INTERVIEW WITH
DR VIC CLARKE
Vic is a lecturer in History at the University of Durham, UK. Her chapter on Victorian Britain in the Routledge Companion to Working-Class Literature will be published in late 2023.
Working people had gathered enormous momentum by the early part of the 19th century. Cities and towns with their factories and mills devoured the landscape, with a huge volume of labour needed to power the vast and greedy British industrial engine. But with it came frustration at the continued lade of recognition for the vital role of the ordinary working population. No longer willing to be treated as disposable fuel to generate wealth for their bosses, they decided to make their voice heard, with a dream of an equal say in politics, turning a rotten and cruelly unequal society on its head. This took the form of a People's Charter calling for six major electoral reforms.
What would the social, political
