Aspects of Chartism: Beyond Kennington Common

The Convention continued to sit undaunted by the rejection of the petition. It organised more mass meetings preparatory to the summoning of a National Assembly that would call upon the Queen to dissolve Parliament and accept only a government prepared to implement the Charter. 6,000 people in Aberdeen voted to form a National Guard, while in Manchester 100,000 people were said to have pledged their support to the Convention in any emergency. On Monday 17^th April the Convention met again, and for the first time delegates acknowledged that a number of the signatories to the petition might well be far less than claimed. Internal disagreement, mutual suspicion and recriminations increasingly paralysed the work of the Convention. O’Connor attacked its handling of the petition. On Clark’s motion, the meeting of the National Assembly was postponed to 1^st May, but the mood remained defiant. In the following week, the first delegates were elected as further public meetings took place. At this point, O’Connor chose to claim that the National Assembly would be an illegal gathering.

Delegates began to leave to seek guidance in their localities. The Convention, though not actually dissolved, as Jones feared, was rapidly losing the initiative. His hopes that pressure could be maintained through the National Assembly that met in May, were shattered when O’Connor came out against it. William Dixon (Norwich) was appointed chairman and James Shirron (Aberdeen) secretary. At first concern was expressed that the Assembly was illegal because it contained more than 49 people. O’Connor came in for criticism, not least from Shirron, who complained that no trust could be placed in the word of a man who had first declared the event legal and subsequently illegal. It soon became evident that most delegates were opposed to physical force, though Shaw of London, Sharp, Ernest Jones, McLean, C.B. Henry (Aberdeen), Shirron, McIntosh (Newcastle-on-Tyne) and T. Jones (Liverpool) said their constituents would fight if necessary. The Assembly resolved that its programme should be to give increased vigour to the movement, to deal with the organisation and policy of the Chartist body, to organise the presentation of the Memorial to the Queen, and to find the best practical method of making the Charter law.

The split between O’Connor and the Chartist body became irretrievable as O’Connor condemned the Assembly as unlawful, and the Assembly charged his Northern Star newspaper with unfair reporting. Edward Jones resigned his position on the paper. The Assembly went on to adopt a new scheme of organisation dividing the country into districts, localities and sections. There was to be a five-strong Executive and 10 Commissioners, with district and local officers appointed by their localities. The Executive’s members were to have £2 each week, and when travelling a further 2s 6d plus their second class fare. A liberty fund of £10,000 was to be raised by voluntary subscription and an office taken in London. A provisional Executive was appointed consisting of J. McCrae (Dundee), Jones, Samuel Kydd (Oldham), Leach and McDouall (Nottingham). This marked the end of Chartist efforts to use traditional mass platform to obtain the Charter. Meanwhile, the Assembly was setting out a policy agenda that went far beyond the Charter. On a motion from West it voted to repeal the union between Great Britain and Ireland; it backed Carver’s call to sever the connection between Church and State; it carried Kydd’s motion advocating the employment of the poor on public lands; and on a motion from Jones it recommended the people to arm. All sense of reality now gone, the Assembly adjourned for six weeks to take the debate back to their constituents. It did not meet again. However, on 2^nd June, The Times concluded that “Chartism is neither dead nor sleeping. The snake was scotched not killed on the 10th of April. The advancing spring has brought with it warmth, vigour and renovation.”

The spring and summer of 1848 saw a great deal of activity, arrests and trials and several riots, against the background of imminent revolution in Ireland. There was a notable toughening of views among calling for physical confrontation with the forces of law and order. Was there the potential for a Chartist rising? The focal points of government concern during the summer were the Bradford, Manchester and Liverpool districts and London. Activity in Manchester began to increase from the middle of May. The cause was the arrest and subsequent transportation of John Mitchel, editor of the United Irishman and first victim of the Treason-Felony Act. This led to a call by Irish Confederates for a mass demonstration in Stevenson Square at noon on Wednesday 31^st May. Local magistrates banned it. However, it went ahead anyway with minor disturbances. The most serious problems facing the government in late May and early June, however, came from the Bradford district and Liverpool. Open drilling spread to Leeds and Bingley. Halifax Chartists attended meeting with ‘glistening pikes flashing in the sun’. Matters came to a head to 29^th May with the botched arrest of two local Chartist leaders. Street violence followed which the Bradford police eventually brought under control. The Times grudgingly reported that[1] “if fighting with luck against Special Constables and the police could make a revolution, those who fought at Bradford ought to have succeeded.”

