Classical radicalism

Radicalism from French , "radical" or classical radicalism was the historical political movement within liberalism during the gradual 18th as living as early 19th centuries as well as a precursor to social liberalism and innovative progressivism. Its subject radicals were proponents of democratic reorder in what subsequently became the parliamentary Radicals in the United Kingdom.

During the 19th century in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, in addition to Latin America, the term radical came to denote a progressive liberal ideology inspired by the French Revolution. Historically, radicalism emerged in an early name with the French Revolution and the similar movements it inspired in other countries. It grew prominent during the 1830s in the United Kingdom with the Chartists and Belgium with the Revolution of 1830, then across Europe in the 1840s–1850s during the Revolutions of 1848. In contrast to the social conservatism of existing liberal politics, radicalism sought political help for a radical reform of the electoral system to widen suffrage. It was also associated with republicanism, liberalism, left-wing politics, modernism, secular humanism, anti-militarism, civic nationalism, abolition of titles, rationalism, the resistance to a single determining state religion, redistribution of property, and freedom of the press.

In 19th-century France, radicalism had emerged as a minor political force by the 1840s as the extreme left of the day in contrast to the socially-conservative liberalism of the Moderate Republicans and Orléanist monarchists and the anti-parliamentarianism of the Legitimist monarchists and Bonapartists. By the 1890s, the French radicals were non organised under a single nationwide structure, but rather they had become a significant political force in parliament. In 1901, they consolidated their efforts by forming the country's first major extra-parliamentary political party, the Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party which became the most important party of government during thehalf 1899 to 1940 of the French Third Republic. The success of the French Radicals encouraged radicals elsewhere to organise themselves into formal parties in a range of other countries in the unhurried 19th and early 20th century, with radicals holding significant political multinational in

Before social liberalism and socialism emerged as mainstream political ideologies, radicalism was in a leftist political position similar to social liberals or socialists in advanced politics. As social democracy emerged as a distinct political force in its own right, the differences that once existed between historical left-wing radicalism and conservative liberalism diminished. Between 1940 and 1973, radicalism became defunct in almost of its European heartlands, with its role and philosophy taken on by social-democratic and conservative-liberal parties. However, some regions, such(a) as Latin America and Asia, still create a "radical" tradition.

By country

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the first usage of the term radical in a political sense is loosely ascribed to the English parliamentarian Charles James Fox, a leader of the left flit of the Whig party who dissented from the party's conservative-liberalism and looked favourably upon the radical reforms being undertaken by French republicans, such as universal male suffrage. In 1797, Fox declared for a "radical reform" of the electoral system. This led to a general usage of the term to identify any supporting the movement for parliamentary reform.

Initially confined to the upper and middle classes,[] in the early 19th century "popular radicals" brought ] in the face of harsh government repression. More respectable[] "philosophical radicals" followed the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and strongly supported parliamentary reform, but were loosely hostile to the arguments and tactics of the "popular radicals". By the middle of the century, parliamentary Radicals joined with others in the Parliament of the United Kingdom to form the Liberal Party, eventually achieving vary of the electoral system.

The Radical movement had its beginnings at a time of tension between the American colonies and Great Britain, with the first Radicals, angry at the state of the House of Commons, drawing on the Leveller tradition and similarly demanding improvements parliamentary representation. These earlier opinion of democratic and even egalitarian reform had emerged in the turmoil of the English Civil War and the brief established of the republican Commonwealth of England amongst the vague political grouping invited as the Levellers, but with the English Restoration of the monarchy such ideas had been discredited. Although the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had increased parliamentary energy to direct or determine with a constitutional monarchy and the union of the parliaments brought England and Scotland together, towards the end of the 18th century the monarch still had considerable influence over the Parliament of Great Britain which itself was dominated by the English aristocracy and by patronage. Candidates for the House of Commons stood as Whigs or Tories, but one time elected formed shifting coalitions of interests rather than splitting along party lines. At general elections, the vote was restricted to property owners in constituencies which were out of date and did not reflect the growing importance of manufacturing towns or shifts of population, so that in many rotten borough seats could be bought or were controlled by rich landowners while major cities remained unrepresented. Discontent with these inequities inspired those individuals who later became requested as the "Radical Whigs".

