Lesson video

Hello everyone.

And welcome back to Citizenship.

This is your second lesson.

And today we're going to have a look and continue our journey all about struggle for vote.

All you're going to need is a pen and a piece of paper, and somewhere quiet, so that you can listen to the lesson and do your very best.

There's also going to be a video or two, maybe two videos.

So, that would be a nice treat lecture.

So, you definitely need somewhere quiet so that you can listen in on that.

And then when you're ready, just please pause the video and take down today's title really sorry that's a long title today, and I will see you in a bit.

So, last lesson if you remember, we started to introduce some key ideas.

And we looked at the concept of political rights.

And these are the rights that we all have to vote to have a say in who represents us, and who runs our country.

We looked at how long it's taken to get these written rights.

And I hinted that the 1834 Reform Act was not all that seemed.

On today, we're going to look at why the Reform Act made some people so angry, that riots and protests backed the country.

We'll examine a group of people that lived around 200 years ago.

But whose actions are still quite relevant today.

Their movements eventually led to political change.

But the big question is, was it changed for everyone? And just how much influence can a bunch of old people have today? So, to answer the question, how did the Chartists affect the political rights today? We have to look at these three things.

How do you campaign? How did the Chartists campaign? And how far did they extend our political rights? Are you ready for your first exercise? I've been a bit mean about time, and giving it you quite early on.

Do you recognise that picture? That's right.

Quite a turn back.

And I think anybody wouldn't recognise that picture.

Actually now she's so famous.

Isn't she? Well, she's a modern day chartist.

if you're not sure what that means, then that's what we're going to do in this lesson.

So, you'd be an expert by the end.

She's petitioned to have coerced the governments around the world.

She's organised global school strikes.

The sign actually says "school strike for climate." And she's also given lots of speeches in countries, as well as being known for passionate campaigning about climate change.

But she didn't just do all those things.

She had to create an action plan first.

And that's what I'd like you to have a go at.

Just the action plan side of things.

So, have a look at the green box.

It says, think about creating a campaign on an issue that you feel is really important.

You're not going to carry out that campaign.

We're thinking about all this stuff that happens before we even get to that point.

So, what you need to do is just make a list.

Some of the practical things that you would have to think about in order for your campaign to be successful.

Pause the video now and have a think about that.

And then resume once you've finished.

We'll have a look at some ideas.

So, how did you do.

Well, first of all, to create a great active campaign, you have to know what the issue is about.

For Greta that's simple, isn't it? Climate change.

We all know that.

And then, know your goals to know your impact.

You don't know if you're going to be successful, If you haven't got goals and a plan of things to work your way through, and then to measure success against.

Some, think about, what support do I need? Where do I need my information to come from? Where can I research? And who are my influences? Who am I trying to convince? Who am I trying to change what I need them to do.

And lastly, plan and carry out the action.

On this as again, lots of different things.

What sort of action do you want to carry out? Is it a petition? Is it a letter? Is it a protest? So, am sure you got some of those things.

If you didn't don't worry.

That was quite a tricky first task.

Wanted to get your brains warmed up for today's session.

Let's have a look at those ideas and relate them to Greta.

Was Greta's campaign a good citizenship campaign? We'll have a look at those purple, green, and pink boxes that in a minute.

That sort of pink questions to start with.

Her issue is climate change.

The planet needs an advocate.

That's just someone to speak out for it.

Goals and impact.

Well, her goals worked for Sweden to cut carbon emissions, to get to the students, to make similar demands in their country.

Governments around the world, eventually to cut all emissions.

So, there two major goals there.

And the support.

Who did she want to influence? She did secondary research.

So, she looked at climate change and the impact on then.

She also did primary research.

Her dad, she asked her dad all about climate change, 'cause he's quite an expert in this area.

And her influences were world leaders.

What methods did she use while she protested outside Parliament, school striking, creating "Fridays For Future Movement" which is a school strike for climate movement.

And, she's now petitioning the United Nations.

And she succeeded, hasn't she? Created this global attitude shift.

