Difference between revisions of "Chartism in 19th Century Britain"

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'''Chewton, by John Ellis, Chewton Domain Society'''
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'''Chartism in 19th Century Britain'''
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by Isobel Dowling, Former lecturer in Sociology and Politics at University of Ballarat
  
The following item appeared, without fanfare, in the Domestic Intelligence, column of the Argus on 8th September 1851:
 
  
:"NEW GOLD FIELD. - We have received the following letter announcing the discovery of a new gold field at Western Port:
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In London, in early 1839, the first Chartist National Convention was called to plan and write the famous Charter. About 10 years later the movement began to disintegrate after the Kennington Common debacle in 1848. Dates tell us what happened, but give little help to understand why, let alone what it has to do with our lives today. For that we need to know more about the climate of opinion in the early 19th century. This paper begins the Chartist story well before the Charter, and argues that the story did not finish when Chartism disappeared.
Dear Sir, - I wish you to publish these few lines in your valuable paper, that the public may know that there is gold found in these ranges, about four miles from Doctor Barker's home station, and about a mile from the Melbourne road; at the southernmost point of Mount Alexander, where three men and myself are working. I do this to prevent parties from getting us into trouble, as we have been threatened to have the constable fetched for being on the ground. If you will have the kindness to insert this in your paper, that we are prepared to pay anything that is just when the Commissioner in the name of the party comes. John Worbey [sic] Mt Alexander Ranges Sept 1st, 1851"
 
  
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We will begin the Chartist story in 1832 when the British Parliament passed the first Reform Act. This Act shifted political power from the old aristocracy to the newly emerging middle class of wealthy landlords, merchants and industrialists. Eligible voters increased from about 430,000 to 650,000. Almost at once however the Act produced widespread disappointment and anger, especially among the new “working and industrious classes” (See footnote 1). This deep discontent had causes which were partly political.
  
The writer was actually [[John Worley]] who, along with [[Christopher Peters]] and two others, was credited with the discovery of gold at Mt Alexander, by the Rewards Board in 1864. They had first found gold at Specimen Gully, Barker's Creek, to the north of present-day Castlemaine.
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The economic unhappiness was triggered by what we now call the Industrial Revolution. As the 19th century began, the new factory system of production was causing acute economic distress, with resulting severe personal and social dislocation among previously respectable self-sufficient artisans and small farmers. Pauperism, hunger and homelessness spread from London to the new cotton and steel towns in the north, to the Yorkshire and Welsh coal mines, to Cornish farms, and over the border to industrial towns like Glasgow. Owen’s experiments with “co-operative unionism”, between new owners and workers were clearly failing to help. Many working people now had bitter memories of their abortive long struggle for wider parliamentary reform. Fairly quickly many began to feel the new 1832 Bill still represented property, not people. Wider property certainly, but still only property.
  
David Bannear, Historic Mining Sites Part 1 (1993)
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The Reformed Parliament produced by the Bill finally triggered political fury. Popular anger against the Act exploded dramatically in 1834 when the new parliament passed the Poor Law Amendment Act. In the name of greater economic efficiency, it transferred responsibility for poverty relief from the local parish to central government commissioners. The new law quickly produced some really gross mismanagement, and the unfortunate workhouse inmates were powerless victims. For instance each single workhouse was now to be an asylum, an orphanage and a poorhouse simultaneously.
  
:''The Mount Alexander Gold Rush commenced in October 1851 when gold was first discovered at Golden Point near one of Major Mitchell's 1838 exploration camp sites. ("here from 8 to 12 inches of black soil overlaid deposits of gold, yielding from 12 to 20oz. to the tub of washdirt. As the workings extended southwards down Forest Creek, similar yields were common, and many extraordinary finds were made of 200 to 2,000oz., aggregated in small hollows, or "pockets", in the bed-rock"). The first Gold Commissioners camp (Mr Powlett's) was soon established and by November, the gold diggings had spread some 4 miles downstream, "tents are being pitched for four miles lower down than the Commissioners"). Soon the Commissioner shifted and a new camp was set up at Red Hill and in the vicinity of which canvas stores, post office and Argus office, and thousands of diggers' tents, swiftly formed the goldfield's first 'village'. Known generally as 'Forest Creek', the settlement was given the name Chewton in 1856.''
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In 1838 Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, specifically to expose some of the new law’s injustices. In 1865 his heartbreaking Betty Higden in Our Mutual Friend chooses to die tramping the roads, rather than be put in the work house. Clearly he had not changed his opinion during the 30 years between half-starved Oliver “asking for more”, and Betty, running away with her “funeral money sewn into her dress”. In Chapter 2 of Oliver Twist he wrote, (A poor mans choice) “is between being starved by a gradual process (in the workhouse) or by a quick one out of it”.
  
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Remember this widely hated legislation was produced by the new Reformed Parliament which thousands of people had welcomed as a hopeful new beginning. This same parliament now also revived the hated stamp duty, the “tax on knowledge”. By law, newspapers costing six pence or less now must pay for a government stamp, or their publication was illegal. Penny or tuppenny papers had begun to flourish throughout England during the 1830s - the “Paupers’ Press”. Many were edited by people who would shortly become leading Chartists, like Fergus O’Connor’s The Northern Star and O’Brien’s Poor Man’s Guardian, which he deliberately published unstamped. He wrote that the unjust tax had “made the rich man’s paper cheaper, the poor man’s dearer.” Like large numbers of working class editors he was arrested and imprisoned. But the bitter struggle for a “tax free....cheap and honest Press” was one of the many movements which throughout the 1830s paved the way for Chartism, “one of the most remarkable examples of working class politics ever seen in England” (See footnote 2)
  
The Melbourne Morning Herald reported:
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Around 1833-34, small groups of various kinds of workers, with various kinds of political beliefs - Friendly Societies, Working Men’s Associations, Industrious Females, Owenites and many more - combined to form the Grand National Union, GNU. Lord Melbourne’s reformed government quickly met this “threat to property”. The Tolpuddle Martyrs, agricultural labourers who had joined the new Union to try to raise their wages back from seven shillings to ten shillings, were arrested and deported.
  
:"MOUNT ALEXANDER: His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor returned from these diggings yesterday morning. The reports from the mines are very favourable, several large yields rewarding the miners for their toil. One man obtained eleven pounds-weight of gold in forty-eight hours. We learn that His Excellency has expressed himself much gratified with his trip and is astounded at the success of many of the miners; it is His Excellency's opinion that the Gold Fields here are much more extensive than at Ballarat."
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The clear message to employers was that they could now act with impunity, assured of full government support and there is overwhelming documentary evidence, that virtually all of them understood it. “All in turn” now gave their workers the choice of the sack, or of signing a document renouncing the new Union. Within a few months the Union failed, amidst widespread bitter anger. But this failure was followed almost at once, by the remarkable new Chartist movement.
Melbourne Morning Herald (20th October 1851)
 
cited in Goldfields Reminiscences, Stan Tingay 1995
 
  
The Argus' correspondent on the spot reported on the changes:
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The Hammonds argue that something more than struggling for just wages and conditions had always inspired some of the older Chartists like Cobbett or O’Connell, and also the younger Oastler and O’Connor, leaders of the new movement about to emerge. They write “Working (people were) stirred by the belief that society might be radically changed; that life need not wear so hard and ungenerous a face; that the poor might have a share in the civilisation of their age. The movement (Chartism) then is significant because of its scale, and its ideas.” (My emphasis)
  
:"Though gold is found more or less along the creek the richest deposit appears to be at one point, and at this spot there are 122 tents pitched, containing as near as I could judge, 610 persons, independently of about 400 in the neighbourhood... There have been at least 300 persons arrived here since nine o'clock this morning, and hundreds more are coming across the country from Ballarat."<ref>''The Argus,'' 5th November 1851.</ref>
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So, in 1836, Place “the radical tailor of Charing Cross” and Lovett, a self-educated cabinet-maker, formed the London Working Men’s Association, (L.W.N.A), to promote political reform. This body produced the famous Charter. It was a draft for an Act of Parliament, with 13 sections, to be presented to the House. The 13 sections outlined proposals to reform elections, so that Parliament could be truly representative. The Preamble and the famous six points contain the revolutionary ideas for radical change of the existing power structures. They clearly echo earlier democratic revolutionaries’ debate in 17th century Putney, and in 18th century Washington and Paris.
  
