Radicals (UK)

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The Radicals were a group of parliamentarians in the United Kingdom in the early to mid-19th centuries who helped transform the Whigs into the Liberal Party .

background

The main factors out of which the radical movement grew were: support for electoral reforms, the emancipation of Catholics and free trade efforts . In the working class and the middle class it was the “popular radicals” who fought for social reforms and rights, whereas the concern of the middle class “philosophical radicals” was the reform of the electoral law.

Radical parliamentarians

The Whigs Reform Act of 1832, while giving the middle class the right to vote , failed to meet radical demands for universal male suffrage. A small group of radicals in the House of Commons joined the aristocratic Whigs in demanding the right to vote for the working class. This also found increasing approval among Whigs from the middle class. In the population, the Chartists accepted the demand for extended voting rights. From about 1839 the community of interests was called the Liberal Party by radicals and Whig MPs .

The medium-sized Anti-Corn Law League ( Anti-Corn Law League - the Corn Laws were protectionist import tariffs for grain), founded in 1839, opposed the punitive tariffs that drove up grain prices and thus brought profit to landowners, but burdened industrialists. It attacked " feudalism " and tried to win the support of the working class. After the failure of the mass demonstrations and petitions of the Chartist movement in 1848, the expansion of the electoral law remained the goal of Corn Law opponents and the radical parliamentarians.

Formation of the Liberal Party

The radical parliamentarians were decidedly middle-class - their radicalism consisted in opposition to the rule of traditional British elites, not in proximity to socialism . The radicals joined the Whigs and a few Tories who were supporters of Robert Peel and formed the Liberal Party in 1859.

Electoral reform

In 1864, the Liberal MP William Ewart Gladstone introduced the first very cautious proposal for reform of the electoral law. It was rejected with the votes of the Tories, who wanted no reform, and the reform-liberals, who wanted more far-reaching reform, which toppled the liberal government. The Tory Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister, and the new Tory minority government introduced the Reform Act of 1867 , which doubled the number of people eligible to vote: from now on all male heads of household, about 40% of the male population in England and Wales, had the right to vote , for the first time this also applied to parts of the workforce.

literature

• S. MacCoby: The English Radical Tradition 1763-1914 , Nicholas Kaye, London 1952.