On 10 April 1848, the British ruling class trembles as the Chartists – a political movement whose People's Charter advocates universal manhood suffrage – hold their biggest-ever demonstration in London. Elsewhere in Europe, revolutions have broken out and blood runs in the streets. Two German exiles, Karl Marx (1818-83) and Friedrich Engels (1820-95), publish the manifesto of the Communist Party and advocate violent revolution. They are soon to arrive in England.

Memories of the Newport Rising of 1839, when a mass Chartist demonstration was fired on by troops who killed at least 22 protestors, are still strong. In the event, the 1848 Chartist demonstration – which numbers about 50,000 – passes off peacefully. The British working class prefers peaceful change to violent revolution. But change comes slowly.

Just before Victoria ascends the throne, the first great Reform Act of 1832 strikes a blow against 'Old Corruption', the anti-democratic electoral system that allows small groups of oligarchs to send their placemen to Parliament. The act extends the vote to male householders paying annual rents of between £2 and £50 (depending on where they live) and reorganises constituencies to reflect the growth of the new industrial towns of the north of England.

But the financial qualification limits the reform to middle-class citizens. From now on, the campaign advocates reforms that will widen the categories of men allowed to vote in parliamentary elections to take in workers. Women remain excluded.

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Electoral reform

After the revolutionary excitement of the Chartist era, reformers settle down to extend the vote to wider sections of the population. It is typical of Victorian times that the leader of the working men's cause in Parliament is not a firebrand radical but the philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury, a high Tory aristocrat who believes in hierarchy, deference and the literal truth of the Bible. In this last, at least, he is matched by the increasing number of Christian socialists.

'Respectable'

At first, the campaign is for 'household suffrage', which would give the vote to the male head of every household. However, the ruling class is afraid of including the poor, and 'household suffrage' usually means 'respectable' households.

Nevertheless, the 1867 Reform Act makes household suffrage a reality. Ironically, it is brought in by the Tory Benjamin Disraeli, who sees a political advantage in widening an electoral system that has been consistently electing Liberal governments for more than 20 years. The act adds many working-class urban electors, doubling the number of voters to almost 2 million. But John Stuart Mill's attempt to amend the act to include women is defeated. (Equally ironically, Disraeli, briefly prime minister in 1868, is then rejected by the enlarged electorate that he himself had created.)

Fair elections

The holding of fair elections is greatly helped by the 1872 act that – despite some reactionary opposition in the House of Lords – introduces secret ballots and by the Corrupt Practices Act of 1883, which tightens control of election expenses.

By 1884, the rise in the number of people owning houses in the towns and cities means that voters (all male) number 3 million. In the same year, Gladstone's Reform Act widens male suffrage to about 5 million, including many who live in the countryside. Now that the vast majority of adult males aged 21 or over can vote, the exclusion of women is even more scandalous.

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Women's suffrage

In Victorian times, women aren't allowed to vote, and so there are no women in Parliament – except, ironically, the queen as head of state at its annual opening. The Chartist movement in the 1830s and 1840s involves women as well as men, and there are 80 local Female Political Unions and Chartist Associations. However, the movement's charter makes no mention of a woman's right to vote, and its female supporters are therefore campaigning only for their menfolk. Chartism's gradual decline in the 1850s leaves the issue of women's suffrage unresolved.

Confined to the drawing-room

Other organisations make the link between the experiences of women and of black people. For example, the Female Political Union, set up in Newcastle in 1839, argues that 'slavery is not confined to colour or clime'. Women, the radicals argue, must get the same rights as men. In 1855, Barbara Bodichon (1821-91) publishes A Brief Summary of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women, which demolishes the idea that women are inferior to men.

At first, the movement to secure votes for women is confined to the middle-class drawing-room. After the disappointment of the Reform Act of 1867, which does not secure women the vote, the campaign hots up. In that year, the London Society for Women's Suffrage is formed, and comparable societies are established in Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and Edinburgh. In 1872, the Central Committee for Women's Suffrage is founded to coordinate the campaign.

