ABSTRACT
The demand for a further measure of parliamentary reform had never been completely stilled from the moment that the nature of the compromise settlement of 1832 became apparent. The radical advocates of manhood suffrage saw the First Reform Act as a sellout by the more moderate and pragmatic reformers, and at best they viewed it as a short-term, interim arrangement which would soon have to give way to a much fuller package of democratic reform. The legislative programmes and social attitudes of the first post-Reform parliaments confirmed the radicals’ worst suspicions, and a combination of trade depression, repressive policies towards trade unions and the poor, and apparent indifference to working-class grievances enabled the Chartists to enlist a mass following at times of stress in the late 1830s and early 1840s. The Charter’s Six Points envisaged more accountable, accessible and socially representative parliaments as well as manhood suffrage, and its supporters included believers in each man’s natural right to vote, or in the need to rediscover a ‘lost’ democratic Old English constitution, as well as those who were more concerned to see their interests served and their living standards protected by a radically reformed parliament.
