Unit 3 - Industrialisation and people - Political Change and Social Reform (1832-1846)

Chronology of Agriculture, 1832-46

- 1836: Enclosure Act - 1845: Enclosure Act - 1846: Agricultural Drainage Act - 1846: Repeal of the Corn Laws

Chronology of Whig reform, 1833-35

1833 - Government provisions of £20,000 to voluntary educational societies to provide schools 1833 - Factory Act 1833 - Abolition of Slavery 1834 - Poor Law Amendment Act 1835 - Municipal Corporations Act

Lord Ashley, child labour, and factory reform

After the passing of the 1833 Factory Act, the momentum for further reform did not abate. As we have seen, Lord Ashley was one of the foremost social reformers of the day, with a particular passion for factory reform. In June 1836 a Ten Hours Bill was introduced into the Commons and although Ashley considered this Bill ill-timed, he supported it. In July 1837 Ashley accused the government of ignoring breaches of the 1833 Factory Act relating to working hours and moved the resolution that the House regret that the regulation of the working hours of children had been found to be unsatisfactory. Sadly, the motion was lost by fifteen votes. In 1842 Ashley wrote twice to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, to urge his government to support a new Factory Act. Peel replied that he would not support a Bill, and so Ashley wrote to the Short Time Committees of Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, who desired a Ten Hours Act. This letter illustrated well his stance that as an Evangelical, public duty was part of his religious belief: 'Though painfully disappointed, I am not disheartened, nor am I at a loss either what course to take, or what advice to give. I shall persevere unto my last hour, and so must you; we must exhaust every legitimate means that the Constitution afford, in petitions to Parliament, in public meetings, and in friendly conferences with your employers; but you must infringe no law, and offend no proprieties; we must all work together as sensible men, who will one day give an account of their motives and actions; if this course is approved, no consideration shall detach me from your cause; if not, you must elect another advocate. I know that, in resolving on this step, I exclude myself altogether from the tenure of office; I rejoice in the sacrifice, happy to devote the remainder of my days, be they many or be they few, as God in His wisdom shall determine, to an effort, however laborious, to ameliorate your moral and social condition'. In March 1844 Ashley moved an amendment to a Factory Bill limiting the working hours of adolescents to ten hours after Sir James Graham had introduced a Bill aiming to limit their work time to twelve hours a day. Ashley's amendment was passed by eight votes—the first time the Commons had approved of the Ten Hour principle. However, in a later vote his amendment was defeated by seven votes and the Bill withdrawn. Later that month Graham introduced another Bill which again would limit the employment of adolescents to twelve hours. Ashley supported this Bill despite that he wanted ten hours not twelve as the limit. In May he again moved an amendment to cap hours worked at ten, but this was lost by 138 votes. Nevertheless, the 1844 Factory Act did provide workers with more protection, for 8 to 13 year olds were to receive three hours' schooling a day and could not work more than six and a half hours each day. Women's working hours were limited to 12 hours a day, and for the first time, dangerous machinery was to be fenced. Ashley also sought to improve condition in the highly-dangerous coal-mining industry, by introducing the Mines and Collieries Act in 1842 to outlaw the employment of all women and boys under the age of 10 to work underground, while also making provision for enforcement by the establishment of a Government Inspectorate. Despite the opposition of many manufacturers, factory owners, and MPs who opposed extensive State interference in the economic relations between business owners and workers, or 'masters and men' as it was often called, the legislation was passed. Shaftesbury was arguably the leading advocate for improving the working and social conditions of the lower classes. Like other Tories involved in pressing for factory reform, he did this not out of regard for democracy - indeed he was vehemently opposed to any further constitutional changes after the 1832 Reform Act. His motivation was rather a mixture of old-style Tory paternalism and new-style devout Evangelicalism, which so influenced many 'Tory radical' politicians at this time. A large body of Conservative MPs consistently supported a Ten Hours Bill, while the Whigs were divided and the radicals, often closely connected with manufacturing districts, if not manufacturers themselves, were mostly hostile. After he left the Commons in 1846 his role as leader of the Ten Hour Movement and other humanitarian reforms passed to John Fielden.

The Poor Law Amendment Act

An Act based on the commissioners' principles of the workhouse test and the notion of less eligibility was passed in 1834. These phrases were not actually used in the Act, nor did it specifically prescribe the ending of outdoor relief or allowances. However, guidance from the new central administrators was in favour of these principles and of a change towards making workhouses the norm and life in them less attractive than employment outside, whether in field or factory. The key administrative and organisational features introduced by the Act were: - centralisation of poor relief oversight to ensure uniformity of practice via a London-based Poor Law Commission with Edwin Chadwick as its Secretary - grouping together of parishes into Poor Law Unions, each with its own workhouse - locally elected Poor Law Guardians to replace overseers - appointment of 12 Assistant Commissioners to coordinate and monitor the application of the amended law in the regions. Workhouses that came into being were encouraged to use strategies that we would now find repellent. Separation of sexes and families, the wearing of prison-style uniforms and the necessity of undertaking repetitive and often pointless labour became standard in many. Despite the incorporation of 'work' in workhouse, there is little dispute that the majority of workhouses post-1834 were not places of productive work, in contrast to most of their late eighteenth-century predecessors, but quite simply places of incarceration. Deterrence, not reformation, came to be seen as the main purpose of the New Poor Law. There was only very limited opposition to the Act's passage in Parliament. MPs generally respected the views of 'experts' on the Royal Commission and, with many being substantial landed ratepayers themselves, the argument that it would save ratepayers' money, unsurprisingly, went down well. Significantly for the future implementation of the Act in the North of England, what opposition there was came in large part from the newly enfranchised industrial boroughs. In the event, the bill passed its Commons second reading by 319 to 20. Outside Parliament, though, there were some formidable forces lined up against the utilitarian authors of the act, with many leading writers of the time solidly antagonistic. Disraeli, the future Conservative Prime Minister, devised a new name for the doctrine most closely linked to the Poor Law Amendment Act: 'Brutilitarianism'. Thomas Carlyle wrote of 'the monster Utilitaria'. Strong objections were raised by such influential organs as The Times and the Tory Quarterly Review. It soon became common for critics to refer to workhouses as 'Bastilles' run on prison lines.

Was Peel justified in repealing the Corn Laws in the face of the opposition of most of his party? Explain your answer.

Answers should allude to Peel viewing the national interest as being served by Corn Law Repeal. He increasingly accepted the Anti-Corn Law League view that Repeal would not harm agriculture, and would increase British competitiveness in international markets. Peel also had to deal with the Irish Famine, and it seemed morally wrong to retain protective and restrictive duties on food imports when a part of the United Kingdom was threatened by starvation. Overall, Peel saw himself as a statesman first and a party leader second, and consequently he placed national interests ahead of party interests.

Movement against the Poor Law The impact of the New Poor Law 1834-46

As we have already seen, among the conclusions of the committee report on which the New Poor Law was based was the view that 'the great source of abuse is outdoor relief afforded to the able-bodied'. The government followed the report's main recommendations, so able-bodied people joined the old, the orphaned and the infirm in workhouses, where each category of person was carefully segregated from the others, with oversight from Poor Law Unions, and Boards of Guardians responsible for workhouse administration, under the central administration of the Poor Law Commission. It is important to note at the outset that there was very little that was totally new in the 'new' Poor Law introduced in 1834. Key elements such as the grouping of parishes into Poor Law Unions, the deterrent of the workhouse, and the workhouse test, had all existed at different times and in different places under the Old Poor Law. What changed was, first, the attempt to make these features universal and centrally policed. Second, there was the fact that the post-1834 system was guided by the view that the poor were largely responsible for their own situation, which they could change if they chose or were encouraged to do so. By 1840 about 14,000 out of 15,000 parishes, covering 12 million out of a total English population of 14 million, were in Poor Law Unions. However, workhouses were far from a common picture throughout the country. In fact, despite recommendations from the members of the Royal Commission, outdoor relief for able-bodied paupers was not actually abolished under the 1834 Act, which merely settled for a statement of intent that it would be abolished at some unspecified future date. During 1834-39 some 350 workhouses were constructed, mostly in the 7,000 parishes of the rural South. However, many new Poor Law Unions failed to follow through with a building programme because of lack of accommodation or money. Likewise, several parishes simply did not wish to be dictated to by the central government.. Put quite simply, if the deterrent aspect of the threat of the workhouse failed, it was usually more expensive to build and run workhouses than to offer outdoor relief. Many humane Poor Law Guardians, while constructing workhouses, resorted to hidden forms of outdoor relief to supplement low or non-existent wages. Fifteen of the already established 'Gilbert workhouses', with their generally more humanitarian attitude to outdoor relief, also survived. Where the rigid principles of the 1834 Act were implemented they often lived up to the image of cruelty and ruthlessness ascribed it by its critics. Often, the workhouses constructed fully met the formula of 'less eligibility', one of the key principles set out in the Poor Law Amendment Act. Less eligibility meant that relief was to be given to able-bodied people only in the workhouse, and abolished outside of it. The conditions in the workhouse should be lower than that of the poorest though still employed labourer in the outside world. That was the principle of 'less eligibility in action. In the workhouses, the separation of the sexes and of families, the tedious drudgery of breaking stoners, crushing bones, and picking oakum, the prison-style uniforms, and other degrading aspects of the workhouse regime were fully consistent with the aim of the architects of the system, that the workhouse should be a last resort, and that they should be, in the words of Edwin Chadwick, places of 'uninviting places of wholesome restraint'. Not surprisingly workhouses were soon seen as sites of incarceration rather than of work and, in the preoccupation with the problem of the adult workman, the plight of the other categories of people (old people, children, the sick and invalids) who were committed to the workhouse was often overlooked. Working people came to detest the new Act. The implication that poverty was the fault of the poor themselves was particularly resented. in part because of widespread popular protests and resistance, there was, in practice, a large measure of continuity with the Old Poor Law in the country at large, because the basic structures of the old law were retained in defiance of the law. Where the New Poor Law was operational, Trevelyan's metaphor of treatment without anaesthetic was most apparent in the way in which what were seen as the 'deserving poor' were treated in much the same way as the feckless, 'undeserving' poor. Bradford's radical anti-Poor Law leader Peter Bussey (quoted in Murray, 1999) asked: Did the new law draw a line of demarcation between the good and the evil? No. In the Bastille [nickname for the workhouse] they found the most virtuous people crowded with the most vicious people on earth, and the treatment of one the same as the treatment of the other, and both worse than the common felon. The Poor Law Commissioners paid lip service to this distinction but in practice Guardians often found costs too prohibitive to place able-bodied paupers in separate buildings to other categories. Mixed and general institutions, with able-bodied, young, old and sick all together and subject to the same punitive regimen, were commonplace. It has been estimated that between 1848 and 1870 (when, as you will see, the Poor Law system arguably became less harsh), only about 15% of those in workhouses were actually able-bodied. Best estimates suggest that over 40% of inmates were children, a further 30-40% aged or infirm, and a significant proportion classified as 'pauper lunatics'. An added horror for those in fear of committal to the workhouse was the prospect at death. Under the 1832 Anatomy Act, if a dead body was 'unclaimed' by family within a short space of time, it might be bequeathed to a medical school for the purposes of research. This raised the possibility that the corpses of paupers dying in workhouses might be offered up for dissection, regardless of the individual's wishes when alive. Since the prevailing nineteenth century mind-set was one that venerated dignified Christian burial, this was a uniquely horrifying prospect for paupers who had become (geographically) detached from their families. There were some adjustments made to the 1834 Act in the early 1840s. Under the 1842 Labour Test Orders, outdoor relief could only be allowed if work was done for the parish. This relief was usually in kind rather than money. In 1844 an Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order was applied to all Unions, including the North. As a consequence, about 75% of the country was banned from giving any outdoor relief. However, from the start there were always emergency exceptions and in fact industrial towns rarely complied. The financial impact of the new Poor Law was undoubtedly good news for ratepayers. In the period 1831-34 an annual average of £6.7m had been spent on poor relief; this fell by 35% to £4.6m in the period 1835-38. Even during the severe depression of 1839-42, when Chartism was at its most active, the cost was maintained at the same level. From the narrow financial point of view, the structure set up in 1834 did have real effect and was more cost-effective.

Conditions in urban Britain - Urban growth

Between 1801 and 1851 the population of Britain, excluding Ireland, rose from 10.5 million to 20.8 million Most of the rise can be accounted for in the rapidly expanding urban areas, and urbanisation was a major factor in social change. By 1831, the populations of Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manchester each stood at about 200,000 and growth appeared set to continue. By 1851, there were approximately sixty towns and cities in Britain of that size. By 1846, almost half of Britain's population lived in urban rather than rural areas so conditions in these areas affected a larger percentage of the population. For example, Liverpool's population increased 46% between 1821 and 1831, an increase of 338,000 of whom 222,000 were migrants from rural areas in Britain and from Ireland; this was a pattern repeated across the most rapidly growing urban areas. Rapid population increases brought opportunities for employers and could facilitate economic growth and expansion, but they also brought challenges. They put an immense strain on the existing urban infrastructure—and for the most part, the existing local authority structures and institutions were not equipped to cope with those stresses.

What was Robert Owen's influence on working class organisations like cooperatives and friendly societies?

By promoting the notions of self-help, thrift, and independence, Owen's ideas were influential in the establishment of consumer cooperatives, friendly societies, and even savings banks. Cooperation was a guiding principle but there were other influences at work, especially among status-conscious skilled workers and tradesmen who were keen to draw a distinction between themselves and unskilled workers. Part of this distinction was to project their social and economic values which were informed by self-worth, respectability, and financial independence. Cooperatives were merely the institutional expression of these values.

Some key individuals

Critics of the Poor Law system were not in short supply. Most influential was the author and journalist, Charles Dickens. His voice was echoed by fellow novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, the historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle and Friedrich Engels. Paternalistic Tories such as Richard Oastler, who was also prominent in the campaign for better factory conditions, and the Tory proprietor of The Times, John Walter, added their voices to those who condemned the inhumanity of the workhouse. No person of celebrity campaigned so much for the poor as the novelist Charles Dickens. As a young man, he had worked in the House of Commons as a journalist reporting on debates and he was there when the proposed amendments to the Old Poor Law were being considered in 1834. This certainly helped to colour his attitude to the way the poor were treated and encouraged him to attack the New Poor Law as he continued his journalistic career and began writing novels. Probably the most famous - and deliberate - polemic attacking the New Poor Law was Dickens' novel, Oliver Twist, written in 1837-38 in the immediate aftermath of the implementation of the New Poor Law. Dickens also touched on the iniquities of the system in other novels, notably Hard Times and Our Mutual Friend. In the latter novel Dickens wrote: There has been, since the day of the Stuarts, no law so infamously administered, no law so often openly violated, no law habitually so ill-supervised. In the majority of the shameful cases of disease and death from destitution, that shock the public and disgrace the country, the illegality is quite equal to the inhumanity - and known language could say no more of their lawlessness. As mentioned, Dickens was a journalist as well as a novelist and he used his journalistic talents and energies to press for better treatment of the poor. His editorship of the two journals Household Words and All the Year Round gave him an outlet for his crusade against poverty and its repercussions. He was also involved in projects to help the needy in practical projects, working closely with the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, for example, to establish a home for 'fallen' women, that is, women who had resorted to prostitution'. Another novelist who highlighted the problems faced by the poor was Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-65). In her novels, notably Mary Barton and North and South, she used elements of her plots to critique contemporary conditions and attitudes. Her early works focused on factory life and life in working-class neighbourhoods; Mary Barton is sub-titled A Tale of Manchester Life. She knew Dickens well and many of her works appeared in his periodical Household Words. To some contemporaries, Thomas Carlyle was the leading thinker of his day. In 1839 he wrote Chartism, giving his views on the causes of the early Chartist agitation. Then, in 1845, he published his influential work Past and Present in which he rounded on the defects of the New Poor Law and the workhouse. He expressed outrage at the waste of men's potential. Carlyle compared contemporary attitudes to earlier societies, and while he didn't advocate a return to medieval practices he wondered why some modern, humane equivalent to the more caring practices of the past could not be found. A more political critique came from the pen of Friedrich Engels (1820-95) in his famous work, The Condition of the Working Class in England, written in 1844 and describing life among the poor in Manchester, Engels was a graphic critic of the New Poor Law. He wrote that 'The regulation of these workhouses or, as the people call them, Poor Law Bastilles, is such as to frighten away everyone who has the slightest prospect of life without this form of public charity'. Similarly, Richard Oastler (1789-1861), the factory reformer and opponent of slavery, argued it was the responsibility of the ruling class to protect the weak and vulnerable. In 1836 his encouragement of workers to use strikes and sabotage in their campaign for factory legislation and changes in the Poor Law cost him his job as an estate steward and led to prison sentence (though he continued to write and campaign against workhouses whilst he served it). Oastler saw himself defending old, localist values against cold, utilitarian radicalism. 'What is the principle of the New Poor Law?' he wrote in 1838, 'That man shall give up his liberty to save his life! That, before he shall eat a piece of bread, he shall go into prison.' Arguably more influential, if less well known today, was John Walter (1776-1847), proprietor of The Times newspaper from 1803; Walter was a determined critic of the New Poor Law. The strength of his personal convictions, running counter to the views of many voters in his constituency, cost him his seat in Parliament in 1837. He had previously shown support for parliamentary reform through his newspaper, with Sir Robert Peel arguing that The Times was the 'principal and most powerful advocate of Reform' in Britain. The Times also campaigned for trade union rights and became involved in the case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, condemning the decision to prosecute six farm-workers for administering illegal oaths. From all these sources, condemnation of the New Poor Law was particularly severe, and it highlighted the inhumanity and injustices that economic forces could inflict on individuals in a society where there were few resources to deal with adversity such as unemployment, sickness and disability.

What view does de Toqueville take of conditions in Manchester in 1835? What does the quote tell us about the different aspects of industrial growth?

De Toqueville argues that conditions in Manchester were terrible in social and sanitary terms but that wealth creation was the main objective of the economic activity of industrialists and manufacturers in Manchester and it had reached incredible heights. The quote describes the divergent and apparently contradictory results and effects of rapid industrialisation, urbanisation, population growth and density and the impact of inward migration. The great advances of industry and commerce were remarkable and a tremendous achievement but the social cost of these achievements was very high, with the population degraded and poverty-stricken living in insanitary, deplorable, and dangerous conditions.

Living conditions in the towns

Despite the fact that many workers in industry were better off financially than they would have been in agrarian areas, provided they were in reasonably full employment, there was a considerable social cost. Industrialisation created a growing demand for labour in the industrial towns and cities of the North and Midlands; as workers and their families were sucked in from the surrounding countryside or further afield there was a pressing need to house them. What followed was the creation of slums and the myriad health and social problems that arose from this. Social segregation of the classes continued too, with the crowding together of a large number of people in towns and cities, while the wealthy middle classes increasingly moved out to suburbs, whilst the artisan and tradesmen class often occupied terraced houses, not too far from the centres of towns and cities. However, the vast majority of manufacturing workers lived in hastily-built overcrowded tenements close to the smoky, smelly industrial centres, with entire families often housed in one room. Most people had only very basic facilities, a limited water supply and primitive sanitation. Tenements were overcrowded, draughty, and lacked basic hygiene facilities, with sometimes just a single privy created for each tenement block. Lack of sanitation was a big threat to health in urban areas. An earth privy was a soil pit, that is, a lavatory without water running through it, and it could be shared by several families. Even when water closets were installed in middle class areas, they sometimes drained into open gutters at the side of the road. The incidence of disease was often worst in the old districts of towns like Glasgow and York. In Exeter in 1832, of a population of 28,000 there were 1,200 cases of cholera. Infectious diseases like typhus, whooping cough, dysentery, and measles caused 40% of deaths in industrial towns. Life expectancy was short, with for example approximately half of all children born in Manchester in the 1830s dying before their fifth birthday. Mortality rates, which had fallen steadily from around 1750, rose again during the 1830s and 1840s. High death rates and infant mortality among the labouring poor caused problems with burials. The belief that Christian burials musty take place on holy ground led to church graveyards overflowing and people being buried in multiple-occupancy graves. As a solution to this difficult problem, specially-designed cemeteries, constructed by municipal authorities or by private investment, emerged on the edge of towns. The effects of industrial and urban growth were multi-faceted and unpredictable. A foreign visitor to Manchester in 1835 noted the contrasts and duality of rapid urban growth, industrialisation, and social conditions in the towns with incredulity: 'From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilise the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish, here civilisation works its miracles and civilised man is turned almost into a savage'. (Alexander de Toqueville, Journeys to England and Ireland) The soot-blackened cotton towns containing the 'dark satanic mills', as they were known in popular culture, were most prevalent in Cheshire, Lancashire, and South-West Scotland, most notably Manchester, Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Glasgow, and Paisley.