It is unclear whether a rising was planned at Bradford at the end of May. Whether it was or not, it is clear that any co-ordinated Chartist action was unlikely. There were different levels of preparation in different towns. Liverpool had remained relatively quiet in April despite its potential for violence. Its links with the movement in the rest of the country were weak. Its large Irish population appears to have been politically inactive. During May political activity increased with growing activity by Irish radicals. Religious divisions sharpened politics in Liverpool. Social tensions increased in June and July. Newcastle commented in his diary[2]

[June 1] “The Chartist meetings are becoming very troublesome not that we know any thing of them in this part of the Town for they meet in Clerkenwell to the amount of some thousands - but they require much watching both by police & soldiers. At Bradford there has been a very serious affair, & the rioters were very difficult to beat.  [2 June] In the H of Lords notice was taken of the tumultuous assemblies holden every night in the eastern parts of this metropolis - disturbance of the peace, good order, & mercantile transactions of the inhabitants. The Police, special constables & soldiers have been out every night of the week - amongst only Peers the D of Wellington called upon ministers to put down this nuisance, & suggested two modes either to prevent assemblage by dispersion before meeting, or else to make the ring leaders personally responsible for all damage done & for all delinquency either by word or deed. Ld Lansdowne promised that the evil should be put down. It is time that it should, the citizens complain of it bitterly.  [3 June] The Chartists have been out every night this week & today (being Sunday) they were out by ten o’clock & continued to hold meetings throughout the day in various parts of the town. The Police had to be on the alert throughout the day & had some very sharp affrays with them. On one occasion they broke all the windows of a Church. Their conduct has been very scandalous & they give out that they shall go on until they have worn out the authorities & shall have carried their point. The desecration of the Sabbath is a new practice in English outrage. They say openly that in Whitsun week they shall make such a dramatic time throughout the Kingdom as the like has never been seen before.”

Street meetings and violence increased. However, vigorous action by the police rapidly restored order and by early August, Liverpool was completely under the control of the forces of law and order. In London, the police broke up meetings in the East End on 4^th June and the provisional executive of the National Assembly called a day of protest on 12^th June. The government responded with a heavy display of force at the Bishop Bonner’s Fields meeting. It was determined to rush what remained of the Chartist threat. The hostility of the press and the willingness of the courts to convict Chartist leaders, as well as the rank and file, eased the gradual repression of the movement. Newcastle finally[3] [7 June] “A man of the name of Jones, a Chartist orator & firebrand, & anothers have been arrested. Their language has been so outrageous that there can be but little doubt that they will soon follow to the penal Colonies. Yesterday & the day before these miscreants have not shewn themselves as they announced, possibly they may think it advisable not to meet the police until they may be better organised & prepared.  [8 June] Several more of these miscreant Chartist leaders & orators have been arrested. They are all upon their guard just now & since the beginning of this week have been very quiet - but I suspect that they are now waiting for any opportunity, it is expected that on the 12^th they will show themselves in many places. Great preparations are making to meet them whenever they may appear - for the first time they are secret as to their intentions - which appears the more like earnest.  [10 June] It is intimated to us that the Govt & the Vestry are very desirous that special constables should be made & sworn in - & that we should send our Servants for that purpose, also go ourselves if we do not object to it. I sent many of my servants & they went with great good will & alacrity. I myself went to the office & enquired of the magistrate whether if I were to be sworn in I could be excused from ordinary work, & might only be called upon when danger threatened & there was a foe to meet. He told me that he thought no exceptions could be made & that I could not be excused if others were called out. He mentioned a report that tomorrow (Sunday) the Specials would be called upon to do the duty of the Police who were to have rest to better able to undergo the probable fatigues of Whit Monday. This scared me & I retired telling that if on Monday (12^th) I found that there was really likely to be a great stir, I should probably call upon him to be sworn a special constable. I will do so if occasion requires, but I have no taste for acting Police watchman in the streets.  [12 June] I am now writing at past 7 o’clock. I have heard of no disturbances anywhere, & I was told today that telegraphic accounts had been received from all the great northern [towns] there had been meetings, but all had gone off quietly & the mobs had dispersed. A meeting was conducting near Mr. O'Neil's by Westbourne Grove, but since 10 o’clock it has so absolutely poured with rain that no mob would like to be washed by it.  [13 June] Not the slightest disturbance or appearance of disturbance occurred yesterday & today every where all has been equally quiet. The Chartists have taken us in most completely - & if they ever intend to do anything, it will now not be attempted except when we may be entirely off our guard.”