 +
Preamble
 +
Whereas the Commons House of Parliament now exercises....on the supposed behalf of the people the power of making laws, it ought in order to fulfil with....honesty the great duties imposed on it, to be made the faithful and accurate representative of the peoples’ wishes, feelings and interests. This was followed by the six points:
  
Three days later, he wrote:
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1. Universal manhood suffrage
 +
2. Equal electoral districts (1 vote, 1 value)
 +
3. Vote by secret ballot
 +
4. Payment of Members of Parliament
 +
5. No property qualifications for Members of Parliament
 +
6. Annual Parliaments
 +
(See footnote 3)
  
:"Since Saturday morning, the scene has greatly changed - then a tent would be seen here and there, but now they are becoming inconveniently crowded... On Saturday, dozens were arriving at a time; on Sunday, hundreds; Monday and Tuesday, one continuous line of new arrivals. Your Melbourne departures are but trifling compared to the arrivals from Ballarat and the surrounding country... Gold continues to be found in abundance - two, three, and four pounds per day seem common among the luckies; but water is becoming more scarce.<ref>''The Argus,'' 8th November 1851.</ref>
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The Charter was published in 1838. L.W.M.A “missionaries” took the Charter to the provinces, especially the new industrial towns in the North like Manchester and Birmingham. This was a political and organisational master-stroke. It drew together almost all the varied protest movements of the time, especially the widely different, but passionately angry, opponents of the new Poor Law. All united now in demand for the six points.
  
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During 1838 huge “monster” meetings, torchlight processions, mass demonstrations and protests, were held not only throughout London, but even more so in the new industrial towns. The aims were to explain and familiarise the six points and to organise all the varied discontents into demanding them. In other words, to present the Charter as a goal behind which many different groups could unite. And it worked! To repeat an earlier comment, however Chartism is evaluated in political history, its assessment as “one of the most remarkable examples of working-class politics” can not be challenged.
  
He also set the record straight about the actual location of the goldfield:
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Backed by this mass support a plan was now worked out. First, working people were to be organised to freely elect delegates to a People's Convention. This Convention would then organise a monster petition containing the six points. Finally, arrangements would be made to present this Petition to Parliament for the members’ consideration. In other words, Chartists sought to redress their grievances by radical change through Parliament.
  
:"The diggings are not on Mount Alexander, as is generally supposed, but in a gully known as Forest Creek, and situated about seven miles from the Mount, and twenty from the Loddon, which receives the waters of this Creek ... the more experienced are quietly retreating to the Loddon, where report states that gold has been found in abundance."<ref>''The Argus,'' 8th November 1851.</ref>
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The “missionaries”, the working people's newspapers, and ordinary members, worked tirelessly for the cause, and support swelled. By 5th May 1839, all had been arranged. Attwood, a Member of Parliament and a moderate Chartist, was to present the petition to Parliament for consideration. It contained 2,283,000 signatures and was three miles long.
  
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That very day there was a parliamentary crisis. The government resigned! The Petition was finally presented on 14th June, when a new Whig government had formed, but was not debated until 12th July. Lord John Russell made “some very sensible remarks”, and Disraeli expressed some sympathy for Chartists in “this very remarkable social movement.” But on the whole Parliament was unmoved and uninterested. 46 members voted for the Petition to be considered, while 235 voted against. After so much work and such high hopes, parliamentary action must have seemed to be a hopeless way to win economic or social change, let alone justice.
  
The population of the Forest Creek area had reached 15,000 at the end of November 1851, and the Argus (27th November 1851) reported:
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During the long delay angry frustration had sometimes produced unruly meetings, especially at Birmingham’s famous “Bull ring”, and anger increased after the Petition’s rejection. There were even clashes between moderate and radical Chartists, the latter convinced now that only physical force could succeed. Some began to urge more extreme action such as a general strike. Growing numbers of both leaders and followers were arrested and usually jailed during Parliament’s long delay, and many more arrests followed the Petitions rejection. Instead of individual trials prisoners began to be “tried” in large groups. Despite a few unpleasant incidents there was no serious violence, contrary to the authorities’ fears and some hot-headed Chartists' hopes.
  
:"The escort brought into Melbourne from Forest Creek on November 26, 1851, 16,226 oz., about 6,000oz. having to be left behind as the conveyances provided for the transport of gold were unsuitable and the roads were in a very bad condition."
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With many members in prison the movement was fairly quiet briefly, but by 1840 it began to plan a second Convention followed by a Petition in 1842. The 1842 petition was larger than the first in 1839. It contained 3,317,702 signatures and was over six miles long. A huge procession followed 30 bearers who carried it to the House. Its size produced a problem getting it inside. The debate about getting it presented was lively. (The great historian McCauley told the House that universal suffrage was “incompatible with the very existence of civilisation!”) The motion was defeated 287 votes to 49.
Within months the rush was causing concern:
 
  
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This massive failure was followed by worsening conditions especially in the North. During the “hungry forties” trade was depressed, wages cut and unemployment soared. A new Poor Law ruled that the unemployed were to be put in the hated workhouses! Large groups of ragged half-starved people roamed the North and the Midlands, and often attacked the closed “dark satanic mills”. The government now treated the Charter as treasonable, and hundreds of Chartists were arrested. Special Commissions were appointed to try them. Hundreds were imprisoned, mostly with hard labour. Scores were transported. Almost certainly many more left England of their own accord under the new assisted migration scheme.
  
:''MOUNT ALEXANDER: The RUSH to the goldfields is now so great that serious fears begin to be entertained regarding the wheat crops, and it becomes a matter for the prompt attention of the Government as to what is to be done to save the country. *** Whether to raise the the gold licence today to 10 pounds a month for the next three months, or to prohibit digging for that time appears only feasible. The RUSH to these mines is FEARFUL, and no wonder.''<ref>''Melbourne Morning Herald'', 25th November 1851</ref>
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By 1848, Europe’s “Year of Revolutions”, Chartism had revived. There was a growing interaction between some European revolutionaries and some Chartists. Marx and Engels, now living in England in exile, attended many Chartist meetings, and their writings reveal their admiration for Chartist organisational skills. Marx called Chartism “the first (organised) working man’s party the world ever produced”. Much later in his life (when working men had finally got the vote) he seriously considered whether English Chartist methods might make peaceful revolutionary change possible.
cited in Goldfields Reminiscences, Stan Tingay 1995
 
  
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Chartists now organised their third Petition to Parliament, requesting that their Charter be debated and accepted. This collected an even greater number of signatures than the two earlier failures in 1839 and 1842, probably somewhere between four and five million. Historians differ about the precise number, because for the first time many of the signatures were fakes - including Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington whose names appear a number of times.
  
