History professor pens book about political unions

A historian at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point has penned a new book about political unions of the early 19^th century and their effects upon British history.

Professor Nancy LoPatin is the author of "Political Unions, Popular Politics and the Great Reform Act of 1832," newly published in the United States by St. Martin’s Press of New York and in Great Britain by Macmillan Press Ltd. of London.

A dozen research trips to Britain, a sabbatical year spent as a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College and a summer seminar at Yale University led to the completion of LoPatin’s book. Her studies were funded by grants from UWSP through the University Professional Development Committee, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Philosophical Society.

LoPatin describes her scholarly study as a revisionist account of how political unions, populist organizations made up of members from the lower and middle classes, promoted the beginnings of democracy in Great Britain. Up to this time, historians believed the aristocratic classes in Britain granted early reforms due to magnanimity toward the lower classes. Not true, says LoPatin. She believes and purports in her book that the ruling segment, afraid of revolution, succumbed to public opinion and granted voting reforms. The political unions were a grassroots effort which put pressure on the upper classes to ease the country’s voting restrictions.

Before 1832 only one out of 28 adult males qualified to vote based on the value of owned or rented property. After the first reform act, which lowered the property restrictions, was passed, one out of seven males could vote. Women did not gain the plebiscite until 1920.

LoPatin says the contributions of political unions to democracy in Great Britain is a new area of research for historians. She became interested in exploring their activities during graduate school because it was a subject that had never been studied before. Her next book will focus on Joseph Parkes, a party manager who served as liaison between the unions and the government.

LoPatin, who came to UWSP in 1989 after teaching for a year at UW-Whitewater, also serves as coordinator of the Collaborative Degree Program in General Studies, a degree-granting cooperative arrangement among the two-year campuses at Marshfield and Wausau and UWSP. She holds degrees from Washington University, St. Louis, and Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.

-30-