HISTORYPerilous Question
Antonia Fraser, W&N
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Antonia Fraser's vivid, impeccable and authentic account of the passage of the Great Reform Bill of 1832 paints a picture of tempestuous times.
REVIEW
Although the electorate may appear like a crude democratic tool, shaping our future with a blunted axe of provincialism, prejudice, anger and apathy, it has frequently shown itself to be a sharper, faster instrument than the Parliament it elects.
Not a difficult trick when, as recent news has shown, many of our representatives expend their energies cashing in on power and influence while using their influence to maintain their power.
While this notion of sluggish Parliaments dragged reluctantly behind a progressive electorate is witnessed in the current battle between Britain and the EU, it is also the 1,000-year story of our democracy, from Magna Carta to universal suffrage.
A significant milestone on that journey was the Great Reform Bill of 1832 which looked to update the medieval system of voting patterns and reflect the wholesale social change brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
Constituencies were stuck in the past, with "rotten boroughs" reflecting townships long gone and virtually voterless. In the 1830s, a green mound or a patch beneath the sea could send MPs to Parliament.
The landed gentry bought and sold these seats like thoroughbreds while the great provincial cities such as Manchester and Birmingham languished in silence, having no representation at all.
Antonia Fraser's wonderfully vivid, authentic and impeccably sourced account of the passage of this bill paints a picture of tempestuous times when a disenfranchised people, struck by poverty, chose reform in Parliament as their placard.
In the wake of French revolution, the hard heads (notably Tory Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel) saw concession to the mob as a gateway to the guillotine. Others, particularly the eminent and reluctant successor to the nobbled Duke, Lord Grey, saw reform as a means to head off an uprising.
Over two years as the argument was played out, grandly and memorably on stages great and small, the country did teeter on the brink as frustration and poverty took its toll. General elections were fought, won and lost and the Lords were talked down from their block-headed intransigence.
It took the tenacity the activists, some deft manoeuvres by the new King William IV, a free press and considerable self-sacrifice on the part of the people to persuade the executive that their elite club should let in fresh air and not just fresh heirs.
Although only a fraction more of the population were enfranchised (and certainly not women) the Great Reform Bill signalled a seachange in the relationship between rulers and ruled with power and the people talking directly, not through the artificial offices of the blue bloods.
Antonia Fraser captures the febrile times with a kaleidoscope characters who leap off the page in their eminence, silliness and eloquence.
This is a particular slice of history demanding a particular reader but it is edifying and breathless stuff and there are many lessons that our current ruling class could learn if they could tear themselves away from their expenses chits to make the effort.
Politics, for all its dunderheaded preoccupation with self, can be a noble pursuit - as long it is minded to keep pace with its true masters.
