Social and Political Change: Britain 1800-present

A selection of articles and publications that link to Social and Political Change in Britain from 1800. These articles are all free to HA Student Members 

See also our 5-part Podcast series on Social and Political Change in Britain from 1800

1. The People's Pension
Podcast of lecture by Professor Chris Wrigley. 

2. The Urban Working Classes in England 1880-1914
On reading the title of this article, any reader at all familiar with the social history of late Victorian and Edwardian England is likely to think of the... 

3. William Morris, Art and the Rise of the British Labour Movement
Commenting in early 1934 at the University College, Hull, at the time of the centenary of William Morris' birth and of a large exhibition at the Victoria... 

4. The Evolution of the British Electoral System...
During the last 20 years our perspective on the great Victorian question of... 

5. Edwardian England
The Edwardian era is still less than a lifetime away. Yet the memoirs of... 

6. The Poor Law in Nineteenth-century England and...
Variety rather than uniformity characterised the administration of poor relief... 

7. From Disraeli to Callaghan: Britain 1879-1979
A previously unpublished survey of British history by A.J.P. Taylor. It is a characteristic piece, though marked by gloom about the then recent inflation.... 

8. The British Communist Party 1920-1945
With the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, archival material is becoming available not only on these regimes but also on communist parties in... 

9. The great Liberal landslide: the 1906 General Election in perspective
On 1 May 1997 the Conservative party suffered an electoral defeat so overwhelming that political commentators were left rummaging through the statistics of the... 

10. Limited Monarchy in Great Britain in the 18th Century
There was hardly anything in Great Britain which political thinkers on the...

11. Votes for Women in Britain 1867-1928
This classic pamphlet takes you through the Votes for Women in Britain movement...

12. Voices of History (The British Library)
Listen to some of the British Libraries recordings of some of the most...

13. Chartism
It is not surprising that Chartism has attracted a great deal of interest from...

14. The Reformed Electoral System in Great Britain...
The struggle for parliamentary reform between 1830 and 1832 has long been...

15. Towards Reform in 1809
Two hundred years ago it must have seemed to some as if the time for political...

16. Chamberlain Day and the popular meaning of Tariff Reform
Few Conservative institutions appealed to the Tory rank-andfile activist like the Tariff Reform League did in the opening two decades of the Twentieth Century....

17. Cholera and the Fight for Public Health Reform in Mid-Victorian England
Of the many social changes that occurred during the Victorian age, public health reform is widely agreed to be one of the most significant. In the early...

18. Christopher Hill: Marxism and Methodism
Christopher Hill, the eminent historian of seventeenth century England, was a convinced Marxist throughout most of his long and productive life (1912-2003). He...

19. The Origins of the Local Government Service
The concept ‘local government' dates only from the middle of the nineteenth century. ‘Local government service' emerged later still...