Birmingham Political History

Birmingham Political importance in the early 19th Century when the Birmingham Political Union in which Thomas Attwood was prominent before the passing of The Great Reform Act of 1832. During this time the Union’s outdoor meetings at Easy Hill in The Jewellery Quarter were the biggest political gatherings which had taken place in Britain.

Throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras Birmingham had a reputation for radical thought and politics which made it an important provincial counterweight to the metropolitical thinking of London.

From his election as Mayor in 1873 Joseph Chamberlain became the dominant political figure in Birmingham despite his move onto the national stage. Throughout this time he was at the centre of a political machine which became a model for modern political party organisations.