‘We need to ask how much deference there actually was’

Linda Colley is Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University

I have my own tale of deference. My great-aunt May, the daughter of a train driver, was once proposed to by a member of the Herefordshire gentry. She turned him down, on the grounds that he was out of her class. Told this as a child, I was astounded. Even then, this sort of response seemed out of date. Yet I have subsequently wondered whether more complexities were involved in this episode than appeared. My great-aunt had worked as a hospital sister with the army, coping easily it seems with crowded wards and intemperate officers. Was it just the prospect of landed acres and cut-glass accents that sapped her considerable confidence? Or, as one of a family of nine, did she perhaps not want to marry at all?

In other words, when we think of an ‘age of deference’, which may have ended, we need to ask just how much deference there actually was, and also what lay behind it. To be sure, right up to 1945 people from wealthy and prominent families were likely to possess more education, better health and more influence than the masses. They also tended to be better dressed and taller. The Marquess of Salisbury, who presided over Britain’s last really patrician administration, was 6’4”. Many of his aristocratic ministers were also over six foot at a time when the average male height was 5’7”.

But while you might literally have to look up to the rich and titled, there was often an element of negotiation involved. As E.P. Thompson showed, food-rioters might tug forelocks and disperse when their social betters rode up. But this was on the expectation that the gentlemen would intervene to lower the price of bread. By the same token, some of Victoria’s colonial subjects might defer to the queen-empress. But they also expected their petitions of complaint to be addressed in some way.

As well as questioning meanings of deference in the past, we need to problematise assertions of a lack of deference now. Yes: education, social media and travel have sapped some traditional responses, as has a decline in religious belief. But if most of us no longer defer to duchesses, millions avidly follow celebrities. In Britain we glumly put up with almost half of the country’s wealth being held by a tenth of the population. So perhaps enquiring why the age of deference has declined is not the right question to be asking?

‘Deference in terms of loyalty to traditional institutions remains alive and well in modern Britain’

Miles Taylor is Professor of British History and Society at Humboldt University of Berlin

Deference means two things to political historians: class and tradition. Class deference points to the deeply rooted habits of the social hierarchy which has existed in many countries since the onset of modern society in the late 18th century. In Britain, where there was no democratic transformation akin to the French Revolution of 1789, deferential attitudes persisted well into the late 20th century. The working classes tugged their proverbial forelocks to the middle classes, who in turn were supine towards the aristocratic elite and the super-rich, long after the decline of the nobility. Class consciousness of this kind was immortalised in ‘The Three Classes’ comedy sketch (The Frost Report, 1966) in which a patrician John Cleese looks snootily at a bumptious banker-type played by Ronnie Barker, who stares down his nose at a diminutive cloth-capped Ronnie Corbett.

Nowadays there is little of this social deference left in Britain. The years of Thatcherism and New Labour created a new mood of individualism, a dislike of class privilege and even, as some historians argue, a celebration of ‘ordinariness’. Neither the Conservatives nor Labour can any more take for granted class voting based on historic herd behaviour. However, deference in terms of loyalty to traditional institutions remains alive and well in modern Britain. In 1867 the Victorian political commentator Walter Bagehot ingeniously described in his The English Constitution the reverence for what he called the ‘dignified’ parts of the constitution, such as the monarchy and the House of Lords. True, the Brexit crisis and subsequent turmoil at Westminster, together with the end of the long reign of Elizabeth II, have chipped away at unquestioning support for these archaic survivals. And yet they linger on, providing much of the ritual and ceremony of national life. As the French political scientist Catherine Marshall has recently suggested, this is a form of peculiarly English ‘voluntary’ deference that marks it out from the rest of Europe.

‘It was certainly under threat by the late Georgian era’

Natalee Garrett is Lecturer in History at the Open University

Though it may seem a very modern development, evidence of the beginning of the end of deference can be found in the late Georgian era, when Britain’s press culture began to undermine the image of the royal family. In that era George III and Queen Charlotte worked hard to shape a positive, moral image of the British monarchy. However, they were increasingly fighting against an evolving print culture which revelled in exposing embarrassing and scandalous details of royal behaviour. The antics of their son, the Prince of Wales, were a common source of entertainment and criticism in newspapers and satirical prints, but even the king wasn’t immune to public insolence.

The Prince of Wales had several romantic dalliances in his youth, including a marriage to a Roman Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert, which was not legal under the Royal Marriages Act. After news of the marriage leaked to the press in 1785, one satirical artist was bold enough to produce an image of the heir to the throne and his ‘wife’ in bed together. Other reports and images showing the prince in amorous situations demonstrate how the growing press culture of the period challenged traditional notions of deference by blurring the boundaries between the ‘public’ and ‘private’ lives of royalty.

The public image of George III in the 1790s and early 1800s also reveals the diversity of views of the monarchy. The rise of patriotism during Britain’s wars with Republican France saw the king portrayed as a venerable father-figure whose constitutional role and strong values provided Britain with stability during an age of revolution. Yet even this ‘reverence’ for the king was not uniform: the state coach was attacked by anti-war protesters when he travelled to Parliament in 1795.

In Britain, the Georgian period was a time when the monarchy as an institution still commanded deference and respect in theory, but the rise of print culture and public appetite for scandal led to portrayals of individual members of the royal family in new and often disrespectful ways. If the British monarchy had ever truly enjoyed an uncontested ‘Age of Deference’, it was certainly under threat by the end of the 18th century.

‘One might expect that the waning of deference would weaken the monarchy. This did not happen’ 

Jane Ridley is Professor Emerita of History at the University of Buckingham

The ‘Age of Deference’ was characterised by class politics, inherited privilege, economic inequality and patriarchy. Women were expected to obey their husbands, and the working classes deferred to their social superiors. Deference peaked in the 19th and early 20th century when the Crown stood at the apex of the class system.

There are many reasons for the end of the deference. The vast casualties sustained by the British army in the First World War undermined the authority of the officer class, and in the 1920s and 1930s writers such as Evelyn Waugh satirised and ridiculed the upper classes. The swinging sixties brought a youth culture in open rebellion against the older generation, and pop culture symbolised the end of deference. Feminists demanded equal pay and equal rights for women.

One might expect that the waning of deference would weaken the monarchy. But this did not happen. On the contrary, the monarchy adapted to the change and, from the 1870s, as the Crown lost its executive power, royal ceremonial became ever more splendid, public – and popular.

One reaction of the monarchy to the shrinking of deference was to show that the royal family were normal people. Royal Family a television programme jointly produced by the BBC and ITV, followed the royals for a year. Airing on BBC1 on 21 June 1969, the fly-on-the-wall footage shows the private life of Elizabeth II and her family. But those who criticised the film for destroying the mystique of monarchy and letting in daylight on the magic were proved right. The film was withdrawn. Too late, the royals had realised that if the queen was prepared to welcome television cameras, there was no justification for protecting the privacy of the royals from the inroads of the tabloid press.

Today, one of the biggest puzzles is the continued popularity of Elizabeth II. In the last decades of her reign, as Britain became less deferential than ever, the queen’s popularity surged. This is a paradox which historians have yet to explain.