Radicals (UK)
Radicals | |
---|---|
Historical leaders | |
Founded | 1750s |
Dissolved | 1859 |
Preceded by | Radical Whigs |
Merged into | Liberal Party |
Newspaper | |
Grassroots wing | Hampden Clubs |
Ideology |
|
Red | |
This article is part of a series on |
Liberalism in the United Kingdom |
---|
Part of Radicalism |
The Radicals were a loose parliamentary political grouping in
History
Early Radicals
The
Radicals and the Great Reform Act
Radicals inside and outside Parliament were divided over the merits of the Whig
The 1832 parliament elected on the new franchise – which raised the percentage of the adult population eligible to vote from some 3% to 6%[7] – contained some fifty or sixty Radicals. This number shortly doubled in the 1835 election, leading many to envisage a House of Commons eventually divided between Radicals on the one side and Conservatives (Tories and Whigs) on the other.[8]
In fact, the Radicals failed either to take over an existing party, or to create a new, third force and there were three main reasons. The first was the continuing strength of Whig electoral power in the half-century following the 1832 Act. The latter had expressly been designed to preserve Whig landlord influence in the counties and the remaining small borough[9] – one reason a radical like Henry Hetherington condemned the bill as "an invitation to the shopocrats of the enfranchised towns to join the Whiggocrats of the country".[10] Whigs were also able to profit in two-member constituencies from electoral pacts made with a more reforming candidate.[11]
Secondly, there was the widening body of reforming opinion inside (and outside) Parliament concerned with other, unrelated causes, including international liberalism, anti-slavery, educational and pro-temperance reforms, admissibility of non-Anglicans ("nonconformists") to positions of power.[12] The latter expanded later to disestablishmentarianism which replaced the old local government units of the simple parish unit vestry by the mid-nineteenth century, devising instead civil (non-religious) parishes for almost all areas.
Thirdly, the Radicals were always more a body of opinion than a structured force.[13] They lacked any party organisation, formal leadership, or unified ideology. Instead, humanitarian Radicals opposed philosophic Radicals over the Factory Acts; political Radicals seeking a slimmed-down executive opposed Benthamite interventionists; universal suffrage men competed for time and resources with free traders – the Manchester men.[14]
By 1859, the Radicals had come together with the Whigs and the anti-protectionist Tory Peelites to form the Liberal Party, though with the New Radicalism of figures like Joseph Chamberlain they continued to have a distinctive political influence into the closing years of the nineteenth century.[15]
Continuing agitation and reform
Following the First Reform Act, popular demand for wider suffrage was taken up by the mainly
By 1866, with agitation from
Further Radical pressure led to the Ballot Act 1872 and the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1883, followed by the Representation of the People Act 1884.[18] Progressive liberals like John Morley and Joseph Chamberlain continued to value radicalism as a unifying bridge between the classes, and a common goal.[19] However, in 1886 Chamberlain helped form the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party that mostly supported Conservative governments. The long career of David Lloyd George saw him moving from radical views in the 1890s to becoming Prime Minister in coalition with the Conservatives in 1918. From 1900 and the rise of the Labour Party and the gradual achievement of the majority of the original Radical goals, Parliamentary Radicalism ceased to function as a political force in the early twentieth century.[20]
Disappearance as a political party
Radicals were absorbed by the Liberal Party by 1859, but did show their presence as a faction of the Liberal Party.[21]
Literary echoes
- Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), a social novel written by George Eliot, offered a positive view of an idealistic and well-educated committed Radical.[22]
- Beauchamp's Career (1875), a satirical novel written by George Meredith. It portrays life and love in upper-class Radical circles and satirises the Conservative establishment.
- Anthony Trollope offered a more shaded view in his outline for The Way We Live Now (1875), describing his anti-hero as "A scapegrace. Has glimmerings of Radical policy for the good of the people".[23] Economically liberal and laissez-faire, Trollope finds non-radicalism bucolic, extolling the rural county of Suffolk: "The people are hearty, and radicalism is not quite so rampant as it is elsewhere. The poor people touch their hats, and the rich people think of the poor."[24]
- Sybil, or The Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli, which includes a fictional Industrial Radical Party.
