GCE History Teachers' Guide - Unit 3 - WJEC

GCE AS and A HISTORY UNIT 3 Teachers' Guide 28
DOCUMENT 5
'It must be clear that the Great Reform Act was not based upon any accurate knowledge of
the nature of contemporary society. A major point in the arguments of the reformers was
their acceptance of a broad, but extremely vague, notion of a middle class, endued with
certain values. Closer scrutiny reveals that it is very difficult to find the 'middle classes' that
the Whigs talked so much about in the 1830s.
The principal support for Parliamentary reform came from within the government
minorities in the highly unequal society. The kind of reform that the Whigs were proposing in
1831 evoked widespread support amongst powerful and influential interests. The 'country'
interest had long regarded the pocket and rotten boroughs as a basis for government
corruption and the Whig Bill seemed to meet these objections. The proposers were people
like Durham and Grey, who were themselves leading aristocratic landowners. Furthermore
the Bill would entail a reduction in the number of borough seats and a considerable
extension of county representation.
The Tories knew that by opposing the Bill they had alienated much of their support.
The Whigs knew that they could count on not merely the noisy and embarrassing support of
radicals but also on the bulk of respectable opinion. The 1831 general election provided the
Whigs with a decisive majority for reform on the old unreformed franchise and on the old
unreformed distribution of seats. In some places, enthusiasm and agitation for reform
played some part, but the overwhelming swing of the county seats to reform in 1831 is not to
be explained by a reaction to the threat from working-class movements.'
[Norman McCord, an academic historian and specialist in nineteenth century British history,
writing in a specialist book, The Age of Reform (1991)]
DOCUMENT 6
'It may be asked,
Will a reform of Parliament give the labouring man a cow or a pig?
Will it put bread and cheese into his satchel instead of infernal cold potatoes?
Will it give him a bottle of beer to carry to the field instead of making him lie down on his
belly to drink out of the brook?
Will it put upon his back a Sunday coat and send him to Church instead of leaving him to
stand lounging about shivering with an unshaven face and a carcass covered with a ragged
smock-frock, with a filthy cotton shirt beneath it as yellow as a kite's foot?
Will it put an end to the harnessing of men and women by a hired overseer to draw carts like
beasts of burden?
The enemies of reform jeeringly ask us, whether reform would do these things for us, and I
answer distinctly that IT WOULD DO THEM ALL !'
[William Cobbett, a radical journalist and activist, writing in his newspaper,
The Political Register (April 1831)]