During the autumn and winter of 1864–65 members of the Universal League for the Material Elevation of the Industrious Classes planned to form a new organisation which would concentrate solely on manhood suffrage.
The League excluded a number of trade unionists, including Thomas Vaze of the Painters and John Bedford Leno the shoemaker poet because they had supported the South during the American Civil War.
Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke a Liberal M.P., enraged the working class by describing them as "impulsive, unreflecting, violent people" guilty of "venality, ignorance, drunkenness and intimidation".
[4] At one such meeting, in Trafalgar Square on 29 June 1866, speeches were made which refused support for any future Reform Bill which was not based on the League's programme.
A second meeting on 2 July 1866 was even more heated, with rioting in the West End by a "fortuitous concourse of the waifs and strays and roughs of a great city".
The Tory Home Secretary, Spencer Horatio Walpole declared it to be illegal, and issued a Police Notice, but the Reform League resolved to attempt to enter the Park and, if this failed, to move on to Trafalgar Square.
[6][7] While arguing with the police, John Bedford Leno's friend, Humphreys, noticed that the railings would stand no pressure and began to sway them backwards and forwards.
In addition to the members of the procession, large numbers of bystanders, who were sympathetic to the cause, joined in the storming of Hyde Park and the police were overwhelmed "like flies before a waiter's napkin".
John Bedford Leno and the leaders of the Reform League heard a rumour that the government was determined to crack down on the demonstrators and so decided to confront the Home Secretary, Walpole.
The march was made in a dispiriting downpour, but the fine discipline displayed by the rain-sodden men gave their leaders another claim to public attention.
The next day it was reported in the Times that the working men had done enough to show they were earnest in their demand for enfranchisement and asked them to stop their disturbing actions and to wait for the reforms that the Parliament was now certain to make.
In the winter of 1866 discontent increased as cold gripped the nation with great East End distress, a growing Fenian problem in Ireland and amongst the Irish in English cities, Trade Union restlessness grew and a feverish international atmosphere followed Bismarck's foundation of an apparent democracy in the North German Confederation.
On 11 February 1867, the very day the Tory government had fixed for the announcement of its reforms, the League arranged an impressive demonstration that started from Trafalgar Square and ended at a meeting at the Agricultural Hall in Islington.
That evening a number of "advanced Liberal" MPs arrived fresh from a sitting at the House of Commons with news of how "unsatisfactory" the Tory government's proposals for reform were.
This was a disappointment as the prospect of a procession on a bank holiday, like Good Friday, was an excellent opportunity to draw large crowds of workers who had the day off.
Gustave Paul Cluseret fled Ireland and arrived in London immediately after the Reform League's Trafalgar Square meeting.
He met a dozen members of the Reform League, including John Bedford Leno, in a private room of the "White Horse" in Rathbone Place.
He proposed that they create civil war in England and offered the service of two thousand sworn members of the Fenian body, and that he would act as their leader.
The next day the meeting was fully reported in The Times, although Leno's speech had been attributed to George Odger, who had in fact supported Cluseret's proposal.
The very wealthy Samuel Morley gave the League £250 in November 1867, followed by £25 from P. A. Taylor and £20 from Abraham Walter Paulton in January 1868, £100 from Titus Salt in April 1868 and £100 from Thomas Thomasson in June 1868.
However, Samuel Morley gave another donation of £1,900 which enabled the League to send out numerous "deputations" to boroughs where a useful Trade Union and working-class vote might be won for the "advanced Liberalism" of the General Election of Nov 1868.
As reward for their help, Morley had also allowed some of his £1,900 to finance a number of the Reform League's leaders (e.g., Edmond Beales in Tower Hamlets, George Howell (aided by John Bedford Leno) in Aylesbury and William Randal Cremer in Warwick, etc.)