By mid-December the population of the Forest Creek goldfield was approaching 30,000. The cheap labour, on which the squatters and others relied to produce their individual wealth, had suddenly become self-employed persons seeking to strike it rich. The Government in Melbourne was thrown into panic. The Governor and his advisors in the Legislative Council were representatives of the wealthy employing class, and pressure was brought upon them to halt the flow of labour on the gold fields.
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On 10th April 1848, after assembling at Kennington Common, the people were to march in a procession over the river to Parliament. They marched with O’Connor at their head and the Petition at the front in 15 huge crates, each carried by 24 strong men. At the House it was to be accepted by Roebuck, a Chartist Member of Parliament, for presentation to the House.
  
Thus it was decided to put the cost of gold-digging out of reach of most working people, by doubling the License Fee to dig - from 30 shillings to 3 pounds per month (the equivalent of six spades or five axes). The Government stated that the increase in the License was needed to finance Law and Order on the gold fields. (Bruce Murray, 1995 Commemoration Booklet).
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However, the Police Commissioner appeared and told the leaders the procession had been declared illegal. Lawyers had found an old 1660s law from Charles II, which forbade more than 10 persons to present petitions. The Commissioner told the organisers that a large force, led by the Duke of Wellington would use force if they continued. There were 8,000 troops, reinforced by 170,000 “special constables” (including Gladstone!). These had been specially recruited (overwhelmingly from the nobility and middle classes) in the last few weeks. (One of them was the Hon. Charles Cavendish Fulke Grenville. He recorded in his memoirs in 1885 that he had enlisted as “a special constable, taking with him all his...employees”, that he found it “a most satisfactory demonstration by the Government... the Chartist movement was contemptible” and of the petition that “there were no end of fictitious names...with the insertion....of ribaldry, indecency and impertinence”)
  
Serious trouble was feared, and The Argus reported that a force of 130 soldiers was sent from Melbourne, and encamped at Castlemaine.
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The sad anti-climax to the day is well-known. O’Connor had never intended violence and he acquiesced. The petition was transferred to three or four hansom cabs to carry it to Parliament. Only O’Connor was allowed to accompany it to deliver it. It was never heard, but simply laughed out of the House without debate or division three days later.
  
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The Chartist Movement really died that day. Reform through and of Parliament was widely perceived as a lost cause. New Conventions were held over the next six or seven years. Small breakaway groups formed, but popular support dwindled. Many Chartist emigrated, especially to the Victorian gold rushes. The collapse of the movement unhinged O’Connor’s mind and he died insane in 1855, six months after the final National Convention.
  
On the morning of the 8th of December a notice appeared through the Forest Creek area.
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However, we cannot and should not dismiss Chartism as just a fascinating episode, a brief historical flash in the pan, which soon failed and disappeared - because this 'misreads 19th century English history'.
  
:''Fellow Diggers!''  
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Most historians see the major characteristic of that time as 'widespread social discontent', though they disagree about its nature and causes. There is also general agreement that the Industrial Revolution was producing terrible suffering and hardship which cannot be separated from this social discontent. However the Hammonds, E.P Thompson and many others, dig more deeply to introduce what Inga Clendinnen calls the “moral dimension” to these over simplified cause and effect explanations.
  
:''The intelligence has just arrived of the resolution of the Government to Double the License Fee. Will you tamely submit to the imposition or assert your rights as men? You are called upon to pay a tax originated and concocted by the most heartless selfishness, a tax imposed by Legislators for the purpose of detaining you in their workshops, in their stable yards, and by their flocks and herds. They have conferred to effect this; They would increase this seven-fold but they are afraid! Fie upon such pusillanimity! And shame upon other men, who, to save a few paltry pounds for their own pockets, would tax the poor man's hands!''
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They argue that the discontent fundamentally arose from what was deeply felt to be a radically changing “philosophy of life”; a feeling that authorities had “set up the Golden Calf; that working people’s lives no longer mattered, or were of any value compared with acquiring material wealth; but that life need not be like this. There was a better and fairer way to manage these new productive forces”.
  
:''It will be in vain for one or two individuals to tell the Commissioner, or his emissaries, that they have been unsuccessful and that they cannot pay the licence fee.''
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John Stuart Mill wrote, “Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish.
 
:''But remember that union is strength, that though a single twig may be bent or broken, a bundle of them tied together neither bends nor breaks.''
 
  
:''Ye are Britons! will you submit to oppression or injustice?''
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When the Chartist movement died, its vision did not. Its ideas and principles motivated the great struggles throughout the 19th century and into the 20th - the struggles for free universal education, public health, the temperance movement, and the long hard fight for universal franchise, which was not won in England until 1928 - struggles “building up the self-respect of English working people”
  
:''Meet - Agitate - Be unanimous - and if there is justice in the land, they will, they must abolish the imposition.''
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John Stuart Mill memorably described Chartism as “the victory of the vanquished”
  
:''Yours Faithfully,''
 
:''A Digger.''
 
(The Gold Seekers, Norman Bartlett)
 
  
  
After the distribution of that notice, each of the diggings held small local meetings to plan the next step. A delegation of diggers approached Commissioner Powlett, asking him to sponsor a mass meeting so that diggers could express their views directly to him. He refused, saying he had urgent business in Melbourne. The diggers then called their own mass meeting for December 15th.
 
  
On the 12th of December the A. Digger notice was published in the Argus, along with a notice:
 
  
:''NOTICE TO DIGGERS AT MOUNT ALEXANDER AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD''
 
:''A PUBLIC MEETING will be held on Monday next, the 15th instant, at four o'clock, on the ground near the Commissioner's tent, for the purpose of taking into consideration the Proclamation of His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor of the 1st instant, relative to increasing the License Fee from 30s per month to 3 pounds, and for other purposes connected with the diggings. December 12th.''
 
  
  
A letter in the Argus on the 13th of December from a correspondent "Bendigo" stated:
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Footnotes
  
:''That we, the gold miners assembled on Bendigo Creek, having learned that the Lieutenant Governor and Executive Council of Victoria, by proclamation, have intimated their intention of doubling our license fee from mid after (sic) the 1st of January next; and considering that it is unjust and extremely oppressive, are, to a man, determined not to submit to the wholesale robbery which is contemplated by such proclamation, and to the uttermost will withstand its imposition. We, therefore, solemnly pledge ourselves to resist it in every shape and form, and will aid by all the means in our power those who will do the same elsewhere. We wish to be understood as not objecting to the present heavy tax of thirty shillings per month, although we consider it too much. As in proof of which, there is a large surplus fund arising therefrom, amount to £3,000.''
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Footnote 1
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The term “working class” and middle class” have considerably changed meanings since the early 19th century. This can be confusing.
  
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In the 1830s “workers” meant men and women who owned no income generating property. Therefore they could live only by the wages they could get for their labour, their work. So in Chartist writings and speeches, the term “workers” is as likely to refer to teachers, doctors, small tradesman, ministers of religion, as it is to mean factory hands, or cleaners, or navvies. A Chartist ballad in 1840 reflects the strong representation of tradesmen in the movement. After “colliers and miners...
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There’s tailors, shoemakers and masons likewise,
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The plasterers and brick layers strongly do rise,
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The great nobs of this town are struck with surprise”
  
On the 15th of December the Argus published a letter:
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The term “middle class” has changed just as much and is just as confusing. During at least the first half of the 19th century, the term referred to owners of the kind of property which produced enough money for them to buy the labour of others to work for them, and on the whole to control what price they paid for that labour. By the 1830s the new middle class consisted mainly of large industrialists, mill owners, mine owners, large merchants and land- owners.
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Of course any actual situation was more complex than this simplified description.
  
