1. ASPECTS OF POLITICS IN MID-19th-CENTURY WALES.
- Author
-
Jones, I. G.
- Subjects
WELSH politics & government ,LABOR movement ,SOCIAL classes ,WORKING class ,SOCIAL reality - Abstract
The article presents abstracts of the papers based on politics in Wales, that were read on May 15, 1971 at the conference held at the Polytechnic of Central London. One of the papers discussed here is titled "Aspects of Politics in Mid-19th-Century Wales." The middle decades of the last century deserve detailed study by the historian of the labor movement for the reason that these were the years when characteristic attitudes to politics among the rural and urban working classes were being formulated. The solidification of these attitudes during subsequent decades helps to explain the relatively slow development of the labor movement in Wales in the 20th century. An examination of some of the formal aspects of the structure of politics in the period 1850-70 in such a way as to expose its underlying social realities enables to understand how and why these attitudes came to be so powerful. The outstanding feature of the formal representative system in 1850 was the extent of the inequalities contained within it. Most of these can be ascribed to the working out of the arrangements of the First Reform Act, but the result of a vast increase in, and a redistribution of, population in the intervening years had been to make them far more pronounced than they had originally been. This was the case in both county and borough constituency, but was most pronounced in the latter.
- Published
- 1971