Chapter 17
In this Chapter
● What they meant by “revolution” in the Age of Revolution
● Why a civil war broke out in the British Empire in North America - and why it’s not called that in other books
● Why the British welcomed the French Revolution - at first
● Why the British fought Napoleon for so long
● How the British feared - and hoped - they were next for a revolution, and what they got instead
Somewhere around the second half of the eighteenth century, historians get their rulers out and start drawing dividing lines: The Modern Age begins here. This is mainly because of the big changes in politics, economics, and society that took place at that time, which are usually termed “Revolutions”: the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution.
This chapter looks at how these big events affected the British. How did they end up fighting a long and bitter war against their own colonists in America, and how did they cope with losing it? Why did the British feel the need to fight the French yet again when the French seemed perfectly capable of fighting each other? Remember that this was the time when the whole way of life in Britain was changing as people started working in factories and mills and moved from the countryside to the big cities. (See Chapter 16 to find out more about how Britain became the world’s first modern economic power.) A lot of people thought that after America and France, it would be Britain’s turn next for a revolution. What they got was a reform of Parliament, but in its way, that was something of a revolution, too.
Revolutions: Turning Full Circle or Half?
Strictly speaking a revolution is a complete turn of a wheel so that you end up where you started, and that was how the British used the term in the eighteenth century. When they spoke of “The Revolution,” they meant the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which had turned the wheel full-circle back to the liberties that they genuinely believed the English had enjoyed in Anglo-Saxon times. The Americans meant more or less the same thing when they spoke of their “Revolution”, only this time they meant recovering the freedom they had enjoyed before George III started interfering.
When the French overthrew King Louis XVI a few years later, it quickly became clear that theirs was a very different sort of revolution. The French had no idea of restoring anything; the French Revolution was more about turning things upside-down, so that those who had been at the bottom of society under the old regime were now on top - a half-turn of the wheel, to be precise.
A British Civil War in America
The first thing to get rid of is the idea that the American Revolutionary War was between the “Americans” and the “British”. Eighteenth-century “Americans” regarded themselves as fully British, and the thirteen colonies as extensions of England, so it was a real wrench to declare independence in 1776. Throughout the war, many “Americans” continued to regard themselves as British, while in Britain, there were many who were profoundly unhappy at going to war against fellow “Englishmen”. So how had things gone so badly wrong?
If you want the patriotic American angle on this, you can find plenty of films (Revolution with Al Pacino and The Patriot with Mel Gibson are just two examples) showing the Americans as stout-hearted, freedom-loving, and heroic, while the British appear as little better than red-coated Nazis, and if that’s how you like your history then you’d better stick to the films. The truth is a bit more messy.
Pontiac's Rising, 1763
Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa united the Indian tribes and tried to drive the British out of America. He captured nearly every important British fort and settlement in the west except for Detroit and Pittsburgh. He even laid siege to these, but without artillery, he had to withdraw and the British regained control. But his actions had scared the British (and the colonists) and no-one could be sure that it wouldn't happen again.
How the trouble began
The trouble started in 1763, with the end of the Seven Years War. For the British, it was a moment of glory - they had trounced the French on three continents and ended up with control of most of India and North America.
But when the celebrations died down, there was the small matter of how exactly to defend and pay for this empire.
Like all governments after a major war, London was looking to economise where possible, and it seemed reasonable to ask the American colonists to contribute some of the cost of what was, after all, their own defence. The problem was how.
● Tax sugar (or, to be precise, molasses). Tried: 1764.
Sugar was the big money crop of the age, but the government got precious little revenue from it because it was so easy to smuggle. In fact, the government reduced the duty on molasses, but this time it was going to be enforced properly. That was why the colonists complained about it.
● A Stamp Tax (a duty on legal documents, newspapers, playing cards and other printed material). Tried: 1765.
The British were used to stamp taxes, but the idea was new to America.
As a result, there were massive protests, and I mean massive, not just against the tax but against the idea that Parliament had the right to tax America at all. Result? Stamp Act repealed - but the government also passed a Declaratory Act which said, in effect, “Just Because We’re Giving Way On This One Don’t Think We Can’t Tax You Any Which Way We Choose, Alright Mate?”
