HISTORY ZONE: Chartism

Feargus O'Connor: A political life

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:51:42 GMT

Paul A. Pickering Feargus O'Connor: A political life, (Merlin Press), 2008, ISBN978-0-85036-561-0

The publication of Paul Pickering's biography of Feargus O'Connor is an important event for all those who study Chartism. Given his central position in the movement and in radicalism generally from the 1830s to the mid-1850s, it is perhaps surprising that the only full-length study of his life was published as long ago as 1961 when Donald Read and Eric Glasgow produced their Feargus O'Connor: Irishman and Chartist. We have James Epstein's excellent The Lion of Freedom but it only covers the decade from 1832 to 1842 in detail paying little attention to O'Connor's life after the climactic strikes of 1842. In fact, Epstein devoted only nine pages to questions such as the Land Plan, Kennington Common and O'Connor's second period as an MP. As Pickering points out in his 'bibliographical note', 'it is notable that O'Connor is not included in the first eleven volumes of the Dictionary of Labour Biography.'

This is not, as Pickering acknowledges, a 'comprehensive biography' covering the daily minutiae of O'Connor's life but a 'sketch' of his career 'to balance...a consideration of his pre-Chartist and later-Chartist activities and to better understand his ideas...'. In that it succeeds very effectively. At the core of the book is an examination of the Irish dimension of O'Connor's career by considering his heritage, ideas and public life on both sides of the Irish Sea. For O'Connor, more than any other contemporary radical leader, bringing the 'working Saxon and Celt' together in their common struggle' lay at the heart of his thinking, something Pickering shows had roots deep in the Irish past. It was O'Connor's Irishness that provides the leit-motif for his radical career, something that is frequently played down by historians. The strength of Pickering's book is that he shows that this is the key to understanding O'Connor's involvement in the Chartist movement though, in practice, the Irish dimension only emerged as a key element within Chartism in 1848 and Chartism failed to establish firm roots in Ireland initially because of opposition from O'Connell though O'Connor persisted with his Irish mission until the late 1840s.

The achievement of the book is its success in establishing O'Connor as a more rounded and less caricatured figure within Irish and British radicalism. In the absence of a comprehensive biography, it is certain to establish itself as the key study of O'Connor's life and justifiably so.

Amazon

Merlin

The Northern Star

Mon, 12 May 2008 16:12:48 GMT

Although the Northern Star has been available for several months on-line via the British Library, unfortunately access is limited to institutions or within the British Library itself. On 13th May, as the culmination of a three-year project entitled Nineteenth Century Serial Editions, a free, fully searchable online edition of the Northern Star and five other newspapers will become available. This will be a real boon for anyone interested in Chartism.

The Chartist press provided an important unifying force within the movement[1]. The press provided a bridge with earlier movements, especially the ‘unstamped newspaper’ campaign involving Henry Hetherington, Bronterre O’Brien and John Cleave[2]. There was some continuity between the ‘War of the Unstamped’ and Chartism with the same people acting as agents, distributors, journalists and publishers. O’Connor was a prominent speaker for the unstamped press both in and out of parliament. In 1836, the Newspaper Act reduced the stamp duty to 1d. The Northern Star said the reduction “made the rich man’s paper cheaper and the poor man’s paper dearer”. The Northern Star was the most important and long-lived of the radical newspapers, published weekly[3]. It was important because it gave an understanding of Chartism to the working classes. It was in print before the Charter was drawn up and before the establishment of the National Charter Association. Initially it advocated factory reform and supported the Ten-Hour Movement and anti-Poor Law campaigns. These merged into Chartism. It also gave Chartism some semblance of unity. The London Working Men’s Association did not lead the way in print media.

The Northern Star existed for about fifteen years and sold at 4½d a copy in 1837, rising to 5d in 1844, a high cost, considering the targeted group. Because it was so expensive, it was common for people to contribute halfpennies towards the cost and then share the paper. The sales figures should be multiplied by about twenty to give some idea of its true audience.

How did the paper begin?

Initially, it was a Barnsley newspaper produced by William Hill in Peel Street. Hill, a preacher from Hull, was in financial difficulties so he sold the paper to Feargus O’Connor. O’Connor moved it to Leeds where he raised funds by popular subscription besides putting in his own money. O’Connor owned a landed estate in County Cork that gave him an income of £750 per annum. Comments from contemporaries suggest that Hill was a rather unsympathetic individual but under his editorship from 1837 to 1843, the Northern Star was an excellent paper. There is little doubt that in its most successful years, the paper owed an enormous amount to Hill’s guidance. Joshua Hobson and George Julian Harney then took over. In November 1844, it was moved to London.

Its full name was the Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser. The first issue appeared in Leeds was on 17^th November 1837 as a stamped paper at a cost of 4½d. It was published and printed by Joshua Hobson. The Northern Star was aggressively radical in tone. It was concerned with radical reform, violently opposed the Poor Law Amendment Act and supported the unstamped press and the Ten-Hour Movement. Even before the publication of the Charter, the Northern Star established the movement, which was to become Chartism. Other (later) editors included John Ardill, a Leeds brass-moulder, clerk and milk-seller, and Bronterre O’Brien, who had edited Hetherington’s Poor Man’s Guardian. Distribution was a popular movement in its own right. Agents became local organisers and local organisers became agents. Its circulation in some areas was enough to provide the distributor (who might also act as a reporter) a living. The paper thus gave Chartism a semi-professional local leadership. People were encouraged to send in reports of meetings, articles, letters and comments -- and did so by the hundreds: the Northern Star therefore gave a national perspective to Chartism.

How was it financed?

O’Connor sank much of his own money into the paper, but public subscriptions were raised at £1 per share with 10% interest. The paper’s success was immediate and the subscribers got a good return on their investment. Some eventually got their money back, which usually was unheard of. £690 was subscribed; £500 of this was from Leeds, Hull, Halifax, Bradford and Huddersfield. Because the Northern Star was a stamped newspaper, accurate records of its sales are available.

Year	Average sales per week
1838	10,000
1839	17,640
The average sales for 1839	36,000 copies a week - the height of Chartist activity. Sales did rise to 50,000 copies a week during 1839
1840	18,000
1841	13,000
1842	12,500
1843	9,000
1845-6	6,000 or less (6,000 probably the break-even point)
1847-8	12,500
1850-1	5,000 and less

Throughout most of its career, the Northern Star was a financial asset to O’Connor, who seems to have poured the money straight back into the movement.

Policy

The Northern Star initially was not a vehicle for Chartism because Chartism did not exist at the time. It only became a Chartist paper after 1838. Its readership is likely to have been in excess of sales because the paper was bought by groups or placed in coffee houses and/or public houses and it was read aloud for the benefit of the illiterate. The Northern Star was a mixture of education, encouragement and advice. It reported on all aspects of Chartism and gave a complete picture of what was going on. It even included articles from rivals and opponents of Feargus O’Connor. It was a full-sized paper and had a greater circulation than the Leeds Mercury[4]. It contained advertisements, general and commercial news, national and local reports, letters, editorials and reviews. Because it had so many local reporters, its news coverage was one of the best in the country for the sort of events that interested Chartists. It was a good, professional newspaper.

How did the paper develop?

O’Connor was central to its existence, and it was an important factor in his leadership of Chartism. The Northern Star kept him in the forefront of people’s interest, even when O’Connor was in York gaol between 1840 and 1841. He emerged from imprisonment with his reputation much enhanced. There is some discussion as to whether he used the paper merely to advance his own political career or because he really wanted to educate the working class. A daily evening paper, the Evening Star, was attempted between July 1842 and February 1843 but it failed.

In November 1844, O’Connor moved the Northern Star to London as the Northern Star and National Trades Journal in an attempt to broaden the base of support. Hobson went as editor but disliked London. Harney then took over, helped by G. A. Fleming and Ernest Jones. In 1849, O’Connor and Harney quarrelled over ‘red republicanism’ and Harney left. William Rider, a Leeds radical, took over for a few months and then in 1850 Fleming took over. In 1852, he bought it for £100. On 20^th March 1852, it appeared as just The Star, a radical paper but no longer a Chartist medium. In April 1852, it was taken over by Harney for a few months as the Star of Freedom, and then it collapsed. The end of the Northern Star in many respects marks the end of Chartism. Donald Read says of the sales figures for the Northern Star: “As well as showing the extent of working-class political enthusiasm, these [sales] figures prove that illiteracy was not an obstacle to the success of a working-class newspaper, despite the low standard of educational provision for the poor at this time”[5].

What was the importance of the Northern Star?

It kept Chartism alive, with a sense of continuity. Chartism was held together by the Northern Star, which welcomed and reported all radical initiatives of all types: Owenism, co-operation, trade union activity and so on. Its readership was larger than its circulation and it had a high quality of staff and news.
The circulation of the Northern Star, taken together with the many smaller or short-lived journals amounted to an enormous number of pages of print. If the great mass of pamphlet literature is added to this, it becomes clear that Chartism was in many places a movement of literate people. How far the printed word was a unifying force and how far it was divisive is a difficult question. The press provided a sense of national unity that the platform could not provide. It reached districts regularly, which would have been inaccessible to speakers or organisers. But it also allowed oppositional views to be circulated and some papers, like the National Reformer published in the Isle of Man between 1844 and 1847, were largely concerned with carrying on personal vendettas against other leaders.
Its popularity helped O’Connor to dominate Chartism. His letters and speeches were given prominent coverage.
It played on the baser instincts of the workers and encouraged class conflict by flattering the virtues of Chartists, and hence was opposed by such men as Lovett and Place. The paper appealed at some level to most of the active people in the movement.
As an early exercise in mass working-class propaganda, it alarmed the government.

