Lesson video

Hello, and welcome back to history of the Oak National Academy.

My name is Mr. Arscott, and hopefully you recognise me now because it's a full lesson looking at, what did the French Revolution mean to Britons? And as this is our fourth and final lesson on this inquiry, at the end of this lesson we're going to bring all together and we going to see if you can do a really good job if you're not answering that inquiry question.

What did the French Revolutions mean to Briton's? Now, as we've found out different people in Briton reacted to the French Revolution in different ways.

For some people as a threat to their wealth, some people they're fearful of it, and some people were excited about the ideas from the French Revolution.

And what we're going to do today we're going to look at the Tories about how the French Revolution contributed to a major change in Briton known as the Great Reform Act.

So, you're going to need a piece of paper and a pen to have a go at this lesson and I'm going to get my head of the way so you can write down today's title, The Great Reform Act.

So let's start by recapping the story so far.

On the screen, you're going to see four statements and some of these statements are true, and some of them are false.

So what you're going to need to do is in your margin, write down the letters A to D and I'm going to read through the statements and just on your piece of paper, write either true or false.

I'm going to pause the video now whilst you do that.

All right, welcome back let's go through 'em and see how many you've managed to get right.

So for A, well done if you wrote true, the British government was worried the Haitian Revolution would make it harder to make money from the slave trade.

B, well done if you put false, it's not true that the French armies defeated the British at the Battle of Waterloo, in fact, it was the British that defeated the French.

For C well done if you put true, as Britain industrialised, the size of the working class increased.

And for D well done if you put false, it's not true that only British soldiers died at the Peterloo Massacre.

In fact, it was British soldiers who killed members of the working class at the Peterloo Massacre.

Now let's look at this through our timeline.

So here are three major events you've looked at so far, the French Revolution in 1789, the British defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, which happened 1815, and the Peterloo Massacre which we looked at last lesson and after 1819.

Now during this entire period, Britain was industrialising.

And that meant that Briton was changing because new technology and new inventions were changing the way that people lived and worked in Briton.

One of the key inventions that was the steam engine and that was used to power lots of facTories that took over in British cities.

Now, one of the other ways that Briton changed that we looked at last lesson was social changes, so changes in the different social groups in Briton.

And some social groups got larger, which means I have more people in that social group.

So one of the key social groups that increased in size, was the middle class.

And here we can see a picture of the top of a typical middle class man.

So the middle class people, were people that worked as lawyers, or doctors, or even the wealthiest ones owned facTories businesses.

So this social group increased in size as Britain industrialised, the more people who worked in middle class jobs.

Another social group which increased in size was the working class, the working class people, were people that worked in facTories.

Now, in general the people in the working class, they were living quite close to poverty or in poverty, the wages they earned in the facTories weren't very high, the conditions in the facTories weren't often very good.

And sometimes the housing which working class people lived was also quite difficult.

So both the working class and the middle class got bigger as Britons industrialised, which means more people were part of these social groups.

Now, as Britain industrialised and changed the society, it also changed how people thought about political changes.

So what did political change mean for different social groups in Britain? So how do different social groups have different ideas about political change? Now, on the screen are four options about different ways that different social groups might have seen political changes.

Now what I want you to do, is I want you to read through them and think about which social groups are most likely to have agreed with this particular option.

So for example option four, fears that change could lead to violent revolutions, the social group that most likely to have agreed with that would be the aristocracy or the upper class.

So pause the video now, once you work out for yourself how these other options will match different social groups.

Welcome back.

So different social groups had different attitudes towards change.

Now, the working class who are often living in desperate poverty or some of them were living in desperate poverty.

They were excited about the potential or the possible major political changes.

They wanted to have a new kind of government, which might look after things like poverty that might make sure that factory owners paid them more.

They might think about how they can improve housing.

So for people in the working class, they were excited about potential political changes.

Now people in the middle class they were wealthier and therefore they were more comfortable.

And so they wanted there to be changes, lots of members of middle class didn't have the vote, and they wanted that, because that would get them more power, but they weren't desperate for change in the way that people in the working class were.

Now members of the upper class or the aristocracy they saw changed in different light or at least some of them did.

Some of them would have seen change as a threat to their power or wealth and they would have feared revolution.

And I was also going to find out later in the lesson, actually not everyone in the upper class had that view.

So, why did members of the working class and the middle class want the vote so much? The vote was the key political change that they wanted.

So why was that? Well, you might recognise this picture.

This painting on the right, we've seen it in previous lessons.

And this painting shows parliament.

Now, the people that are in parliament were known as the Members of Parliament.

And if you could vote, you were able to choose who your member of parliament would be.

All across the country it split up into different areas and each of those areas would choose Members of Parliament.

And those people who could vote, we get to choose which Members of Parliament would represent them.

