"Swords drawn, slashing on all sides”: How the Bull Ring Riots of 1839 changed Birmingham
"Swords drawn, slashing on all sides”: How the Bull Ring Riots of 1839 changed Birmingham
The middle-class had power, the working class wanted it
By Jon Neale
When the journalist Eliezer Edwards came to Birmingham from Kent in 1837 to work for the Birmingham Daily Mail, he arrived in a city that had recently become notorious for radicalism and public agitation. “This is the place which, for the first time in his life, had compelled the great Duke of Wellington to capitulate!” he wrote. “This is the home of those who, headed by Attwood, had compelled him and his army — the House of Lords — to submit, and to pass the memorable Reform Bill of 1832!” But while Birmingham had indeed been host to vast pro-Reform rallies with the threat of violence constantly in the air, mass civic disorder had largely been avoided.
Two years later, on his way back from London, Edwards stopped overnight in Coleshill. In the morning, he was approached by a wild-eyed young man. “With a tremulous tongue”, he reported that “Birmingham was all on fire, and hundreds of people had been killed by soldiers”. This was an excited exaggeration, but the first part of the sentence at least was correct. While Edwards had been sleeping, the infamous Bull Ring riots had begun. The following nights were “such as few can remember without a shudder”.
A sequence of events had been set in motion in and around the Bull Ring, which despite widening and the construction of the elegant Market Hall, was still recognisably the marketplace and meeting place of the mediaeval town. London police arrived in Birmingham and were attacked by a mob; armed dragoons slashed at innocent bystanders with swords; iron railings were ripped up and used as makeshift weaponry; houses were set on fire; and several shops were reduced to shells. One of those businesses, Horton’s silversmith, “presented a curious sight,” Edwards wrote. “Each floor was strewn with missiles thrown by the mob. Large lumps of sugar, stones, bits of iron, portions of bricks, pieces of coal, and embers of burning wood were mixed up with silver teapots, toast racks, glass cruets, and plated goods of every kind…. The whole place was a frightful state of ruin and confusion.”
Local radical George Holyoake — who would later become a leading figure of the Lancashire-based co-operative movement — disavowed violence, but nevertheless found himself caught up in the rioting.
“[The] Birmingham men treated the London policemen as aliens. Some frenzied men set fire to houses in revenge. Soldiers were brought out, and a neighbour of mine, who happened to be standing unarmed and looking on at the corner of Edgbaston Street, had his nose chopped off.... Although we alone crossed the Bull Ring, the soldiers rushed at us and tried to cut me down.”
To understand how the city got to this point, we need to rewind to the beginning of the 19th century. Birmingham had grown rapidly over the previous few decades to become one of the largest cities in the country, but had no parliamentary representation, other than the two MPs who represented Warwickshire as a whole. Nor did most of the similarly rapidly growing cities of the North of England. Meanwhile, there were a host of MPs returned by so-called ‘rotten boroughs’, the most famous of which was Old Sarum near Salisbury — a deserted village with a single farmhouse. Voting was also restricted to landowners with the equivalent of a 40-shilling annual rental income, excluding not just the working-class, but a large section of the professional and business-owning classes too.
Pressure for reform had been building for decades, but in the mid-1810s a new radicalism emerged, a result of an economic slump and the resulting hardships following the Napoleonic Wars. “Hampden Clubs” sprang up all over Britain calling for the vote to be given to every working man (described as ‘universal suffrage’, although not as the later Suffragists would understand it). Public meetings were staged, alongside passionate speeches, to collect signatures for parliamentary petitions. In July 1819 such a meeting took place on Newhall Hill in Birmingham, where some 25,000 people elected a local baronet as their “legislative attorney” or virtual MP. Similar meetings followed elsewhere, including, notoriously, at St Peter’s Fields in Manchester, where the crowd was charged by soldiers — the ‘Peterloo Massacre’. Despite outrage, petitions were rebuffed, and many radical reformers were charged and imprisoned.
Many of Birmingham’s elite had stood apart from these campaigns. But in 1829, local banker Thomas Attwood — a highly influential figure in the area, albeit one previously known for his obsession with currency issues — declared his support for parliamentary reform. He began the process that would lead to the formation of the Birmingham Political Union (BPU), perhaps the most influential non-parliamentary organisation pressing for what would become the 1832 Reform Act. Central to Attwood’s philosophy was the “union” of the middle and working-classes to achieve a common goal, as well as working (just) within the confines of the law. They were not yet calling for universal suffrage — rather, for all taxpayers to be given the vote, the property qualification for MPs to be removed, and for parliament to be reformed.
