Popular Radicalism by D. G. Wright

Author:D. G. Wright [Wright, D. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, 20th Century, Social History
ISBN: 9781839983252
Google: fa6VzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: 2022-03-31T01:22:57+00:00

The Anti-Poor Law Agitation

An enormous amount of working-class radical energy and indignation was poured into the Anti-Poor Law Movement, which rose to a crescendo in the manufacturing areas of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1837–8 before merging with the Chartist agitation. It was to a considerable degree an extension of the Factory Movement, in that it involved much the same organization and personnel. Impetus for the reform of the poor law in 1834 stemmed from what many men of property regarded as unacceptably burdensome poor rates, which fell disproportionately heavily on the agrarian community. Between 1803 and 1833 poor rates in England and Wales rose by 62 per cent, though population growth meant that the increase in per capita expenditure was relatively slight. The Swing Riots of 1830 also helped undermine the old poor law and further encouraged an increasingly punitive attitude towards the poor (Digby 1982: 9–11; Apfel and Dunckley 1985).

Like the Factory Act of 1833, the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act was based on the report of a Royal Commission dominated by Utilitarians and orthodox political economists. A central board of three Poor Law Commissioners, aided by Assistant Commissioners, was created to recast the poor relief system in line with the recommendations of the Royal Commission. The Board was encouraged to eradicate idleness, corruption and parochial maladministration, while assuming that much poverty was a result of individual moral failings. There was to be less aid in the future. Hitherto independent parishes were to be grouped into Poor Law Unions, governed by elected Boards of Guardians. The Commissioners aimed to guide these local boards in implementing improved methods of relief, especially the gradual withdrawal of ‘outdoor relief in the form of payments in cash or kind, and its replacement by ‘indoor relief in a well-regulated workhouse.

Although the Act met relatively little opposition in parliament, it was widely unpopular in the localities, even in areas where there was no organized protest movement. Samuel Kydd, a young shoemaker in the 1830s, later wrote: ‘The passing of the New Poor Law Amendment Act did more to sour the hearts of the labouring population, than did the privations consequent on all the actual poverty of the land.’ It caused working men to ‘dislike the country of their birth, to brood over their wrongs, to cherish feelings of revenge, and to hate the rich of the land’ (Thompson 1984:30). In southern and eastern England, the incidence of rural protest against the 1834 Act was greater than was once realized, although there was a lack of leaders to weld together a coherent movement from a scattered rural population. In many urban areas there was relatively little agitation; for example on Tyneside, where the late 1830s were relatively and unusually prosperous, as well as in Manchester, Doncaster, Nottingham, Derby and Leicester (Digby 1976: 152; McCord 1979: 90–1; Ashforth 1976: 131).

When in late 1836 the Commissioners began to implement the New Poor Law north of the Trent, they met determined resistance in the textile

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