WI: Peel doesn't die in 1850

[Indicus]

Robert Peel (1788-1850) was the prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1834-1835 and 1841-1846. He was born into the manufacturing classes, the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer. He then went into politics as a Tory, and in 1822 he became Home Secretary, where he embarked on prison reform, consolidated statutes to simplify criminal law, and created the Metropolitan Police. Though he initially opposed Catholic emancipation, he later reversed his position and played a major role in pushing the issue. Subsequently, in opposition, he opposed the Great Reform Act of 1832, though he later accepted it. He was appointed as prime minister in 1834 heading a minority government, and he also declared his views in the Tamworth Manifesto, in which he declared his support of modest reform, to "conserve" the constitution (and it's from this the Tories became the Conservative Party), and served as prime minister for a year before he was defeated in a vote of no confidence. In the subsequent 1835 election, the Conservatives were defeated, though they gained many seats in no small part for Peel's relatively moderate agenda. Subsequently, in 1841, the Conservatives won the election, and Peel became Prime Minister again with a majority government. In this period he pursued factory reform, reintroduced the income tax, and lowered tariffs. It was in 1846, however, that Peel decided to support the abolition of the Corn Laws, which were large tariffs on importation of grain, which caused his own party to revolt against him. Nevertheless, Peel successfully abolished of the Corn Laws, though he, along with much of the front bench of the Conservatives, were forced out of the party, and instead his Peelite faction sat with the Whigs and Radicals. Peel served as an influential MP within the Whig-Radical-Peelite coalition until his death in 1850 from a riding accident.

From Peel's ousting in 1846 to the election of 1874, the Whig-Radical-Peelite coalition, which went on to become the Liberals, effectively dominated British politics with the exception of a few Conservative minority administrations - the Conservatives now lacked people with ministerial experience which greatly diminished their credibility. Furthermore, the Peelite Lord Aberdeen became Prime Minister from 1852-1855, and of course William Gladstone was initially a Peelite before they merged into the Liberals. So, as can be seen, the Peelites were an enormously influential faction within the Liberal Party.

And of course, all of this brings up a question - what if Robert Peel didn't die from a riding accident in 1850?

 

[heraclius]

The 'Robert Peel survives 1850' possibilities idea has been covered in an article by Matt Cole on pp 13-28 of the 2006 Politico's ( London specialist Parliamentary affairs bookshop) Publishing book 'President Gore and Other Things That Never Happened: A Second Collection of Political Counterfactuals', pub 2006 and edited by Duncan Brack. As stated there, the riding accident that put paid to Peel, aged 62 so with some years of political activity probably still left to him, in 1850 was not inevitable, as he was normally not a risk-taker but had purchased a reputedly frisky and dangerous horse against expert advice and had then gone out riding on it for a first time without letting his groom try it out first - as the groom asked him. He was then thrown off onto a hard road on Constitution Hill, outside Buckingham Palace, not onto the grass in Hyde Park where he was heading for his ride , and fatally injured. (For those who know London, his house was in the now defunct Whitehall Gardens, a 'close' of smart early C19th town houses built on the site of W Palace on the East side of Whitehall - now under the Ministry of Defence's huge 1930s concrete HQ.)

