Demands for parliamentary reform began in the final years of the
war. In 1812, Major John Cartwright, a
radical leader who had campaigned for parliamentary reform since the 1760s,
began the first of three tours of the Midlands and
North. He wanted working- and middle-classes
to work together to obtain parliamentary reform. The result was the creation of Hampden Clubs[1] especially in the northern manufacturing districts hit by the slump in
trade. These were working-class in composition
and moved away from the household or taxpayer suffrages demanded by middle-class reformers towards demands for manhood
suffrage. The Political Unions,
organised by northern workingmen replaced the Hampden Clubs (they were finally
banned in 1817) and helped organise over 2,000 petitions for parliamentary
reform between 1817 and 1818.
These two radical
organisations raised a series of problems that were to dog radical activity
until the 1850s. Was parliamentary reform best achieved by class collaboration
(middle and working-classes working together) or by the working-class acting
alone? Should parliamentary reform be
approached solely through demands for manhood suffrage (one man, one vote) or
through achieving limited suffrage (household or taxpayer suffrage) and then
moving to manhood suffrage (votes for adult males)? The problem with this approach and class
collaboration was that once the middle-classes had achieved limited suffrage,
their enthusiasm for further reform waned.
This can be seen in the aftermath of the 1832 Reform Act. What tactics should radicals use to achieve
parliamentary reform? Should radicals
rely on persuasion (the use of petitions and meetings) to achieve their aims or
should they adopt a more revolutionary approach using force if the government
refused to act on their demands?
It is easy to write
off the revolutionaries as a failed minority and in retrospect, their
activities can be seen as laughably naïve and doomed to inevitable
failure. However, there was a
revolutionary underground in Britain that can be traced back to the late 1790s
and it was prepared to confront the authorities with armed force. The Luddite attacks between 1812 and 1815 had
a revolutionary dimension and the Blanketeers projected march from Manchester to
London to
present a petition implied the use of force.
The fiasco of the Cato Street Conspiracy needs to be seen in
the context of the actions of Glasgow weavers who were defeated by troops at the
battle of Bonnymuir or the West Riding woollen workers who seized weapons and tried to take
Huddersfield in April 1820. The problem
that radical faced was that attempts at revolution increased support for firm
government action when public order and property were threatened.
The transition to a
peacetime economy between 1815 and 1821 severely strained social and economic
relationships. Falling demand for
manufactured goods, especially textiles and
the flooding of the labour market with
demobilised soldiers and sailors increased unemployment. In
the climate of ‘distress’, the government found itself under pressure
from two quarters. It faced protest that
took traditional forms, like the Fenland riots of 1816 that aimed at restoring ‘just’
wages and
prices. There
were also growing demands for political reform from the radical platform of
Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt[2] and William Cobbett. Hunt built
on the foundations created by the Hampden Clubs and
mobilised people around demands for manhood suffrage, annual parliaments and
the secret ballot.
Disturbances in 1815
and 1816 convinced Lord Sidmouth[3] that the government faced a revolutionary
challenge to its authority. The disorder
at the Spa Field meetings calling for parliamentary reform in London in
November and December 1816 appeared to confirm his fears. The attack on the
Prince Regent’s coach in late January 1817 was followed later in the year by
the march of the Blanketeers,[4] unemployed workers from Lancashire and
Cheshire. These events and Pentrich rising[5] in Derbyshire shifted middle-class public
opinion, previously sympathetic to the radical demands behind the government
that was committed to preserving public order and defending property. In 1817,
Habeas Corpus[6] was suspended and restrictions placed on
meetings for twelve months (the Seditious Meetings Act). The opposition Whigs were as worried by
events as the government and became more cautious in their approach to
parliamentary reform.
Prompt action by the
government only partly explains the decline in radical activities. Economic conditions eased during 1817 and
1818 and this led to a decline in radical activity. William Cobbett maintained that it was difficult to ‘agitate a
fellow with a full stomach’. Habeas
Corpus was
revived early in 1818 and the Seditious Meetings Act lapsed in July that year. However,
economic distress returned in 1819 and radicalism revived in
1819 reaching its peak in the ‘Peterloo Massacre’ in August 1819.[7] There
was a wave of public support for the radical cause and even The Times
attacked the actions of the Manchester magistrates. The
problem that faced Hunt and
the radical leadership was how to translate this support into practical
actions. It was clear that the
government did not intend to give in to radical demands for parliamentary
reform. Liverpool, though Sidmouth had advised the Manchester
magistrates against taking any precipitous action, had
little choice but to support their actions.
Repression was re-imposed in the ‘Six Acts’ restricting meetings and the press,
allowing magistrates to
seize weapons, and preventing drilling.
They gave the government powers to deal harshly with even slight
symptoms of discontent. The radical
agitation faltered despite the intense unpopularity of the government.
