Administration and Finance of the Reform League, 1865–1867
ALDON D. BELL ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE OF THE REFORM LEAGUE, 1865-1867 I In the first months of 1865 artisan and middle class Reformers in London established the Reform League with the publicly stated political goals of "manhood suffrage and the ballot".1 Reflecting a new political awareness among artisan workingmen as well as a realization that workingmen and sympathetic bourgeois Reformers might achieve more when agitating together, the League resulted from experiences and associations in several recent working class and bourgeois campaigns, concerns, and agitations. London artisans, for instance, had been involved in trade unions (both amalgamated and local), the London Trades Council, Trades Union Manhood Suffrage and Vote by Ballot Association, Workingmen's Garibaldi Committee, Universal League for the Improvement of the Working Classes, and International Working Men's Association ("First Inter- national"). They also joined organizations and campaigns more 1 The Howell Collection, which includes the papers of the Reform League, is located at the Bishopsgate Institute, London E.C. 2. League papers include the minute books for the various councils and executives, ledgers, account books, carbon books of letters sent, and some letters received. The boxes of miscellaneous materials include clippings, pamphlets printed by the League, odd notes of all kinds (including plans for demon- strations), and posters. Howell's manuscript autobiography and his sketches of person- alities are also in the collection. I have filled out information from these sources by culling reports in many London and provincial newspapers. The most useful are the Bee-Hive, Commonwealth, and Morning Star in London, and the Birmingham Journal, Manchester Examiner and Times, Leeds Express, Newcastle Chronicle, and Glasgow Sentinal.
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