British Question: What Would Disraeli Do?

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The New York Sun

What would Benjamin Disraeli do? And what would Britain’s great 19th-century Conservative prime minister, born in the Jewish faith, say to Frank Field, the veteran member of Parliament who resigned the Labor whip prior to the autumn session, over the issue of anti-Semitism? Mr. Field warned his fellow Labor members: “We are increasingly seen as a racist party.”

It’s impossible to imagine Disraeli would have failed to address the anti-Semitism. One biographer calls him a lifelong booster of “one of the oldest races in the world.” Dizzy (as he was popularly known) boasted that a Jewish civilization was thriving when “the inhabitants of England were going half-naked and eating acorns.”

He would understand, too, that a fish rots from the head. So no doubt Disraeli would place much of the blame for the corruption of Labor with its leader. He would not be fooled by Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to characterize his views as a quarrel with Israel.

Mr. Corbyn has accused British “Zionists” of two problems: first, “they don’t want to study history”; second, despite their deep roots in British society, “they don’t understand English irony either.” Disraeli had to battle his entire political career against similar slights, from friend and foe alike, disparaging his “foreignness.”

Never one to pass up the “main chance,” Disraeli would have turned the rancor in Labor ranks to Conservative advantage. A “great object of the Tory party,” he told an appreciative audience at the Crystal Palace in June 1872, “is the elevation of the condition of the people.” True progress for the working classes is begun when “you can effect some reduction of their hours of labor and humanize their toil.” In power, he promised to do both.

Swept into office two years later, Dizzy instructed his Cabinet to implement a program for the working poor, and there followed a series of factory acts regulating working conditions and hours, plus legislation favoring union formation. Borrowing from a line in Ecclesiastes, “vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” Disraeli made slum clearances and sanitation improvements a focus of his ministry: “Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas.”

Although liberalism in the Victorian period prided itself on its compassion for the “common man,” one opposition MP confessed that “the Conservative party have done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in fifty.”

In Frank Field, an MP known for his criticisms of the dependency culture inculcated by the welfare state, Disraeli would have recognized a kindred spirit. “The great problem,” Dizzy realized, is to elevate the lives of ordinary citizens “without violating those principles of economic truth upon which the prosperity of all States depends.” Conservative political economy belies why Theresa May once castigated them as the “nasty party.”

Escalating hostilities could ensure that Labor MPs despondent over the direction of their party will follow Mr. Field’s lead. Ingrained political identification may deter them from formally joining the Conservatives, but there is no impediment to their voting with the government on an issue-by-issue basis. Mr. Field and colleagues have broken Labor ranks to vote for pro-Brexit measures. Much can be mutually accomplished in good faith.

“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution,” Disraeli said, “a Radical to remove all that is bad.” As evidence, the Conservatives’ 1867 Reform bill so broadened the basis of the electoral franchise that historian Gertrude Himmelfarb called it “the” act that “transformed England into a democracy.”

Mr. Corbyn would have met his match in Disraeli, who was wise to the ways of anti-Semitism, according to biographer (and formerly the Sun’s book critic) Adam Kirsch. “Once he embarked on his career as an English politician, he took great care not to be associated with Jewish causes,” Mr. Kirsch admits. Dizzy feared the reciprocal backlash to them and his own political career.

Rather than give (in Mr. Kirsch’s words) “even the slightest appearance of using the actual power of the British state to promote Jewish interests,” Disraeli preferred to demonstrate how Jewish concerns were complementary with the British polity and his party. “All the tendencies of the Jewish race are conservative,” Disraeli wrote; the far-seeing statesman would see that they were “encouraged” and “their energies and creative powers enlisted in the cause of existing society.”

Despite his playful remark that “the Jews are essentially Tories,” it would be plain to Disraeli that the fight against anti-Semitism outstrips partisanship. Their faith is an indispensable part of British history and culture, regardless of party affiliation. To deny Jewish integrity, “the mighty prototype which has fashioned Europe,” makes a mockery of British identity itself — an un-ironic lesson of history beyond the understanding of Mr. Corbyn.

Mr. MacLean, who blogs at the Disraeli-Macdonald Institute, keeps the Brexit diary for The New York Sun.

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Image: The cartoon, from Fun, August, 24 1867, depicts Lord Darby, a Tory prime minister, and Disraeli, then chancellor of the exchequer, “dishing the Whigs” by serving more liberal reforms than the Whigs and Liberals had contemplated. Via Wikipedia.


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