Страница 59 из 87
In the weaving districts of the west of Scotland in the early months of 1820, discontent was mounting. A plan to stage a general strike on 1 April to draw attention to economic grievances was greeted with enormous enthusiasm. The strike involved the whole of Glasgow’s textile workers, as well as those in Paisley, Kilsyth and a number of surrounding villages. All in all, some 60,000 workers heeded the call to cease work in an attempt to recover ‘their rights’. The strike lasted only a few days. By 7 April, the weavers were said to have returned to their looms, but while the strike was in full swing it was the springboard for an audacious armed revolt.
Some 1,500 men were said to be armed and engaged in military drills with muskets and pikes. Of the armed factions, two small groups were prepared to go beyond parading:
On 5 April, 20 men, under the leadership of James Wilson, a stockingmaker and long-serving radical, marched on Glasgow under the impression that it was in the control of rebel forces. When they discovered that this was not the case, they panicked and fled.
Another contingent of 40 men, under the leadership of Andrew Hardie, a weaver and devout Christian, marched toward Stirling to capture the Carron ironworks, which manufactured ca
Between the two incidents, 88 men were charged with treason. Of these, 58 escaped; 30 were tried, of which 15 to 20 were sentenced to transportation; and 3, Wilson, Hardie and Baird, were executed.
The savagery of the execution of James Wilson, a man of 60 years, who was hung in front of a Glasgow crowd of 20,000 and then had his head cut off, was meant to shock. Two other radicals, John Baird, a 32-year-old weaver from Condorrat, and Andrew Hardie, a 28-year-old weaver from Glasgow, were executed in Stirling, watched by a crowd of 2,000. The authorities wouldn’t pay the 20 guineas to have their heads severed.
The night before his execution, Hardie wrote to his girlfriend:
I shall die firm to the cause in which I embarked, and although we were outwitted and betrayed, yet I protest, as a dying man, it was done with good intention on my part… . No person could have induced me to take up arms to rob or plunder; no, my dear Margaret, I took them for the restoration of those rights for which our forefathers bled, and which we have allowed shamefully to be wrested from us.
Hardie’s words provide an insight into why the men took up arms, but there is no record of factory workers or coalminers being involved. Hand-loom weavers were the most disaffected group of workers in Scotland, owing to the decline in their income and status; their part in the revolt was as much an expression of distaste for changing values as it was for reform. The weavers were defending an older way of life against unpla
The failure of the Cato conspirators and the Bo
It seemed that once again nothing had been achieved. But the events of Peterloo and the 1820 risings had an impact:
They convinced middle-class reformers, and some Whigs, of the consequences that would result from their continued loss of influence among the unrepresented masses and of the dangers of refusing to make concessions.
As William Wilberforce put it: ‘they had a duty to rescue the multitude from the hands of the Hunts and Thistlewoods’.
Peterloo secured the right of public meetings. Never again would violence be used in such an uncontrolled way on a peaceful crowd on the British mainland.
Peterloo fragmented relationships between workers and their social superiors. Exclusively working-class institutions began to emerge with alternative views on how to run the economy.
With the upturn in the economy, by the mid-1820s, there was no public enthusiasm for reform. But the demand never completely died – it was just temporarily sidelined.
Enlightened Tories: An oxymoron?
The 1820s have been described as the age of ‘enlightened Toryism’. Peel and other Tories were quietly reversing the most repressive legislation of the post-1815 years and embarking on a programme of reform, which included repeal of the anti-trade-union Combination laws (which had ba
A far more important concession was the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, allowing Catholics to play a full role in public and political life. Major concessions on so sensitive an issue as Catholic emancipation naturally encouraged those looking for other types of reform.
The Whigs themselves were deeply divided as to what sort of parliament they wanted, but they were encouraged to step up their campaign, partly arguing out of principle, partly out of fear – fear of the masses if reform was not agreed.
