SCOTLAND AND THE CREATION OF A NATIONAL REFORM MOVEMENT, 1830–1832

Abstract

The popular movement for parliamentary reform after 1830 managed to sustain its campaign for over eighteen months. The popular movement itself has largely been studied at a local level, and undoubtedly local contexts were influential in conditioning responses to reform. Reformers, however, predominantly represented themselves as patriots involved in a pan-British struggle, and this was a key factor in sustaining the mobilization. This article explores the reform movement on its own terms in one ‘national’ context, that of Scotland. If the immediate political context of reform was a spur to unity, the languages and strategies of reformers provided the real glue. Scottish reformers represented themselves as patriots involved in a ‘national movement’ and this article will analyse how the reform movement could act as a solvent for apparently conflicting aspects of Scottish and British national identities. It will argue that reformers deployed a language of ‘unionist-nationalism’ – which coupled demands for greater access to the British constitution with appeals to popular understandings of Scottish history – to call for reform, mobilize support, and maintain the unity of the movement.