Continuing our series on places of significance in labour history, Dave Steele recalls the long history of extra-parliamentary activity in New Palace Yard, on Parliament’s doorstep.

New Palace Yard originated as part of the eleventh century Palace of Westminster. It formed an enclosed outer bailey much larger than the fenced-in area which survives today, and once hosted tournaments, jousts, public executions and a pillory.

Later it became a space where extra-parliamentary groups could put on a show of force. Here I will focus on nineteenth century crowds campaigning for electoral reform, but will also discuss earlier uses of the space, and the appropriation of the adjacent Parliament Square by current political groups of the Left and Right as a site of protest.

The yard formerly extended from what became Parliament Square almost to the river. Two older buildings survive, St Margaret’s Church and Westminster Hall, but in the 1750s, street layouts changed to accommodate access to the new Westminster Bridge, and though open access continued up to the mid-nineteenth century, the yard was then reduced to the railed-off area we know today.

New Palace Yard and Westminster Hall featured in the Gordon riots of 1780 and the hustle and bustle and noise of the protest is imagined by Dickens character Geoffrey Haredale in Barnaby Rudge:

‘There was a pretty large concourse of people assembled round the Houses of Parliament, looking at the members as they entered and departed, and giving vent to noisy demonstrations of approval or dislike. As he made his way among the throng, he heard once or twice the No-Popery cry, which was then becoming familiar to the ears of most men and observing that the idlers were of the lowest grade – noisy passengers, mechanics and squabbling urchins’[1]

By the nineteenth century the yard had become built up, with houses, shops, taverns and coffee-houses. The frequency of meetings picked up as it proved an ideal venue for the mass platform crowds of the campaigns for electoral reform from 1816-48. This included three waves of activity – the post Napoleonic war years leading up to Peterloo in 1819, the reform crisis of the early 1830s and the Chartist years from 1838-1848. By bearding legislators in their den, orators and participants of the mass platform got close to power. While governments turned a blind eye, the physical proximity of these demonstrations to the seat of government amplified the empowerment of the crowd and these liminal spaces were perfect for venting emotion on the threshold of power.

In June 1816, a meeting was held to select a radical candidate for the Westminster constituency. Potential candidates were the reform stalwart Sir Francis Burdett, radical trailblazer Henry Hunt and ambitious lawyer, Henry Brougham (later Lord Chancellor). That September, a meeting was triggered by poor harvests and post war demobilisation which linked hardship with the call for electoral reform.

Larger meeting locations included Smithfield and Kennington Common, but Spa Fields, 2.5 miles north of Westminster, was chosen for three reform meetings in 1816/17, due to its location just outside municipal jurisdiction. Two of these culminated in riots – serious enough to trigger legislation suspending Habeas Corpus and limiting meetings to no more than fifty people. This prompted a further protest gathering on 25 February at New Palace Yard followed by one in March 1818 celebrating the restoration of Habeas Corpus and in September 1818, when the Seditious Meetings Act expired. This meeting was contentious as it went ahead without the approval of the High Bailiff. Organisers lost their preferred spot in front of the King’s Arms Hotel and had to improvise a rostrum by lashing planks to the railings in front of Westminster Hall. Some reports claimed the meeting ‘did not exceed three or four hundred’ which is well within my own calculation of site capacity. The yard occupied 4,309 sq m, which, at an average density of two people per square metre (ppsm) gives a capacity of 9000.[2]

The following year, the frequency of meetings ramped up across the country, many addressed by Henry Hunt and, while the larger venue of Smithfield was selected for the London meeting on 21 July, the shock of the Peterloo massacre the following month triggered a wave of sympathetic meetings across the country, and New Palace Yard was selected as the venue for the London meeting. Again, it sparked controversy over its legality but Burdett went ahead in contravention of the High Bailiff’s refusal. The crowd was reported at 30-40,000. While this is unlikely, it was clearly a significant meeting, and the space would have been packed even at only half that attendance. But the important point is the location. Of all the meetings up and down the country, this is the one which spoke truth to power and a series of resolutions were read out castigating the government and Manchester magistrates.[3]

Very little happened here around the time of the 1831-1832 Reform Crisis, probably because there was a ban on meetings within one mile of Parliament, but, in October 1831, after the Lords rejected the Reform Bill, a rioting crowd got very close, ‘at 10.30pm a group of 3-400 rioters who had been dispersed from Palace Yard advanced up Whitehall shouting “Reform for ever”, “No Taxes”, “No Police” […] a party of police from Scotland Yard drove them back, dispersing them over Westminster Bridge.’[4] While this was insignificant compared with the rioting in Nottingham, Derby and Bristol, it shows that Westminster was still considered by the crowd to be a target site for protest.

