How to Organise in the 1820s: Forum Selection and the Anti‐Corn Law Campaign in London and Lancashire*

Abstract During the early years of the 19th century, a set of conventions gradually developed for how to organise local meetings as part of national controversies. This article applies the concept of ‘forum selection’, generally used by lawyers, to the 1820s campaign against the corn laws to explore how those conventions influenced the decisions that organisers made about which method of organising to employ, together with the consequences that flowed from their decisions. At that time meetings were arranged for defined groups: they were ‘of’ inhabitants, commercial men or individual trades. The identity selected determined the type of meeting convened and who could and might attend, and it also shaped the ways in which their views were articulated. Broad urban support in England for reform of the corn laws made the campaign a good context for organisational innovation, providing new methods that were particularly useful to working people. Exploring forum selection also draws our attention to the important role of local activists in extending the political nation. The 1820s were a lively period of experimentation in extending the practices of organising, soon to be employed to full effect in the agitation over parliamentary reform.