大象传媒

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Great Reform Act of 1832. The Act redrew the map of British politics in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and is a landmark in British political history.鈥淲e must get the suffrage, we must get votes, that we may send the men to Parliament who will do our work for us; 鈥�and we must have the country divided so that the little kings of the counties can't do as they like, but must be shaken up in one bag with us.鈥� So declares a working class reformist in George Eliot鈥檚 novel Felix Holt: the Radical. It is set in 1832, the year of the so-called 鈥淕reat Reform Act鈥� which extended the vote and gave industrial cities such as Manchester and Birmingham political representation for the first time. But to what extent was Britain鈥檚 political system transformed by the Great Reform Act? What were the causes of reform in the first place and was the Act designed to encourage democracy in Britain or to head it off?