The Cato Street conspiracy, when a group led by
the clearly unstable Arthur Thistlewood planned to assassinate the Cabinet in
February 1820, had little impact on public opinion though Liverpool was able to
make political capital out of it during the election campaign caused by the
sudden death of George III the
previous month. More damaging for
Liverpool was the unsuccessful attempt by the new king, George IV to
divorce his wife Queen Caroline and
the successful attempt to prevent her attending his coronation in 1821 (she was
locked out of Westminster Abbey). George
IV became king on the death of his father in January 1820. He had long lived apart from him wife whose
behaviour had been a cause of concern since the mid-1800s. In June 1820, she returned from Italy to
claim her rights as queen, to which George IV was totally opposed. The government was instructed to dissolve the
marriage. It was forced to abandon its
attempts to deprive Caroline of her title and dissolve the marriage in November
1820 after widespread popular and Whig opposition.
She died suddenly in August 1821, three weeks after the coronation and
the London crowds
forced the military to take her coffin through the City on its way to Harwich
and to her family home in Brunswick. The Queen Caroline affair made the
government very unpopular and the Queen’s cause provided a rallying point for
radical campaigners.
Once again, as the
economy revived in the early 1820s, radicalism declined. The public’s energies were diverted into
other forms of radical action. Some
workingmen turned to religion and there were Methodist revivals in Lancashire and
Cumberland. Others campaigned against
the Combination Acts.
Successful parliamentary pressure led to the repeal of the Combination
Acts in 1824. A downturn in the economy
led to a rapid increase in trade union activity with extensive strikes,
including some violence in the winter of 1824-1825. Employers lobbied for the
reintroduction of the Combination Acts and in 1825 new legislation was
introduced that allowed unions to negotiate over wages and
conditions but did not confer the right to strike. This effectively limited trade unions to
peaceful collective bargaining with employers over wages and
hours. Trade unionists who went beyond
this narrow definition of legal activity for trade unions could
be prosecuted for criminal conspiracy.
Two linked issues
arise from the revival of radicalism after 1815: how revolutionary was it and
how justifiable was the response of the government? The radical platform posed
a significant threat in that it created a potential for revolution. This was a very real fear for central and local
authorities that feared a repeat of events in France thirty
years earlier. However, radicals who
sought revolutionary solutions were never a leading force in the movement. Far more importantly, the radical platform’s
grievances challenged the whole direction of social development created by the
industrial revolution.
There was a growing belief that working-class grievances like discriminatory taxation, the Corn Laws, the game laws, and the legal ban on trade
unions could
only be resolved by a parliament elected on democratic principles. Unrest and
agitation, though they appeared to contemporaries to be part of a nation-wide movement,
are best seen in terms of responses to local conditions. In this situation, the
local magistrates rather
than central government were at the forefront of reaction. The Home Office was
prepared to provide advice to local authorities and increasingly its officials
became convinced that there was a general desire to begin a national
revolution. The problem that Liverpool
faced was that he had to rely on information provided by magistrates who
reached national conclusions on their basis of their own local experiences,
army officers and spies who often exaggerated the nature of the radical threat
for financial gain.
Liverpool was
therefore responding to a perceived threat to public order based on inaccurate
and, on occasions, deceptive information.
As a result, the government often overreacted to events as a result and
because it did not wish to run any risk of revolution ever happening in
Britain. In fact, Liverpool’s approach
was relatively moderate. When
legislation was passed, it was either, like the Seditious Meetings Acts given a
time limit or as the Six Acts demonstrated largely ineffective in
practice. These radical demands
challenged the political and economic power of the landed classes and
industrialists and it was this that added a potentially revolutionary dimension
of the radical challenge. The reaction of the government though criticised by
contemporaries and historians as dictatorial emphasised the need for public
order and tried--not always successfully--to distinguish between genuine social
grievances and deliberately disruptive radical activity.
[1] Hampden Clubs were first set
up in 1812 by Major Cartwright to promote the cause of parliamentary
reform. They were named after Sir John
Hampden who fought and died for the cause of Parliament in the Civil
Wars in the mid-seventeenth century. They were banned by the government in
1817.
[2] Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt (1773-1835)
advocated annual parliaments and universal suffrage (one man, one vote). He was the major leader of the radical
movement in the 1810s.
[3] Henry Addington 1st Viscount
Sidmouth (1757-1844) was an able
administrator but a mediocre Prime Minister between 1801 and 1804. He was an effective Home Secretary between
1812 and 1822
[4] March of the
Blanketeers. Manchester textile workers
decided to march to London to petition the Prince Regent for
parliamentary reform. They each carried
a blanket but few got beyond Stockport and only one reached London.
[6] Habeas Corpus. A writ
requiring that someone who has been arrested and imprisoned should be examined
by the courts to see whether there are sufficient grounds for continued
imprisonment. It is an effective means
of protecting the individual against arbitrary arrest and detention.
[7] Peterloo
Massacre. On 16 August 1819, a peaceful meeting was
held at St Peter’s Field, Manchester. Local
magistrates decided to
arrest Hunt who was one of
the speakers. The Yeomanry were given
this task, in the ensuing chaos, large numbers of people were injured, and at
least eleven killed.
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