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(TRUMPET PLAYS)
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January 1901 -
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the dawn of the British Empire's
fourth century.
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Few of its servants or rulers
imagined it would be its last.
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Queen Victoria was barely cold in her coffin
when her Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon,
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envisioned a fitting memorial
in Calcutta to the Queen Empress
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who reigned over a fifth of the globe.
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A learned enthusiast of Indian architecture,
Curzon's mind naturally turned
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to the most beautiful memorial
in the world, the Taj Mahal.
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Not least because he'd been responsible
for making it beautiful again,
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cleared out the bazaar in front of it,
restored its water gardens.
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Now he would build the British Taj,
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faced with the same white marble
hewn from the Makrana quarries.
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But the Victoria memorial would not be
a poem in stone so much as a proclamation
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in domes and columns that the British Raj
was the Rome of the modern age.
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But was this a time
to be spending a royal fortune
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when millions of peasants were starving?
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When the foundation stone was laid,
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a year after Curzon left India,
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with its violence and chaos,
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at least 16 million Indians had perished
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in the most terrible succession
of famines Asia had known for centuries.
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What had happened?
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The men and women who had sat
at their desks, played out their chukkas
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and danced in the club were not monsters
of hard-hearted indifference.
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They had, many of them,
only the very best intentions.
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They had a vision that their empire
was the best the world had ever seen
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because it was built on virtue.
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Its power was to be measured not in
Gatling guns, but in an unselfish dedication
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to eradicating poverty,
ignorance and disease.
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We would take whole cultures
crippled by those maladies
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and stand them on their own two feet.
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In the fullness of time, so the theory went,
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the millions would become
civilised enough to govern themselves,
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and we would leave them,
the children of our liberal dream,
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grateful, devoted, peaceful and, this was
the bonus for the modern world, free.
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It didn't exactly work out like that, did it?
So what went wrong?
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Ripped By mstoll
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On February 4th, 1834,
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the young MP for Leeds made
a farewell speech to his electors.
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Thomas Babington Macaulay,
"Clever Tom", boy wonder at Cambridge,
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juvenile lead of the Whigs in the Commons,
ace reviewer and historian in the making,
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had decided that as nice
as all this was, he needed a fortune.
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India, he'd been told,
was where you got it, fast.
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Just to show that he wasn't a greedy Tom,
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while he was at it,
he'd do good to the natives.
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He might be leaving industrial Britain,
but he was confident he'd find its products,
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as well as its benevolent spirit,
alive and well in Calcutta.
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May your manufactures flourish,
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may your trade be extended,
may your riches increase.
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May the works of your skill
and the signs of your prosperity
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meet me in the furthest regions of the east.
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Give me fresh cause
to be proud of the intelligence,
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the industry
and the spirit of my constituency.
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Macaulay's breezy optimism,
that cotton cloth and constitutionalism
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were what Britain had to offer the world,
was the authentic voice of the liberal empire.
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Equally sure of itself,
whether it was preaching and teaching,
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at India, Ireland or darkest England,
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where the natives also toiled
in filth, ignorance and disease,
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and equally in need of a hefty dose
of Victorian vim and vigour.
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Asia, they thought, was especially inert,
and the great principle of liberalism,
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according to its founders,
was, above all, movement.
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Macaulay had been
brought up a strict Christian,
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but his real church
was the church of progress -
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steam engines, free newspapers,
parliamentary government.
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The historian in him looked
at the rise and fall of civilizations
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and was jubilant that this was
Britain's time for imperial greatness.
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We would share
our blessings, moral and material.
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We would take ancient societies,
miserable with poverty and tyranny,
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and teach them self-reliance.
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And when we'd done the job,
we'd pack up and go home.
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So the great principle of the British Empire
would be its own self-liquidation.
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It would be like a parent,
full of bittersweet emotion
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as its children were sent off into the world,
tied to the home no longer by power,
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but by grateful affection.
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Never had Britain had such
an abundance of clever, zealous young men,
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itching to liberate Asia
from the grip of superstition and disease.
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In the Governor General of India,
Lord William Bentinck,
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they'd found an ardent patron.
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Even the most dedicated pilgrims
in search of the relics of the Raj
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are not going to make
a beeline for this statue.
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I don't suppose anybody in this park
knows who Lord William Bentinck really was.
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You have to look at the figures in the frieze
here to see why he's commemorated.
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Bentinck was the first of the authentic
do-gooder Governors General,
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and the kind of person he wanted to do
good to was this young woman in distress.
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She's a young widow and she's about
to join her husband in a joint cremation,
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the traditional Hindu practice of suttee.
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Unlike an older generation
of British in India,
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the likes of Macaulay and Bentinck knew
next to nothing of this kind of tradition,
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nor would it have
made any difference if they had,
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but they knew an abomination
when they saw it.
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Never mind that there were
only 500 cremations a year,
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the campaign to abolish suttee
was the campaign of their dreams,
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and they went about it with a will.
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Volumes were written by missionaries,
committees deliberated in parliament,
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a law was passed and inspectors
were despatched to intercept widows
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en route to the funeral pyre.
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The 1830s were a crossroads
in the young life of the liberal empire.
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Did the welfare of our native subjects
oblige us to impose
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the values of the west on the east,
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or should we be rebuilding
and reinvigorating Asian culture and society?
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Charles Trevelyan,
another high-minded young reformer,
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who was courting Macaulay's sister,
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was in doubt which road to take.
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The more British India
could become, the better.
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For Macaulay and Trevelyan, the country
would be turned into one vast schoolroom.
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Teaching for them was not just a job.
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Western education was the instrument
by which India was going to be transformed
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from a world of bullock carts and beggars
into the progressive Victorian dynamic world
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of the telegraph and the locomotive.
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English would be a way to bring Indians,
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divided by so many faiths
and languages, together.
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And it would help bridge the culture gap
between Europe and the subcontinent.
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To those who said,
"You're destroying their own culture",
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Trevelyan replied that Hinduism was...
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... identified with so many
gross immoralities and physical absurdities
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that it gives way at once
to the light of European science.
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Here we are, on the veranda.
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Late afternoon,
the perfect imperial time of day.
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This is the time when words like veranda
and bungalow enter the British vocabulary.
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They would make you think that the world
that the sahib built for themselves
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was a marriage between
an Indian and a British lifestyle.
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A bungalow, after all,
was a one-storey Indian dwelling.
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But it wasn't really like that.
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The British had, with the bungalow,
made a life for themselves
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that was as much as possible
like the life of a country gentleman
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in Buckinghamshire,
Hampshire or Lancashire.