● Tax other commodities (like paper, glass, paint, and tea). Tried: 1767.
These were the Townshend Duties, named after the minister who introduced them. No-one denied that Parliament could regulate trade, but the Americans argued that these duties were nothing to do with trade and all to do with asserting Parliament’s authority over them. Result? Things took a turn for the worst.
No taxation without representation
No taxation without representation was the idea, supposedly from Magna Carta, that taking money in taxation is theft unless it is done with the people's consent, through their representatives. The Americans used this argument as a basis for objecting to the Stamp Act because there were no American MPs in Westminster. Of course, you could say that taxation is theft whether or not it's done through consent!
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party had very little to do with the tax on tea. The British East India Company was badly in the red, so London had given special permission for a consignment of Indian tea to sail straight for Boston without having to go via England. This made the tea cheaper, not dearer, but the local merchants didn't want to be undercut, so they arranged the famous raid. It looked very symbolic and patriotic, but really it was all about profits.
Things get nasty: From Boston to Concord
By 1770, the British were in a very difficult position. They had given way on the Stamp Act, and now they repealed all of the Townshend Duties - except the one on tea. Well, they had to save face somehow. But they could not appear to be giving in to violence. The colonists had made violent assaults on Stamp Act officials, and in 1770, troops in Boston fired on a mob who had been attacking a sentry - the Boston Massacre. Two years later, colonists attacked and burned a British revenue cutter, the Gaspee. In 1773, it was the turn of the ships carrying tea into Boston harbour, sailing into the most famous tea party in history. A gang of Bostonians, loosely dressed up as Mohawk Indians, raided the ships and poured the tea into Boston harbour. Thus, as Mary Poppins puts it, rendering the tea unfit for drinking. Even for Americans.
In fact the other colonies thought that Boston had gone too far, but then the British turned on Boston, closing the harbour and imposing direct rule on Massachusetts. Now the other colonies were worried that what happened to Boston today could happen to them tomorrow. They decided to stand by Boston. So, when the British commander in Boston got wind of an arms dump at nearby Concord and decided on a search and destroy expedition, he found the locals prepared to fight - on the village green at Lexington. Someone - we don’t know who - fired a shot. And that’s how the war began.
The British made it to Concord and destroyed the arms cache, but they were decimated on the way back by deadly accurate American sniping from behind trees and stone walls. By the time they got to back to Boston, the British knew they had a war on their hands, and it wasn’t going to be easy.
Tom Paine
Tom Paine has become something of a hero on two continents, though that was not how he was generally regarded in his lifetime. He was a corset-maker by trade, and his enemies made sure no-one forgot it. He came from Norfolk, and in 1774, he set sail for America where he wrote Common Sense and fought in the American army against the King. When the French Revolution broke out Paine was elected to the French National Convention, the revolutionary
"Parliament", but he fell foul of the Jacobins, the extremist party, for voting against the execution of Louis XVI and he was lucky to escape with his life. He returned to America, where he had always been appreciated and where he died in 1802. His enemies regarded him as little better than the antichrist; more recently he has been recognized as a true Radical, one of the most important political writers and thinkers Britain has produced.
Declaring independence
Once the fighting had started, the Americans met in Congress at Philadelphia, set up a Continental Army under George Washington, and promptly launched an unsuccessful invasion of Canada. And it was at this point, with passions aroused and both sides appalled at the bloodshed that Tom Paine (British born American philosopher and author) came on the scene, with one of the most influential pieces of writing in history. It was called Common Sense and it pointed out that, instead of faffing around trying to work out what the King and Parliament could or could not do, it made much more sense just to declare independence. And on July 4, 1776, that is exactly what Congress did.
The Declaration of Independence placed the blame for the trouble fairly and squarely on the shoulders of King George III, not because he had actually taken the lead in American affairs (he hadn’t), but because being independent meant being independent of the King. Declaring independence, however, was one thing; winning it was another matter altogether. The British had a huge army, and they were prepared to use it.
