Riotous Victorians - Donald C Richter

 RIOTOUS VICTORIANS - DONALD C RICHTER

It was Thatcher who advocated for Victorian values, seeing in them the path to a better Britain. Hard work, self-reliance, thrift, and sexual propriety were the cornerstones of her vision but you have to wonder: how did Thatcher ever come to such a mindset? It was chemistry she studied at Oxford, not history, so where did she come by this perception that Victorian times were some sort of golden age of higher morality? 

And whilst we're on the subject, what is it with those on the Right and their harking back to 'better days', as if better days ever were? Conservative Prime Minister John Major was the same with his 'back to basics' campaign, calling for a return to so-called 'traditional values', before his government being drowned in an infinity pool of sexual and financial scandals. 

The 'We want our country back' advocates are the modern-day equivalents, but back to what exactly? When were these supposed harmonious times when everyone was happy and the streets so free of crime you could leave your front door open for the Kray Twins to pop in and borrow a cup of sugar?

Riotous Victorians, by Donald C Richter, makes the case that Thatcher's ideal Victorian society was in actual fact rife with lawlessness, violence and riot. And a pretty convincing case it makes too. Published in 1981 by Ohio University Press, which means it's an academic book full of footnotes citing sources, but then when it comes to history and debunking revisionism this is no bad thing. Unusually for an academic book, the language is accessible and the style of writing is free-flowing which makes for a far easier read.

The sheer amount of episodes of rioting during the Victorian age that the book chronicles is actually quite bewildering, proving that Britain during this period was an extremely disorderly society and that any other version of it is a misconception.

Policing at that time was in its embryonic stage and the powers of those recruited for the work were vague and undefined, one of their major tasks being to prove they could uphold the law without military aid. In particular, that they could control crowds and combat rioting through the use of truncheons instead of guns and cutlasses. The military was always in waiting of course but even more so were the threats of prison, hanging, and being transported to Australia.

Unintentionally, some of the outbreaks of rioting of which Donald Richter writes are actually quite amusing, especially when quoting the politicians and newspapers of the day. For example, describing mobs as 'a great lot of roughs', 'frivolous elements', and 'riot-for-the-fun-of-it types'.

One riot where a labourer was urging a crowd of one thousand to kill the constables trying to restore order is described as 'Never was there such a hurly burly'. And what better phrase to describe a riot than 'a hurly burly'?

Another great turn of phrase is in regard to the proscribing of public meetings at Hyde Park, where placards on the gates of the park declared 'Meetings for the purpose of delivering or hearing speeches, or for the public discussion of popular and exciting topics' were banned. Exciting topics?

Not to be outdone, certain rabble rousers had a way with words also. For example, Protestant lecturer William Murphy, who would taunt Catholics by telling them their wives and daughters were being 'exposed to debauchery in the confessional, and are betrayed and kidnapped into convent prisons, and there kept the dupes or slaves of priestly lust'. Moreover, he would advise that 'all the convents in England ought to be burnt' and that 'if ever there was a rag and bone gatherer in the universe it was the Pope himself'.  

These were obviously not the Victorian values that Thatcher had in mind, but in the scheme of things were probably a lot more appreciated at that time than sexual propriety and thrift. And rightly so. Thatcher was dreaming a lie. As was Major and as is Farage and co today. The past is a foreign country, as they say, where you visit for a cheap holiday in other people's misery only to find it's not as it's depicted in the brochure at all but you send home a postcard saying 'wish you were here' anyway.

'History is written by the victors' as Hermann Goring said at the Nuremberg trials. And as George Orwell said: 'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' The urge to rewrite the past is the urge to rewrite reality and is the foundation stone of totalitarian-type control. And in this light, how Thatcher, Major, Farage, Trump and all the others try to rewrite history starts to make sense for why should they even bother if there was nothing from it for them to gain?

John Serpico