[1] Dorothy Thompson The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood Press, 1984, pages 55-70 contains an excellent discussion of the Chartist press.

[2] Short biographies of John Cleave can be found in J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour History, volume VI, 1982, pages 59-64 and Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 138-141

[3] Stephen Roberts ‘Who wrote to the Northern Star?’, in Owen Ashton, Robert Fyson and Stephen Roberts (eds.) The Duty of Discontent: Essays for Dorothy Thompson, Mansell, 1995, pages 55-70 is a valuable study of readership.

[4] Donald Read Press and People 1790-1850: Opinion in Three English Cities, Arnold, 1961 examines the development of the largely middle class press in Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield. He also discusses the Northern Star, pages 49-50 and 98-102.

[5] Donald Read Press and People 1790-1850: Opinion in Three English Cities, Edward Arnold, 1961, page 101.

Aspects of Chartism: Chartism and Slavery 'distinction without difference' 3

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:45:16 GMT

‘Moral radicalism’

Contemporary reformers in and around Birmingham were convinced that the Birmingham Political Union had led the popular movement that brought about parliamentary reform in 1832. For Thomas Attwood and his supporters what made this possible was the union of middle and working classes in the town. This union of all classes was, the BPU argued, based on the unity of interest of all the ‘productive classes’, a shorthand term for both manufacturers and workers. Whether valid or not, the myth of class collaboration as a means of achieving reform was a powerful one in Birmingham and it is not surprising that later attempts to draw together middle class radical and the more respectable elements of Chartism drew its inspiration from the BPU[1].

The precise relationship between political, ideological and social factors was, however, more complex than this suggests. The BPU may have proclaimed the success of the alliance of the working and middle classes, but there was considerable dissatisfaction among working people with the 1832 settlement. This contributed to the re-emergence of the BPU between 1837 and 1839 and Attwood’s somewhat pragmatic conversion to the programme of universal suffrage he had previously opposed. In many respects, Attwood was responding to changes in the local economy towards the increasing factory production of various trades, downward pressure on wages and fear of unemployment and under-employment[2]. This had led to developing economic conflict with employers and resentment at the exclusion of working class representatives from a share in the leadership of the BPU. The notion of a ‘unity of interest’ looked increasingly precarious by the middle years of the 1830s and collapsed completely in 1838-39 with the incorporation of Birmingham in late 1838 and the decision by BPU leaders to call in detachments of the metropolitan police in mid-1839 to control rioting crowds in the Bull Ring.

One of the strengths of middle class radicalism in Birmingham up to the late 1830s was that although it was bankers, manufacturers and businessmen who took the lead, they were able to draw on the support of those exponents of ‘moral radicalism’ among the town’s middle class. The attitude of ‘moral radicals’ was explicitly shaped by non-Anglican religious loyalties and their conviction of the possibilities of class harmony through class collaboration. This perspective was not grounded in any socio-economic analysis and they had no evident attraction to Attwood’s currency theories, but their presence in the BPU does seem to have made a difference. Attwood and his supporters were abolitionists and maintained this position after 1833 and they found common ground with the religious reformers over factory regulation and opposition to the financial claims of the Established Church.

The ‘moral radicals’ shared a number of the specific objectives of the Attwood group and the more general aspiration to class collaboration. However, by 1835, their views on class collaboration began to diverge from the emphasis of the BPU. A more distinctive moral radicalism was given voice in a new weekly paper, the Reformer and in its successor, the Philanthropist. In addition to their opposition to West Indian apprenticeship, support for freer trade, the ballot and further franchise reform, the moral radicals directed their views at the aspiration to respectability among the working class by advocating temperance and what was later called ‘rational leisure’. There was also a strong element of patriotism in their thinking. The duty of Christian reformers was to end corruption and they believed in ‘reform of every abuse from the throne to the poor house’[3]. This led to increasing tension with the BPU and the Philanthropist concluded before the end of 1837 that the BPU not longer commanded the support it had in 1832 and lacked the influence to turn the Whig government out and was simply hoping for something better from the Tories[4]. With the collapse of the Attwood-working class alliance by 1839, the moral radicals were best placed to establish a new union of the classes. Sturge certainly saw himself as leading any such alliance. The result was the eventual creation of the Complete Suffrage Union in early 1842.

The Complete Suffrage Union: the high point of co-operation

Was Sturge being politically naïve in believing that a Parliament elected by the people could be trusted to legislate for the people? Francis Place certainly had worries on this score. Sturge had, however, taken the moral high-ground of the right to the vote just as he had accepted the right of slaves to freedom irrespective of how that right might be exercised. This was apparent in the ‘Declaration’ he drew up to be circulated for signature. It articulated the principle that taxation without representation was tyranny and that the right to a ‘full, free and fair’ franchise was based on both constitutional and Christian principles[5]. By 1842, a provisional committee based in Birmingham had begun preparations for a conference in April.

The Birmingham conference in April 1842 launched the Complete Suffrage Union[6] amid high hopes for a successful coalition. It recognised the natural right to the suffrage and demanded the vote for every male aged twenty-one regardless of property qualifications, called for a secret ballot, annual parliaments and the payment of MPs. This was all condensed into a resolution for Sharman Crawford to introduce in the House of Commons. Lord Brougham agreed to launch it to the House of Lords and to present the memorial to the Queen. This showed that there was awareness among middle class radicals of the need for conciliation on their part. They announced that it was wrong to assume that a memorial embodying principles agreed on the preliminary discussions was intended to defeat the Charter. Nonetheless, the imprint of the outlook of moral radicalism and anti-slavery was clear in the minutes and records of the conference. The language of ‘political slavery’ was used widely and a proposed pattern of operation through correspondents, lecturers and missionaries, tracts and pamphlets as well as propaganda in religious periodicals such as the Nonconformist and the Eclectic Review was reminiscent of anti-slavery campaigns.

Many abolitionists rallied to support Sturge. Nonconformist clergymen were among the most active as many were already sympathetic to the ‘Chartist churches’ established among the working people. In this groups were: Edward Miall, J.H. Hinton of London[7], J.P. Mursell of Leicester[8], J.W. Massie of Manchester[9], Doctor John Ritchie of Edinburgh[10], Thomas Swam of Birmingham[11] and Henry Solly of Yeovil[12]. The most noted organiser of Chartist churches, Arthur O’Neill, worked with Sturge in Birmingham. Influential abolitionist ministers of the established church included Patrick Brewster and Thomas Spencer of Bath[13]. Spencer and Solly had the most direct contact with the working class. Scottish abolitionist supporters of Sturge included James Moir, John Ure, James Turner and Andrew Paton from the Glasgow area, Baillie Turner and John Dunlop of Edinburgh. Support also came from the League especially from Archibald Prentice, P.A. Taylor and Dr John Bowring as well as from Lord Brougham and Daniel O’Connell, prominent anti-slavery politicians. The moral radicals were also encouraged by the emergence of ‘new move’ Chartism; this was just the kind of respectable radicalism that was most likely to appeal to Sturge and his religious friends. Leading Chartists, including William Lovett, Henry Vincent (as the leading exponent of teetotal Chartism his attendance was immediately encouraging to temperance reformers among the moral radicals), John Collins and Bronterre O’Brien[14] who were already committed to the anti-slavery cause also supported Sturge.

There were, however, notable absentees. Colonel T.P. Thompson was sceptical of Sturge’s approach believing that Chartism would drag the CSU down. Edward Baines did not accept that it was possible to unite such a disparate collection of reformers effectively. In addition, Baines believed that, after 1832, the middle class electorate had to be preserved from being overwhelmed by the uneducated masses and for many years was opposed to the complete suffrage proposals or even household suffrage. Joseph John Gurney, probably the leading figure of the evangelical Quakers, was hostile to Chartist politics. This was largely the consequence of his views on American democracy that he experienced first-hand in the late 1830s. He believed that democracy was no good unless it was also a theocracy and he especially disliked the habit of oppressive popular violence in the democratic system.

What made the Complete Suffrage Union different from earlier attempts at class reconciliation was its acceptance of universal suffrage as necessary to forge a cross-class alliance. This posed a real problem for O’Connor and throughout 1842, while expressing personal respect for Sturge he consistently resisted any Chartist alliance with the CSU. The Northern Star opposed the formation of the CSU in April 1842 on the grounds that two national associations committed to universal suffrage could not co-exist. It was never likely that the O’Connorite wing of Chartism would embrace the moral radicalism that informed the middle class leadership of the CSU. O’Connor’s attitude remained ambivalent. The CSU was too closely associated with free trade and the Anti-Corn Law League to be acceptable. O’Connor initially conducted a fierce campaign against the CSU, which was obliged to adopt the Charter in all but name, but recognised the tactical advantage of an accommodation with middle class radicals and came out in favour of class collaboration in July 1842. This strategy of infiltration led to widespread Chartist support for Sturge when he stood for the open and radical constituency of Nottingham at a by-election in the summer. Although the contest was close, Sturge lost. O’Connor did not seek an alliance with the CSU but rather the incorporation of a section of the middle class into the Chartist movement. He told a Chartist meeting at St Pancras in September 1842[15] “We will stand firm and united – We will listen to no coalition, no half measures. Mahomet must come to the mountain…We are the mountain – we are the people.”

The points of the Charter were accepted but they were tied to a repudiation of physical force and an exclusive reliance on ‘a moral agency’. Although the Chartist members of the conference did not dissent from this, signs of future difficulties did emerge. Lovett and his allies would not budge on the Charter itself. No alternative definition of complete suffrage was acceptable. He argued that acceptance of the principles of the Charter without its name made the unity of classes less likely since the Charter had become a symbolic statement for working people. Miall and Spencer voiced the unease of some of the middle class radicals that the Chartists were trying to dictate the terms of the alliance and, as a result, the decision on the status of the Charter was postponed until the autumn.