The fight's on
People often think that the Americans were bound to win, but that was not at all how it seemed at the time. The Americans were thirteen separate colonies who had a record of not being able to agree on anything except what day of the week it was. They had no professional soldiers, no allies, no navy, and their Commander-in-Chief, George Washington, had never held any military
post higher than a junior rank in the Virginia militia. They were up against a large and professional British army, reinforced by large numbers of German troops from Hesse. The British had won the Seven Years War - the first world war in history - including victory in North America. No eighteenth century bookies were offering odds on an American victory, and the first year of fighting suggested they were very wise not to do so. The following are some highlights of the war:
● 1776: The British take New York: Britain’s General Howe launches a massive amphibious assault that catches Washington completely on the hop. New York remains in British hands until the end of the war.
● 1777: British surrender at Saratoga: Britain’s General Burgoyne launches a huge three-pronged attack to cut the United States in two. Howe defeats Washington again, but Burgoyne is cut off and forced to surrender at Saratoga thanks to swift action by the American general, Benedict Arnold.
● 1778: The French come in: The British surrender at Saratoga encourages the French to declare war on British because it looks like they might be on the winning side for once. The British get out of Philadelphia. And can you blame them?
● 1779: The British take Savannah and drive off French and American counter-attacks.
● 1780: The British land in the South, take Charleston and rout US General Gates, who’s been sent South by Congress specifically to prevent this happening.
It was at this point that Benedict Arnold, who was by then far and away the most successful American commander, turned traitor and nearly handed the British the whole of New York state. Had he done it, it is hard to see how the British could not have won the war.
George Washington
You may think this view of events is a bit unfair on Washington. Where is his famous crossing of the Delaware and his victory at Trenton? Well, yes he did launch a daring attack at Trenton, New Jersey, at Christmas 1776 having crossed the Delaware river (though almost certainly not standing up in the boat as you see in the famous painting, at least not if he had any sense). But the fact remains that despite this undoubted success, Washington was much more successful as an organiser of his army than as a field commander. He was defeated far more often than he won; by contrast the British General Howe never lost a battle. Washington's greatest achievement was to hold the American army together, especially through the notorious winter of 1778, when it was camped at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and drilled remorselessly into shape, until the British finally over-reached themselves.
Revolution or War of Independence?
The most accurate term for what happened between England and its colonies in America is a civil war, but that's always been more of a British than an American view. It goes against the patriotic grain to suggest that not everyone was keen on independence (as Alistair Cooke once pointed out, the sort of people who commemorate the Revolution nowadays would almost certainly have been on the British side).
To Americans, it has long been the Revolution or the Revolutionary War in Britain, until recent years, it was generally referred to as the War of American Independence.
This is not just a matter of semantics: There is an important difference of interpretation here.
To Americans, overturning a king and establishing an independent republic with an elected president was a revolution both in the modern sense of the word and in the older sense of a return to a state of liberty that had been lost. British historians, however, were less convinced. Compared with genuinely revolutionary movements like the French or Russian revolutions, the American experience looked pretty tame: no purges, no Terror, no massacres or dictatorship. Although the term "American Revolution" is in more common use in British textbooks now, the basic British view of it has not changed.
But he didn’t. His British contact, Major John Andre was captured, in civilian clothes, behind American lines, and with plans of Fort West Point hidden in his boots. Arnold was rumbled and fled to the British lines; Andre was hanged. America’s War of Independence could resume.
Calling it quits: The World turned upside down
The British attack in the South began to run out of steam as Washington regrouped his forces, and eventually in 1781 British General Cornwallis found himself trapped between Washington’s army and the French fleet on the Yorktown peninsula. He surrendered. His bandsmen played a tune called “The World Turned Upside Down”, because in a world where colonists could beat their masters (and the French could beat the British!), that is how it seemed.