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Instead of the bustle of an Indian courtyard,
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with animals inside it
and washing and cooking going on,
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we have the rose garden,
the well-kept hedges,
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the strictly-disciplined gardeners.
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Tucked safely away behind
the walls of bungalows and barracks,
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and flattered by a new class
of English-speaking merchants,
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the sahibs imagined they knew everything
about this new, westernised India
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which would be, as Macaulay
liked to put it, an ally not a subject.
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So when Macaulay and Trevelyan
went home at the end of the 1830s
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to government jobs in London,
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they were confident that they had sown
the seeds of a modern, liberal India.
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Everything was now in place
to ensure as much of the world as possible
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would be governed
by the one mechanism capable of doing so -
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the British Empire of free trade.
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An educated, Anglicised India
would be a key player.
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There was just one iron law -
let the market do its job.
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If people clinging
to backward ways went under
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in the name of the new
economic order, well, so be it.
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But while the modernisers
were all looking east
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to see the payoff of their great experiment,
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the first great shock
to the complacency of their views
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came from the opposite direction,
from the west...
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...somewhere alarmingly
closer to home, from Ireland.
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Many of those who look back on the disaster
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thought they should have seen it coming,
seen that Ireland was India with rain.
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A population explosion from
over two to over eight million in a century.
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Too many bodies clinging
to unworkable little plots,
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too small to make a profit
in the imperial market place.
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Of course, just like India, there were islands
of modernity in the great ocean of poverty.
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Rich Ireland was the east and the north,
around Dublin and Belfast,
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facing the immense engine
of industrial Britain,
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and supplying it with butter
and meat, linen and oatmeal.
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But the west was where
Ireland's agony was felt.
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Tiny scraps of land with a cabin
and a pig and only potatoes to grow
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to make the difference
between survival and starvation.
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By the 1840s, Irish men and women,
especially in the poorer counties of the west,
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were eating between ten
and fifteen pounds of potatoes a day,
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sometimes washed down
with a little buttermilk.
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Then, in 1845, the Angel of Death struck
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in the shape of the fungus
phytopthora infestans.
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Spores grew on the underside of leaves,
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the Irish wind blew them to their neighbours
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and the Irish rain
made sure the crop rotted.
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The infestation was so sudden
and so unprecedented,
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it was impossible at first to take in
the magnitude of the disaster.
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In August 1846, Father Theobald Matthew
saw the damage for himself.
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On the 27th of last month,
I passed from Cork to Dublin.
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This doomed plant bloomed in all
the luxuriance of an abundant harvest.
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Returning on the third
of the following month,
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I beheld with sorrow
one wide waste of putrefying vegetation.
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In many places, the wretched people sat
on the fences of their decaying gardens,
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wringing their hands and wailing bitterly
at the destruction that left them foodless.
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And while this was happening,
oats, one of rich Ireland's prime exports,
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were being shipped out.
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The man executing government policy
at the Treasury was Charles Trevelyan.
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Someone who could see a catastrophe
around the corner wrote to Trevelyan,
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begging him to stop the export of oats.
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I know there is a great
and serious objection
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to any interference with these exports,
yet it is a most serious evil.
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Trevelyan wrote back:
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We beg of you
not to countenance in any way
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the idea of prohibiting exportation.
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The discouragement
and feeling of insecurity to the trade
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would prevent its doing
even any immediate good.
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If the peasants of western Ireland
weren't able to grow potatoes,
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perhaps by labouring on public works,
they could earn money to buy food.
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This is one of those relief projects -
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a road in the Burren in County Clare
which goes absolutely nowhere.
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But it didn't matter,
even these futile jobs got closed down.
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So too did the soup kitchens
which the government briefly provided,
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following the example
of the Quakers and others.
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Now there was only one
place to go - the workhouse.
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Even if you had typhus or dysenteric fever.
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Workhouses like this one at Portumna
in Galway were filled to overflowing.
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Workhouses had always been designed
to be as much like prisons as possible
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to deter anyone
who had the slightest chance of a job.
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As the famine developed,
the situation here got much worse,
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the sick and the healthy placed side by side.
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You'd have to be off your head
to want to cross the threshold,
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but when the alternative was starvation,
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multitudes were banging
at the doors begging to be let in.
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After June 1847,
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to get any relief you had to prove
you were at the bottom of the heap,
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with no more than
a quarter of an acre to call your own.
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Of course, renting one acre of bog or heath
didn't exactly make you middle class.
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Hundreds of thousands of peasants were
clinging to their cabins and patches of land,
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on which they hoped
one day to grow potatoes again.
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Now they were faced with a terrible choice:
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Either turn in that extra land to the landlords
to get poor relief or stay put and starve.
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It was no choice at all.
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The hungry converted themselves into the
officially landless just to get something to eat,
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travelling miles to the widely-dispersed
workhouses, leaving their plots behind.
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It was just the opportunity
Irish landlords had been waiting for.
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Tenants who tried
to stay were forcibly evicted,
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their roofs smashed in
to make sure they didn't return.
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Now the landlords could stock
their acres with sheep and cattle,
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so much more profitable
than peasants and pigs.
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00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:31,679
At the height of the famine, there were
too many babies dying either at birth,
226
00:18:31,840 --> 00:18:36,277
or in early infancy,
for the priests to baptise them all.
227
00:18:36,440 --> 00:18:39,989
Denied consecrated ground,
their fathers carried them
228
00:18:40,160 --> 00:18:46,759
to a piece of no-man's land like this, on the
very rim of the island on the Atlantic shore,
229
00:18:46,920 --> 00:18:53,189
and put up a rough stone marker
to mark their short, sad life.
230
00:18:57,960 --> 00:19:02,750
For two million Irish men and women,
for whom it was just too exhausting
231
00:19:02,920 --> 00:19:07,948
to go on fighting the uphill battle
against hunger, opportunist landlords
232
00:19:08,120 --> 00:19:11,157
and the stony heartlessness
of the government,
233
00:19:11,320 --> 00:19:16,553
there was one more place to trudge to -
the ports, which would carry them away
234
00:19:16,720 --> 00:19:20,554
to America, Canada,
Australia, New Zealand,
235
00:19:20,720 --> 00:19:25,589
and, they hoped to God,
a better chance, a better life.
236
00:19:31,280 --> 00:19:36,070
It would be many generations
before Ireland's population would recover
237
00:19:36,240 --> 00:19:39,198
to the numbers before
the potato blight struck.
238
00:19:39,360 --> 00:19:42,352
And in the memory bank
of the Irish Diaspora,
239
00:19:42,520 --> 00:19:46,593
in Boston, New York or Sydney,
the great emptying of western Ireland
240
00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:52,551
was above all a British - make that
an English -plot, little short of genocide.
