1840s radicalism (1): the Chartists

Chartist meeting on 10 April 1848 at Kennington Common,

by William Edward Kilburn, restored version.

An early daguerreotype.

Public domain 

There are some useful web sites on Chartism.

In 1839 Thomas Carlyle’s pamphlet Chartism stated that there was

a feeling very generally exists that the condition and disposition of the working classes is rather ominous at present; that something ought to be said and something ought to be done, in regard to it.

The origins of Chartism

The Chartist movement was the first radical working-class (as opposed to artisan) movement in Britain. It had an ancestry going back to the 1770s, which was reinforced by the French Revolution and the subsequent wars with France. In the post-war period  radical agitation once more became a powerful force. In April 1831 the National Union of the Working Classes was founded in April 1831 by the Cornish cabinet-maker, William Lovett, to campaign for manhood suffrage. 

Working-class radicals were literate and politically aware. One of their most successful campaigns was the 'war of the unstamped'. From July 1831 the radical printer, Henry Hetherington published the Poor Man’s Guardian, in defiance of the Stamp Act that kept the prices of newspapers beyond the reach of many working people. He was joined by a young Irish lawyer, James Bronterre O'Brien, who edited the paper and rapidly established himself as the foremost theorist of working-class radicalism.  In 1835 the stamp was reduced to 1d - an improvement, but still too expensive for working-class pockets. The battle over the stamp led to the setting up of a network of organizations and a chain of command that could be revived when the occasion required it.

The working classes (in the early nineteenth-century they were always referred to in the plural) were the creation of the Industrial Revolution, and they bore the full brunt of the economic and social problems it created. The heartland of Chartism was not London but industrial Lancashire and Yorkshire.

Working-class radicals were angered by what they saw as the ‘great Whig betrayal’. If anything, the 1832 Reform Act reduced the number of working-class voters by replacing the old varied borough franchises with the £10 household franchise. Leading politicians, like the Whig Lord John Russell and the Tory Sir Robert Peel, both declared that the Reform Act was a final settlement - there was to be no revision. Along with this feeling of betrayal went resentment at the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.


In June 1836, William Lovett, founded the 'London Working Men’s Association for benefiting ... the useful classes’. He became the secretary and the subscription was one shilling a month. Only persons of good moral character were permitted to join! The Association represented the common radical belief - that social evils were due to bad legislation and were curable by parliamentary reform. In the same year that it was founded, the LWMA published Bronterre O'Brien's The Rotten House of Commons, being an exposition of the present state of the Franchise. 

Knaves will tell you that it is because you have no property that you are unrepresented. I tell you on the contrary, it is because you are unrepresented that you have no property. Your poverty is the result not the cause of your being unrepresented.

The People's Charter

The idea of a people’s ‘Charter’ was rooted in the myth of Magna Carta which was held to have been a statement of popular rights against the arbitrary authority of the king. It also referred to abolition of slavery and the granting of the charter of freedom to the slaves. The People’s Charter was published on 8 May 1838, primarily the work of William Lovett and the radical tailor, Francis Place. It contained the Six Points that were to define the Chartist movement:

1. manhood suffrage
2. annual parliaments
3. the ballot
4. payment of MPs
5. equal electoral districts
6. the abolition of property qualifications for parliament

The Six Points were formally adopted at a great rally in Birmingham on 6 August, 1838. Similar meetings were held throughout the country. The movement had a newspaper, the Northern Star (founded 1837), published in Leeds and edited by Feargus O’Connor. By the end of 1838 the Northern Star (priced 4½d) was selling 50,000 copies a week.

Chartist culture

Religion played an important role in the culture of the Chartists. A number of their leaders were Methodists or had been reared in Methodist homes. Meetings were held in Methodist chapels and Chartist crowds were addressed by Methodist ministers. The movement had hymns such as ‘The Charter springs from Zion’s hill’ and 'The Chartist's Song'. 


There is a good short article on Chartism in the November 2013 edition of History Today. The following quotation highlights its cultural importance.

