Britain has a long history of revolutions against the establishment, from the Barons’ Revolt against the absolutist nature of King John that led to Parliament, to the Civil War that established a short-lasted republic, to the Glorious Revolution that threw out a King to replace him with another, and in more recent times the Social Revolution that brought around a new social perspective for Britons.
But none dominate as much as the Splendid Revolution. And out of all the anti-establishment revolts, it is this one that undeniably is one pushed by the working-class and at times got dangerously republican, but in the end buttressed the monarchy’s legitimacy thanks to a canny prince realising his moment was at that time, not when his mother finally dies.
To understand the Splendid Revolution, one has to understand the institutional system at the time. Parliament was one dominated by vague reformists in the Commons, grouped as the Conservative and Liberal parties, both descended from the dominant Pittite ‘institutional coalition’ of Anglicans, Scottish Presbyterians and Catholics. The Pittite coalition split on the issue of free trade in the 1840s, with the Liberals being for free trade and Conservatives for protectionism.
The two would seek to outmanoeuvre each other and gain more support, and eventually by the 1880s, both increasingly considered widening the franchise, much to the still-very-influential Lords’ displeasure. The Lords had members in both factions, but was generally aloof to their partisan bickering, and quietly made it clear that any attempt to widen the franchise would get a Lords’ veto. Queen Victoria was very much favouring the Tories, but above all she distrusted the idea of a wider franchise, preferring to maintain the ‘altered settlement’ of Crown, Churches and Autocracy, while giving the poor a lighter hand in taxation or encouraging them to emigrate to the colonies.
The rotten boroughs were long gone by 1889, as much as some pop-cultural retellings conflate the light reforms due to the localised riots of the 1830s with the revolution of the 1880s. Nevertheless, there were a lot of discontent. Literacy rates were soaring thanks to the growth of charities, workhouses, even Robert Owen’s ‘cooperative communities’, and this led to a boom in politicisation. When even an ordinary worker could read and understand radical literature, it was the day of popular literature focusing more on political grievances and the idea of representation.
The old idea of ‘ancient liberty’, rooted in the Magna Carta and continued by persisting Chartists, became popular with the literate working-class. Attempts at appeasing working-class discontent elsewhere, such as the first workplace laws, only allowed them to realise that Parliament could do a lot to help them in particular and hence to lobby harder for representation.
The Conservatives and Liberals were not blind to this. Both tried over the last few decades to implement moderate expansions of the franchise, but the Lords (heavily shaped by more traditional Pittite dominance) were intransigent. They knew that the more the Commons represented the fickle crowd, the more it would take more and more legitimacy and power from the Lords, and hence sought to preserve their ceremonial strength in parliament by stonewalling it with help from a firmly conservative Victoria.
Those were covered and led to considerable protests and riots, but it just didn’t spark off at the time. But by the late 1880s, it was growing infeasible. The workers were now organising in trade unions, doing strikes, the urban middle-class were getting uppity too thanks to gradual loss of faith in parliament to modestly reform to appease them, and even the women were starting to ask for their votes too.
It all started in Birmingham. Joseph Chamberlain was increasingly a big dog in the Black Country and he had grand ambitions. Growing frustrated with the Liberals, he declared himself an ‘independent radical’ in 1882 and made a strong career in the city as a political strongman. Already twice mayor of the city (thanks to newly-acquired wealth and land), he was known for his strong focus on efficient municipal government including intense development. He was also known for lobbying heavily in favour of the franchise, including rural and urban workers. But by the 1880s, it was obvious that drastic action needed to be done.
Already known in established circles as a ‘Jack Cade’ and a ‘mountebank’ and routinely portrayed as a republican and an atheist, he was narrowly elected to Parliament in 1887 off heavy contacts overcoming the restricted franchise, and even as he took the oath of loyalty, there were those who booed him. Still, he was one of a very very few Radicals in Parliament. Still, as an MP he grew his contacts beyond Birmingham, making alliances with the rest of the ‘discontented masses’ and their political leaders. Tom Mann of the Labour Federation, the women of the Suffragist Federation, even communists and socialists and yes, even republicans. He knew he needed to coordinate their efforts.
After his latest attempt at vote expansion died in the Commons due to the Tories opportunistically opposing it to gain the Queen’s favour, he knew he needed to move. The entire structure needed to be broken and rebuilt again, and he was very much in favour of more unorthodox measures. Hence the first part of the Splendid Revolution happened, the March on London.
