|
Reform League
The Reform League was established in 1865 to press for manhood suffrage and the ballot in Great Britain. It collaborated with the more moderate and middle class Reform Union and gave strong support to the abortive Reform Bill 1866 and the successful Reform Act 1867. It developed into a formidable force of agitation at the very heart of the country. Origins During the autumn and winter of 1864–65 members of the Universal League for the Material Elevation of the Industrious Classes planned to form a new organisation which would concentrate solely on manhood suffrage. As a result, the Reform League was established on 23 February 1865 and the Universal League for the Material Elevation of the Industrious Classes became defunct. The leadership of the League, which was to remain consistent throughout its life, drew heavily on personalities from the International Working Men's Association, including George Howell, George Odger, William Cremer and Benjamin Lucraft. The father ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
National Reform Union
The National Reform Union (NRU) was a British political organisation formed in 1864 and was composed mainly of Liberal Party members. At the start of 1867 the Reform Union had 150 branches compared to the Reform League's 400. The Reform Union was more intellectual than the similarly motived Reform League but was less influential. It enjoyed the support of the prosperous middle class whereas the Reform League enjoyed the support of trade unionists, ex-Chartists and the working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ... and were perceived as a threat by the establishment due to the agitation it could create. References * ''Respectable Radical.'' by F.M. Leventhal. Published London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1971 Political movements Radical parties Political p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
William Cremer
Sir William Randal Cremer (18 March 1828 – 22 July 1908) usually known by his middle name "Randal", was a British Liberal Member of Parliament, a pacifist, and a leading advocate for international arbitration. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1903 for his work with the international arbitration movement. Early life Cremer was born to a working-class family in the southern English town of Fareham. His father was a coachman, who abandoned the family soon after Randal Cremer was born. His mother raised him along with his two sisters, ensuring he received an education at a local Methodist school. He augmented his knowledge by attending free lectures, was apprenticed as a builder and became a skilled carpenter. Moving to London 1852, Cremer became active as a union organiser, swiftly becoming a recognized labour leader. Cremer was elected as the Secretary of the International Workingmen's Association in 1865 but resigned two years later in 1867, when the organization decide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Charles Bradlaugh
Charles Bradlaugh (; 26 September 1833 – 30 January 1891) was an English political activist and atheist. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866, 15 years after George Holyoake had coined the term "secularism" in 1851. In 1880, Bradlaugh was elected as the Liberal MP for Northampton. His attempt to affirm as an atheist ultimately led to his temporary imprisonment, fines for voting in the House of Commons illegally, and a number of by-elections at which Bradlaugh regained his seat on each occasion. He was finally allowed to take an oath in 1886. Eventually, a parliamentary bill which he proposed became law in 1888, which allowed members of both Houses of Parliament to affirm, if they so wished, when being sworn in. The new law resolved the issue for witnesses in civil and criminal court cases. Early life Born in Hoxton (an area in the East End of London), Bradlaugh was the son of a solicitor's clerk. He left school at the age of eleven and then worked as an offic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
John Bright
John Bright (16 November 1811 – 27 March 1889) was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies. A Quaker, Bright is most famous for battling the Corn Laws. In partnership with Richard Cobden, he founded the Anti–Corn Law League, aimed at abolishing the Corn Laws, which raised food prices and protected landowners' interests by levying taxes on imported wheat. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846. Bright also worked with Cobden in another free trade initiative, the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty of 1860, promoting closer interdependence between Great Britain and the Second French Empire. This campaign was conducted in collaboration with French economist Michel Chevalier, and succeeded despite Parliament's endemic mistrust of the French. Bright sat in the House of Commons from 1843 to 1889, promoting free trade, electoral reform and religious freedom. He was almost a lone voice in opposing the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke
Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke, Order of the Bath, GCB, Privy Council of the United Kingdom, PC (4 December 1811 – 27 July 1892), British wikt:statesman, statesman, was a Liberal Party (UK), Liberal politician who helped shape British politics in the latter half of the 19th century. He held office under William Ewart Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1868 and 1873 and as Home Secretary between 1873 and 1874. Lowe is remembered for his work in education policy, his opposition to electoral reform and his contribution to modern UK company law. Gladstone appointed Lowe as Chancellor expecting him to hold down public spending. Public spending rose, and Gladstone pronounced Lowe "wretchedly deficient"; most historians agree. Lowe repeatedly underestimated the revenue, enabling him to resist demands for tax cuts and to reduce the national debt instead. He insisted that the tax system be fair to all classes. By his own main criterion of fairness — that the balan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (18 August 1792 – 28 May 1878), known as Lord John Russell before 1861, was a British Whigs (British political party), Whig and Liberal Party (UK), Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1852 and again from 1865 to 1866. The third son of the