Social and political reforms during the Industrial Revolution

During the Industrial Revolution more and more people moved from rural areas to towns and cities in order to work in factories.

These changes to living and working led to demands for social and political reform.

As the Industrial Revolution progressed, factories and coal mines became major employers.

Conditions in these industrialised places could be poor. Employees were forced to work long hours in environments that often could be dangerous.

Over time, campaigners pushed Parliament to bring in laws to improve the working conditions in some of these key industries.

To improve the lives of factory workers, the UK parliament passed the Factory Act 1833 which forbid children under the age of nine from working in factories.

Children between the ages of nine and thirteen had their working time limited to just nine hours a day!

Inspectors were employed to ensure the factory owners obeyed these laws.

The Factory Act (1844) brought improvements to factory safety. Dangerous machinery had to be made fenced off, with safety guards and protection in place. Mill machinery had to be stopped before children were made to clean it.

Over the following few years, many other laws were passed to make minor improvements to working conditions in factories.

The Factory Act (1878) brought together all existing rules about factories and added new laws, including the following:

• Factories had to be kept clean and properly ventilated
• Accidents had to be reported and investigated
• Children under the age of ten could not be employed.
• Children aged between ten and fourteen could only work half days in textile factories.
• Women were to work no more than 56 hours per week.
• Lunch breaks of at least one and a half hours had to be given
• Work on Sundays were banned (except in some cases for Jewish employers and workers)

In 1838, a terrible flooding disaster at a coal mine in South Yorkshire led to the deaths of twenty-six children who had been working underground at the Huskar Colliery.

News of the deaths shocked the nations and Queen Victoria ordered an inquest into what had happened.

The end result was a new set of legislation aimed at improving working conditions in mines.

In 1842 the Mines and Collieries Act was passed. The act stated that:

• No women were allowed to be employed to work underground.
• No child under ten was allowed to work underground.
• More inspections of conditions underground were needed.

The huge growth of industry across the UK caused rapid urbanisation as more people moved from rural areas to towns and cities.

With so many people pulled towards towns and cities for jobs, there were not enough places for them to live in.

It led to slums and poor living conditions. Families would often have to live in one or two rooms in high rise tenements as landlords crammed them in.

It was noted by a visitor to the Glasgow Wynds in 1844 that:

The overcrowding of large numbers of people in poor quality housing soon led to serious public health issues.

Poor sanitation, unsafe drinking water, and cramped conditions often led to infectious diseases spreading quickly.

It was the arrival of a devastating new disease, cholera, that prompted the government of the day to find solutions.

In 1831, a new disease arrived in Britain and led to the deaths of thousands of people.

Cholera was a disease caused by the Vibrio cholerae bacteria. It was spread by people drinking contaminated water.

During 1830s, the disease spread across Europe, killing thousands of people.

It arrived in Sunderland, England, in 1831 and was soon found in other British cities.

It arrived in Scotland in 1832 and killed 3,000 people in Glasgow.

Across the whole of Scotland, around 10,000 people died. (J. Devine, The Scottish Nation, 2012).

Over the course of the next twenty years, several new outbreaks of the disease appeared - each time killing thousands.

Although, at the time, the cause of the disease was not known, it was generally assumed that poor sanitation and living conditions contributed to disease.

After another deadly cholera outbreak in 1848, the government passed new laws to improve public health.

In 1848, the government passed a Public Health Act that was designed to improve the health of the working class by improvements to housing, sanitation, and water quality.

The act stated that:

• A Central Board of Health should be established to oversee improvements.
• Local boroughs should be responsible for providing clean water supplies, adequate drainage, and streets clear of rubbish and sewage.
• Local Boards of Health must be established in areas where the death rate was above 23 per 1,000 people.

While the act did have flaws - many of its rulings were voluntary, and the Central Board of Health had few powers and no budget - it was an important first step in improving the lives of people who lived in towns and cities.

After another outbreak of cholera in 1855, Glasgow took action to improve the city's sanitation and water supply.

Loch Katrine in the Trossachs was dammed, and an aqueduct and tunnels built to transfer fresh water to the city. The scheme cost £468,000, a huge amount at the time, and took four years to complete.

The money proved well spent and, together with improvements in the city's sewers, the fresh water supply helped eradicate cholera outbreaks in the city.

By the time of the Industrial Revolution, many people across Britain believed that the political system was unfair and excluded too many people.

Generally, the only people who could vote either owned land or had an income over a certain amount.

This ruled out the vast majority of working people and all women – voters were exclusively male. It even ruled out most of the educated middle classes.

The industrial revolution led to a bigger middle class – owners and managers of factories and businesses who had growing wealth, paid significant taxes and felt they should have more say in how the country was run.

A growing working class was aware that industry needed their labour. They lived and worked in poor conditions and wanted improvements, and they were becoming increasingly organised.

The system was also unbalanced in how many Members of Parliament (MPs) could be elected in different areas.

Some small constituencies which small populations elected several MPs to represent them in parliament, while some big cities with large populations, such as Birmingham and Manchester, could not even elect one MP.

During the early decades of the 1800s, pressure grew for political reform. Societies and institutions were formed that pushed for greater democratic participation. There were also organised marches and protests.

One of the best known happened at St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, in 1819. A mass crowd of around 60,000 people had assembled to listen to a speech by the radical speaker, Henry Hunt. An armed military force was dispatched the break up the meeting, and in the chaos that followed, 18 people were killed and over 700 were injured.

It became known as the Peterloo Massacre – a reference to the bloody battle at Waterloo that had happened four years earlier in 1815.

After years of campaigns, reform came in 1832.

After years of trying to reform the political system, Parliament passed the Reform Act, 1832.

The act attempted to address some of the issues regarding who could vote and how many MPs each constituency could send to the House of Commons.

• It expanded the right to vote to small landowners, tenant farmers, shopkeepers, and households who paid over £10 in yearly rent (the equivalent of around £800 per year now).
• It abolished tiny electoral districts with few voters.
• It allowed larger towns and cities more MPs to represent them in the House of Commons.

The Reform Act (1832) gave the vote to many middle class men and skilled workers, but the working class was still excluded from voting in elections or becoming a Member of Parliament.

The working class was not satisfied and movements like Chartism campaigned for more change.

A separate act covered the political reforms in Scotland. They broadly addressed the same issues as the other Reform Act:

• Giving the vote to a wider section of the population.
• Giving towns and cities more MPs and better representation.
• The number of Scottish MPs in the House of Commons increased from 45 to 53.

While, like the other Reform Act, the Scottish Reform Act was limited it was an important first step to improve political representation.

As a result of the act, the number of people (males only at this stage) able to vote increased from around 5,000 to around 65,000. (Source: W. Ferguson, The Reform Act (Scotland) of 1832: Intention and Effect, 1966.)

Later reform acts would go further in extending the vote to more of the population.

• The Reform Act 1867 granted the vote to all householders and lodgers who paid a rent of more than £10 a year, and to landowners and tenant farmers who owned small amounts of land.
• The Representation of the People Act 1884 allowed more people to vote by bringing voting rights in country areas into line with the ones in towns and cities.
• The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave the vote to all men over the age of 21 and to women over the age of 30.
• The Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 gave women the same voting rights as men. From 1928, women over the age of 21 had the right to vote.