And this is important because in parliament, they would debate new laws and new taxes.

So if you could decide, who's going to represent you in parliament.

You are indirectly having a say in the laws of the country and what taxes you're going to pay.

Now, in most parts of the country, voters could choose between different candidates or different possible representatives to become members department.

And in general, those different people could choose between with members of different political parties.

Now, what we mean by political party, is a group of people that have similar views.

Now we have political parties today, but in the 19th century we also had them, but it had some funny names and we've got those two names down the bottom.

It's the whigs and the Tories.

Now the whigs in general people that were actually interested in reform, that means they wanted to change things for the better.

Whereas the Tories in general wants to keep things the same.

Now, when you see paintings of parliament, like the one you can see the right, normally one political party was set on one side and the other political party will face them on the other.

Okay so let's just get some really good notes so we can clarify what these different political parties were.

So the whigs and the Tories were the two main political parties in this period.

I'm going to ask you to pause the video, just write down these two definitions so you've got some nice clear notes.

So pause the video now and unpause it once you've finished.

Okay, Welcome back.

So when we say reform, we mean make changes for the better.

Now all the way since the battle of Waterloo, the Tories had been the main political party in parliament.

They'd have the most seats, and therefore they'd been able to dominate the discussions and choose which laws.

That meant all the way since Waterloo, they'd been able to stop there being political reform, they'd stopped giving extra people to vote.

And this explained partly why at the time of Waterloo at Peterloo when that Massacre happened, there was no attempt to give more people the boat.

Now this all changed in 1830, when elections were held to choose members or to choose a new parliament, choose who would be in the new parliament.

Now these two quite complicated looking maps tell us a story about how this changed.

So these two maps show the different areas of the country and what parties they chose during elections.

So the blue shows areas of the country, which elected Tories and the orange or yellow shows areas of the country which elected Whigs.

Now the first map, the one that's on the left is from the pre-1830 parliament.

And you can see there's quite a lot of blue in it and there's some areas which are blue and orange or blue and yellow and those were areas which still did vote for Tories.

So pre-1830, most areas of the country were voting for Tories and therefore the parliament was full of Tories.

However, in 1830 and then 1831 there were new elections and after the elections, most areas of the country were voting for Whigs.

Now that meant that in parliament most people, most of the Members of Parliament were Whigs.

And that meant there was an opportunity for reform an opportunity to change the voting system.

So what exactly happened? Well, the Whigs won the election in 1831, once they won the election, the Whigs then had a majority of seats in the House of Commons.

Once they got this majority, the Whigs then proposed a new law to reform the voting system and what they want to do, if they want to increase the number of voters not to allow more people to have the right to vote.

Now, the House of Commons then votes for the new law and it looks like that law is going to pass.

And it looks therefore like more people are going to become voters in Britain, but what happens next shocks the country.

The reform was then blocked, it wasn't allowed to become a law and this is because there were actually two houses of parliament, not just the House of Commons, there was the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

Now you might recognise the painting on the right which we looked at quite a few lessons ago.

And if you look at it carefully, you might remember that there were different groups in parliament, now relabel it now so we can see those groups.

So in the red and in the black and white, we have members of the House of Lords, now the people in the House of Lords, were the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country.

Here you can see them wearing black and white, they're the archbishops and red they're the official Lords.

Now these people blocked reform, most of them were Tories and therefore they did not want to change the voting system.

Now at the bottom you can see members of the House of Commons and it was the House of Commons that wanted to have reform, most people in the House of Commons were Whigs.

So even though the House of Commons which had been elected during a general election, had then wanted to have reform, that reform had been blocked because members of the unelected House of Lords, would not allow it to go ahead.

Right that's quite complicated so let's make sure you've got some nice clear announcements.

So I've got here two useful sentences which I'm going to ask you to copy into your notes, but there's two important words missing, the words either Tory Or Whig.

So have a go at trying to complete the sentences, filling in the gap with either word Tory or Whig unpause the video when you're done.

Right welcome back let's see what you wrote.

So well done if you wrote, the Whig party supported increase in the number of voters and had a majority of seats in the House of Commons.

Well done if you wrote the Tory party, opposed increasing the number of voters and had a majority of seats in the House of Lords.

So what do you think happened next? Well, across the country people were shocked and angry that the house of Lords had blocked reform.

Both people in the working class and people in the middle class were fierce and they were united in their anger.

And all across the country there were riots, we couldn't reform riots 1831, where people took to the streets and to show the anger to the House of Lords had stopped them being able to get in the vote.

This painting shows violence scenes in Bristol, they look very similar to the Peterloo Massacre, where soldiers are charging at ordinary British people.

Now there were similar violent clashes in Nottingham.

Now it looked very much like at this state Britain was getting close to a revolution, the British army was having to be used against it's own people to try to stop them writing.

