ATTWOOD, Thomas.

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Framed commemorative roundel. An attractive memorial roundel for Thomas Attwood, the leading figure in the campaign for the Great Reform Act of 1832, and a popular hero among radicals, industrial towns, and the politicized working class. From 1831 he featured in a "stream of mementoes, souvenirs, and commemorative plaques... On all, Attwood's name and picture was the dominating feature" (Moss, p. 198).The Attwood family was heavily involved in the industrialization of the region around Birmingham. The town, as with the other new industrial towns of Manchester and Leeds, was effectively excluded from direct representation at Westminster. From 1827 Attwood led the local campaign to support transferring parliamentary representation from the rotten borough of East Retford to Birmingham. In 1830 he launched the Birmingham Political Union, which rapidly rose to be the most prominent national campaign for parliamentary reform, attracting radical working-class supporters."Through 1831 and 1832 Attwood regularly addressed open-air reform meetings of between 50,000 and 200,000 people. At these he proved himself an effective platform orator, often making contact with his audiences by use of violent imagery. The use of the 'rhetoric of violence', or what Attwood himself referred to as 'wholesome violence', was a radical strategy established by a line of platform orators from Henry Hunt onwards, through which the people's right to resort to defensive violence was invoked. In November, fol

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