:''Fellow diggers in bush and town! - Remember, 15th of December 1851, to rally round the standard of Australian Reform, and record your opinions against the tyrannical oppressors who wish to levy an enormous Tax upon the bone and sinew of the country - the capital of the poor man!''
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Footnote 2
''What has developed the vast, rich resources of this Colony! Labour; which has placed the poor man, who after years of suffering toil to earn a crust for his starving family, is now, in a great measure, to be deprived of the chance of digging for gold (for it is a chance with the many), because the rich man conceives that your energetic spirit to raise yourselves and your families to a position above want, is to be crushed by the intended advance upon the license fee, which has no precedent in the annals of history. Why not tax the amount of gold produced from the soil?''
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To say the Chartist story begins with the 1832 Reform Act is quite arbitrary. I choose it because in the early 1830s the reformers high hopes changed very quickly to bitter anger over what the Reformed Parliament actually did. Some reforms were achieved, most notably the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. But on the whole Members of Parliament's prejudice and ignorance, combined with self-interest, produced some of the cruellest injustices in English history, the Poor Law perhaps being the most notorious.
M''en, in equity, every man would pay in proportion to what he has received. On the other hand, has thirty shillings per month defrayed the expenses of the Commissioner, escort & company? If it has done so, then the increase of thirty shillings extra, is an imposition in practice, and unjust in principle. Why does not the Government make out a debitor and creditor account, and let the diggers know how the money they have paid has been expended, and where the surplus, which must be a large one, has gone to, or what is intended to he done with it?''
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Probably Parliament’s greatest achievement was to popularise the idea that social change could come through legislative action. This helped lay the foundations not only of Chartism, but of modern political party organisation.
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But 1832 is arbitrary, instead we could choose 1800. The first quarter of the 19th century was full of outbreaks, riots, protests and harsh repression. There were the Luddite outbreaks, the 1819 Peterloo massacre, and many, many more. They produced a growing climate of opinion, that something was wrong, the times were out of joint, that somehow ordinary people's lives should and could be changed.
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Or (because 'nothing comes from nothing') we could begin the story even earlier, with the great Age of Democratic Revolutions in the 17th and 18th centuries. First the English Revolution’s Civil War and Putney Debates - “the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he”. Then came the American Revolution’s Declaration “that all men are created equal....with inalienable Rights”, and in 1789 France’s Rights of Man that “Men are born free and equal in rights.” - great democratic documents, each profoundly influenced by subversive early democrats like Rainborough, Paine and Voltaire, all of whom were favourite authors of many Chartists.
  
:''I remain, R.B.C."''
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Footnote 3
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It is worth noting that although at least the first five points constitute what is generally agreed now to be a political democracy, that Chartists themselves rarely, if ever, used the word democracy. Until the very late 19th or early 20th century, democracy was a widely used term of abuse. It was understood to be something dangerous, disreputable and very subversive. (It is easy to think of today’s comparable scary labels).
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In 1848 for instance when the Australian colonies were submitting proposals for self-government to Earl Grey in London, Tasmania’s Governor Dennison stressed the need for an upper chamber, because “Your Lordship can hardly form an idea of the character of the population of these colonies. There is an essentially democratic spirit which actuates....the community and it is...to check the development of this spirit that I suggest....an Upper Chamber....I also think that in order (for) members to be independent of either the government of the people, they should be appointed....for life”.
 +
A few days after the Eureka uprising, Victoria’s Governor Hotham warned Grey, “the eyes of the Government must not be shut against what I believe to be the fact (that) the agitators and promoters of sedition have further objects in view than the repeal of the Licence fee; the more moderate...subsist upon money collected from their followers...The rest hold foreign democratic opinions.”
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Democracy did not become fully respectable and acceptable until the First World War. War-weary people were pressing their governments to tell them why that dreadful war was being fought. What were the “war aims”? About 1916 Lloyd George’s government eventually decided it was to save democracy, and this became a popular slogan.
  
  
and the same edition of the Argus editorialized:
 
  
:''THE LICENSE FEE: We believe that we are warranted in stating, that the Government has seen the necessity of deciding that the exaction of the doubled license-fee shall not be enforced. Very 'firm' and very 'judicious' certainly, the whole proceeding! The adoption of a charge upon the gold, in the shape of a Royalty, is still under consideration; and the License system having proved a complete failure, we think that some better course should be decided upon.''
 
:''The scene was thus set for the 15th of December. As researcher Barbara James noted "we are dependent on the two contemporary Melbourne papers (the Herald and the Argus) for first hand accounts of the meeting."''
 
  
(Barbara James Collection held by the Chewton Domain Society)
 
  
 +
Addendum - The Chartists
  
On the 17th of December the Argus reported:
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During the 1830s and 40s, Chartism grew into a nationwide mass movement in Britain with a membership of millions. They were completely unified in two key areas. First, they agreed about their purpose, their goal - to obtain social reforms by working for political reforms - clearly set out in their Charter. Second, virtually all Chartists thought of themselves as workers, as “bees not drones”. Dr. Fletcher, a surgeon who became a Chartist Member of Parliament, wrote that the first 1839 Convention was made up of barristers, clergymen, literary men and a “considerable proportion of honest and intelligent men.”
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However there were wide differences about what were the best methods to use to achieve their goals. Chartists also had very different social, religious, educational and occupational backgrounds. There was no such thing as a typical Chartist.
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The clearest division was over tactics - whether physical or moral force was the most effective method to achieve their aims. Moderate leaders, like Lovett, Place, O’Connell, Oastler and many more, believed that educating working people would “rouse their imagination” and would “ensure the suffrage”. They organised Working Men’s Groups, Unions and Classes and even produced “lesson cards”. Many worked for the “Paupers’ Press”.
 +
Radical leaders like Attwood “the radical banker!”, O’Brien, Jones and others believed (as Kennedy the Scottish Chartist at Bakery Hill a few years later) did, that:
 +
 +
“Moral persuasion is all a humbug,
 +
Nothing persuades like a lick in the lug.”
  
''MOUNT ALEXANDER: MEETING OF DIGGERS.''
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Though a small minority at first, Parliament’s indifference and the savage repression of fellow Chartists, increased radicals’ numerical strength throughout the 1840s.
 +
However, like the leader O’Connell, many Chartists fluctuated between moderate and radical positions. Conscientiously opposed to using force, they also embraced the Chartist slogan, “Peacefully if we may, forcibly if we must.”
 +
Most Chartists were christians, and most “knew their Bible well.” It is easy to see (and hear) links between “Onward Christian Soldiers” and Chartist hymns, for example in “Sons of Poverty Assemble” (from the Chartist Hymn Book):  
 +
See the brave ye spirit-broken
 +
Who uphold your righteous cause
 +
Who against them hath not spoken?
 +
They are, just as Jesus was,
 +
Persecuted
 +
By bad men and wicked laws
 +
Rouse them from their silken slumbers,
 +
Trouble them amidst their pride;
 +
Swell you ranks, augment your numbers,
 +
Spread the Charter far and wide;
 +
Truth is with us,
 +
God himself is on our side.
  
