The Justification of the Tory Government's Reaction to the Problem of the Radicals

The Justification of the Tory Government's Reaction to the Problem of the Radicals

The Radicals had formed as a reaction to the French revolution at the

end of the 18th century. They demanded change of the parliament (which

had been formally elected by wealthy land owners as the vote was

restricted to a propertied minority) such as; a more representative

parliamentary system, annual election and a secret ballot.

In 1815 – 21 the British Government faced problems from the Radicals.

They witnessed an intensification of their movement, which went out of

its way to win over the working class; one way in which they did this

was by open air mass meetings. In this answer I am going to highlight

the Radical problems which faced the government and state how they

were justified.

At the time of the Radical movements there was no police force in

place, as well as this they had only a limited number of troops.

However there was in place a local magistrate who did impose law and

order, although it had no experience of crowd control. As well as

this, ministers used spies and agents to detect evidence of

treasonable activity. One of the Radicals major displays of discontent

toward the government was at Peterloo. In 1819 a protest supporting

the cause of parliamentary reform was allowed to go ahead for, as

mentioned before, there was not an effective law and peaceful order

and therefore feared that if it was prohibited what the consequences

would be, although they had troops standing by in case of any trouble.

The Peterloo protest was one of peace, and was legitimate however the

magistrates apparently lost their nerve, decided the protest was

illegal, so the troops intervened, stopping it causing 11 deaths and

400 injuries. This incident was not of a Radical cause but of the

local magistrates, who had over-reacted to the gathering of the large

crowd.

The governments reaction to this incidence was justified by

introducing the ‘six acts’ which included increasing the price of