241
00:19:54,400 --> 00:19:56,755
It certainly wasn't that.
242
00:19:56,920 --> 00:20:00,629
Many of the cruelties were acts
Irishmen inflicted on each other,
243
00:20:00,800 --> 00:20:03,633
just as the Highland
clearances had been horrors
244
00:20:03,800 --> 00:20:07,156
committed by Scots against other Scots.
245
00:20:08,840 --> 00:20:14,472
But Trevelyan and men like him did subscribe
to the "blessing in disguise" theory,
246
00:20:14,640 --> 00:20:21,079
in which, as in India, the road to modernity
in overcrowded, unproductive rural economies
247
00:20:21,240 --> 00:20:24,994
would always be paved
with the ruin of villages.
248
00:20:27,360 --> 00:20:31,956
This is how a contemporary
English newspaper summarised it.
249
00:20:32,920 --> 00:20:36,310
The truth is,
these evictions are not merely illegal,
250
00:20:36,480 --> 00:20:41,270
but a natural process,
and, however much we may deplore
251
00:20:41,440 --> 00:20:45,831
the misery from which they spring,
we cannot compel the Irish proprietors
252
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:48,992
to continue in their miserable holdings
253
00:20:49,160 --> 00:20:52,311
the wretched swarms
of people who pay no rent
254
00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:57,474
and who prevent improvement of property
as long as they remain on it.
255
00:20:59,760 --> 00:21:04,515
For many Irish on both sides of the Atlantic,
Trevelyan was to blame.
256
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:10,437
John Mitchell, a journalist and the most
eloquently bitter of the Anglophobes, wrote:
257
00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:14,354
I saw Trevelyan's claw
in the vitals of those children.
258
00:21:14,520 --> 00:21:18,308
His red tape would draw them to death.
259
00:21:20,120 --> 00:21:25,752
The price of this religious devotion
to the Victorian bible of free trade
260
00:21:25,920 --> 00:21:30,789
was a million dead and another
two million uprooted as emigrants,
261
00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:34,669
more than a third
of the total population of Ireland.
262
00:21:34,840 --> 00:21:38,196
It was perhaps the greatest
peacetime calamity
263
00:21:38,360 --> 00:21:41,238
in all of 19th-century European history.
264
00:21:41,400 --> 00:21:46,235
It happened, not just on the doorstep
of the richest country in the world,
265
00:21:46,400 --> 00:21:49,039
but inside our own house.
266
00:21:49,200 --> 00:21:53,671
Ireland, after all,
had been part of the kingdom since 1801,
267
00:21:53,840 --> 00:21:58,118
and this, nationalists would say
for generations afterwards,
268
00:21:58,280 --> 00:22:01,238
was the bitter fruit of the union.
269
00:22:02,360 --> 00:22:06,638
Knighted in 1848
for his sterling work on Irish relief,
270
00:22:06,800 --> 00:22:10,475
Sir Charles Trevelyan
was oblivious to all this hatred.
271
00:22:10,640 --> 00:22:13,552
No blots on his conscience.
272
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:17,713
"I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course",
273
00:22:17,880 --> 00:22:19,757
his memorial window would proclaim
274
00:22:19,920 --> 00:22:24,516
in the church
near his family's estate in Northumberland.
275
00:22:30,280 --> 00:22:32,555
By the spring of 1857,
276
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:38,158
Trevelyan was in no doubt that Victorian
Britain was, in the best sense imaginable,
277
00:22:38,320 --> 00:22:42,916
the new Rome, the Rome
before corruption and despotism set in,
278
00:22:43,080 --> 00:22:45,230
a light to the nations.
279
00:22:46,240 --> 00:22:50,552
And, thanks to Trevelyan's reforms,
run by a new kind of civil service -
280
00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:53,996
entry by exam, not by connections.
281
00:22:55,000 --> 00:22:58,959
Now, government, the dream machine
of Trevelyan and Macaulay,
282
00:22:59,120 --> 00:23:04,399
needed a space that would properly
proclaim its moral and political grandeur;
283
00:23:04,560 --> 00:23:07,393
not a rabbit warren
of inky-fingered scribes,
284
00:23:07,560 --> 00:23:10,677
but a palace of the high-minded
and the hard-working.
285
00:23:10,840 --> 00:23:17,518
And here it is, the new Foreign Office,
designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott.
286
00:23:19,680 --> 00:23:24,276
Swaggering enough to take its place
alongside the Topkapi in Istanbul,
287
00:23:24,440 --> 00:23:31,232
Versailles or the Doge's Palace in Venice
as an indisputable house of power.
288
00:23:35,720 --> 00:23:39,349
And it was a machine
whose every part interlocked
289
00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:41,670
with majestic economy and precision.
290
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:46,311
Our great banks told
native money men what Britain needed.
291
00:23:46,480 --> 00:23:52,715
They told their cultivators
and lo, raw cotton and indigo dye arrived.
292
00:23:54,120 --> 00:23:58,511
We shipped back to them the manufactures
produced in the workshop of the world -
293
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:03,595
locomotives taking our textiles
and heavy metal to the towns of India
294
00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:06,558
and China and Latin America.
295
00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:09,794
(MORSE CODE SIGNAL)
296
00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:12,076
The globe was shrinking
297
00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:15,232
and, through the modern marvel
of the electric telegraph,
298
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:19,632
this was the first empire that could boast
it was run on high-speed information,
299
00:24:19,800 --> 00:24:24,749
a worldwide web of intelligence -
commercial, political, military.
300
00:24:26,280 --> 00:24:28,953
So how was it,
with all this data-gathering equipment,
301
00:24:29,120 --> 00:24:33,989
we managed not to hear the ominous
rumble of an earthquake in the making
302
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:36,993
right in the heart of India?
303
00:24:45,800 --> 00:24:49,793
Perhaps because we were
so besotted with our shiny new toys,
304
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:52,679
we weren't looking
or listening in the right place,
305
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:56,355
weren't eavesdropping
in the bazaar and the mosque,
306
00:24:56,520 --> 00:24:59,273
listening to the imams and the soothsayers.
307
00:25:02,520 --> 00:25:06,354
If we had been listening,
we'd have heard, in the towns,
308
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:10,672
angry complaints about missionaries
pushing bibles in native languages,
309
00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:14,753
and in the countryside,
protests about who controlled the land,
310
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:18,390
and the taxes you had to pay for it.
311
00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:27,674
Mutiny, the word by which we know
the terrible slaughters of 1857,
312
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:30,638
seems to speak of rank ingratitude
313
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:34,076
for all the good
Britain was supposed to have brought India.