The French Revolution
In 1789, unexpected and exciting news arrived from France. The people of Paris had risen up and stormed the Bastille. This was like the fall of the Berlin
Wall exactly two hundred years later. The Bastille was a sinister fortress and prison, widely believed to be full of innocent victims of a cruel and repressive regime. In fact, it only had seven inmates when it fell, but, hey, feel the symbolism.
The French declared the Rights of Man and set up a constitutional monarchy, not unlike the British one, but then found that you cannot just import forms of government wholesale, like cloth or brandy. Some leaders did not want a monarchy, constitutional or otherwise: They wanted a republic, and in 1792, that’s just what they got.
The nutshell version
Since the French Revolution had a profound effect on events on the other side of the Channel, here is a brief outline.
Phase 1: Risings 1789-91
In 1789, the French monarchy, under the kindly but inept King Louis XVI, went bankrupt. In an effort to raise money, Louis summoned the ancient Parliament of France, the Estates-General, to Versailles. When the Parliament met the deputies wanted much more far-reaching changes. When the King refused to play ball the deputies declared themselves the National Assembly, representing the People of France. In Paris, the people took the opportunity to attack the symbol of royal power, the Bastille. The National Assembly declared the Rights of Man and the Citizen and set up a constitutional monarchy, with Louis XVI at the head, ruling according to the rules. In theory.
Phase 2: Republic and Terror 1792-94
Louis XVI did not co-operate for long, and in 1791 he fled, trying to reach the Austrian frontier and lead an Austrian army into France. Unfortunately (for him) he was caught, put on trial, and guillotined. France became a republic, and immediately went to war with its neighbours. The war began badly, so the radicals, led by Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins, declared a Reign of Terror, with “suspects” sent to the guillotine on the flimsiest evidence.
Phase 3: War 1794-99
In 1794 Robespierre’s enemies decided enough killing was enough - especially as they were next - and had him arrested and guillotined himself. The war went on, though the news was generally good for the French thanks to a gifted young commander, General Bonaparte. In 1799 Bonaparte returned from an unsuccessful campaign in Egypt to seize power in France.
Chapter 17: Children of the Revolutions 277 Sounds good to us . . . we think
At first the British liked what they heard from France. The Whig leader (and Chapter 15 will fill you in on what one of those was), Charles James Fox, described the French Revolution as the greatest event in history. One of Fox’s closest friends, Edmund Burke (who was another Whig politician), disagreed.
His book Reflections on the Revolution in France denounced the Revolution and said it would lead to anarchy and military dictatorship. But no-one really listened to Burke - his own friends thought he had gone mad. Until these events made them change their minds:
● Wholesale murder in Paris: Within a month, the new French republic had organised a wholesale massacre of people held in all the prisons in Paris.
● The French invaded Belgium: (Officially it was the Austrian Netherlands, but everyone called it Belgium). Belgium’s ports were a perfect base for invading England, and Antwerp was such a strong potential trade rival to London that it had been closed to trade years before. Only now the French were opening it up again.
● The French executed King Louis XVI: The British thought Louis XVI had brought a lot of the trouble on his own head, but they didn’t want to see that head cut off. There was a big wave of sympathy for him, and a brisk trade in sentimental prints of his final moments.
● The Edict of Fraternity: The French revolutionary leaders issued a decree saying they would help any people struggling to be free of oppression.
The British government assumed they had Ireland in mind, and they assumed right.
This means War! Britain and France at it again
In 1793 the French declared war on Britain, though the British were planning to declare war anyway. The Government was led by William Pitt the Younger, and although the war wrecked all his careful plans to put the British economy back in the black, he seemed to welcome it with grim satisfaction. The Whigs, led by Charles James Fox, were outraged, and accused Pitt of waging an illegal ideological war - that is, one against an idea rather than against a specific threat. However, as the French grew stronger and more menacing, more and more people came round to support Pitt and the war.
British landings on the Continent were so disastrous that they are recalled in the children’s song The Grand Old Duke of York (you get the idea - up the hill, down again, no idea where they were going or what they were doing). Far more effective was the close naval blockade the British imposed on the French coast, which seriously disrupted French trade. Roads were so bad in those days that much internal trade was carried along the coast, so a naval blockade had major nuisance value.