It was originally supposed to be a peaceful protest. Supposed. But the Prime Minister at the time declared that any ‘intimidation of the Government’ would be met with truncheons and force (the approach that worked for the Lord Liverpool decades before). It only galvanised them as the organisations steeled themselves. If they backed down here, the Government would only go on the offensive further and break them. Hence the March had to go ahead.
Thousands upon thousands of workers from the cities and a fair few from rural areas went down to London. The more comfortable middle-class reformers took out newspaper ads calling for reform and compromise. In the end, the Army was dispatched and hundreds were dead at the end of the first day. It is after the first day that you see the first calls for a republic, and the British tricolour first saw the light of day. The government miscalculated.
Chamberlain felt as if he was losing control of the protests. Tom Mann was increasingly open to pushing for an outright republic, and the suffragists, well, the fact that three women died radicalised them considerably. And the local rivalries were starting to emerge, with blame flying around. After more fighting and more bloodshed, the coherency was collapsing, but there was one thing they all agreed upon – down with the government, down with the parliament, down with the Lords and increasingly down with the Queen.
This only made the backlash from the Army even more harsh as they fired upon people they believed to be republicans and socialists. Not helping was the fact some of them were now reading translations of the French Declaration of Rights either. By the end of the third week, thousands were dead, and more and more people had enough and were joining the march to London. Chamberlain lost control. And he panicked. He needed a gutsy move to recapture control. He made it.
Standing up in the Commons, he presented his latest bill – it was far more radical than his last one, removed all property qualifications and even included universal female suffrage (which got many MPs’ eyes to pop at). Upon being asked how he would achieve it, he merely stated ‘to get the omelette of democracy, one has to break the eggs of autocracy’. This got him named and thrown out, but his bill was still in contention. And he used it extensively. Holding it up as a clear goal for the crowd to achieve for, he declared ‘this is our future, and it is a future the do-nothing Lords will deny all of you!’.
But nevertheless, as much as the protesters were now generally on board Chamberlain’s bill, a lot wanted more than what the radical offered. Republic was in the air, and heavy too. The Labour Federation, led by Keir Hardie and Tom Mann, voted to advocate a republic – one that would overthrow the monarchy and exile them out of Britain. Chamberlain was not entirely opposed to one, mind, he was on the record as speaking positively of the idea while counselling his preference for a ‘true’ constitutional monarchy.
Meanwhile, the deaths piled up, and a man smoked a cigar in deep thought. This man was Albert Edward of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince of Wales and heir to the Empire. Well in the tradition of Princes of Wales, he often disagreed with his mother, and spoke in favour of reform. But with his mother intransigent and heavily reliant on her reactionary advisors, he realised that if he did not act, the whole situation would collapse.
With the protesters moving closer and closer to Parliament despite the Army’s best efforts, Chamberlain slinked back in the chamber, and gave them an ultimatum – ‘reform, or revolution’. He was thrown out yet again, but the Commons were getting antsy. Could the mob actually threaten them unlike with Peterloo? Could it be different this time? They took Chamberlain’s bill, watered it down and put it up for a vote. It passed easily in the Commons but like with every other bill on the matter, died in the Lords.
With Hardie openly calling for the establishment of a new republican government, Chamberlain bade him to give him time, and brought him into the new plan. Hardie was sceptical, and thought of Chamberlain as an opportunist, but granted him his needed time. Meanwhile, Prince ‘Bertie’ was feeling around for contacts with the protesters and managed to get himself a good speaking place.
The final phase of the Splendid Revolution has been called many things. A coup, a revolution, a compromise, a selling out, the triumph of a new Britain or the death of the dream.
What we do know is that the crowd broke through Army blockades, marched all the way to Westminster Palace, while Chamberlain was waiting patiently. Three firm knocks on the door was the signal, and he stood up.
“Gentlemen, we have dithered way too long! The people are at the door, crying out for their rightful place in this hallowed chamber and in our society! Either we pass my bill or our Nation will perish in the flames, reborn like a true phoenix, one burnt off of all of you!”
The Speaker at the time was a keen follower of Denison’s Rule and of the idea of the Speaker maintaining the status quo, but as the knocks became louder and more aggressive, he declared it was time to vote on the bill, as much as some people complained that it was the third time. The knocks became thumps as he declared “DIVISION!”. It was now time to go in the lobbies to vote. The thumps echoed more and more.
