What we should remember of course is that, ironically while Britain was at the height of it's power it had huge slums in many of it's major cities. Take for example East London where I live which had in the late Victorian Era a massive number of brothels, hugely out of proportion to it's size, with a high percentage of child prostitutes - and the average life expectancy for the people of the area was only around 40 or so. On the whole British Imperialism benefited an elite, who by constant rhetoric and jingoism managed to convince the other sections of society to some extent at least of how great Britain was for civilising everywhere. Also, in all fairness some of the local rulers were eager to jump into bed in some areas with the British-especially some of the minor rajahs you found in India, who thought they could invite Britain in, but then found they couldn't get em to leave.

A good synopsis of how the English lower classes suffered themselves is presented in Shaw's, "John Bull's Other Island" where an Irish character is explaining the tragic history of Ireland after British occupation to which the English character responds,"Oh do stow it Paddy", and tells him about his wife died in a rented room with no heat when they couldn't pay the landlord and how his father lost his business for been a few weeks behind on bills. That is why to me James Connolly's socialist republicanism is more informed and intelligent than the simplistic Irish Nationalism as preached by other movements.