Book description
There may be a civil war, starting in the Midlands. The Birmingham
garrison have rough-sharpened their swords and barricades have gone up
in the town. Wellington is trying to form a government without a
majority. The Duke says 'The English people are usually quiet; if not,
there are ways of making them.' These are the Days of May, High Summer
of English Reform. The new Whig government has staggered everyone with a
reform bill more drastic than all expectations, one to wipe out rotten
boroughs and enfranchise industrial towns. It has passed the Commons,
been thrown out by the Lords, then, in an election, is massively
endorsed. Now in May 1832, the Lords are again blocking it. Political
unions formed to promote reform are denounced for Jacobinism and
revolution. One Tory, John Croker, hopes that 'the coming revolutionary
regime' will let Princess Victoria 'live quietly as Miss Guelph'. King
William IV, influenced by the Court and Queen Adelaide, refuses to make
new peers; stalemate may turn into street fighting. The struggle is
recorded here. The players, painted vividly, speak in their own voices
from 170-year-old Hansards: the radicals, Cobbett and Hunt; the Ultras,
Wetherell and Eldon, resisting all reform; Lord Chancellor Brougham,
drunk and brilliant in a great speech; Lord Alport, who manages the
nightmare legislative struggle, tempted by suicide; a mad backbencher
demanding a day of fasting and penitence. Here too are the riots and the
quiet politics of British constitutional reform. The outcome - the 1832
Act - is the most important event in the last 300 years of parliamentary
history. Edward Pearce, after 25 years of Commons sketching and
political commentary in national newspapers, concentrates on history.
After eight briefer, contemporary books, Reform! is the latest of four
major studies, following The Lost Leaders (1997), Lines of Most
Resistance (1999), and Denis Healy (2002), the widely acclaimed
authorised biography.