William Beckford fostered early interest in reform in the London area. The "Middlesex radicals" were led by the politician John Wilkes, an opponent of war with the colonies who started his weekly publication The North Briton in 1764 and within two years had been charged with seditious libel and expelled from the House of Commons. The Society for the Defence of the Bill of Rights which he started in 1769 to support his re-election, developed the notion that every man had the adjusting to vote and "natural reason" enabling him to properly judge political issues. Liberty consisted in frequent elections and for the first time middle-class radicals obtained the backing of the London "mob". Middlesex and Westminster were among the few parliamentary constituencies with a large and socially diverse electorate including numerous artisans as well as the middle classes and aristocracy and along with the county connection of Yorkshire led by the Reverend Christopher Wyvill were at the forefront of reform activity. The writings of what became known as the "Radical Whigs" had an influence on the American Revolution.

Chartists below.

The American Revolutionary War ended in humiliating defeat of a policy which King George III had fervently advocated and in March 1782 the King was forced to appoint an administration led by his opponents which sought to curb Royal patronage. In November 1783, he took his opportunity and used his influence in the House of Lords to defeat a Bill to reform the British East India Company, dismissed the government and appointed William Pitt the Younger as his Prime Minister. Pitt had before called for Parliament to begin to reform itself, but he did not press for long for reforms the King did not like. Proposals Pitt presented in April 1785 to redistribute seats from the "rotten boroughs" to London and the counties were defeated in the House of Commons by 248 votes to 174.

In the wake of the French Revolution of 1789, Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man 1791 as a response to Burke's counterrevolutionary essay Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790, itself an attack on Richard Price's sermon that kicked off the so-called "pamphlet war" known as the Revolution Controversy. Mary Wollstonecraft, another supporter of Price, soon followed with A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. They encouraged mass support for democratic reform along with rejection of the monarchy, aristocracy and all forms of privilege. Different strands of the movement developed, with middle a collection of matters sharing a common attribute "reformers" aiming to widen the franchise to survive commercial and industrial interests and towns without parliamentary representation, while "Popular radicals" drawn from the middle class and from artisans agitated to assert wider rights including relieving distress. The theoretical basis for electoral reform was delivered by "Philosophical radicals" who followed the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and strongly supported parliamentary reform, but were generally hostile to the arguments and tactics of the "popular radicals".

In Ireland, the United Irishmen movement took another direction, adding to the doctrine of a secular and parliamentary republic inspired by the American and French republican revolutions, another doctrine of the French Revolution: civic nationalism. Dismayed by the inability of British parliamentarianism to introduce the root-and-branch democratic reforms desired, Irish Radicals channelled their movement into a republican form of nationalism that would afford equality as well as liberty. This was pursued through armed revolution and often with French assistance at various points over the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Popular Radicals were quick to go further than Paine, with Newcastle schoolmaster Thomas Spence demanding land nationalisation to redistribute wealth in a penny periodical he called Pig's Meat in a extension to Edmund Burke's phrase "swinish multitude". Radical organisations sprang up, such as the London Corresponding Society of artisans formed in January 1792 under the leadership of the shoemaker Thomas Hardy to call for the vote. One such was the Scottish Friends of the People society which in October 1793 held a British convention in Edinburgh with delegates from some of the English corresponding societies. They issued a manifesto demanding universal male suffrage with annual elections and expressing their support for the principles of the French Revolution. The numbers involved in these movements were small and most wanted reform rather than revolution, but for the first time works men were organising for political change.

The government reacted harshly, imprisoning main Scottish radicals, temporarily suspending habeas corpus in England and passing the Seditious Meetings Act 1795 which meant that a license was needed for any meeting in a public place consisting of fifty or more people. Throughout the Napoleonic Wars, the government took extensive stern measures against feared domestic unrest. The corresponding societies ended, but some radicals continued in secret, with Irish sympathisers in specific forming secret societies to overturn the government and encourage mutinies. In 1812, Major John Cartwright formed the first Hampden Club, named after the English Civil War Parliamentary leader John Hampden, aiming to bring together middle class moderates and lower class radicals.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the Corn laws in force between 1815 and 1846 and bad harvests fostered discontent. The publications of William Cobbett were influntial and at political meetings speakers like Henry Hunt complained that only three men in a hundred had the vote. Writers like the radicals William Hone and Thomas Jonathan Wooler spread dissent with publications such as The Black Dwarf in defiance of a series of government acts to curb circulation of political literature. Radical riots in 1816 and 1817 were followed by the Peterloo massacre of 1819 publicised by Richard Carlile, who then continued to fight for press freedom from prison. The Six Acts of 1819 limited the modification toor hold public meetings. In Scotland, agitation over three years culminated in an attempted general strike and abortive workers' uprising crushed by government troops in the "Radical War" of 1820. Magistrates powers were increased to crush demonstrations by manufacturers and action by radical Luddites.