The French were able to defeat their other enemies on land, while the British made the most of their own naval victories, and by 1795, the two sides were so exhausted they came close - but only close - to making peace. In 1796 the French tried a landing in Ireland, which might have worked had it not been for the bad weather. When the Irish staged their own rising two years later, the British were ready for them. (You can read the gory details in Chapter 14.)
Impeached for free speech: Restricting freedoms
Prime Minister Pitt was as worried about enemies at home as he was about the French. He brought in laws to clamp down on free speech, and anyone calling for changes in the political system risked ending up charged with treason. Incidentally, there was no point in reminding Pitt that he himself had supported changes only a few years before. That was then, he argued; you don’t repair your house in a hurricane.
The only place where it was safe to say anything against the government was in Parliament itself, because you could not be arrested for anything said there (though many people think you should be). But all was not lost. When a large treason trial of Radicals was held in 1797, the jury found the defendants not guilty. No such luck for Tom Paine: He had written a book called The Rights of Man as a counterblast to Edmund Burke’s anti-revolutionary Reflections on the Revolution in France (see the earlier section “Sounds good to us . . . we think”). He fled to France and was found guilty of treason in his absence. (See the sidebar earlier in this chapter for more on Tom Paine and why he was so important.)
Pitt the Younger - Boy Wonder
William Pitt the Younger was the son of William Pitt the Elder (later Earl of Chatham) who won a huge empire at France's expense in the Seven Years War (1756-63) (see Chapter 14 for more on the elder half of this remarkable political family). Pitt the Younger was something of a boy wonder, who went to study at Cambridge aged fourteen and won a Double First, and went on to become Prime Minister - thanks to George III - at the age of twenty-four. Not surprisingly, he was staunchly loyal to the King.
Life in Nelson's navy
For a nation that prided itself on its seapower, the British seemed to have taken remarkably little care of their seamen. The harsh conditions on board His Majesty's ships were notorious, from the poor food and late pay to the floggings with the cat o'nine tails - a nine-thonged leather whip, often with spikes, used on the naked back. Never mind mutiny on the Bounty - in 1797 the whole fleet rose in mutiny against their conditions. However, no navy can win battles by terrorising its men, and more recently historians have pointed out that although conditions might horrify us, they were often a lot easier than conditions on land - there was regular food, and the pay was adequate, and most captains were nothing like Captain Bligh. Nelson himself was universally admired for the care he took to ensure his men were well looked after, and they fought all the better under him.
Not content with suspending the freedoms he was supposed to be fighting to defend, Pitt went on to pass the Combination Laws, which made combinations (Trade or Labour Unions to you and me) illegal. So any workmen who complained about their wages or the conditions in factories stood the risk of being sent to prison. No wonder some workers declared they sympathised with the French. (See Chapter 16 to find out why they had something to complain about.)
Cruising for a bruising - Nelson
Badly needing a success story, the British milked the Nelson story for all it was worth, making him one of the first media war heroes. Don’t get me wrong: Nelson was without question a very fine commander, and he was very, very lucky - no bad thing to be (ask Napoleon) - but he wasn’t exactly a good role model for aspiring young officers. One of his most famous actions was to put his telescope deliberately to his blind eye so as not to “see” a signal from his superior officer telling him to disengage. For anyone else that would have meant a court martial. Nelson often neglected his duty to spend time with his mistress Emma Hamilton (with whom he enjoyed a curious menage a trois with her husband, the British ambassador in Naples).
If you’re going to be that sort of an officer, you had better win (the British had shot Admiral John Byng in 1757 for losing a battle), and fortunately for Nelson, he did:
● 1798: Nelson destroyed almost the entire French fleet at anchor in Aboukir Bay in Egypt (it became known as the Battle of the Nile, which sounded better), stranding Napoleon and his army in Egypt.
● 1801: Nelson sailed into Copenhagen harbour when it looked as if the Danes were going to enter the war, and destroyed their fleet too (this was when the “blind eye” incident took place).
