Did British democracy start in Newport?

  • 2 months ago
We’re learning all about the Chartists, and their impact on modern democracy. Did it all start in Newport? Maybe, maybe not, but we definitely played a big role in our rights to vote.

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00:00It's really sparked the voice of the people and the fact that we need to stand up for our rights.
00:05There's an argument to be made that democracy in the United Kingdom, to some extent, started here in Newport.
00:11The Chartists famously marched into the town centre at the Westgate Hotel in protest of their rights to vote.
00:17Previously, only a select group could vote, but that changed with the Chartists.
00:21Initially, because of his working men, John Frost, he had a draper's shop on High Street, which is just round the corner.
00:29He was a mayor of Newport previously, a few years before this happened,
00:35but he was trying to get the vote for people because he needed property qualification.
00:41There were so many restrictions that only 90% of the population could vote across the UK.
00:46So the Chartist movement was devising that charter and putting it to Parliament,
00:51and they got so, so many signatures, and it just kept getting ignored.
00:55Newport was just one of the places that marched. It happened across some parts of the north of England too,
01:00but for us in South Wales, it's the Chartists here that are most famous for their efforts.
01:05The phrase was, at the time, peacefully if we can and forcibly if we must,
01:10and this is kind of what led to this, and they gathered all these men from the Valleys and marched down.
01:16It wasn't just Newport, it wasn't just South Wales, even though this was led by the South Wales Chartists,
01:23it was across the whole of the UK.
01:25It certainly didn't come easily. The initial march wasn't all it took for us to be able to vote nowadays,
01:30and the journey for those Chartists was anything but simple,
01:33and took decades to slowly move towards a full democracy in the UK.
01:37So the achievement of the vote was on several different dates after, because this was unsuccessful,
01:43and they got initially sentenced to be hung, drawn and courted,
01:47and then that got revoked and they got deported to Tasmania.
01:52The actual achievement of the right to vote and the different six points was across the next hundred years.