Though its demands hinged upon universal male suffrage, the Charter attracted the support of hundreds of thousands of men and women. Chartism became for a time the structure within which a majority of industrial workers pursued their political and cultural activities. The new-born child of Chartist parents might be received into the movement at a ceremony presided over by one of its leaders and possibly given his name. They might attend a Chartist Sunday School, while parents might immerse themselves in the political and social life of the local branch of the National Charter Association: the father in an affiliated trades union and the mother in a Female Charter Association. In many towns she could shop at a Chartist co-operative store and her husband support Chartist candidates in local elections…The family's main source of national news would be a Chartist weekly paper, probably the Leeds-based Northern Star.

Female Chartists

Chartism also attracted women. In April 1839 Elizabeth Neesom, the wife of a radical tailor, founded the London Female Democratic Association. The Association pledged itself to supporting the struggle for the Charter and to opposing the 'child-murdering' and 'atrocious' new Poor Law. She argued that the main obstacle to women's full participation in the public sphere was 'apathy and timidity' and she urged women assert their right to rule themselves.

However, mainstream Chartism took little interest in women's rights. If anything, they were embarrassed by the issue of female suffrage and were worried at the thought that women might steal men’s jobs. It seems as if the women themselves were primarily interested in protecting men's jobs and in organising their own homes on middle-class lines. (Elizabeth Neesom and her husband later became preoccupied with vegetarianism.)

The National Convention

On 4 February 1839 about fifty delegates assembled in London for the National Convention of the Industrious Classes (calling itself the People’s Parliament). By far the largest contingent represented the industrial North. 

Deep divisions emerged among the delegates, and it became apparent that they were united on the Charter but little else. Some speakers advocated violence or wore the red cap of liberty. The rest urged moderation. The Chartist movement never resolved the dilemma of whether to rely on ‘moral force ‘or to contemplate physical force. And it had no strategy about what to do next if Parliament rejected the Petition.

On 7 May the National Petition was ready to be presented: it was three miles long and contained 1,280,000 signatures.  On 14 June the Petition was presented to the Commons by the Birmingham MP, Thomas Attwood. However, on 12 July his motion that the House should go into committee to consider it was voted down 235/46. Following this, there were riots in Birmingham that were put down by the police.

The Newport Rising

A confused period now followed, with much talk of fighting. Speakers, newspapers and handbills called on the people to procure arms and be ready to march when the signal was given. There is evidence of pikes being manufactured and small stores of arms accumulated.

On the night of 3/4 November some 7,000 colliers and ironworkers, led by the draper and former magistrate, John Frost,  Zephaniah Williams and William Jones led an armed march on Newport, in a monster demonstration against the arrest of Henry Vincent, a popular Chartist leader in Wales and the West. But the march was mismanaged, the authorities knew about it in advance, and the attack did not take place until after daybreak. 

The Chartists were fired on by a company of the 45th Foot. Twenty-four people were killed or died from their injuries (more than twice the death toll at Peterloo), making it the most serious armed rebellion of the nineteenth century. A hundred and twenty-five were arrested and twenty-one were charged with high treason. Frost and the other leaders were sentenced to death. However as a result of a series of meetings and demonstrations throughout the country, the death sentences were commuted to transportation for life.

The Newport rising has been the subject of some historical controversy. Whereas the march to Peterloo had been peaceful, this was probably part of a wider plan of insurrection. If so, it was the last to occur on the British mainland.

After the Newport rising the attitude of the government hardened. Police powers were reinforced and more troops sent in. Between June 1839 and June 1840 at least 543 Chartists were detained.

The second phase of Chartism

In spite of the failure of the early years Chartism did not die. New leaders and new forms of organisation appeared to continue the struggle. Feargus O'Connor toured the country addressing public meetings. Through sheer force of personality and through the influence of the Northern Star, he displaced Lovett from the leadership of the movement.

