The Corn Laws
In Our Time: History
BBC
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2013
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Corn Laws. In 1815 the British Government passed legislation which artificially inflated the price of corn. The measure was supported by landowners but strongly opposed by manufacturers and the urban working class. In the 1830s the Anti-Corn Law League was founded to campaign for their repeal, led by the Radical Richard Cobden. The Conservative government of Sir Robert Peel finally repealed the laws in 1846, splitting his party in the process, and the resulting debate had profound consequences for the political and economic future of the country.
With:
Lawrence Goldman Fellow in Modern History at St Peter's College, Oxford
Boyd Hilton Former Professor of Modern British History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College
Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey Reader in Political Science at the London School of Economics
Producer: Thomas Morris.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time for more details about In Our Time |
| 0:04.1 | and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk slash radio for. |
| 0:09.1 | I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:11.3 | Hello, one evening in March 1815, a riot broke out in Canterbury. |
| 0:15.6 | According to the following days edition of The Times, |
| 0:18.5 | quote, |
| 0:30.0 | The Times then broke the windows of the local MPs before two of their ring leaders were arrested and thrown into jail. |
| 0:35.7 | Similar events on Philadelphia elsewhere in Britain, the rioters were protesting against the corn laws. |
| 0:40.7 | Legislation introduced a control of the price of grain. |
| 0:43.9 | Past in 1815, the corn laws led to an ideological dispute between manufacturers and landowners, |
| 0:50.2 | city dwellers and farmers. |
| 0:51.9 | They were eventually repealed by Robert Peel's government in 1846 after three decades of disagreement. |
| 0:57.7 | The episode led to a major alteration in government policy and some argue change the face of British politics. |
| 1:03.8 | With me to discuss the corn laws are Lawrence Goldman, fellow in modern histories and Peter's college Oxford, |
| 1:09.8 | Boyd Hilton, former professor of modern British history at the University of Cambridge and fellow of Trinity College, |
| 1:16.2 | and Cheryl Sean Hart Bailey, reader in political science at the London School of Economics. |
| 1:21.8 | Lawrence Goldman, this episode began at the end of the Napoleonic War in 1815. |
| 1:27.7 | Could you give us some idea of the state the country was in? |
| 1:30.9 | Well, in June, of course, of 1815, the Battle of Waterloo ends a generation of warfare against France, which began in 1793. |
| 1:40.1 | But the state of the country throughout this decade is really poor shape. |
| 1:46.0 | It's one of the most difficult decades in modern British history before Waterloo. |
| 1:51.7 | In difficult, economically, difficult in terms of the conditions of the poor and so forth. |
... |
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