Emancipation

The incompetence of the ruling classes and their heartless treatment of working-class soldiers during the Crimean War led to social reforms in both Russia and Britain. Russia emancipated its serfs in 1861 and Britain gave the vote to working class households in 1867. These reforms came through grass-roots activism rather than top-down initiative.

Emancipation tries to explain this grass-roots movement by following the lives of some fictional survivors before and after the war. It is available as an Amazon eBook (readable on any device with free Kindle app).

Click image to see blurb and read a sample. Scroll down for more background.

Why did Parliament give votes to working class householders in 1867?
In 1866 Parliament rejected a proposal to reduce the property qualifiction, which would have added 200,000 voters in England. It was feared that 200,000 new, poorer, voters would make government too ‘democratic’. But one year later the same Parliament passed an Act that added a million poorer voters, doubling the size of the electorate. The result was a landslide defeat of the Conservative Government in the 1868 general election.

What caused the U-turn in Parliament? Different historians with differing political perspectives offer three possible explanations for why the 1867 Act passed against all expectations:

  1. Rivalry between Disraeli and Gladstone to be the first to extend the franchise
  2. Disraeli’s social conscience as revealed in his novel Sybil, or the Two Nations
  3. Fear of the revolutionary ideology  of the popular Reform League

Any or all of these three explanations may be ‘true’, but each is limited by its reliance on the written records of eminent and charismatic leaders.

Any complete explanation would need to give weight to the social consciences of thousands of men and women who had witnessed the inhumane treatment of Britain’s loyal working-class army during the Crimean War.

Historians lack the detailed records to evaluate the contribution of a multitude of anonymous individuals. Fiction can bring it to life by imagining the personal development of a small sample of the relevant population. That is what Emancipation sets out to achieve.