Chartism soon began to lose its major leaders. Jones was convicted for his speech at Bishop Bonner’s Fields. McDouall was brought to trial in late June. Harney summed up the procedures used in court throughout the second half of 1848 in the following way[4] “Place Fustian in the dock, let Silk Gown charge the culprit with being a ‘physical force Chartist’ and insinuate that he is not exactly free from the taint of ‘Communism’, and forthwith Broad Cloth in the jury box will bellow out GUILTY.”

Gradually the noose of repression was tightened but at a cost. There was an increased commitment to violence from the Chartists who remained. News from Ireland impelled some of the Chartists towards revolution. First, Mitchel was convicted, and then Habeas Corpus was suspended in Ireland in late July and finally Smith O’Brien’s abortive rising. Very little of the activity of late July was reported in the Star. However, two new papers appeared in Lancashire. The hope was to direct outrage at the treatment of Ireland into disciplined organisation. The Truth Teller called for ‘full and perfect organisation’ and opposed any idea of planned violence. The English Patriot and Irish Repealer, edited by James Leach[5] a leading Manchester Chartist, put forward a more radical agenda. It called for all Irishmen living in England to join the Irish League. Informers were pessimistic. They detected moves to greater secrecy in Irish and Chartist circles and reported that northern England would rise if there was insurrection, even if unsuccessful, in Ireland. The result was the August ‘conspiracy’. In London, a government informer infiltrated the local groups and its leaders were arrested on 16^th August. Provincial involvement is more difficult to assess. There is evidence of disagreement between local Chartists and Irish over the use of violence. However, there is much to suggest that Manchester was intended as the centre of co-ordinated action on either 15^th or 16^th August. In the event, local magistrates struck first and in the pre-emptive strike arrested fifteen Chartist and Confederate leaders on the night of 15^th August.

Was the Chartist threat real in 1848? To those in authority it certainly was. They saw the daily meetings and riots[6]. They received reports of drilling and military style marches from the provinces. The events of 10^th April were not seen at the time as marking the end of the movement, nor was it a decisive date and nor was it the demoralising fiasco that the mainstream media sought to maintain. Perhaps the end of the year has a greater claim. By then, the leaders of the movement were in prison. The Land Company was in difficulty and the ‘year of revolutions’ in Europe had ended not with the creation of just and democratic societies but with the reassertion of traditional authority. As in 1838 and 1842, Chartism was contained from without and critically weakened from within. Yet, Kennington Common and the June riots are only ‘fiascos’ in retrospect. The revival of 1848 was limited in geographical scale. Of the 1,009 places where evidence for Chartist organisations can be found between 1839 and 1849, only 207 were active in the third phase of which only 42 had emerged since 1845. Chartism’s failure in 1848 was not one of ideas but of will. The united ‘mass platform’, already weakened, disintegrated. Chartism as a mass movement was over.

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[1] The Times, 31^st May 1848.

[2] Extracts from the diaries of the fourth Duke of Newcastle, Archives Department of the University of Nottingham, published by Open University in Arts: A Third Level Course. The Revolutions of 1848, Unit 3, Document Collection, pages 108-09.

[3] Extracts from the diaries of the fourth Duke of Newcastle, Archives Department of the University of Nottingham, published by Open University in Arts: A Third Level Course. The Revolutions of 1848, Unit 3, Document Collection, pages 108-09.

