Freehold Land Societies were a type of building society that flourished in England in the late 1840s and early 1850s, although new societies continued to be established for several more decades and some were still operating in the early 20th century. Their original purpose was to acquire land and divide it into plots or allotments of a size that would entitle the (male) owner to a vote. The key stimulus was the Reform Act 1832 which, under the county franchise, gave the vote to "Forty-shilling freeholders" - men in possession of land worth 40 shillings a year. Initially supporters of the Liberal party were the main promoters of freehold land societies, with the aim of increasing the number of Liberal MPs. The Conservative party and others took up the idea, and by the early 1850s there were at least 180 societies established. [1] [2]
The first society is usually considered to be the Birmingham Freehold Land Society, established in 1847 by a local temperance campaigner James Taylor (although not registered until 1849) and by 1851 at least seventy societies were in existence, almost all in the Midlands and Northern England. Many of these early societies were ‘rooted in the working-class ethic of self help’ [3] and at least nominally intended to provide the vote and home ownership for working men. From the early 1850s the majority of new societies had a more commercial aim of acquiring cheap land for housing and London became the main focus for new societies.
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom with the opposing Conservative Party in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The party arose from an alliance of Whigs and free trade–supporting Peelites and the reformist Radicals in the 1850s. By the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and then won a landslide victory in the following year's general election.
The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that introduced major changes to the electoral system of England and Wales. It abolished tiny districts, gave representation to cities, gave the vote to small landowners, tenant farmers, shopkeepers, householders who paid a yearly rental of £10 or more, and some lodgers. Only qualifying men were able to vote; the Act introduced the first explicit statutory bar to women voting, by defining a voter as a male person.
The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word corn in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley. They were designed to keep corn prices high to favour domestic producers, and represented British mercantilism. The Corn Laws blocked the import of cheap corn, initially by simply forbidding importation below a set price, and later by imposing steep import duties, making it too expensive to import it from abroad, even when food supplies were short.
The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910, and is sometimes expanded to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victorian era. Her son and successor, Edward VII, was already the leader of a fashionable elite that set a style influenced by the art and fashions of continental Europe. Samuel Hynes described the Edwardian era as a "leisurely time when women wore picture hats and did not vote, when the rich were not ashamed to live conspicuously, and the sun really never set on the British flag."
Chartism was a movement for political reform in Britain that existed from 1838 to 1857. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country, and the South Wales Valleys. Support for the movement was at its highest in 1839, 1842, and 1848, when petitions signed by millions of working people were presented to the House of Commons. The strategy employed was to use the scale of support which these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings demonstrated to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on constitutional methods to secure its aims, though some became involved in insurrectionary activities, notably in South Wales and in Yorkshire.
In English church history, a Nonconformist is a Protestant Christian who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established church, the Church of England. Use of the term in England was precipitated after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, when the Act of Uniformity 1662 renewed the opponents of reform within the established church. By the late 19th century the term specifically included other Reformed Christians, plus the Baptists, Brethren, Methodists and Quakers. The English Dissenters such as the Puritans who violated the Act of Uniformity 1559 – typically by practising radical, sometimes separatist, dissent – were retrospectively labelled as Nonconformists.
The Anti-Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britain aimed at the abolition of the unpopular Corn Laws, which protected landowners’ interests by levying taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread at a time when factory-owners were trying to cut wages. The League was a middle-class nationwide organisation that held many well-attended rallies on the premise that a crusade was needed to convince parliament to repeal the corn laws. Its long-term goals included the removal of feudal privileges, which it denounced as impeding progress, lowering economic well-being, and restricting freedom. The League played little role in the final act in 1846 when Sir Robert Peel led the successful battle for repeal. However, its experience provided a model that was widely adopted in Britain and other democratic nations to demonstrate the organisation of a political pressure group with the popular base.
The first MacDonald ministry of the United Kingdom lasted from January to November 1924. The Labour Party, under Ramsay MacDonald, had failed to win the general election of December 1923, with 191 seats, although the combined Opposition tally exceeded that of the Conservative government, creating a hung parliament. Stanley Baldwin remained in office until January 1924.
Radicalism was a historical political movement within liberalism during the late 18th and early 19th centuries and a precursor to social liberalism. Its identified radicals were proponents of democratic reform in what subsequently became the parliamentary Radicals in the United Kingdom.
"Unreformed House of Commons" is a name given to the House of Commons of Great Britain and the House of Commons of the United Kingdom before it was reformed by the Reform Act 1832.
Forty-shilling freeholders were those who had the parliamentary franchise to vote by virtue of possessing freehold property, or lands held directly of the king, of an annual rent of at least forty shillings, clear of all charges.
The Working Men's Club and Institute Union is a voluntary association of private members' clubs in Great Britain & Northern Ireland, with about 1,800 associate clubs. One club in the Republic of Ireland, the City of Dublin Working Men's Club is also affiliated. Most social clubs are affiliated to the CIU.
Berkshire was a parliamentary constituency in England, represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of England until 1707, then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1885. The county returned two knights of the shire until 1832 and three between 1832 and 1885.
Merioneth, sometimes called Merionethshire, was a constituency in North Wales established in 1542, which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the English Parliament, and later to the Parliament of Great Britain and of the United Kingdom. It was abolished for the 1983 general election, when it was largely replaced by the new constituency of Meirionnydd Nant Conwy.
Surrey was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832. It was represented by two Members of Parliament until 1832.
Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom was a movement to fight for women's right to vote. It finally succeeded through laws in 1918 and 1928. It became a national movement in the Victorian era. Women were not explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain until the Reform Act 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. In 1872 the fight for women's suffrage became a national movement with the formation of the National Society for Women's Suffrage and later the more influential National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). As well as in England, women's suffrage movements in Wales, Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom gained momentum. The movements shifted sentiments in favour of woman suffrage by 1906. It was at this point that the militant campaign began with the formation of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).
James Macpherson Grant was an Australian solicitor who defended the Eureka Stockade rebels and a politician who was a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly and the Victorian Legislative Council.
The Cumberland Building Society was established on 16 April 1850 as the Cumberland Co-operative Land and Benefit Building Society. It has its headquarters in Carlisle, Cumbria, England. It is the 10th largest in the United Kingdom based on total assets of £2.5 billion as at 31 March 2018. The first branch was opened 100 miles south of Cumberland in Preston, Lancashire. It is a member of the Building Societies Association.
The Ipswich Building Society is a UK building society based in Ipswich, Suffolk. It is a member of the Building Societies Association. It was formed in June 1975 by the merger of the Ipswich & District Building Society and the Ipswich & Suffolk Building Society.
Women's suffrage in Wales has historically been marginalised due to the prominence of societies and political groups in England which led the reform for women throughout the United Kingdom. Due to differing social structures and a heavily industrialised working-class society, the growth of a national movement in Wales grew but then stuttered in the late nineteenth century in comparison with that of England. Nevertheless, distinct Welsh groups and individuals rose to prominence and were vocal in the rise of suffrage in Wales and the rest of Great Britain.