Days of May
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
that took place in May 1832, following the wrecking by Tories in the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
of the Third Reform Bill
Reform Act 1832
The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales...
, which aimed to extend parliamentary representation to the middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
and to the newly industrialised cities of the English Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
and the North of England.
The campaign to broaden the electoral franchise
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
had garnered a wide and organised national support over the preceding years, led by Thomas Attwood
Thomas Attwood
Thomas Attwood was a British economist, the leading figure of the underconsumptionist Birmingham School of economists, and, as the founder of the Birmingham Political Union, a leading figure in the public campaign for the Great Reform Act of 1832.He was born in Halesowen, and attended Halesowen...
's Birmingham Political Union
Birmingham Political Union
The Birmingham Political Union was a political organisation in Great Britain during the early nineteenth century. Founded by Thomas Attwood, its original purpose was to campaign in favour of extending and redistributing suffrage rights to the working class of the kind set out in the Reform Bill of...
, which boasted that it "had united two millions of men peaceably and legally in one grand and determined association to recover the liberty, the happiness, and the prosperity of the country". While Attwood was careful to keep the unions' activities legal and non-violent, he also encouraged the widespread belief that they had the potential to constitute a powerful and independent extra-parliamentary force, boasting that the nation could be mobilised in an hour. The fall of the bill, and the subsequent resignation of the Whig government of Lord Grey
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, KG, PC , known as Viscount Howick between 1806 and 1807, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 22 November 1830 to 16 July 1834. A member of the Whig Party, he backed significant reform of the British government and was among the...
, were met with riot
Riot
A riot is a form of civil disorder characterized often by what is thought of as disorganized groups lashing out in a sudden and intense rash of violence against authority, property or people. While individuals may attempt to lead or control a riot, riots are thought to be typically chaotic and...
ing, campaigns of economic sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
and threats of armed insurrection that were judged by many contemporaries to be credible.
The crisis was defused with the reinstatement of Grey's government on 15 May and King William IV
William IV of the United Kingdom
William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death...
's agreement in principle to create enough new peers
Peerage
The Peerage is a legal system of largely hereditary titles in the United Kingdom, which constitute the ranks of British nobility and is part of the British honours system...
to build a Whig majority in the Lords and allow the bill to pass. The Lords backed down short of this measure and the Great Reform Act was finally passed by Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
and received Royal Assent
Royal Assent
The granting of royal assent refers to the method by which any constitutional monarch formally approves and promulgates an act of his or her nation's parliament, thus making it a law...
on 7 June 1832.
Although the extent to which extra-parliamentary pressure was decisive in securing the passage of the bill is a matter for debate among historians, the period has come to be seen as one of the times when the UK came closest to revolution
Revolution
A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
.
Background
England and Wales
England and Wales is a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom...
out of a total population of 8 million, and property qualifications varied widely between consituencies. The onset of the industrial revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
wrought sweeping social and economic change across the country, but the unchanging electoral system that continued left political structures increasingly unable to reflect the realities of economic power in the country. In 1830 fifty-six rotten borough
Rotten borough
A "rotten", "decayed" or pocket borough was a parliamentary borough or constituency in the United Kingdom that had a very small electorate and could be used by a patron to gain undue and unrepresentative influence within Parliament....
s elected two MPs each but had electorates of fewer than fifty, while Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
and Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
, with a combined population of more than 540,000, had not one MP between them.
Reform also had a record of inspiring popular discontent. In 1819 a crowd of 15,000 had gathered at Newhall Hill
Newhall Street
Newhall Street is a street located in Birmingham, England.Newhall Street stretches from Colmore Row in the city centre by St Phillip's Cathedral in a north-westerly direction towards the Jewellery Quarter. Originally the road was the driveway to New Hall occupied by the Colmore family...
in Birmingham to symbolically elect Charles Wolsley as the town's "Legislatorial Attorney and Representative" in Westminster; when Manchester followed Birmingham's lead 2 months later troops opened fire and killed 15 in the event that became known as the Peterloo Massacre
Peterloo Massacre
The Peterloo Massacre occurred at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 that had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation....
.
Sporadic unsuccessful attempts to abolish specific rotten boroughs and transfer representation to larger towns were carried out by Lord John Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, KG, GCMG, PC , known as Lord John Russell before 1861, was an English Whig and Liberal politician who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century....
throughout the 1820s, but the election of a Whig government headed by Lord Grey
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, KG, PC , known as Viscount Howick between 1806 and 1807, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 22 November 1830 to 16 July 1834. A member of the Whig Party, he backed significant reform of the British government and was among the...
in November 1830 was the first occasion when a ministry committed to parliamentary reform took office. Grey formed a committee to draft reform proposals that would be sufficient to quell public opinion and "afford sure ground of resistance to further innovation", but the resulting Reform Bill received only lukewarm support in parliament and further elections were held in May 1831. Newly armed with a majority of over 130 seats Grey introduced a Second Reform Bill in July 1831, which passed through the House of Commons with a majority of 140, but was defeated in the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
in October amid rioting in Derby
Derby
Derby , is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands region of England. It lies upon the banks of the River Derwent and is located in the south of the ceremonial county of Derbyshire. In the 2001 census, the population of the city was 233,700, whilst that of the Derby Urban Area was 229,407...
, Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
and Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
.
