite Prime minister of Queen Victoria.
In 1845, Britain was still the wealthiest nation in the world. The nation that dominated banking and, hence, trade. But three-quarters of the population lived in squalor equal to or worse than any other country in the world.
If you are considering which book will be most helpful, then if you want the most detailed and complete description of the horrors suffered by the poor of England, read The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 by Friedrich Engels.
If however you are curious to know the cause of what is generally called ‘The Condition of England Question’, then definitely read Sybil or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli.
The book inspires the strand of thinking within the Conservative Party known as One Nation Conservatism. Depending on economic circumstances, it will rise or fall against the strand of thinking famously championed by Margaret Thatcher.
That strand of thinking firmly believed that the old values of individualism and a robust challenge to the dependency culture were the way to improve conditions within the nation.
Here is the moment in the book when Disraeli sums up the situation in the country.
“Yes," resumed the younger stranger after a moment's interval. "Two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.”
Not a situation that would create a world in which - to borrow a well-known phrase - “all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation, they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.”
It is evident from both the works of Engels and Disraeli that three-quarters of England’s population was in no way created equal to the other quarter and certainly not to the one-thousandth of the population who controlled nine-tenths of the country’s wealth.
It followed that for those squalid three-quarters, the “preservation of life” was a constant struggle.
As for “liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”, that was in very short supply.
I said that if you were looking for an explanation for how the country ended in this situation, then Disraeli is the writer to look to.
Disraeli doesn’t pull his punches and indeed appears far more radical than Engels or even the mighty Marx.
Just 13 pages into the book he gives a description of the state of the nation. He writes that “a people without power or education, had been induced to believe themselves the freest and most enlightened nation in the world.”
He would certainly be applauded by those today who regard the electorate as sheeple, or is it sheople?
Disraeli was definitely not a revolutionary communist, and yet here he is, as a member of the mother of all parliaments, saying the people have been duped.
The opening lines of a speech Disraeli delivered in Parliament show he was a loyal and patriotic Conservative.
“Gentlemen, 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, in my opinion, to uphold the empire of England.”
And he ends that speech with a flourish Boris Johnson might have been proud of and some other politicians in other lands.
“The issue is not a mean one. It is whether you will be content to be a comfortable England, modelled and moulded upon continental principles and meeting in due course an inevitable fate, or whether you will be a great country - an imperial country - a country where your sons, when they rise, rise to paramount positions, and obtain not merely the esteem of their countrymen, but command the respect of the world…”
And yet this same true blue Tory is saying that the country was populated by “a people without power or education” who “had been induced to believe themselves the freest and most enlightened nation in the world.”
And he doesn’t stop there. He says that these powerless uneducated people “had submitted to lavish their blood and treasure, to see their industry crippled and their labour mortgaged.”
And why have the good people been abused in this way? Disraeli puts it quite bluntly. It has all been done “in order to maintain an oligarchy.”
We can’t deny that a tiny and incredibly wealthy elite existed in the same realm as “a people without power or education” were working tirelessly to maintain that same small elite class.
The brutal murders that were committed in 19th-century Whitechapel were possible because of unremitting poverty and gross misogyny.
But Disraeli, in his book Sybil or The Two Nations, did not stop there and in the next post, we will see just how radical this champion of the Conservative Party was.