There was nothing inevitable about the failure of collaboration, at least between the kinds of working class radicals in Birmingham and those present at the April conference. By late April 1842, there were fifty local associations and the CSU presented a rival parliamentary petition to that of the National Charter Association: it too was heavily defeated. The April conference had adjourned with the intention of meeting again in the autumn. However, the summer of 1842 saw widespread unemployment followed by demonstrations and arrests and it was this, more than anything else that destroyed the substantial common ground between middle and working class radicals. Consequently, the meeting was postponed until December. By the autumn, under pressure from Chartist hard-liners and by his failure to attract substantial middle class converts, O’Connor reversed his position and again attacked the CSU as ‘a League job’. A conference to try to determine a common programme was called to take place in the saloon of the Mechanics Institution, New Hall Street, Birmingham from 27^th to 30^th December 1842. Weeks of jockeying for position followed, with each faction trying to send the most delegates. O’Connor and other representatives of the NCA stood in the election to nominate delegates. This proved successful and O’Connor was elected as one of the six delegates for Sturge’s home town of Birmingham. The result was a conference packed with Chartist delegates despite prior agreement.

The irony was that everyone who attended the December conference agreed on goals but it foundered on naming the document through which those aims should be publicised. The middle class radicals insisted on the adoption of a 96-clause ‘New Bill of Rights’ for universal suffrage instead of the emotive ‘Charter’. This was an attempt to disassociate middle class radicalism from the anarchic confusion associated with O’Connor and his supporters. Things did not start well. Thomas Beggs, a Nottingham delegate, presented a series of resolutions, supporting the six points of the Charter, asking that the conference support “such means only for obtaining the legislative recognition of them as are of a strictly just, peaceful, legal and constitutional character” and take as the basis for discussion a Bill of Rights prepared by the council of the Complete Suffrage Union. The two measures were largely identical as both parties to the conference admitted, but there was an absolute deadlock over the term ‘Chartist’. Lovett, as leader of the Chartist faction at the conference, proposed in the interests of harmony that both bills be withdrawn or that both be considered clause by clause. But all attempts at conciliation failed, Lovett was not prepared to accept this and tactically (and temporarily) joined with O’Connor in substituting ‘Charter’ for ‘Bill’ and this was carried by the decisive majority of 193 to 94. When it became clear that the Charter had the support of the majority of delegates, Joseph Sturge resigned from the chair and withdrew from the conference with many of his supporters. Further splits followed as the conference went on, and by its end, the 300 to 400 delegates present at its opening had fallen to just 37. Neither side would accept the other’s conditions for joint action. Class collaboration was ended, the CSU was allowed to wither and O’Connor’s grip of the movement was tightened. The Birmingham Journal provided an apt summary of events: it was the old story of marriage on Monday, quarrels on Tuesday and divorce on Wednesday. The two partners had agreed on their affections but could not agree on the name of their child and so strangled it[16].

A falling-off of support?

The experiment with the Complete Suffrage Union was the high point of abolitionist co-operation with Chartism from the viewpoint both of the level of support and the degree of public commitment. Though there was a falling-off of support was caused by a sense of disillusion among some abolitionists and anti-slavery organisations, a significant number of individual abolitionists carried on the agitation for suffrage reform. Sturge continued to tour the country speaking for reform and his newspaper, The Pilot, advocated the franchise as basic to other reforms and necessary even to obtain the repeal of the Corn Law. Abolitionist MPs sympathetic to Complete Suffrage or Chartism in the 1840s included John Bowring, C.P. Villiers, Edward Miall, William Johnson Fox[17], George Thompson and Sharman Crawford. Other abolitionists continued to work through local politics, lectures and publications. Of particular importance were James Silk Buckingham, W.H. Ashurst[18], Albert Albright and his nephew Charles Gilpin, William and Mary Howitt[19], W.J. Linton, F.R. Lees[20], W.E. Forster, Thomas Spencer, Henry Solly, Samuel Roberts of Wales[21], James Haughton of Dublin[22] and several Scots including Patrick Brewster, John Ritchie, James Moir and Alexander Duncannon[23]. The Complete Suffrage Union survived in Scotland after it had died out in other areas,

The increasing sensitivity of British abolitionists to the justice of Chartist demands is reflected in the degree to which visiting Americans were drawn into discussions on the similarities between slavery and working class exploitation and thus into arguments about where priorities should lie. James and Lucretia Mott, John A. Collins, Charles Redmond and William Lloyd Garrison were all influenced by what they saw of working class conditions in Britain. Collins, for example was persuaded that the anti-slavery movement had helped open eyes to other oppressive systems and saw British society was resting on a dangerous structure just as American society rested dangerously on slavery. The late 1840s and 1850s brought an increased flood of American abolitionists to Britain, among them many blacks who were often appalled by the conditions of the British poor. Frederick Douglass, most prominent of all black abolitionists, specifically called himself a Chartist and lectured to large crowds that included working class people. In 1846, Douglass, Garrison and Henry C. Wright, all committed to Chartist principle, worked closely with British abolitionists. They preached in Chartist churches and Complete Suffrage gatherings.

At the same time, several Chartist leaders, notably Lovett and Vincent, strengthened their links with organised anti-slavery groups. Both took part in the formation of George Thompson’s Anti-Slavery League in 1846 and were active in that group’s efforts to pressure the Evangelical Alliance to refuse fellowship to visiting pro-slavery American clergymen. This interest in black slavery continued within the Chartist movement into the 1850s and this is a clear indication of the degree to which the two causes influenced each other. The success of the abolitionists in winning their fight for emancipation and against the apprenticeship system persuaded some Chartists to use their strategy to gain support. More importantly, the Chartists adapted the arguments against slavery for use in their own cause capitalising on abolitionist success in heightening the British public’s awareness of oppression. By equating working class exploitation with slavery, the Chartists forced many abolitionists to extend their vision.

Conclusion

It is easy to exaggerate the significance of Chartist links with the abolitionists. The range of responses to Chartism exhibited by anti-slavery reformers underlines the conclusion that there was no single set of abolitionist answers to working class grievances. Mass support for abolitionism in the 1830s, though it died away after 1838, co-existed with sympathy, ambivalence and much hostility among abolitionists towards claims for greater autonomy and greater influence by the leaders of Chartism. Above all, efforts by abolitionists to work with Chartists achieved very little. However, the abolitionists in general and Sturge’s supporters in particular anticipated the development of the more harmonious society that developed in urban and industrial centres in the late 1840s and 1850s. They also accepted that, if collaboration was to work, it required acknowledgement by the middle class of an equality of esteem as well as rights of working people and meant acknowledging that collaboration did not simply mean middle class leadership. This does not alter the reality of co-operation, which worked best where there was some convergence in attitudes and values between middle and working class radicals. When Oastler said that the causes of anti-slavery and Chartism were ‘one and the same’, he recognised the mutual influence that they had over each other. This was the achievement of class collaboration.

[1] Carlos Flick The Birmingham Political Union and the Movements for Reform in Britain 1830-1839, Folkestone, 1978 and Clive Behagg ‘An Alliance with the Middle Class: the Birmingham Political Union and Early Chartism’, in James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working Class Radicalism and Culture 1830-60, Macmillan, 1982, pages 60-61, 67.

[2] Clive Behagg Politics & Production in the Early Nineteenth Century, Routledge, 1990, especially pages 158-222 is an invaluable revisionist study that challenges the standard interpretation of the social relations of production in the workshop sector especially in Birmingham.

[3] Philanthropist, 4^th February 1836.

[4] Philanthropist, 21^st December 1837.

[5] The Northern Star, 19^th May 1842 facetiously objected to Sturge’s principle that all who were not a burden on the state should have the vote. This, said the editor, would exclude all the clergy, the upper class and most of the middle class.

[6] On the Complete Suffrage Union, James Epstein The Lion of Freedom, Croom Helm, 1982, pages 286-302 is the best examination of Chartist responses. Alexander Wilson ‘The Suffrage Movement’ in P. Hollis (ed.) Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England, London, 1974, pages 80-104 considers the 1840s and the 1850s with a useful section on the CSU. Alex Tyrrell Joseph Sturge and the Moral Radical Party in Early Victorian Britain, London, 1987 is the standard biography

[7] Hinton worked with Sturge in organising the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and was editor of the British Emancipator.

[8] Mursell was pastor of the Bond Street Independent Chapel in Leicester and was active in the Reform agitation and the Anti-Corn Law League.

[9] Massie was an Anti-Corn Law activist and helped organise the Anti-Slavery League.

[10] James Ritchie of the Secessionist church in Edinburgh had taken part in the Scottish abolition movement since the organisation of the Glasgow and Edinburgh societies in 1833.

[11] Thomas Swan was a Baptist minister. He was an active member of the Birmingham Anti-Slavery Society and a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1843.

[12] On Solly, see his autobiography These Eighty Years, Or The Story of an Unfortunate Life, 1893. He was a relative newcomer to the anti-slavery cause largely because of the publicity surrounding the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. He went to Yeovil on his first Unitarian pastorate and was challenged by John Bainbridge, the local Chartist leader to explain how he could preach Sunday after Sunday about Christ and yet did nothing to relieve the crushing oppression of the poor and was persuaded by the Chartist arguments. He spoke for the Charter at the ministers’ conference in 1841 and was an enthusiastic support of Sturge and the CSU but was one of the few abolitionists who voted with Lovett to retain the name of the Charter against Sturge who wanted to discard it.

[13] Spencer, like Brewster was outspoken against the established church’s failure to meet the needs of working people and insisted that it was a Christian’s duty to be political in the cause of the oppressed. He spoke in favour of the Ten Hours’ Bill, the unjust tax system, the standing army and other unjust state institutions.

[14] O’Brien had attacked the limited sympathies of abolitionists in the 1830s but seemed to have revised his attitude by 1842 to the worth of working with those of the middle class who were more acceptable because they were not Anglican but nonconformist in religion.

[15] Northern Star, 17^th September 1842.

[16] Birmingham Journal, 31^st December 1842. Bronterre O’Brien put the primary blame for failure to agree on Thomas Spencer, J. Ritchie, Patrick Brewster and Lawrence Heyworth in British Statesman, 31^st December 1842.

[17] Fox was interested in extending educational opportunities, women’s rights and Chartism though he disliked O’Connor’s approach. After the Chartist failure of 1848, he wrote Counsels to the Working Class, in which he argued for the need for co-operation between middle and working classes.

[18] William Ashurst was a radical London solicitor who championed the cause of the poor, the Charter and equal rights for women.

[19] The Howitts took over The People’s Journal and continued it as People’s and Howitt’s Journal. They were active in the Co-operative League and on behalf of Mechanics’ Institutes.

[20] F.R. Lees, who joined the Chartists, published The Truthmaker in which he frequently reprinted anti-slavery as well as Chartist materials.

[21] Samuel Roberts of Llanbrynmair supported numerous reforms including anti-slavery, manhood suffrage and education, abolition of the death penalty and disestablishment of the church. In 1843, he founded a monthly magazine Y Cronicl.

[22] James Haughton was one of the main leaders of the Irish anti-slavery movement. He favoured the suffrage for men and women as long as they were literate and not on parish relief.

[23] Alexander Duncannon was pastor of a Congregational church in Falkirk and was active in the Scottish abolitionist movement. He wanted a fusion of all reform groups including Chartism, anti-slavery, temperance and anti-capital punishment.

Aspects of Chartism: Chartism and Slavery 'distinction without difference 2

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:38:41 GMT

Emancipation as radical stimulus

The passage of the Emancipation Act in 1833 provided an ideal opportunity to contrast what was being done for black slaves with the neglect shown to ‘white slaves’. Two features of the Act provided Chartists with ammunition to attack the government: the payment of £20 million compensation to slave owners and the apprenticeship system set up to prepare slaves for full freedom. This let Chartists point out that the government was doing more for black slaves than for white workers and that what was being done for slaves was at the expense of British workers. The Whigs were the focus for their attack but the Chartists also accused anti-slavery societies and anti-slavery leaders of hypocrisy. As in the case of the Poor Law, the propaganda seemed to put Chartists and abolitionists on opposite sides of the argument.

As soon as the Emancipation Act was passed, the Poor Man’s Guardian declared that the compensation money would be ‘extracted from the bones of the white slaves’ of Britain[1]. J.R. Stephens took the view that it was the labouring children who were paying the £20 million compensation so that adult black apprentices in Jamaica could enjoy an eight-hour day. Abolitionists exerted themselves in seeking enforcement of the Emancipation Act but they were, in general, unwilling to limit the hours for working children at home. The radical press repeatedly pointed out the conditions in which British apprentices lived and worked; how men in the army and navy were flogged much as slaves were; and, that after 1833 West Indian slaves had the prospect of complete freedom but that British workers had no such expectation. The impact on Chartism is evident in the words of the National Petition in 1838: ‘Our slavery has been exchanged for an apprenticeship to liberty, which has aggravated the painful feelings of our social degradation, by adding to them the sickening of still deferred hope.’[2]

In their attacks on the Whigs for compensating slave owners, the Chartists found that they had many abolitionist allies who argued that it was the slaves not the slave owners who deserved compensation. Immediately after the passage of the Emancipation Act, a protest statement to this effect was signed by many prominent abolitionists including Joseph Sturge. In parliament, Daniel O’Connell objected to both compensation and apprenticeship. The Glasgow Emancipation Society passed a resolution saying that all parts of the act should be fully enforced before any compensation should be paid and there were similar expressions of opposition from anti-slavery societies across the country[3]. Abolitionists were as outspoken in their opposition to compensation as were Bronterre O’Brien, Richard Oastler and Henry Hetherington. It was clear on this issue at least that Chartists and many abolitionists shared common ground.

The widespread support for emancipation meant that Chartists could not go too far in attacking the anti-slavery movement‘s shortcomings since this invited the accusation of being pro-slavery. Their strategy was to outflank the abolitionists by demonstrating that they were opposed to all types of slavery everywhere. This was apparent in ‘A Hint to Mr Buxton MP’ that appeared in the London Dispatch and People’s Political and Social Reformer edited by Henry Hetherington and in the Northern Liberator where the editor said that he hated slavery as much as anyone and blasted the House of Commons for voting to continue it under the guise of apprenticeship. Bronterre O’Brien, in a letter to the editor of the Northern Star, commended Brougham’s stand on apprenticeship but went on the recommend that if his Lordship really wanted to end slavery, he needed to look closer to home[4]. The dilemma the Chartists faced was that to call for the immediate ending of apprenticeship meant diverting efforts away from demands for manhood suffrage: the Northern Star actually came close to apologising for this[5]. Chartist newspapers took much the same position in emphasising that the issue was not a choice between chattel and wage slavery: O’Brien put it well when he wrote that to contrast white and black slavery was to create a ‘distinction without a difference’[6].

Beyond emancipation

Once apprenticeship in the West Indies was ended, anti-slavery activists were free to champion a new cause, Chartists sought to gain their support. Richard Oastler’s appeal in the Northern Star called on abolitionists now to help British working men ‘our cause being one and the same—they must now help us’[7]. Oastler recognised that the political momentum of the emancipation movement should be capitalised on and that loosening the shackles of black slaves would inevitably help loosen the bonds of white workers. It was, however, Joseph Sturge, the Birmingham Quaker abolitionist and a central figure in the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society who was critical in moving the debate towards an alliance to try to attain the Chartist goal of manhood suffrage[8]. He, along with several other abolitionists, was at the centre of the political manoeuvring between 1838 and 1842.

It is important to recognise that many Chartists had long been abolitionists and like earlier radicals such as Cartwright and Cobbett were fully aware of the indivisible nature of the issues of black and white slavery. William Lovett and John Collins were among the first to spell out its meaning for Chartism. When Lovett spoke of ‘Tyrants [who] delight to crush the yielding, suppliant slave’, he conjured up in one sweeping phrase images of slaveholding planters, factory overseers and upper-class bureaucrats[9]. Lovett, along with Hetherington and others, organised the London Working Men’s Association in 1836 and its ‘Address to the Working Classes of Europe’ posed the question: ‘Where, but from the ranks of labour, have the despots of Europe raised their fighting slaves to keep their brother slaves in awe’.[10] While in its ‘Address to the working classes in the United States’, though bemoaning that democratic America could tolerate legal oppression, reasoned that ‘Surely, it cannot be for the interests of the Working Classes that these prejudices should be fostered—this degrading traffic be maintained.’[11] John Collins, speaking at a Chartist rally in Manchester, said that the one stain on the Star-Spangled Banner was slavery which, like the slavery of children in England, did not proceed from her democratic institutions but from vestiges of aristocratic rule, words that were to be repeated in his and Lovett’s Chartism: a New Organisation of the People published in 1841..

Other abolitionists appeared at meetings of the LWMA and as a result were connected with the beginnings of Chartism. Daniel O’Connell’s relationship with Chartism fluctuated. He certainly played a significant role in drawing up the Charter though he soon fell out with Lovett and Hetherington over his attitude to trade unionism and especially the Glasgow spinners prosecuted in 1837. Even so, O’Connell defended his credentials as a friend of Chartism and continued to speak and write on the issue of slavery. He wrote in the Northern Liberator, ‘Yes, you are slaves so long as the law allows a ‘master class’ to have political privileges’[12].

The Charter was published in May 1838 and then presented to public meetings to gain mass support. Newspaper accounts show that anti-slavery supporters attended and sometimes played a leading role in these meetings. For example, in Glasgow[13], the first Chartist meeting on 21^st May 1838 was chaired by James Turner of Thrushgrove, a long-time anti-slavery advocate. James Moir and John Ure, both member of the Glasgow Emancipation Society were also involved in planning meetings in the city. In the Midlands, August 1^st was deliberately chosen as the date for a local demonstration to coincide with Emancipation Day in the West Indies so that speakers could capitalise on the opportunity to denounce slavery at home. The main speech was given by Henry Vincent[14], another Chartist leader who ascribed his political motivation to early anti-slavery convictions. One of the most important Chartist meetings was held in London in September in Palace Yard opposite Westminster Hall where Parliament was sitting[15]. Apart from Lovett, other abolitionists including T. Perronet Thompson and the Sheffield poet Ebenezer Elliott[16] spoke in favour of the Charter. The meeting thrust George Julian Harney[17], another Chartist who had long been an abolitionist centre stage in the movement. His growing involvement coincided with the evolving debate between the ‘moral’ and ‘physical’ force wings of Chartism. Most abolitionists preferred the ‘moral force’ approach because of their strong religious feelings and this put them on a collision course with Feargus O’Connor and his supporters.

The religious sentiments of abolitionists were most clearly expressed by the Reverend Patrick Brewster of Paisley who, as early as 1820 had used his pulpit to proclaim his support for the working class and their political aspirations. In his Christian and Socialist Sermons, he revealed the sufferings of the poor and the power of the rich[18]. He declared that having dared to seek justice for African slaves in defiance of vested interests, it was equally the duty of the people to seek justice in their own country. He believed it was Christian influence that had banned both slavery and the slave trade and he denounced the British ruling class and the laws that maintained unfair privileges. The suffering of slaves, including the white slaves of ‘Christian autocrats’, was greater in total, he declared, than all the suffering that came from social convulsions and insurrections against despotism. Though suspended from his pulpit for a year, Brewster held Edinburgh Chartists to a ‘moral force’ position while Glasgow Chartists joined the camp of the Scottish O’Connorite, Doctor John Taylor. The ensuing contest for leadership left the Scottish Chartist hopelessly divided[19].

The O’Connorite wing of Chartism was increasingly concerned by the divisive effects of ‘Christian’ attitudes towards labour’s problems. They also began to interrupt Anti-Corn Law meetings. From the Chartist point of view, this was not interruption of a good cause but a method of carrying the cause further than the narrow platform of one issue. By 1840, their disruptive tactic was extended to all meetings that did not give priority to the Charter. The World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London in the summer of 1840 offered an excellent prospect because it led to local anti-slavery societies holding numerous meetings. There were attempts to take over anti-slavery meetings in Newcastle[20] and Norwich[21]: in Newcastle confrontation between Chartists and abolitionists was only avoided when the gas lights were put out but in Norwich the Chartists failed to substitute a resolution against slavery at home for one against black slavery in America. The largest disturbance took place in Glasgow in August 1840 when Chartists tried to take over the annual meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society[22]. These disruptions have been cited by historians as evidence of rivalry and antagonism with abolitionists though in fact Chartist disruption was a planned tactic used at public meetings of every variety. Certainly, this tactic alienated some abolitionists but the ensuing debates did result in other anti-slavery activists re-examining their views on and definition of oppression. Levels of hostility or sympathy towards Chartism co-existed within anti-slavery societies and families. For example, after the disruption of the Norwich meeting, the archdeacon acknowledged the necessity for anti-slavery societies to be aware of the needs at home as well as those abroad[23] while Anna Gurney sought to counteract Chartist influence by distributing bibles in the town.

Many abolitionists were torn between the competing appeals of Chartism and the Corn Law repeal. The middle class was especially concerned about direct action by Chartists and even Francis Place criticised Chartists for raising false hopes as they operated under the delusion that threats could move the government. Many abolitionists preferred to support the League or at least use it as an excuse for not backing Chartism. Repeal had the advantage of seeming less radical and more easily attained and was therefore a reasonable first step. Although many Chartists also favoured repeal, their conviction was that it would be only a half-way measure. Genuine improvement in working class conditions, they believed, would only come with political emancipation through manhood suffrage. It was from this position that Joseph Sturge sought to forge an alliance between abolitionists, Anti-Corn Law Leaguers and Chartists because he had no more fear of giving the vote to the people than he had of giving freedom to the slaves[24]. In reaching this conclusion, Sturge was influenced by what he saw as the need to defuse the growing tensions between middle and working classes in the wake of the Birmingham riots and the Newport rising in 1839 and as a result of his visit to the United States in 1841 on an anti-slavery mission. There he noted the relative comfort and prosperity of workers (other than slaves) and concluded that[25] ‘it is quite evident that the statesmen who would elevate the moral standard of our working population, must begin by removing the physical depression and destitution in which a large proportion of them, without any fault of their own, are compelled to drag out a weary and almost hopeless existence’. Sturge was afforded the opportunity of putting his ideas into practice with the publication of a series of letters on the necessity of bringing the classes into cooperation by Edward Miall[26], the editor of the London Nonconformist in the autumn of 1841[27].

Sturge’s chief rival in the competing anti-slavery societies, George Thompson, also decided in favour of coalition with the Chartists. Thompson was the leader of the British wing of the Garrisonians[28], while Sturge was affiliated to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Their agreement in principle meant that both abolitionist factions were now influenced by sympathy for and cooperation with Chartism. It could be argued that Chartism was the catalyst bringing the two factions into a new, though temporary spirit of co-operation. Both Sturge and Thompson were members of the Anti-Corn Law League and, as early as 1839, Thompson had suggested that the three groups (the League, the anti-slavery societies and Chartism) were pursuing issues that were all part of a single larger question. By the autumn of 1841, the consensus of opinion was that the Anti-Corn Law League could not succeed without the working class though it was not until 1842 that Thompson, rather apologetically, publicly joined the Chartists. Both Sturge and Thompson recognised the importance of public opinion in pushing government reform and now, together with Richard Cobden and Charles Villiers agreed that they must now show the government ‘that the masses are with us, or they will defy and defeat us’[29]. The British Garrisonian radicals and many of Sturge’s supporters in the early 1840s had concluded that, whatever their personal anxieties, class legislation was a fundamental source of evil in society.

[1] Poor Man’s Guardian, 6^th July 1833.

[2] Quoted in R.G. Gammage History of the Chartist Movement 1837-1854, 2^nd ed., 1894, reprinted Augustus M. Kelley, 1969, page 88.

[3] British Emancipator, 3^rd January 1838 and The Reformer, 19^th June 1835 both contain details of opposition among anti-slavery societies to compensation.

[4] Chartist attitudes were expressed in Northern Liberator, 17^th April 1838 but also in issues between April and June 1838 and in the Northern Star, 10^th March and 14^th April 1838 and 8^th November 1839.

[5] Northern Star, 26^th May 1838.

[6] Northern Liberator, 8^th November 1838.

[7] Northern Star, 5^th May 1838.

[8] Sturge became directly involved with Chartism in Birmingham in 1839. He strongly objected to the presence of Metropolitan police used in July to deal with the meetings in the Bull Ring and whose presence arguably led to rioting. Sturge’s public stand in support of Chartist rights made him the object of Home Office surveillance for the next four years.

[9] William Lovett The Life and Struggles of William Lovett…, 1876, page 107. He had been involved in the anti-slavery movement from the mid-1820s.

[10] William Lovett The Life and Struggles of William Lovett…, 1876, pages 129-134, reference to page 132.

[11] William Lovett The Life and Struggles of William Lovett…, 1876, pages150-158, reference to page 152.

[12] Northern Liberator, 28^th October 1837.

[13] Alex Wilson ‘Chartism in Glasgow’, in Asa Briggs (ed.) Chartist Studies, Macmillan, 1959, pages 251-253.

[14] William Dorling Henry Vincent: A Biographical Sketch with a Preface by Mrs Vincent, James Clark, 1879, pages 66-69 details Vincent’s experience as a youth in Hull where he heard a lecture by George Thompson that filled him with a ‘holy zeal’ to fight slavery and the slave trade and aroused his sense of personal responsibility for reform.

[15] On 16^th October 1834, most of the Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire. Only Westminster Hall, the Jewel Tower, the crypt of St Stephen’s Chapel and the cloisters survived the conflagration. A Royal Commission was appointed to study the rebuilding of the Palace. The Commission decided that the Palace should be rebuilt on the same site and in 1836, after studying 97 rival proposals, it chose Charles Barry’s plan for a Gothic style palace. The foundation stone was laid in 1840; the Lords’ Chamber was completed in 1847, and the Commons’ Chamber in 1852 (at which point Barry received a knighthood). Although most of the work had been carried out by 1860, construction was not finished until a decade afterwards.

[16] Sheffield Iris, 8^th January 1839. Elliott later broke with the Chartists believing that repeal of the Corn Laws should have priority.

[17] On Harney’s anti-slavery credentials see A.R. Schoyen The Chartist Challenge: A Portrait of George Julian Harney, Heinemann, 1958, pages 3 and 8.

[18] Brewster’s references to slavery in his Christian and Socialist Sermons, 1844 are especially on pages 8-10, 20-21, 32-33, 48, 54 and 58.

[19] Bronterre O’Brien in The Operative, 14^th December 1838 blamed Brewster for the split and O’Connor in the Northern Star, 12^th January 1839 called him a ‘political priest’ whose actions had played into the hands of O’Connell and the ‘vile Whigs’.

[20] Northern Liberator, 15^th August 1840. The paper described the Anti-Slavery Convention as a ‘grand meeting of humbug’ representing the cant and insincerity of the ‘slave squad’.

[21] Northern Star, 26^th November 1840.

[22] Glasgow Argus, 12^th, 13^th August 1840.The paper described the meeting degenerating into a ‘constant howl’.

[23] Northern Star, 26^th November 1840.

[24] Birmingham Journal, 1^st February 1840.

[25] Joseph Sturge A Visit to the United States in 1841, London, 1842, pages 102-3 and 147.

[26] On Edward Miall, see David M. Thomson ‘The Liberation Society 1844-1868’ in P. Hollis (ed.) Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England, London, 1974, pages 210-238.

[27] The articles appeared in the Nonconformist 13^th October-1^st December 1841 and were collected together by Miall the following year in the pamphlet Reconciliation between the Middle and Labouring Classes, Birmingham, 1842 with an introduction by Sturge.

[28] Widespread rejection of the anti-slavery programme in the United States forced abolitionists to reconsider their moral persuasion strategy. Many followed the lead of the Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and abandoned the churches, believing them to be hopelessly corrupted by slavery. Garrisonians also counselled Northerners to refuse to vote as a way of expressing disapproval for the ‘pro-slavery’ Constitution. The Garrisonians also championed universal reform, including temperance, pacifism, and extension of women's rights. Under Garrisonian control, the American Anti-Slavery Society committed itself to non-resistant political protest and advocated the dissolution of the union with slaveholding states.

[29] John Rylands Library, Manchester: George Thompson Papers, Notebook, 7^th October 1841.

Aspects of Chartism: Chartism and Slavery 'distinction without a difference' 1

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:09:19 GMT

In the 1820s and 1830s, working class newspapers and journals were highly critical of members of the anti-slavery societies who were dedicated to freeing black slaves in the colonies and yet were blindly insensitive to the exploitation of white workers at home. It was difficult for many middle class abolitionists to equate wage slavery with chattel slavery. Yet the more they publicised the appalling conditions of slavery, the more likely it was that British workers would see themselves as caught in similar conditions. By the early 1830s, the leaders of working class radicalism recognised that it would be to their advantage to capitalise on the achievement of the abolitionists in awakening sympathies for the downtrodden and to do this by copying abolitionist strategies. Workers’ cries of enslavement, in turn, forced abolitionist attention to miseries at home. Since the late 1960s, studies[1] of the anti-slavery movement have increasingly demonstrated the extent to which abolitionists and supporters of reform for workers recognised their causes to be philosophically and pragmatically inseparable. However, there is little that considers Chartism and anti-slavery[2]. It is with this issue that this chapter is concerned.

From hostility to sympathy

The response of middle class abolitionists to the political claims of Chartism and to the plight of workers in the 1830s was as varied as the attitudes of working class radicals towards them. Some remained unsympathetic; others were concerned but did little concrete; and, many were involved in extending charity to the poor. Yet a surprising number of abolitionists went much further than this even though their analyses of the causes of and solutions to working class distress varied considerably. Some abolitionists were confirmed Malthusians concerned with reducing over-population; other advocated assisted emigration and home colonies to make the surplus population self-sustaining on the land; while many were supporters of the repeal of the Corn Laws that, they believed, favoured producers over consumers. There were few prominent abolitionists who did not favour increasing educational opportunities for the working class. The most radical position for abolitionists was publicly to endorse the Chartist programme and a significant number adopted this stance. Chartism created a political climate in which the developing arguments about the relationship between black slavery and white wage slavery came to a head. There was even a national debate about whether a slave or a factory worker was more oppressed. The immediate result was an intensification of the hostility and rivalry between abolitionists and Chartists and there were many attempts by Chartists to disrupt anti-slavery meetings. However, it was out of these spirited and often hostile exchanges that sympathies and a sense of common purpose slowly, if temporarily developed.

This process was aided by abolitionists and Chartists sharing some common political roots. Around 1800, many of the active members of the society to abolish the slave trade were also involved in calls for parliamentary reform and an extension of the franchise. Granville Sharp, for example, was well aware of the connection between black slavery in America and white slavery at home. He argued that as long as slavery remained in the West Indies, working people in general ‘would inevitably be involved by degrees in the same horrid slavery and depression; for that is always the base whenever slavery is tolerated’[3]. His fear was that black slaves brought to England might create an unemployment problem that would threaten the jobs of free labourers that were already ‘approaching slavery’ because arbitrary legislation had gradually elevated property rights over personal rights[4]. Major John Cartwright was equally convinced that slavery in any form violated and degraded all humanity, a view expressed in a letter to Samuel Whitbread in 1814[5]: ‘Why the people of England should not stand forward with as much unanimity in defence of their own freedoms as that of the negroes, I must be slow to believe. It does not accord with my own experience and is contrary to reason’. Between the 1790s and the early 1830s, abolitionists had some success in obtaining support from the working class, largely though petitions and boycott campaigns and this provided a useful basis for cooperation between abolitionists and Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s.

Although radical writers such as William Cobbett talked of society in terms of ‘Masters and Slaves’ in the years after the end of the wars with France, it was not until the 1830s that ‘anti-slavery’ became a central feature of radical discourse. Richard Oastler[6] used the image of ‘Yorkshire Slavery’ when he confronted the issue of child labour in 1830: ‘The very streets which receive the droppings of an ‘Anti-Slavery Society’ are every morning wet by the tears of innocent victims at the accursed shrine of avarice, who are compelled (not by the cart-whip of the negro slave-driver) but by the dread of the equally appalling thong or strap of the over-looker….The nation is now most resolutely determined that negroes shall be free. Let them, however, not forget that Britons have common rights with Afric’s sons…’ The subsequent campaign for reform gained widespread support among working class radicals and among middle class humanitarians who recognised contradictions between calls for the end to slavery and the conditions under which many working people laboured. For example, on 6^th October 1831, the Huddersfield Short Time Committee sent out a circular to all trade unions, sick-benefit clubs and friendly societies in the district: ‘Is it not a shame and disgrace that, in a land called “the land of the Bibles”, children of a tender age should be torn from their beds by six in the morning, and confined, in pestiferous factories, till eight in the evening? Ten hours a day, with eight on Saturdays, is our motto - may it be yours. Gentlemen, let us rouse ourselves from lethargy and carelessness, and rally round the principles of humanity, with an irresistible voice, demand the immediate curtailment of the hours of factory labour.’

Brougham, Martineau and the 1834 Poor Law: fighting for and against

However, it was the agitation against the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act that provided a rallying point for those who believed that working people were indeed slaves and no better off than the slaves in the West Indies or the United States. One of the central arguments against the institution of slavery was that it allowed families to be torn apart. This was not lost on the opponents of the 1834 Act with its segregation of husbands, wives and children in separate wards in the workhouse. English workers, like slaves lost control over their own family life, an analogy that spokesmen for the working class used to considerable effect. At a meeting in Manchester in 1836, Joseph Rayner Stephens waved a document that, he said, illustrated the revival of slavery in Great Britain: a bill of sale for a whole family forced to move from their home to work in a factory, a situation only made possible by the Poor Law[7]. The Operative reported that a ‘Children’s Friend Society’ had taken English children to South Africa for sale[8]. The Birmingham Journal satirised the ‘liberty’ of an English labourer as the privilege of migrating from a parish where he was barely provided for to one where he would starve[9]. Michael Sadler pleaded with his fellow MPs to give English children at least as much consideration as they gave to adult West Indian slaves. At a public meeting in support of Sadler’s Ten Hours Bill, people carried placards with such slogans as ‘No white slavery’ and ‘Sadler and the abolition of slavery at home and abroad’[10].

Radical anger turned particularly on those anti-slavery leaders who were members of the Whig government and had a hand in creating the new Poor Law. Henry Brougham[11] as Lord Chancellor and Nassau Senior who had a major role in drafting the law, were prime targets along with Harriet Martineau who J.R. Stephens called ‘their female assistant’. As well as being abolitionists, all were well-known Malthusians who believed that the working class must limit its numbers if conditions were too improve and it seemed to many radicals that the decision to segregate men and women in the workhouse was an inept attempt to enforce birth control. Certainly it was Senior[12] who advised Brougham that conditions in the workhouses should be as disagreeable as possible and it was small wonder that they were promptly dubbed ‘Brougham’s Bastilles’. The Northern Star thundered that Brougham had now joined the ranks of those peers who lived on the venality and prostitution of the country[13]. The London Dispatch and People’s Political and Social Reformer, published by Henry Hetherington included a striking cartoon of the greedy Brougham eating a bowl of squirming little people, one of them impaled on the fork he lifted to his mouth[14]. There was little here to suggest any middle way between the anti-slavery movement and the growing power of Chartism and no doubt that the close association of well-known emancipationists with the passage and defence of the Poor Law did little to improve the abolitionist image in the eyes of working class radicals.

This is unfortunate since Brougham and especially Martineau saw more good in Chartism than they have generally been given credit for. Brougham had a long association with radical causes: his long support for working class education, his defence of civil liberties, attacks on the Corn Laws, opposition to flogging in the army and navy, his support for Queen Caroline in 1820 as well as his record of opposition to black slavery need to be seen in relation to his support for the Poor Laws. Harriet Martineau privately questioned the genuineness of his populist sympathies and pointed to his inconsistency on many issues. Yet on several occasions, Brougham gave the Chartists cause to be grateful. In 1838 and 1839, when the agitation for the Charter was at its height, Brougham was praised by the editors of The Charter and The Operative[15] for backing suffrage extension and the ballot and he did support their National Petition. He also submitted petitions for leniency on at least two occasions: one for the Glasgow spinners sentenced to transportation in 1837 and another for the Chartists arrested in the riots in 1839. However, on other occasions, Brougham’s opinion was more half-hearted and equivocal.

Ironically, the same thinking that led Harriet Martineau[16] to defend the Poor Law formed the basis of his Chartist sympathies. Her goal had always been to help the poor to help themselves, especially through education. Her Malthusianism was rooted in optimism that once the working class recognised that their fundamental problem was over-population and surplus labour, they would limit their own numbers[17]. This underpinned her support for the Poor Law. However, since many families were dependent on child labour to stay above the poverty line, she argued that the only way to end this situation was to pay men higher wages. Though unwilling to declare that English workers were slaves, Martineau’s attitude to their plight was much influenced by her growing involvement in the American abolitionist movement. She concluded that slaves could only be taught to use their freedom if they were actually free and similarly concluded that British workers could only become independent and self-respecting if they were allowed to exercise their own judgement. Given her views, it is not surprising that she saw Chartism as a legitimate protest movement, one that demanded reform if Britain was to escape violent social revolution. From her viewpoint, it was not O’Conner and the Chartists, who were to be feared but Whigs and Tories with their political complacency and unwillingness to countenance further reform. But while approving Chartist goals, she deplored the demagogy of such ‘Tory agitators’ as O’Conner, J.R. Stephens and Richard Oastler and the actions of those Chartists who led the Newport rising.

The attitudes of Brougham and Martineau to Chartism were grounded in support for the aims of the movement while opposing the worse excesses of those Chartists who saw direct action as the only effective means of achieving their goals. Neither was prepared to approve of threats to public order and to property. When Brougham characterised himself as a one-step-at-a-time reformer, he was restating the abolitionist position that the emancipation of the slaves would take time and, by extension that achieving the demands of the Chartists would also take time. In that respect, he had more in common with the artisanal radicalism of Francis Place and William Lovett than the proletarian, ‘mass platform’ radicalism of O’Connor.

There were, however, other prominent emancipationists who, using the slave comparison joined the Chartists in attacking the Poor Law. Edward Baines, editor of the Leeds Mercury attacked the separation of husbands and wives in workhouses. Samuel Roberts, one of the anti-slavery leaders in the Sheffield area asked, in letters to the editor of the Sheffield Iris wrote: ‘And is England come to this? Now is there a country in the world where SLAVERY like this was ever submitted to?’[18] Lord Morpeth’s campaign for election to Parliament from the West Riding included promises to amend the Poor Law (something radicals later criticised him for not doing) and once elected he presented a petition from Bradford spinners that asked for a reduction in working hours. Richard Oastler was the most prominent abolitionist fighting the Poor Law. His anti-slavery dated back to his youth and by the 1820s he joined the drive for complete emancipation in the West Indies. It led directly into his growing awareness that, when he pleaded for the far-off slave, similar evils existed on his own doorstep. Oastler was never officially a Chartist and Samuel Roberts and Edward Baines remained stubbornly anti-Chartist but their involvement in campaigns against parliamentary bills and government policies helped to build up public interest in what Chartism had to offer.

[1] Howard Temperley British Antislavery 1833-1870, University of South Carolina Press, 1972 and Christine Bolt The Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction: A study of Anglo-American Cooperation 1833-1877, Oxford University Press, 1969 mention that some abolitionists, notably Joseph Sturge, were not insensitive to working class interests but the relationship had yet to be studied in detail. Patricia Hollis ‘Anti-Slavery and British Working-Class Radicalism in the Years of Reform’, in Christine Bolt and Seymour Drescher (eds.) Anti-Slavery, Religion and Reform, Dawson Press, 1980, pages 294-315 restates the traditional argument of working class antipathy to the anti-slavery movement. David Turley The Culture of English Antislavery 1780-1860, Routledge, 1991, pages 182-187 and 190-194 makes clear links with Chartism

[2] G.D.H. Cole Chartist Portraits, Macmillan, 1940 included a portrait of Joseph Sturge in his biographies.

[3] Letter from Sharp to Mr Lloyd (Gray’s Inn) for Dr Drummond, the Archbishop of York, 30^th July 1772, Granville Sharp Letterbook, York Minster

[4] This view was expressed in Granville Sharp An Appendix to the Second Edition of Mr Lofft’s Observations on a Late Publication entitles “A Dialogue on the Actual State of Parliaments”’, 1783 and The Legal Means of Political Reformation, 8^th ed., 1797.

[5] Cartwright to Samuel Whitbread, 30^th August 1814, printed in Frances D, Cartwright (ed.) The Life and Correspondence of Major Cartwright, two volumes, 1826, volume II, pages 80-83.

[6] Cecil Driver Tory Radical: A Life of Richard Oastler, OUP, 1946, pages 36-48. J.T. Ward The Factory Movement 1830-1850, Macmillan, 1962 is the most detailed study though it has, in part, been superseded by R. Gray The Factory Question and Industrial England 1830-1860, Cambridge University Press, 1996

[7] Alfred [Samuel H.G. Kydd] The History of the Factory Movement from the Year 1802, to the Enactment of the Ten Hours’ Bill in 1847, two volumes, 1857, reprinted August M. Kelley, 1966, volume 2, pages 67-72 and 88-89.

[8] The Operative, 5^th May 1839.

[9] Birmingham Journal, 13^th January 1838.

[10] Alfred [Samuel H.G. Kydd] The History of the Factory Movement from the Year 1802, to the Enactment of the Ten Hours’ Bill in 1847, two volumes, 1857, reprinted August M. Kelley, 1966, volume 1, pages 198-199 and 254-255 and volume 2, pages 60-61.

[11] Brougham has been ill-served by biographers and historians have to rely on Brougham’s posthumous autobiography The Life and Times of Henry, Lord Brougham, Written by Himself and edited by his son, three volumes, London 1871-72. Chester New The Life of Henry Brougham to 1830, Oxford University Press, 1961 and Ronald K. Huch Henry, Lord Brougham: the later years, 1830-1868: the ‘great actor’, Edwin Mellen Press, 1993 are of variable quality. E.P. Thompson in his The Making of the English Working Class, Gollancz, 1963, page 604 saw Brougham as playing a ‘ritual role’ in the radicalism of the period.

[12] ‘Letter of 14^th September 1832, to Lord Chancellor Brougham on Poor Law Reform’, in Leon S. Levy Nassau W. Senior 1790-1864, David & Charles, 1970, Appendix X, pages 247-254.

[13] Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser, 31^st March 1838.

[14] London Dispatch and People’s Political and Social Reformer, 23^rd April 1837.

[15] The Chartist, 19^th May 1839; The Operative, 23^rd December 1838 and 30^th June 1839.

[16] On Martineau, see Vera Wheatley The Life and Work of Harriet Martineau, Fairtown, New Jersey, 1957, pages 103-105 and R.K. Webb Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian, Heinemann, 1960, pages 130-132.

[17] On this issue see: Elaine Freedgood ‘Banishing panic: Harriet Martineau and the popularization of political economy’, Victorian Studies, volume 39, (1995), pages 33-53.

[18] Sheffield Iris, 4^th September 1838 and 11^th December 1838.

Aspects of Chartism: Dr William Price

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:01:38 GMT

Dr William Price (Llantrisant)

Source: Front page of the Illustrated Police News, Saturday, 26 January 1884.

Reference code(s): GB 0210 WPRICE, National Library of Wales

Title: Dr William Price (Llantrisant) Papers

Biographical history

William Price[1] was born at Ty’n y Coedcae, the parish of Rudry, Glamorgan on 4^th March 1800. He was the third son of the seven children of Rev. William Price and his wife Mary. He went to school in Machen. When he was thirteen, he was sent to Dr Evan Williams, surgeon, of Caerphilly. In 1820, Price went to study medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons. He passed the examinations of both the College and the Hall within twelve months. He returned to South Wales in 1823 and was a doctor in the Nantgarw, Treforest and Pontypridd area. As one steeped in Druidic lore, Price was a worshipper of Nature.

Later, he became interested in the Chartist movement and was appointed the leader of the Pontypridd Chartists. He had also been involved in the planning of the armed uprising Newport and was thus forced to flee to France. Price met John Masklyn, an English doctor friend of his college days and set up a practice. Price returned to Wales in 1840, took up residence in Eglwysilan and opened a practice combining a holistic approach with his version of Druidism. His first child was born of Ann Morgan of Pentyrch in 1841, and named her Gwenhiolen Hiarhles Morganwg (Gwenllian Iarless Morgannwh).

In 1860, he made his way to Paris again after a warrant was issued. Here, he was introduced to Pierre Joseph Proudhon, French philosopher of revolutionary bent. Price returned to Wales in June 1866, bought a practice in Llantrisant and established himself in Ty’r Clettwr. In December 1870, he met Gwenllian Llywelyn, from Clawddnewydd near Ruthun. On 18^th January 1884, Price secured a place for himself in history. As the villagers were coming out of Church, they found him cremating the dead body of his five month old son, Iesu Grist. Cremation was illegal in the British Isles at the time, but his success in the court case paved the way for the Cremation Act, 1902. Before he died at the age of 92, he had fathered another son, Iesu Grist and daughter, Penelope Elizabeth. He died on 23^rd January 1893, in Llantrisant, and his body was cremated, as he had instructed, on top of two tons of coal.

Scope and content

Deeds, 1697-1835, relating to properties in Bedwas and Maugham; correspondence, [c. 1825]-1884; financial papers, 1859-1896; pedigree of the Price family, compiled [c. 1865]; printed works written by William Price, [1838]-1871, including Y Maen Chwyf and Gwyllllis Yn Nayd; works concerning Price, [c. 1855]-1965, with press cuttings, [c. 1920]-1953; and miscellaneous ephemera relating to the Price family, 1859-1906.

[1] The following sources were consulted in the compilation of this description: National Library of Wales Minor Lists and Summaries, (1988); Meic Stephens Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales, Oxford, 1986; Cyril Bracegirdle Dr William Price: Saint or Sinner?, Llanrwst, 1997; John Cule ‘The Eccentric Doctor William Price of Llantrisant (1800-1893)’; Morgannwg: Transactions of the Glamorgan Local History Society, volume vii, (1963), pages 98-119; Islwyn ap Nicholas A Welsh Heretic: Dr William Price, Llantrisant, Aberystwyth, 1973; The Rev Dr John R. Guy ‘The Rudry Radical: Dr William Price of Ty’n Y Coedcae, Part 2’, Caerphilly, 6, (March 2000), pages 52-64; Brian Davies ‘Empire and Identity: the case of Dr William Price’, in David Smith (ed.) A People and a Proletariat : Essays in the History of Wales 1780-1880, London, 1980; National Library of Wales W. W. Price Biographical Index, volume xxii.

Aspects of Chartism: Mid-Wales

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:02:48 GMT

The main industry in 19^th century Mid-Wales was the woollen mills. There were three main towns involved, Newtown[1], Llanidloes[2] and Welshpool. The conditions of the woollen workers were poor. It was common for workers to work 14 hours per day and on occasions they would work 36 hour continuous shifts. Children were employed as feeders (feeding the wool into the machines) and horrific accidents to the children were not infrequent, with losses of limbs. Wages, living conditions and public health were poor in the towns. Poverty was rife, unemployment high and there were outbreaks of Cholera in the 1830s and the1840s. Although there were no trade unions the Friendly Societies acted as a type of union to which most workers belonged. In 1819, there was a march of Friendly Society members at Newtown to demonstrate against reductions in wages and this saw outbreaks of violence and damage to property. At Llanidloes in 1830 there was a five week strike by woollen workers which succeeded in winning higher wages. During the Reform Crisis of 1831-32, whilst the riots were taking place in Merthyr Tydfil, Political Unions were being formed in Mid-Wales. Expecting violence the authorities swore in 300 Special Constables, but there was no trouble. However, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 did occasion violence and troops were required to restore order in Llanfair Caereinion in 1837 when a Relieving Officer was attacked.

In 1839, Llanidloes became well known all over the country as one of the centres of a growing revolutionary movement among working people. As well as not being allowed to vote, there were many other reasons for the ordinary workers to rise up against the government in the 1830s. A new law of 1834, just three years before Queen Victoria was crowned, brought in very harsh treatment of the poor and set up the terrible workhouse system. The local flannel-making industry was in depression and new machinery had put many of the poorest out of work. The situation led to outbreaks of violence in many areas, with unrest in industrial towns and the burning of ricks in country districts.

One of the radical groups which had set up the national Chartist movement was the Birmingham Political Union. It was with their help that a Chartist branch was set up in Newtown in 1837 and held its first public meeting in April that year to protest against the Poor Law. Further Chartist groups were set up in Llanidloes and Welshpool in 1838, though the latter did not survive for long. In October 1838 the first Chartist demonstration in Wales was held in Mid-Wales. At this meeting the Chartist Petition was approved and Charles Jones of Welshpool was chosen as delegate to the Chartist National Convention. Jones had lived in Birmingham and been a member of the Birmingham Political Union prior to returning home to Welshpool. Another local leader was Thomas Powell[3], originally from Newtown but, after training in London as an ironmonger, had set up in business at Llanidloes. Both of these men and most of the Mid-Wales leaders were responsible reformers who supported peaceful methods to achieve their aims. Not so, however, Henry Hetherington[4], a Birmingham Chartist who came to Mid-Wales in 1839 and advocated the taking up of firearms for ‘self-defence’. Unfortunately Hetherington’s views appealed to the younger fanatics amongst the Mid-Wales Chartists who proceeded to arm themselves, obtaining guns from local farmers, drilling under an ex-militiaman, making pikes, grenades and bombs.

By early 1839, the local landowners, magistrates, members of the church and others who had all the power in the area were getting worried by rumours of an armed revolt against them. Normally there was just a night watchman and part-time unpaid constables on duty in the town, so the magistrates sent for reinforcements. Three police constables were sent to Llanidloes from London, and Thomas Marsh, who was one of the wealthy landowners from the district, formed a ‘private army’ of around three hundred local men armed with sticks. They were probably people who were his workers and tenants, and had to do as he said. Like almost all ordinary workers of the time they would have been paid very little and could lose their jobs and homes if they upset the powerful ruling class. They would probably have supported the Chartists if they were able to[5].

A Chartist meeting was being held in Llanidloes on April 30^th 1839 when three of their members were arrested by the policemen from London. They were taken to the Trewythen Arms in Great Oak Street, and when the crowd of Chartists found out what had happened to their supporters they all headed for the building... When the crowd of Chartist supporters arrived at the Trewythen Arms in the centre of Llanidloes they found it surrounded by the ‘private army’ of special constables. This enraged the crowd who stormed the building and set free the three Chartists who had been arrested by the London policemen. One of the policemen was badly beaten, but the other two escaped and hid, terrified of the mob. The inside of the building was wrecked but the authorities, scared of losing their power, claimed that there was a serious armed revolution going on. It appears, though, that most of the people involved in this affray were not Chartists but teenage labourers and other known troublemakers. Thomas Powell, the Chartist leader, was now in charge of the town of Llanidloes and he tried to act responsibly, being concerned to maintain the peace and appointing watchmen to ensure it.

T.E. Marsh, the Mayor of Llanidloes, however, was determined to take action and he again requested assistance from the Government, and this time they sent a contingent of the 14^th Light Infantry from Brecon plus a troop of around two hundred Yeomanry cavalry that arrived on Saturday 4^th May, 1839. The Chartists were not prepared to take on the army and fled, mostly to the South Wales ironworks where they considered they would be safe from apprehension. . The troops sealed off the town and arrested over thirty Chartists, including three women and Thomas Powell, and sent them to Montgomery jail. Although there was little resistance to be found in the town a military force stayed in the town until the following year. They were tried at Montgomery Assizes on 15^th July 1839 where they were defended by Hugh Williams, the Carmarthen Lawyer and radical. All were found guilty. Thomas Powell was sent to prison for twelve months and was charged to find sureties of £400 after his release to keep the peace for a further five years. James Morris was transported for fifteen years for stabbing with intent to do bodily harm; Abraham Owen and Lewis Humphreys were transported for seven years for drilling in the use of arms; John Evans (Tailor), John Lewis (Tatw) and John Lewis (Crippplegate) were each sent to prison for twelve months with hard labour; others were sent to prison for six months with or without hard labour; and others lesser sentences of imprisonment[6].

[1] B. Bennett Rowlands History of Newport, Newport, 1914 contains some useful material on the early nineteenth century.

[2] E. R. Horsfall-Turner Municipal history of Llanidloes, Llanidloes, 1908 gives a municipal perspective on the events of 1839.

[3] A short biography of Thomas Powell can be found in J. E. Lloyd and R. T. Jenkins (eds.) The Dictionary of Welsh Biography down in 1940, University of Wales Press, 1959, pages 776-777. Powell was born in 1805 in Newtown, Wales. He moved to London youth as ironmonger’s assistant, worked for Hetherington and became bookseller himself. He was a Chartist missionary in Wales in the 1840s and took party of English ‘political’ emigrants to South America (San Salvador) via New York where he worked briefly. He died in 1850 in Trinidad. He contributed to possible Chartist influences on constitution of San Salvador.

[4] Ambrose G. Barker Henry Hetherington 1792-1849, London, 1938 remains the only modern biography. Shorter biographies can be found in J. Bellamy and J. Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour History, volume i, Macmillan, 1972, pages 167-172 and Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 236-238.

[5] Humphrey Gwalchmai ‘Y Chartists yn Llanidloes’, Yr Athraw, Llanidloes, 1839 and Anon (George Thomas) History of the Chartists and the bloodless wars on Montgomeryshire, Welshpool, 1840 are the most detailed contemporary accounts. Edward Hamer The Chartist Outbreak in Llanidloes, Llanidloes, 1867 reprinted 1939 is a sound near-contemporary pamphlet.

[6] Valuable analysis of the disturbances can be found in J. E. Samuel ‘The Montgomeryshire Chartist riots’, Cymru Fu, volume ii, 1889; J.D. Spencer ‘The Chartist movement in Wales’, in O. M. Edwards (ed.) Wales, volume ii, London, 1895; and, T. I. Nicholas One hundred years ago: the story of the Montgomeryshire Chartists, Aberystwyth, 1939.

Aspects of Chartism: The West Country

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:40:21 GMT

This was an agricultural/rural area where there was a cloth trade and cottage industry elements. The development of technology meant some job losses, so poverty existed in many areas. Bath, an eighteenth century spa town, was the centre of a declining tourist industry.

In March 1834, the Tolpuddle Martyrs were convicted under the 1797 Illegal Oaths Act and were sentenced to seven years’ transportation. In August 1837, Samuel and George Morse-Bartlett and Anthony Phillips founded the Bath Working Men’s Association[1]. It advocated universal manhood suffrage and a secret ballot. In 1838, the Bath WMA adopted the Charter. In November 1839, a torch light meeting attended by 3,000 people was held in Trowbridge and on 1^st April 1840, Vincent addressed a large meeting at Devizes. The Charter and National Petition were adopted. Four thousand people attended, but a hostile group set upon the Chartists with stones and bludgeons. Vincent was knocked senseless and the anti-Chartist mob seized the Chartists’ banners. The Chartists barely escaped alive. This violence effectively put a stop to public meetings of Chartists in this area but some Chartists then armed themselves and rioting occurred: many Chartist leaders were arrested.

George Morse-Bartlett was a reporter, dogmatic speaker, convinced democrat, republican and mainly a moral force man. William Young, a Bath jeweller and pawnbroker; was a physical force man. John Moore was “as determined a Chartist as any in the West” and bridged the gulf between the physical and moral force elements. He was treasurer of the Trowbridge Working Men’s Association in 1838 and became sub-treasurer of the National Charter Association in April 1841.

During its ten years of activity, Chartism gained hardly any hold in the rural areas of Somerset and Wiltshire[2]. The amount of activity was limited because of a “deep suspicion of the urban mob by countrymen.” Where Chartism did exist, cloth was manufactured and a technological revolution was in progress that caused distress to some workers. Chartists were a very mixed bunch: farmers, lawyers, clerks, handloom weavers, and parsons. Chartism started in a phase of violence and depression but became more stable and highly organised later. Women attended early Chartist meetings and a Female Radical Association was set up in 1840. Many Chartist chapels were also set up in this part of the world. Vincent came to Bath and started a stamped Chartist newspaper, the National Vindicator.

[1] R.S. Neale Bath 1650-1850: A Social History Routledge, 1981, pages 367-380 examines Chartism in the town.

[2] R.B. Pugh ‘Chartism in Somerset and Wiltshire’, in Asa Briggs (ed.) Chartism Studies, Macmillan, 1959, pages 174-219 examines developments in this area. Roger Wells ‘Southern Chartism’, Rural History 2, 1991 reprinted in John Rule and Roger Wells Crime, Protest and Popular Politics in Southern England 1740-1850, Hambledon, 1997, pages 127-152 is a valuable corrective.