The British had come to rely more on Nelson for their protection than on the Royal Navy itself.
Britain and France signed a truce in 1802, but neither side expected it to last and it didn’t. In 1804 the war began again, and this time Napoleon intended to invade Britain. It was Nelson’s job to stop him.
In fact, Napoleon had already given up his invasion plans in despair at his admirals’ reluctance to take on the British when Nelson finally met the combined French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalagar in 1805. The British cut the French and Spanish line of battle and destroyed or captured almost all their ships. But a French marksman spotted Nelson - he was easy to spot because he refused to cover up all his medals - and shot him. Even though Trafalgar had destroyed Napoleon’s naval power, the British were so upset by Nelson’s death that they hardly took this in. Who was going to save them now?
Napoleon tried Plan B. He used his command of the Continent to close every European port to British trade and slowly starve her into submission. Unfortunately, Europe needed British manufactures so badly that leaks kept appearing in Napoleon’s trade wall.
Bonaparte's Spanish Ulcer: The Peninsular War
Britain’s chance to defeat Bonaparte on land came in 1807 with a revolt against French rule in Spain and Portugal. When the Spanish managed to defeat a French army, London sent a large army to Portugal under Sir Arthur Wellesley, soon to become the Duke of Wellington.
The war dragged on from 1808 until 1814, and at times it seemed that Wellington was being forced to retreat, though in fact he was wearing the French down (not for nothing did Napoleon refer to the war as his “Spanish ulcer”), tying down badly-needed French troops when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 and eventually crossing the Pyrenees into France itself.
The great irony of this Peninsular War (after the Iberian peninsula where it took place) was that it was a war by the Spanish and Portuguese people, helped by the British, against a French-imposed government that was supposed to be governing in their name.
The Battle of Waterloo: Wellington boots out Napoleon
Napoleon’s big mistake was invading Russia in 1812; he never recovered from his devastating retreat from Moscow. By 1814 his enemies had pursued him to Paris, and he was forced to abdicate. While the allies restored the discredited Bourbon Kings of France, Napoleon himself was sent to govern the small island of Elba, just off the Italian coast. Within a year, however, he had escaped from the not-very-close watch that was kept on him and was back in control of France. Rightly expecting that the allies would not let him stay on the throne if they could help it, he decided to get his retaliation in first by attacking the nearest army to him. This happened to be a mixed British and Belgian army - commanded by the Duke of Wellington. They met near the small village of Waterloo.
The Battle of Waterloo was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war. Basically, the French hurled themselves against the British lines for a whole day; it was touch and go whether they might break through, when Wellington’s Prussian allies arrived and the French had to flee.
The British were obsessed with Waterloo - they named towns and stations after it, and marked Waterloo Day, June 18, every year until the First World War. It was a tremendous feat of arms - the British were the first to make Napoleon’s famous Old Guard turn and run, and it did bring Napoleon’s career to an end. The great man was carried in a British ship to exile on a remote British colony, St Helena, from where even he could not escape.
A British Revolution?
The men who fought at Waterloo (see the preceding section for details) came home to a country that seemed about to stage a revolution of its own. British industry had been growing rapidly, and the growth had been a painful process. The skilled craftsmen thrown out of work by the new machines fought back as best they could by attacking the factories and smashing the machinery. To control these Luddites (see Chapter 16 for a bit more about these men and what drove them) the government had to deploy more troops than Wellington had with him in Spain. Factories meant long working hours, low wages, and a system that hardly cared whether its workers lived or died. And if you and your fellow workers wanted to do anything about it - bad news. Under the Combination Laws (explained in the section “Impeached for free speech: Restricting freedoms”), it was illegal for workers to get together in groups. Welcome home, lads.
The Prince Regent
Poor old George III finally went mad in 1810 and had to be locked away in Windsor Castle where he hung on for another ten years. Meanwhile, his eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, (also called "Prinny", though not to his face) ruled as Prince Regent. Prinny was fat, lazy, and utterly self-obsessed. He and his dandy friends like George "Beau" Brummell would spend a fortune on gorging and drinking themselves senseless each night and rising each day as early as one or two in the afternoon to face the challenges of the morning. Yes, I know, it sounds more like the life of a student than the Prince Regent.
