The Age of George III

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The Society for the Supporters of the Bill of Rights (SSBR)

In 1769, following the Middlesex election fiasco when John Wilkes was prevented from taking his seat in parliament even though he had come top of the poll on four separate occasions, a group of young lawyers and merchants formed the SSBR. The movement was led by John Horne Tooke.

The immediate aims of the SSBR were:

• financially to support Wilkes, who was in gaol,. This was necessary because of the state of the gaols: money and influence on the outside were necessary to the comfort of prisoners. They intended also to pay off Wilkes' debts
• to organise popular opposition to the government and to encourage the growth of democracy by bringing the limited condition of the constitution to the attention of the public and making the people aware of their political restrictions.

Before long, they emerged as advocates of extensive reform programmes including legal reform. They condemned General Warrants and the taxation of the American colonists; they criticised the refusal of judges to allow juries to decide what constituted libel. They also took up reforms of a political nature, calling for legislation to exclude all office holders from the House of Commons. They demanded a secret ballot, shorter parliaments and an end to bribery in general elections.

The SSBR printed pamphlets, broadsheets and political leaflets containing their demands. The organisation wanted the government to be more answerable to the people and more democratically representative. It has been said that Chartism had its early roots in the demands and methods of the SSBR, which brought new methods into popular politics: it

• issued instructions to MPs who supported its aims on how to vote in parliament
• employed agents and speakers to hold public meetings and get letters and articles into the provincial press.
• established affiliated societies in the provinces, particularly in the big new centres such as Bristol and Liverpool
• made social and political demands on government.

Now public opinion was being heard, a new dimension was added to politics.