314
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:39,109
If you look at it from the Indian
point of view, the picture changes.
315
00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:43,558
Both British and Indians
got very worked up about loyalty and honour.
316
00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:46,678
What they meant
by those very highly-charged words
317
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:49,718
were two completely
different sets of values -
318
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:53,475
values which were at war
with each other in 1857,
319
00:25:53,640 --> 00:25:56,837
before a single shot had been fired.
320
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:02,836
The Indians, whether Hindus
or Muslims, peasants or townsmen,
321
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:08,552
lived in a world governed by ceremony,
shame, respect and passion.
322
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:13,316
The Victorians prized
moral and material self-improvement,
323
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:16,597
and above all, tight emotional discipline.
324
00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:27,313
Typical, then, that in their eagerness
to issue their Indian recruits, or sepoys,
325
00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:31,792
the new, improved Enfield rifle,
the army neglected to ensure
326
00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:36,078
that the cartridge grease
was made of neither pig nor cow fat,
327
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:40,518
an oversight bound to offend
both Muslims and Hindus.
328
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:50,639
In fact, it was not the issue of the
offending cartridges which was the problem.
329
00:26:50,800 --> 00:26:53,872
Vegetable grease was quickly substituted.
330
00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:58,431
What was most offensive was the
increasingly arrogant response of the British
331
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:01,558
to matters which they regarded as trivial.
332
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:07,875
They were about to find out just what
was trivial to an Indian and what wasn't.
333
00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:22,638
For generations,
the province of Awadh in northern India
334
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:25,872
had supplied the British Army
with its best sepoys,
335
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:29,396
in return for which they got to go back home
336
00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:33,758
and swagger about in the gardens
of Lucknow, its principal city.
337
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:40,717
Then, in 1856, their special status
disappeared when Awadh was annexed.
338
00:27:40,880 --> 00:27:43,917
Why? Because the new
Trevelyanite civil service
339
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:46,992
decided that the province
was badly administered.
340
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:52,029
The sepoys joined a long queue of people -
tax collectors, local judges,
341
00:27:52,200 --> 00:27:56,830
palace courtesans -
all bitter that a perfectly workable regime
342
00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:00,117
had been demolished
by the British in the name of officiousness.
343
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:08,511
Lucknow, once one of the most easygoing
places for Europeans and Indians to mix -
344
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:12,235
at cockfights, for instance -
had become a segregated city.
345
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:18,077
The tight-laced British huddled
together in their military cantonment
346
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:22,358
and in the buildings scattered
through the 37 acres of the Residency,
347
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:26,035
complete with churches,
clubs and banquet hall.
348
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:31,313
They were about to pay
the price for this distance.
349
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:34,711
Their over-reliance
on the new information technology
350
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:38,395
had fatally separated them
from the word on the street.
351
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:43,313
The sahibs said they'd built
this cordon sanitaire for the memsahibs,
352
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:46,233
who'd come out to India in record numbers.
353
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:50,712
Have to keep the ladies away
from the dirt, the squalor, the disease
354
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:54,156
and the frightful morals
of the natives, don't you know (!)
355
00:28:54,320 --> 00:29:00,111
The memsahibs at Lucknow were to get
a taste of the real India with a vengeance.
356
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:06,633
Take Katherine Bartrum,
for example, 23 years old,
357
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:12,352
just married to an army surgeon, living
in a hill station 80 miles away from Lucknow.
358
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:17,150
There, with her new baby,
Kate lived the usual bungalow life,
359
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:20,232
waited on, hand and foot, by servants.
360
00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:26,157
In early June, 1857,
Kate and her husband, Robert,
361
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:30,393
would have heard the incredible news
that sepoys had marched to Delhi
362
00:29:30,560 --> 00:29:34,838
and persuaded the old king,
the last of the Mughals, Bahadur Shah,
363
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:40,870
to issue proclamations, calling on the
faithful to rise against the Feringhees,
364
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:43,156
the detestable foreigners.
365
00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:48,519
European Delhi burned, its desperate
survivors retreating up this hill
366
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:52,355
to the ridge at the
north-east end of the city.
367
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:57,000
What started as a mutiny of soldiers
368
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:01,915
built like wildfire into an immense
rebellion of peasants and townspeople,
369
00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:06,949
right through the mid-Ganges Valley,
the prosperous heart of India.
370
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:10,596
Lucknow would not escape the flames.
371
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:15,356
Rumour fed disobedience,
even up at the Bartrum bungalow.
372
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:19,752
With brutal speed, the world Kate
must have thought would never change,
373
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:24,436
that daily routine of sweepers,
punkah-wallahs, grooms, cooks, gardeners,
374
00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:27,797
now began to crumble
under her slippered feet.
375
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:31,754
(WOMAN)
All our servants have deserted us,
376
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:34,639
and now our trials have begun in earnest.
377
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:38,270
From morning till night,
we can get no food cooked
378
00:30:38,440 --> 00:30:41,637
and we have not
the means of doing it ourselves.
379
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:45,190
How we are to manage, I cannot tell.
380
00:30:47,080 --> 00:30:50,914
For many nights,
we have not dared to close our eyes.
381
00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:55,596
I keep a sword under the pillow
and dear R has his pistol ready
382
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:58,672
to start up at the slightest sound.
383
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:04,475
Their isolation marked them as sitting ducks.
384
00:31:04,640 --> 00:31:09,077
Their only chance lay in somehow
getting through to the stronghold at Lucknow.
385
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:13,552
When Robert was called to his regiment,
Kate made her way by elephant
386
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:19,431
through hostile country to the domes
and minarets of Awadh's golden city.
387
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:26,032
8,000 sepoys were preparing
to encircle the Residency.
388
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:29,636
Within the grounds
were barely 800 British soldiers,
389
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:34,874
just 700 loyal Indian troops,
and 50 pupils from La Martinière,
390
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:39,909
Lucknow's model western school,
who were also ready to do their bit.
391
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:43,031
(GUNSHOTS)
392
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:48,831
Soon after Kate arrived, the siege began.
393
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:51,151
When a breakout failed,
394
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:55,757
it was obvious the British wives
would be needed to nurse and cook.
395
00:31:57,080 --> 00:32:00,675
The torrid heat was broken
only by torrential rain.
396
00:32:00,840 --> 00:32:05,152
Above them, bullocks and horses
wandered about, mad with thirst.
397
00:32:05,320 --> 00:32:09,757
Details had to be sent out
to bury the rotting carcasses.
