Days of May

The Days of May was a period of social unrest and political tension in the United Kingdom that took place in May 1832, following the wrecking by Tories in the House of Lords of the Third Reform Bill, which aimed to extend parliamentary representation to the middle class and to the newly industrialised cities of the English Midlands and the North of England.

The campaign to broaden the electoral franchise had garnered a wide and organised national support over the preceding years, led by Thomas Attwood's Birmingham Political Union, which boasted that it "had united two millions of men peaceably and legally in one grand and determined association to recover the liberty, the happiness, and the prosperity of the country". While Attwood was careful to keep the unions' activities legal and non-violent, he also encouraged the widespread belief that they had the potential to constitute a powerful and independent extra-parliamentary force, boasting that the nation could be mobilised in an hour. The fall of the bill, and the subsequent resignation of the Whig government of Lord Grey, were met with rioting, campaigns of economic sabotage and threats of armed insurrection that were judged by many contemporaries to be credible.

The crisis was defused with the reinstatement of Grey's government on 15 May and King William IV's agreement in principle to create enough new peers to build a Whig majority in the Lords and allow the bill to pass. The Lords backed down short of this measure and the Great Reform Act was finally passed by Parliament and received Royal Assent on 7 June 1832.

Although the extent to which extra-parliamentary pressure was decisive in securing the passage of the bill is a matter for debate among historians, the period has come to be seen as one of the times when the UK came closest to revolution.