By the 1830s the most influential extra-parliamentary support for reform came from the Birmingham Political Union
Birmingham Political Union
The Birmingham Political Union was a political organisation in Great Britain during the early nineteenth century. Founded by Thomas Attwood, its original purpose was to campaign in favour of extending and redistributing suffrage rights to the working class of the kind set out in the Reform Bill of...
, which had been founded by Thomas Attwood
Thomas Attwood
Thomas Attwood was a British economist, the leading figure of the underconsumptionist Birmingham School of economists, and, as the founder of the Birmingham Political Union, a leading figure in the public campaign for the Great Reform Act of 1832.He was born in Halesowen, and attended Halesowen...
in December 1829 as "a General Political Union between the lower and middle classes of the people" to engineer the political reform that Attwood had come to think necessary to achieve his ultimate goal of currency reform. The unusually small size of the units of production characteristic of the Birmingham economy, coupled with the resulting high degree of social mobility and shared economic interest between Birmingham workers and factory owners, enabled the BPU to attract a broad support across classes and maintain its position of leadership among the hundreds of more fragmented unions that followed its example and formed across the country in 1830 and 1831.
The BPU had made its reputation amid the spontaneous riot
Riot
A riot is a form of civil disorder characterized often by what is thought of as disorganized groups lashing out in a sudden and intense rash of violence against authority, property or people. While individuals may attempt to lead or control a riot, riots are thought to be typically chaotic and...
ing that had accompanied the fall of the First Reform Bill in 1831, assembling 150,000 protesters at Newhall Hill
Newhall Street
Newhall Street is a street located in Birmingham, England.Newhall Street stretches from Colmore Row in the city centre by St Phillip's Cathedral in a north-westerly direction towards the Jewellery Quarter. Originally the road was the driveway to New Hall occupied by the Colmore family...
in the largest political assembly the country had ever seen. Its threat to reorganise itself along semi-military lines in November 1831 had led to suggestions that it was trying to usurp the civil authority, and made a deliberate, if implicit, threat of the possibility of armed revolt in the event of the formation of an anti-reform government. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
called the BPU "the barometer of the reform feeling throughout England", while Attwood himself was dubbed "King Tom" by William Cobbett
William Cobbett
William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly...
and described by Francis Place
Francis Place
Francis Place was an English social reformer.-Early career and influence:Born in the debtor's prison which his father oversaw near Drury Lane, Place was schooled for ten years before being apprenticed to a leather-breeches maker. At eighteen he was an independent journeyman, and in 1790 was...
as "the most influential man in England".
Change of leader
On 9 May 1832, after the Great Reform Act had been vetoed by the House of LordsHouse of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
, the then Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
, Earl Grey
Earl Grey
Earl Grey is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1806 for General Charles Grey, 1st Baron Grey. He had already been created Baron Grey, of Howick in the County of Northumberland, in 1801, and was made Viscount Howick, in the County of Northumberland, at the same time as...
, handed in his resignation. He was replaced by the Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
, a Tory
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
, who opposed the Reform Act. Lord Grey commented that Wellington was a man who "didn't understand the character of the times", referring to the fact that Wellington believed the pressure for change was insignificant and the electoral was fine as it was.
BPU meeting
The news of Grey's resignation was not reported in London on the day it happened, but on 10 May 1832, news reached Birmingham about the situation.Progress and events
Pro-reform organisations such as the Birmingham Political UnionBirmingham Political Union
The Birmingham Political Union was a political organisation in Great Britain during the early nineteenth century. Founded by Thomas Attwood, its original purpose was to campaign in favour of extending and redistributing suffrage rights to the working class of the kind set out in the Reform Bill of...
played a major part in the protests; their membership swelled, causing politicians to fear an armed riot. In other parts of the country, armed mobs attacked the homes of prominent members of the peerage who had opposed reform. Petition
Petition
A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer....
s were also presented from around the country. On 15 May, Wellington resigned and Grey was invited to return to form a government. The House of Lords subsequently agreed to the Bill after William IV
William IV of the United Kingdom
William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death...
threatened to create dozens of Whig peers to overwhelm the opposition.
Revolutionary potential
Although at the time it was claimed that the nation could be mobilised in an hour commentators disagree on how real the threat of revolution was during the Days of May. Contemporary observers had little doubt: Edward LittletonEdward Littleton, 1st Baron Hatherton
Edward John Littleton, 1st Baron Hatherton PC, FRS , was a British politician, of first the Canningite Tories and later the Whigs. He had a long political career, active in each of the Houses of Parliament in turn over a period of forty years...
, then a Whig MP, commented in his diary that the country was "in a state little short of insurrection", while the Anglican clergyman Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith was an English writer and Anglican cleric. -Life:Born in Woodford, Essex, England, Smith was the son of merchant Robert Smith and Maria Olier , who suffered from epilepsy...
later described a "hand-shaking, bowel-disturbing passion of fear". As Thomas Creevey
Thomas Creevey
Thomas Creevey was an English politician, son of William Creevey, a Liverpool merchant, and was born in that city....
observed, this fear was shared by the Queen, whose "fixed impression, is that an English revolution is rapidly approaching, and that her own fate is to be that of Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....
" Some more modern historians agree: E. P. Thompson
E. P. Thompson
Edward Palmer Thompson was a British historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the British radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class...
wrote that "in the autumn of 1831 and in the 'Days of May' Britain was within an ace of revolution" and Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
felt that "This period is probably the only one in modern history ... where something not unlike a revolutionary situation might have developed."