The BPU became a model for other political unions around the country, and its ranks swelled as the Tory-dominated House of Lords blocked the progress of the Bill introduced by the Whig [Liberal] Government. Attwood led a series of pro-reform rallies at Newhall Hill, allegedly featuring 100,000 to 125,000 attendees (these figures seem implausibly high — modern research suggests something closer to 30,000 or 40,000; nevertheless, these were some of the largest public meetings Britain had ever seen).
There was always the implicit threat — which became more explicit the more the Lords blocked the Bill — that the BPU could act as an almost paramilitary force. As the crisis reached its crescendo, during the notorious ‘Days of May’ when Britain arguably came the closest it ever has to revolution, the city was garrisoned by the Scots Greys in anticipation of widespread unrest. But ultimately more Lords were appointed to enable the Bill to pass, although historians to this day debate whether the BPU was critical to this step or not.
Despite all the noise, it was actually a very modest reform. Birmingham (alongside Leeds and Manchester) was given two MPs, with Attwood and his supporter Joshua Schofield elected without much in the way of opposition. But more importantly, the property qualification was retained, with only a tiny fraction of the working-class enfranchised alongside most of the middle-class. (Women were also explicitly excluded for the first time — a handful of female landowners had previously been electors.) It was followed by the Municipal Corporations Act in 1835, which turned three new towns — Birmingham, Manchester and Bolton — into corporations, giving them the right to elect a council to manage their affairs. Perhaps predictably, it also became dominated by the BPU’s middle-class leadership.
With the middle-class leadership now satisfied, working-class resentment grew and grew, driven partly by a worsening economic slump. They had supported the BPU and reform but had got little out of it so far in return. Indeed, the new Parliament, rather than being more attentive to the needs of the marginalised, had introduced a new Poor Law, which had hugely extended the workhouse system. As Carl Chinn, Birmingham’s leading popular historian, explains:
“The working-class had become increasingly bitter at being excluded from the vote and were now seeing the middle-class dominate the town politically. Some felt that they were being more harshly treated than ever.”
New radical leaders representing those interests more directly were also proposing more unlawful and even violent means to achieve their goals. William Lovett and the London Working Men’s Association had drawn up the People’s Charter which argued for universal suffrage, while in the North, Feargus O’Connor set up the Great Northern Union. Chartism had been born.
Attwood was one of the few among the elite who remained true. Indeed, in 1833, disappointed that the new Parliament seemed little different to the old, he signed up fully to the radical agenda, seemingly leaving his Tory roots behind. At yet another rally on Newhall Hill, alongside the Irish MP Daniel O’Connell, who had secured Catholic Emancipation, he called for universal suffrage, annual Parliaments and for all ministers to be sacked. With the rise of Chartism — in some ways inspired by his movement — he attempted to re-energise the BPU as a national force, but in reality, his more restrained approach was out of step. Nevertheless, it was this Birmingham MP who presented the Chartists’ National Petition — with its almost 1.3m signatures — to Parliament, only for it to be voted down by 235 to 46 votes. Attwood, who had consistently been mocked in Parliament for his Brummie accent and obsession with currency reform — which economists would later see as an early form of Keynesianism — was a spent force.
Nevertheless, Chartism had become a force on the streets of Birmingham. John Collins, a journeyman pen maker who had been a prominent working-class member of the BPU, became its focal point. He and others regularly led fiery meetings at Holloway Head and in the Bull Ring (Newhall Hill was now too built-up). In London, the National Convention — which had driven the Petition — was under siege from the authorities, with prominent figures increasingly being arrested. The Convention made the fateful choice to move to Birmingham, where they felt, given the history of pro-reform agitation, they might have an easier reception. While they were initially joyfully welcomed by large crowds, the mood soon changed. The town’s magistrates had already been alarmed by the regularity and popularity of Chartist meetings in the Bull Ring, which increasingly looked to them like a ‘mob’, and were interpreted as increasing calls for violence.
Troops were moved from Northamptonshire into Birmingham, with cavalry made ready to move into the town if needed. Special constables were signed on. Eventually, as Birmingham did not yet have its own police force, mayor William Schofield requested that detachments of the Metropolitan Police be sent to deal with the situation. When he alighted with the contingent at Moor Street Station on 11 July, things started to get interesting.