398
00:32:11,840 --> 00:32:16,709
As it got hotter, the Residency
turned into a stagnant pool of sickness.
399
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:20,429
Kate Bartrum gagged
at the overflowing latrines.
400
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:31,191
Food became dire,
covered with thick swarms of flies.
401
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:37,069
There was still champagne,
but now it was an anaesthetic
402
00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:42,997
used only for the badly wounded, one
bottle drunk at a gulp before an amputation.
403
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:51,110
Kate Bartrum watched babies and mothers
die as cholera and dysentery took their toll.
404
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:54,389
She saw people go mad.
405
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:56,994
The Victorian mask was slipping.
406
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:03,991
(GUNSHOTS)
407
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:08,039
After nearly five months,
a relief force managed to break through
408
00:33:08,200 --> 00:33:10,395
and evacuated the women and children.
409
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:13,438
But still the siege wore on.
410
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:18,831
It wouldn't be lifted until 1858,
the following spring.
411
00:33:21,520 --> 00:33:25,559
By then, the great Indian rebellion
had been crushed.
412
00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:29,076
Calcutta had remained intact
at one side of the country
413
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:31,310
and the Punjab at the other.
414
00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:36,918
Troops from both converged on the centre
and then it was only a matter of time.
415
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:46,039
But then came retribution,
swift and terrible.
416
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:50,751
Sepoys blown apart by cannon,
flogged to death, mutilated.
417
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:57,589
Prints, illustrating what British men
and women had suffered,
418
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:00,115
fed the calls for revenge.
419
00:34:01,320 --> 00:34:04,630
Since the public expected
to see a charnel house,
420
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:07,598
photographers who came
to Lucknow obliged them,
421
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:12,276
dressing their photos
with the disinterred bones of mutineers.
422
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:20,835
Things would never be the same.
423
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:25,357
As a sop to Indian pride,
the East India Company had pretended
424
00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:30,355
to govern alongside a symbolic
Mughal presence, the King of Delhi.
425
00:34:31,400 --> 00:34:36,076
For a brief moment during the rebellion,
he had become an emperor again,
426
00:34:36,240 --> 00:34:39,277
but now he was a wanted fugitive.
427
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:44,833
The British caught up with the pathetic
blind old man at Hummayyun's Tomb in Delhi.
428
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:49,190
As a captive, he became a figure of ridicule.
429
00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:55,036
The East India Company
and the rule of the Mughals
430
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:58,237
were put to rest at the same time.
431
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:04,197
The catastrophe of the mutiny
threw into crisis all the old ideas
432
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:06,794
about how the empire should be run.
433
00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:10,396
What shape it would take
in the future divided opinion.
434
00:35:10,560 --> 00:35:15,111
Those divisions were personified
by the great Punch and Judy of politics
435
00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:19,671
in the second half of Victoria's century,
Disraeli and Gladstone.
436
00:35:19,840 --> 00:35:26,234
They'd slug it out for decades,
their views on imperial power
437
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:29,551
as conflicting
as their personal and political styles.
438
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,794
The man who gave
the British a real appetite for empire
439
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:36,520
was, of course, Benjamin Disraeli.
440
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:40,434
His whole career,
from taking on and tearing down
441
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:44,354
the venerated leader
of the Tory party, Sir Robert Peel,
442
00:35:44,520 --> 00:35:51,471
to taking the reins of that party, was one
long virtuoso exercise in improbability,
443
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:57,317
and the most improbable feat of all
was to make the exotic, starting with himself,
444
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,552
domestic, national, patriotic.
445
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:04,593
When Macaulay
had made his maiden speech,
446
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:07,558
arguing for the admission
of Jews to parliament,
447
00:36:07,720 --> 00:36:10,109
it's unlikely he could ever have imagined
448
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:13,829
that one would lead
the Tories in the next generation.
449
00:36:14,000 --> 00:36:16,070
"Dizzy" was a baptised Jew,
450
00:36:16,240 --> 00:36:20,791
a romantic novelist who compensated
for his lack of aristocratic pedigree,
451
00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:24,839
or commercial fortune,
by being the attack dog of a party
452
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:28,197
not famous for verbal
brilliance in the House.
453
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:33,150
He took one look at how politics
was conducted in mid-Victorian Britain
454
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:36,278
and saw that something was missing.
455
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:40,149
That something
was what he called imagination.
456
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:42,880
What does a politician do with imagination?
457
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:48,990
In the hands of a mere showman, not a lot,
but behind the parliamentary performer,
458
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:53,358
the flamboyant wag in the cherry-red
waistcoats and the glossy curls,
459
00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:57,354
was a political tactician of pure genius,
460
00:36:57,520 --> 00:37:01,991
someone who could take
imagination and turn it into power.
461
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:07,712
Disraeli's appeal was being not Gladstone,
462
00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:11,919
not being the high-minded,
morally-driven do-gooder.
463
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:14,796
When Queen Victoria complained
464
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:17,997
she hated being "addressed
like a public meeting" by Gladstone,
465
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,550
she voiced the irritation
of millions of her subjects.
466
00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:30,112
How the two of them
spent their hours tells you everything.
467
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:34,239
Gladstone, when he allowed himself
time off from the despatch boxes,
468
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:40,316
unbuttoning his cuffs and chopping down
trees at Hawarden, his estate in Flintshire.
469
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:45,710
Disraeli, on working days at Hughenden,
his house near High Wycombe,
470
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:48,474
strolled the terrace, amidst his peacocks...
471
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:54,555
and then perused the odd document or two
between daydreams in the study,
472
00:37:54,720 --> 00:38:00,192
where "I like to watch the sunbeams
on the bindings on the books".
473
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:04,918
Like the master psychologist he was,
474
00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:10,791
Disraeli had cottoned onto the insight, so
obvious to us but shocking to the Victorians,
475
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:14,589
that in the dawning age of mass politics,
476
00:38:14,760 --> 00:38:17,513
not everyone wanted to be political;
477
00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:21,468
that rather than struggle
relentlessly to BE good,
478
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:25,633
many people would be happier
to have good done FOR them.
479
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:31,796
The new voter might actually prefer physical
betterment over the moral regeneration
480
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:34,554
the Liberals were always going on about,
481
00:38:34,720 --> 00:38:39,555
might want to opt for the kind of things
that Disraeli's government would give them:
482
00:38:39,720 --> 00:38:44,555
Better food, cleaner water
and the gaudy oompah of empire
483
00:38:44,720 --> 00:38:47,109
over the pious cant of liberty.
