Pointing The Finger Of Scorn

Two centuries ago, as now, Britain was locked in political crisis. As we surely approach an election that could redefine British politics, Jacqueline Riding looks at the corruption and chaos that prompted the reform of the Georgian Parliament.

- Jacqueline Riding

THE year 1819: the United Kingdom is polarised, Parliament is in uproar and the Government is deemed, by those opposing it, as the most extreme, uncompromising and arbitrary in living memory. The faint cry for Parliamentary reform has risen to a deafening roar and a new tactic, the mass political meeting—a visible demonstration of the will of ‘the people’, championed by Wiltshire gentleman-farmer and reformer Henry Hunt (1773–1835)— is being rolled out across the nation.

Addressing thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of their disenfranchised countrymen, speakers called for the destruction of the old corrupt order through a radical reformation of the House of Commons.

The key demands were equal representation across the UK, requiring a complete overhaul of constituency distribution, universal manhood suffrage (Hunt was the first MP to present a petition to the Commons relating to female suffrage), secret ballots and regular parliaments.

None of this may sound radical to a modern UK citizen, but at one such assembly, held in Manchester on August 16, 1819 and chaired by Hunt, the peaceful crowd of some 60,000 men, women and children was attacked with batons and sabres by constables and cavalry on the orders of local magistrates, supported by the Home Office.

With 18 dead and in excess of 700 maimed and injured, the Peterloo Massacre, as it became known, reflected the extreme measures the authorities were willing to pursue to maintain the status quo.

In the immediate run-up to the Great Reform Act of 1832, which brought about some of the changes Hunt had advocated, only about 5% of adult males were eligible to vote. In practice, however, there were important regional variations: in Scotland, for example, the 1831 electorate was a mere 4,500 men from a total population of 2.6 million.