Consumer cooperatives and savings banks

Disciples of Owenism went on to take up the idea of cooperative production and retail stores. In 1821 a Co-operative and Economical Society had been launched in London with its own magazine, the Economist. Then, in 1827, William King had founded what was arguably the first successful cooperative society and store in Brighton. Other stores followed and it is estimated that about 500 existed or had existed - not all survived - throughout the country by the mid-1830s. The first national cooperative congress met in 1831. This was a movement destined to grow significantly in the mid-Victorian era. While the cooperative movement drew inspiration from Owen's ideas, the formation of these groups was also a reflection of the social and economic values projected by many skilled tradesmen who were status-conscious and who saw themselves as morally and materially above unskilled labourers. By applying the notions of self-help and thrift, they would be enabled to maintain a decent standard of living even during economic slumps when business and employment was slack. In 1844, a group of Rochdale weavers set up a co-operative store, each contributing an investment of £1. The business bought goods at wholesale prices and sold them at a profit. The quality of the food was reliable and reasonably-priced. The members received a share of the profits (dividend) in proportion to their purchases every year. It was a successful business model which was emulated by others and by 1850 there were over 100 stores. By 1863, the Cooperative Wholesale Society was formed, and continues in existence to the present day. Another example of largely working-class cooperation and mutual support in a search for respectability was the savings bank. These banks, often called 'trustee savings banks', numbered only six in 1812 but increased in number after legislation to protect them, like friendly societies, was passed in 1817 and 1828. By the latter date there were 408 banks with deposits of £14 million.

List the factors which were important in the making of the New Poor Law of 1834.

Escalating cost was the main thread in promoting reform, for the burden on ratepayers was very onerous, especially after the end of the French wars in 1815. The Old Poor Law was held to encourage idleness and in doing so political economists like Malthus predicted ruin for the country. For many, a harsh measure was needed to break the cycle of empowering laziness and punishing ratepayers, and relief would only be given under certain exceptional circumstances, to ensure that workers would not feel outdone by those on poor relief.

The Conservatives in Government

From when he took office in 1841 until his retirement, Peel repeatedly claimed to be acting above all sectional interests. Yet the geography of Conservative majority in 1841 was in keeping with what was considered to be traditional Conservative opinion, that is, primarily based on English agricultural counties and small boroughs, which were not manufacturing areas or centres of dense population. Here was a problem for Peel, for despite his reforming agenda and appeal to other sectors of British society, by and large, the Conservative majority was based on the landed interest, and a Conservative Government was expected to govern in the interest of maintaining the Anglican Constitution in Church and State and to maintain the economic privileges of the Corn Laws. Although the 1841 General Election did not solely turn on the Corn Laws, since both parties supported them in principle, though differing in how to levy duties by a fixed duty or a sliding-scale, it was an emerging issue that potentially could prove divisive and damaging to both parties. By 1841, the Whigs were perceived to be moving towards free trade in corn, and Conservative gains were most notable in the counties, especially the corn-growing counties. In 1841, it was the old spirit of traditional Toryism which triumphed over the new spirit of the Tamworth Manifesto. By and large, the Conservatives still remained in essence the Tory party of old: the party of the land, and electorally of the counties and small boroughs. Historians are divided on the course charted by Peel and how far his new reforming agenda was responsible for the 1841 General Election victory. Ian Newbould challenged the view of the dynamism of Peel, and that the Whigs were set on a destructive course. He agrees that the moderate Whigs engaged in a tacit alliance with Peel in order to contain the radicals and that Peel also gained by marginalising the Ultras in his own party, but for him Peel didn't win the 1841 election on account of his principles but rather that it was a victory for the Ultras, and a mandate to protect the institutions of Church and State, Anglicanism, and the Corn Laws. Conversely, Gash argues that urban voters put their faith in Peel's new progressive Conservatism. Peel's difficulties consisted of Chartism, Ireland, O'Connell and the National Repeal Association, and dealing with the huge deficits bequeathed to him by the previous Whig government. In the late 1830s opposition to the New Poor Law grew stronger, which proved to be a focal point for working class discontent in the North of England. The Anti-Corn Law League and the Chartist movement were perceived as dangerous movements inasmuch as they possessed the potential to exploit working class grievances. The early 1840s was a time of high unemployment and desperate living conditions. The economic slump of 1841/2 was characterised by high unemployment, wage reductions, and general distress in the manufacturing areas of the North of England and Scotland. Peel took a firm stance towards disturbances with arrests and coercion to stop strikes. In 1842, there was considerable labour unrest with the Plug Plot riots in English manufacturing districts; in the same year, the sliding scale of the Corn Law was reduced. Peel's overall strategy was to quell discontent by economic prosperity. Income Tax was imposed in March 1842 at the rate of 7d in the £ for incomes over £150 per annum. An appeal was made to the middle class on the grounds of fairness, given that the working class faced a heavy burden of indirect taxation. Simultaneously, Peel reduced tariffs on general consumption. The aim was to stimulate manufacturing and commerce, encourage employment, and reduce the cost of living of the poor. This would, he hoped, encourage national unity and harmony and undermine political discontent. As we will see later, these financial reforms met with a good response from the Conservative party but holding the party together was Peel's biggest challenge. Peel's reputation for disinterested statesmanship began with his firm, principled opposition to Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Act. After 1832, his status as the emerging Conservative leader, and his activity and creativity as Prime Minister, and not being beholden to his followers between 1841 and 1845, added to this reputation. Peel was often haughty and aloof and his increasingly statesmanlike stance distanced him from the concerns of party members, especially those representing agricultural constituencies, who looked to him to preserve Anglicanism and to maintain the Corn Laws, an essential component of the landed interest's party loyalty. Those personal, party and ideological differences were to be the cause of a serious fracture in the Conservative Party in 1846. As Newbould has written, Peel 'set out to build a party and instead split one'.

What was the linkage between the Reform Act and the Municipal Corporations Act?

Having reformed the national system of representation, the Whigs turned to local government. Ratepayers now held the franchise replacing the old corrupt, self-serving corporations which had been far from local and far from representative. The middle class ratepayers gained considerably from the Municipal Corporations Act, for as the personnel of the office-holders changed, the middle class accrued considerably enhanced political powers locally.

The 1832 Reform Act: continuity or change? 1832 and after

Historians have long debated whether the 1832 Act represented continuity or change. Certainly, in many ways continuity seemed to be the order of the day. As you saw earlier, the Reform Act had not been intended as a progressive or radical piece of legislation - it was in fact intended to forestall more radical change. The political establishment remained in place, with the aristocracy continuing to dominate both government ministries and the both Houses of parliament. Extending the franchise may have reached out to the middle classes but early evidence was that it had reinforced the pre-1832 elites. Although corruption was reduced, it still existed, and patronage remained a very common way to get on politically. William Gladstone, the future Prime Minister, famously entered the House of Commons unopposed as the Duke of Newcastle's nominee. For many historians, particularly those writing in a liberal democratic tradition, the unreformed electoral system that existed before 1832 was indefensible, inasmuch as the system, by restricting the franchise, was the means by which aristocrats and oligarchs maintained political power. Assessed purely in terms of those who possessed the vote, it is relatively easy to accept such an interpretation, with only 3.1% of the population comprising the electorate pre-1832. Yet the corresponding figure post-1832 was only 4.7%, which to twenty-first century eyes, seems hardly a revolutionary change. Indeed, adult male population is a fairer guide to gauging the extent of the change for the franchise was gendered and no women possessed the vote after 1832. By this measure, one in eight (male) adults possessed the vote in England and Wales before 1832; in Scotland, the ratio was one in one hundred and twenty-five. After the Reform Act, the ratios were 1:5 for England and Wales and 1:8 for Scotland. As we saw earlier, changes to voting in boroughs, while bringing more uniformity, actually resulted in fewer working-class voters in those large constituencies that had previously been particularly generous in who could vote. Meanwhile, in the counties, aristocratic influence remained strong, in large part due to the Chandos Amendment. This had added some 130,000 men to the electorate - on the face of it another democratic step. However, as most of these men were tenant farmers they were susceptible to influence from their landlords in an age when the secret ballot didn't exist. This often meant they voted how they were told to. After the Reform Act, the cost of elections remained high. Official costs, such as organizing electoral staff and local dignitaries, were paid at the expense of candidates. The average sum necessary was between £2,000 and £5,000 but was sometimes much higher. This factor, combined with the absence of payment of MPs meant that only wealthy men of independent means could afford to stand for Parliament—and financial independence was often equated with political independence. There was very little in the way of party funding in this period. There were however significant changes that would develop over the next decades. First, politics became steadily more professional and the old groupings of Whigs and Tories began to consolidate as Conservative and Liberal parties. Second, the middle-class 'junior' partners in the 1832 settlement gradually began to challenge aristocratic dominance. Both of these developments were steps along the road to fuller democracy.

The Ten-Hour movement

In 1818 cotton operatives in Manchester had started to agitate for a ten-and-a-half-hour day for all workers. By 1830 the demand for shorter hours had reached a grand scale, with support from many quarters. Supporters even included factory owners and managers, some of whom had favoured reform from the early days of industrialisation: arguing that creating a happy and healthy workforce was both fair and conducive to greater profits. One key figure was the cotton magnate Robert Owen (who we discussed earlier in Unit 1 Topic 4 - Social developments, and Unit 2 Topic 4 - Pressure for Change) whose mills at New Lanark in Scotland were run on humanitarian grounds. It was a slow process to get the views of Peel, Owen and the like (together with those of humanitarians outside the industry) to prevail in Parliament. The most important pressure group pushing for further reform was the Ten Hour Movement. This began in Yorkshire in 1830 as what historian Boyd Hilton has described as 'a howl of protest against the process of industrialisation' (Hilton, 2006). Two of the most prominent leaders of the movement were Richard Oastler, a former Leeds cloth merchant, and Michael Sadler, another merchant and Conservative MP for a time. Oastler wrote a series of letters on 'Yorkshire Slavery' to the Leeds Mercury in 1830, bringing the problem into the open. He wrote of 'thousands of little children ... sacrificed at the shrine of avarice, without even the solace of the negro slave'. Both men were Tories who had opposed Catholic Emancipation and the extension of the franchise in 1832, but believed in old Tory values such as social duty, local prerogative, and paternalism. Support from across the Pennines in Lancashire soon came from sympathetic manufacturers such as John Fielden. Fielden was a radical cotton manufacturer from Lancashire and as a leading supporter of factory legislation, practised what he preached by paying top wages and providing good working conditions. As a radical MP elected to the first reform Parliament in 1832, he played a leading parliamentary role in pushing through the 1847 Ten Hours Act - arguably his crowning achievement. Sadler's bill to reduce the daily limit of hours worked to 10 was unsuccessful, but a further parliamentary select committee on child labour was set up in 1832. This led to furious public debate. Anthony Ashley Cooper (also known as Lord Ashley and later the Earl of Shaftesbury) took over leadership of the reform movement in the Commons and presented a bill limiting work for 9 to 18 year olds to 10 hours a day. Like Sadler and Oastler, Shaftesbury can be described as a Tory paternalist.

Agriculture and Corn Law repeal - Agricultural developments

In the 1830s, agricultural improvements were built largely on earlier developments, consisting of better soil cultivation, crop rotation, enclosures, the use of fertilisers, and the wider use of drainage systems. Further Enclosure Acts of 1836 and 1845 brought a rapid scramble for enclosed land with few open fields left by mid-century. This reached the point that the government considered it necessary to include a provision in the 1845 Act to ensure that open land in the immediate vicinity of a village or town was preserved. By 1850 the process of enclosure was virtually complete. Enclosure had facilitated the use of more funds available for investment but market developments, especially the profits derived from consistently high price of wheat after 1838, stimulated new capital ventures. It was also the case that the reduced cost of poor relief after the 1834 reform, meant that more income was available for farmers to invest. Agricultural improvements also helped. Drainage techniques impacted on the type of crop sown and the quality of the crop when harvested. Steam drainage began to replace windmill drainage wheels, enabling land to dry out sufficiently to take wheat instead of the less profitable oats. Drainage was cheap and efficient—one engine could maintain drainage for 6,000 acres. Heavy clay soils were dealt with by the manufacture of clay tiles, thus bringing more land into cultivation, and boosted by Peel's Agricultural Drainage Act which provided loans for farmers to improve field drainage. Greater use of fertilisers, animal dung, guano, and treated crushed bones all contributed towards greater crop yields. Light iron implements (e.g. ploughs, harrows), drawn by one or two horses, lowered labour costs and increased efficiency. Yet apart from the invention of McCormick's steam reaper there were few advances in the area of agricultural mechanisation and many jobs were still tackled by hand. Improvements in agriculture took another form—the dissemination of information and knowledge through clubs, journals, newspapers, and books, all offering advice and dispensing information and advertising. The formation of the Royal Agricultural Society in 1842 was a major step in stimulating this conversation. Its journal was an excellent source of farming knowledge and acted as a forum for the exchange of information as well as monitoring agricultural developments throughout the country. It is important to remember that over one-third of all families still lived off the land in the 1830s and 1840s, and that despite improvements, landless labourers remained very poor on the whole. Moreover, wages and housing varied enormously by region, depending on the customs of particular areas, the type of farming conducted, and the particular sets of relationships in different localities. The North and East of Scotland for example was renowned as an area where improving farmers adopted mixed farming and were often more innovative in relation to cultivation and the use of technology. On the other hand, Dorset in Southern England was notorious for the low wages paid to labourers. Yet the most poverty-stricken agricultural labourers were in the South and West of Ireland where subsistence farming was a perilous existence, and where agricultural improvement had been minimal.

Peel's Irish policy

In the 1840s the return of Peel to power precipitated the breakdown of the Irish movement, for the Whig/Irish coalition sealed by the Lichfield House Compact collapsed. Peel condemned the mass meetings undertaken by O'Connell, perceiving the hidden hand of Catholic militants behind O'Connell's constitutional approach. Peel was in a strong position since O'Connell lacked moderate Catholic and Protestant support. The 'monster' rallies and meetings in Ireland, always at historic sites and always addressed by O'Connell, caused Peel to fear mass public disorder. He therefore intervened to ban a rally at Clontarf in 1843. O'Connell backed down from holding the meeting, and was arrested and jailed for five months for conspiracy. On his release he was a changed man, bruised by the experience and unable to lead the repeal campaign. Losing impetus, the repeal movement collapsed shortly thereafter, marking the effective end of the Catholic political party in Parliament that had built up in the aftermath of Catholic Emancipation. Why was O'Connell's fall so dramatic and comprehensive? One reason was that he had no alternative strategy to the implicit threat of civil disorder and disobedience raised by his mass meetings. When his bluff was called by Peel, he was left rudderless. Despite terming 1843 the 'repeal year' and using mass rallies as a vehicle for the campaign, there were inherent weaknesses in the Repeal campaign. There were three factors which led to the failure of the repeal agitation. Firstly, the Catholic hierarchy, although sympathetic, did not consider repeal as urgent an issue as further Catholic Emancipation and did not support it to the same degree. Secondly, there was no body of sympathetic opinion towards repeal in England as there had been in the earlier agitation of the 1820s. Finally, Peel, who feared that the example of Catholic Emancipation showed that violence produced results, was aware of these two factors and exploited them to take a stand against O'Connell. Peel aimed to detach from the ranks of those supporting repeal a considerable portion of the respectable and influential classes from the Roman Catholic population, and wanted to break the link between O'Connell and the Catholic clergy. As you will see, a grant made by the British government to Maynooth College was one such attempt. While this was eventually enacted in 1845, it caused a furore amongst Conservative MPs and a sharp division between Peel and much of his party. Peel had come to power advocating an even-handed approach to Irish policy as a means towards undermining O'Connell's repeal campaign. Yet he was heavily constrained by his own party and consequently achieved little in terms of land reform or economic improvement; Ireland seemed to illustrate the limits of reforming Peelite Conservatism. For O'Connell, the debacle of 1843 effectively ended his political career. The 'Liberator' or the 'uncrowned king of Ireland' was no longer at the forefront of the Irish nationalist movement. A new generation was emerging, even before 1843, in the form of the Young Ireland movement, as part of a generational challenge to O'Connell. The leading figures of the movement, which echoed the Young Italy movement of Mazzini, in its emphasis on ethnicity and language as the basis of nationhood, were repelled by O'Connell's blatant sectarianism. The leaders of Young Ireland, Charles Gavan Duffy, John Dillon, and Thomas Davis, all from solid middle-class background, produced in 1842 the newspaper The Nation which proved to be a highly-popular vehicle for their form of Irish nationalism. The readership reached an impressive cross-section of Irish society, with at its high point, a print run of almost 250,000. Young Ireland concentrated on literary and cultural elements of nationhood rather than the religious, legal and political aspects of sovereignty. In a way, it was a return to the non-sectarianism of the United Irishmen in the 1790s.

The industrial North

In the North and Midlands, the Poor Law Commissioners encountered opposition that was often violent. Apart from the general reasons for people opposing the amended system, industrial workers saw it as inappropriate to their circumstances where work was often irregular and subject to short-term unemployment determined by trade cycles beyond anyone's control. It was probably the early Victorian depression of the late 1830s and early 1840s that wrecked the general policy to reform the Poor Law in the industrial North. The principle of 'less eligibility' had little relevance to communities in which industrial economies meant that hundreds of workers could be thrown out of work overnight and where, in times of slump and cyclical unemployment, thousands could be looking for poor relief until the good times came round again. Industrial centres in Lancashire and Yorkshire had been seething for some time with calls for factory reform and early trade-union activity; a northern protest movement was therefore easily mobilised when the New Poor Law legislation was passed. Although the intended system was never to be applied in full in northern industrial areas, the working-class fear that it would be was a contributory factor in the social unrest of the period. Study hint Remember that you should always be looking for interlinking themes where popular pressure and protest combined to produce political, economic and social change. Be aware of the many cross-currents that helped to account for unrest in the North of England at this time. Your study of movements for factory reform and early trade unionism can be cross-referenced with opposition to the New Poor Law and seen as part of a more general movement of popular protest. The Chartist movement could be seen as the 'knot' pulling all these strands together. It was in the North that most violent opposition to the new law emerged. Riots occurred in such towns as Stockport, Huddersfield, Bradford and Todmorden in the late 1830s. For a while there was a semi-structured opposition through an Anti-Poor-Law Movement that borrowed support and ideas from the contemporary Ten-Hour Movement. Protest leaders - the 'usual suspects' you could say - were already to hand. Richard Oastler and John Fielden from the factory reform movement were joined by Feargus O'Connor and Joseph Stephens from the Chartist camp in helping to organise campaigns of harassment, boycotting, obstructing and rioting to thwart attempts by Poor Law Assistant Commissioners to set up new administrative units (the parish Unions). Anti-Poor-Law riots were not just an indicator of popular opinion and attitudes but also a reminder that the New Poor Law had been designed largely to respond to conditions in the rural South and was wholly inappropriate to the industrial North. The degree of concerted pressure in the North actually brought about a tactical retreat from the London Commissioners. In 1838 they empowered Guardians from Lancashire and the West Riding to effectively carry on as before without having to implement a workhouse test. Partly for this reason, the northern protest movement petered out after 1839. Many protesters got swallowed up in Chartism, which industrial workers and radicals increasingly saw as the only practical route to general reform. Others felt protest less necessary or important as local Guardians in the North now soft-pedalled on implementation. Paternal humanitarian attitudes persisted in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire where hardly any workhouses were built in the 1830s and 1840s. Even 10 years on from the Act's passage, in 1844, nationally only 16% of those receiving relief did so in a workhouse. Poor Law Commissioners in London continued to be wary of using their powers of compulsion over parish unions, and when the newly established Poor Law Board (which replaced the Poor Law Commission in 1847) tried to push harder to impose the system in the North it found compromise to be the best way forward. Outdoor relief continued as the main method of pauper assistance and, until the 1850s and 1860s (and even then by no means universally) no serious attempts were made to build a tranche of new union workhouses in the industrial North.

Topic 1 - Government

In the years following the Reform Act the Whigs sought to pursue a reform agenda which incorporated social and economic reforms alongside reform of the Poor Laws and local government. While the reform programme was broadly liberal, it might look with hindsight to be timid and moderate in nature. Yet the important principles advanced in many policy areas represented an important step in imposing new 'enlightened' standards across many areas of social life, especially when compared to previous legislation. While many reformers were disappointed at the pace of change, the development of national political parties after 1832 was an indication that a new political era had begun, and that the wishes of a larger electorate would influence politics and political life in a much closer way than in the past. This closer alignment between the electors and the parties was perhaps the most immediate impact of the 1832 Reform Act and it continued to influence and shape politics for many years to come.

Make a list of reasons as to why increased party organisation was necessary after the 1832 Reform Act.

Increased party organisation was necessary on account of the larger electorate which was less amenable to traditional methods of treating and bribing. It was necessary for parties to align themselves with the new electoral system. With a more anonymous electorate, the parties needed to engage more directly with the electors and adopt a more methodical approach to information-gathering and data analysis in particular constituencies, and which was made possible by the new electoral registers.