And in 2019, she'd be getting the Times newspaper's Person of the Year.

So, she's done some pretty good stuff.

But is it good citizenship stuff? Well, to give really good citizenship campaign, you need these three things.

Firstly, you need to believe that you can make a difference.

And everybody can make a difference in some way.

You need to have that interesting community.

And what's going around in the world.

What's going on in the world.

And Greta had that, didn't she? And she also had responsible action.

Skills are really important.

The skills to research, to debate, to have critical thinking and informed action.

We're going to have a look at those in a later lesson.

So, you'll know all about those soon.

And knowledge.

Know what democracy and government means.

Know what fairness and justice is about, and know what rights and equality are.

So, are you ready to just test a little bit of knowledge that you've had so far? The word advocate means the right to protest.

Is that true or is that false? I'm going to count to three and I want you to shout it out.

One, two, three, it's brilliant.

False.

It means to speak out on somebody's behalf.

It's not about the right to protest at all.

One campaign method Greta used was petitioning, true or false? One, two, three.

It's correct.

Good job.

She used protest and striking but also petitioned her government and other students.

So, where have Greta's political rights come from? If you need a definition for political rights, just pause the video and take the definition down that you can see.

If Greta tried to do, all of this active campaigning a few years ago, she would not have been so successful.

The internet and social media have helped to reach millions.

And this has only been around since 1990, when Tim Berners-Lee invented the worldwide web.

And if you go back 18 more years.

Well, she'd probably been arrested for her acts.

She wouldn't have had the protection of human rights laws that we have today.

And, she certainly wouldn't have had so many political rights.

So, do you remember last week we drew this timeline, didn't we? Well about I did a bit of an extension to it.

If you have a look at 1832, that's where the Chartists are.

And they were most active between 1838 and 1848.

Now in 1918, after over 700 years of struggle of different people, trying to get the vote, universal suffrage was finally achieved.

But I did that extra bits of timeline there because really this ongoing struggles.

And we'll have a look at those in other lessons.

But for now, lets learn a little bit more about the Chartists.

So, in order to learn a little bit more, we're going to watch this video.

You'll have a break from my voice for a little bit.

Task two.

Watch the video and take some notes.

The video is a little bit quick so, you might need to watch it a couple of times, and that's fine.

Just go back and watch it again if you need to.

You'll come across these two words.

The first one is radical, which means causing great social change.

And you should that change is caused by acting in extreme ways.

And transportation.

Back when the Chartists were around, as a punishment, people could get homed.

People could go to jail.

But also, sometimes people were transported to different countries that were owned by Britain, called British colonies.

And they served that sentence they're off.

And they had to stay there for the rest of their lives.

So, watch the video.

We'll compare notes in a minute.

From the late 18th century, radicalism and popular protest started to sweep across Britain.

The home office began to charter these acts of resistance.

Found files in the national archives for country's mass protests, such as the Chartist marches.

Chartism was a working class movement prominent in the 1840s and 50s.

Striving for political rights, and influences for workers.

Protests like those in rule today in Cannington, were met with military force.

In response, more radical leaders emerged.

William Cuffay, the six year old mixed race leader within street locality was one.

He was arrested after instructing his groups to steal guns buy gunpowder, and even ordered his groups wives to throw toxic ginger beer box whose filled with tap and toilet at police from their windows.

John's scripts from his 1847 trial.

Show he was sentenced to transportation for 24 years.

Shortly after this judgement , he was shipped off to Tasmania to serve his time.

Despite this being shortened to three years, Cuffay remained in Tasmania, and continued his political activism.

They didn't protest for democratic whites for Tasmanians.

Despite being the son of a slave and a criminal, he was so influential that when he died in poverty in 1870, aged 82, the butress were published in seven different Australian States.

He was widely forgotten in the UK, but the impact of his campaign to political rights are still relevant today in England and in Australia.

I hope you enjoyed that video.

I found it absolutely fascinating.

So, this is the exercise I'd like you to try now.

And you might need to watch the video again 'cause it was quite short.

But now you've watched it, write down all the things that you recall.