As Eliezer Edwards wrote, drawing on eyewitness accounts:
“Suddenly, without a word of notice, a large body of London police, which had just arrived by train, came out of Moor Street and rushed directly at the mob. They were met by groans and threats, and a terrible fight at once commenced. The police with their staves fought their way to the standard bearers and demolished the [Chartist] flags; others laid on right and left, with great fury. In a short time, the Bull Ring was nearly cleared, but the people rallied, and, arming themselves with various improvised weapons, returned to the attack. The police were outnumbered, surrounded, and rendered powerless. Some were stoned, others knocked down and frightfully kicked; some were beaten badly about the head, and some were stabbed.”
It was only the arrival of a Magistrate with a troop of Dragoons and a company of the Rifle Brigade — and the reading of the Riot Act — that calmed things down, at least for the time being; later that night, around Holloway head, shops were broken into and bonfires were built in the street, with the dragoons again clearing the scene.
Over the next few days, the soldiers kept order on the streets, although there were reports of unwarranted violence towards some Chartists. But the rejection of Attwood’s submission of the charter on 12th July, and the arrest of William Lovett and local leader John Collins and their commitment for trial at Warwick Assizes increased tensions. Some of those magistrates making the charges were former leaders of the BPU, further demonstrating the extent to which the “union of the classes” had fallen apart.
Tensions spilled over three days later amid rumours that Lovett and Collins were going to be released on bail. A huge crowd gathered in the Bull Ring and soon afterwards shops and houses were set on fire. Edwards’ brother was a manager at Dakin’s tea merchants, at the Bull Ring end of the High Street, which was about to be looted. He reported seeing the glare of burning buildings reflected in his window, while a few minutes later, some of his windows were smashed and his door attacked by railings men had taken from Nelson’s statue nearby. In the subsequent struggle he knocked a man unconscious before being pelted with goods stolen from nearby shops. Nearby a gas lamp was knocked off and the flame used to light whatever was available.
“All at once,” he wrote, “there was a cry, a roar, a sound of horses’ hoofs… a troop of Dragoons came tearing along, with swords drawn, slashing away on all sides. Some of the rioters were very badly cut… amid groans, curses and a horrid turmoil. Several houses were on fire… the whole place was lit up with a lurid glow.” He went on to describe a town of ruined shops, burning houses and injured people (amazingly, no immediate deaths appear to have occurred).
Birmingham became, briefly, an occupied town, with 3,000 special constables in addition to the military presence, and even artillery pieces placed at locations such as Holloway Head. Meanwhile, at Warwick, three men were committed to transportation while John Collins was sentenced to a year in prison. It would be almost another thirty years before more working men would get the vote, while women and poorer men would have to wait until the early 20th century.
Unsurprisingly, Birmingham’s politics had been torn apart. The BPU was completely finished, while some questioned the ability of the newly formed council to govern. The city itself felt like it was in shock. Gradually, with the establishment of its own police force, Birmingham began to normalise, while the entry of lots of the newly wealthy shopkeeping class into politics created a new form of penny-pinching conservatism that would constrain the city until the era of the Municipal Gospel some three or four decades later.
So, 40 years to the day after the earlier ‘Church and King’ riots that signalled the twilight of the Lunar Society and the Midlands Enlightenment, another set of riots marked the end of another period of national influence for Birmingham. The energy of later Chartism, as well as the new campaign against the Corn Laws, would centre on Manchester — although Birmingham would continue to play a role, albeit a more peripheral one.
It was only in the 1870s, with the founding of George Dixon’s Education League — which would eventually be chaired by Joseph Chamberlain in his first major political role — that Birmingham became more prominent again in national politics, a role it would maintain until the Second World War. Perhaps both cities, served with mayors whose powers remain deeply underwhelming compared to those in their equivalents elsewhere, need to find again the radicalism and confidence of the Victorian decades — although preferably without the rioting and violence.
Enjoyed reading this rousing report of radicalism in Birmingham's past. Manchester's Peterloo has dominated history in the struggle for voting rights. I now know more about Birmingham's struggle too. Incidentally the village of Dodford near Bromsgrove is a Chartist village with one if the houses now owned and restored by The National Trust. Worth a visit but you do have to book ,I think.
Very interesting article-importing police from London! No wonder they rioted