It was Prinny who conceived the idea of building himself a pleasure dome down at Brighton, a tasteless piece of ostentation that can't even decide whether it's meant to be Chinese or Indian. The regency style was very elegant - think Pride and Prejudice and those elegant Nash terraces in London - but there was nothing elegant about the man who gave his name to it.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. The government put up the price of food.
Sowing discontent: The Corn Law
The increase in the price of food was due to the Corn Law, so called because it said how much corn could be imported into the country and at what price and what the import duty on it was to be and how much home-grown corn there could be and at what price - hey, wake up! Yes, I know it all sounds even less exciting than a wet weekend in Skegness, but beneath all the economics is one rather important principle: Are poor people going to be able to afford to eat or are they not?
The idea of the Corn Law was to keep foreign corn out of the country, which would help the farmers; unfortunately, it also meant that farmers and the people who speculated in corn could keep the price high so as to maximise their profits. Expensive corn equals hungry people, and hungry people could equal revolution. The signs were already there.
Hampden Clubs discuss reforms, 1812
The Hampden Clubs, named after John Hampden, who had resisted King Charles I, (you can meet him properly in Chapter 13) were radical discussion groups set up for workers to discuss reform. The government used the clubs as an excuse for suspending habeas corpus and clamping down on public meetings.
One of the most important civil liberties to emerge from the constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century, habeas corpus (1679) stops the police or the government arresting you just because they don’t like your face. Or your opinions.
Spa Fields meeting, 1816
This big public reform meeting in London was stirred up into a riot, and the crowd raided a gunsmiths’s shop. The government feared this could have been Britain’s storming of the Bastille.
March of the Blanketeers, 1817
The March of the Blanketeers was meant to be a massive march of workers from Lancashire to London (the blankets were to sleep in) to present a reform petition to Parliament. The army stopped the march and arrested the leaders.
Pentrich Rising, 1817
This was an armed rising by the men of a small Derbyshire village called Pentrich. Unfortunately for them, the organiser turned out to be a government agent known as Oliver the Spy, and the leader of the rising was hanged.
“Peterloo" and the Six Acts, 1819
In 1819 a huge meeting of people from all over the North-West of England was held in St Peter’s Fields in Manchester to demand reforms. The local authorities panicked and sent in Yeomanry cavalry, who charged at the unarmed crowd with sabres. Over 400 people were wounded - and you should see what a cavalry sabre can do - and eleven were killed. People were so disgusted that they nicknamed the incident “Peterloo” (that’s irony, 1819-style). The Prince Regent was delighted and sent a message of congratulations to the cavalry.
The government responded to Peterloo by bringing a set of six laws to reduce free speech, restrict public meetings, make newspapers more expensive, and give the authorities greater powers to search private property.
Cato Street conspiracy, 1820
The Cato Street conspiracy was a plot to kill all the members of the Cabinet as they sat down to dine. The plan was discovered in time because one of the plotters was a government agent. Which always helps, of course.
What the protestors wanted
What did they want, all these people protesting against the system? Well, of course they wanted things like better wages and a modicum of safety at work, but the main thing they were calling for was what is known in the trade as Parliamentary Reform. It’s not just that they wanted the vote: They wanted the whole parliamentary system reformed.
Small Cornish fishing villages: 2 each; Major industrial cities: nil
When King Henry III summoned the first Parliament back in 1258 (you can read all about this in Chapter 9), the map of England looked a bit different. Places like Manchester or Birmingham were little villages; the big towns were cathedral cities and towns in the cloth trade. So these were the places that sent MPs to Parliament. By the nineteenth century, though, Birmingham and Manchester were major industrial centres, and the places that had been big in 1258 were now small market towns and Cornish fishing villages. It didn’t make any difference: they still had two MPs each, and the big cities had none.
No pot? No vote!