As the thumps started to make the door buckle, the Speaker waited patiently. “ALL OUT” echoed through the chamber, and the vote was now completed.
With the door visibly buckling, the Speaker announced the results. “The Ayes to the right, 291 votes. The nays to the left-”
The door broke.
“247 votes. THE AYES HAVE IT! THE AYES HAVE IT!”.
Joseph Chamberlain stood up in a chamber in bedlam and smiled. He got what he wanted. Sure it was more radical than what he desired, but he showed the old establishment. However, as he turned to face his crowd, he saw a face he knew should not be there. The first man to step over the broken door was none other but Albert Edward. Smiling at the Parliament, he waved back to the crowd which cheered his name.
For while Chamberlain was in the chamber waiting for the knocks, Prince Bertie was steadily working on his crowd. He pledged his unconditional support of reform, spoke of how he disagreed with his mother, and pledged famously to be ‘also king of the republicans’ once he ascend to the throne. This, built on already-existing goodwill from his known reformist reputation, won the majority over even as Hardie and Mann tried to maintain die-hard republicanism.
The Lords however, was seen as likely to vote down the bill. So Prince Bertie visited the Lords in his capability as a peer, and spoke frankly of the power of the people. ‘In no such world can blue blood defeat red when red bubbles in anger and is truly united as one’. For the more stubborn Lords, especially the young toffs, he outright bribed them. The Lords relented and passed the bill by a slim margin.
And now it was down to his mother. Victoria was known to be in seclusion for a long time, and barely re-emerged. She glared at her decidedly unfavourite son, and regarded the paper she was given with disgust. But with the mob braying for reform, the Commons door broken in and the Lords greased over, she relented and passed the bill into law, before calling for a new election the following year. A famous anecdote has it that the military-loving Victoria stated after giving assent that as much of a mistake as she regarded the bill, the whole matter showed to her that her eldest ‘clearly and plainly inherited a little, a sliver granted but still a little, of his father’s military leadership. What a wretched thing that he only uses it against our country!’.
It is believed that as the bill was on her desk, she openly talked of abdication either before giving assent or afterwards, declaring ‘the burden of the crown proves tiring’, and was only persuaded out of it by a personal appeal to her sense of duty by a retired general who was in England for a personal meeting. This retired general is widely accepted to have been Sir William Sherman, who was in a unique position of having the Queen’s ear while still being sympathetic to the reformers for he implemented the same principle in the Cape.
Two men dominate the conversation of the Splendid Revolution. Joseph Chamberlain and Albert Edward. One rallied the masses for the revolution, and the other ensured it would happen with as few bloodshed as possible. Marxists those days lambaste how Edward VII ‘compromised’ the revolution and made it away from the ‘workers’ revolutionary spirit’ it allegedly was. But however, a lot of the masses in the protests were far from republican.
They believed in the monarchy as an institution, but grew to dislike Victoria in particular. It was merely the more organised societies that were more inclined to the idea. So her more personable and ‘reasonable’ son had fertile ground to work with. Nevertheless, it is true that 1889 was the closest Britain got to a republic since the Restoration, and is a favourite of ‘lefty-Britain’ timelines.
Victoria returned to seclusion, cursing her fortune. The 1890 election was a notably confusing one, but concluded with Chamberlain in prime position to become Prime Minister. There of course would be future clashes with the Lords as he did not do anything in the original bill about them, but he could say that they were successfully ‘de-fanged’ by the time he stepped down in 1905 due to ill health.
Of course, Prince Albert Edward, later King Edward VII, became remembered as an icon of reformism in the revolution, despite his original opportunistic intention to preserve the monarchy from what he thought was a republican tide. Even today, he’s noted as one of the best monarchs mostly for what he did before his coronation (with Victoria in the bottom 50% at best), and the start of the ‘Edwardian Era’ quite uniquely is defined not with his coronation but with the start of his political ascendancy, namely with the Splendid Revolution.
The old system of Crown, Churches and Autocracy set up by the Glorious Revolution and much amended over time (most notably in 1800 with Catholic relief and 1834 with the Reform Act) perished with another revolution, one that got its name by Albert Edward noting in relief after the 1890 election that it was ‘in a way, a very splendid revolution’.
Meanwhile, one aspect led to Britain being world news for another reason. Chamberlain’s second bill was deliberately radical to rally the masses, and in the panic it was passed unaltered. Even the new Prime Minister looked quite disturbed as he realised what he did once he noticed not all of his backbenchers were men.