Write down any questions you might have from the video.

I'm hoping that through the rest of the lesson, I'll give you a lot more information.

So, you'll be able to tick off any questions that you have as we go through the video.

Okay.

So, pause the video now to complete your task, and resume once you've finished and I'll see you in a bit.

I hope you've got lots of notes now.

So, if we're going to find out more about how the chartists really affected the political rights we have today, we need to look at their campaigning.

And ask, well, was it a good citizenship campaign? Let's look closer at William.

You learn a little bit about him in the video, didn't you? He was born on a ship in the Western days.

The son of the ship's cook and a former slave.

And he grew up in London and worked as a tailor.

And then he really got into politics.

I don't think it's because he was a tailor.

He got into politics it was just one of his interests.

He was an extraordinarily great leader within the chartist movements.

But how did he do it? Just as we looked Greta's plan, let's have a look at William's campaign.

The issue for William and many others, was that working class men wanted to gain political rights by extending the franchise or increasing the number of people who could vote.

They were angry that the Reform Act of 1832 only gave middle class men the right to vote.

Working class remain disenfranchised.

That means without a vote.

And they were advocating for the rights of all men over 21 to vote.

Have a look at charter its huge, isn't? Actually its got thousands of signatures on there.

And, what he's doing is he's presenting that to an important official, probably an MP working in Parliament.

Did you know that the word charter comes from Latin, and means paper or map? No.

Oh, from touch plan something else.

Sounds great.

So, the second good thing to know in citizenship, when you're thinking about a campaign is to know your goals.

And that will then help you to measure your impact.

William Cuffay and the Chartists wanted six changes to the way Britain was ran.

All men over 21 could vote.

Voting by secret ballot.

MPs to be paid.

Anyone to be an MP.

Equal electoral districts.

And general elections every year.

So, look at that list.

Do you think these things are reasonable demands? Or do you disagree with any of them? What was the impact? It's tricky to say just like Greta.

They did create a mass movement at the time.

It wasn't global and it was just isolated to certain towns, and cities.

But many people joined them.

Sadly none of their goals were achieved during the time they were active.

Working class men had to wait for the vote.

BY 1918, five of their demands were met.

Let's just have a look at a couple of them.

All men could vote over the age of 21 from 1918.

Look about secret ballots as well.

Secret ballots.

It's just a way of voting so that the voters choice is anonymous.

No one knows what anyone else would have voted for.

And this is good, isn't it? Because then you can vote` without any interference from anyone else.

You can make your own mind up.

And they also managed to get MPs some wages.

And if you are over 18, you can also stand to become an MP.

And also the bottom one, I have a look at that and they didn't manage to have general elections every year.

Let's see how you've done.

How much information have you retained? Okay.

Which of the following describes Chartism? I'm going to give you two options.

You just need to shout up which is correct.

Option I, a movement, wealthy people who wanted the vote.

Option 2, a movement of working class men who all wanted men over 21 to have the vote.

Ready? Option 1 or option 2.

Shout time now.

It's option two.

Why did the Chartists campaign? Option 1 they were angry at the 1832 that-- They were angry at the 1832 that Reform Act and only giving them middle classes the vote.

Option 2 they were angry, and wanted to cause trouble by rioting.

So, can you get the right option despite me not being able to read out very well? One, two, three, option 1.

They want to work around it all.

Good job.

That's have a look.

Last one, many of the leading chartists faced? Option 1 transportation to one of Britain's colonies or option 2 heavy put prison sentences.

Shout to outages option number 1.

Great.

Right there.

They're going to move it along a little bit now.

We are going to have a look at whether the charters used good citizenship campaigning methods.

So, if you remember parts of being a, having a good citizenship campaign is looking for ways you can get support from, and thinking about who you can influence.

Where did William get garner support from, and who had what he wants to influence.

in terms of support is one of the leaders.

And so, he did have support from other people, but has been disliked together.

There was a divide within charters, and some believe that peaceful protest, and presenting petitions to Parliament were more effective.

They also went on strike and wrote newspapers.