Marginalised

Despite being denied the vote for parliamentary elections, women's suffrage does make a little headway in the 1870s and 1880s. Some women are allowed to vote in local elections and stand as candidates for local councils and for school and Poor Law boards. But they remain marginalised: they become secretaries to charities but never head them; they help ministers, doctors and MPs, but these jobs remain male bastions.

In fact, many women have to make difficult choices. Emily Davies (1830-1921), who with Barbara Bodichon sets up Girton College, withdraws from the campaign for women's suffrage because it might damage her educational activities, and instead concentrates on opening careers to women. Both Octavia Hill and the social reformer Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) also remain aloof from the suffrage movement.

Gradualist

However, middle-class women increasingly demand their rightful place as full citizens. In 1897, Millicent Fawcett (1847-1929) and Lydia Becker (1827-90) set up the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, which unites a number of well-established local groups. It is liberal and gradualist but increasingly makes an impact on the national scene. By now, most MPs have accepted the idea of women voting in general elections, even if they manage to delay passing any laws about it until 1918.

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Unions

Not only is there pressure for the vote, but people also resort to more direct action for the betterment of society.

Common cause

By mid-century, trade union militancy has become increasingly common. Even before the setting up of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) – a federation of individual trade unions – in 1868, there are frequent strikes. In 1871 and 1875, the law finally recognises trades unions and allows peaceful picketing (previously pickets were seen as criminal conspiracies). The first TUC meeting in Manchester, however, is a small affair with only 34 delegates.

The development of trade unions reflects growing industrial strength and a more highly integrated economy. Larger factories create the conditions for more workers to gather together in common cause, and by the end of the century, many workers are militant and combative in asserting their legal rights and wage demands.

Self-help

But the unions don't just exist to bargain for better wages – they also offer a whole range of self-help benefits. Because the state offers no welfare, most unions give sickness and unemployment payments to their workers. Victims of industrial accidents have a tough time unless their unions help them. And the unions pay to bury their members. This is vital to the self-esteem of most respectable workers because it means they avoid a shameful pauper's burial organised by the local workhouse.

The unions also have close links with the charitable 'friendly societies', to which 4 million people belong in 1874; these provide benefits (on a contributory basis) mainly to skilled workers. Related to the friendly societies is the co-operative movement, which starts in Rochdale in 1844 when 28 workers raise initial capital of £28. Within 30 years, it has 927 branches and 300,000 members.

Militancy

In the second half of the century, unionism spreads from small groups of traditional skilled craft workers to the much greater numbers of semi-skilled and unskilled workers. In 1880s, the new mass unionism really takes off, with the formation of unions for gas workers, dockers and miners. Organisations such as these are easy to join and soon have a large membership – by the 1890s, there is a total of 1.5 million trade unionists. They are very militant and keen on effective direct action to improve working conditions and to raise wages.

In 1888-9, for example, that militancy reaches London. There are huge strikes in at gasworks, which win an eight-hour day, and a massive struggle in the docks for the 'dockers' tanner' (sixpence an hour basic rate) led by John Burns (1858-1943). Women workers are equally determined. In 1888, the 'match girls' of the Bryant & May match factory strike for higher wages and in protest against health hazards at work. They succeed in getting more money, but conditions at work remain grim.

The Taff Vale decision

But trade unions remain vulnerable to a legal system that only grudgingly accepts their rights. A series of legal cases attack the unions' right to picket and their freedom from being sued for damages.

This culminates in the Taff Vale case in 1900/01, when the Taff Vale Railway company in south Wales sues the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants for the losses that the company incurred during a strike. The case lasts for more than a year and ends in the Law Lords ruling in favour of the company, which is awarded £23,000. The Lords say that, contrary to what had previously been supposed, trade unions are corporations under the law and so can be sued for any illegal acts carried out by their members. This could lead to the unions being bankrupted every time their members take industrial action.

