The Chartists - Timelines.tv History of Britain B13

northeast of Manchester lie the Bradford Moors a rugged majestic landscape menacing almost 20 years on from Peterloo out on the moors the story of the struggle for the vote took an ugly turn the year was 1839 it was winter we don't know the exact date but we're told that thousands of men assembled up here on the moors exhausted after a hard day's work in the mills the grime of the factory still on their faces and they carried home made pikes long wooden staves with iron spikes on the end and all through the night by torchlight they prepared for the uprising that they sense would begin any day what follows is the story of the Chartist risings an outpouring of anger that swept industrial Britain in the late 1830s and the closest this country ever came to a full-blown revolution this is Queen Street in Burnley the last mill you can visit in Britain to see textile looms like these powered by a functioning steam engine what's this place got to do with nighttime gatherings on the Bradford Moors well the fact is most of the men plotting revolution on the Moors that night were weavers they made cloth for a living and it's impossible to understand their anger without understanding the fabric of their lives and how much their lives had changed for the worse in these years of Industrial Revolution once the Bradford Weaver's were well-respected craftsman they'd worked on handlooms powered by their muscle and this was skilled work well-paid work but with improvements in technology with the development of water power and steam power machines were introduced that replaced the old handlooms production went through the ceiling and the bosses made a fortune but for Bradford's weavers these power looms spell disaster the days of the skilled artisan were over now the machines did all the work the workers merely service them and they felt their become slaves to the Machine even more damaging these new power looms could do the job of for workers and that meant either wage cuts or massive unemployment thousands were thrown out of work and the prosperity of Bradford's working-class ground to a halt it's hard to get a handle on the scale of the suffering experienced by so many people in those early decades of the Industrial Revolution a trade depression failing harvests the high price of bread they all combined to create a misery unique even in those grim days and what made it worse it seemed as if the powers-that-be were actually trying to stoke up this suffering it was Parliament that fixed the price of bread it was Parliament that passed laws that seemed to turn poverty itself into a crime if you were actually starving you could be sent to the workhouse parents were separated from children husbands from wives all were forced to work for starvation rations hardly surprising then that the suffering masses turned not just to their employers and their landlords but to Parliament as the cause of their distress and their hope for comfort well here I am outside the Palace of Westminster the seat of parliament since the 13th century and if you like the focus of this entire story and as I've explained Parliament in the early industrial period was unrepresentative of any but a small fraction of the population basically just a land owning elite but in the 1830s two dramatic events shook Westminster the first was a massive fire that destroyed almost the entire building not important to our story but a symbol that change could occur even here and the second was a piece of legislation a law pushed through Parliament and it's vital to understand this act if we're to understand the anger that rippled across Britain in the late 1830s and this crucial piece of legislation was the great Reform Act of 1832 now you read old-fashioned history books of 19th century Britain and you'll find the great Reform Act hailed as a triumph a milestone on the onward march to democracy and it's true certainly it made Parliament more representative it gave MPs to the new industrial towns it doubled the number of voters and yet it caused such anger why what to be honest I don't think it was a great Reform Act at all I think it was a nasty small-minded hypocritical little Reform Act because and here's the point the MPs that passed this act they weren't interested in increasing democracy in this country they were trying to block democracy they thought if we give the vote to a few more people all of whom like us have property if we get the vote to cozy middle-class folk to industrialist to factory owners to bankers to shopkeepers then they'll help us keep the vote out of the hands of everyone else the rabble the swine --is-- multitude 1832 was the moment in British history when the propertied classes in the countryside and the property classes in the towns joined forces closing ranks against the poor the labourers in the countryside and the workers in the towns the Reform Act was met with celebration amongst the middle classes those with the tidy sum of 10 pounds a year who now could vote but the act confirmed to the workers their powerlessness and out of that disappointment was born a new political movement the Chartist movement the greatest expression yet of the people's demand for political change it began peacefully signatures were collected for a petition the Great Charter it listed their demands votes for all secret ballots regular Parliament's payment of MPs or rights we take now for granted the building blocks of our democracy but when the Charter was brought to Westminster in 1839 it was laughed out of Parliament and so the tide began to turn and a new slogan was heard here in the mills and the factories peaceably if we can forcibly if we must there were rumors of muskets stock pile and a local blacksmiths mass producing weapons and from about October 1839 we read these first tantalizing accounts from police records of workers at the end of the factory day foot slugging it up onto the moors there to drill for the revolution that must now surely come but it never did it's strange you know in France there were revolutions not just in 1789 but in 1830 in 1848 in 1870 all that violent upheaval but here the revolution never came some historians reflecting on that contrast between France and Britain have concluded maybe we Brits were just too quiet to uncomplaining was that how it was well I don't think so the thousands of men who mobilized up here on the moors were hardly quiet and uncomplaining but when that bubbling anger spilled into actual confrontation in Newport in Sheffield in Bradford these riots were crushed almost before they'd begun the fact is that the Chartist movement was riddled with police informers police spies and when the riots began the authorities were ready the militias moved in arrests were made the chata sneeze were broken with years of hard labor in prison the last time the Chartists met was on Kennington common in London on a rainy day in 1848 it was all rather sad there were apparently more spectators than demonstrators the police barred the Chartists from marching on Parliament and the demonstrators all went home I think at that moment they must have despaired of the vote would never be won but it was in the most unlikely way

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Length: 9min 34sec (574 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 03 2013