Industrial Britain 1745–1901, Year 11: the American Revolution, the Great Reform Act and Chartism (Power and the people option)

The Seven Years' War

HintKnown in North America as the French and Indian War.

The whyDuties were enforced more strictly after the war, and then the Stamp Act of 1765 imposed a direct tax on colonists. Both increased what the colonists had to pay.

No taxation without representation

HintA slogan.

The whyParliament replied that the colonists were virtually represented, like the many Englishmen who owned no property and could not vote.

The East India Company's

HintParliament had given a trading firm special rights over selling tea in America.

The whyThe Tea Act let the company sell tea directly in the colonies, and colonists objected to the taxes and to the company's special position together. The protest is remembered as the Boston Tea Party.

With the Intolerable Acts, which included closing the port of Boston

HintParliament punished one colony in particular.

The whyThe laws aimed to place Massachusetts under tighter British control. In response, colonial delegates met at the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September 1774.

Consent

HintWhat a government needs from the people it governs.

The whyThe Declaration lists many complaints against the king and Parliament. This one echoes the long-running argument that Parliament should not tax people who were not represented in it.

The Treaty of Paris

HintIt was signed in the capital of one of Britain's rivals.

The whyIt ended the war that began in 1775. For Britain it meant giving up the thirteen colonies it had ruled in America.

It was a bitter joke echoing the Battle of Waterloo, because soldiers attacked an unarmed crowd at St Peter's Field.

HintThink of a famous victory over Napoleon, four years earlier.

The whyAbout 60,000 people had gathered peacefully to hear Henry Hunt speak for parliamentary reform. Yeomanry and cavalry were sent in, and an estimated 18 people were killed and up to 700 injured.

Six Acts

HintA set of laws, named after how many there were.

The whyThey followed Peterloo. They made large public meetings harder, taxed cheap periodicals and let magistrates search for weapons. Many people saw them as a symbol of repression, and the vote was not widened until 1832.

Rotten borough

HintThe name suggests something decayed.

The whyOld Sarum was the best-known example. Meanwhile, growing industrial towns such as Birmingham had no MPs of their own. The 1832 Act removed dozens of rotten and pocket boroughs and gave seats to new towns.

The king agreed to create enough new Whig peers to outvote them.

HintThe threat was to change who sat in the upper house.

The whyThe Lords had defeated an earlier bill in 1831, and there were riots in several towns, the worst in Bristol. William IV was reluctant, but agreed to the new peers, and the Tory peers then gave way.

10

HintThink of a two-digit sum, not a three-digit one.

The whyThe test meant the Act mainly gave the vote to the property-owning middle classes. Many working men were disappointed to be left out, and women were formally excluded.

1839; 1842; 1848

HintThey were spread over just under ten years.

The whyThe 1842 petition was the biggest, with over three million signatures. Parliament would not act on any of them, but within decades several Chartist demands did become law.

The Great Reform Act gave the vote to property owners, so working men were still left without it.

HintThink about who qualified in 1832, and who did not.

The whyChartism began in the mid-1830s as Britain's first mass working-class political movement. Its support peaked in years of depression and hunger, in 1839, 1842 and 1848.

Payment for MPs

HintWithout it, only the wealthy could take the job.

The whyThe other five points were a vote for every man over 21, a secret ballot, no property qualification for MPs, equal-sized constituencies, and annual parliaments.

Newport

HintIt is in south-east Wales, in what was then Monmouthshire.

The whySeveral thousand marchers led by John Frost, a former mayor of the town, gathered outside the Westgate Hotel, where soldiers opened fire. The rising was quickly crushed and was a disaster for the Chartist cause.

Kennington Common, London

HintA public open space within the capital.

The whyThe authorities prepared heavily and recruited special constables in large numbers. The meeting was seen as a failure, the petition was rejected again, and Chartism declined rapidly as an organised movement after 1848.