socialmedian: Annual parliaments – radical or crackpot?

User-submitted headlines for this story

Clips

Annual parliaments – radical or crackpot?

Source: guardian.co.uk Politics

Oct 23, 2009

Summary

Bravo Geoffrey Wheatcroft for reviving the final, unattained demand of the Chartists – annual parliaments (More than ever, Britain needs the last Chartist reform, 20 October). It is also worth remembering that the desire for frequent elections goes back beyond the Victorian reformers. Georgian radicals, too, wanted universal (male) suffrage and annual parliaments. The astonishing growth of the popular reform movement from 1792 until its temporary defeat at the hands of Pitt the Younger and Henry Dundas a few years later threw up many leaders who are now, regretfully, all but forgotten.

In Scotland, where the movement was especially strong, the leaders of the Society of the Friends of the People were charged with sedition for organising a national convention to support the popular demands and the so-called "Scottish martyrs" were transported to Botany Bay. In England, the leaders of the London Corresponding Society and the Society for Constitutional Information were charged with the much more serious crime of treason, the definition of which was twisted to incl

...Read the full article

Comments (0)

Add Your Comment