But actually it got even closer to revolution in what happened next.

Now certain cities were even less represented in parliament than others, so the new industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham, which hadn't really existed before weren't able to send any Members of Parliament to parliament.

So in those cities people were particularly angry, that the House of Lords had blocked reform.

Now one middle class person who came from Birmingham was particularly angry but had a very clever idea about how to try to force the Lords to accept reform.

And his name was Thomas Attwood and you can see a painting of him on the right.

Now Thomas Attwood planned a tax rebellion, he wanted to persuade lots of most people to refuse to pay taxes until the House of Lords accepted reform.

He then wanted to plant a march on London from all the major towns and cities in England, to put pressure on them.

Now rumours started to spread after that, that the soldiers in Birmingham were going to join the marches and go to London, rather than try to stop them.

Now because of the importance that taxes had played in the American Revolution and the French Revolution, the Lords were really scared at this point.

Now because the army looked like they might support the demonstrators or the protestors rather than the government, they decided they needed to act.

And so in 1832, the Lords decided to accept the reform act, they didn't want to do it, but they thought it was worth doing to avoid revolution.

So in 1832, a new law was passed which has become known as The Great Reform Act.

Now it did have some positive changes, so industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham, could now elect MPs, Members of Parliament for the first time.

It also meant that middle class men could vote.

But there are some groups of society which was still denied the vote.

So working class men and women were still not allowed to vote.

Some middle class women believed that they might get the opportunity to vote at this point.

One of them is called Ann Wheeler, you can see a picture of her in the middle, She'd campaigned that women should be able to be given the vote during The Great Reform Act, but she was ignored as well.

And so only middle class men were given the right to vote after The Great Reform Act.

And so for some people, they were a bit unimpressed and still angry The Great Reform Act hadn't given them a vote, but it had taken enough pressure out the system that a revolution was no longer a risk.

Okay you're now in a really good position for you to have a go at answering the comprehension questions.

So, shortly I'm going to ask you to pause the video, go to the next page and then read through the information before answering the five comprehension questions in full sentences.

Beforehand, I'll read through the questions so they are as clear as possible.

Question one, which political party had been in power before 1830? Question two, in what ways did the Whigs want to change the voting system? Question three, what happened when the House of Lords, refused to accept The Reform Act in 1831? Question four, why did the House of Lords eventually accept The Great Reform Act? And five, the challenge question which is a bit harder, why might some people have been disappointed by The Great Reform Act? So what I'm going to to ask you to do, is to pause the video, go to the next page, read through the worksheets slides, then have a go answering these questions in full meaningful sentences.

Once you've done that, come back to the video and we'll go through the answers.

So please pause the video now.

Welcome back.

Right, let's see how well you did.

So question one, which political party had been empowered before 1830? An acceptable answer, the Tories or the Tory party.

A good answer in a full sentence, the political party that had been in power before 1830 were called the Tories.

Now if you didn't get exactly that wording, don't worry, look for common language and you might still be able to give yourself a tick for getting it right.

If you get it wrong, don't worry, just use my answer in order to improve your notes, so you've got some really good, clear answers afterwards.

Question two, in what ways did the Whigs want to change the voting system? An acceptable answer, give vote to the middle class or make sure new cities are represented.

A good answer in a full sentence, the Whigs wants to change Britain's voting system in two main ways.

Firstly, they wanted to increase the number of voters, by giving middle class men the right to vote.

Secondly, they wanted to make sure new industrial cities like, Manchester and Birmingham were represented in parliament.

Question three, what happened when the House of Lords refused to accept the Reform Act in 1831? Acceptable answers, riots or tax protests or marches.

The good answer and full meaningful sentences, when the House of Lords refused to accept the reformat of 1831, there were violent riots across the country.

In Birmingham, Thomas Attwood organised a tax protest.

There was also a planned march on London.

People were angry that the House of Lords was blocking reform.

Question four, why did the House of Lords eventually accept the Great Reform Act? Acceptable answer, feared revolution.

A good answer, the House of Lords eventually accepted the Great Reform Act because they feared a violent revolution.

The acts rebellion in 1831, convinced the Lord that reform was necessary.

And the challenge question, why might some people have been disappointed by the Great Reform Act? An acceptable answer, they didn't get the right to vote.

A good answer in a full sentence.

Some people might've been disappointed by the Great Reform Act because it did not give enough people the votes.

Radicals had wanted women and the working class to get the vote.

But the Great Reform Act only gave the vote to middle class men.

Okay, well done for your answers today and for your really hard work.

So, now I've had to go to the comprehension questions.

I want you to have a think about our inquiry question again.

So I also think about this question.

What did the French Revolution mean to Britons by 1832? Now in order to think about that.

Let's think about what we've looked at in the last few lessons.