:''Our reporter left the diggings yesterday morning, and arrived with his report too late in the evening for insertion.  
+
Anglicans were widely represented but catholics and methodists were most prominent. The Irish troubles, especially the 1846 potato famine, help explain catholic sympathies, as Wesley’s fiery missionary work in the new industrial and coal mining towns in the late 18th century does the methodists. Hobsbawn stresses “marked parallelism” between religious and political activism at this time. The Chartist methodist Rev. J.R Stephens preached the need to work for universal suffrage. but he also wrote in a Chartist paper - “if the people who produce all wealth (are) not allowed...in accordance with God’s word to have...the fruits of the earth which....they had raised...then War to the knife with their enemies (because they are) the enemies of God”. And he told a Wigan meeting “The firelock must come first and the vote afterwards”.
From a hurried glance we find that it was attended by about 14,000 men, many of whom had travelled twenty miles to be present. Not a cradle was seen at work after 3 o'clock, until the meeting was over. J.F. Mann, Esq. in the Chair. Capt. Harrison, Messrs Potts, Lineham, Hudson, Booley and Richmond addressed the crowd, which is reported to be one of the most orderly in the colonies.  
+
“Owenite” Chartists were christian on the whole but very much their own brand. Lovett was a christian but always said this had nothing to do with his Chartism. Society would only become more civilised by putting Chartist egalitarianism into practice, not through religion. When Richardson said he was a Chartist because “The voice of the people is the voice of God”, O’Connor scoffed that Chartism “is superior to christianity (because) it takes its name from no man. What greater honour can a man have than to be a Chartist?” A fairly large number of Chartists were atheists, particularly the “Paineites”.
Five resolutions were passed, a committee formed - and delegates appointed. We intend giving the report in full tomorrow."
+
There was no notable gender division in the movement, and this reflects general public attitudes at that time. The majority of Chartist were men. However quite significant numbers of women were active participants from the beginning. At the 1839 Convention 24,000 of the Birmingham signatures to the petition were women’s. Their number started to decline around the mid 1840’s although considerable numbers remained active until the movement ended.
:The Argus of the 18th of December and the Herald of the the 20th of December both published reports of the meeting, each prepared by their "own Correspondent". The day was summarized in the 1995 commemoration booklet as:''
+
Various reasons have been suggested by different historians. One of the most interesting argues the change reflects the change in the movement itself. In the beginning the movement appealed to and involved families, including children, rather than individuals. Children were often given Chartist's christian names, especially O’Connor’s first name, Feargus (like all those British children called Winston during the 1940s).
:''The 15th of December was hot and dry, but the chosen meeting place near the Shepherd's Hut at Chewton, was hung with bright banners and bunting was strung between tall stringy barks. By 3 o'clock, the cradles lay idle, and bands of diggers, many carrying shovels, made their way in from various corners of the diggings. Some were accompanied by musicians, including a brass band, giving the occasion a festive air. Cheers and greetings echoed about to welcome each arriving party. A roaring welcome was given to Captain [[John Harrison]], who led in a delegation from Bendigo.''
 
:''By 4 o'clock, a cooling breeze gave relief to the crowd. After waiting some time for A. Digger to present himself, at the dray which served as speakers' platform, J.F. Mann, Esq. was appointed Chairperson. He called upon Mr. Lawrence Potts to speak. (From his turn of phrase, it is clear that the mysterious A. Digger was very well known to "Pottsie".) Messrs Lineham, Booley, Richmond, Hudson and Capt.Harrison then spoke in turn. Five resolutions declaring opposition to the License Fee and setting out future actions were put and adopted, interspersed with good-natured heckling from the crowd.''
 
:''1. That this meeting deprecates as unjust, illegal, and impolitic, the attempt to increase the License Fee from 30 Shillings to Three Pounds. Moved Potts. Seconded O'Connor.''
 
:''2. That this meeting while deprecating the use of physical force, and pledging itself not to resort to it except in case of self-defngence; at the same time pledges itself to relieve or release any or all diggers that on account of non-payment of the Three Pound License Fee may be fined or confined by Government orders or Government agents, should Government temerity proceed to such illegal lengths. Moved Lineham. Seconded Doyle.''
 
:''3. That Delegates be named from this meeting, to confer with the Government, and arrange an equitable system of working the Gold Fields. Moved Dr. Richmond. Seconded Potts.''
 
:''4. Moved that Captain Harrison, Dr. Richmond and Mr Plaistowe be appointed Delegates from this meeting, to make arrangements with the Government in the spirit of the foregoing resolutions. Carried. That to meet the expenses of the Delegates and other incidents, a Subscription of 1 shilling per month from each cradle be entered into. Carried.''
 
:''5. That the miners at each diggings appoint Committees to watch over their interests, and that a Central Committee be formed by a Delegate from the Committee of each Digging, such Delegates to be paid for their services, and report proceedings to a General Meeting of the miners, to be held the first Monday in every month. Carried. Speakers and hecklers joked about the "Joes and Noonies" (police and troopers), saying that some were so young they had to be dragged from their mother's breast and should be rocked in the (gold) cradles. Special invective was saved for George Cavenagh of the Herald newspaper. The Herald had printed articles describing the diggers in such terms as "vagabonds, cut-throats and scoundrels", but speakers made a point of mentioning how safe and trustworthy was society on the gold fields.''
 
:''To round off the meeting, the assembly gave three hearty cheers for the Argus newspaper; "who watch over the interests of the working classes", and three groans for the Herald.''
 
  
  
After the speeches, the musicians played, and gradually the diggers dispersed to their respective tents. According to the Argus report:
+
== Also See ==
  
''At 7 o'clock that evening no person could have surmised that anything of importance had taken place that day. During Capt. Harrison's address, there could not have been less than 14,000 persons on the ground, not a cradle was seen to he working. The ''men appear to have risen en masse, at the sound of the band, and retired in the same order.''
+
[[Articles]]
The Governor had to back down by rescinding the order to double the License Fee, or risk greater insurrection. This decision was declared in an order dated December 13th 1851; that is, prior to the Monster Meeting. However, it was not reported by the Argus until December 16th and then said to be "under discussion", while the Government Gazette did not confirm the decision until December 24th. Whether the rescission order was deliberately pre-dated, so that the Governor did not appear to buckling under Digger pressure, is open to conjecture.''<ref>1995 Commemoration Booklet.</ref>
 
  
Rescission Notice, Colonial Secretary's Office, Melb. Dec. 13th. 1851
+
[[Chartism]]
  
Measures being now under the consideration of Government, which have for their object the substitution as soon as circumstances permit of other Regulations in lieu of those now in force, based upon the principle of a royalty leviable upon the amount actually raised, under which Gold may be lawfully removed from its natural place of deposit. His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor, with the advice of the Executive Council, hereby causes it to be notified, that no alteration will for the present be made in the amount of the License Fee as levied under the Government Notice of the 18th August 1851; and that the Government Notice of the 1st inst., is hereby rescinded.
+
== Bibliography ==
  
By His Excellency's Command,W. Lonsdale
+
This bibliography indicates only my most used references.
  
 
+
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Pelican, 1968
Writing in the Argus on the 5th of July 1924 "G.B." wrote about the aftermath of the 15th of December:
+
J.L & B. Hammond, The Bleak Age, Pelican, 1947
 
+
A. Briggs, Chartism, Sutton, 1998
:''Though the possibility of a revolt was averted by the abandonment of the proposed increase, the soldiery remained, and for seven years Castlemaine was under semi-military rule. The gold diggers of Castlemaine, like their brethren elsewhere in Australia, do not seem to have been a submissive class, and a small hill in the town became known as Agitation Hill, as here was the local forum where were held from time to time meetings to protest against various wrongs, local and national.''
+
D. Thompson, England in the Nineteenth Century, Pelican, 1950
:''To commemorate the great Meeting of Gold Diggers on the 15th of December 1851, a group of activists celebrated the event in 1995. In 2003 another celebration was organized, and since then it has become an annual event. The Chewton Domain Society sells commemorative booklets about this event.''
+
K. Marx, Surveys From Exile, Penguin, 1973
 
+
C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, Pelican, 1975
== References ==
+
R. Owen, A New View of Society (1813), Pelican, 1970
 
+
L. Snyder, Fifty Major Documents of the 19th Century, Anvil, 1955
<References/>
+
A.S.P. Woodhouse ,Puritanism and Liberty, Dent, 1938
 +
J. Lewis Ed., The New Rights of Man, Constable, 2003
 +
I. Clendinnen, The History Question: Quarterly Essay, Schwartz, 2006
 +
C.M. Clark, Documents in Australian History, Angus & Robinson, 1950

Latest revision as of 16:33, 6 September 2013

Chartism in 19th Century Britain by Isobel Dowling, Former lecturer in Sociology and Politics at University of Ballarat


In London, in early 1839, the first Chartist National Convention was called to plan and write the famous Charter. About 10 years later the movement began to disintegrate after the Kennington Common debacle in 1848. Dates tell us what happened, but give little help to understand why, let alone what it has to do with our lives today. For that we need to know more about the climate of opinion in the early 19th century. This paper begins the Chartist story well before the Charter, and argues that the story did not finish when Chartism disappeared.

We will begin the Chartist story in 1832 when the British Parliament passed the first Reform Act. This Act shifted political power from the old aristocracy to the newly emerging middle class of wealthy landlords, merchants and industrialists. Eligible voters increased from about 430,000 to 650,000. Almost at once however the Act produced widespread disappointment and anger, especially among the new “working and industrious classes” (See footnote 1). This deep discontent had causes which were partly political.

The economic unhappiness was triggered by what we now call the Industrial Revolution. As the 19th century began, the new factory system of production was causing acute economic distress, with resulting severe personal and social dislocation among previously respectable self-sufficient artisans and small farmers. Pauperism, hunger and homelessness spread from London to the new cotton and steel towns in the north, to the Yorkshire and Welsh coal mines, to Cornish farms, and over the border to industrial towns like Glasgow. Owen’s experiments with “co-operative unionism”, between new owners and workers were clearly failing to help. Many working people now had bitter memories of their abortive long struggle for wider parliamentary reform. Fairly quickly many began to feel the new 1832 Bill still represented property, not people. Wider property certainly, but still only property.

The Reformed Parliament produced by the Bill finally triggered political fury. Popular anger against the Act exploded dramatically in 1834 when the new parliament passed the Poor Law Amendment Act. In the name of greater economic efficiency, it transferred responsibility for poverty relief from the local parish to central government commissioners. The new law quickly produced some really gross mismanagement, and the unfortunate workhouse inmates were powerless victims. For instance each single workhouse was now to be an asylum, an orphanage and a poorhouse simultaneously.

In 1838 Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, specifically to expose some of the new law’s injustices. In 1865 his heartbreaking Betty Higden in Our Mutual Friend chooses to die tramping the roads, rather than be put in the work house. Clearly he had not changed his opinion during the 30 years between half-starved Oliver “asking for more”, and Betty, running away with her “funeral money sewn into her dress”. In Chapter 2 of Oliver Twist he wrote, (A poor mans choice) “is between being starved by a gradual process (in the workhouse) or by a quick one out of it”.

Remember this widely hated legislation was produced by the new Reformed Parliament which thousands of people had welcomed as a hopeful new beginning. This same parliament now also revived the hated stamp duty, the “tax on knowledge”. By law, newspapers costing six pence or less now must pay for a government stamp, or their publication was illegal. Penny or tuppenny papers had begun to flourish throughout England during the 1830s - the “Paupers’ Press”. Many were edited by people who would shortly become leading Chartists, like Fergus O’Connor’s The Northern Star and O’Brien’s Poor Man’s Guardian, which he deliberately published unstamped. He wrote that the unjust tax had “made the rich man’s paper cheaper, the poor man’s dearer.” Like large numbers of working class editors he was arrested and imprisoned. But the bitter struggle for a “tax free....cheap and honest Press” was one of the many movements which throughout the 1830s paved the way for Chartism, “one of the most remarkable examples of working class politics ever seen in England” (See footnote 2)

Around 1833-34, small groups of various kinds of workers, with various kinds of political beliefs - Friendly Societies, Working Men’s Associations, Industrious Females, Owenites and many more - combined to form the Grand National Union, GNU. Lord Melbourne’s reformed government quickly met this “threat to property”. The Tolpuddle Martyrs, agricultural labourers who had joined the new Union to try to raise their wages back from seven shillings to ten shillings, were arrested and deported.

The clear message to employers was that they could now act with impunity, assured of full government support and there is overwhelming documentary evidence, that virtually all of them understood it. “All in turn” now gave their workers the choice of the sack, or of signing a document renouncing the new Union. Within a few months the Union failed, amidst widespread bitter anger. But this failure was followed almost at once, by the remarkable new Chartist movement.

The Hammonds argue that something more than struggling for just wages and conditions had always inspired some of the older Chartists like Cobbett or O’Connell, and also the younger Oastler and O’Connor, leaders of the new movement about to emerge. They write “Working (people were) stirred by the belief that society might be radically changed; that life need not wear so hard and ungenerous a face; that the poor might have a share in the civilisation of their age. The movement (Chartism) then is significant because of its scale, and its ideas.” (My emphasis)

So, in 1836, Place “the radical tailor of Charing Cross” and Lovett, a self-educated cabinet-maker, formed the London Working Men’s Association, (L.W.N.A), to promote political reform. This body produced the famous Charter. It was a draft for an Act of Parliament, with 13 sections, to be presented to the House. The 13 sections outlined proposals to reform elections, so that Parliament could be truly representative. The Preamble and the famous six points contain the revolutionary ideas for radical change of the existing power structures. They clearly echo earlier democratic revolutionaries’ debate in 17th century Putney, and in 18th century Washington and Paris.

Preamble Whereas the Commons House of Parliament now exercises....on the supposed behalf of the people the power of making laws, it ought in order to fulfil with....honesty the great duties imposed on it, to be made the faithful and accurate representative of the peoples’ wishes, feelings and interests. This was followed by the six points:

1. Universal manhood suffrage 2. Equal electoral districts (1 vote, 1 value) 3. Vote by secret ballot 4. Payment of Members of Parliament 5. No property qualifications for Members of Parliament 6. Annual Parliaments (See footnote 3)

The Charter was published in 1838. L.W.M.A “missionaries” took the Charter to the provinces, especially the new industrial towns in the North like Manchester and Birmingham. This was a political and organisational master-stroke. It drew together almost all the varied protest movements of the time, especially the widely different, but passionately angry, opponents of the new Poor Law. All united now in demand for the six points.

During 1838 huge “monster” meetings, torchlight processions, mass demonstrations and protests, were held not only throughout London, but even more so in the new industrial towns. The aims were to explain and familiarise the six points and to organise all the varied discontents into demanding them. In other words, to present the Charter as a goal behind which many different groups could unite. And it worked! To repeat an earlier comment, however Chartism is evaluated in political history, its assessment as “one of the most remarkable examples of working-class politics” can not be challenged.

Backed by this mass support a plan was now worked out. First, working people were to be organised to freely elect delegates to a People's Convention. This Convention would then organise a monster petition containing the six points. Finally, arrangements would be made to present this Petition to Parliament for the members’ consideration. In other words, Chartists sought to redress their grievances by radical change through Parliament.

The “missionaries”, the working people's newspapers, and ordinary members, worked tirelessly for the cause, and support swelled. By 5th May 1839, all had been arranged. Attwood, a Member of Parliament and a moderate Chartist, was to present the petition to Parliament for consideration. It contained 2,283,000 signatures and was three miles long.

That very day there was a parliamentary crisis. The government resigned! The Petition was finally presented on 14th June, when a new Whig government had formed, but was not debated until 12th July. Lord John Russell made “some very sensible remarks”, and Disraeli expressed some sympathy for Chartists in “this very remarkable social movement.” But on the whole Parliament was unmoved and uninterested. 46 members voted for the Petition to be considered, while 235 voted against. After so much work and such high hopes, parliamentary action must have seemed to be a hopeless way to win economic or social change, let alone justice.

During the long delay angry frustration had sometimes produced unruly meetings, especially at Birmingham’s famous “Bull ring”, and anger increased after the Petition’s rejection. There were even clashes between moderate and radical Chartists, the latter convinced now that only physical force could succeed. Some began to urge more extreme action such as a general strike. Growing numbers of both leaders and followers were arrested and usually jailed during Parliament’s long delay, and many more arrests followed the Petitions rejection. Instead of individual trials prisoners began to be “tried” in large groups. Despite a few unpleasant incidents there was no serious violence, contrary to the authorities’ fears and some hot-headed Chartists' hopes.

With many members in prison the movement was fairly quiet briefly, but by 1840 it began to plan a second Convention followed by a Petition in 1842. The 1842 petition was larger than the first in 1839. It contained 3,317,702 signatures and was over six miles long. A huge procession followed 30 bearers who carried it to the House. Its size produced a problem getting it inside. The debate about getting it presented was lively. (The great historian McCauley told the House that universal suffrage was “incompatible with the very existence of civilisation!”) The motion was defeated 287 votes to 49.

This massive failure was followed by worsening conditions especially in the North. During the “hungry forties” trade was depressed, wages cut and unemployment soared. A new Poor Law ruled that the unemployed were to be put in the hated workhouses! Large groups of ragged half-starved people roamed the North and the Midlands, and often attacked the closed “dark satanic mills”. The government now treated the Charter as treasonable, and hundreds of Chartists were arrested. Special Commissions were appointed to try them. Hundreds were imprisoned, mostly with hard labour. Scores were transported. Almost certainly many more left England of their own accord under the new assisted migration scheme.

By 1848, Europe’s “Year of Revolutions”, Chartism had revived. There was a growing interaction between some European revolutionaries and some Chartists. Marx and Engels, now living in England in exile, attended many Chartist meetings, and their writings reveal their admiration for Chartist organisational skills. Marx called Chartism “the first (organised) working man’s party the world ever produced”. Much later in his life (when working men had finally got the vote) he seriously considered whether English Chartist methods might make peaceful revolutionary change possible.

Chartists now organised their third Petition to Parliament, requesting that their Charter be debated and accepted. This collected an even greater number of signatures than the two earlier failures in 1839 and 1842, probably somewhere between four and five million. Historians differ about the precise number, because for the first time many of the signatures were fakes - including Queen Victoria and the Duke of Wellington whose names appear a number of times.

On 10th April 1848, after assembling at Kennington Common, the people were to march in a procession over the river to Parliament. They marched with O’Connor at their head and the Petition at the front in 15 huge crates, each carried by 24 strong men. At the House it was to be accepted by Roebuck, a Chartist Member of Parliament, for presentation to the House.

However, the Police Commissioner appeared and told the leaders the procession had been declared illegal. Lawyers had found an old 1660s law from Charles II, which forbade more than 10 persons to present petitions. The Commissioner told the organisers that a large force, led by the Duke of Wellington would use force if they continued. There were 8,000 troops, reinforced by 170,000 “special constables” (including Gladstone!). These had been specially recruited (overwhelmingly from the nobility and middle classes) in the last few weeks. (One of them was the Hon. Charles Cavendish Fulke Grenville. He recorded in his memoirs in 1885 that he had enlisted as “a special constable, taking with him all his...employees”, that he found it “a most satisfactory demonstration by the Government... the Chartist movement was contemptible” and of the petition that “there were no end of fictitious names...with the insertion....of ribaldry, indecency and impertinence”)

The sad anti-climax to the day is well-known. O’Connor had never intended violence and he acquiesced. The petition was transferred to three or four hansom cabs to carry it to Parliament. Only O’Connor was allowed to accompany it to deliver it. It was never heard, but simply laughed out of the House without debate or division three days later.

The Chartist Movement really died that day. Reform through and of Parliament was widely perceived as a lost cause. New Conventions were held over the next six or seven years. Small breakaway groups formed, but popular support dwindled. Many Chartist emigrated, especially to the Victorian gold rushes. The collapse of the movement unhinged O’Connor’s mind and he died insane in 1855, six months after the final National Convention.

However, we cannot and should not dismiss Chartism as just a fascinating episode, a brief historical flash in the pan, which soon failed and disappeared - because this 'misreads 19th century English history'.

Most historians see the major characteristic of that time as 'widespread social discontent', though they disagree about its nature and causes. There is also general agreement that the Industrial Revolution was producing terrible suffering and hardship which cannot be separated from this social discontent. However the Hammonds, E.P Thompson and many others, dig more deeply to introduce what Inga Clendinnen calls the “moral dimension” to these over simplified cause and effect explanations.

They argue that the discontent fundamentally arose from what was deeply felt to be a radically changing “philosophy of life”; a feeling that authorities had “set up the Golden Calf; that working people’s lives no longer mattered, or were of any value compared with acquiring material wealth; but that life need not be like this. There was a better and fairer way to manage these new productive forces”.

John Stuart Mill wrote, “Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish.”

When the Chartist movement died, its vision did not. Its ideas and principles motivated the great struggles throughout the 19th century and into the 20th - the struggles for free universal education, public health, the temperance movement, and the long hard fight for universal franchise, which was not won in England until 1928 - struggles “building up the self-respect of English working people”

John Stuart Mill memorably described Chartism as “the victory of the vanquished”




Footnotes

Footnote 1 The term “working class” and middle class” have considerably changed meanings since the early 19th century. This can be confusing.

In the 1830s “workers” meant men and women who owned no income generating property. Therefore they could live only by the wages they could get for their labour, their work. So in Chartist writings and speeches, the term “workers” is as likely to refer to teachers, doctors, small tradesman, ministers of religion, as it is to mean factory hands, or cleaners, or navvies. A Chartist ballad in 1840 reflects the strong representation of tradesmen in the movement. After “colliers and miners... There’s tailors, shoemakers and masons likewise, The plasterers and brick layers strongly do rise, The great nobs of this town are struck with surprise”

The term “middle class” has changed just as much and is just as confusing. During at least the first half of the 19th century, the term referred to owners of the kind of property which produced enough money for them to buy the labour of others to work for them, and on the whole to control what price they paid for that labour. By the 1830s the new middle class consisted mainly of large industrialists, mill owners, mine owners, large merchants and land- owners. Of course any actual situation was more complex than this simplified description.

Footnote 2 To say the Chartist story begins with the 1832 Reform Act is quite arbitrary. I choose it because in the early 1830s the reformers high hopes changed very quickly to bitter anger over what the Reformed Parliament actually did. Some reforms were achieved, most notably the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. But on the whole Members of Parliament's prejudice and ignorance, combined with self-interest, produced some of the cruellest injustices in English history, the Poor Law perhaps being the most notorious. Probably Parliament’s greatest achievement was to popularise the idea that social change could come through legislative action. This helped lay the foundations not only of Chartism, but of modern political party organisation. But 1832 is arbitrary, instead we could choose 1800. The first quarter of the 19th century was full of outbreaks, riots, protests and harsh repression. There were the Luddite outbreaks, the 1819 Peterloo massacre, and many, many more. They produced a growing climate of opinion, that something was wrong, the times were out of joint, that somehow ordinary people's lives should and could be changed. Or (because 'nothing comes from nothing') we could begin the story even earlier, with the great Age of Democratic Revolutions in the 17th and 18th centuries. First the English Revolution’s Civil War and Putney Debates - “the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he”. Then came the American Revolution’s Declaration “that all men are created equal....with inalienable Rights”, and in 1789 France’s Rights of Man that “Men are born free and equal in rights.” - great democratic documents, each profoundly influenced by subversive early democrats like Rainborough, Paine and Voltaire, all of whom were favourite authors of many Chartists.

Footnote 3 It is worth noting that although at least the first five points constitute what is generally agreed now to be a political democracy, that Chartists themselves rarely, if ever, used the word democracy. Until the very late 19th or early 20th century, democracy was a widely used term of abuse. It was understood to be something dangerous, disreputable and very subversive. (It is easy to think of today’s comparable scary labels). In 1848 for instance when the Australian colonies were submitting proposals for self-government to Earl Grey in London, Tasmania’s Governor Dennison stressed the need for an upper chamber, because “Your Lordship can hardly form an idea of the character of the population of these colonies. There is an essentially democratic spirit which actuates....the community and it is...to check the development of this spirit that I suggest....an Upper Chamber....I also think that in order (for) members to be independent of either the government of the people, they should be appointed....for life”. A few days after the Eureka uprising, Victoria’s Governor Hotham warned Grey, “the eyes of the Government must not be shut against what I believe to be the fact (that) the agitators and promoters of sedition have further objects in view than the repeal of the Licence fee; the more moderate...subsist upon money collected from their followers...The rest hold foreign democratic opinions.” Democracy did not become fully respectable and acceptable until the First World War. War-weary people were pressing their governments to tell them why that dreadful war was being fought. What were the “war aims”? About 1916 Lloyd George’s government eventually decided it was to save democracy, and this became a popular slogan.



Addendum - The Chartists

During the 1830s and 40s, Chartism grew into a nationwide mass movement in Britain with a membership of millions. They were completely unified in two key areas. First, they agreed about their purpose, their goal - to obtain social reforms by working for political reforms - clearly set out in their Charter. Second, virtually all Chartists thought of themselves as workers, as “bees not drones”. Dr. Fletcher, a surgeon who became a Chartist Member of Parliament, wrote that the first 1839 Convention was made up of barristers, clergymen, literary men and a “considerable proportion of honest and intelligent men.” However there were wide differences about what were the best methods to use to achieve their goals. Chartists also had very different social, religious, educational and occupational backgrounds. There was no such thing as a typical Chartist. The clearest division was over tactics - whether physical or moral force was the most effective method to achieve their aims. Moderate leaders, like Lovett, Place, O’Connell, Oastler and many more, believed that educating working people would “rouse their imagination” and would “ensure the suffrage”. They organised Working Men’s Groups, Unions and Classes and even produced “lesson cards”. Many worked for the “Paupers’ Press”. Radical leaders like Attwood “the radical banker!”, O’Brien, Jones and others believed (as Kennedy the Scottish Chartist at Bakery Hill a few years later) did, that:

“Moral persuasion is all a humbug, Nothing persuades like a lick in the lug.”

Though a small minority at first, Parliament’s indifference and the savage repression of fellow Chartists, increased radicals’ numerical strength throughout the 1840s. However, like the leader O’Connell, many Chartists fluctuated between moderate and radical positions. Conscientiously opposed to using force, they also embraced the Chartist slogan, “Peacefully if we may, forcibly if we must.” Most Chartists were christians, and most “knew their Bible well.” It is easy to see (and hear) links between “Onward Christian Soldiers” and Chartist hymns, for example in “Sons of Poverty Assemble” (from the Chartist Hymn Book): See the brave ye spirit-broken Who uphold your righteous cause Who against them hath not spoken? They are, just as Jesus was, Persecuted By bad men and wicked laws Rouse them from their silken slumbers, Trouble them amidst their pride; Swell you ranks, augment your numbers, Spread the Charter far and wide; Truth is with us, God himself is on our side.

Anglicans were widely represented but catholics and methodists were most prominent. The Irish troubles, especially the 1846 potato famine, help explain catholic sympathies, as Wesley’s fiery missionary work in the new industrial and coal mining towns in the late 18th century does the methodists. Hobsbawn stresses “marked parallelism” between religious and political activism at this time. The Chartist methodist Rev. J.R Stephens preached the need to work for universal suffrage. but he also wrote in a Chartist paper - “if the people who produce all wealth (are) not allowed...in accordance with God’s word to have...the fruits of the earth which....they had raised...then War to the knife with their enemies (because they are) the enemies of God”. And he told a Wigan meeting “The firelock must come first and the vote afterwards”. “Owenite” Chartists were christian on the whole but very much their own brand. Lovett was a christian but always said this had nothing to do with his Chartism. Society would only become more civilised by putting Chartist egalitarianism into practice, not through religion. When Richardson said he was a Chartist because “The voice of the people is the voice of God”, O’Connor scoffed that Chartism “is superior to christianity (because) it takes its name from no man. What greater honour can a man have than to be a Chartist?” A fairly large number of Chartists were atheists, particularly the “Paineites”. There was no notable gender division in the movement, and this reflects general public attitudes at that time. The majority of Chartist were men. However quite significant numbers of women were active participants from the beginning. At the 1839 Convention 24,000 of the Birmingham signatures to the petition were women’s. Their number started to decline around the mid 1840’s although considerable numbers remained active until the movement ended. Various reasons have been suggested by different historians. One of the most interesting argues the change reflects the change in the movement itself. In the beginning the movement appealed to and involved families, including children, rather than individuals. Children were often given Chartist's christian names, especially O’Connor’s first name, Feargus (like all those British children called Winston during the 1940s).


Also See

Articles

Chartism

Bibliography

This bibliography indicates only my most used references.

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Pelican, 1968 J.L & B. Hammond, The Bleak Age, Pelican, 1947 A. Briggs, Chartism, Sutton, 1998 D. Thompson, England in the Nineteenth Century, Pelican, 1950 K. Marx, Surveys From Exile, Penguin, 1973 C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, Pelican, 1975 R. Owen, A New View of Society (1813), Pelican, 1970 L. Snyder, Fifty Major Documents of the 19th Century, Anvil, 1955 A.S.P. Woodhouse ,Puritanism and Liberty, Dent, 1938 J. Lewis Ed., The New Rights of Man, Constable, 2003 I. Clendinnen, The History Question: Quarterly Essay, Schwartz, 2006 C.M. Clark, Documents in Australian History, Angus & Robinson, 1950