The National Political Union was an organisation set up in October 1831, after the rejection of the Reform Bill by the House of Lords, to serve as a pressure group for parliamentary reform: “to support the King and his ministers against a small faction in accomplishing their great measure of Parliamentary Reform”. Modelled by Francis Place on the influential Birmingham Political Union, (but without its emphasis on currency reform) the N. P. U. was meant to serve both as a co-ordinating body for the country's political unions, and as a particular outlet for London radicals.