the great reform act and the chartist challenge dr robert saunders

The Great Reform Act and the Chartist ChallengeDr Robert Saunders

#unravellingbritain: week 2

Spencer Perceval (1832)• ‘I tell ye that this land will soon

be desolate; a little time and ye shall howl one and all in your streets. The pestilence is let loose among ye, and the sword will follow it. Therefore, trouble yourselves not with this Bill; for this which I have told ye is your doom’.

The Age of Reform• 1832: The ‘Great’ Reform Act Reforms the constituency system and extends the franchise to middle class voters• 1867: The Second Reform Act Extends the vote to working men in towns• 1884/5: The Third Reform Act Extends the vote to working men in counties• 1918: The Fourth Reform Act Establishes universal suffrage for men and enfranchises most women over 30• 1928: The Fifth Reform Act Equalises the voting qualification for men and women, enfranchising almost everyone over the age of 21

Francis Place: the country ‘within a moment of

general rebellion’

Sidney Smith: ‘a hand-shaking, bowel-disturbing passion of

fear’

‘Rotten boroughs’: Old Sarum

POPULATION: 0 MPs: 2

TRIGGERS FOR REFORM

• ECONOMIC DOWNTURN

• REVOLUTION IN FRANCE, 1830

• CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION, 1829Formation of ‘Whig’ government, 1830

The Reform Bill• Boroughs: £10 franchise (later: £50 franchise for counties)• Redistribution: 143 seats redistributed.

Rotten boroughs abolishedSeats for Manchester, Birmingham etc.

• Residence: Abolishes ‘out-voters’• Registration: All voters must be on the electoral register a year inadvance.

‘The Tree of Taxation’

Benjamin Haydon, ‘The Meeting of the Unions’ (1832)

The Song of Freedom

‘God is our guide! from field, from wave,From plough, from anvil, and from loom,We come, our country’s rights to save,And speak a tyrant faction’s doom;We raise the watchword Liberty.We will, we will, we will be free!’

• The reform bill was ‘a Satanic measure’, ‘the work of the Anti-Christ’

• All who supported the bill were ‘banded with the enemies of God’

William Ewart Gladstone

Bristol Burns

OCTOBER 1831

‘SATAN – REFORMER’‘Satan stood high upon Brandon Hill,With his fiery eyeballs glowing;He banged the ground with his swinging tail,And the Demons came round him, and cried, All hail!See, see, how Reform is going!

Satan he stood in the blazing square,In the midst of conflagration;And shouted, Reform! – the day’s my own,I’ve won me on earth another throne –And this is my Coronation’.

Blackwood’s, April 1832

Sir Robert Peel• ‘I was unwilling to open a door

which I saw no prospect of being able to close’

King William IV, aka “Reform Bill”

Chartism and ‘the People’s Charter’

‘The Six Points’• Universal manhood suffrage• Equal electoral districts• Secret ballot• Annual elections• Payment of MPs• Abolition of the property

qualification for MPs

The Poor Law (Amendment) Act, 1834

‘Please, sir, can I have some more?’

Two main principles:

• ‘The workhouse test’ (no poor relief outside the workhouse)

• ‘Less eligibility’ (the condition of the pauper must be lower than the poorest independent labourer’

A system based on DETERRENCE

The ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ (1834)

The First National Petition (1838-9)

• ‘our workmen are starving; the home of the artificer is desolate, and the warehouse of the pawnbroker is full; the workhouse is crowded and the manufactury is deserted.

• It was the fond expectation of the people that a remedy for their grievances, would be found in the Reform Act.

• They have been bitterly and basely deceived’.

Chartist Hymns‘How long shall babes of tender years

Be doomed to toil for lazy peers –

The locusts of our land?

Make bare thine arm, O Lord! defend

The helpless, and, be thou their friend

And shield them with thine hand!’

Women in Chartism

Peel’s Second Government, 1841-46

• Reintroduction of income tax• Repeal of the Corn Laws• Free Trade in most foodstuffs

and raw materials• Goal: that ‘thoughts of the

dissolution of our institutions should be forgotten in the midst of physical enjoyment’.