484
00:38:49,840 --> 00:38:55,517
In Disraeli's vision for post-mutiny India,
the Queen would rule as Empress,
485
00:38:55,680 --> 00:38:59,434
and Britain would swerve sharply
away from Macaulay's wishful thinking
486
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:04,628
that the best thing for Indians would be
to turn them into brown Englishmen.
487
00:39:07,720 --> 00:39:13,989
Let them instead be Indians and be delivered
to the tender care of sahib fathers,
488
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:16,674
the Viceroys and their teams of prefects,
489
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:19,877
the district commissioners,
magistrates and collectors,
490
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:23,829
who in return for their children
being good boys and girls,
491
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:28,278
would promise to deliver peace,
good health and a bowl of rice.
492
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:36,433
For Disraeli and the Tories,
the goal was more empire, not less.
493
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:45,993
Now what India needed was an
extravaganza to celebrate her new dominion,
494
00:39:46,160 --> 00:39:49,357
and who better
to organise one than the noble,
495
00:39:49,520 --> 00:39:53,513
though irredeemably bad poet,
the Earl of Lytton?
496
00:39:56,200 --> 00:40:02,719
Lytton's India would be a new old India,
a combination of tigers and peddlers,
497
00:40:02,880 --> 00:40:07,670
holy men and native princes,
bejewelled, feudal and loyal,
498
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:16,072
the Queen Empress promising to protect
the ancient usages and customs of India.
499
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:22,679
The bond would be sealed
at a durbar, a great assembly,
500
00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:26,753
camped on the most sacred site
of the Raj, Delhi Ridge,
501
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:30,913
where the British had precariously
held out during the mutiny,
502
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:35,949
and which, along with Lucknow, had become
a place of pilgrimage in the 20 years since.
503
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:40,352
Spectacle would wipe out
the memory of slaughter.
504
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:49,390
On New Year's Day, 1877,
thousands watched Lytton step onto a dais,
505
00:40:49,560 --> 00:40:52,677
its banners designed
by Rudyard Kipling's father,
506
00:40:52,840 --> 00:40:58,676
and receive, on behalf of the Empress,
the homage of 300 Indian noblemen,
507
00:40:58,840 --> 00:41:01,718
the Nizams and Gaekwars
and Maharajahs.
508
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:06,351
The show had to be sufficiently
over the top if it was to impress them
509
00:41:06,520 --> 00:41:09,114
with the stupendous invincibility of the Raj.
510
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:10,998
As Lytton put it:
511
00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:16,553
The further east you go, the greater
becomes the importance of a bit of bunting.
512
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:23,990
The banquet, the most expensive
in British history, went on for a week.
513
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:27,550
During that week,
thousands of the Queen Empress's subjects
514
00:41:27,720 --> 00:41:30,792
in Madras and Mysore starved to death.
515
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:34,669
No reason, Lytton thought,
to let it spoil the party.
516
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:41,119
The monsoon had failed in south India.
517
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:44,590
Lytton's council knew
that the situation might get desperate,
518
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:49,231
but though they were supposed to be
the new kind of "benevolent" ruler,
519
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:53,154
when it came to action,
they stuck to the old rules.
520
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:57,029
Once again, there would be
no interference in the grain markets.
521
00:41:57,200 --> 00:42:00,431
Once again,
famine relief works were overwhelmed,
522
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:03,353
prompting Lytton's enforcer,
Sir Richard Temple,
523
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:09,197
playing the part Trevelyan had played earlier
in Ireland, to introduce the distance test,
524
00:42:09,360 --> 00:42:15,913
which insisted that starving applicants travel
at least ten miles to dormitory camps
525
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:19,231
in order to sign on for hard labour.
526
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:24,669
The task of saving life,
irrespective of cost,
527
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:28,799
is one which it is
beyond our power to undertake.
528
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:32,270
The embarrassment
of debt and the weight of taxation
529
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:35,910
would soon be more fatal
than the famine itself.
530
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:43,757
What made the scale
of suffering so obscene
531
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:49,040
was that it happened during a time
of grain surplus in other parts of India.
532
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:53,478
So fanatically devoted to the iron law
of the market was the government,
533
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:59,556
that it refused to liberate those supplies for
fear that it would artificially bring down prices.
534
00:42:59,720 --> 00:43:05,909
So common sense and common humanity
was sacrificed to the fetish of the market,
535
00:43:06,080 --> 00:43:09,709
and millions were abandoned to perish.
536
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:15,596
Five million died in 1877
of starvation and cholera.
537
00:43:15,760 --> 00:43:20,675
Horrified missionaries would use
relatively portable cameras to record sights
538
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:23,593
that otherwise no one
in Britain might believe.
539
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:29,676
They saw peasants drop dead in front of
troops guarding stockpiles of rice and grain.
540
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:36,598
Florence Nightingale, moved to
indignation by reports of the famine,
541
00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:40,878
called it "a hideous record
of human suffering and destruction
542
00:43:41,040 --> 00:43:43,793
"the world has never seen before".
543
00:43:45,280 --> 00:43:50,195
For William Gladstone, the lessons
of India and Ireland were very clear.
544
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:55,159
Disraeli's glitzy paternalism
was not the answer.
545
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:58,357
For Gladstone, it was morally inexcusable.
546
00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:01,239
But Liberalism needed to be something more
547
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:05,996
than the old mantra of liberty,
free trade and righteousness.
548
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:10,551
It needed to nail its colours
to the mast of political justice.
549
00:44:10,720 --> 00:44:14,429
Surely it was the sense
of being robbed of that justice
550
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:17,672
which drove men to fury and violence.
551
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:23,559
So Gladstone's new testament
would be the idea that government,
552
00:44:23,720 --> 00:44:27,156
even self-government
within the empire, or home rule,
553
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:30,118
should be the instrument of justice.
554
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:36,475
William Ewart Gladstone was a politician
whose career had always been shaped
555
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:38,710
by religious revelation,
556
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:44,352
for whom the Bible was not just
a sacred text but a guide to politics.
557
00:44:44,520 --> 00:44:47,353
Once the truth
had been revealed to Gladstone,
558
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:51,035
he felt obliged,
like the carriers of the first gospels,
559
00:44:51,200 --> 00:44:55,751
to preach to the unbelievers,
to bring others to the light.
560
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:00,069
And did he preach it!
561
00:45:00,240 --> 00:45:03,471
A great whistle-stop
railway campaign in the north,
562
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:08,316
Lancashire, Scotland, where, with the
wind in his hair and fire in his belly,
563
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:12,359
the locomotive-driven prophet
appearing before the immense flock
564
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:17,469
rained down hellfire on the immorality
and indifference of Disraeli's government
565
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:19,756
to human suffering.
566
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:27,477
Gladstone swept to victory in 1880.
