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Origins and early History of the Pressure Group
| The pressure group is, together with the right to vote and the right to petition, one of the main forms in which people can make their voices heard in the democratic system. This paper outlines the 19th century history of the modern pressure group as it can be traced in British, Irish and American history. The establishment of the pressure group as a successful and legitimate political phenomenon was a process which spanned almost a century. From the later 18th century up to c. 1830, a repertoire of political action developed (especially in Britain), elements of which would be utilized in the modern pressure group from the 1820s onwards. Antislavery and temperance organizations were pioneering pressure group politics. Another inspiration for the early pressure groups were religious mass organizations, which were very successful in the 1810s and 1820s on both sides of the Atlantic. Pairing the social movement repertoire with a mass organization, British and American reformers experimented with pressure group politics in the 1820s and 1830s. In doing so, they pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable in politics. Critics of the modern pressure group long maintained that these modern pressure groups corrupted the political system as well as disturbed social relations. In the 1860s, however, the pressure group had become accepted and was viewed as an integral, even necessary part of the political process.
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