Transcription
Well, here I am outside the Palace of Westminster, the seat of Parliament since the 13th century. If you like, this is the focus of this entire story. As I've explained, Parliament in the early industrial period was unrepresentative of any but a small fraction of the population—basically just the landowning elite.
But in the 1830s, two traumatic events shook Westminster. The first was a massive fire that destroyed almost the entire building. While not important to our story, it served as a symbol that change could occur even here. The second was a piece of legislation—a law pushed through Parliament. It's vital to understand this act if we're to grasp the anger that rippled across Britain in the late 1830s. This crucial piece of legislation was the Great Reform Act of 1832.
Now, if you read old-fashioned history books about 19th-century Britain, you'll find the Great Reform Act hailed as a triumph, a milestone on the onward march to democracy. And it's true; certainly, it made Parliament more representative. It gave MPs to the new industrial towns and doubled the number of voters. Yet, it caused such anger. Why?
To be honest, I don't think it was a great Reform Act at all. I think it was a nasty, small-minded, hypocritical little Reform Act. Here’s the point: the MPs who passed this act weren’t interested in increasing democracy in this country; they were trying to block it. They thought, "If we give the vote to a few more people, all of whom, like us, have property—if we get to vote—cozy middle-class folk, industrialists, factory owners, bankers, shopkeepers—then they'll help us keep the vote out of the hands of everyone else: the rabble, the swinish multitude."
1832 was the moment in British history when the propertied classes in the countryside and the property classes in the towns joined forces, closing ranks against the poor—the laborers in the countryside and the workers in the towns. The Reform Act was met with celebration among the middle classes—those with a tidy sum of ten pounds a year—who could now vote. But the Act confirmed to the workers their powerlessness, and out of that disappointment was born a new political movement: the Chartist movement, the greatest expression yet of the people's demand for political change.
It began peacefully; signatures were collected for a petition, the Great Charter. It listed their demands: votes for secret ballots, regular Parliaments, payment of MPs—all rights we take now for granted, the building blocks of our democracy. But when the Charter was brought to Westminster in 1839, it was laughed out of Parliament. And so, the tide began to turn, and a new slogan was heard here in the mills and the factories: "Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must."
There were rumors of muskets stockpiled and of local blacksmiths mass-producing weapons. From about October 1839, we read these first tantalizing accounts from police records of workers, at the end of the factory day, foot slogging it up onto the moors, there to drill for the revolution that must now surely come. But it never did.
It's strange, you know. In France, there were revolutions—not just in 1789, but in 1830, in 1848, in 1870—all that violent upheaval. But here, the revolution never came. Some historians, reflecting on that contrast between France and Britain, have concluded that maybe we Brits were just too quiet, too uncomplaining. Was that how it was?
Well, I don't think so. The thousands of men who mobilized up here on the moors were hardly quiet and uncomplaining. But when that bubbling anger spilled into actual confrontation—in Newport, in Sheffield, in Bradford—these riots were crushed almost before they’d begun. The fact is that the Chartist movement was riddled with police informers, police spies, and when the riots began, the authorities were ready. The militias moved in, arrests were made, and the Chartist leaders were broken with years of hard labor in prison.
The last time the Chartists met was in London on a rainy day in 1848. It was all rather sad; there were apparently more spectators than demonstrators. The police barred the Chartists from marching on Parliament, and the demonstrators all went home. I think at that moment, they must have despaired that the vote would never be won. But it was in the most unlikely way.