In this series of blog posts we are showcasing the work from GCSE and A-Level students who have worked with the Citizens Project to research and write blog posts on key moments of protest and reform throughout British history. In this blog post Calum Laurie, a pupil at Cambourne Village College tells us about the 1832 Great Reform Act.
The Great Reform Act was passed in 1832 but it wasn’t an easy journey. It took over fifteen months of rioting, marching and petitions to get this law approved by government. Without the newest Prime Minister at the time, Earl Grey who was leader of the Whigs (a political party who were very keen on the idea of reform) it may never have happened. At the time this was the most significant change to be made in how Parliament was run and managed. Understandably there was a lot of opposition to these proposed changes, but none of these objections could stand up to the people of Britain and their demands.
Before 1832 very few people could vote, only the very wealthy had that privilege. This meant that at general elections there would end up being a large bias because all of the wealthy land owners were good friends and many of them went as far as to take bribes from some of the people running for election in return for voting for them. Not letting ordinary, working people vote meant that those in power limited the amount of say the poor have in their own county. To make things worse, the big cities with large working-class populations often had no MPs from their constituencies. Therefore, although what went on in Parliament affected them directly, most people had no say in what actually happened or how the country was governed.
People had started to campaign for the vote in the 19th century because they wanted a say in how the country was run and they wanted to put an end to the hardships that ordinary people faced on a daily basis. The Tories were very anti-reform, believing that if it the same system had worked for so long in the past that it could continue to work in the future.
In 1831, the House of Commons had passed a Reform Bill, but the House of Lords (which was dominated by the Tories) defeated it. Afterwards there was rioting in London, Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Yeovil, Sherborne, Exeter and Bristol.
The riots in Bristol were some of the worst seen in England in the 19th century. Public buildings and houses were set on fire, there was more than £300,000 of damage and twelve people died. Of 102 people arrested and tried, 31 were sentenced to death.
The government were worried that if there wasn’t some reform soon there might be a revolution instead. France had experienced revolutions in 1789 and again in 1830, when the people overthrew King Charles X and replaced him King Louis-Philippe. In Britain, King William IV lost popularity for standing in the way of reform. Eventually he agreed to create new Whig peers, and when the House of Lords heard this, they agreed to pass the Reform Act.
The Whigs were the main political party in support of reform. They believed in having a private ballot where there was no way of bribing voters so that voting could be fair. They also wanted to sort out the issue of rotten boroughs (where small constituencies had more than one MP, but large industrial cities had no MPs at all). By having Earl Grey, a member of the Whig party, as Prime Minister it was a lot easier to get some of these proposed reforms listened to in Parliament.
The Great Reform Act was eventually passed and it had a huge impact. Rotten boroughs were removed and the new towns were allowed to elect MPs, although constituencies were still of uneven in size. The Great Reform Act also largely increased the number of voters from 214,000 (only 3% of the country) all the way up to 650,000 (giving 1 in 5 adult males the right to vote).However, only men who owned property worth at least £10 could vote, which cut out most of the working classes, and only men who could afford to pay to stand for election could be MPs. While this was not perfect, it was a good start. The Great Reform Act also managed to stop corruption and bribery entirely by giving voters a secret ballot. This meant that voters were no longer required to tell people who they were going to vote for, which removed the ability for the rich to either pay people to vote for them or in some cases threaten them with violence.
To conclude, the Great Reform Act was the start to changing Parliament to the way we know it today. The Act gave more people the vote than ever before and demonstrated that reform could work. It was also a step towards making Parliament more representative of the population, paving the way for a Parliament which would eventually pass laws which benefitted the lives of everyone, not just the rich.
By Calum Laurie. Calum is a Year 11 pupil at Cambourne Village College and is currently studying for his GCSEs.