Then there was the little question of who had the vote. Apart from no women having the vote anywhere, the rules were different in each constituency. The main types of voters were:
● Householders: This was the basic qualification, but there were different rules according to how much your house was worth. In some places, you got the vote if you could prove your hearth was big enough to hold a large cooking pot, and you claimed your right to vote by taking your pot along to the hustings. (So when you voted you took pot luck!)
● Members of the City Council
● Everybody!: There were two places, Preston (Lancashire) and the borough of Westminster, where pretty much everyone had the vote as long as you had spent the night before in the borough and were a) adult and b) male.
You think that's bad? Wait 'til you hear about the corruption
There was no secret ballot. Electors declared who they were voting for in front of a large crowd. With so few voters, bribing them was easy, especially when they were the tenants of the local landowner. The usual way was to buy up the local inn and provide free food and drink for the duration of the election, which in those days could be a week or more.
Some boroughs were so completely controlled by the local lord that they were known as pocket boroughs - literally meaning that the borough was effectively in someone’s pocket. Pitt the Younger’s pal Henry Dundas had twelve seats in his pocket and effectively controlled the whole of Scotland. (For Pitt the Younger see the sidebar earlier in this chapter).
In many boroughs, no elections were held, because the local lord just nominated who he wanted elected and that person got in unopposed.
The rottenest boroughs
Boroughs with very few voters were known as "Rotten Boroughs". The rottenest were:
● Gatton (Surrey): Number of voters (er, no they didn't actually live there): 6; Number of MPs: 2.
● Dunwich (Suffolk - well, near Suffolk because in fact it had fallen into the sea):
Number of voters: 0; Number of MPs: 2. Number of fish: 4,000.
● Old Sarum (Wiltshire): Number of voters: 0; Number of inhabitants: 0; Number of houses: 0 - yes, folks, it was a grassy mound! Number of MPs: 2.
In effect the system kept the landed classes in power which was why the Radicals - the people who wanted change - argued for a reform of Parliament as a first step before changing anything else.
The Great Reform Act
So did the protestors get what they wanted? Not at first. In the years after Waterloo, anyone arguing for parliamentary reform got locked up, but gradually things calmed down. The landowners eventually realised that they really ought to do something for the big industrial cities. By 1830, almost the only two people opposed to some sort of reform were King George IV (who had been Prince Regent, see earlier in this chapter for more on him), and he died, and the Duke of Wellington, who was Prime Minister at the time - and he was turned out of office anyway. After an epic battle, in 1832 Parliament finally passed the Reform Bill, which became known as the Great Reform Act. It modernised the parliamentary system, bringing it kicking and screaming into the nineteenth century - only 32 years late!
Was THAT the British Revolution?
Okay, the Great Reform Act wasn’t very revolutionary. It standardised and helped to geographically balance the voting system, but it certainly didn’t give the vote to the working people. The people who gained most from it were the middle classes: They could now organise as a political force to be reckoned with. But it did change the system, and it did break the old landowners’ hold on power, and above all it was passed.
In the centre of Newcastle, there’s a magnificent column with a statue on top. It’s not another one of Nelson, it’s Earl Grey, the man who got the Reform Bill through Parliament. In his way, Grey was every bit as important as Nelson: If
Trafalgar saved Britain from a French invasion, the Great Reform Act saved Britain from violent revolution. Britain was going to change, and the change would indeed be revolutionary, but it would come through Parliament. That was what made Britain different as she entered the Victorian age.
Rotten Boroughs: Rotten system?
No-one argues that the old political system didn't need changing, but historians have disagreed about just how bad it was. Obviously, it offends against all our democratic principles; on the other hand, the oddest thing about it was that, by and large, it did work. Some of Britain's greatest statesmen, including William Pitt and Sir Robert Peel, came up through the old, unreformed system, and an able young man without much money could get into Parliament with the help of an obliging patron. Not all patrons tried to dictate what "their" MPs said and did, and even when they did, there were plenty of independent-minded constituencies that had no truck with patrons and their "pocket" MPs.