567
00:45:27,640 --> 00:45:32,760
But he knew he had no time to celebrate,
he had to grasp the nettle.
568
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:38,310
Ireland is at your door.
Providence has placed it there.
569
00:45:38,480 --> 00:45:42,758
Law and legislature
have made a compact between you,
570
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:46,595
and you must face these obligations.
571
00:45:47,720 --> 00:45:52,919
Even if he'd wanted to look the other way,
political reality made it impossible.
572
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:58,228
Ireland now boasted a block of 59 MPs
573
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:02,678
who had no intention of allowing
London to neglect Irish affairs.
574
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:11,077
At their vanguard
was Charles Stewart Parnell,
575
00:46:11,240 --> 00:46:16,872
whose fate would be tied to Gladstone's
as he inched towards home rule.
576
00:46:19,240 --> 00:46:23,392
A Protestant landowner
from County Wicklow and an MP,
577
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:29,908
Parnell was the most unlikely incarnation
of Irish anger, hopes and dreams.
578
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:34,437
At this distance, without the sound
of his voice, or his presence,
579
00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:40,038
it's hard to recapture what made
this patrician so charismatic a leader.
580
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:44,751
Perhaps it's because he went
so much against the grain,
581
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:48,754
did and said things
a gentleman was not supposed to do;
582
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:52,469
a landlord who burned
for the sufferings of the landless;
583
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:55,393
an Irishman who could play
the parliamentary game
584
00:46:55,560 --> 00:46:57,357
like a Friday night fiddler,
585
00:46:57,520 --> 00:47:01,638
that Parnell was such a god,
in the pub and at the racetrack -
586
00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:05,588
and a god all too obviously
made of flesh and blood.
587
00:47:07,320 --> 00:47:10,915
Parnell's power to sway
the Liberals and Gladstone
588
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:13,992
came because he was riding
two political horses:
589
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:16,913
The well-behaved mare of the ballot box
590
00:47:17,080 --> 00:47:21,153
and the fiery stallion
of countryside violence.
591
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:26,915
This had been triggered by a collapse
in demand for Irish cattle and butter.
592
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:30,436
Small farmers found themselves
struggling to pay their rents.
593
00:47:30,600 --> 00:47:32,795
Large numbers faced eviction.
594
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:35,872
They fought back with ferocity -
cattle maiming,
595
00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:37,917
arson, murder.
596
00:47:39,720 --> 00:47:43,110
Parnell, as President
of the National Land League,
597
00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:47,717
was the mouthpiece for airing
the grievances of the rural population.
598
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:52,313
In 1881, in an effort
to pre-empt more violence,
599
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:56,553
Gladstone pushed through a land act
which theoretically gave the government
600
00:47:56,720 --> 00:48:00,349
the right to intervene
in landlord-tenant relations.
601
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:11,398
Suspicions, though,
had a way of overcoming trust.
602
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:16,680
On the Irish side, it was thought that without
the threat of violence, boycotts, strikes,
603
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:22,278
hits on landlords, the British would
never get really serious about land reform.
604
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:27,195
On the British side, Gladstone was told
by the hardliners in his government
605
00:48:27,360 --> 00:48:29,590
to get tough on militants.
606
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:33,514
As the apparent figurehead of the militants,
607
00:48:33,680 --> 00:48:37,116
Parnell was thrown into Kilmainham Jail.
608
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,670
But Gladstone realised it was a futile gesture
609
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:44,877
and that dialogue was the only way forward.
610
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:50,149
Then, just when it seemed
that progress might be possible,
611
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:56,509
on May 6th, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish
and his Under-Secretary, Thomas Burke,
612
00:48:56,680 --> 00:49:01,879
were attacked and stabbed repeatedly
while walking in Dublin's Phoenix Park.
613
00:49:07,200 --> 00:49:09,350
Gladstone took it personally.
614
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:13,195
Frederick Cavendish
was not just the Chief Secretary for Ireland,
615
00:49:13,360 --> 00:49:18,070
he was also, for Gladstone, family,
his wife Catherine's nephew.
616
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:24,871
Parnell was horrified,
offered Gladstone his resignation
617
00:49:25,040 --> 00:49:29,033
and assumed that the Phoenix Park
murders had all but killed off
618
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:31,919
any serious chance of collaboration.
619
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:37,916
But Gladstone did exactly what the hard men
of both sides did not expect him to do.
620
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:42,073
He rejected the resignation
and began a correspondence with Parnell
621
00:49:42,240 --> 00:49:44,390
which made their relationship much closer.
622
00:49:47,040 --> 00:49:51,556
Parnell's importance to Gladstone
was that he alone could translate the fury
623
00:49:51,720 --> 00:49:55,395
of Irish grievances
into something politically constructive.
624
00:49:55,560 --> 00:50:00,315
Gladstone's importance to Parnell
was that he was the first British politician
625
00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:04,393
to take seriously
the nationalist dream of home rule.
626
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:08,677
By the mid-1880s,
Gladstone became more adamant
627
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:14,153
that by embracing the cause of home rule,
he was doing God's work in Ireland.
628
00:50:16,280 --> 00:50:22,071
He was indeed in another world, combing
his library at Hawarden for Irish history.
629
00:50:22,240 --> 00:50:26,358
For all the prayers and the penance,
he was only being realistic
630
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:29,717
when he told
the House of Commons that this was:
631
00:50:29,880 --> 00:50:32,792
One of the golden moments of our history,
632
00:50:32,960 --> 00:50:36,350
one of those opportunities
which may come and may go,
633
00:50:36,520 --> 00:50:39,034
but which rarely return.
634
00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:43,828
The speech lasted three and a half hours,
635
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:47,788
as if Gladstone could overcome
the adverse arithmetic of the lobby
636
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:50,633
by sheer force of oratory.
637
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:55,954
With the tragic hindsight we have
of the miseries that ensued on his failure,
638
00:50:56,120 --> 00:51:00,432
nothing rings more powerfully true
than his moving appeal
639
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:04,275
to ditch history and memory
for the sake of the future.
640
00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:07,870
Ireland was asking, he said:
641
00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:12,272
For what I call
a blessed oblivion of the past.
642
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:15,557
She asks also a boon for the future.
643
00:51:15,720 --> 00:51:19,633
That boon will be born
to us in respect of honour,
644
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:26,717
no less than a boon to her in respect
of happiness, prosperity and peace.
645
00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:29,519
Such, sir, is her prayer.
646
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:36,199
Think, I beseech you, think well,
think wisely, think not for the moment,
647
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:41,957
but for the years
to come before you reject this bill.