Prominent Radicals
- William Beckford
- Edward Spencer Beesly
- Jeremy Bentham
- John Bright
- Timothy Brown
- Charles Buller
- Lord Byron
- Richard Carlile
- John Cartwright
- William Cobbett
- Richard Cobden
- Sir Charles Dilke
- Charles James Fox
- William Godwin
- George Peabody Gooch
- Thomas Hill Green
- George Grote
- Thomas Hardy
- Frederic Harrison
- William Hazlitt
- Thomas Hodgskin
- Thomas Holcroft
- George Holyoake
- William Hone
- Henry Hunt
- Leigh Hunt
- Douglas William Jerrold
- Walter Savage Landor
- James Mill
- John Stuart Mill
- Sir William Molesworth
- George Odger
- Thomas Paine
- Joseph Parkes
- Francis Place
- Richard Price
- Joseph Priestley
- John Arthur Roebuck
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Thomas Spence
- Edward John Trelawny
- John Wilkes
- Mary Wollstonecraft
- Thomas Jonathan Wooler
- Christopher Wyvill
See also
- Foxite
- Hampden Clubs
- Liberalism in the United Kingdom
- Philosophical Radicals
- Popular democracy
- Socialism in the United Kingdom
- The British Reform Movement
- Owenism
- National Union of the Working Classes
- Radical Reform Association
- Metropolitan Political Union
References
- ^ Alan Sykes, ed. (2014). The Rise and Fall of British Liberalism: 1776-1988. Routledge.
- ISBN 9781624669057.
British politics of the first half of the nineteenth century was an ideological spectrum, with the Tories, or Conservative Party, on the right, the Whigs as liberal-centrists, and the radicals on the left.
- ^ Evans 2000, pp. 10, 98.
- ^ Élie Halévy, The Liberal Awakening (London 1961) pp. 67–68.
- ^ Élie Halévy, The Triumph of Reform (London 1961) pp. 25–27
- ^ J. Wade, 1831, quoted in M. Dorothy George, Hogarth to Cruikshank (London 1967) p. 169.
- ^ Élie Halévy, The Triumph of Reform (London 1961) pp. 27–29
- ^ Élie Halévy, The Triumph of Reform (London 1961) pp. 65–66, 195.
- ^ H. J. Hanham, The Reformed Electoral System in Great Britain (London 1968) pp. 12–15, 31.
- ^ Quoted in Evans 2000, p. 101.
- ^ Evans 2000, p. 71.
- ^ Evans 2000, p. 45.
- ^ M. L. Henry, "Radicals", in S. H. Steinberg ed., A New Dictionary of British History (London 1963) p. 300
- ^ Élie Halévy, The Triumph of Reform (London 1961) pp. 195–96.
- ^ G. M. Trevelyan, British History in the Nineteenth Century (London 1922) p. 383.
- ^ Evans 2000, pp. 37, 46.
- ^ H. J. Hanham, The Reformed Electoral System in Great Britain (London 1968) pp. 4, 11.
- ^ Evans 2000, pp. 63, 67.
- ^ Vincent, John (1969). "John Morley". History. 54: 316.
- ^ M. L. Henry, "Radicals", in S. H. Steinberg ed., A New Dictionary of British History (London 1963) p. 300.
- ISBN 9781317866602.
Counter-balancing Palmerston's more moderate image was his chancellor of the exchequer, William Gladstone (1809–98), who enjoyed support on the left wing of the Liberal Party and among British radicals. This duo kept politics on course ...
- ^ I. Ousby ed. The Cambridge Guide to literature in English (Cambridge 1995) p. 327.
- ^ M. Sadleir, Anthony Trollope (London 1945) p. 422.
- ^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of the Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope". Gutenberg.
Bibliography
- Evans, E. J. (2000). Parliamentary Reform in Britain, c.1770–1918. Harlow: Longman. ISBN 0582294673.
- Harling, Philip (1996). The Waning of "Old Corruption": the politics of economical reform in Britain, 1779–1846. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780191676772.
- Harris, William (1885). The History of the Radical Party in Parliament. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.
- Worrall, David (1992). Radical Culture: discourse, resistance and surveillance, 1790–1820. New York/London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. ISBN 0745009603.