John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford, 6th Duke of Bedford, Russell was educated first by private tutors due to his fragile health and later at Westminster School and Edinburgh University before entering Parliament in 1813. In 1828 he took a leading role in the repeal of the Test Acts which discriminated against Catholics and Protestant dissenters. He was one of the principal architects of the Reform Act 1832, which was the first major reform of Parliament since the Stuart Restoration, Restoration, and a significant early step on the road to democracy and away from rule by the aristocracy and landed gentry. He favoured expanding the right to vote to the middle classes a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British politican, starting as Conservative MP for Newark and later becoming the leader of the Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party. In a career lasting over 60 years, he was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for 12 years, spread over four non-consecutive terms (the most of any British prime minister) beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894. He also was Chancellor of the Exchequer four times, for over 12 years. He was a Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for 60 years, from 1832 to 1845 and from 1847 to 1895; during that time he represented a total of five Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, constituencies. Gladstone was born in Liverpool to Scottish people, Scottish parents. He first entered the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons in 1832, beginning his political career as a High Tory, a grouping that became the Conservative Party (UK), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
1865 United Kingdom General Election
The 1865 United Kingdom general election was held 7 July 1865 to 24 July 1865 to elect 658 members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons. It saw the Liberals, led by Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, Lord Palmerston, increase their large majority over the Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, Earl of Derby's Conservatives to 80. Palmerston died in October the same year and was succeeded by John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, Lord John Russell as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister. Despite the Liberal majority, the party was divided by the issue of further parliamentary reform, and Russell resigned after being defeated in a vote in the House of Commons in 1866, leading to minority Conservative governments under Derby and then Benjamin Disraeli. This was the last United Kingdom general election until 2019 United Kingdom general election, 2019 where a party increased its majority after having been returned to office at the previ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Samuel Morley (MP)
Samuel Morley (15 October 1809 – 5 September 1886), was an English woollen manufacturer and political radical. He is known as a philanthropist, Congregationalist dissenter, abolitionist, and statesman. Background He was the youngest son of John Morley, a hosiery manufacturer with premises in Nottingham who opened offices in Wood Street, London; his mother was Sarah Poulton of Maidenhead. Born in Homerton, from an early age he worked for his father's business in London. When his father and brothers chose to retire, he was left in managerial control. By 1860 he was sole owner of both the London and Nottingham parts of the business, and as it grew rapidly into the largest of its kind in the world he became very wealthy, and a model employer. Morley took a large residence in Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington when not living at his City of London address. He was a member of Thomas Binney's King's Weigh House Congregational Chapel in Fish Street Hill, London. He ventured into pu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Peter Alfred Taylor
Peter Alfred Taylor (30 July 1819 – 20 December 1891) was a British politician, anti-vaccinationist and radical. Biography Taylor was born in London. He was the son of another Peter Alfred Taylor, a silk merchant, and the nephew of Samuel Courtauld. He was educated at a school in Hove, Sussex, run by J. P. Malleson, his uncle and the Unitarian minister for Brighton. Here he met Clementia Doughty, whom he married in 1842. In the late 1830s he joined the family company of Samuel Courtauld & Co, later becoming a partner. The wealth from the company was what allowed him to develop and fund his radical interests, something which he conducted in concert with his wife. Taylor was an anti-vaccinationist. He commented that vaccination was a "delusion-a baseless superstition; that it afforded no protection from smallpox".Ross, Dale L. (1968)''Leicester and the Anti-Vaccination Movement 1853–1889'' ''Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society'' 43: 35 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of America, Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by U.S. state, states that had Secession in the United States, seceded from the Union. The Origins of the American Civil War, central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether Slavery in the United States, slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
John Bedford Leno
John Bedford Leno (29 June 1826 – 31 October 1894) was a Chartist, radical, poet, and printer who acted as a "bridge" between Chartism and early Labour movements, as well as between the working and ruling classes. He campaigned to give the vote to all common men and women, driven by a strong desire for "justice and freedom for all mankind". He was a leading figure in the Reform League, which campaigned for the Reform Act 1867. He was called the "Burns of Labour" and "the poet of the poor" for his political songs and poems, which were sold widely in penny publications, and recited and sung by workers in Britain, Europe and America. He was an entertaining and persuasive orator and his speeches were in great demand around London. He owned, edited and contributed to Radical and Liberal newspapers and journals, and printed and distributed bills advertising London Reform meetings and demonstrations. He wrote the international hit 'The Song of the Spade'. George Howell. ''Howell C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
