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By , the League had largely failed to win support from industrial workers. It is important not to overestimate the degree of middle class support for the League up to The movement developed on quasi-religious lines and looked to the anti-slavery movement of the s and s for a model for action. Its moralistic character mobilised nonconformist antagonism to the Anglican Church: These demogogic and crusading characteristics alarmed the more conservative among the middle classes.

Propaganda, however, though it influenced opinion, had little direct affect on achieving repeal. Russell had intimated in that the Whigs might support repeal by publicly supporting the replacement of the sliding scale with a small fixed duty on corn, a policy used as a electoral gambit in Peel remained silent on the issue.

History of the Anti-Corn Law League

Cobden recognised that repeal would only be achieved through electoral activity with the ultimate aim of forcing the House of Commons to concede. The Walsall by-election in showed the potential of the League as a third force in politics and in the General Election later that year the strategy was applied in a number of favourable constituencies. Eight Leaguers, including Cobden for Stockport, were elected and this gave them an important parliamentary base that Chartism lacked. But the outstanding victory in lay with Peel and the Conservatives [2].

The victory for the protectionist party put the ACLL in an awkward position. It also led to a revival of demands by some middle class Radicals for organic reform in conjunction with the Chartists. This led to a crisis of confidence for Cobden, Bright and the other leaders of the ACLL, a crisis exacerbated by the deepening of distress in the northern manufacturing districts in the winter of The League Council split into two parties: The League was also faced by a formidable rival in the form of the Complete Suffrage League which attempted, unsuccessfully, to unite all radicals behind a common programme of reform.

The summer of saw the League at its lowest ebb with no policies and increasing lack of confidence. He took the dangerous step of trying to shake public confidence in Parliament by comparing the immorality and sectionalism of the Commons with the moral righteousness of the League. The League was rightly blamed by government of contributing to an atmosphere in which widespread industrial discontent occurred. The decline of the Complete Suffrage League, actions against Chartism and a resolution of its internal crisis pushed the League back on course.

By the end of , it emerged stronger and more confident than before. In March , the League Council divided the country up into twelve areas each with its own organisation, improving both the collection of money and the enrolment of new members. From to , the League directed its energies towards preparing for a decisive struggle at the expected General Election.

It could not have foreseen the crisis and, having rejected extreme measures, turned towards electoral politics.

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Attempts were made to win over tenant farmers to free trade. They were regarded as the key to control of the county seats and Cobden hoped to use their antagonism towards their landowners. This direct assault on the shire failed because many tenant farmers supported protection and may even have influence their landlords into a protectionist stance rather than the other way round.

Certainly it was tenant farmers who provided much of the support for the protectionist Anti-League formed in The League then adopted more indirect methods. It organised the practice of extensive postal objections to hostile county votes. It sought to create new free trade votes by buying up the freeholds in key constituencies, achieving some notable success in south Lancashire and the West Riding.

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Free traders intervened as a third party in by-elections. By the summer of only a small number of seats had been made safe in this way and it is unlikely, as John Prest maintains, that Peel was scared into repealing the Corn Laws to avoid an anti-Tory landslide in the counties.

McCord doubts whether free traders would have emerged electorally victorious had such a trial of strength proved necessary. Chaloner, Cass, , is still a valuable source. The political strategies of the League can be approached through D. Prest Politics in the Age of Cobden , Macmillan, , especially chapters 5 and 6. Morley provided biographies of Bright and Cobden in and respectively. More recent biographies are D.

Read Cobden and Bright. Robbins John Bright , Routledge, and the different perspectives of W.

Anti-Corn Law League

A Victorian Outsider , Yale, and N. Its candidate was defeated and it was unable to convince voters regarding free trade. However, the League did learn lessons that helped to transform its political tactics. It learned to concentrate on elections where there was a good expectation of victory.

Nevertheless the League had a restricted capability for contesting electoral seats, and its role in the final act of was largely that of creating a favourable climate of opinion.

The League then prepared to dissolve itself. Chaloner argues that the repeal in marked a major turning point, making free trade the national policy into the 20th century, and demonstrating the power of "Manchester-school" industrial interests over protectionist agricultural interests.

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He says repeal stabilized wheat prices in the s and s; however other technical developments caused the fall of wheat prices from The League marked the emergence of the first powerful national lobbying group into politics, one with a centralized office, consistency of purpose, rich funding, very strong local and national organization, and single-minded dedicated leaders.

It elected men to Parliament. Many of its procedures were innovative, while others were borrowed from the anti-slavery movement. It became the model for later reform movements. The model of the League led to the formation of the Lancashire Public School Association to campaign for free, locally-financed and controlled secular education in Lancashire.

It later became the National Public School Association.

It had little success because national secular education, was a divisive issue even among the radical groups However it did help convert the Liberal Party from its laissez-faire philosophy to that of a more interventionist character. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Age of Improvement p. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain — 2nd ed.

As in other bad years for the past twenty years and more a good deal of sporadic opposition to die Com Laws appeared in various parts of the country. As in the big rally at the beginning of the year had set the agita- tion off to a flying start, intensive work was carried on for a few months and then came to an enforced halt when the funds ran out. He was not new to the political game in , but had been an agitator on the Radical side at least since the crisis of The Conservative victory in the General Election gave another impetus to the movement for further Parliamentary Reform, and the closing months of saw the beginnings of the Complete Suffrage 1 In J. The singular attention on the Corn Laws focussed attention on the aristocracy in a way that heterogeneous radical politics, with its potential for dissension and division, did not. I pine for liberty and ease, free- dom of speech, and freedom of pen. Before the delegates reassembled in London the Manchester Association held its first annua!