Page 31 - History 2020

How was the Great Reform Act passed in 1832?

When leading Tory Sir Robert Peel heard Russell’s proposals, he put his head in his
hands. Well he might. Tory opposition would put them on a collision course with
public opinion. The unofficial leaders of the popular movement were two veteran
campaigners, Thomas Atwood, a banker and an inspiring speaker with a broad
Brummy accent; he was the founder of the Birmingham Political Union which many
other cities copied; and Francis Place, a radical London tailor. Place was an avid
learner who walked over 20 miles a day and ran a library of radical publications. He
founded the more radical National Union of the Working Classes who urged universal

suffrage and the secret ballot. The fundamental split in the popular movement was
between those like Atwood who saw a common interest between “masters and
men”, reflecting the Birmingham pattern of small businesses and small workshops
where employer-worker relations were close, and those like Place whose more
radical views reflected the Lancashire-Manchester pattern of big factories where
relations between factory owners and factory hands were more distant and
potentially more confrontational.

The radical leaders had unofficial contacts with the aristocratic Whig leaders who
acknowledged the value of the popular protests they organized. Their motives varied;
some, like Russell and Althorp, wanted to draw in the new industrial middle classes;
others accepted the inevitability of making concessions to public opinion; but none
saw it as a first step to democracy. On the contrary, they were fearful of public
unrest, took measures to suppressed the Swing riots, and hoped reform would calm
popular discontent. For the Tories, Wellington made it clear he would never

countenance reform: to him, the Bill wasn’t reform, but “a complete Revolution”. This
point-blank opposition dismayed some Tories; as the crisis wore on, more and more
of them wavered.

*The Whigs suppressed the Swing riots of 1830.

Grey and Russell’s Reform Bill proposed to abolish 168 seats, the most notorious

rotten and pocket boroughs. These would be given to industrial towns, including
Manchester and Birmingham. The most populous counties would also get extra seats.
The qualification to vote, with all its bewildering local and historical variations, was
made standard, though differing between borough and county seats. The net effect
was to admit the urban middle classes to voting rights; they were defined in as those
living in property with an annual rental value of at least £10.

The Bill’s opponents sprang to the defence of the unreformed system. Two of their
arguments were derived from Burke: first, that MPs were representatives not
delegates; they had a duty to represent the wider interests of the whole nation, not