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Robert Peel

Prime Minister 1834 - 1835, 1841 - 1846

Robert Peel was very clever, doing spectacularly well in his final exams at Oxford, taken just a year before he entered Parliament in 1809 aged 21. Many prime ministers have been chosen because they didn't particularly offend anyone. A prime minister's role has generally been to act as a figurehead of unity. Brilliant individualists have not been suited to the job. Peel doesn't initially seem to have been any kind of figurehead prime minister. Asa Briggs for example, sees him very much as an active leader of ground breaking reform. But judgments of Peel have been as contradictory as his own record. He is presented by various writers as both a powerful initiator of change, and as someone who simply followed change. The story of Peel, and indeed of British prime ministers is almost Shakespearian in the way it presents people who can be seen as powerful, or without any power at all.

Robert Peel was born 5th February 1788, son of a wealthy cotton manufacturer, and educated at Harrow and Christ Church College, Oxford. The Peel family had been made rich by the Industrial Revolution, Peel's farmer grandfather rising through the cotton business to great wealth. His grandson now had to struggle with the tensions of the new industrial society. He could either look after the interests of agricultural landlords with protective tariffs; or he could look after consumers with the abolition of tariffs, resulting in lower prices. By the end of his great ministry of 1841 - 46 Peel had repealed the Corn Laws, after defending them previously in his career. His decision to abolish the Corn Laws finally brought down his government. And this supreme final act of commitment and sacrifice led Harriet Martineau to call Peel "a great doer of the impossible." And yet this great reformer, in 1832, had opposed the historic Reform Bill which did so much to bring about our modern conception of democracy. This fact reveals another way of looking at Peel. While Martineau describes a great doer of the impossible, Bagehot describes a man who generally only did the possible. Bagehot writes: "From a certain peculiarity of intellect and fortune, he was never in advance of his time. Of almost all the great measures with which his name is associated, he attained great eminence as their opponent before he attained even greater eminence as their advocate. On the Corn Laws, on the currency, on the amelioration of the criminal code, on catholic emancipation... he was not one of the earliest labourers or quickest converts. He did not bear the burden of the heat of the day; other men laboured and he entered into their labours. As long as these questions remained the property of first class intellects, as long as they were confined to philanthropists or speculators, as long as they were advocated by austere intangible whigs, Sir Robert Peel was against them. So soon as these measures, by the progress of time, the striving of understanding, the conversion of receptive minds, became the property of second class intellects, Sir Robert Peel became possessed of them also. He was converted at the conversion of the average man." (Quoted The Prime Ministers Vol 1 P375)

Asa Briggs might claim that Peel was ahead of his time, setting the pace which others followed. But you could argue that people who are truly ahead of their time rarely appear to succeed. There are plenty of examples of visionary people who were simply marooned in a time not yet ready for them. Their bright ideas sit out of place like desert islands. I often come back to the story of Amedee Bollee who designed and built a road going vehicle called the Rapide in 1881. This amazing creation was capable of travelling at a speed of 37mph, sixteen years ahead of any other vehicle. But the design of tyres lagged behind the Rapide, and with the design of rubber tyres not yet perfected, Bollee's incredible car could not fulfill its potential because other aspects of development still had to be made. In the circumstances of its time the Rapide represented not so much a development as a brilliant cul de sac. Progress depends on many factors coming together, and you could say that Peel had a knack for knowing when things were coming together. In a way it is impossible to say whether Peel brought about change, or whether change only happened when it was meant to. Tolstoy would claim in War and Peace that leaders are at the centre of such a vast web of influence that they only do what circumstance allows them to do. Such thoughts do seem to come to mind when thinking about the history of prime ministers, and particularly of Robert Peel.