[4] ‘L’Ami du Peuple’, Northern Star, 2^nd December 1848 quoted in John Belchem ‘1848: Feargus O’Connor and the Collapse of the Mass Platform’, in Epstein and Thompson (eds.) The Chartist Experience, page 299.

[5] James Leach (1806-69) was a well-known Manchester Chartist who was imprisoned in 1848. As a pamphleteer, he wrote about the factory system and the need for a middle-class alliance.

[6] M. Finn ‘A vent which has conveyed our principles: English radical patriotism in the aftermath of 1848’, Journal of Modern History, volume 64 (1992), pages 637-659 is essential on this issue.

Aspects of Chartism: 10th April 1848

The Convention now became the key to success. Could it provide central co-ordination and leadership? In short, no. Forty-nine delegates met in London on 4^th April. Some delegates like G.W.M. Reynolds and William Cuffay^[1] were bellicose at least in their rhetoric. Most were not. After much heated debate, the programme agreed by the NCA Executive was relatively moderate. If the petition were rejected, the Convention would address a memorial to the Queen. In the interim, the Convention was to be dissolved. This was to be followed by widespread agitation throughout the country leading to the formation of a more fully representative convention or national assembly.

“1^st – That in the event of the National Petition being rejected by the House of Commons, this Convention prepare a National Memorial to the Queen to dissolve the present Parliament, and call to her council such ministers only as will make the People’s Charter a cabinet measure.

“2^nd – That this Convention agree to the convocation of a National Assembly, to consist of delegates appointed at public meetings, to present the National Memorial to the Queen, and to continue permanently sitting until the Charter is the law of the land.

“3^rd – That this Convention call upon the country to hold simultaneous meetings on Good Friday, April 21^st, for the purpose of adopting the National Memorial, and electing delegates to the National Assembly.

“4^th – That the National Assembly meet in London on April 24^th.

“5^th – That the present Convention shall continue its sittings until the meeting of the National Assembly.”

This approach did not appeal to Chartists like Jones who believed that the Convention should immediately declare itself permanent. This would provide clear direction for extra-parliamentary pressure and allow the Convention to retain the initiative as the agitation intensified.

The Convention planned a peaceful demonstration at Kennington Common for 10^th April followed by a procession to present the petition to Parliament. O’Connor hoped that the petition would contain five million signatures. The Government responded by issuing a proclamation that such a procession would be illegal. Despite the Convention’s protests that its plans were peaceful, special constables were sworn in, and the Government made detailed plans to deal with the Chartists should they defy it. The Convention was in no mood to back down, however. A motion from T.M. Wheeler that it should go ahead with its public meeting “notwithstanding the foolish proclamation of the Government” was carried unanimously with speeches in support by Cuffay, West, Child, Adams, Stevenson, Cochrane, Shaw, Bolwell, Watson, Wilkinson, O’Connor, Kydd, Ernest Jones, Mcarthy, Frances, Reynolds, Clark, Ashton, Buckby, Walter, Cumming and Tattersall. The government was determined to prevent this.

Public opinion and increasing hysteria was firmly behind the Whigs and they exploited this to the full. The Crown and Government Security Bill was rushed through Parliament. This introduced a new charge of felonious sedition, a charge that extended to ‘open and advised speaking’. Stuart legislation against tumultuous petitioning was revived to prevent any mass procession through the streets. Strong precautionary measures were taken by the authorities for whom the Chartist threat was very real. The 79-year old Duke of Wellington began to organise London’s defences: 150,000 Special Constables were sworn in (including William Gladstone and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte) and the army was put on stand-by but was held in reserve. Eight thousand troops were drafted into the capital to support thousands of special constables. The government was utterly confident. It was unwilling to accede to any of the Chartist requests as a deputation from the Convention to the Home Office discovered. The issue increasingly was whether the meeting should proceed. Bronterre O’Brien had grave doubts. He recognised the determination of the government but also the likely effect on public opinion if the meeting went ahead. Harney called for the meeting and procession to be abandoned at secret gatherings with delegates on 8^th and 9^th April. McGrath, as chairman of the Convention, sought a last minute compromise with the Commissioners of Police. The movement had reached an impasse.

