Conservative nostalgia for Victorian era is dangerous

The government's promotion of Victorian values could destroy the summation of the era's reforming spirit – the welfare state

o Timothy Stanley
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 February 2011 09.59 GMT


The promos for the upcoming public service white paper suggest that ideology is driving the government's agenda. David Cameron has stated that his goal is to defund and deconstruct the welfare state, to "dismantle big government and build the big society in its place". His ambition is radical in the purest sense of the word, for it is a conscious attempt to turn the clock back to the historical period for which he feels the greatest affinity: the 19th century.

Victorian Britain was a land of laissez-faire capitalism and self-reliance. Government regulation was minimal and welfare was left to charity. With little tax burden and low labour costs, industrialisation turned Britain into the workshop of the world and created a thriving middle class. The state helped promote and safeguard trade through a bullish foreign policy that created a consumer's empire. In 1839, we even went to war with China to force the Middle Kingdom to lift its ban on imported British opium.

The Victorians matched entrepreneurship with a passion for civic engagement and voluntarism: the historical blueprint for the "big society". Churches provided schools and hospitals, friendly societies offered support for impoverished members, co-operatives helped small traders keep afloat. Robert Owen built a model mill town in Scotland that guaranteed free schools and hygienic living conditions to refugees from industrial Glasgow. Sweetmaker Joseph Rowntree gave his workers doctors and a pension, and set up a charitable trust that is still transforming lives today.

The Victorian era had a deep impact upon a certain Tory tradition, which remembers it as an epoch wherein wealth creation spurred civic virtue. Margaret Thatcher observed that during the 1800s, "not only did our country become great internationally, also so much advance was made in this country … As our people prospered so they used their independence and initiative to prosper others, not compulsion by the state." Michael Gove has written: "For some of us Victorian costume dramas are not merely agreeable ways to while away Sunday evening but enactments of our inner fantasies … I don't think there has been a better time in our history."

In a speech to the CBI, George Osborne argued that both parties in the coalition had revitalised themselves by revisiting their 19th-century roots. Indeed, when the Lib Dem David Laws gave his first speech to the Commons as the new chief secretary to the Treasury, the Tory MP Edward Leigh said: "I welcome the return to the Treasury of stern, unbending Gladstonian Liberalism." Laws acknowledged the comparison to the Liberal prime minister, adding: "I hope that this is not only Gladstonian Liberalism, but liberalism tinged with the social liberalism about which my party is so passionate." In other words, Victoriana stripped of its Christian moralism.

The government's promotion of Victorian values might be well intentioned. After all, self-reliance is preferable to welfare feudalism, and the dynamic capitalism of the 1800s did push Britain to new heights of economic and cultural achievement. But nostalgia without nuance is dangerous. Unregulated Victorian Britain was a country of dreadful poverty and moral hypocrisy. The dark streets of London thronged with anarchist bomb-throwers, child prostitutes and drug addicts. The empire was sustained with cold steel, and industrialisation uprooted old communities and patterns of life. Many contemporary conservatives mourned the death of rural England and resented the callous materialism of the free market. The 19th-century Conservative party was rescued from electoral annihilation by Benjamin Disraeli, a one nation Tory who won working-class votes by embracing social reform.

And this is a subtle point that government Victoriaphiles miss about our public services: the welfare state was the 20th century's answer to the social problems created in the 19th. Owen and Rowntree started out as private philanthropists, but they dreamed that one day free schools and hospitals funded by taxation would become national policy. The 19th century closed with the birth of the Labour party – the political summation of the era's reforming spirit. The Victorian revolution enriched and enfranchised the people and what did they do with their newfound money and power? They built the very welfare state the government is now intent on dismantling.

Conservative nostalgia for Victorian era is dangerous | Timothy Stanley | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk