Chartism

I

Introduction

Chartism, important movement of popular protest in British history. Drawing on a variety of local discontents in a period of economic distress, it mobilized working men in different parts of the country. It was always more, however, than an expression of distress, fluctuating in appeal in economically “good” and “bad” years between 1838 and the 1850s. It started with a political declaration, the People’s Six Points Charter—from which the movement took its name—published in May 1838 and drafted in London on the initiative of the London Working Men’s Association. Petitions presented to Parliament demanding the Charter were turned down three times, in 1839, 1842, and 1848. The Chartists secured none of the Six Points during the lifetime of Chartism, which broke up as a mass movement after 1848, but five of them were to be secured decades later after the movement had apparently failed. It is for this reason that Chartism has been called, in long-term perspective, “the victory of the vanquished”. In the short run it provided unique political experience for working men without either formal political power—a recognized place in the constitution—or publicly provided education.

II

The Charter

There was nothing new in what came to be called the Six Points, all familiar to radicals in the 18th century—universal manhood suffrage; annual parliaments; payment of Members of Parliament; vote by ballot; equal electoral districts; and the abolition of the existing property qualifications for Members of Parliament (£300 in land)—but William Lovett, the secretary of the Association, was at pains to explain and amplify them. For example, there would be 300 electoral districts, each containing as nearly as possible the same number of voters. Prospective Members of Parliament would need 100 signatures to obtain nomination. A register of attendance of Members would be published at the end of each session. There would be penalties for impersonation of voters and bribery. The amount of detail was as striking as the simplicity of the principles in the Points themselves. The Charter proclaimed a parliamentary ideal. In its emphasis as well as in its detail it was “democratic”, a word then unacceptable in parliamentary politics.

The Charter bore all the marks of its origin, that is, London radicalism with an explicitly and proudly working-class dimension to it, and with a strong sense of the importance of a free Press—free to express opinions and free too from fiscal duties—in informing and moving working-class people to act. All the leaders of the Association were used to the experience of “struggle”. All wanted to mobilize others. From the start London was not the only source of political drive. In Birmingham the Political Union that had been active during the Reform Bill struggle was revived and in December 1837 espoused universal suffrage in the name of the people. “Before the majesty of their united will,” it declared, “Whigs and Tories, and all dark and deceitful things will flee away.” They did not, but the enthusiastic acceptance in Birmingham of the Charter was accompanied by the drafting of a Petition that soon became as widely known as the Charter itself. “Heaven has dealt graciously with the people, but the foolishness of our rulers has made the goodness of God of no effect.”

The slogan was union, but in fact there were already serious signs of differences within the developing Chartist movement, differences related not only to political tactics or to strategy but also to local economic and social circumstances in a period of economic distress. They had started in London itself where the London Working Men’s Association was challenged from the start for its moderation in the East End. And in Birmingham Thomas Attwood, who had launched the Political Union, had a quite different approach to politics from Lovett: his main concern was for reform of the currency, which he believed would alleviate the problems of the working classes and middle classes alike. In the industrial North of England, where a bitter campaign was being fought out against the implementation of the new Poor Law of 1834, the language was often revolutionary. J. R. Stephens, its religious leader, thought of universal suffrage as a means to secure the right of “every working man in the land” to have “a good coat to his back… a good dinner upon his table… and all the blessings of life which a reasonable man could desire”.

Given such differences of experience and outlook—and they were obvious in Scotland and Wales also—the unifying power of Chartism was remarkable. It became a national movement largely because of one man, Feargus O’Connor, an Irishman, who was not himself a working man and who contributed to the divisions of leadership that dogged Chartism throughout its brief but, thanks to him, dramatic history. He had been active in London and the North of England, making himself well known before the publication of the Charter, and he was present at the Birmingham meeting that rallied to the Six Points. He took pride in the fact that he was a demagogue, “the Lion of Freedom”, and could sway the crowds; and he was prepared to use violent language, acclaiming the right of every man to bear arms in the defence of justice. Universal suffrage would change “the whole character of society”: it was “the only remedy for all our social and political maladies”.

III

The Convention

The first move of the Chartists was to elect delegates to a National Convention, itself no more a new idea than the Six Points themselves. Yet it was to be a “Convention of the Industrious Classes” and was to run in parallel to the Westminster Parliament, meeting on February 4, 1839. Some of the delegates, who thought of themselves as members of a real “People’s Parliament” and a superior one to that in Westminster, put the letters MC after their names. Others thought of themselves more modestly as representatives lobbying for signatures to a National Petition to be presented at Westminster. They were chosen by a variety of procedures, none of them, however, by ballot, and as soon as they met in London the differences in approach became apparent. The Birmingham delegates quickly withdrew. Lovett, chosen as secretary, stuck to his task but was uneasy.

Preparations for presenting the Petition to Parliament were delayed until May 7, when it was escorted on a decorated cart to the home of a sympathetic Member of Parliament. It did not make its way to Westminster until July 12, and by then the Convention, depleted in numbers, had made its way from London to Birmingham, completely disunited on the question of what it would do if Parliament turned it down, as it was bound to do. Some members wanted a general strike, others the withdrawal of money from savings banks. Some talked of physical force. When the Convention adjourned until July 1, the decision of what to do next was returned back to the “localities”, and inevitably in some of them, particularly in the North, there were noisy torchlit demonstrations with talk of violent “ulterior measures”. On July 4, back in Birmingham, two of the delegates were arrested after disturbances in the Bull Ring, and the following day when Lovett and the acting Chairman of the Convention, John Collins, from Birmingham, both of them sensible, moderate men, protested against the action of the magistrates, who had called in troops, they too were arrested. A spate of further arrests followed in all parts of the country, overshadowing the presentation to the House of Commons by a then disillusioned Attwood on July 12. It was turned down by 235 votes to 46. The Convention dissolved in confusion on September 6 on the casting vote of the Chairman, John Frost, until recently a magistrate and a former Mayor of Newport in Wales, having returned to London only as a rump.

IV

Arrests and Regrouping

There would have been more serious consequences of the confusion and the arrests had not the commander of the military appointed to deal with disturbances in the industrial north, General Sir Charles Napier, been sympathetic to the Chartists and critical of what he called “Tory injustice and Whig stupidity”. As it was, however, most of the Chartist leaders, including O’Connor, were in jail by the winter of 1840. There was one violent and itself confused disturbance at Newport in Wales on the stormy night of November 3, 1839, the “Newport Rising” that was followed by the sentencing to death (later commuted to transportation to Australia) of Frost and other local leaders. There were other aborted “risings” in other places.

The trials of Chartists gave many of them the opportunity of stating their case and their time in jail gave them time to consider how next to proceed. Clearly physical force was no answer. Scottish Chartists led the way in pressing for a system of strong and “enlightened” organization. Lovett, as always, put his trust in political education and in April 1841 founded a new—and again never large—National Association for Promoting the Political and Social Improvement of the People. In Leeds, efforts were made to ally working-class and middle-class reformers and in Birmingham ,Joseph Sturge, a Quaker corn merchant, founded a Complete Suffrage Union that demanded both universal suffrage and repeal of the Corn Laws, the single object of the middle-class led Anti-Corn Law League, since March 1839 a national organization.