Why no revolution in Victorian England?

[masterpeastheater]

While recently contemplating the US 2016 situation, I now wonder why there was no revolution in Victorian England. We seem to be reverting to that sort of oppressive class structure-complete with the bosses yapping about how us proles just don't work hard enough and such. I am afraid that there will be no change(even if The Bern gets elected), no revival of progressive politics with teeth or democracy in general. 80 percent(give or take a few) of the US population may live in a Dickens novel but with cellphones after the next economic downturn. Can the Victorian era point to a way of preventing this?

 

[bilby]

While recently contemplating the US 2016 situation, I now wonder why there was no revolution in Victorian England. We seem to be reverting to that sort of oppressive class structure-complete with the bosses yapping about how us proles just don't work hard enough and such. I am afraid that there will be no change(even if The Bern gets elected), no revival of progressive politics with teeth or democracy in general. 80 percent(give or take a few) of the US population may live in a Dickens novel but with cellphones after the next economic downturn. Can the Victorian era point to a way of preventing this?

The solution is clear; you need to send the majority of your young men off to fight in a very expensive Great War, from which many will not return, thereby forcing massive societal change, and significant redistribution of wealth from the gentry to the proletariat, without a direct popular uprising.

If you can arrange an industrial revolution that redistributes wealth from landowners to the newly populous cities, providing a fresh wave of social mobility, that would help too. Add universal suffrage to the mix, so that the workers can change things without recourse to guns, just to make things a bit easier.

Cap it all off with an exemplary revolution in an empire that is even more unequal, so that the aristocracy become nervous about the possibility that they might be next against the wall, and Presto! - non-violent change from a very unequal society to one that is significantly less unequal, in which a safety net is provided for the poor, at the expense of the wealthy.

 

[Valjean]

People revolt when social conditions deteriorate significantly or when expected social outcomes aren't met and there appears no prospect for improvement. As I understand it, England had never had much of a middle class, there had always been masses of poor, and conditions were actually improving.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Also, revolutions are terribly gauche and one does not want to be associated with that sort of thing, dear.

 

[skepticalbip]

The English nobility were smart enough to keep the poor so poor that they couldn't afford the red bandannas that are absolutely necessary for any revolution.