These were known as Moral Force Chartists, and these were led by William Lovett.

There's a clue to help you to remember that the word love, and I suppose more peaceful and action.

Others though sort of violence was the only way to be taken seriously.

They started riots.

And some who supported Feargus O'Connor were even prepared to die for what they believed in.

This is known as Physical Force Chartism.

And I think after watching the video, you could probably guess that William did support both of those, but really he was a physical force Chartists.

And this divide weakened them.

And I think probably it's one of the reasons why the petition of the charter petitioning of the charter failed fought for this organisation.

But there were other things as well.

To have a good citizenship action you also have to have a good method.

William and others created a People's charter.

And by 1848, they had petitioned or presented that Charter to Parliament three times.

William organised a mass meeting on London's Kennington common.

You can see the picture there at the top.

After, the Chartists presented the largest, and final petition to Parliament, with over 5 million signatures.

But when this was examined by Parliament, it had less than 2 million signatures, and many were false.

Names such as Mr Punch and Mr Pug Nose were on the document.

Not very convincing, was it? So, sadly they were mocked by the newspapers, and the chartists campaign eventually came to an end.

Having looked at the evidence then, what do you think effect of the Chartists had? Do you think they've had a great effect on British society? Well, let's have a think about all the things they did.

Some were positive and some were negative.

And by looking at these arguments, helps us work out what effect they had.

Despite not having much success in their own time.

Their legacy was strong.

And by 1850s members of Parliament accepted that further reform was inevitable.

And, we still use some of the methods today.

So, you'll need to pause the video in a minute because I'd like you to create a list.

What really two lists, a list of the positives and a list of the negatives, saying how successful the Chartists were.

When you finish it have two lists, there's three positives and three negatives given on the following table for you to identify.

You might also be able to add your own ideas.

I'm sure you'll be able to do that.

So, let's have a look.

So, you can just jot down which ones were positive, which ones were negative.

And we'll go through the answers in a bit.

Pause the video now.

How did you do? Positives have been highlighted.

Methods used by the Chartists is still used today.

They proved when people came together, change happens.

Chartism got more people interested in politics including the poor and working classes.

And they inspired future protests.

And look, we remember that the five of their demands in the charter were met.

Do you remember which one was them? Yeah.

General elections every year.

Good job.

Okay.

You can have a break from my voice now.

And we're going to have a look at the methods that we still use today.

And thankfully there's not many rights that occur, but we've seen lots of protests around BREXIT, Black Lives Matter and Climate Change.

And the use of petitions is a very common too.

So, have a look at the video, take some notes and I will see you in a bit.

A petition is a way of getting your voice heard in Parliament.

It's original request, asking the House of Commons or the government to take action on something.

You prepare your petition, and get people who agree with you to sign it.

There are some kinds of petition that we can't accept.

Have a look on our webpage to make sure.

You can always get in touch with us to clarify before you start work.

You can send us two types of petition: a paper petition or an online e-petition.

A paper petition asks the house of commons to do something.

For example, make a new law or change an existing one.

Or put pressure on the government to take action on a particular issue? Paper petitions are normally from a local area.

This isn't a rule, but you'll need to collect hand signed signatures which is obviously easier to do close to home.

Once your paper petition is ready, you'll need to find a member of Parliament willing to present your petition to the House of Commons.

An online e-petition can ask the government, as well as the House of Commons to do something.

If your issue is national, then this is usually the best way to collect signatures from around the country.

As you'll be putting your petition up online for anyone to sign.

You can browse the website for other petitions, and sign any which you strongly agree with.

So, what happens next? The petitions committee, that's a group of MPs from different parties will decide if they want to investigate your petition.

In other words, they might want to find out more information from the public or experts or from the government, or have a debate on it in the House of Commons.

A petitions that receive 100,000 signatures will definitely be considered for a debate.

Most paper petitions will receive a response from the government as do all e-petitions, which receive 10,000 signatures or more.

And all petitions are recorded in the official record of Parliament.

Whatever else happens, even if your petition doesn't get picked up by Parliament for debate or action, you'll certainly have helped get publicity for your campaign.

