How did the Trades Union movement develop after the Tolpuddle Martyrs?

"You don't get me, I'm part of the Union..."

The first in our mini sequence of podcasts on the development of the Trades Union movement and its place in the development of democracy starts small; focused on one small village in Dorset and six men who swear an oath to found a Union to bargain for better pay and conditions...

The Chartists were a huge political movement, able to mobilise a lot of public support; born out of unhappiness with the Great Reform Act, their demands were simple and clearly designed to improve the representation of the working class in Parliament. But the movement collapsed by the 1850s, ending in abject failure.

Or did it...?

What was the problem with elections in the 1800s? How did a meeting at St Peter's Field lead to the Great Reform Act? And how Great was it anyway?

This is background to the Chartist movement which will be covered in the next episode. 

After the Civil Wars, the question of who ruled - Parliament or the King - was settled. The next phase of power shifting to the people would be about who was represented in Parliament. The first skirmish of this fight would be a war across the sea, when colonists declared that there should be no representation without taxation and, in their Declaration of Independence, wrote down some self-evident truths. 

In our final episode of the class of 2018, we talk through with an AQA Lead Examiner how to answer each of the questions on the new paper. 

For the last time, 2018 - good luck in your exams!

Good-BYEEEEE-EEEEEEE. 

England is at war with itself; the King versus Parliament. This confilct gave rise to new radical politics which would inform the rest of British political history. But not only that - hovering in the background is the biggest unanswered question of all - what do you do with the King?

Probably the most important turning point in the development of Power and the People is covered in this episode. 

In August 1642 King Charles I raised his standard at Nottingham, declaring war on his own Parliament. The most serious challenge to royal authority in English history was about to begin - British history, actually, as the mid-1600s saw war engulf the three kingdoms of the British isles. How did it come to this? In this episode we talk through the steps to 1642 and what brought Parliament and the King to the brink of war....

Henry VIII had to deal with the challenge to his authority, but how? This episode wraps up the events of 1536 and looks at the impact it had for the people who rebelled, Henry and Thomas Cromwell.

In 1536 Henry VIII faced the most serious challenge to his power - the most serious challenge to any monarch since 1381. Why did nobles, commons and peasants alike join together to rise up against the Tudor king?