Why was the reform act of 1832 passed?

There were several major factors involved in the build up to the reform act which all led to the government having to enforce the reform act to keep the people happy. The voting system was extremely out of date, having not been altered since the 18th century and the government had not taken into consideration the demographic changes with had taken place since then. There were many rotten boroughs (Areas which had low vote to high representation ratio) and yet many fast growing cities like Leeds and Manchester had little or no representation at all which meant that no proportional voting was in place. The swing riots was an explosion in Britain at the time as it was such a huge movement of industrial workers, unhappy at low wages, high unemployment and new labour saving devices led the workers to attack machinery and burn barns which was affecting the amount of work in the country. This put pressure on the government to change, something they were not used to and caused panic in parliament as they were worried about a revolution which were rife at that time throughout Europe e.g. France. Another major turning point was the passing of the catholic emancipation act (1829) which caused outrage in parliament and led to the break up of the Tory party, many of them outraged at the passing of this act. All of these are main factors which led to an angry and dis-contented country, fighting for their rights and the enforcement of a reform act.

Britain as a whole had not really moved forward with the industrial revolution which had swept over it in the last 100 years due to the fact that the government in power were the Tories who always had the policy of no change, maintaining everything in the country. However this led to the country being crippled and many things all rose together with a couple of main catalysts to the rise of the Whigs and the reform act in 1832. One of the main things which worried the government was the threat of revolution apparent in Britain. This was rife at the time in Europe, especially France, in a state of crisis and this put huge pressure on the government. One of the other two major inputs why the reform act became necessary was the severe economic problems which had hit Britain. Britain had never really fully recovered from the war and the economy was still suffering from this, along with the crippling factor of industrial revolution. This helped the businesses increase production greatly but the people of Britain suffered as machines took over their jobs and unemployment in the country rose significantly. This spread anger through the people as unemployment meant no income and therefore families were struggling to survive. This accumulated into a massive problem that the government were not acting on and so strikes and riots grew creating the swing riots in 1830 where workers attacked machinery and burned barns. This was a major panic for the Tory government and could be seen as a main reason to their demise as this showed the people no longer supported them.

I feel the other big reason/catalyst was the catholic emancipation act as this resulted in the split and weakening of the Tories. It meant that Catholics could now sit in parliament. The result was that it gave reformers more hope than ever before and that many Tories were outraged with Wellington and this split the party. It wasn't however just the above as a great stroke of luck hit for the reformers in June 1830 when George IV died as he was against reform. Although his successor, William IV was not very enthusiastic he was prepared to go along with some changes. A general election also had to take place and reformers were delighted with this and so reform candidates did well meaning that Wellington was thrown out and a Whig government came to power. Reform had been wanted by some individuals for many years however and so it wasn't such a sudden demand. Jeremy Bentham and his supporters had been calling for reform since 1817, where they called for general elections and votes for all men over 21. There were at first too extreme for people but by 1830 some of them began to be taken up. All of these were important factors as to why reform was necessary and people were demanding change. The big signs of hope for people, I feel were the catholic emancipation act and election as people saw a hint of change from the catholic act and the election meant people, although who could vote was limited, could put their views forward and try and bring in government who were supportive of people's views and changed the government to the current times instead of the system which was archaic, over 100 years old. As Thomas Attwood stated in 1830, "the general distress which now affects the country, can only be permanently remedied by an effectual reform in the commons." This shows me that individuals wanted reform and collectively they could make a difference and create the reform in Britain.

All of the above factors show a complicated situation within Britain in 1830-31 and I believe that this could have meant that the reform act could have taken a long time in coming but in fact the whole process took place in 15 months, however that begs the question did the people get everything they wanted from their reform demands? The process began in March when the initial bill was issued by Lord John Russell. The Tories however did not like the extent of reform and they were able to still have enough say in parliament to defeat it in the committee stage though it had passed a second reading the House of Commons by a majority of one. Lord Grey, prime minister was able to persuade William IV to call a general election in April.

The call for reform had constantly grown since the last election in June 1830 and so in the counties, where electorates were much larger Whigs made large gains, though Tories did remain popular in rotten boroughs, these were much lower in power now that the large towns had increased electorates and so Whigs now had a much larger majority. It was realised that the bill needed revising substantially, once this was done, along with majorities in Oct 1831 the house was able to pass a reform bill. This however was never put into force as, after many deliberations, it was defeated in the House of Lords. This caused a public outcry and anger. A significant sign was a black border in the 'Morning Chronicle' as a sign of mourning for the bill, riots and protests followed this, people were very anger at the treatment from the lords. The bill, withdrawn therefore again had to be compromised and this was issued in Dec 1831. It took until March to pass commons easily but lords were still hostile. At this point Lord Grey realised he had to do something and so he tried to create another 50 Whig peers from William IV but he refused and this led to resignation of Lord Grey. I think at this point people were sick of waiting and the excuses put forward by the Lords and again an eruption of riots and protests took place. Here William IV invited Wellington to create a new Tory government by they were inadvertently split and so Grey was asked to return to office amid high agitation. Attwood was calling a boycott paying taxes and one MP wrote "The whole country is in a state little short of insurrection" I believe that this summed up the mood of British citizens at the time. They felt betrayed and hard done by by the house of Lords who still remained hostile and so William realised he now had to act and so he created the required number of Whig peers to get the bill passed. Many Tory peers were disgusted and stayed away and so its passage was ensured

