BBC - In Our Time- the so-called “Great Reform Act” (Audio)

“We must get the suffrage, we must get votes, that we may send the men to Parliament who will do our work for us; …and we must have the country divided so that the little kings of the counties can't do as they like, but must be shaken up in one bag with us.”

So declares a working class reformist in George Eliot’s novel Felix Holt: the Radical. It is set in 1832, the year of the so-called “Great Reform Act” which extended the vote and gave industrial cities such as Manchester and Birmingham political representation for the first time. The Act is often described as a landmark moment in British political history.

But to what extent was Britain’s political system transformed by the Great Reform Act? What were the causes of reform in the first place and was the Act designed to encourage democracy in Britain or to head it off?

Contributors

Dinah Birch, Professor of English at Liverpool University

Michael Bentley, Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews

Catherine Hall, Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London

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