Victorian Britain 701New Contours in British Political Life
Queen Victoria’s longevity—she ruled the vast British Empire with dignity
from 1837 until 1901—symbolized British social and political stability.
She endeared herself to her people on the occasion of her silver jubilee in
1887 by wearing a simple bonnet (albeit one with diamonds) instead of her
crown. The Prince of Wales inherited the throne as King Edward VII
(ruled 1901-1910). Edward could not have been more different from his
mother, with whom he constantly battled and whom he often embarrassed.
Edward “the Caresser” indulged his extravagant tastes in beautiful women,
prize horses, good food, fine wines, and gambling.
The Conservatives returned to power in 1895. Like their counterparts in
France and Germany, the British Conservative Party became even more
aggressively nationalist, imperialist, and resolutely antisocialist. The Lib
eral Unionists had allied with the Conservatives over Home Rule. In 1895,
their leader Joseph Chamberlain joined the Conservative government as
colonial secretary.
Frustrated by the Conservative government’s refusal to initiate parlia
mentary bills of social reform and by employers’ attempts to weaken the
unions by hiring non-union labor, British trade unionism entered a more
aggressive phase during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.
The Trades Union Congress (created in 1868) had provided a forum for orga
nized labor, although the financial resources of unions became even more
depleted.
Now, a more militant “new unionism” was characterized by the organiza
tion of semiskilled workers, including many iron and steel factory workers.
In 1887, for the first time since the last Chartist marches in London in
1848, English workers went into the streets in great numbers to protest,
demonstrating against unemployment and the high cost of living. On
November 13—“Black Monday”—store owners slammed their doors shut
amid a “red fear” in central London, again the first since 1848. The police
attacked crowds of workers, killing 2 and wounding about 100 protesters.
In 1889, following a victory by gas workers in a London strike that achieved
the eight-hour workday, dockworkers struck for a minimum wage. They were
led by Ben Tillett (1860-1943). Born in Bristol, Tillett had at the age of
seven begun cutting slabs of clay in a brickyard, then ran away with Old Joe
Barker’s Circus as an acrobat, before joining the merchant marine and then
the navy. Finding work as a dockyard laborer, he helped organize thousands
of unskilled laborers in a massive strike. Australian workers sent funds that
helped tide the strikers over. After five weeks, the dockworkers won a mini
mum wage and overtime pay. Tillett’s dockworkers’ union soon had 30,000
members.
But hundreds of thousands of casual laborers, including those living in
London’s teeming East End, still were not unionized, nor in friendly soci
eties. For them the independence of the skilled worker remained only a