By 1838, the ineffectiveness of the Reform Bill in widening the franchise had sunk in and moves were afoot to launch what we now know as Chartism. The People’s Charter was launched in Glasgow in May and at Palace Yard on 17 September. But the London press could not get a handle on the word Chartist with the Standard dismissing them as ‘Protean Radicals’ and asking, ‘Who the Chartists of Westminster are we do not know, never having before heard of them?’[5] Aspiring leader Feargus O’Connor’s speech was uncompromising. He declared that,

‘a union would arise from which a moral power would be created, sufficient to establish the rights of the poor man; but if this failed, then let every man raise his arm in defence of that which his judgement told him was justice’.[6]

Here was an early hint of the moral vs physical force debate which would ultimately tear Chartism apart, and O’Connor, often considered a physical force Chartist, reneged when put to the test in 1848. It was never clear if ‘forcefully if we must’ was a serious threat or merely a hint of what may come but nevertheless these were strong words delivered within feet of the seat of power.

The Standard reported attendance as 200,000, which is untenable as it would represent forty ppsm. (Anything over four ppsm is considered dangerous as I argued in my thesis on reform crowds.[7]). The Tory Chronicle, despite putting attendance at a more believable 8-15,000, dismissed the meeting as ‘mere tomfoolery’, but despite writing a scathing report, dedicated one and a half columns of its front page acknowledging its importance.[8]

News coverage for the Palace Yard meeting exceeded all but one of the much larger Charter launch meetings. This underlines a key point that, though attendance was limited to a few thousand people, the symbolic power of physically confronting the state on the doorstep of the seat of power gave the crowd an enhanced political reputation – amplified by the press.

As the century progressed, activism at the site diminished. Rioting in other parts of London during the 1860s led to railings being erected and events moved a few yards west to Parliament Square and on occasion the indoor lobby, such as the ‘rush on the commons’ by Suffragettes in 1908. Two years later, Suffragette Emily Davidson brought her protest to the indoor liminal space when she spent the night in an air duct to gain access to the house to ask a question. She was arrested but not charged and undeterred, returned the following year and stayed in a broom cupboard to have the Commons as her registered address on the 1911 census.

Recently, Parliament Square has been the site of many demonstrations including the People’s vote rally of 23 March 2019, and Led by Donkeys’ unfurling of a giant banner about the alleged genocide in Gaza in December 2024. More recently, a protester scaled the Elizabeth tower to unfurl a Palestinian flag. Despite playing down many regular central London protests with tens of thousands of participants, this incident went viral on the world’s news media, confirming the continuing significance of the location.

Other protests in and around the Houses of Parliament include: peace protester Brian Haw’s ten-year Iraq war protest; the 2015 wheelchair invasion of central lobby against benefit cut;, anti-Brexiter Steve Bray’s daily protests 2018-19; and Extinction Rebellion’s 2019 semi-naked public gallery protest. Parliament Square has been used by protesters across the full gamut of political persuasion including the farmers’ 2024 inheritance tax tractor protest. And echoing the Gordon Riots of 245 years ago, Tommy Robinson’s 2024 ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march on Parliament attests to the fact that it is not only those on the left who utilize the space to enhance the profile of their campaigns. Not all protesters are respectful, as illustrated by a 2020 Far Right protester who urinated on the memorial to mark the site of PC Keith Palmer’s murder in a 2017 terrorist attack in New Palace Yard. Coming up-to-date, Parliament Square has witnessed probably the highest ever numbers of arrests of people protesting against the proscription of Palestine Action.

For the past 250 years, the liminal spaces in and around the Westminster Parliament have attracted political protests from Left and Right alike. Despite the efforts of law enforcement, people returned to these sites because of their symbolic power on the threshold of government. Meetings were and are often rowdy, drawing the attention of newspapers and now 24-hour news media who report the, often controversial, proceedings thereby amplifying the meetings’ effectiveness. While attendance figures were and remain small, due to the physical constraints of space, the symbolic nature of the location amplifies their perceived power in terms of newsworthiness.

Protests usually fall on deaf ears and fail to secure short-term changes to legislation, but when taken as part of long-term national programmes of action, some campaigns did ultimately achieve deferred success – especially in the case of the fight for electoral reform which, after more than 100 years of persistent and dogged Westminster protests, finally in 1928 secured the vote for all men and women over 21.[9]

Dr Dave Steele, University of Warwick.

This blog originated from a paper ‘Where people confront power – the Liminal spaces of Westminster’ given to the Lived Experiences of the Westminster Parliament in History conference at the University of Warwick, 14 March 2025. Video

Interview about the History of Protest in Parliament Square, 6 June 2025 Matt Chorley’s Politics Show on BBC Radio 5 Recording

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[1] Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, Chapter XLII, (London, 1841). Text

[2] Dave Steele, ‘The Reputational Power of English Reform Crowds 1816–1848’, University of Warwick PhD, 2023, p. 112. PhD thesis

[3] Resolution from 2 Sept 1819 Palace Yard Meeting, Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, 9 Sept. 1819

[4] The National Archives, HO 52/14/9 ff.514 Report from Superintendent John May to Home Office, 11 October 1831.

[5] The Standard, 6 September, 1838

[6] The Standard, 18 September, 1838

[7] Dave Steele, ‘The Reputational Power of English Reform Crowds 1816–1848’, University of Warwick PhD, 2023, p. 54.

[8] Morning Chronicle, 18 September 1838

[9] Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. Act of Parliament

Read more articles in the series ‘A Place in Labour History’.