In the light of this ruling, the unions begin to reconsider their relationship with the Liberal Party, which seems lukewarm about helping them safeguard their funds. The TUC joins with the Independent Labour Party to form the Labour Representation Committee. Eventually the Taff Vale decision is overturned in 1906.

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Socialists

The unfairness of capitalism prompts a few to seek more radical solutions. By the early 1880s, the ideas of Karl Marx and other foreign socialists begin to influence intellectuals. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and William Morris (1834-96) read Das Kapital in French, and an Old Etonian, Henry Mayers Hyndman (1842-1921), does too. He sets up the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in 1881 and invites such radicals as Helen Taylor (1831-1907), John Stuart Mill's stepdaughter, to the first meetings. Despite his firebrand politics, Hyndman always sports a silk hat, frock coat and silver-topped cane.

Morris joins the SDF in 1883, and even a dandy such as Oscar Wilde writes an inspiring essay on 'The Soul of Man under Socialism'. But only about 200 intellectuals become socialists. In 1884, the SDF splits, and Morris and others form the Socialist League. This, however, is soon taken over by anarchists.

Running riot

At a meeting of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square in 1886 – organised by the Tory Fair Trade Association – some 10,000 people march down Pall Mall, past some of the grandest buildings in Victorian London. Provoked by the jeers of servants working at the Liberal Reform Club and the Carlton Club, the marchers smash windows and run riot, and shops are attacked in Piccadilly. Morris is arrested during one of the tussles with the police.

Then, on 13 November 1887, although a meeting called by the Metropolitan Radical Association in protest against the government's failure to tackle unemployment is banned, a mass demonstration in Trafalgar Square goes ahead anyway. This leads to a riot in which one person dies, 200 are hurt and 400 arrested. The event is named 'Bloody Sunday'.

Not revolution

There are other left-wing groups besides the SDF and the Socialist League. The London-based Fabian Society, set up in 1884, argues that capitalism is wastefully inefficient and should be replaced by a centrally planned socialist system, administered by a professional élite. Its name comes from the Roman general Fabius, whose tactics the group emulates because it believes in gradual legislation and not revolution. Members include Beatrice Webb (1858-1943) and Sidney Webb (1859-1947), George Bernard Shaw and H G Wells (1886-1946). Later it is joined by the young Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937).

Towards the Labour Party

Most significantly of all, James Keir Hardie (1856-1915) – the secretary of the Scottish Miners' Association (a trade union) – sets up the Scottish Labour Party in 1888. In 1893, he creates the Independent Labour Party in Bradford, which argues for an eight-hour day and for 'collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange', a Marxist slogan.

Six years later, the Trades Union Congress advocates an independent working-class political organisation that can represent workers in Parliament. As a result, the Labour Representation Committee is formed in 1900 under its first secretary Ramsay MacDonald. This is the basis of the modern Labour Party (formed in 1906).

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Activists

Political activists are not confined to parties. For example, the Co-operative Women's Guild is set up in 1884, and within five years has 100 branches with 6,000 members. It campaigns not only for the rights of women employees, but also for educational and political ends.

At another level, the liberal Christian academic Arnold Toynbee (1852-81), despite dying young, exercises a radical influence on Oxford students in the 1870s and early 1880s. His followers – such as Canon Samuel Barnett (1844-1913) and his wife Henrietta (1851-36) who found Toynbee Hall in London's East End in 1884 to enable Oxford graduates to work among the poor – are intellectuals whose mission is to help the working class.

Other radicals use the pen to campaign for better conditions at work and in society. One of them is the economist J A Hobson (1858­1940). He is an advocate of the fin de siècle 'New Liberalism' and attacks 'immoral imperialism', hoping to convert the Liberal Party to a more radical agenda.

Intellectuals are joined by philanthropists such as chocolate manufacturer Seebohm Rowntree (1871-1954) who publishes Poverty: A study of town life in 1901, in which he reveals his findings that 27% of the population of York live in poverty. Such reports fuel the argument for the state to give welfare payments to the worse-off in society. Such measures, however, have to wait until later in the 20th century.

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