How close Britain was to reform during the crisis is debatable and different historians held varying views on the situation. E.P.Thompson said "Britain was within an ace of revolution" as he argues that it was the act compromises which saved full scale revolt however another historian J.Hamburger believe that the violent incidents weren't as serious as some people think and the danger was exaggerated by radicals to panic the government into passing the reform bill. Hamburger uses evidence to back up his theory and a main piece is that during the Bristol riots the better off working class were so disgusted that they ignored them and went home, yet surely if revolution was so close the riots should have been a starting pistol. I therefore believe that the individual will have opposing views on the situation but overall I feel that Britain was quite close to revolution, should the bill have not been passed by the end of 1832 as peoples anger was worsening and patience was increasingly wearing thin.

The bill had been extremely revised from the initial issue in March 1831 and this was bound to be reflected on the actual terms which allowed passing through in June 1832. I am going to analyse how far the terms of the act went about putting right the faults of the system. There were many important changes to the franchise qualification. 143 seats were available for redistribution. 65 were given to counties, 65 were given to boroughs that had previously never had an MP, 8 given to Scotland and 5 given to Ireland. This meant that proportional voting was more evenly distributed throughout Britain, however although this cured the rotten boroughs problem the actual number of MP's in comparison to electorate size meant that some areas were under and some far too over represented, meaning that people were still not having an accurate say in the running of their country. As a general rule the southern agricultural counties were over represented and yet the large, northern, industrial towns, over populated as people had to live near factories to get work has lower representation levels. I believe that should the first bill have been passed we would have seen more radical reform in these areas but this area was severely compromised by the time of the third bill. I don't think many Britain's would have been very happy about the outcome really, indicating that problems for the future were already implanted in Britain's minds.

The people who could actually vote did increase to 813,000 but when we consider that the population was 24 million, the proportion of voters was very small. This really shows that parliament wanted to limit the number of voters as I think that they would fear being thrown out if everyone was treated equal and had the right to vote. Large sectors of the population were excluded from voting e.g. majority of industrial workers. Again this was not a fair system and was not much of a move forward from the pre-existing archaic system which the Tories had wanted to keep in place. Also many people who could vote before the bill as the rights to vote was altered and so many people felt betrayed and disappointed, particularly with this term of the bill. Probably a thing which disappointed the people who could vote was that secret voting was not introduced. This left the system, as before still widely open to corruption and bribes and therefore the results of a vote could never be 100% accurate because someone who could vote would find the right price for someone to bribe them into changing their vote. This left the system still is dis-array and no more fair than it had previously been. The fact that the middle classes were now put with aristocracy also angered the working class as it meant they had even less say, with the middle classes, who wanted different things from the government had more influence and would be seen as more important than the working people. These were really the only changes to the system and so not a great deal had moved forward once the reform bill was introduced.

Overall I feel that the information I have analysed leads me to say that the reform bill was not a great success. It did have a couple of minor break through's, with the system seemed more organised as there were set rules about who could vote and the rotten boroughs were mainly phased out, which was a big break through the overall effect left many people disappointed. I feel that the lack of actual reform within the bill is summed up quite well by M.G.Brook "much the same men continued to run much the same system." This indicates to me that most people realised that parliament had placed massive restrictions on the bill and so they had not really gained anything, suggesting possible future problems for government. The working class seemed to have an especially hard deal; those who could previously vote majorly lost that right. Also it seemed that government and the monarchy were trying to stop the working class from having a say in the country by leaving big chunks of the population out from voting i.e. labourers and industrial workers. I believe that all of this would have left the working class disappointed and they began to look towards trade unionism so that they had someone to stand up for their rights and beliefs in the workplace and a large number also looked towards Chartism, the more radical reformists to get the reform that they felt they deserved. I feel that the main importance of the act was not what it achieved as this was very little but that it was the first breach in the system and gave people a taste of what they desired, an equal voice in the running of the country. This shocked the Whigs as they thought that the reform would satisfy the population but it purely gave people a taste for more and future problems are therefore inevitable in Britain. I feel that the lack of actual reform within the bill is summed up quite well by M.G.Brook, previously mentioned, "Much the same men continued to run much the same system." Change was hard to come by but the people were ready for a fight to get the equality they demanded, this was no doubt not the end of the reform period for Britain.

Bibliography

I have used the following pieces of materials/resources to aid me in the production of this essay:

* Modern British history

* Reaction and reform - J W Hunt

* www.britishhistory.co.uk/reform

* history explored - K Dawson