Posted: September 5th, 2022

Differences between popular protests before and after the emergence of social movements

What are the main differences between popular protests before and after the emergence of social movements in the 18th-19th centuries in countries such as Great Britain and France?

Present two examples (by naming them and with some details) of these emerging social movements of the 18th-19th centuries, by insisting on the ‘repertoire of contention’ or the types of action they used to protest.
Throughout history, people have been using protests as a way to voice their concerns. Most of these protests were either feudal or democratic. However, in the years preceding the 18th and 19th centuries, while Great Britain had managed to form a parliament, it was not democratic. As a result, the only way people could try to bring down the government was through conducting violent protests.
Numerous protests broke out in different parts of the region. In 1811, there was intense rioting in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire, where a big group of weavers, mostly comprising of the Luddites, broke into factories and destroyed numerous new textile machinery.
More protests ensued, like the popular Petrich Rebellion of 1817, the Swing Riots of 1830, and Tolpuddle Martyrs of 1834. A common aspect about all these protests is that they were met with strong opposition from the government resulting in mass trials followed by numerous executions.
For example, the mass trial of 1811-1812 resulted in the execution of 17 Luddites. The Pentrich Rebellion in 1817 saw the execution of three leaders by strangulation. Basically, protests were met with heavy punishments, and anyone accused of treason was executed.
The emergence of social movements revolutionized the nature of protests. The trend shifted from labor and violent protests to contemporary protests and social transformations. Now, people had the right and freedom to form social movements and conduct peaceful protests without being arrested or charged with treason. Social movement protests were not focused on overthrowing any government but were used as a platform to advocate for social changes.
Two examples of these emerging social movements are:
The UK Women’s Suffrage Movement
The Suffrage movement UK was a women’s movement that emerged in the 18th century that sought to fight for women’s right to vote. The campaign was first advocated by Mary Wollstonecraft in her book A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. The Chartists movement would later take up Wollstonecraft’s demands in the 1840s.
Hundreds of women activists and liberal intellectuals continued to support the suffrages demands all through the 1850s. In 1865, the suffrage women’s committee was formed in Manchester, and a petition containing 1550 signatures was presented to the parliament by John Stuart Mill but was later defeated. Similar petitions that followed over the years were also defeated. The campaign was a decades-long-fight but eventually succeeded after the passage of the laws in 1918 and 1928 that granted all British women the right to vote.
The anti-fascist movement
Anti-fascism arose in Europe in the early twentieth century. The movement comprised the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and was primarily formed in opposition of the far-right groups as a direct challenge to democracy. In the beginning, the movement mainly got its support from the conservative party members and later from the rightwing newspaper, Daily Mail. The movement also held mass protests led by high profile members of the community like Aldous Huxley. However, the movement began declining following the ban of the BUF by the government and the arrest of its leader, Oswald Mosley.
References
Dee, D., 2020. British Jews and Anti-Fascism in the 1930s. Immigrants & Minorities, pp.1-33.
Purvis, J. and Hannam, J., 2020. The women’s suffrage movement in Britain and Ireland: new perspectives.
Stratmann, G., 2018. Giving meaning to anarchy: contemporary interpretations of rioting in 18th-century Britain. In Resistance and the City (pp. 79-97). Brill Rodopi.

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