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Overview
In 1830 the first Whig government for 50 years was returned
to power on a platform of ‘peace, retrenchment and reform’. Attempts to reform
parliament had been made at intervals since
the 1780s but none had really succeeded. However, the Tory
government of the Duke of Wellington had ‘cracked’
the Constitution in repealing the Test and Corporation
Acts in 1828 and by passing the Catholic
Emancipation Act in 1829. This made the possibility of parliamentary reform
more likely, particularly since the fear of revolution was abating - except
that in 1830 there were revolutions in France and the Netherlands and an uprising
in Poland. Problems which continued into
the 1830s from earlier years were not only political but also social and economic.
The rate of population increase continued to grow. In 1821 the population was
12 millions according to the Census. By 1831 it was 13.9 million and in 1841 it
had reached 15.9 millions. These figures are for England and Wales. In the
rural south there was under- and un-employment, with consequent low wages.
The Speenhamland System exacerbated this. In the industrial
north, rising population meant urban overcrowding
and its resulting squalor. It also led to low wages in the factories
because it was an employer’s market.
The interests of landowners had been protected in 1815 with
the passing of the Corn Laws so enclosure had continued. Self-contained farms
with hedged fields meant less work for agricultural labourers and also created a
wage labour force. Previously, rural society had operated on a
paternalistic/deferential basis: the landowner helped his workers in times of
need; the labourers gave him the deference he expected. This system had begun to
break down: labourers earned their wages and landowners felt that having paid
the wages, they had no further responsibility towards them. Furthermore, the
Speenhamland System held down agricultural wages.
Industry
This suffered from the effects of the Corn Laws, which
restricted expansion by artificially forcing up the price of food and by
limiting the import of cheap raw materials. There were several results:
- The urban working classes turned their attention to a variety of
movements aimed at improving their living and working conditions
- The middle class industrialists organized themselves into the
Anti-Corn-Law League aimed at pressurising parliament into repealing the Corn
Laws.
Both groups wanted a reform of parliament.
The massive campaign for parliamentary reform began in earnest in 1830 when the
Whigs took power. It continued with varying degrees of intensity, which at several
points appeared to threaten actual revolution, until the Reform Act was finally
passed in 1832. The campaign marks the start of nationally organized campaigns
for various types of reform centred in the provinces.
Owen has been seen as the “father of English
socialism”. He had strong ideas on the organization of factories and
education; he also wanted to see “worker control” of their work places and a
return to self-sufficiency. He became involved with the Grand National
Consolidated Trade Union, the last of the early attempts at organizing the
working man in this period. The GNCTU, like all the other unions, collapsed
because of the economic climate and - so far as the working classes were
concerned - the attractiveness of other movements.
The 10-Hour Movement was a phenomenon of the north of England led by Michael
Sadler and Richard Oastler. It wanted a maximum
10-hour working day in factories, and made much of “Yorkshire
Slavery” when the Anti-Slavery campaign
was at its height. Shaftesbury took over leadership of the factory movement after
1832 and continued to work for factory reform throughout the period, with some
success.
The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 came as a result of the report of the Royal
Commission of 1832-34. It altered the system of poor relief and insisted on the
building of workhouses. The Act was intended to solve the problem of increasing
poor rates in the rural south but attempts to superimpose it on the industrial
north led to a massive anti-Poor Law Campaign, which
failed.
This movement was so diverse in aims, methods and leaders that it is impossible
to describe. The web contains a number of units in Chartism, which are central
to this period study. Chartism appeared in 1836 when the London
Men’s Working Association produced their Peoples’ Charter.
The movement grew and spread, peaking in 1839, 1842
and 1847-48. Thereafter Chartism declined and disappeared.
This was an organization based in Manchester, set up
in 1838 by and for middle class industrialists and manufacturers to pressurize
parliament for the repeal of the Corn Laws. The driving forces behind the ACLL
were Cobden, Bright and Wilson.
They were fortunate in having Peel as Prime Minister
from 1841 since he also saw the need for Britain to move to free trade. The Anti-Corn-Law
League's campaign was highly organized but repeal of the Corn Laws was, in the
end, more to do with external events than to their pressure.
In 1829 Peel, who was Home Secretary in Wellington’s
first ministry, established the Metropolitan Police in
London. In 1839 the Whig government extended the police force to the counties
with the Rural Constabulary Act. The police were much used by the authorities
in the containment of Chartism although troops were also used.
The ‘railway age’ began in 1830 with the official opening of the
Liverpool to Manchester line. Socially and economically the railways had a
tremendous impact on Britain, besides quite literally
changing the face of the countryside. Railways were a second industrial revolution
in their own right.
The state of towns became a real problem in the 1830s. Urbanization on a vast
scale took place very rapidly and there was no precedent to look to so that problems
of sanitation and overcrowding could be resolved. Life expectancy for urban labourers
stood at 15 years in Liverpool and 17 in Manchester. The onset of cholera
epidemics after 1831 added another killer disease to the list already in existence.
Little was done to clean up the towns until the 1848 Public Health Act, which
did little since it was permissive rather than compulsive.
Standards of Living
The debate over whether the standard of living rose or fell in this period is
still raging. Much depends on one’s political leanings. The Marxist, Hobsbawm,
states that living standards declined, so far as the working classes were concerned;
Hartwell, a monetarist, insists that conditions and wages improved.
Education
There was no national provision of education in this
period, although government grants to two church organizations began in 1833.
Such schools as existed for the working classes were ad hoc and provided little
other than the basics.
The Novel as a social document
Students are strongly advised to read as many contemporary novels as possible
since they shed much light on mid-nineteenth century attitudes to work, urban
life and industrialization.
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Last modified
19 August, 2007
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