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Hello, here's a quotation from a 19th century novel

We must get the suffrage we must get votes that we may send the men to parliament who will do our work for us

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

Sir Declare's are working class reformists in George Eliot's novel Felix Holt the Radical

It's set in 1832 the era of what became called the great reform act

Which extended the vote and gave industrial citizens such as Manchester and Birmingham political representation for the first time

The acts often describe as a landmark moment in British political history

But to what extent was Britain's political system transformed by the greater format?

What were the causes of reform and was the act designed to encourage democracy in Britain or to head it off?

We'd need to discuss the great reform act at Catherine Hall

Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London

Michael Bentley Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Diner Birch Professor of English at Liverpool University

Diner Birch, what was the situation with regards to political representation before the reform active 18?

Sorry before the reform active 1832

Well as far as parliament was concerned the situation was really pretty chaotic

There were two kinds of seats. There were the county seats and the borough seats

Counties each returned two members, but the size of the counties varied enormously

So Yorkshire had 20,000 voters and Rutland had a thousand but they were both returning two members and

As far as the borough seats were concerned

...