Outline of Events

‘Power’, Benjamin Disraeli lamented, ‘it has come to me too late.’ He was fortunate that, at the age of 70, it came to him at all. Ironically, it was William Gladstone who made it possible as he disintegrated the Liberal coalition that had dominated politics since 1846. But Disraeli had played some part in his downfall, for with his 1872 speeches at the Crystal Palace and Manchester he had belatedly constructed a serviceable Conservative ideology for the politics of the wider electorate he had brought into being in 1867. The revived One Nation vision had two components: first, an association of the Conservatives with the idea of social reform, in contrast with the Liberal obsession with institutional tinkering, and second, a celebration of the British Empire, as opposed to Gladstone's embarrassed reserve upon colonial issues. These two themes ought to have provided matter enough for a Conservative government. Unfortunately, they were always more rhetorical than practical conceptions, and Disraeli entered office with no programme for either. This fact has fuelled two of the most controversial debates concerning his politics. Was Disraeli a social reformer, and was he ever really an imperialist? The answer to both questions is an equivocal one. Yes, Disraeli was content to see his government associated with social reform and imperial gestures, but this still this leaves the issue of how far Disraeli personally encouraged these developments as elements in a definite strategy of governance. In either case the matter is debatable, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the coherence of Tory policy in both these areas has owed more to the subsequent writings of friends and critics than to the thinking of Disraeli himself. In any case, the narrative of Disraeli's government was shaped more by external events. In 1876 the Eastern Question was reignited by the heavy-handed methods deployed by the Turks to suppress Balkan nationalism. While Disraeli sought to apply the Eastern policy he had learned from Lord Palmerston, the massacre of civilians in Bulgaria provoked a popular outcry that summoned Gladstone from retirement, thereby initiating an exercise in popular campaigning that was to set a new style in politics and, after four years of invective against Disraeli and all his works, carried Gladstone back to power in 1880 and returned Disraeli to the opposition benches (though this time, as Lord Beaconsfield, in the House of Lords).