Peel had lost mainstream Conservative support and the majority of his (mostly rural and pro-farmers interest) backbench MPs over supporting the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and had been driven from office after a five-year reformist govt by putting 'country', and low food prices for the poor, first and the interests of the farmers aside. Like the equally uncharismatic, personally awkward and 'unclubbable' Ted Heath in the 1970s, he was a 'man of principle' and stubborn reformist out of touch with many of his grassroots MP supporters, believed passionately in what he saw as the necessary national interest but was not much good at coaxing support in Westminster, and put forcing through policies he believed in ahead of keeping his MPs onside. As with Heath and the EU, he was at odds on a major policy issue with many of his MPs and more in tune with the more 'liberal' opposition , as were his smallish but talented group of personal supporters - equivalent to the ex-Heathite 'wets' under Mrs Thatcher, though the latter did not actually leave the party? The backbench revolt that put an end to his premiership after he secured the repeal of the Corn Laws with the help of the Whigs in 1846 was led by the future 'One Nation' Tory reformist Disraeli, which was one of the main ironies of the crisis, and after Peel died in 1850 the alienated 'Peelites' (containing the main young talent of the reformist wing of the Tory party, including Gladstone) stayed at odds with the Tories/ Conservatives and were able to migrate to the Whig party and fuse with the latter . Hence the creation of the 'Liberal' party and the latter's domination of politics, and reform, in 1855-74 after the end of the Crimean War crisis - the Tories did not have a parliamentary majority again until 1874 and their two minority govts in 1852 and 1858-9 were short-lived and precarious.

Peel was initially loathed by Queen Victoria in the late 1830s (not least as being an awkward, ex-middle-class Northern manufacturing dynasty character with no small talk or social graces unlike her high nobility Whig allies, eg Melbourne), but was now respected by her as a man of character and honesty and high morals. He had publicly withdrawn from politics in 1847-50 and the Tory majority of backbench squires would not have wanted him back as a leader or senior minister at any price, and he was too proud and too angry to realign himself back to their cause after being rejected and abused by them and having his policies 'trashed'. (Again, a bit like Heath in internal political exile in the 1980s , rejected by the Thatcherite monetarists and anti-EU faction?) So a coalition with the Whigs who had supported him in 1846 was his only option if he did decide to take up govt activity again, and this was the eventual cause taken by his followers after 1855; but with him dead they rallied to the maverick Whig and ex-Tory 'chameleon' Palmerston, the populist and aggressive nationalist Whig Foreign Sec of 1830-4, 1835-41, and 1846-50 but a former hard-line Tory junior minister in the 1810s-20s. Palmerston was the 'war-winning man of action' and 'restorer of competent govt' after the shambles of the Lord Aberdeen-led coalition messing up the Crimean War in 1854-5, but if Peel had been alive and had joined the war-running coalition in 1852-5 he had the capability as a man of organization and efficiency to have assumed that role to 'rescue' the govt in 1854-5. (He had the advantage over Palmerston with the Queen of not being a maverick of dubious morals and honesty with a lot of mistresses.) Peel could even have been asked to lead the Aberdeen coalition in 1852 as a man of proven capability and a national figure, and accepted out of reawakened ambition and as a favour to the Queen - and been less careless and incompetent in running the army and its supplies and healthcare. No need for the William Russell 'Times' exposes and a greater role earlier and more support for Florence Nightingale? In that case, a 'war-winner' Peel, running a successful coalition but distrusted by one major party, would have been like Lloyd George in 1918 - and have probably kept up his coalition after 1855, logically going on to fuse the Peelites and Whigs in 1855-8 and keep the Tories out of power. He would then have probably retired in the late 1850s - with Gladstone succeeding him as his trusted aide and financial 'wizard' as Chancellor,as Palmerston's OTL successor Lord John Russell(1865) would have had a smaller role in politics with Peel surviving? So we get a Peel govt in 1852-8 or 1855-8, or if his health lasts to around 1860?

Palmerston on the sidelines means none of his foreign policy posturing in the period 1855-65, and probably no Tory govt in 1858-9 pushes back Disraeli's career a bit as he is seen as the man who broke the Conservative party by pushing the Peelites out - though his leader, Lord Derby, may still use him as his man of business in the Commons as a brilliant speaker. But Peel was as opposed to Parl reform as was Palmerston (his favour for reforms seems to come out of pragmatism not long-term principle, eg in Ireland where he started off in the 1820s as a hard-line anti-Catholic, 'Orange Peel') - so is the Liberal govt in 1866-7 more opposed to the Second Reform Bill project than in OTL, giving Disraeli a chance to turn the Tories into the party of reform and recover his position and win an election?