Repeal of the Corn Laws

Laws The series of speeches by Peel in the parliamentary session of 1846 established his credentials as a statesman rather than party politician. Peel stressed the importance of manufacturing prosperity, which he linked with agricultural prosperity. Famine in Ireland had forced the issue forward but the proposal was not immediate or total repeal, giving agriculture time to adjust, but all protection to be removed by 1 February 1849. The duty on wheat was to reach 10s when domestic prices stood below 48s dropping to 4s when the price touched 53s and above. Compensation and assistance to agriculture was provided with reduction of seed duties and free importation of maize and buckwheat. This would help farmers withstand foreign competition. Social peace was a priority over satisfaction of backbenchers. Agitation against the Corn Laws was growing and there appeared to have been a great change of opinion in the country. Peel was impressed by the way class cleavage in the manufacturing districts was now being bridged by united opposition to the Corn Laws. Peel argued that the freer trade measures of 1842 had reduced the cost of living, and higher wages. Secondly, that wage levels did not rise and fall with the price of corn—prices could be high and wages low. Thirdly, low prices and comparative abundance had reduced crime and disorder and during this period protection had been reduced and agriculture had not suffered. Cuts in duties of products of every-day consumption were aimed at reducing the cost of living. Although the Commons debate began on 9 February, protectionist opposition was raised long before then, and over one hundred backbenchers spoke against Peel between 9 February and 27 February 1846. The protectionist case against Peel and repeal rested partly on reasoned argument and partly on emotional reaction. They argued on the basis of: - Economic principle - Capitulation to the clamour of the Anti-Corn -Law League - That agricultural compensation inadequate - Support for interpretation of repeal as 'treachery' The economic case rested on the socially disruptive effects of transfer of resources from agriculture to manufacturing, and the related fact that foreigners would not necessarily buy more British goods in return for grain imports, increasing the price of foreign grain. Expansion would be expensive, foreign grain supplies uncertain, and liable to be cut off in times of war. In return for accepting repeal, those representing agricultural constituencies demanded excessive compensation demanded by agriculture, in terms of sweeping away taxes, rates, tithes, and malt tax. There was also the political argument that it was not politically astute to give in to agitation, as this would set a bad precedent for the future. Excessive compensation demanded by agriculture, in terms of sweeping away taxes, rates, tithes, and malt tax. The predominant cry of the protectionists was that of treachery, in and out of Parliament, but Benjamin Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck gave the lead. In the early months of 1846, by-elections favoured the protectionists with sixteen victories to eight losses—the latter were mainly county seats where the sitting members felt unable to vote against the government. There was an economic case for the Protectionists but as a purely economic case it was in defence of a minority landowning class. The purely economic argument for free trade had a much broader appeal, though Richard Cobden admitted that the League acted in 'the belief that we had some distinct class interest in the question.' The Corn Law issue itself might have been sufficient to account for the decision of two-thirds of the Conservative Party in the Commons to reject Repeal, though it remains doubtful that without pressure from the agricultural counties to sustain them, it would have led to the division of the party into two distinct rival groups, Peelites and Protectionists. Cobden indicated that support in the country for Peel's measure meant that it should not be obstructed despite it not being immediate repeal. He told Lord John Russell on 6 February 1846: 'I found the prevalent feeling in the country to be more and more favourable to Sir Robert Peel's measure, and I am of opinion that we should not be warranted in the eyes of the country in doing anything to obstruct or endanger it ... But the honest truth is I am most anxious to put an end honourably to the agitation. I have been taxed beyond my powers in every way'. The Corn Laws were finally repealed after a tortuously-long debate in the House of Commons and House of Lords. Repeal was passed by a combination of Conservatives, Whigs and Radicals. Only 112 Conservatives voted for Repeal and 241 against, leading to a permanent split in the Conservative party. The Irish famine was the immediate cause but not the main reason for Peel's change of attitude. Repeal was phased but brought little immediate relief to Ireland and it was not until around 1850 that Irish agricultural began to recover. There was no sudden fall in the price of wheat. British farmers did not face ruin from cheap foreign imports and bread prices did not move dramatically either way. By 1850, agriculture was booming, largely on the basis of the cumulative improvements undertaken by previous generations. Repeal seemed almost an anti-climax. The split in the Conservative Party allowed Peel greater freedom to stand above party, and he pointed to repeal as part of a broad social and economic approach in a programme of tariff reform. Peel rested his case on the grounds of economic principle not emotional appeals to party. In fact, in acting as he did, he repudiated 'party' doctrines, leading to the historian Boyd Hilton claiming that he had been less than honest with his party and been elected in 1841 on the false notion that he would protect agriculture.

The changing lives of workers - Quality of life

Most historians agree that until mid-century, while some industrial workers' standards of living did improve dramatically, others saw no overall improvement in real wages. Average wages of agricultural labourers, meanwhile, declined by approximately 30% (in real terms, not money terms) in the early decades of the nineteenth century. It could be argued that this decline was offset by the easier access to fresh food, the health benefits on working in clean air, and (for some) the provision of tied housing. For many though, poor relief was the only solution to the decline in wages, and after the new Poor Law was introduced, some of the poorest labourers and their families ended up in the workhouse. In any event, to speak of wages implies employment but for many members of the industrial and agricultural working class work could be cyclical, which - in periods of trade depression - left just the bleak provision of the Poor Law to fall back on. The late 1830s and 1840s were, as we have noted, the times of Chartist protests and what Thomas Carlyle called the 'Condition of England' question. As Hilton has argued: 'The 1830s and 1840s may well have been the worst ever decades for life expectancy since the Black Death in the history of those parishes that were now experiencing industrialisation' (Hilton, 2006). Work itself could be hard, dirty, and relentless, especially for the unskilled industrial labourer, and, as the historian J. F. C. Harrison has pointed out, even with a degree of mechanisation, much industrial work remained labour-intensive: 'A vast amount of wheeling, dragging, hoisting, carrying, lifting, digging, tunnelling, draining, trenching, hedging, embanking, blasting, breaking, scouring, felling, reaping, mowing, picking, sifting, and threshing was done by sheer muscular effort, day in, day out'. (J. F. C. Harrison, The Early Victorian Years, 1832-1851) Evidence of poor quality of life can be found in rising mortality rates between 1830 and 1850. Life expectancy for all but the middle and upper classes was never high but, whereas national average life expectancy at birth was 40 in 1841, in the two major industrial centres of Lancashire, Manchester and Liverpool, it was 27 and 28 respectively. Across the country, people born between 1825 and 1850 were on average two inches shorter than those born before and after.

Financial pressures

One major source of criticism of the Old Poor Law was the escalating cost to ratepayers. In 1803 annual expenditure on poor relief was £4,000,000, but by 1818 it had doubled to £7,900,000. War-time inflation accounted for part of a 10-fold rise since 1750 but in real terms this increase represented a considerable extra burden on ratepayers. However, ratepayers were not very open to rational explanations: contributions were rising, and they didn't like it. By the end of the French wars, the view that the Poor Rate was 'a bounty on indolence [laziness] and vice' had become widespread. Some parishes tried to face the problem by making the workhouse as deterrent rather than workplace a central feature of relief. In the 1820s, for example, parish overseers in Nottinghamshire, the so-called 'Nottingham reformers', abolished allowances for able-bodied paupers and made the workhouse the only alternative to starvation, and thus an object of fear. Deterrence seemed to work, and expenditure in those parishes involved halved in the 1820s.

Professional party politics

One important aspect of the 1832 Act was that electors were for the first time required to be on a register before they would be allowed to vote. Both parties quickly recognised the importance of registering potential supporters. Peel, by then Conservative leader, wrote to a colleague in 1838 of 'a perfectly new element of political power - namely the registration of voters, a more powerful one than either the Sovereign or the House of Commons. The party is strongest in point of fact which has the existing registration in its favour' (quoted in Hanham, 1969). Central party headquarters and the use of professional party agents had become more common by the end of the 1830s. It was clear by the end of the 1830s that both parties and the electorate recognised that the purpose of a general election wasn't just to return Members of Parliament but also to choose a government. The 1841 election, which brought Peel's Conservatives into office, is generally recognised as the first time a government was replaced by another on the verdict of the electorate. The years after 1832 also saw by-elections as indices of a government's popularity, just as they are today. These were very definite moves towards what we think of today as central features of the democratic process. This new professional approach went in parallel with the changes from the Tory and Whig factions to the - to us - more recognisable Conservative and Liberal parties. This process wasn't immediate or ever clear-cut. Just as today we often identify politicians as to the 'left' or 'right' of their party, so - even more so - as parties were emerging in the 1830s and 1840s it often wasn't possible to pin individuals down precisely. The 1837 General Election showed a marked advance in the candidates' party consciousness. At the 1835 election many candidates, including Peel, had not used the word 'conservative' in their election addresses. As the historian Robert Stewart argues: 'The increased party solidarity in the House of Commons in the 1830s, a development which reflected the importance which politicians attached to the differences of opinion separating Liberals and Conservatives, had its parallel in the constituencies. Parties acquired, through new forms of organization, a physical presence beyond Westminster, thereby making them more national and adding a dimension to the political life of the country.' (R. Stewart, Foundation of the Conservative Party 1830-1867 (1978)) This party character was also reflected in the press. A reduction in the newspaper tax in 1836 encouraged the spread of the provincial press, so that most substantial towns came to have at least one Liberal and one Conservative paper. The 1830s and 1840s were decades of unprecedented extra-parliamentary agitation by interest groups, and this awakened political enthusiasm was reflected in the provincial press. By the mid-1830s, every provincial newspaper in England, apart from a few commercial journals, sustained a political character. The majority of the provincial newspapers were Liberal. None of the four largest, with a circulation of more than 3,000 (Leeds Mercury, Stamford Mercury, Liverpool Mercury, and Manchester Guardian) was Conservative. Of the 175 newspapers outside London, 100 were Liberal and 75 Conservative. Of the 60 newspapers with a weekly circulation of 1,000 and more, 37 were Liberal and 23 Conservative. Total Liberal circulation in 1836 was 72,000 against 31,000 for the Conservatives. By 1841, it was common practice for newspapers to classify election candidates in terms of Liberal or Conservative and to assess results in terms of party gains and losses. Indeed, the general election of that year is regarded by many historians as the first 'modern' election.

What was the impact of immigration and internal migration between 1832 and 1846? Describe the patterns of migration

Patterns of migration were complex, but there was a readily identifiable pattern of migrants moving from the surrounding countryside to emergent industrial towns for employment as an escape from rural unemployment and underemployment. The same motive forces also influenced migration from Ireland to mainland Britain, where mini Irish communities were formed around factories. The Irish provided a ready supply of labour for an expanding industrial economy but the impact of this type of migration was social and cultural as well as economic. The presence of the Irish fed into and re-enforced pre-existing anti-Catholic attitudes, and there was something of a 'moral panic' about the Irish in Victorian Britain.

What were the main reasons behind Peel's business reforms?

Peel was interested in improving the administrative and economic efficiency of business operations, and reform was tailored to attempt to make a more conducive commercial environment possible for trade and business. Peel also aimed at promoting economic prosperity and social stability as a means of eliminating or at least minimising the prospect of economic distress and the potential for social disorder. To make business more profitable, its operations and procedures more regular, and to make the economy more responsive and predictable, Peel reformed banking, Customs & Excise, commercial policy, and company law.

The Poor Law Amendment Act - Pressure to reform the Old Poor Law

Pressure for change came from a number of directions. At one extreme there were those who felt that the Old Poor Law was too generous; at the other were those who felt it wasn't generous enough. Financial arguments that it cost too much money naturally came from local ratepayers. More philosophical and ideological arguments that the existing system should be made more stringent came from a range of contemporary writers. Prominent among those who attacked it on ideological grounds was Thomas Malthus, while those who were to have most influence on the nature of reform were the Utilitarians, followers of Jeremy Bentham and so also known as Benthamites. At the other extreme were those humanitarians and radicals who argued that, far from making the Poor Law more stringent, there should be a more supportive and sympathetic system put in place.

Ideological critics

Ratepayers and other critics had strong support from contemporary writers. The dominant intellectual view was that the Old Poor Law made worse the very problem it was designed to alleviate. Critics were becoming increasingly vocal towards the end of the eighteenth century. One was from Sir Frederick Eden in his extensive work, The State of the Poor, published in 1797. Arguing that the Speenhamland approach of subsidies encouraged labourers to be lazy and profligate, he wrote: 'There seems to be just reason to conclude that the miseries of the labouring Poor arose, less from the scantiness of their income (however much the philanthropist might wish it to be increased) than from their own improvidence and unthriftiness.' His message to the poor was to be self-reliant. The economists Malthus and David Ricardo (1772-1823) were quick to support this claim. Though differing in their analysis of the problem, both advocated the abolition of the Old Poor Law. In his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus argued with apparent mathematical exactness that 'population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence'. Geometrical ratios 'proved' that subsistence could never keep up with population growth. He argued that the Poor Laws themselves contributed to the population rise and to the plight of the poor generally. The more paupers were given, the more they would demand, until the time arrived when there would be insufficient funds to meet their needs. Poor relief would encourage the out-of-work labourer to remain economically unproductive without deterring him from reproducing. Abolition of poor relief would free employers from the burden of paying a Poor Rate and enable them to pay better wages. It would also lead to a fall in population, and so a reduction in poverty, because there would no longer be an incentive to have large families, as supposedly encouraged under the Speenhamland system. Because Malthusian arguments were to be so influential, it may be helpful to quote Malthus in some detail. In his Essay on the Principle of Population, he wrote: The poor-laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the poor in these two ways. Their first obvious tendency is to increase population without increasing the food for its support. A poor man may marry with little or no prospect of being able to support a family in independence. They may be said therefore in some measure to create the poor which they maintain; and as the provisions of the country must, in consequence of the increased population, be distributed to every man in smaller proportions, consequently, more of them must be driven to ask for support. Secondly, the quantity of provisions consumed in workhouses upon a part of the society, that cannot in general be considered as the most valuable part, diminishes the shares that would otherwise belong to more industrious, and more worthy members; and thus in the same manner forces more to become dependent. Fortunately for England, a spirit of independence still remains among the peasantry. The poor-laws are strongly calculated to eradicate this spirit. Hard as it may appear in individual instances, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful. Were I to propose a palliative; and palliatives are all that the nature of the case will admit; it should be, in the first place, the total abolition of all the present parish-laws. This would at any rate give liberty and freedom of action to the peasantry of England, which they can hardly be said to possess at present. They would then be able to settle without interruption, wherever there was a prospect of a greater plenty of work, and a higher price for labour. For Malthus famously argued that the supply of food ordinarily increased at a far slower rate than that if the increase in population. Therefore, for him, a policy like the Poor Law, which encouraged this trend was not only illogical but dangerous. Malthus was fatalistic as to over-population and the danger which this posed to the security of the nation but later economists acknowledged there were other factors which offset this 'inevitable' increase such as personal ambition and the desire of individuals to make money. Malthus also believed that poor relief would impact on the price of labour and food and work to the detriment of the national economy, not only by raising prices throughout the country but also by increasing government intervention in the economy to what he deemed to be an unacceptable level. Sexual restraint as a way of achieving fewer births, and so helping to avert the gloomy future predicted by Malthus, was encouraged by a number of Evangelicals, including the Scottish preacher, Thomas Chalmers. Perhaps not surprisingly, the idea of sexual abstinence (which was Malthus's preferred remedy) did not go down well with the poorer sections of society. With understanding of other birth control methods practically non-existent in the early nineteenth century, it seemed that the answer to the population-poverty link had to lie elsewhere and, in the opinion of many influential people, this could best be found in the arguments of Malthus. Ricardo, the pre-eminent political economist of his day, echoed Malthus's view that the Poor Law encouraged an idle, dependent and feckless workforce. He argued that 'Instead of making the poor rich, they are calculated to make the rich poor'. In his view, 'No scheme for the amendment of the poor laws merits the least attention which has not their abolition for its ultimate object.'

The Municipal Corporations Act

The 'aristocratic establishment' was reasonably satisfied with the outcome of reform; it kept them in the political driving seat, well protected - they thought - from radical demands for more change by their middle-class allies. Tory acceptance of change in the Tamworth Manifesto brought them into line with the Whig-Liberals in a 'so far but no further attitude' to reform. However, as things worked out, the middle-class was to push increasingly strongly for a greater share of power over legislation; developments in the 1830s and 1840s showed that government would never again be the almost exclusive prerogative of the aristocracy. One key shift in politics, bringing the middle classes even more to the fore, was the Municipal Corporations Act in 1835. This change had been high on the agenda of the reformist Whigs when they assumed office in 1830. They enacted it in the expectation that an end to the old corrupt self-elected corporations, often under Tory landowner control and patronage, would revolutionise local urban politics in their favour. 'Municipal reform is the steam engine for the mill built by "parliamentary reform"' was how the Liberal Joseph Parkes put it. Certainly Tories viewed the change with dismay, seeing, in the young Disraeli's words, the replacement of 'the authority of the English gentry' by 'Liberal oligarchs'. Despite Tory resistance in the House of Lords, the leadership of Peel and Wellington felt the case for reform was so overwhelming that they agreed to accept it, albeit with some amendments. The Municipal Corporations Act introduced a uniform system of local self-government for the 178 old corporate boroughs. The new system consisted of town councils, elected by male ratepayers and including a mayor, aldermen and councillors. Councillors, who came up for re-election every three years, had to be property owners. Other towns could apply for incorporation and large centres such as Manchester and Birmingham, both incorporated in 1838, lost no time in doing so. With ratepayers and councillors coming from the middle classes, the 1835 Act continued on the local stage what the 1832 Reform Act had achieved on the national stage. With the franchise locally going to ratepayers, the local system was now more broadly-based but still effectively restricted to middle-class men. The Act gave councils powers to carry out certain improvements but in reality they were held back by financial constraints and in-fighting. The Act defined the form of local authorities but did not ensure efficiency and professionalism. There was no central coordinating body to achieve uniform standards meaning that improvements in sanitation, cleansing, and paving were neglected and non-existent in some places. The rapid growth of towns meant that many councils were operating in entirely unfamiliar and historically unique circumstances. On account of its size, London was not included in the legislation. The movement towards middle-class political domination was to be much quicker at the local level than at the national level; it confirmed the trend from an aristocratic political system to one where aristocracy and middle classes were partners. As the historians Searle and Daunton have pointed out, it was the 'local state' which 'provided the setting where a 'self-confident middle class built its characteristic institutions and culture'. The local political scene had rewards in status and prestige for: 'Municipal office, the mayoralty in particular, was a confirmer of social status, which reinforced the position of businessmen as a kind of urban squirearchy, the 'natural' leaders of the new industrial Britain'. Voter registration was further boosted as a result of the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act, and municipal elections were often fought on a party basis from the outset. This kept party politics in the public eye.

The Bank Charter Act

The Bank Charter Act had the objective of inspiring confidence in the medium of exchange and to ensure that the issuing of banknotes related to the value of gold held by the Bank of England. Curbing the over-issue of banknotes was a critical aim since this practice had been a continuing source of financial instability. For years, economists and financial experts had argued over how to make the banking system more secure and stable. Banks had no system for mutual support in the event that one or more faced a 'run', that is, a glut of panic-stricken customers wishing to withdraw their money in the form of gold. Even before the rise of joint-stock banking, weaknesses with the early banking system caused many bank failures and left survivors vulnerable to competition from the new banks. The 1826 Banking Act had terminated the Bank of England's exclusive privilege to engage in joint-stock banking without limit on a number of shareholders and with the right of note issue. It protected the Bank's pre-eminent London positon against encroachment by provincial banks but also gave it the exclusive privilege of opening up branches anywhere in the country. As a result, the Bank of England opened branches outside London and joint-stock banks were established in the provinces and other major provincial cities The 1833 Banking Act broke the Bank of England's monopoly in joint-stock banking and authorised joint-stock banks to be established in London provided they did not issue notes—which was in any case no longer a serious consideration for private bankers in London. Joint-stock banks were highly successful, and experienced great growth. In 1825 there were 542 private banks and one joint-stock bank (the Bank of England) but by 1841, the number of joint-stock banks numbered 117, while private banks had declined by 231. The Bank Charter Act abruptly interrupted the rapid expansion of joint-stock banking which the acts of 1826 and 1833 had set in motion. The problem of note issue was central to the Bank Charter Act and many restrictive provisions against joint-stock banking were incidental with that primary concern. The Act forbade any bank to issue notes unless it had been authorised to do so as of 6 May 1844 (Article 10) and forbade even those banks to increase the volume of notes in the future (Article 11). Several banks in Scotland, such as the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland, retained the right to issue notes. The Act was passed partly to meet the requirements of expanding industry, in which larger industries required larger loans which could not be provided by small banks. Gradually, Bank of England notes became the normal currency, and during the period of re-adjustment, a cheque system developed, enabling business to be carried on without notes or cash. The Act was important in marking the beginning the Bank of England's role as administrator of the government's monetary policy, and generated a greater degree of investor confidence in the economy. The Act, by promoting a sound currency, also promoted international trade. If users knew the currency was backed by gold, they would be confident that banknotes issued would be worth their face value, as they were supported by a valuable commodity. Joint-stock banks were also dealt a sharp blow by the Joint Stock Bank Act of 1844. Whereas the Bank Charter Act imposed restrictions on their expansion by merger, the latter imposed restrictions on their expansion by entry. The formation of new joint-stock banks virtually ceased for a decade. Existing joint-stock banks improved their positon before a later Act in 1857 repealed all provisions of the 1844 Act. In 1844, there were 208 private issuing banks and 72 joint-stock issuing banks. By 1857, failures and amalgamations reduced the number of private issuing banks to 157, while 63 of joint-stock issuing banks remained in existence, although the 1844 legislation hindered the growth of concentration by placing obstacles in the way of joint-stock banks, it inadvertently fostered greater concentration by placing existing joint-stock banks against competition from new joint-stock banks. By 1844, though, Peel was perturbed that his four years in government and his achievements appeared to count for little as far as his party was concerned. This was to have major consequences in the next two years, as we shall shortly see.