Chartist militancy was helped by the economic climate. 1842 was the worst year of the century, with the new Poor Law unable to cope. Twenty per cent of the population of Leeds were on poor relief. In Paisley, 17,000 people were said to be dying of slow starvation.

On 2 May 1842 a second Chartist petition, six miles long, was presented to the Commons with what were claimed to be 3.3m. signatures. The House voted 287/49 not to consider it. Thomas Babington Macaulay said that universal suffrage would be

fatal for the purposes for which government exists

and

utterly incompatible with the existence of civilization.

The summer of 1842 saw a wave of strikes sweep the industrial districts. In Lancashire and Yorkshire gangs of workless men went about armed with sticks and iron bars demanding relief. There were attacks on shops and clashes with the police and yeomanry - though it is not clear how far any of this was associated with Chartism. In the summer there was a general strike in the Potteries - the Plug Plot (so-called because the strikers pulled out the boiler plugs).  Many of the local leaders have been identified as Chartists. But with an improved harvest, some of the greatest misery eased, and Chartist agitation died down.

'The condition of England question

However, this did not mean that the issues that had created Chartism could be ignored. A series of novelists were engaging with what Thomas Carlyle called 'the condition of England question'. In 1848 Elizabeth Gaskell published Mary Barton. Three years earlier, Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil had argued had noted the existence of

Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws …  THE RICH AND THE POOR.

The third phase of Chartism

1847 was a general election year and the Chartists turned once more to politics. Feargus O’Connor, elected for Nottingham, became the first and last pure Chartist MP. The Revolutions of 1848 were watched closely by the leading Chartists, and Chartist orators once more addressed large and enthusiastic crowds in mass meetings. On the evening of 6 March after a meeting in Trafalgar Square a crowd marched to Buckingham Palace smashing lamps and windows on the way. Similar disturbances occurred in Glasgow and Manchester.

The Chartist Convention planned a peaceful rally on Kennington Common on 10 April, to be followed by a procession to present the Petition to the Commons. Public opinion in London was now very tense and property owners feared that the revolutions now convulsing Europe were about to spread to Britain. Appeals to the middle classes produced 10,000 special constables (one of them Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the future Napoleon III).

On 10 April crowds assembled behind banners and marched to Kennington where they were addressed by O’Connor. He claimed implausibly that 5,700,000 signatures had been appended to the Petition. (However, the actual figure, of about two million was very impressive.) The petition was loaded into three cabs and taken to Parliament, but only fifteen MPs voted for it to be considered. By 2 pm the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, was able to inform the Queen (who was at Osborne) that the crisis was safely over. Faced with 4,000 police and 85,000 volunteer special constables the demonstrators dispersed. Chartist disturbances continued in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Bradford, but essentially the movement was finished, having proved powerless against the forces of the state. 

Chartism: a summary

Chartism was an important stage in the political education of the working classes. It presented itself as  a class movement with two enemies: the tax-consuming rich and the perfidious middle classes who had betrayed them over parliamentary reform and the new Poor Law.

Chartism had its distinctive culture, one imbued with Christian ethics. Many Chartists were also Sunday school teachers, temperance workers or members of benefit clubs. There were Chartist hymns, sermons, libraries, discussion groups, choirs and sports teams.

Chartism saw radical leadership move north to the major centres of productive industry. Its heartland was industrial Lancashire and Cheshire, among outworkers, especially weavers.

Chartism was a mass movement only in times of depression. Peaks of activity coincided with troughs in the economy. However, Chartism could not be reduced to the simple assertion, made by one of its leaders, that it was ‘a knife and fork question, a bread and cheese question’. Not all its active centres were in depressed areas.

Chartists were divided between the advocates of 'moral force' and those prepared to use physical violence. But fundamentally, the fiery oratory of physical force Chartists such as Feargus O'Connor failed. His mob oratory suggested a revolutionary potential that did not exist.

There is a sense in which Chartism never went away. Chartist ideals survived into the second half of the century. Chartism gave its adherents a cultural identity and a strong sense that things would improve for working people. By 1918 all but one of the Six Points had been achieved.