By the late 1820s, popular agitation was reviving renewed economic problems. The Tories, by then deeply divided over reforms such as Catholic emancipation, hung grimly on to power until 1830. But that year proved a decisive turning point:
The first event was the news of revolution in France, with the fall of the reactionary Bourbon king in a swift and bloodless coup. This inspired popular radicals – it showed that a reactionary regime could be overthrown by popular action. Many sympathisers who had held back active support from the radical movement because they feared that such action would lead to war and chaos were reassured that these outcomes were not inevitable.
The second event that transformed the political situation was the death of King George IV – or rather not his death but the fact that, by law, a general election had to follow. At the election, the reform of Parliament and the attack on aristocratic privileges in general were the main issues. In spite of the increase in strength in the Commons by reforming Whigs, the outgoing Tory prime minister, the duke of Wellington, blandly stated that the existing state of representation in Parliament was perfect.
Reform or revolution
The Whigs, who came to power under Lord Grey, took a more flexible attitude to reform, although deep down they shared the same prejudices as the unreformed Tories. Grey, soon to become a national hero as Lord Grey of the Reform Bill, was an aristocrat (as were all the members of his Cabinet). Representing the most conservative section of the Whigs, Grey supported reform to ‘afford some ground of resistance to further i
To cut a long story short, in 1831, the Whigs introduced the first reform bill, which was defeated at the committee stage. The Whigs immediately called for another general election, which further increased their strength in the Commons. A second reform bill was introduced and passed in the Commons, only to be thrown out by the Lords, an event that provoked a furious reaction throughout the country. The spectre of violent revolution seemed to be looming. Serious disturbances broke out in Nottingham and Derby, and at Bristol a mob ran riot for two days.
The question was: how could the resistance of the unelected House of Lords be overcome? The solution lay in introducing a third reform bill and creating enough new peers sympathetic to reform. The threat was clear enough, but King William refused to agree to the plan. This refusal plunged the country into confusion and panic, as the Grey administration resigned and the Tories were invited to form a new government.
The resignation of the Grey administration provoked large demonstrations orchestrated by London Radicals aimed at destabilising the Wellington government. The demonstrations proved successful, and the king was forced to consent to Grey’s request for more new peers.
Faced with inevitable defeat, the diehards in the Lords allowed the third reform bill through committee. On 14 June 1832, the third reading of the bill was passed by 106 votes to 22 in the Lords. Three days later, it received royal assent. It applied only to England and Wales, but separate acts for Ireland and Scotland soon followed.
The effect of the Great Reform Act of 1832
Contemporaries spoke of the Great Reform Act and Grey became a national hero, but was such an accolade justified? How great indeed was the Great Reform Act of 1832? On the face of it, the act was a fairly moderate measure. In Scotland, eight new burgh seats were created, including additional MPs for Edinburgh and Glasgow. The old practice of only having burghs represented if they held the status of royal burgh was abandoned as meaningless; towns like Paisley and Greenock were given an MP. In England, 56 rotten boroughs were totally disenfranchised; 30 others lost one of their two members; 22 two-member constituencies were created and 20 one-member; 7 counties received a third MPs; and 26 two-member constituencies were halved, sending two MPs for each division. However, it was all a bit of a sham.
The act did nothing to reduce the power of the landed elite, but then again it wasn’t meant to. It didn’t really do much to increase the number of electors either. The total effect of the act was to increase the electorate of Great Britain from 478,000 to 813,000 out of a population of 24 million. Put another way, one in seven adult males over the age of 21 were enfranchised. However, there were significant national differences. In Scotland in 1820, only 4,250 males had the right to vote; after 1832, this number increased to 65,000 – an increase in the electorate of 1,400 per cent compared to only 80 per cent in England. In 1820, about 0.2 per cent of the Scottish population was qualified to vote; the Reform Act raised this to 2.7 per cent. But who was enfranchised and who remained excluded?
In urban areas a uniform franchise was introduced based on householders who could prove residence for 12 months and who had paid rates and taxes. In the countryside, it was more complex, with several categories of eligible voters, but mainly small landowners and substantial tenant farmers. So, it was property owners in the main who were enfranchised both in the towns and in the countryside. This meant that working-class males, all women regardless of social class and a host of smaller groups including, peers, paupers, lunatics, aliens, magistrates, post office workers, policemen and customs officials were all excluded.