Ideas and ideology of the Whig party

The Whigs as the custodians of constitutional monarchy, in which the King's powers of patronage were limited, had an eighteenth-century feel about them. Yet after the Reform Act, it was clear that in order to govern, Ministries needed a majority in the House of Commons, based on the will of the electorate. Royal favour was no longer sufficient. In fact, this was the fulfilment of Whig constitutional theory. Although the General Election of December 1832 had introduced many new middle-class and radical elements within the parliamentary Whig party, it remained highly dependent on an intricate network of powerful aristocratic landowning families. Many politicians from these families regarded the Reform Act as a final settlement. The leading Whigs still sat in the House of Lords and wielded enough influence to ensure that younger relatives were assured of a seat in the House of Commons. Like the Tories, the Whigs remained a highly-exclusive party though as a political entity, the fact that they had agreed that parliamentary reform was necessary for the country was also highly-advantageous to the their electoral prospects. The less traditional Whigs saw the necessity of supporting Parliamentary Reform and of obtaining radical support in order to facilitate it. By giving expression to middle-class opinion in their ranks and by attacking the rotten and pocket boroughs controlled by landed patrons, the Whig families saw the political advantages of reform. The problem in the 1830s was that many Whigs now saw reform as an end not a beginning, and believed they had gone far enough in undermining the threat of revolution and revitalising the electoral system. The Whigs were not in fact a great reforming party; they were probably more willing than Tories, but they were not zealous agents of reform. As the historian Peter Mandler has argued, after 1832 the Whigs shifted their attention to social concerns such as the Poor Law. It has been argued too, although rather implausibly, that as the heirs of the Scottish Enlightenment, they were the architects of the Victorian Welfare State. While this may be overstating the case, there were a number of ground-breaking reforms passed in the 1830s, motivated partly by humanitarianism, for improvements in the lives of the disadvantaged, and Utilitarianism. These centralising reforms, in accordance with the Whigs' shifting ideology and the problems of urbanisation and industrialisation, intended to promote the utility and efficiency of laws and institutions. The Factory Act (1833), the Abolition of Slavery (1833) and the Municipal Corporations Act (1835) were examples of these influences at work. Radicals wanted to push reform further: for example, Benthamites possessed a systematic vision of large State machinery and private social welfare agencies. State action, in the form of the 1834 Poor Law, is often seen as a harsh measure, a concession to middle class industrialists and the new discipline of political economy, in facilitating labour mobility. However, industrialists had very little input into the legislation and the Poor Law was arguably more a means of alleviating the burden of escalating poor rates in agrarian areas. The Whig programme in the 1830s was well-intentioned but arguably too sensitive towards its aristocratic supporters. One of the great weaknesses of the Whigs was that they were not a party in a formal sense but more of a coalition of different factions. In the period between 1832 and the 1860s, they can most accurately be viewed as a blend of Canningite and Whig Liberalism, providing disinterested rule by propertied classes through moral reform and local participation. The Whigs' support for religious liberty brought Nonconformist support but many radicals played an ambivalent and at times destabilising role, and often appeared allied with a 'working class' belief, enshrined in the Poor Man's Guardian, that the Reform Act had deliberately promoted middle-class inclusion in politics and working-class exclusion. Similarly, Irish Nationalist support was conditional on concessions in Ireland. In spite of their earlier confidence and large majorities, the Whigs lost ground with each election after 1832. This was rather unexpected given the assumed political views of the newly-enfranchised voters. Draining support was a constant source of conflict between Whigs and radicals, who blamed each other for it. Did the electors want the reform momentum to continue or did they want an end to radical agitation? That question was a difficult one for a party which was now tagged as the reform party and which had raised public expectations to a very high level. Alongside ideological divisions were structural inadequacies in the party. The Whigs were somewhat hoist by their own petard for, as we have seen, the Reform Act meant that party organisation was becoming increasingly important in dealing with a larger electorate—this was a phenomenon of which the newly-termed Conservative party made better use.

'The Condition of England' question

The home and work life of industrial and agricultural workers and their families at the time of the passage of the Great Reform Act was often unpleasant and full of hardship. Not surprisingly, then, worsening social and economic conditions for many working-class people at different times during the 1830s and 1840s lent even more weight to the arguments of those who wanted a further extension of the franchise. The development of factories had pauperised many craftsmen such as the hand-loom weavers, and dehumanised those obliged to work in the factories. Early factory acts had barely ameliorated instances of excessive exploitation and suffering. Moreover, the domestic living conditions of the urban factory workers were every bit as unhealthy, if not more so, as the conditions of work. There were other short-term reasons for the hardship and deprivation of working-class lives. A trade depression and stagnant industrial conditions led to widespread unemployment and virtual starvation in towns as far apart as Bolton and Paisley. A run of bad harvests also contributed to the problem and made it a general one, affecting rural workers as well as factory workers. Thomas Carlyle, the historian and man of letters, used the phrase 'the Condition of England' to describe the social and economic problems of the period. Writing in 1839, he anticipated some terrible explosion, particularly among northern factory workers. 'Black, mutinous discontent devours them,' he wrote, 'This world is for them no home, but a dingy prison house.' In 1844 the young Friedrich Engels, later to become famous as Karl Marx's associate in the development of communism, published his classic study The Condition of the Working Class in England, in which he looked at life in industrial south Lancashire. The following year, Benjamin Disraeli, to become Conservative prime minister a generation later, wrote his best-known novel, Sybil. Sub-titled 'The Two Nations' - the rich and the poor - this drew attention to the stark contrasts of life at the different ends of the social spectrum in early Victorian times. A major source of discontent and indignation was the passage in 1834 of the Poor Law Amendment Act. This had notionally scrapped the old Poor Law, in some areas tat least which had been the traditional means of looking after and supervising the poor since Tudor times. Among the conclusions of the committee report on which the Act was based was the view that 'the great source of abuse is outdoor relief afforded to the able-bodied'. Outdoor relief was support, either in money or kind, given to poor people and their families out of parish rates and allowing them to remain in their own homes, i.e. outside the doors of the workhouse. The report went on to suggest that 'except as to medical attendance ... all relief whatever to able-bodied persons or to their families otherwise than in well-regulated workhouses... shall be declared unlawful and shall cease'. For able-bodied people, the stark choice was to become work, workhouse or starve. The government had followed the main recommendations of the report, and so able-bodied people joined the old, the orphaned and the infirm in workhouses, where each category of person was carefully segregated from the others. Parishes were grouped into Poor Law Unions, each with a Board of Guardians responsible for workhouse administration. A Poor Law Commission administered the system centrally. While the 1834 Act was praised for its efficiency, and was certainly popular with many rate-payers, who no longer had to subsidise the low wages paid to agricultural workers in particular, there was a widespread feeling, not just among the poor and populist leaders, that the remedy was far too drastic. In historian G. M. Trevelyan's words, 'An operation was needed to save society but the knife was applied without an anaesthetic' (Trevelyan (1942)).

What were the factors which produced poor living conditions in the industrial towns? What measures were necessary to improve urban living conditions?

The lack of proper sanitation and a poor-quality water supply, with poor living conditions and overcrowding in housing, within a dusty, dirty, and smoky, industrial environment was a clear indication that improvements in infrastructure had not kept pace with urban and industrial development, and in order to provide remedies would require a robust response from government and employers to show a willingness to regulate and legislate on public health, housing, and sanitation issues for the benefit of the general populace.

Moral persuasion and physical force

The movement continued but, shortly after the rejection of the petition, its supporters polarised into what came to be called the 'moral persuasion' and 'physical force' wings. William Lovett, the key 'moral persuasion' leader, advocated constitutional methods of furthering the cause. He believed the working man had to prove his political maturity before a government would grant him the vote and he favoured advancing the Chartist cause through argument and pressure on the House of Commons. Supported by others such as Joseph Sturge, he sought middle-class help through the Complete Suffrage Union, established in Birmingham in April 1842. Source 1 - Taken from an article of 1840 by Lovett, gives some idea of how strongly he felt about the superiority of moral force. Unhappily the conflicting opinions entertained by some portion of the working class regarding the means of accomplishing that object have hitherto greatly retarded it; but we trust that experience ... has led them to perceive that no other means are likely to be so effective as a peaceful combination of the millions, founding their hopes on the might and influence of intellectual and moral progress. However, Lovett was no demagogue and the mainstream of the movement was captured by fiery and even violent elements. Feargus O'Connor and James Bronterre O'Brien led these 'physical force' Chartists. They were advocates of mass meetings and public demonstrations and the threat of violence was never far away. O'Connor was a forceful figure and his oratory and the publicity given to the Chartist movement through his newspaper the Northern Star won mass backing. He supported the slogan 'peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must'. Source 2 - Taken from a speech by O'Brien, made in 1839. What a farce the present system is! The present House of Commons does not represent the people, but only the fellows who live by profit and usury - a rascally crew who have no interest in the real welfare of the country... It is indeed disgusting to see how much of the honey is appropriated by the drones, and what a pittance is left to the bees of the hive; and how the parliamentary franchise is monopolized by one-tenth of the population - and that tenth the worst tenth. The threat of physical force Chartism disminished for a short while after the failure the Newport Rising, in Monmouthshire, South Wales, on 3 November 1839. The Rising significantly developed from discontent at appalling working conditions in coal mines and iron factories. Yet again, the growing pains of the industrial system and the lack of adequate infrastructure (e.g. housing) and economic provision (e.g. safer working conditions) for workers proved to be important in determining the working-class response. Yet the rising was an unmitigated disaster: poorly-planned and ineptly-executed. The numbers involved are disputed but at least 3,000 workers took part in the initial gathering. It was hoped by its organisers that the rising would spark a national revolt but in the event it was easily suppressed by the armed forces in a show of force by the Whig government. The outcome was a disaster for the Chartists, with twenty-four of their number killed in the fighting between the state's forces and the rebels. Many of the local Chartist leaders were imprisoned, and the three most prominent, John Frost, Zephaniah Williams, and Williams Jones, were sentenced to death, albeit later commuted to transportation. More widely, the national Chartist movement lost the impetus it had gained since 1838.

The Tories and the Corn Laws

The question that immediately presents itself is what did repeal of the Corn Laws mean, and what does it tell us about British politics in the mid-nineteenth century? Although it coincided with famine in Ireland, the famine was only the immediate short-term cause of repeal; it is doubtful that the famine alone would have forced Peel's administration to attempt repeal, if the intellectual ground had not been prepared by arguments for freer trade being made for several years beforehand. In the aftermath of repeal, both its members and its detractors inflated the role of the Anti-Corn Law League and outdoor agitation in the passing of the measure. This has been subject to historical revision in recent years, with more emphasis placed upon changing opinion in Parliament, and, most crucially, the changing opinion of Sir Robert Peel. The Corn Laws stood at the fulcrum of the agricultural interest in political and economic terms. The Conservative dominance of the agricultural counties did not emanate solely from landlord influence but was in line with majority opinion in the counties at distrust of the pro-industry, free trade direction of the Whigs. At the Buckinghamshire election in 1835, for example, three Conservatives were returned, and Poll Books showed that a large number of previously Liberal-voting electors voted against a Liberal candidate who advocated Repeal of the Corn Laws. In many counties, the 1835 election revealed the farmers' determination to tie Conservative candidates to agricultural protection and repeal of the malt tax. For voters in English counties the defence and relief of the agricultural interest were at the very heart of the Toryism and by 1841 the Corn Laws had become a contentious issue between the Whigs and the Conservatives. The geography of the Conservative electoral majority in 1841 was in keeping with established urban/rural divides - for English agricultural counties and small boroughs (which were more likely to pick Tory MPs) were not centres of dense population and manufacturing. A core of about sixty Conservative MPs constituted a more or less permanent opposition to Peel on major agricultural questions between 1841 and 1845. It was a tendency, not an organized group, with 47 English county members, with two thirds representing constituencies in the corn-growing South and East of England. Another eighty voted against Peel on at least one occasion on an agricultural issue, but on the second reading of the new Corn Law in 1842 (which modified the sliding scale of import tariffs), only two Conservatives MPs voted against, as loyalty to the leader was still strong at this time. Among the press comment on Peel's financial policies in 1842, the Dover Telegraph perceptively noted how press support was divided between those who supported the measures for their 'boldness and comprehensiveness' and those who accepted them as the 'best compromise' available. The former view came from those who supported free trade; the latter from protectionists. However, J.W. Croker's advice to Peel in 1842 was that there was continuing dissatisfaction within a section of the Conservative Party at Peel's commercial policy, and that this disaffection represented a threat to the Conservative government. 'You are accused of double dealing because you say that you will benefit consumers without injuring producers'. Peel was particularly anxious to explain how the new Corn Law would help agriculturists: 'Lower the price of wheat, not only Poor Rates, but the cost of everything else is lowered'. The agricultural interest resisted the erosion of protective duties, however, with 85 Conservative MPs voting against another Peelite proposal to remove a prohibition on import of cattle. When the Bill to lower the duty on Canadian corn came up in Parliament, 70 rural members met at the Carlton Club and resolved to vote against it. Although amounting to little, these events indicated the concern of backbenchers at the drift of events in 1843. That a large number of Conservatives were willing to vote against official government policy on major issues of economic policy, testified to the strength of feeling within the party. The great fear among farmers was that Peel intended to repeal the Corn Laws. They argued that repeal would open the floodgates to cheap foreign corn, undercut domestic prices, ruin British farmers, and cause mass unemployment for thousands of agricultural labourers, who would fill the towns and create further public order and public health problems.

Associated industries and industrial development

There were a great number of industries and technologies which were developed as a result of the growth of the railways. Railway development meant an increasing use of powered machinery, and new opportunities for mechanical engineers, which had a positive effect on the expansion of the economy. Skills in railway construction were transferred to the Continent, and British railway experts were frequently consulted by their European counterparts. Railway design and construction became an exportable service as other nations invested in railways. Domestically, the railways created a great amount of employment, and by their reach eroded some of the parochialism of British society. National news and developments could be more widely-known, and more quickly, and some of the implications were political, for party politics and trade unions could potentially be transformed, by losing their localised nature, by the imposition of national political and economic developments. Yet, despite the proliferation of national institutions and the development of a national press, recent historians, most notably James Vernon and Patrick Joyce have rejected the idea of a political system fractured along national or class lines. These historians argue that political parties emerged slowly and through local institutions in a varied and uneven way. Just as local electoral traditions survived after the Reform Acts of the nineteenth century, local distinctiveness survived. National political organisation and a national viewpoint remained elusive when regional and local differences in work, culture, and politics, remained so marked. As Patrick Joyce has written: In particular, the idea that local and regional characteristics were subsumed in a nationally uniform mass culture is open to doubt, as is the notion that nineteenth-century industrialists and state centralisation led to the eclipse of local and regional economic and political distinctiveness'. (Patrick Joyce, Visions of the People: Industrial England and the question of class, c. 1848-1914, (Cambridge, 1993), p. 148). While the development of railways provided greater scope for national perspectives it could not wholly replace the local dimensions of political and cultural life in Britain. The economic implications of railways were however at once more immediate and far-reaching. In terms of raw materials, railways stimulated the coal industry, for coal was used as fuel, and the iron industry for tracks and rolling stock. The growth of the iron industry, with output increasing from 450,000 tons in 1820 to 2 million tons in 1850 was complemented by the growth of coal output from 17.4 million tons in 1820 to 33.7 million tons in 1840 and 49.4 million tons in 1850. Before the advent of coke smelting, the iron industry was widely scattered in South Wales, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Derbyshire but afterwards was more concentrated near coalmines in South Wales, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, and Yorkshire. The counties of South Wales, Monmouthshire, Glamorganshire, and Breconshire, contained rich iron and coal deposits in the numerous river valleys from the mountains east of the Severn Estuary. By 1839, South Wales was providing 40% of the iron purchased in England and Wales. Transportation of goods allowed existing industries to develop further, leading to cheaper and wider distribution of goods such as textiles and ironmongery. Railways also boosted agriculture and though many farmers were concerned about the effects of trains on crops and cattle, fresher goods (e.g. vegetables, meat, milk) could now be delivered to large centres of population. Railways also extended to ports and harbours, also facilitating a greater volume of overseas commerce.

Grey, Melbourne and the Whig Party The Whigs in power

These structural changes took time and were an ongoing process but the more immediate task, at least initially for the Whigs, was to govern. Under the second Earl Grey, the Whigs had been in opposition in the period 1807-1830. That period clarified their identity of purpose. The Whigs saw themselves as the natural party of government, but failure to gain office in the 1820s united the Whigs further. The common political heritage based on the memory of Charles James Fox gave the Whigs a modern identity and sustained their morale. The Whig aristocracy made an ideological shift, establishing links with the people on which their political fortunes depended, that is, the liberal middle classes. The insistence on the need for Parliamentary Reform had been a bold move by the Whigs. Their programme consisting of improving education, reforming the Poor Law, and renewing the relationship with Ireland were the Whigs' main priorities and they carried these forward into the post-Reform era. Once the Reform Act was passed, Grey called a General Election which resulted in a Whig majority in the first post-Reform House of Commons. Together with the Radicals and the Irish Nationalists, the Whigs had a commanding majority of 479 to the Tories' 179 seats. Grey's government acted on their reforming agenda by legislating important social and administrative reforms, such as factory reform, reform of the Poor Law, the abolition of slavery and the regulation of banking. The major difficulties for the Whig government were the conflict between Whigs and radicals, the problem of Ireland, and the loss of several influential Whig leaders. The radicals who entered Parliament were divided among themselves which limited their effectiveness in acting in concert. Yet as a body, they proved to be an irritant to the new Whig government, for they queried every tax and questioned every measure. The privileged position of the Anglican Church in Ireland was one such difficulty, and continuing unrest in Ireland was accompanied by calls for repeal of the Act of Union. The Whigs were divided on how to respond. Milder treatment in the form of concessions was promoted by men like Lord John Russell, but the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Lord Stanley believed in coercion. In 1833, the Whigs passed the stringent Coercion Act, which gave wide powers to the authorities to impose curfews and suppress disturbances. Coercion was tried after the failure of concessionary reforms in education and the abolition of taxes levied for the Anglican Church had failed to quell disorder. The concessions made caused a serious split, leading to the resignation of Stanley and other leading Whigs, most notably Sir James Graham. The merger of these 'conservative' Whigs with Peel's Conservative Party occurred in the next few years, an indication of a clearer party divide between conservatism and liberalism. Graham and Stanley went on to play an important role in the development of the Conservative party. Some historians attribute Grey's resignation to fatigue, and lack of tolerance in dealing with controversial issues like Ireland. Most Whigs were not opposed to the continuation of the Coercion Act as a temporary expedient to deal with continuing disorder in Ireland but when Grey realised that plotting to dilute coercion, prompted by O'Connell, was going on behind his back, he resigned as Prime Minister and Whig leader in July 1834. He was replaced by Lord Melbourne.

Education

Until the nineteenth century, education was the preserve of the wealthy classes. Private tutors taught the children, mainly the sons, of the aristocracy, at home. A public school education then usually followed at one of the number of elite schools such as Eton or Harrow. The social impact of the industrial revolution changed all that. Industrial wealth created a new middle class, which was sufficiently ambitious and prosperous to want a better education for its children. Wealthy middle class people were also willing to pay fees for their sons to be educated at a public school, or at a grammar school where the fees were lower, and where there was a great emphasis placed on academic excellence. The syllabus of subject in these schools was largely that of an elitist classical education but in a developing industrial society, the demands for a literate and numerate population were growing. Among reformers, the main concern was the lack of educational provision for the working classes and poor. Industrial society required a more educated workforce. Sunday schools were started by Methodist chapels, and by 1830 over one million working class children were attending Bible classes on Sundays (the one day in the week they didn't work) where they learned to read (and occasionally to write). Sunday Schools were financed by congregational contributions and interested benefactors. The most successful early school system for less well-off children was the Monitorial Schools, in which one teacher instructed older pupils who were appointed as monitors to teach younger children. The monitorial system was promoted by two educational societies, both founded in 1811. Firstly, the National Society, a Church of England foundation, ran schools in which children was taught reading, writing, and arithmetic (the 3 Rs) and the Anglican catechism, a method based on questions and answers. Secondly, the British & Foreign Schools Society, led by the Quaker Joseph Lancaster, taught the 3 Rs without any reference to Anglicanism. Therefore, these schools were preferred by Nonconformists and disapproved of by Anglicans. Funding was provided by private voluntary subscriptions and individual benefactors. Voluntary schools were overwhelmed, in terms of numbers attending, by rapid urban development and population growth. In 1833, the Government made a grant of £20,000 to the two societies to open new schools. This was the beginning of official government activity in national education. The idea of using public funding to allow working class children to spend time learning to read when they could be more usefully employed in productive labour was strongly opposed by many of the traditional political classes. The system was not rigorously administered but attempts were made to improve accountability by appointing salaried inspectors. In 1839, the educational grant was raised to £30,000 and a Cabinet Committee established to monitor how the money was spent. The Whigs proposed non-denominational colleges for teacher training and proposed placing responsibility for education in the hands of the Privy Council Committee, without clergy representation. A huge outcry from Anglicans caused the Whigs to drop most of the scheme but the Committee was established under the chairmanship of James Kay-Shuttleworth, philanthropist and champion of the poor, who endeavoured to set up a state-funded system of popular education. The religious arguments surrounding the education of children proved to be too strong, and prevented any national system from emerging at this point. The Whigs underestimated the extent of Catholic and Nonconformist opposition to an Anglican-dominated educational system and made little progress. With the return of the Tories to power, Sir James Graham introduced a Factory Education Bill in 1843, which advocated compulsory Anglican education for children. The Tories fared no better, for the Bill was soundly defeated. In 1846, Kay-Shuttleworth's Committee attempted to establish a national system of teacher-training to standardise the quality of teaching in grant-aided schools. This measure required additional funding; those costs meant it was not politically viable, and was abandoned. While there was little progress made in the way of national educational provision before 1846, the period did see the beginning of State intervention in education and, more pertinently for the future, it was increasingly conceded by parliamentarians of all stripes that the State had a responsibility to establish a compulsory basic education for all children.

Irish radicalism O'Connell and radicalism

While Chartism and the Poor Law were central to working-class discontent in mainland Britain, in the sister island of Ireland, dissatisfaction centred upon the state of the Church, the land (particularly important since Ireland was a largely agrarian economy), and national identity. These issues played off each other and made Ireland a highly unstable element for successive British governments. For many British politicians, Ireland seemed a strange and savage land, totally disconnected from the 'march of civilisation' which those of a Whiggish disposition believed characterised mainland Britain. Building on the success of the Catholic Emancipation campaign, Daniel O'Connell looked to the Whigs to advance reform to ameliorate Irish conditions. In 1833, the Whigs had abolished ten bishoprics from the Anglican Church in Ireland and had reduced the income of others, and there was a change in government tone towards Ireland, with more emphasis given to eradicating the powerful anti-Catholicism of government officials in Ireland. On the contentious issue of land reform, the Whigs converted the hated tithes, collected for the benefit of the Anglican Church, to rent-charges collected by landlords - but the Conservative opposition and the House of Lords ferociously attempted to defend the rights of landlords and propertied interests. With Catholic Emancipation, the Protestant domination of Ireland's politics dwindled, but the rise of sectarianism continued. The importance of religion was signified by the interaction between the clergy and the nationalist movement. With the Lichfield House Compact of 1835, O'Connell had temporarily shelved a campaign for repealing the Act of Union, but disaffection with progress and sensing the possibilities of a successful agitation, a new campaign began in 1840. The Repeal Association was established in Ireland, with the aim of repealing the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. O'Connell was careful to moderate his aims; he did not want complete separation from Britain but the restoration of an Irish Parliament, albeit of a different kind from the Anglican Parliaments of the later eighteenth century. O'Connell concisely stated his policy, declaiming any idea that he was a social revolutionary: 'I desire no social revolution, no social change. In short, salutary restoration without revolution, an Irish Parliament, British connection, one King, two legislatures'. Crucially, the movement, as earlier with the Catholic Emancipation campaign, was supported by the parish clergy, so O'Connell had a potentially strong alliance with the Irish Roman Catholic Church. O'Connell used his skill in organization and political tactics to advance the campaign, and while early repeal motions presented in Parliament were heavily defeated, O'Connell had undertaken a long-term strategy which was essentially 'chipping away' at British domination of Ireland.

Friendly societies

With the failure to form effective general unions, trade-union developments in early Victorian times lay instead with associations of skilled workers. Rather than existing as out-and-out trade unions, many of these associations took the form of friendly societies. These were not combinations intended primarily to seek higher wages but, in a rapidly changing economy, sought to offer mutual protection through such tangible benefits as insurance against sickness, old age and death. In this sense they were more like insurance clubs, where payment of regular subscriptions entitled members to financial help in time of need or at certain times in their lives (or at death). These friendly societies had their roots in the trade societies and clubs that had been commonplace in urban and artisan employment in the eighteenth century and earlier. So-called printers' 'chapels', for example, could trace their origins to medieval guilds of workers. Societies would typically meet in the local public house. In some cases, employers actually encouraged and supported their employees to form such societies, motivated in part by enlightened self-interest in getting the best out of their workforce. Membership rose rapidly in the wake of the New Poor Law of 1834. Death benefits through a local friendly society or a burial society safeguarded workers from the stigma of burial in a pauper's grave. Uncertainties about the extent of legal protection afforded to trade unions after 1824-25, and the clear hostility of most employers and governments, made a friendly society a more attractive alternative for many workers. Provided local magistrates - Justices of the Peace - approved their rules, much fuller legal protection had been afforded to friendly societies under the Friendly Societies Act of 1793. The approval of Justices of the Peace had been made a condition to stop would-be trade unions from enjoying the privileges of friendly societies. In 1829 a register of friendly societies was set up in London, allowing funds to earn a steady income by being deposited with the Commissioners of the National Debt. A further Act of 1855 extended this legal protection. The strike function of a trade union was not necessarily lost altogether to a registered friendly society, because strike pay could be disguised as out-of-work pay - and many associations of workers with trade union-type aims did conceal their intentions under the 1793 Act. However, friendly societies could not protect skilled workers against either unemployment or being deskilled through fresh inventions of machinery. In this sense, the plight of skilled workers could be as serious as or worse than that of manual labourers, and this left many working-class activists still seeking to improve the workers' lot by becoming fully-fledged trade unions. Membership of friendly societies is estimated to have risen from 600,000 in 1801, when some 700 societies had complied with the 1793 legislation, to over 1.5 million members by 1846. They had a far more numerous membership than trade unions, whose popularity had dwindled after the collapse of the GNCTU. The 25,000 societies nation-wide were usually locally based and mainly found in the industrial North and Midlands. There were some with national affiliations such as the Oddfellows. Friendly societies became a symbol of the Victorian working class respectability and they emphasised the distance of artisan workers from the poorer unskilled labouring classes, who were often out of work, could rarely offer the regular subscription required, and therefore had no security when times were hard.

The Royal Commission on the Poor Laws

As you saw earlier there was a series of agricultural uprisings, rioting and machine-smashing in 1830, sometimes referred to collectively as the 'Swing Riots'. Such problems occurred in rural counties, some of which had adopted the Speenhamland system of poor relief on a sliding scale, and critics of the Old Poor Law were quick to suggest a direct link between the allowance system and the unrest. On top of these worries, the mounting pressure on the Poor Rate continued to cause outrage among those obliged to contribute. After a period of falling prices aggregate annual poor rates reached £7m in 1832, almost as high as in the period 1817-20, the grimmest of the post-war years. A disproportionate amount (per head) was expended and raised in southern and eastern England as against the North and Wales. In Scotland, with its different system, expenditure per head was little more than 10% of the total for England and Wales. Politicians of all kinds concluded that something had to be done to reform the Old Poor Law since it was failing to meet its purpose. Demands for a radical review of the way paupers were treated were met, in 1832, with the establishment of a Royal Commission to look at the entire system of poor relief. The principal co-authors of the Royal Commission Report were Nassau Senior and Edwin Chadwick. Senior was an Oxford professor hostile to the allowance system, while Chadwick was a close associate of Jeremy Bentham. Neither they nor the other members of the Royal Commission were sympathetic to the existing system and almost all were influenced by utilitarian or Malthusian beliefs. Most of the evidence collected fitted in with preconceived hostilities to existing poor relief systems and the report produced in 1834 was very much influenced by Benthamite arguments that state initiative was necessary to eliminate what were seen as the 'debasing influences' of the Old Poor Law. Key to change would be a central supervisory and regulatory body; centralisation and compulsion were the pillars of reform. While not agreeing entirely with Malthus and advocating abolition of the Old Poor Law, the commissioners recommended wholesale changes. Relief was only to be afforded in very specific circumstances. The two guiding principles advocated were the application of the workhouse test and the principle of less eligibility. Under the test, able-bodied men should only be able to seek relief in a workhouse, and outdoor relief and allowances should not be available to them. Conditions in workhouses should always be less desirable ('less eligible') than those of independent labourers. The measure was to ensure that labourers did not feel out-done by the poor on relief and that those receiving relief were still encouraged to find work. The report recommended no more than a two-year delay before implementing the universal application of workhouse only for the able-bodied. Inside the workhouse, 'less eligible' relief would be made as uncongenial as possible through strict discipline, lack of social amenities and irksome regulations. As Nassau Senior wrote in a letter of 1833, 'No relief shall be given to the able-bodied, or to their families, except in return for work, and that work as hard as it can be made, or in the workhouse, and that workhouse as disagreeable as it can be made' (quoted in Hilton, 2006). In this way, men would be encouraged to avoid the workhouse altogether or to get out of it and into employment as quickly as possible. While there might have been hope that the principle of less eligibility would sometimes work in the case of agricultural pauperism, the notion that it might work in the industrial North and Midlands was soon proved highly optimistic. Industrialisation had taken hold by the early 1830s and it was an ingrained feature of industrial society that fluctuations of business and patches of bad trade would produce involuntary unemployment, this could at times affect workers in an area en masse, though not usually for the long term.

Trade unions and other working-class movements - The GNCTU

We saw previously the tentative beginnings of trade unionism organisation and the attempts of Robert Owen to promote worker cooperation. In 1834, delegates met in London to establish the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union (GNCTU), which was in many ways the most famous of these ventures. This was the climax of a series of attempts to change the workers' status in society. In the words of the Chartist Bronterre O'Brien, 'an entire change in society - a change amounting to the complete subversion of the existing "order of the world"', was being sought. Organised in the first place as a response to major employer-worker troubles in Derby, the GNCTU was soon headed by Robert Owen. Owen was already a well-known and important figure on account of his attempts to improve the working and living conditions of workers at New Lanark. The following extract from an article Owen wrote in the publication The Crisis gives you an idea of what he saw as the aims of the GNCTU, the ultimate result of which would be a coming together of workers, employers and government - an arguably utopian ambition: The members of this Union have discovered that competition in the sale of their production is the chief and immediate cause of their poverty and degradation, and that they can never overcome either as long as they shall conduct their affairs individually and in opposition to each other. They are, therefore, about to form national companies of production; each trade or manufacture to constitute one grand company or association ... but each trade and manufacturer will be united to all others by a general bond of interest by which they will exchange their productions with each other upon the principle of equitable exchange of labour for a fair equal value of labour: and all articles, upon the principle of economy and general advantage, will be produced of the best quality only. The next step ... will be the union of the master traders and manufacturers with the operatives and manual producers; and when these two parties shall fully understand the value of this union, the government will not only feel the necessity of uniting with them, but it will also discover the advantage to the whole empire of this national bond of union. Branches were established throughout the country and Owen was soon claiming clearly inflated figures of half a million members. However, the GNCTU never developed any firm foundations. Few members ever paid fees to the headquarters and four major craft unions - the builders, potters, spinners and clothiers - stayed aloof, as did most of the new factory workers. In fact, Robert Owen's utopian ideas were unacceptable to most trade unionists, who were more interested in a general union for supporting industrial action. The total paid-up membership was probably never more than 16,000. Whenever GNCTU members seemed a threat, employers hit back hard. Workers were locked out and, before being taken back on, were often made to sign the so-called Document renouncing the union. In other cases, magistrates were pressed to take action against local union branches. With an industrial workforce still too fragmented by regional, social and occupational differences, the GNCTU soon collapsed. A typical example of how workers renounced union membership can be seen in the following extract from a document of the time from Calderdale Archives: WE whose names are hereunto subscribed, do declare, that from and after the twenty-fourth day of May, 1834, we shall cease to be Members of Trades' Unions, or have disunited ourselves from the Body, and that so long as we continue in the Employment of Benjamin Mellor of Stainland we will not be Members of the Union, or contribute in Any way to the Support of that, or any similar Association. William Lawson, Jos. Schofield X his mark, John Brooks, Robt. Ashworth (And more than 100 other names, half of whom signed with an X.)

The Conservative response to change - Peel in power

According to William Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel exercised greater political authority than any PM since William Pitt. Despite having a Chancellor of the Exchequer, Peel personally introduced the budgets of 1842 and 1845. His sense of purpose, mastery of detail, and administrative efficiency could be intimidating to others. Clearly, Peel possessed a determined approach to policy-making, and acted with vision and clarity. Peel sought to change the Conservative party from a party of the landed interest to one that was representative of all classes. His reforming ambition and zeal was one that was fuelled by promoting administrative efficiency and rationalisation, as he had earlier shown during his reforms of the criminal justice system, and his determination to further progressive legislation where it was viable. Peel was often taken as haughty and aloof and while appearing to be seeking advice from others, was rarely swayed from a course that he had decided on himself. These characteristics came more to the fore throughout his term in office, and ultimately were destructive inasmuch as Peel did not take the time to consult and convince fellow-members of the Conservative party. Nevertheless, the 1841-6 government was one that achieved a great deal in terms of liberal legislation appropriate to an expanding industrial economy.

The Anti-Corn Law League The formation of the League and its aims

After several false starts in the 1820s and early 1830s, an explicitly political Free Trade movement finally began in 1838, with the formation of the Manchester Anti-Corn Law Association, the precursor of the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839. Surprisingly, despite the Whigs' rhetorical commitment to freer trade, the Whig governments of the 1830s achieved little. Although the 1830s has been identified as a period in which the Corn Laws became distinctively identified with the Tory party, most leading Whigs actually supported the Corn Laws. In fact, from 1841, Peel achieved more than his Whig predecessors in establishing free trade, building upon the work of earlier Liberal Tories such as Canning and Huskisson in supporting tariff reductions. The League sought to abolish the Corn Laws as the central pillar of the protective system, but more widely, supported the abolition of all protective tariffs. While many in the League used providential religious language, the main theoretical justification for repeal was economic. The political economist David Ricardo had earlier laid the intellectual basis for repeal by arguing that it would lead to manufacturing and industrial expansion in foreign markets. This was taken up by Richard Cobden, the effective leader of the League. Cobden argued that the Corn Laws diminished foreign markets for British manufacturers, and encouraged foreign manufacturing and tariff barriers. For Cobden, the uncertainty of reciprocal commerce caused by the irregular demand for foreign corn, a result of the Corn Laws, led to monetary fluctuations. Repeal therefore would establish stable markets and promote manufacturing expansion.

Aims and origins

Against the background of the mid-1830s, when economic and social conditions for the working classes worsened, William Lovett and Francis Place founded the London Working Men's Association. This was intended to propagate ideas of greater political influence for the working class. In May 1838, they published a series of demands, echoing those of earlier radicals. This was done in the Charter, which gave its name to Chartism. The Six Points of the People's Charter were: - annual parliaments - universal manhood suffrage over 21 - equal electoral districts (i.e. equal in electorate size) - payment of MPs - removal of property qualifications for MPs - secret ballots Note that the Chartists only sought votes for men. Many and varied groups and individuals supported the Charter and, as a movement, Chartism brought together people of widely differing and divergent aims and advocating very different methods for achieving them. A fierce loyalty to furthering the interests of the working class and establishing a democratic political system - for males only - united men who otherwise had many differences. But while the Charter was the knot that united them, it was to prove rather too slippery to hold the movement together for long. Middle-class support for the Chartists came from Thomas Attwood's Birmingham Political Union (BPU), which had played such an important part in pressing for franchise reform before the 1832 Reform Act. The BPU was revived in 1837 and Attwood, a middle-class banker and MP, found support from fellow MPs such as the radicals, Roebuck and Hume. Recognising the great success that recent petitioning campaigns - such as that against slavery - had conjured up, the BPU suggested that a national petition in support of the Charter should be presented to Parliament, and in February 1839 a National Convention of delegates was formed to direct the campaign. The first Chartist petition, with over a million signatures, was completed by June 1839. Attwood presented it to Parliament but the Commons rejected it by 235 votes to 46. In August 1839, the Convention broke up.

Put the meaning of Peel's remarks in the Tamworth Manifesto into your own words (Source 1 below). How does Gash explain the birth of the Conservative Party? (Source 2 below)

Answers should allude to careful, constructive change after a careful review of the need for reform rather than pursuing reform for the sake of reform. Bearing in mind the necessity for preserving respect for the ancient institutions and aspects of the constitution which were integral to the British political system, and which were identified as rightful constitutional rights and privileges. Gash identifies the Reform crisis as central to the formation of the Conservative party as the party which opposed radical reform. The Tamworth Manifesto clarified this stance, providing a clearer and broader conception of the identity and purpose of the party, not merely as an anti-Reform party but as a party willing to accept moderate reform when it was practical and necessary.

Write two short paragraphs, one presenting arguments for continuing with reforms; the other presenting arguments for halting the reform process.

Answers should allude to in favour: the appetite for reform among the electorate, the increasing electorate, many of whom had shown their support for reform, the Whig victory at the election which had also vindicated the popularity of reform. The widespread view that reform of Church and State was necessary to prevent more deep-seated and fundamental reform, and that in the face of rapid social and economic changes, political modernisation to reflect these changes was increasingly necessary. Against the idea of further reform was the idea that although reform of the electoral system had been necessary, there was no widespread public support for further instalments of reform. Moreover, after the elections of 1832, the Whigs had consistently lost support, showing that the public wanted consolidation and not further upheaval. Several major reforms had been undertaken and it was no longer necessary to continue with further reforms. Indeed, many Whigs had advanced reform as the final necessary reform of State institutions.

Edwin Chadwick and reform

As we have seen, Edwin Chadwick was a very important figure in the formulation, planning, and execution of the New Poor Law. In 1832, he was employed by the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the operation of the Poor Law, and in 1833, he was made a full member of the commission. Chadwick and Nassau William Senior were largely responsible for drafting the famous report of 1834, recommending the wholesale reform of the old law. Chadwick favoured a more centralised system of administration than the one adopted; he thought the reform should have provided for the management of poor law relief by salaried officers controlled from a central board, with boards of guardians acting merely as inspectors. In 1834, he was appointed secretary to the Poor Law Commission. Unwilling to administer the Act in any way other than as he thought best, he found it hard to get along with his superiors. That disagreement, among others, contributed to the dissolution of the Poor Law Commission in 1847 and its replacement by the Poor Law Board. His chief contribution to political controversy was his belief in entrusting certain departments of local affairs to train and select experts instead of two representatives, elected on the principle of local self-government. Chadwick also took up the question of sanitation, in conjunction with Dr Thomas Southwood Smith, and their joint efforts eventually produced improvements in public health. His report entitled 'The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population' (1842) was researched and published at his own expense. A supplementary report was also published in 1843. The formation of the Health of Towns Association and the creation of various city-based branches thereof followed rapidly; these bodies contributed to the passing of the Public Health Act in 1848. Chadwick had a genuine concern for the welfare of the poor but, in common with many liberals at the time, he had a utilitarian and bureaucratic approach to social problems. This often did not take sufficient account of the feelings and motivations of individuals. His reforming instincts were directed towards institutional efficiency and central state direction and allocation of resources. Chadwick's association with Bentham and his sympathy for Benthamite ideas was fully apparent in his public career.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs

Associated with the GNCTU was the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers which had a branch in the Dorset village of Tolpuddle. In 1833, local employers had six local union leaders charged under the Unlawful Oaths Act of 1797. They were found guilty in 1834, in a decision supported by the Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, and were sentenced to transportation to Australia for seven years. Despite a campaign by Owen, and widespread outrage at the severity of the sentence, the decision stood, although the sentences were eventually reduced. The case of the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' symbolised the collapse of the early general union movement. Leadership splits, financial and organisational weakness, the counter-attack of employers and government, a lack of adequate funds, a failure to stand together nationally, the lack in the immediate pre-railway age of efficient communications and, ultimately, the dishonesty of officials (the treasurer absconded with many of the funds) combined to make the GNCTU a short-lived failure.

Conservative recovery

By 1834, the Ultra Tories in the Commons were slowly being re-absorbed into the Conservative Party while moderate Whigs were rebelling. In May 1834, four members of the Whig government resigned over the 'lay appropriation' clauses of Russell's Irish Church Bill. November 1834, saw the resignation of Melbourne and Peel's succession as Prime Minister. He issued the Tamworth Manifesto on 18 December 1834, displaying the progressive credentials of the Conservative Party. Nonetheless, the Whigs were again returned to power early in 1835, and Peel's short-lived ministry (known as the Hundred Days Ministry) ended, though it was a crucial event in the Conservative recovery. According to Gash, the 100 Days, brought 'a fresh and welcome political leadership, dissociated from the anti-reform image of old Toryism and yet different from the propensities of the new Whiggery'. (N. Gash, Sir Robert Peel: the life of Sir Robert Peel after 1830 (1972)) The appointment of the Ecclesiastical Commission was the only measure of lasting importance from the Government, and their recommendations were adopted by the Whigs, strengthening the legitimacy of the Established Church by removing abuses and anomalies. The 1835 election campaign and the Tamworth speech are generally regarded as witnessing the birth of the Conservative Party. By 1835, with 290 MPs, an effective party organization in the country, and established leaders, the Conservatives were now a more cohesive parliamentary force and Peel's personal stature increased dramatically. There were 450 Conservative candidates at the 1837 General Election, a significant increase from 1835, when there were 390. The 1837 General Election saw the Whig majority reduced to twenty. The increasing importance of party politics was also apparent in the disappearance of 'independent' members, and in opposition, Conservative MPs observed a much tighter party discipline in the House of Commons.

Social problems in towns

Cyclical unemployment, poverty, and alienation led to an increase in crime and social disorder. There was a rise in crime during the period 1832-46, and in larger overcrowded urban areas crime was easier to commit with impunity. The extension of the Metropolitan Police to provincial areas was an attempt to deal with the spiralling crime rates but the nationwide introduction of police forces took time, and was sometimes actively resisted in individual boroughs and counties. Moreover, early police forces were not always very efficient in detection methods, which was another reason why so criminal activity remained concealed . The Municipal Corporations Act had attempted to improve the administration of towns and the services they offered, but action was very patchy across the country. Work on the Poor Law Board had turned Edwin Chadwick towards public health reform. Chadwick's Report of 1842 shocked its readers and suggested to the government that it was necessary to improve the conditions of the poor, but Peel's government rejected the Report as too intrusive into the prerogatives of local authorities and, in any case, too expensive to implement centrally. Chadwick was convinced that insanitary conditions caused disease, which in turn caused poverty and dependence on the Poor Law. Parliamentary Commissions in the 1840s drew the same conclusion, but municipal authorities wanted to protect their powers against what they frequently saw as central government meddling.

The road to repeal

During the summer of 1845, the Times, and many other newspapers, began to predict the end of the Corn Laws. The London correspondent of the Norwich Mercury stated: 'The whole current of the public mind in the metropolis, the decided and unanimous tone of the daily press, and the private opinions of well-informed politicians' all assumed the Corn Laws were nearing their end. In Punch, 3 May 1845, a striking cartoon was published depicting 'Papa Cobden taking Master Robert a Free Trade walk'. Cobden (shown as a father figure) was represented as saying: 'Come along, Master Robert, do step out' and Peel (depicted as a small boy struggling to keep up with his father's stride) replying: 'That's all very well, but you know I cannot go as fast as you do'. On 6 November 1845, the Times predicted: 'The present corn laws were doomed' (p. 157). We might attribute this move towards repeal as the result of the constant agitation of the League, and it is certainly true that Peel was influenced by Cobden's economic arguments for repeal and free trade. As early as 1841, Gladstone had stated 'Cobden will be a worrying man on corn'. Yet Peel appears never to have wholly accepted the cosmopolitan views of those like Cobden who saw free trade promoting international peace, although theologically Peel appears to have supported the Evangelical case for the removal of artificial impediments towards trade. Peel had become a convert to free trade but was confined within a party committed to protection. The occasion of the acceleration towards Repeal was the situation in Ireland. It seems doubtful Peel could have proposed repeal without the Irish Famine inserting a high sense of urgency to the issue.

Sir Robert Peel and political strategy

Having served in Lord Liverpool's Tory government as Chief Secretary for Ireland (1812-1818) and Home Secretary (1822-7), Peel had vast governmental experience. Peel opposed the Reform Act in 1832 but accepted thereafter that it was the will of the country. While opposing further parliamentary reform he accepted that good government must include prudent but significant amendment of institutions. From 1830 Peel sat as MP for his small home borough of Tamworth, with an electorate of only 528 in 1832. He never contested a large, popular constituency, and relished 'that independence which the representation of a small place enables a man to exercise'. This statement possessed the implication that the larger the local electorate, the more an MP might be expected to respond to constituency opinion. (Donald Read, Peel and the Victorians (1987)) As a political strategist, one of Peel's main aims was to obtain the support of non-partisan middle opinion. Peel stressed how the Conservatives had sustained Whig ministries against pressure from the radicals, often supporting Whig legislation, referred at times as 'constructive opposition' or government in opposition'. Peel was always looking to drive a wedge between the Whigs and moderate opinion, a task made easier by the Lichfield House Compact, and the compromises which had been necessary in making this agreement. There were two areas of Whig policy that Conservatives were particularly concerned about: the problem of Ireland and the growth of religious Dissent. The political strengthening of Dissenters, socially and politically important at local level through the newly-elected Town Councils, was a significant feature of mid-Victorian England. Peel was aware that he had to win over the moderates, and this explains his tactical restraint during the mid-1830s. Conservatism in the 1830s rested on the determination to uphold the monarchy, the rural interest, localism, and the Anglican constitution. The Conservatives remained a predominantly landed, religious party. Conservative identity consisted mainly of hostility to Dissenters and Irish Catholics, while possessing a deep attachment to the landed interest and a protective tariff on grain, the Corn Laws, which would protect the landed classes.

Civic culture

In fact, conditions in urban Britain were not all determined by filth, disease, and overcrowding. During this period, many towns and cities developed a kind of civic pride in their newly-created urban conurbations. Many towns and cities developed into great cultural centres, or at least developed a civic culture characterised by an emphasis on charitable works, economic improvements, and local pride. City Fathers commissioned magnificent buildings like Birmingham Town Hall in 1834. Commercial organisations like Chambers of Commerce and professional institutions established state of the art headquarters in city centres, and wealthy benefactors built museums and laid out beautiful and spacious public parks. Some of these structural and cultural improvements were established to promote the social and political strength of the new elites, the wealthy middle classes, who generally inhabited grand homes in smart residential areas well away from the industrial town centres. Despite the splendour of many of these city centres, the defining characteristic of this period in urban Britain was the relative paucity of infrastructure - such as roads, sewers, and street lighting - to cater for the needs of the population as a whole. In Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow, the contrasting fortunes of wealthy merchants and industrialists with those of the labouring poor were stark. Glasgow, the 'second city of the Empire' also had some of the worst slum housing in Britain. More broadly, squalid living conditions in lodging houses and tenement buildings across the country encouraged the spread of diseases like cholera, typhoid, and typhus, which killed thousands every year.

Abolition of slavery

In the aftermath of the Reform Act, many of its supporters believed the country would benefit from a rapid progress of knowledge and the spirit of liberty and independence. Veteran abolitionists like William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson were disappointed that the abolition of slavery was not included in the Whig government programme. In late 1832, parliament was flooded with petitions calling for an end to slavery in the British Empire, reflecting the earlier change in the climate of opinion in relation to the practice. Plantation owners in the British colonies were reluctant to accept abolition but, weakened after the reform of parliament, were powerless to prevent it. Slave revolts were not unusual but the level of violence involved in the Jamaican revolt of 1831-32 caused panic in government circles, and among plantation owners for their lives and profits. A parliamentary inquiry followed, resulting in the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. After abolition, slaves were re-classified as apprentices with planned release dates often years away. Peaceful extra-parliamentary protests led to the date being brought forward to 1838. Compensation of £20 million was paid by the Whig Government to all former owners of slaves, reflecting Government acceptance that slavery was no longer acceptable but that the interests among families, many of whom belonged to the political classes, should be catered for. To satisfy plantation owners further and help them to replace the lost workforce in the British West Indies, and a system of indentured labour was introduced by bringing workers in from India. Regulations were put in place to safeguard immigrant workers who were contracted to stay for a period of five years, but there were many abuses of the system and it could still be regarded as a form of forced labour. The Whigs had recognised humanitarian and Evangelical sentiments, but 1833's Act was really more a case of putting the finishing touches to a reform which had been likely for many years. Nevertheless, they grasped the opportunity to reflect public opinion and sentiment on the matter; in that respect, they were perhaps more followers than leaders.

The League's campaign

Increasingly, the League's hopes of Corn Law repeal rested on Sir Robert Peel especially after Peel's 1842 Budget had revised Britain's tariffs in a liberal direction and moved Britain towards freer trade, The League's electoral campaigns of voter registration and freehold purchase, though still operational, had yielded little in changing the complexion of Parliament, which still contained a large majority of members opposed to Corn Law Repeal. By 1843, the League appeared to have reached an impasse. In a speech of 28 September 1843, Cobden was concerned that the public campaign was running out of steam and considered that repeal might come about not through 'agitation from without' but from 'conversion from within'. League events, meeting, tea-parties, and fund-raisers were being held on a regular basis throughout the country in 1843 but it didn't appear that the League was making a significant number of converts where it really mattered—in Parliament. It may also have been that people were becoming bored with the League. A hostile Tory periodical, while calling the agitation the 'paramount nuisance of the day' asserted, perhaps more in hope than conviction: 'This is that question which all men have ceased to think sufferable ... No man hearkens to such debates any longer—no man reads the reports of such debates: it is become criminal to quote them; and recent examples of torpor beyond all torpor, on occasion of Cobden meetings amongst the inflammable sections of our population, have shown—that not the poorest of the poor are any longer to be duped, or to be roused out of apathy, by this intolerable fraud'. ('The Last Session of Parliament', Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, (October 1843)) The League continued with its agitation right up until the Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, but there were other more pressing reasons behind Peel's decision to repeal the Corn Laws, as you will see. Nonetheless, although the League's direct impact on the decision was probably slight, its long campaign was one of the most important of the nineteenth century because it provided a model for successful agitation on a single issue question, which slowly changed the climate of popular opinion. Moreover, although most members of the League were free traders, they accepted that they must concentrate solely on the Corn Laws as they were considered the keystone of the arch in Britain's protective system.

Social reform campaigners including Shaftesbury and Chadwick - The social aspect of industrial development - Industrialisation and philanthropy

Industrialisation brought many advantages to British society in the form of wealth creation, infrastructure development, better communications, and urban and municipal facilities which promoted learning and leisure. On the other hand, it also brought many problems which a predominantly rural society had not generally faced. These included long working hours, the extensive employment of children, and insanitary working and living conditions. It was partly as a response to the problems posed by industry and urban living that philanthropic activity accelerated in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. We have seen that the reform programme of the Whigs incorporated factory reform and reform of the Poor Law. There were tangible results from these initiatives - as we have seen - but, as industrialisation continued apace, further challenges emerged. Behind the growth in philanthropic activity lay a change in social attitudes, especially apparent in the more widespread view that the state should regulate society more. Jeremy Bentham provided much of the impetus for centralised social reform of this kind, for his ideas were underpinned by the idea that institutions must be useful and efficient, and this concept meant that reform should always be in the minds of politicians and public men. Although humanitarian and Evangelical influences were also at work, especially in the work of men like Lord Ashley, Bentham's ideas appeared to feed into a wider consciousness of the need for administrative efficiency and the intelligent use of available resources.

Topic 4 - Social Trends

Industrialisation, as we have seen, brought many problems to British society. Working practices, discipline, and hours were all transformed by the application of steam-driven machinery and the construction of factories, though change was uneven across the country in time and geographically. Working class standards of living were often precarious and often subject to sharp changes—for individual workers it was very dependent on what you did, where you lived, and what skills you possessed. Rural areas were often the scene of desperate poverty, as agricultural wages often failed to keep pace with urban wages. Conditions in the towns and cities were often deprived, with insufficient housing, poor sanitation and drainage, inadequate leisure facilities, and few open spaces. These deficiencies were exacerbated by the rate of population growth and the expansion of factories. Internal migration placed further strains on the population. The social divisions and segregation between masters and men which resulted from industrialisation led to institutional and organisational divides within the working class itself, with the skilled working class, often termed, the 'labour aristocracy' forming its own institutions of self-help and improvement to deal with hard times and the threat of poverty.

The 1833 Factory Act

It is not entirely coincidental that the first significant Factory Act was passed the year after the passage of the 1832 Reform Act. However, it fell far short of the recommendations of the parliamentary committee led by Sadler and the demands of the Ten Hour Movement. The 1833 Factories Regulation Act was based on the much less radical report of a Royal Commission and only related to children under 18. It covered all textile mills except those producing silk and lace and its main provisions were: - night work was forbidden - under-9s were not to be employed at all - 9 to 13 year olds had a maximum working day of 9 hours and a maximum working week of 48 hours - 13 to 18 year olds had a maximum working day of 12 hours and a maximum working week of 69 hours - 9 to 13 year olds were to have two hours schooling a day. Four factory inspectors, appointed by the Crown as full-time paid officials, were to see that the law was observed, leading to a much more thorough and efficient enforcement of the law in theory, but in practice the inspectors were over-worked and many abuses and transgressions of the law continued. Despite its limitations, this Act signalled that the State, for the first time, was beginning to take responsibility for some aspects of the people's well-being. This was a serious inroad into the doctrine of laissez-faire. Nevertheless, the Act was not passed solely from philanthropic motives, and it allowed adults to be worked up to 16 or 17 hours a day via a relay system. The new legislation would mean an increasing number of child workers but Chadwick factored into the proposals that they could be drawn from the workhouses which had been established by the New Poor Law of 1834. While the Act was made more effective by the appointment of inspectors, adult hours remained untouched. Nevertheless, the principle of State intervention in working hours was established. There was also inclusion of educational provision within the legislation for child factory workers—the first indication of any government policy introducing an element of compulsory education.

To what extent were the social reforms advocated by Shaftesbury, Chadwick and others a response to the development of the industrial system. Explain your answer.

Many of the reforms advocated by contemporary social reformers arose from the adverse effects of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation and the lack of provision in terms of infrastructure in the expanding towns and cities. Factory reform, the New Poor Law, and sanitation and public health issues were matters which had great resonance and were consequences of the growing pains of an industrial and urban society.

Why might it appear that the working classes were worse off during the period 1832-46?

The working classes appear to have been worse off according to some wage and prices data which indicate that prices rose faster than wages across the period. Therefore, money wages had less purchasing power. However, the picture is complicated by regional variation, differences in skill level, and by the impact of mechanisation, with the latter exerting a particularly devastating impact on particular sectors, like handloom weaving. Equally, new sectors like railways offered higher and more regular wages. The political events of the period seem to indicate by anecdotal evidence that workers considered that their standard of living had been diminished.

Peel and the transformation of the Conservative party Party organisation

Nowhere was the heightened party organization required by the Reform Act seen with greater clarity than in the Tory Party. The Carlton Club, founded in 1832, became the party's organisational headquarters. Meanwhile, in the country at large, party organisation improved, building on foundations laid during the election campaign of 1834-35. A party electoral expert observed to Peel that, in 1834-35, 'we had to find candidates, organisers and friends in almost every place. Now that work is done' (quoted in Gash et al., 1977). Starting with the election campaign of 1835 and continuing with that of 1837, there was a rapid growth in Conservative and Constitutional Associations, the forerunners of modern constituency organisations. Gash quotes a pamphlet of 1837 that declares 'at this moment there is scarcely a county in England which cannot boast of its Conservative association of gentry'. For the Conservative supporters who were not 'gentry' there were often parallel Conservative Tradesmen's Societies. The Conservatives reaped the reward for the hard-organisational work of the late 1830s by winning a convincing overall majority in the general election of 1841.

The Decline of Chartism

O'Connor organised a second Chartist petition in 1842. This claimed over three million signatures and was presented to the Commons in May. Again, the House overwhelmingly rejected a motion to hear the petitioners, by 287 to 49. Against a background of industrial slump, strikes broke out in support of the Charter. Starting in Lancashire, these 'plug plots' (named as a result of workers pulling out the plugs in steam boilers and so making them unworkable) spread over the North, Scotland and the Midlands during 1842. Ignoring O'Connor's plea for caution, a Chartist Convention in Manchester called for a general strike, but the strike wave met with resistance from industrial employers and government and petered out. Many imprisonments followed. Meanwhile Lovett's 'New Move' to win middle-class backing for the Charter had collapsed. Sturge and middle-class adherents of the Complete Suffrage Union were frightened away by Lovett's Chartist associations, especially in view of the actions of some of his former colleagues during 1842. Disillusioned, Lovett withdrew from the movement, devoting himself to teaching, writing and other causes. With the return of prosperity and economic recovery after 1842, Chartism, discredited after civil disorder, failed risings, and incompetent leadership, went into a steep decline. The circulation of its leading newspaper, O'Connor's Northern Star, declined dramatically, and there remained considerable apathy among the working class, many of whom failed to see the connection between political reform and their social and economic condition. Chartism was never as strong again as it had been in the late 1830s, and the direction taken by O'Connor, of short-lived ventures like the National Land Cooperative Society, ended in failure. A long period of prosperity effectively ended mass working-class support, and while it re-emerged in 1847, as a mass movement Chartism went into irrevocable decline after 1842.

The plight of the handloom weavers and the rise of the railway workers

One of the most famous examples in British economic history of the decline of a craft on account of mechanisation and industrial change is that of the handloom weavers. For tens of thousands of traditionally highly-skilled handloom weavers, their inability to compete with machines, and the subsequent decline in status and living standards was a tragedy. By 1830, the handloom weavers in the West Riding of Yorkshire were earning 4s 6d a week, when earlier in the century, some had earned as much as 25s a week. A Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1835, after taking evidence into the condition of the weavers and the state of the industry, recommended that they seek a different means of earning a living. Mechanisation cut costs for employers and only in areas where mechanisation was not viable, such as in small workshops where steam-driven machinery could not be installed, was handloom weaving still in demand. The rise of factories and the mechanisation of the process of weaving effectively terminated handloom weaving, and although the decline was long drawn-out, it was irrevocable. Some workers in rapidly expanding sectors or industries like the railways were better off than their urban contemporaries in factories. These types of workers could usually rely on a steady wage, unaffected by seasonal variation, and there was also plenty of casual work in the railways which was reasonably well-paid. The question of standards of living is a very difficult one, and not susceptible to an easy generalisation. There were so many variables involved, such as regional variation, the vibrancy of particular sectors, the skill level of individuals, and overall demand for labour, that general trends and averages tend to obscure important variations in the experiences and lives of workers.

Cooperative movements

The years after 1815 saw a number of advances in working-class cooperation as members of the artisan class and their spokesmen sought routes to respectability and self-esteem. These included idealistic and, in the event, short-lived schemes for setting up cooperative communities along the lines of Robert Owen's factory-based community at New Lanark. Owen was very much at the heart of a wide range of movements to help the working classes. Following the links above will allow you look a little further into his work and what has been termed 'utopian socialism' (a term used in a disparaging way by Marx and Engels) as one of the key cooperative movements of the period. However, of more long-lasting importance, perhaps, were other models of working-class cooperation: friendly societies, consumer cooperatives, temperance societies and savings banks. What characterised each of these cooperative ventures was a strong belief in self-help.

What does Peel's quote above say about the economic composition of Britain and the extent of industrialisation by 1842? What were some of the political difficulties associated with these economic developments?

Peel indicates by his words that the balance between industry and agriculture in Britain had changed by the mid-nineteenth century. While he found this process somewhat regrettable in terms of the type of society it was producing, he was reconciled to as manufacturing future which promised some significant advantages in terms of wealth creation and standards of living. The extent of industrialisation by the mid-nineteenth century made this change appear inevitable.

Peel and political economy

Peel placed the responsibility on his backbenchers to support his Ministry and its policies, which the government chose to recommend on the basis of the national interest. In commercial policy, Peel moved towards free trade but not in any doctrinaire sense. He cited Huskisson: 'In the vast and complex interests of this country, all general theories, however incontrovertible in the abstract, require to be weighed with a calm circumspection'. Agriculture had its special interests, and required protection, but it was only one of many economic interests in the country. This was most obviously the case when we consider that the development of manufacturing continued at a high level throughout the period 1832-46—by the 1840s the factory system that we associate with industrial development was well established in some sectors. This was most markedly so in the textile industry. Production processes were now often concentrated on a single site and this usually meant that factory owners experimented more with new processes and introduced labour-saving machines. By the 1840s, steam-powered machines were becoming more cost-effective than those powered by water in the cotton mills of the North. The decline of the handloom weavers continued at a steady pace. Not all factories were large scale, however. In 1841, for example, out of nearly a thousand Lancashire cotton firms, almost 45% employed fewer than 100 workers and less than 3% employed over 1,000 workers. Although iron and steel were second only to textiles as a staple industry, technical innovations came in that sector a little later - but by the 1850s that industry too was on a much larger scale. Peel acknowledged that manufacturing was here to stay and expected that his government would legislate accordingly, trying to balance the different interests within the country. In 1842, he wrote in the Quarterly Review: 'If you had to constitute new Societies, you might on moral and social grounds prefer Corn fields to Cotton factories, an agricultural to a manufacturing population. But our lot is cast, and we cannot recede'. Ultimately, the interests of industry and agriculture were not totally compatible, for manufacturers wanted to overturn protection and establish an open trading environment between Britain and other countries. In order to achieve this objective, as you saw earlier, the Corn Laws had to be repealed. On the other hand, agricultural interests, fearful of foreign competition, and viewing agriculture as the bedrock of the British economy, wanted the Corn Laws to continue. Peel had the difficult task of reconciling these two positions.

Why was Peel accused of 'double-dealing' by some members of the Conservative party?

Peel was accused of 'double dealing' for a number of reasons. Most obviously, he had been elected in 1841 as leader of a party committed to agricultural protection yet he was the architect of tariff reforms which relaxed duties on cattle and grain imports. Peel was also, as the leader of the party which posed as the defender of the Church of England, accused of betraying the Church by promoting Catholicism by increasing the Maynooth Grant. In these ways, Peel was viewed by a protectionist and Protestant cohort of the party as having betrayed their interests.

Commercial policy

Peel's Budgets of 1842-5 reduced tariffs and reintroduced Income Tax to provide the government with a bridging revenue during the transitional period in which trade was expected to expand. The hope was that trade expansion would eventually bring in the old volume of revenue from a reduced scale of charges, whose purpose was to raise revenue rather than to protect, distort, or discriminate against the products of various industries. It was a daring policy which ultimately transformed the nation's finances, and pushed Britain further in the direction of free trade. Peel's legislation was successful in arresting a slump in exports and in reviving trade and industry. The removal of customs duties from imported raw materials was of great benefit in lowering the costs of manufacturers and, equally, reducing export duties helped them to export a greater volume of goods. Unemployment fell, and food, except for bread (partly because of the Corn Laws), became cheaper. Peel's reforms encouraged some of the changes which were necessary for most Britons to enjoy a higher standard of living. Peel was concerned with solving Britain's problems through reviving the economy and achieving national prosperity. He aimed at stabilising government finances, stimulating trade and industry, and thus lowering the cost of living, unemployment, and ultimately eliminating distress and discontent. In Peel's mind, economic prosperity went hand in hand with social stability, and would quell any further demands for political reform, which had been such a characteristic feature of the 1830s. To complete his reform programme Peel tackled the banking industry, another of the commanding heights of the economy, and a crucial one if economic stability was to be maintained.

Trade and business regulation

Peel's business-like approach to government was well-suited to reforms in trade and business. There was in reality much scope for reform for there were few controls in place to prevent fraudulent practices or to curb risky speculation of investors' money. An absence of professional accounting was a major inefficiency in business practices of the period, and with the increasing sophistication of business and the increasingly tangled network of commerce, reform appeared long over-due to Peel and his acolytes. With the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1844, Peel introduced measures to regulate company finance. A salaried Register of Companies was established and it became obligatory for any firm with more than twenty-five shareholding members and transferable shares to be listed on the new Companies Register. In addition, every Registered Company had to produce regularly audited balance-sheets. This reform was an important step in increasing confidence within the business community, on the basis of promoting fair dealing and eliminating risk in transacting business with other companies. There were limitations, however. Companies formed by special Act of Parliament were exempt, for instance, and this now included the new railway companies which were experiencing a boom and whose directors were making huge fortunes. Gladstone's attempt to regulate these companies was unsuccessful on account of the links between many MPs and the companies but he did succeed in regulating the operation of the railways. An Act of 1840, establishing the Board of Trade Railway Department, was extended and allowed for inspection of railways by paid officials.

In assessing the respective merits of physical and moral force Chartism, which method do you think would be most likely to succeed?

Physical force Chartism used the threat of violence and the power of numbers to exert pressure on politicians to instigate political change. Moral force Chartism sought to persuade politicians by reason and argument as to the justice of the Chartist cause. Physical force Chartism could gain the attention of the authorities more directly and perhaps demanded a more forthright response but by adopting such an approach it was likely to frighten middle-class and moderate opinion and lose support in this way. It was also likely to encounter greater hostility from the authorities and would make a confrontation more likely. Moral force Chartism used constitutional methods as more appropriate to the British political tradition and there did exist channels to convey the Chartist arguments to Parliament, notably petitioning. There was more likely to be an engagement in political argument but petitions and the attempt to persuade were also easily dismissed especially by a Parliament based on wealth and property. It could be argued that moral force was more likely to succeed but in the historical context of the 1840s, neither method appeared likely to succeed unless the Chartist movement could broaden its base of support which it proved unable to do.

The Whigs and reform The legislative record, 1832-1841

Pressure for reform did not end with the Reform Act. Partly as a result of reform agitation, a raft of liberal, centralising legislation followed. Pressure groups came more to the fore in post-1832 Britain, ranging from factory reformers to anti-slavery advocates. The emergence of more popular involvement in public policy and the policy-making process as a result of the Reform Act, was an important aspect of the political system in furthering the cause of reform. Despite their historical reputation, the Whigs had not been advocates for widespread reform but public expectations had been raised of change and improvement. The clash of interests between different groups, as we have seen, made governing a difficult task, and the Whigs approached the legislative process in a serious and careful manner. The establishment of many Select Committees and Royal Commissions drawing evidence from experts, practitioners, and interested parties in particular fields proved to be an important innovation in the legislative process, one which ostensibly provided legitimacy, transparency and professionalism within the consultative process. Parliament seemed prepared to listen to extra-parliamentary opinion in the decision-making process, and so public opportunities to influence social and economic reform grew. By 1846, it was becoming normal for a wide range of evidence on national social issues to be heard and proposals considered by a Royal Commission before any legislative enactment. The Whig reforms were carried through with the cooperation and involvement of liberal-minded aristocracy, commercial, and manufacturing interests, and leading middle class professionals. These groups believed that they could achieve a balance of gradual, measured reform which would not fundamentally alter the political status quo but would incorporate the new dynamic elements in British society. The Whig reforms, with hindsight, may have been flawed and incomplete but they laid the foundations for further reforms in key policy areas, providing a greater degree of central State involvement than had previously been known in Britain. Apart from the Municipal Corporations Act, which related primarily to governance, the Whig reforms related to four key areas: education, factory reform, slavery, and the Poor Law.

Opposition to the New Poor Law

Provincial resistance to the centralisation of the Poor Law system, especially but not exclusively in the North, together with the bad publicity generated by workhouse scandals, played a large part in ameliorating the impact of the new legislation and eventually helped to bring about changing attitudes and a slightly more sympathetic approach (or readiness to turn a blind eye), both from local Guardians and at the centre in London. Historian Norman Gash has concluded: 'the governing classes had come down tacitly but overwhelmingly on the side of compromise, common sense and humanity' (Gash, 1985). It may be helpful at this stage to summarise reasons for opposition to the 1834 Act, both from those affected and from those administering the system locally. The combined effect of this range of opposition would not end the New Poor Law but it certainly produced a readiness to ease it. We can note: - widespread hatred of the harshness of the regime in the poor law 'bastilles', as workhouses came to be called, where poverty was apparently seen as a crime to be punished - blurring of the distinction between the deserving poor and those whose poverty was self-inflicted, causing the majority of the respectable working class to fear that if they hit hard times they could be thrown together with the roughest elements of society in the new workhouses - belief that the use of workhouses drove down wages, with labourers in the South fearful that they would be sent to northern industrial towns to provide 'cheap labour' - resentment at central control from London - fear on the part of Guardians of Poor Law Unions in industrial areas that there would be flooding of workhouses during depressions - ratepayer worries that if the deterrent aspect failed to work it could cost twice as much to house paupers in a workhouse than to give them outdoor relief.

The pace of railway construction

Railway construction required time: plans had to be submitted, investors had to be found, subscriptions raised, and Acts of Parliament passed. With the initial lines of the 1840s operating at a profit, there was a mad scramble to construct railways. Uncontrolled speculation was a boost to the economy but a disaster for many individuals. By the early 1840s there were 200 different railway companies. Canals and turnpikes were badly affected but the wider economic effects are debated. It seemed obvious that railways promoted economic growth, connected markets, and promoted business expansion, but the early railways seem to have had more of an impact in transporting people rather than goods, and it was only in the late 1850s when freight overtook passengers as the slightly larger earner. Yet the potential for pulling together the different regions of the country and creating a true national economy which allowed business to grow was very great indeed. Passengers could use the facilities of several companies in a single journey making allocation of revenues to companies complicated. In 1842, a Railway Clearing House was established and managed a system of revenue distribution among the several companies. If a passenger bought a ticket at a station owned by one company and travelled on a train owned by another, then during the journey travelled along two stretches of line each owned by a different company and ended at a station owned by yet another company, the Clearing House ensured that each company received a fair proportion of each fare paid. There were over 4,000 miles of track laid by 1846, a sharp increase on the 100 miles of 1832. These figures indicate that the social effects of railways were great, and equally as important as the economic and financial effects. After a period of initial and perhaps understandable suspicion, the public embraced the idea of rail travel. The railways could bring mobility and the freedom to explore new horizons, but equally could be used for a cheap excursion to the coast. By the 1844 Railways Act, Peel and Gladstone recognised the importance of railways, for the Act decreed that each railway company had to provide a carriage for third-class passengers at least once a day with the fare capped at not more than one penny per mile. It was flippantly termed 'the parliamentary train' but in a small way it was an advance towards a less elitist society.

List the ways in which railways promoted economic development.

Railways promoted economic development by stimulating the coal and iron industries for raw materials, by connecting transit trade to ports and harbours, by facilitating local, regional, and national commercial networks. Railways increased the mobility of the population, promoting tourism and leisure industries, and not least, by providing employment in the railway industry and associated ancillary industries.

The railway 'revolution' and associated economic growth - Railways and the railway boom

Railways were one of the most distinctive aspects of Victorian enterprise. In 1830, the Liverpool & Manchester Railway was the first to completely rely on steam and heavily on passenger income. Railway development was an indication of the confidence of investors, entrepreneurs, and politicians, in the stability of the economy. Railways improved the country's infrastructure and dramatically altered its landscape. The engineering feats of the Victorian period to enable and facilitate the course of railways remain impressive even today. Engineers like George and Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel were pioneers, innovators, and visionary in their conception of what was possible. Robert Stephenson, as Chief Engineer of the Great Western Railway, designed the highly-acclaimed London to Bristol line with its mile-long Box Tunnel. Engineering as a profession advanced with industrial progress—railways, bridges, tunnels, cuttings, and viaducts, all presented a challenge. In 1818, the Institute of Civil Engineers was established, helping to shape the development of engineering as a profession. With a body of available expertise and the availability of capital, the growth of railways in Britain was rapid. In 1836, there were nearly 1,000 miles of track planned but 227 of them were actually built in 1839, 528 in 1840 and 277 in 1841. In 1846, 4,540 miles were approved, and by 1850 more than 6,000 miles of track had been constructed. By the early 1840s most of the early railways had become profitable and that led to euphoric economic expansion. By November 1845, there were 620 schemes with a capital of £563 million before Parliament—but by the end of the year the boom had burst. There were two frenzied bursts of speculative activity, in the periods 1838-40 and 1845-7. The railway boom had all the hallmarks of an expanding and innovative industry: - a new invention - far-sighted pioneers - over-speculation - devious entrepreneurs - a crash - long-term tangible gain

What were the main elements of the 'Condition of England' question?

The 'Condition of England' question encapsulated social and economic problems of the early Victorian period. The dislocation caused by urbanisation and industrialisation and the discontent it was bringing in its wake. The deprivation and degradation of the conditions in towns and the mass poverty which spawned Chartism and anti-Poor Law protests appeared to contemporaries as potentially very dangerous to political and social stability. Men as diverse as Thomas Carlyle (the author of the phrase), Benjamin Disraeli, and Friedrich Engels all identified this seething mass of discontent as very dangerous and something which needed to be addressed.

Parliament and Reform Parliament in the 1830s

The 1832 Act and its local offspring, the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act, did little to meet working-class political aspirations. The hope of some working men had been that a more radical change would have allowed at least some labourers to express their views on the social and economic problems of the day by using the vote. The Act was therefore a considerable disappointment to many radicals, in some sections of the middle class as well as the working class itself. Parliamentary radicalism did not, however, die out. While Whigs were happy to have averted revolution and have consolidated their position by bringing the middle classes into the political mainstream and even a share in government, this didn't mean that those, mainly with middle-class backgrounds, who had been pushing for change before 1832 necessarily gave up on further progress. Thomas Attwood and some 30 to 40 radical colleagues sat in the Commons. They included old hands like Cobbett and Hume but also 'new men' of 1832 such as John Roebuck and John Fielden, a Lancashire manufacturer. Early challenges to the Whig government from Radical MPs for a more robust approach towards implementing a reform agenda were largely rebuffed by the Whig leadership but nevertheless, there were signs of support for some radical measures. Although Lord John Russell (a key figure in enacting the Reform Bills in 1831-32) had declared in 1837 that the 1832 Act was a 'final solution' to the constitutional issue of further reform (earning him the nickname of 'Finality Jack'), a large number of Whig-Liberals did support resolutions in 1838 and 1839 in favour of a secret ballot and triennial parliaments: over 200, in fact, in the latter year. But, apart from their regular questioning and niggling, and even advocating reform of the House of Lords, prospects for further reform through Parliament were not good in the 1830s and 1840s. This left much of the leadership of protest and demands for further reform to extra-parliamentary radicals who had many working-class grievances to feed off.

The Great Famine

The 1841 Census recorded a population of 9 million in Ireland, which by 1851 had fallen to 6.5 million. The cause was the great Famine of 1845-6 during which an estimated one million people died as a result of starvation, and approximately 1.5 million Irish emigrated, mostly to the US and Canada, by 1851. Most of the Irish rural population were abjectly poor, and their main crop was the potato. They sold a portion of the crop to pay the rent, and the remainder of the crop was the staple diet for 9 out of 10 inhabitants. In 1845 a fungus attacked the autumn crop and virtually wiped it out. The Western areas of Ireland were most affected owing to the almost total reliance on the potato crop. It was a major disaster, and always a threat to a country of subsistence farming. Unable to pay their rent, many people were evicted; within a short space of time, they were starving to death. The Anti-Corn Law League, Whigs and free traders argued for unrestricted imports to prevent a humanitarian disaster but protectionists scorned the idea of a crisis, seeing in it a plot to repeal the Corn Laws. Petitions flowed in from all over Britain to open the ports. In Cabinet on 29 November 1845, Peel recommended suspension of the Corn Laws and Wellington assented to any measure Peel considered necessary in the national interest but the Cabinet was reluctant, for the famine in Ireland was not yet a visible fact, and the moral issue of the Conservative government taking action against the Corn Laws weighed heavily. Amidst a political crisis, the Whigs were unable to form an administration leading to Peel resuming office to resolve the crisis. Lord John Russell changed his policy, and supported Repeal, an opportunist move that made it appear as if any action by Peel would appear to be in response to that of the Whigs. Famine had forced the issue forward. The Devon Commission of 1843, appointed to look into Irish land tenure problems, reported in 1845, but far too late for Peel to act on its recommendations. The protectionist Morning Post proposed a compromise 10s duty falling by 1s per year until a permanent duty of 5s was reached but Peel decided to remove corn duties within the context of a broad round of tariff reform.

Topic 3 - Economic Policy

The Conservative government of 1841-46 stands out as a remarkable period of reform and policy readjustment to deal with the profound social and economic changes in British society. As the traditional party of the land, the Conservatives were expected to govern in the interest of the landed interest, and to maintain the Anglican Church against the attacks of radicals and dissenters. However, Peel came to power with a broader agenda. He was determined to govern in the national interest, above the interest of any one class, and to embrace the necessary social and economic changes to regulate an increasingly urban and industrial economy. To this effect, Peel passed important legislation on trade, business, and finance, and, facing a catastrophic famine in Ireland, he repealed the Corn Laws, the central legislation protecting the landed interest. Peel was confident that in passing Repeal he was enabling agriculture to adapt and helping industrial development but by his actions he split the party he had done so much to build up and unify in the years since 1832.

Cross-referencing between the information from the previous page and Source 1 from The National Archives below, make your own assessment of the effectiveness of the 1833 Factory Act. What were the successful and unsuccessful aspects of the Act?

The Factory Act was a serious attempt to limit child labour and represented a significant attempt by government to regulate working hours for children. Educational provision, while limited, was an early indication of the government accepting responsibility for a national educational system. Adult hours remained untouched and enforcement of the provisions of the Act was not totally effective and many employers continued to employ children contrary to the Act.

What were the reasons for the collapse of the GNCTU?

The GNCTU collapsed because the union was not properly administered and was not established on a sound business footing. Fees were paid on an irregular basis and perhaps more importantly large sections of the national workforce did not participate in the union. Employers also hit back at the union, demanding renunciation of union membership from workers in their factories and workshops. It was an overambitious scheme which was not quite sufficiently developed to organise a very fragmented and diffuse working class.

Why was the Anti-Corn Law League formed in 1838, and what were its strengths and weaknesses?

The League was formed in 1838 to agitate for repeal of the Corn Laws. Although it began in Manchester, the movement soon fanned out across the country into national movement with a strong organisational apparatus. The missionary zeal of its followers, the plentiful funds supplied by supporters, the strong political intelligence of its leadership, and the coherence of its economic and political case for repeal were major strengths. Nevertheless, too close an association with manufacturing interests in terms of funding and support left the League vulnerable to attacks from Chartists and Tory protectionists that it was merely the tool of manufacturing interests. This criticism was not an easy one to shrug off since most of the major figures in the League had manufacturing connections. While agitating for a single issue was a sign of strength, in allowing greater focus in conveying a simple message to the population, it also carried the risk of becoming tired, trite, and less relevant in relation to other emergent political issues.

Opposition to the League

The League's demand for Repeal was often criticised by Chartists and Tory protectionists as a means whereby manufacturers lowered wages via cheaper bread. The leading Chartist Feargus O'Connor stated at the Chartist National Convention in 1839: 'Repeal the corn laws, and, instead of having children of nine years of age immured in the factories, they would have the child born with a shuttle in its mouth'. (The Chartist, 16 February 1839) It is certainly true that manufacturers and industrialists comprised the vanguard of the League, in providing funds, resources, and influence. The manufacturers of every major manufacturing town in Britain were almost without exception in favour of the League, and many were contributors to League funds. Despite attempts to promote conciliation, there was open hostility between Chartists and Corn Law repealers. It was not until 1845 that the Chartist Convention abandoned outright opposition to the League. Feargus O'Connor had earlier predicted ruin and chaos if the Corn Laws were repealed before universal suffrage. The prominent Chartist John Campbell, published in 1841, An Examination of the Corn and Provision Laws, which argued that free trade would cripple British agriculture and extend the factory system and mechanization. He argued instead for the development of domestic resources and domestic markets. The wage-cutting critique was powerful and gained traction in some areas where there were wage reductions on account of mechanization or an over-supply of labour. Protectionists in the countryside, especially in England, offered a vigorous counter-attack to the League's doctrines, and the initial political impact of the League was limited. An 'Anti-League' was formed in 1844 in Essex, which aimed at combatting the League in print and through meetings, and made progress in several corn-growing counties in Southern England. The Conservatives were hostile to the League, both its arguments and its methods, and the latter was an important issue since the League was innovative in its approach to political agitation.

List reasons why there was strong opposition to the Poor Law in the North of England.

The North of England in particular was vehemently opposed to the New Poor Law. There was great opposition to the abolition of outdoor relief and the increasing threat of the workhouse. Additionally, within the industrial system, particularly applicable in the North of England, work was often irregular and cyclical trade depressions meant that hundreds of men could be thrown out of work at short notice. The Poor Law was not designed to be aligned with these kind of developments and the series of crises emerging out of industrial employment were not adequately met by the New Poor Law.

What did the Repeal Association campaign for and why did it fail?

The Repeal campaign centred on repeal of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland of 1800, and for the legislative independence for Ireland. The campaign for Repeal was based on a historical and political interpretation of Ireland's subjugation to England over centuries, and pointed to Ireland's distinctive character and historical independence which demanded the re-instatement of self-government. The Repeal campaign failed on account of the absence of broad-based support from the Roman Catholic Church, the lack of a parallel movement in England, and Peel's political skills and determination to challenge O'Connell and confront and defeat the campaign in a robust way. Yet while the Repeal campaign declined irrevocably, the idea of self-government and Irish nationhood continued to be influential in other contemporary political and cultural movements such as the Young Ireland group.

Finance, Administration and the Economy - Commercial reform

The early years of Peel's government indicated that his views on commercial policy were changing in a liberal direction. Income Tax was re-established in 1842 as a more just form of taxation. Peelite fiscal policy consisted of taxation of a small number of highly remunerative articles, with the types of goods subjected to import duties much reduced in scope. In 1834, Peel had made William Gladstone a Lord of the Treasury and then Under-Secretary for the Colonies. In his 1841 government, Gladstone was appointed Vice-President, and after 1843, President of the Board of Trade, a non-Cabinet post but an important department in relation to commercial and economic policy. Gladstone proposed to Peel that he should lower customs duties further in relation to the Corn Laws, and threatened resignation when his views were rejected. Peel recognized, in the light of Gladstone's intimidation, that commercial policy controversies were a danger to the survival of the administration, and duties were taken off or reduced on 750 articles. Duties on Canadian corn were reduced, and foreign imports of cattle permitted. Peel also recognized that the national economy was dependent upon manufacturing. He believed too that economic management was a primary function of government, and that fiscal policy could be a regulator of social harmony. As early as 1834, after a parliamentary debate on Joseph Hume's motion to repeal the Corn Laws, Peel confided to his close ally J.W. Croker that, although he defended the farmers' need for some protection he was perturbed by the agriculturalists 'invidious and startling argument' that the landed interest, as the most enduring part of the nation, ought to be a favoured class, for the benefit of which the rest of the community ought properly be taxed. Peel's attempts to govern for the nation was going to be difficult, for although the Tory Radicalism of Oastler and Sadler was waning by 1841, the attitudes and emotions which gave rise to their movement continued to exercise a divisive influence on Tory backbenchers after 1841. It reinforced the anti-manufacturing bias of local, agricultural Conservatism which, combined with Protestant Anti-Irish sentiment, was to undermine Peel's attempt to make the Anglican and predominantly rural majority of 1841 an efficient and reliable instrument of a progressive Conservative Government.

Factory legislation

The first attempt to legislate for better conditions in factories had come in 1802 when Robert Peel, the father of the future Prime Minister of the same name, had sponsored an Act to protect pauper apprentices assigned to textile mills by Poor Law authorities. Hours of work were limited to 12 a day with no night work (9pm to 6am). Factory rooms had to be washed and ventilation was to be assured. Some education was to be given during part of the day, although how much was left vague. Justices of the Peace were to appoint two visitors to inspect factories. Contravention of the Act meant a fine of £2 to £5. While well-intentioned, this statute had the consequence of leading to the employment of more unregulated 'free' child labour from the immediate vicinity. This trend continued as steam power replaced water power. Because steam power could be generated in towns it was no longer necessary to site factories close to supllies of running water and so there were more children on the spot. An additional benefit of urbanisation for the factory owners was that they no longer had to house and maintain child workers themselves. Increased use of child workers brought the question of 'free labour' to the fore and in 1816 a Select Committee was set up to look into it. The result was the 1819 Factory Act, again introduced by Peel the Elder. As before, it only applied to cotton mills, but this time it covered the employment of 'free' child labour. Employment of children under 9 was forbidden and there was a limit of 12 working hours each day for 9 to 16 year olds. No night work was allowed (9pm to 5am). Penalties for infringement were to be between £10 and £20 for 'wilfully' contravening the Act, but this was at the discretion of Justices of the Peace. Inspection was patchy, however, and the Act was often circumvented by mill owners. Study hint A Royal Commission was a major, formal public inquiry into a clearly defined issue, often lasting many years and drawing on evidence from many interested parties. Historically, Royal Commissions have been conducted into matters of great historical importance. On the other hand, Select Committees are made up of a small number of MPs or Lords, and deal with particular policy areas based on the activities and operations of particular government departments. Select Committees function in both Houses of Parliament, and in broad terms, their role is to investigate and monitor government departments and to report on all areas of government and administration.

The defence of protectionism

The pro-Corn Law interest, or protectionists, argued that the middle-class manufacturers of the Anti-Corn Law League wanted repeal in order to reduce wages. This was a similar view to that of the Chartists and there was some cooperation between Chartists and protectionists as they both faced a common enemy. Recycling an old national security argument, the protectionists also claimed it would be dangerous to be reliant on foreign supply especially in times of war. The formation of the Central Agricultural Protection Society as the advocate of protection for agriculture, was an illustration in the divisions within the Conservative party. The first steps in organizing rural defence of the Corn Laws had come in 1843-44, when the Anti-Corn Law League extended its activities into the counties. While protectionist societies appeared throughout the southern counties of England, there were a few progressive farmers who supported repeal and who saw the improvements in agriculture, the benefits of mixed farming, and the increases in crop yield as guaranteeing a bright future for British agriculture. Peel's difficulties continued throughout his government's term. His legislation admitting Canadian corn at a nominal duty aroused considerable hostility in the corn-growing counties, and led to the formation of local agricultural protection societies. A.S. O'Brien, a protectionist county member sent Peel a series of tracts from the Agricultural Protection Society in August 1844, with a covering letter explaining the object 'to keep the farmers in good humour'. The newspaper Morning Post, which had welcomed the 1842 Budget, had since hardened its support for protectionism and by 1845 was declaring that Peel must soon cease to be head of a government that had purportedly styled itself 'agricultural and Conservative'. While there was no organized opposition to Peel within the party in 1845, of the 162 Conservative opponents of the Maynooth Bill, only 20 were to vote for Repeal of the Corn Laws a year later; 133 voted against. These divisions were a reflection of the two main areas of Conservative opposition to Peel between 1841 and 1845, that is, in agricultural and religious policy. While there were 'Tory Radicals' such as Richard Oastler and Michael Sadler who were consistent opponents of the industrial system and the manufacturing class, it was Peel's grant to the Catholic college of Maynooth which proved to be the most divisive issue between Peel and many of his followers. The morale of the parliamentary party was badly damaged by these divisions, and historians like Norman Gash have argued that the fracturing of the party over Corn Law repeal in 1846 was the result of long-term pressures.

Political clubs

The rise of party politics was also reflected in the emergence of political clubs. The foundation of the Reform Club as an organisational headquarters for Whigs and radicals in 1836 mirrored the establishment of the Conservative Carlton Club and is evidence of a new 'liberal' political organisation. Liberal or Reform Associations were also emerging around the country largely as a response to Conservative and Constitutional Associations. While most historians would point to the true origins of the Liberal Party as much later, in the 1850s, with the fusion or coalition of the Peelites (followers of Sir Robert Peel) with Whigs and radicals, it remains possible to trace the origins of the Liberal Party back as far as the 1832 Act. More broadly, clubs allowed for closer cooperation between MPs, and they acted as a meeting-point for supporters and patrons outside Parliament to liaise with parliamentarians. Together with the vibrancy of the local press, this development was a sign that contemporaries acknowledged that a new era of party politics had begun, and that efficient management and heightened organisation were necessary to deal with a larger electorate.

The Tories in opposition and government Peel and Conservatism

The term 'Conservative' had spread during the period of the great debates about reform in 1830-32. The reform crisis created a need to find a label for those opposed to reform but who didn't necessarily identify themselves unconditionally with the Tory Ultra faction. For example, Sir Robert Peel, soon to succeed Wellington as leader of the Tories, and who did not regard himself as an out-and-out reactionary, wished to make it clear that he was not against reform in general but only against what he saw as radical or excessive reform. During 1831-32 the Tories had strongly resisted attempts to introduce reform but within a few years they came to accept the changes of 1832. When the Whig government fell at the end of 1834, Peel formed a minority ministry, pending the holding of a general election. During the election campaign, in a speech directed at the voters in his Tamworth constituency in December 1834, Peel set out the principles of what he called 'Conservatism'. What he offered was an alternative to the Whigs and the radicals on the one side and what was perceived as negative, reactionary Toryism on the other. 'Conservatives' accepted the changes of 1832 as the 'final chapter' on parliamentary reform and were prepared to countenance other moderate changes in future, but only through a process of steady evolution. For a better understanding of the transition from Tories to Conservatives, read the two extracts that follow. One is a primary source, from the time; the other is a secondary source from an historian of the period. Source 1 Sir Robert Peel's Speech at Tamworth (The Tamworth Manifesto), 1834: I consider the Reform Bill a final and irrevocable settlement of a great Constitutional question - a settlement which no friend to the peace and welfare of this country would attempt to disturb. Then, as to the spirit of the Reform Bill, and the willingness to adopt and enforce it as a rule of government: if, by adopting the spirit of the Reform Bill, it be meant that we are to live in a perpetual agitation; that public men can only support themselves in public estimation by promising the instant redress of anything which anybody may call an abuse, - by abandoning the respect for ancient rights, and the deference to prescriptive authority; if this be the spirit of the Reform Bill, I will not undertake to adopt it. But if the spirit of the Reform Bill implies merely a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances, - in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions. Source 2 Norman Gash et al. (1977) The Conservatives: The term Conservative was ... a product of the Reform crisis and from the start signified something different from Tory. The general use of the phrase 'Conservative Party' by 1832 did not, however, imply that an organised political party was already in being. Before such a party could come into existence, it was necessary for a large section of the public to have a sense of common interest on which such a party could be based. What happened in 1830 and 1831 was a successful search for a political identity among those who were opposed to radical reform ... [T]he birth of the Conservative Party can be assigned with unusual precision to the months of November-December 1834 when Peel was summoned ... 'to put himself', as the King expressed it 'at the head of the administration of the country' ... The publication of the Tamworth Manifesto, in form an Address to Peel's constituents, in fact an appeal to the nation, was ... a remarkable and unprecedented action. ... (It) was essentially an electioneering document, the first of its kind in British political history. The speech made by Peel at Tamworth, which came to be known as the Tamworth Manifesto, received widespread publicity, and its contents formed the basis of speeches by many Tory-Conservative candidates in the election campaign. The Tamworth Manifesto was not innovative in form, for election candidates had often written addresses. Peel's letter was innovative in the way it was published, not just locally in his constituency but nationally through the London press. Peel argued that good government was primarily the correction of proved abuses and real grievances but he re-assured the middle classes that there would be stability for property ownership, and acceptance of the 1832 Reform Act as a 'final and irrevocable settlement'.

Urban Transport

There was very little possibility of travel being a viable prospect for many working people in towns. Most people walked to work, which was actually imperative since their working hours were so long and the relay shift system in factories so inflexible that workers had to live as near as possible to their workplace. These necessities, for employers and workers, meant that the typical lay-out near a factory was for back-to-back houses and tenement blocks and nearby lodging houses to accommodate the working population. Inevitably, over time, these areas developed a distinctly working-class feel. Transport facilities within towns (as opposed to between them) therefore catered for the middle classes, and they were privately owned. The railways were not in this period widely used, as the national network was still in the process of construction. Other more traditional forms of transport like horse-drawn carriages were used by the wealthy; sometimes horse-drawn omnibuses, an innovation started in Glasgow in 1845, were frequently used by non-manual, clerical workers to commute to and from work. The proximity of factory and housing meant that urban transport was slow to develop, for there was no real need to innovate and not much space in which to construct capital-heavy projects like roads and railways. Only much later when the railways facilitated commuter traffic were there significant advances in road transport with trams and omnibuses, and the patterns of every-day life changed by the possibility of working further afield.

Wage rates

There were some serious attempts to improve the lives of workers. The Factory Acts of 1833 and 1846 might have led to an improvement in the quality of life for factory workers' families but it also meant a fall in total household wages. For that reason, some workers opposed the Ten Hour working day for all adults advocated by Shaftesbury. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was estimated that about 75% of the weekly wage of a worker was spent on food, with most of that spent on bread. Variation in bread prices throughout the period could therefore be a particular source of hardship. Wage rates for workers varied enormously by region, occupation and even between different factories. The economic historians Deane and Cole estimated that real wages fell slightly between 1832 and 1846 but other secondary sources indicate a slight overall rise. However, it was certain that for many workers, any plateauing of their wages meant hard choices, for food prices increased notably during the period. The price index of total agricultural and principal industrial products indicates that price variations over the period, using a base index for 1830 of 100. Study hint An index number is an economic data figure which reflects a price or a quantity, compared with a standard base or value, over time. The base usually equals 100 and the index number is usually expressed as 100 times the ratio the base value. For example, if coal cost twice as much in 2010 as it did in 2000, its index number would be 200 for 2010 relative to 100 in 2000. Indices therefore measure price, volume, and quantity variations over time.

Topic 2 - Pressure for change

To a large degree, the 'Condition of England' question dominated the 1830s and 1840s and most pressure groups were in one way or another concerned with tackling the problems raised by urbanisation, industrial growth, and the disparities between rich and poor, and the injustices and suffering arising from these differences. The Chartists, the Anti-Corn Law League, and the Anti-Poor Law movement had definite goals relating to policy issues and their campaigns sought to mobilise the widespread discontent which was prevalent against the partially reformed Parliament, the Corn Laws, and the Poor Law. In the same vein, the emergence of Irish nationalism, with a social and economic critique of British government policies, was focused on repeal of the Act of Union as a means of removing what they considered to be the source of Irish oppression. Less 'political' pressure for change came from those social reformers who wanted to humanise industrial conditions and to provide better living and working conditions for the poor—a key objective for all pressure groups concerned with the 'Condition of England' question in this period.

Migrants

Urban growth and the problems it brought with it was fuelled by migration, both internally from other parts of Britain, and externally, from Ireland. The Highland migration, known as the 'Highland Clearances' - which began in the eighteenth century - forced many farmers and crofters off unproductive marginal land, into the larger cities of Scotland, most notably, Glasgow and Edinburgh. The external migration of the Irish was broader but there were particular areas of their settlement, most notably Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow, though smaller textiles towns like Dundee and Leeds also contained sizable Irish communities, and there were smaller scale Irish communities in Bristol and York. The influx of the Famine generation (which we discussed in Unit 3 Topic 3 - Economic Policy) were poor peasants and unskilled. The Irish swelled the ranks of the working class, providing much-needed labour for many industries. While many of the problems of urban growth stemmed from insufficient infrastructure, it was also the case that, especially in the case of Irish migration, that the new migrants brought with them the lower standards of hygiene and public health awareness characteristic of rural areas, into the towns. The migratory influx of the Famine generation were poor peasants and unskilled labour and their notoriety as undesirable guests was almost immediate, especially in areas where they were highly concentrated in areas of high population density. Friedrich Engels' classic study of life in Manchester, The Condition of the Working Class in England, published in 1844, gives a graphic account of life in the part of Manchester known as 'Little Ireland', Engels described the standing pools, full of refuse, offal and sickening filth: A horde of ragged women and children swarm about, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage heaps and in the puddles. ... The race that lives in these ruinous cottages behind broken windows mended with oilskin, sprung doors and rotten door-posts, or in dark wet cellars in measureless filth and stench ... must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity. ... Little Ireland, in spite of everything, in this year of grace 1844, is in almost the same state as in 1831. Migration to the towns was an important part of urban and industrial growth but problems of over-population or, more accurately, a higher density of population in areas that lacked some basic sanitation measures led to impoverished living conditions. Remedies for this situation would take time.

Families and urban poverty

Urbanisation changed the way of life for approximately half of the working population in the 1830s and 1840s, and not always for the better. In the countryside, enclosure and agricultural improvements had changed life for many, but the deterioration of conditions for workers and the poor in urban areas, at a time when that population was rising, suggests a decline in quality of life for many people. As always with questions of economic status, there was great variation on a regional and occupational basis. Despite wages being higher in manufacturing areas, employment was not always constant. For many families, the move to the towns meant a break with the linkage of the extended family and kinship ties. Old family ties and friendships might be broken up, and when times were hard, kinship ties could not always be relied on. The provision of the New Poor Law meant that people could not depend on relief because, if they moved from the parish of their birth, they were not automatically entitled to support. Admittedly, in the industrial towns and cities employment was more readily available and usually the need for relief in Northern England was less intense than in Southern England. When hard times hit, though, the number of local people affected was proportionately much higher than in the rural South. The result was that urban parish systems could be overwhelmed when a trade slump meant large numbers of labourers found themselves having to apply for relief to cover the basic necessities of life. After 1834, outdoor relief was notionally banned in agricultural areas, but it was continued in some places despite the law. It was, however, often chaotic and haphazard, leaving many people desperate for charitable handouts to prevent starvation. But whether relief was provided indoors or outdoors, its cost to the ratepayers and the administrative headaches for the overseers and magistrates could be considerable and the system, especially in the industrial areas, found it difficult to serve persistent demand.

Melbourne as Prime Minister

When William IV invited Melbourne to form a government in August 1834, it was with the intention of securing a government that would protect the King from policies he disliked. Melbourne was a conservative Whig and had little time for radicalism of any kind. He had been a reluctant supporter of the Reform Act, and remained a staunch supporter of the Corn Laws. After the Reform Act had passed he saw no need for further reform but wished to consolidate Whig rule. This view was at odds with radicals and some Whigs who saw the necessity for further reform to complement the Reform Act. On coming to office, Melbourne refused the King's request to include Peel and Wellington as part of a plan to construct a moderate coalition of parties but in order to appease the King, Melbourne upset the radicals by excluding Henry Brougham from the Cabinet. This misguided attempt at reconciliation backfired, for Brougham refused to accept this exclusion, and bitterness and division within the party were heightened. Melbourne's attempt to install Lord Althorp as Leader in the Commons failed as he succeeded to the earldom and therefore sat in the House of Lords. Turning to Lord John Russell, whom the King disliked as too radical, led to the King dismissing the Ministry even though the Whigs had a majority in the Commons. The King asked Sir Robert Peel to form an administration. Melbourne, as was his style, took the decision with grace, and perhaps with some relief. The end of Melbourne's ministry by William IV in November 1834 was the last time that personal disfavour of the Sovereign ended an administration. Sir Robert Peel took office, heading a minority Conservative administration. A concerted attempt was now made to bring down Peel, with the Lichfield House Compact, an agreement made on 28 March 1835, stipulating cooperation between independent radicals, moderate Whigs, and Irish nationalists to oppose the new Conservative government. At the 1835 General Election, the Conservatives did well, gaining more than 100 seats, and were the largest single party, if Whigs and Radicals are counted separately. However, the alliance created by the Lichfield House Compact ensured the fall of Peel's government. With Peel successfully ousted from office, the Whigs having made promises of reform in Ireland in exchange for Irish support, were forced to deliver. The Irish MPs called for repeal of the Act of Union, leading to conflict within Whigs and radicals, and the Whigs faltered in delivering church reforms aimed at removing church rates which imposed a burden on Nonconformists—who were another important element of support for the Whigs. The General Election of 1837, caused by the death of William IV, saw the Whig majority reduced to twenty, with the Conservatives making great gains in the country on the back of Peel's astute and moderate leadership. The succession to the throne of Queen Victoria gave an unexpected boost to Melbourne, for the young, inexperienced Queen showed her preference for Melbourne over Peel. However, Melbourne's Ministry was a great disappointment to reformers and was beset by economic problems. With widespread unemployment, two new radical movements emerged, the Chartists, and the Anti-Corn Law League. The government mishandled both movements which appeared in the late 1830s to both be going from strength to strength and which posed a threat to social stability. From 1837, budgets were in deficit, and direct and indirect taxes had been raised. In 1841, with a budget deficit of £6 million, Lord John Russell attempted a free trade budget but it was too late to convince an electorate slowly moving towards support for free trade. In the election of July 1841, support for the Whigs evaporated leaving the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel victorious.

Governing style

While Peel's place in history revolves around the Corn Law controversy of 1846, there is no doubt that the wider legislation he promoted had a major transformative effect in promoting mid-Victorian stability and prosperity. In terms of governing style, Peel's appointment of Sir James Graham at the Home Office, and William Gladstone at the Board of Trade set high standards for meticulous attention to detail, practical efficiency, and departmental professionalism. Royal Commissions of Inquiry reported on many social and economic problems of the day and were a very useful way of gathering information, and in identifying problems and potential solutions. The government responded to calls for further regulation in industry, with legislation on coal mining and factories, which addressed some of the worst abuses of children's working hours and women and children working underground. Equally important was the process of extending State intervention in the labour market. Economic reforms were passed to regulate the framework of business without (ostensibly) attempting to control or supervise it. Bankruptcy courts were established to deal with local cases, and imprisonment for small debts was ended. A uniform system of district county courts was set up. These reforms increased the efficiency of the administration of justice. As administrative procedures improved, more specialised positions in key institutions opened up, and civil service employment opportunities were no longer comfortable sinecures for sons of the upper classes. Merit and professionalism were beginning to be accorded state recognition. There were failures; for example, the initiative to introduce compulsory education in 1843, crashed over the vexed question of which religious denomination would provide the schooling. Religion would be a continual source of difficulty for Peel. His proposal to increase the annual government grant to Maynooth, a college where priests received training, was fiercely opposed by Anglican Tories (and also Nonconformists, though for slightly different reasons) who were outraged at the implication of supporting the Catholic Church over the Anglican Church in Ireland. The Maynooth issue made it difficult for Peel to unite the Conservative Party, and his policy of limited concessions to Catholicism in Ireland did not work, for not only did he fail to obtain the loyalty of the Catholic priesthood but he was constrained by his backbenchers from addressing Ireland's fundamental problems of land tenure and the poverty of a large percentage of the population.

Chartism The Chartist movement

While causing frustration in its failure to give the vote to working-class men, the 1832 Reform Act had encouraged a popular belief that what had been achieved for the middle class might also be achieved for the working class. The Act was therefore both a disappointment and an encouragement. The most important movement to press for more democracy was the Chartist movement. The failure of trade unions in the early 1830s, notably Robert Owen's Grand National Consolidated Trade Union (GNCTU), and the treatment of union members and leaders, such as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, led many in the urban working class to argue that better social and economic conditions could not be achieved outside a political framework. The logic was that if working men had fair representation in the House of Commons, then they could press for legislation to ease the ills they faced. It was out of a mixture of frustration at the shortcomings of the 1832 Reform Act and the economic and social matters just outlined that the Chartist movement grew. There were three phases in the Chartist agitation. The first period of 1839-40 saw the development of the Six Points of the Charter, with sporadic violence in Yorkshire and Lancashire and a disastrous uprising in Newport. The second phase of 1840-42 was dominated by the charismatic figure of Feargus O'Connor, the presentation of the movement's second petition with three million signatures, and the disorder in industrial areas known as the 'Plug Plot'. The third phase of 1842-48 saw the Chartists develop a cooperative land scheme which failed, the presentation of the third petition, and an abortive march on Parliament, the failure of which effectively ended the Chartist movement.