So in lesson one, we looked to the Haitian Revolution and we looked at how that threatened the power and the wealth of some of the Britain that involved in the slave trade.

Then lesson two, we looked at Napoleon and the Waterloo and how the British fought against the podium 'cause they didn't want the French to have too much control of Europe.

So again, the French Revolution seemed to threaten British power.

And lesson three.

We looked at the Peterloo Massacre and we looked at how the French Revolution had inspired some Britons to challenge the way Britons was being ruled.

And today's lesson, we looked at the Great Reform Act, and how the way Briton was ruled was changed in 1832.

So let's think about what this might mean.

So what might the French Revolution mean to different people? So it could be an inspirations change Britain, it could be a threat to power wealth.

Maybe the French Revolution could fear of dangerous new ideas, or maybe the French Revolution was seen as an opportunity to change things, to benefit oneself.

So for each of these lessons, do any of these possible means the French Revolution, match up with any of them? Do any of these French Revolution, fit with some of the types of people we've met in these lessons.

Pause the video for 30 seconds, I want you to think about that now.

Well, let's now turn to what the British attitudes to reform were after 1832.

So if you are working class, you would likely to be disappointed, but the lack of radical change, you might've been inspired by the French Revolution been hopeful than offering that attitude, you thought actually that the reformat hadn't been able to deliver it's promise, it hadn't given you the vote.

If you were a member of the middle class, you were pretty quite happy.

You had been excited about the ideas of the French Revolution, about more people getting the vote.

And after 1862, you as a member of the middle class now had the vote.

So you and are more powerful.

Now, if you remember the upper class, you might have some different attitudes to political reform after the 1832 reformat.

So you might have been glad to avoid a revolution.

One of the key things that motivated members of the upper class, between the French Revolution 1832 was they were terrified of a revolution.

And it hadn't happened, started being good.

But some members of the upper class might have still been fearful of future change.

They didn't know what the future would bring.

Now a member of the middle class could also vote for Members of Parliament.

So let's have another think about the meaning of the French Revolution.

And let's just focus on Britain's middle class.

What are they likely to felt about the French Revolution in the different stages? So before the French also during the French Revolutions between 1815 and 1832.

So this period of political reforms that we've looked at in these lessons and offering those to.

what do you think the French Revolution might mean to a member of the middle class at these different points? So pause it for the analysis.

You have to think about that, then unpause it when you've got some ideas.

Welcome back.

Well, here's what I've had to think about.

So I think during the French Revolutions, members of the middle class, some of them might have had hope and excitement 'cause they might've thought this might lead to changes in Britain where they would get the vote.

But some members of the middle class, especially those who are involved in the enslavement of West Africans and people who have made lots of money from slave plantations in the Americas.

They might have felt the French Revolution was a threat to their wealth and power.

So they wouldn't have liked that part there.

Now during the period 1815 to 1832, it's likely many members of the middle class still had this idea of hope and excitement about getting the vote.

And that's what the French Revolution meant to them, it meant that it might lead to change in Britain.

But after 1832, once members of the middle class at the vote, the meaning of the French Revolution might have changed again.

Now it might be seen as a threat to power.

If the working class were given the vote, as had happened at one point in the French Revolution, then the middle class would have less power because now they have to be voted amongst a much larger population, and they would therefore have less influence and power themselves.

So interestingly, the meaning of the French Revolution might change the members of the middle class at different periods.

I wonder if that would also happen for the other social class we've considered.

Right, we've now got a lot to think about.

So what I want you to have a go at trying to do, is now answering up a big inquiry question.

What do the French Revolution mean to Briton's? And there's loads and loads of things that you can think about including here.

And I want you to try to limit yourself.

I don't want you to write everything.

I just want you to think about one key contrast you can get.

So I've given you some suggestions for some paragraph starters.

For some Britons, the French Revolution inspired, then you choose whether you want to talk about how it inspired hope or fear then say, because explain which social group you're talking about.

Then if you use those sentence starters, for example, want to expand it further, to illustrate this a bit more, to give some evidence, to talk about some of the things we've looked at in this inquiry.

And then the next paragraph for other British people, the French Revolution was seen as an opportunity or a threat to wealth because, and explain why the French Revolution might have had that meaning to some groups of Britons.

And then again, try to explain that a bit further.

I put some key words on the right hand side to help you.

So I want you to now have a go at trying to answer this big question.

So pause the video, spend a bit of time doing it.

And once you're done, absolutely brilliant and unpause the video.

Well done, you really have what it takes to try and finish our inquiry and answer our inquiry question.

What did the French Revolution mean to Britain's? We learned about some really interesting things as you've been considering that question.

And we found out a lot about different groups in Britain at the time.

So one final thing to do before we finish is for you to have a go at the end of the lesson quiz if you do that now, brilliant work.

I've really enjoyed teaching about this inquiry.