This year’s William Cobbett Society Annual Lecture will be given by Emma Griffin, Professor of Modern British History at Queen Mary University of London. She has recently been President of the Royal Historical Society, is the author of 5 books and best known for her work on the lives of ordinary people in Britain during the Industrial Revolution. Professor Griffin will focus on the changes that occurred in England in the early nineteenth century, the period when Cobbett was relentlessly commenting on the plight of the working man.

William Cobbett is best known for Rural Rides, his record of his journeys around Southern England in which he comments on the hardships faced by farmers as they grapple with the economic challenges of the time. He identifies many causes, from enclosures of common land to low wages and high taxes, which he blames on the high National Debt and the government wasting money on sinecures. Underlying it all he blames a system controlled by the rich and the lack of votes for ordinary people.

Could Britain have succeeded economically without causing the hardship Cobbett fought against so courageously?