648
00:51:45,640 --> 00:51:48,234
The prayer was not answered.
649
00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:51,039
In 1886, the bill went down to defeat.
650
00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:54,556
So too did Gladstone and his party.
651
00:51:55,880 --> 00:52:00,476
It would be six years before he'd
be back in power for the last time,
652
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:03,108
with the chances of success even slimmer.
653
00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:11,393
By that time,
Parnell's reputation had been destroyed.
654
00:52:11,560 --> 00:52:17,317
In 1890, the husband of Katherine O'Shea,
his mistress, brought a divorce action
655
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:19,994
based on Parnell's adultery with her.
656
00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:26,233
A year later, deserted by his followers,
disowned by the Catholic clergy,
657
00:52:26,400 --> 00:52:28,675
he died in her arms.
658
00:52:30,720 --> 00:52:35,271
New liberalism was now high
on the octane of imperial conquest
659
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:38,034
or concerned with social conditions at home.
660
00:52:39,560 --> 00:52:43,792
Its politicians were just humouring
Gladstone with another doom reading
661
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:47,270
in 1893 of the Home Rule Bill.
662
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:51,271
The grand old man died five years later.
663
00:52:53,440 --> 00:52:57,797
But he'd been right, the chance
of satisfying Irish self-government
664
00:52:57,960 --> 00:53:01,714
inside the United Kingdom
would never be realised.
665
00:53:02,720 --> 00:53:06,713
We're still living
with the consequences of that defeat.
666
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:13,153
The failure of Home Rule
was more than just the death rattle
667
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:15,788
of Gladstone's project for Ireland.
668
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:20,590
It spelled the end of the whole Liberal dream
of an English-speaking empire
669
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:25,356
grounded on English justice
and buoyed up by the great miracle
670
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:28,034
of the Victorian industrial economy;
671
00:53:28,200 --> 00:53:32,955
an empire whose pupil colonies
would be educated and legislated
672
00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:39,150
into free self-government,
Macaulay's vision of a half a century earlier.
673
00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:42,278
(GUNSHOT)
674
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:47,434
The empire, rolling from war to war,
painting Africa as well as Asia red,
675
00:53:47,600 --> 00:53:52,469
now seemed to be in the hands of men
like Lord Salisbury and Cecil Rhodes,
676
00:53:52,640 --> 00:53:55,712
who made no bones
about ruling by the sword,
677
00:53:55,880 --> 00:54:00,954
making it clear to westernised natives that
if they thought they'd have an equal share
678
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:04,237
in law and legislation,
they could think again.
679
00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:10,158
It was no wonder, then,
that those who in an earlier generation
680
00:54:10,320 --> 00:54:13,517
would have hoped to see
the Liberal dream realised,
681
00:54:13,680 --> 00:54:17,275
now turn their backs on it
as a bankrupt fraud.
682
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:20,555
The Tories wouldn't give them prosperity
683
00:54:20,720 --> 00:54:24,030
and the Liberals couldn't give them
justice and self-government.
684
00:54:24,200 --> 00:54:26,953
It was time to fend for themselves.
685
00:54:27,120 --> 00:54:30,829
In Britain, the working class
finally had had enough of hand-me-downs
686
00:54:31,040 --> 00:54:34,396
from the conscience-stricken
middle-class liberals.
687
00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:38,519
They created their own Labour Party.
688
00:54:45,520 --> 00:54:49,911
In India, the writing was on the wall
when militant Hindu nationalists
689
00:54:50,160 --> 00:54:55,871
adopted a campaign and a word that had
begun its life in Ireland - the boycott.
690
00:55:00,240 --> 00:55:04,153
The entire premise of the Macaulay vision
had been that subject peoples
691
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:07,869
would yearn to join
the world of the British consumer,
692
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:14,036
and here they were saying "No thanks" to
the salesmen of the workshop of the world.
693
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:17,829
Self-sufficient handcrafts
would challenge imperial commerce.
694
00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:22,955
That's why Gandhi put the spinning wheel
at the centre of the Indian flag.
695
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:31,109
You wouldn't know this if you got a seat
at the last of the great durbars in 1911,
696
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:34,238
actually featuring a King Emperor, George V,
697
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:38,518
present and in person,
held yet again on the dusty Delhi Ridge
698
00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:42,036
where the martyrs of the mutiny
had held out.
699
00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:54,316
Three years later, the empire would ask its
loyal subjects to line up for king and country.
700
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:57,552
Millions did from Ireland and from India.
701
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:04,876
Out of the carnage of world war
came a reborn Islamic militancy.
702
00:56:05,880 --> 00:56:11,750
And a revolutionary Irish republicanism,
eager to escape the clutches of empire.
703
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:26,555
This is the Ozymandias of the Raj.
704
00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:31,635
In 1947, when India became independent,
705
00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:36,999
all New Delhi's statues of the King Emperors
and viceroys and generals,
706
00:56:37,160 --> 00:56:41,756
the great and the good and the not so good,
were rounded up and taken here,
707
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:45,151
to the empire's theme park, the Durbar Field,
708
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:51,759
where they were interned like so many
forlorn hostages to that old joker, history.
709
00:56:52,960 --> 00:56:54,837
Was that it, then?
710
00:56:55,000 --> 00:57:00,552
Where Macaulay and Gladstone and the other
high priests of the great Victorian mission
711
00:57:00,720 --> 00:57:03,837
kidding not just the natives but themselves?
712
00:57:04,040 --> 00:57:07,715
In the end, were they just
window dressers of a regime
713
00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:10,678
that was really all about money and power,
714
00:57:10,840 --> 00:57:15,277
and when both gave out,
just cut their losses and slunk home?
715
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:20,195
Maybe, but before we write
their ideals off completely,
716
00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:23,796
we should take note
of what rose from their defeat -
717
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:27,669
cycles of religious hatred,
sectarian wars and massacres,
718
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:30,195
epidemics and destitution.
719
00:57:30,360 --> 00:57:33,909
Not all them, I think, exclusively our fault.
720
00:57:37,040 --> 00:57:41,352
Perhaps the last word on the British Empire
hasn't been written, after all,
721
00:57:41,520 --> 00:57:47,516
at least if that empire is thought of, not in
terms of scarlet tunics and flashing sabres,
722
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:51,389
but language, law and liberal democracy.
723
00:57:53,920 --> 00:58:00,029
Perhaps the marriage of east and west does
have a future if we're prepared to fight for it,
724
00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:06,958
not just in Calcutta and Karachi, but also
in Leicester, Oldham, Bradford and Burnley.
725
00:58:09,500 --> 00:58:17,500
Ripped By mstoll