You may decide to stop there or continue campaigning in other ways.

Just remember the most famous campaigns in history often started with a petition.

So, you saw in that video, that petitions are a great way to campaign.

And that she talked about the two types of petitions, didn't she? In the video.

And did you spot right at the end? The two people that were, and the very very last slide.

One was a suffragette and we'll have a look at next week.

And but the other one, what was that person called? Yeah, correct.

The Chartists.

So, if he didn't know that before, hopefully you've learned something new.

And you'll probably come across the Chartists in history.

Citizenship and History have a lot of different case similar case studies, but we teach them in slightly different ways.

Despite progress, there are people who feel that they cannot participate in an influence society, unless they have the vote.

We look at more about this over the next couple of lessons.

Like Greta, because they can't vote they're taking action by planning their own campaign, and using more modern methods.

Today we have online petitioning.

Rules have tightened up a lot since Chartists.

You have to provide your name and email to start a petition, to avoid any more Mr Pug Noses.

So, when you sign up, you can go to Parliament and you can create a petition.

Look at this one.

Extend the franchise which is a voting age to include all of those who are 16 to 17 years old.

Now, when I was searching for a petition to show you, I didn't know, at the time that this petition by some year 11 students of Mr Humphrys, who's also one of the Citizenship teachers for Oak National.

So, next time you come across Mr Humphrys, you'll have to let him know that I used his petition in my lesson.

I think he'll be delighted about that.

Although I won't be delighted is only got 417 signatures.

So, hopefully he'll get a few more by the end of the petitions life.

Look at this, we're on our final exercise, and we need to consider how far, the Chartists came to creating political change.

And, was it a good citizenship campaign? Just to remind you, I've put down the three areas that citizenship covers, and if you're covering these, you're pretty good citizenship person, and you've learned a lot.

You need to have those attributes.

You need to have some of those skills.

And you need political knowledge as well.

If you're not sure about any of those words, we're covering those in a couple of lessons.

So, don't worry about them.

We could look them up to see what they mean.

As ever there's some sentence starters for you.

So, if you need those, please feel free to use them.

But as I always say, if you don't need them, then just go for it.

I'd like a paragraph please answering that question, and you'll need to pause the video now.

And restart it when you're ready.

How did you do it?.

Wow these are some of my ideas.

Feel free to use them.

if you'd like to.

I'm sure you've got some brilliant stuff there already.

I wrote Chartists for a movement that demanded the extension of the franchise call include all men over 21.

Working class men who campaigned to change political process onto change petitioned a Charter to Parliament.

And had six demands to change the political system.

So, any of those sort of ideas would be great.

They used petitioning, peaceful, protest violence, moral force, physical force.

Some of you might have mentioned.

And they created political change because they got more people interested in politics.

And we use and see these methods today.

Was it good citizenship campaign? Well that's for you to decide.

I think there were elements of that.

Because they did use their political knowledge.

They used informed actions.

And mostly they were responsible.

However, some methods such as rioting, and falsifying petitions clearly not so responsible.

So, some just throwing a little takeaway task.

If you're interested to learn a little bit more.

So, you could go on Parliament's website, find out about petitions that you're interested in.

Or you could find out who your local counsellors are if you're not sure.

And to local MP who that is, and petition them about any area of concern that you might have.

It's always good to know who represents your voice in Parliament.

Look at this.

That's what you've done today.

Lots of learning.

We looked at how you can campaign, how the Chartists campaign.

And we talked about how far they extended our political rights today.

Thank you so much for your focus.

I wonder how many questions you had at the start, but you're able to tick off now.

And I wonder if you are going to have a look at those petitions on the Parliament website.

Well, I'll find out next lesson I'm sure.

One way you can let me know is to share your work with Oak National.

So, if you'd like to, please ask a parent or carer to show your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I look forward to seeing what you posted, look forward to seeing the fantastic quality I'm sure your work is.

It's been delightful teaching you today, and don't forget to please complete the exit quiz.

Just to prove to yourself how much you've learned.

Take care.

Bye.