The procession was banned but the meeting went ahead. There are various estimates of the numbers present: O’Connor said three quarters of a million people attended. Gammage said there were between 150,000 and 170,000 in attendance; Russell put the number at between 12,000 and 15,000. The resolution of government, some have argued, was sufficient to ‘frighten’ O’Connor into asking his supporters not to confront the authorities and to disperse peacefully but it was always his intention that the meeting and the procession should be peaceful. The petition was carried in three cabs by O’Connor, Doyle, McGrath, Jones, Wheeler and Harney in a cab, first to Kennington Common and then on to Westminster. The crisis appeared to be over.

Newcastle’s diary provides an important indication of the attitudes and fears of the governing classes and he commented critically on the events^[2] [7 April] “Ministers are acting well & vigorously, they have made extensive & well devized plans in preparation to meet any thing which may happen on the 10^th at the great Chartist meeting. They have also brought in a bill for the better protection of the Crown & Govt of the United Kingdom & are showing the most praiseworthy determination to resist republicanism & disorganisation, & to secure order & tranquillity. [8 April] Charles has been hurried away from the society of his future bride & has been ordered up to London where he will arrive tomorrow to join his regiment - it is very hard upon him poor fellow as he had only been in Scotland 4 or 5 whole days. All the troops that are any where near to London have been ordered up in case of accident, altho’ after all there will not be above 10,000 men. But the great reliance will be on the Police & constabulary force which will be made to act in the first instance & if required aided by the military force. This is quite the right mode, & meets with the most strenuous support from all classes & has brought out the best & noblest feelings from all well thinking men. All have stepped forward & have been sworn Special Constables. Nobles, gentlemen, the middle-classes, professional men of all kinds, shopkeepers, working men, everybody. A most admirable spirit prevails & by God’s will we shall be secure. [9 April] The last weeks have made me think deeply & reflect upon the past & the future. For myself…I have come to the conclusion that tomorrow may decide the future fate of England & be indicative of God’s will towards us - as other Nations & Kings have been sacrificed to the first burst of popular action almost without a struggle so may we, if such be God’s decree, so that if we are respited that may be a warning to us & a token that we are not to be afflicted to the same degree as other nations. [10 April] This is Monday & no post from London. I had made arrangements to receive advices from all quarters if any thing were happening today within a circle of 30 miles around the place, but I am informed this evening that all is quiet up to 2 o’clock. A traveller brought an account to Worksop that at some station which he passed news had been received from London by telegraph that all was quiet at 12 o’clock. I shall most anxiously open the newspapers tomorrow morning. I was informed today that at Sutton in the neighbourhood of Mansfield, the wretches were so bent on mischief that they had bought from the pawnbrokers all the fire arms & other arms that they had by them, & would have bought more if procurable - lead they have taken wherever they could find it - ripping up the gutters & cisterns & every leaden thing for bullets. Hereabouts they will probably wait the issue of the proceedings in London & regulate themselves accordingly…If numbers shall be wanting I have determined to call together my tenantry & others, arm them as well as I can & instantly march at their head to succour or attack as circumstances may require. The most admirable spirit prevails here as elsewhere. [11 April] The boasted meeting which was to carry all before it has vanished, not into thin air perhaps, but into the smoky air of London. The Standard states that not above 10,000 at the utmost could have been present. Some inflammatory speeches were made by the leaders, when a Police Constable went up to O’Connor & spoke to him when O’Connor informed the people that he had been desired to desist, & advised the meeting to disperse quietly as resistance would be unwise as they were unarmed. At another time if they wished to resist the govt they must come armed. The crowd then dispersed & the petition which Mr Feargus O’Connor said was signed by more than 5,000,000 was rather unceremoniously taken from the stately van & 8 horses & bundled into 3 cabs & sent there to the H of Commons - where shortly after the knavish O’Connor presented it to the house - & there was an end of this grand bravado. Everything was quiet afterwards. O’Connor & the leaders are accused by the Chartists of treachery…In this county all went off quietly the same at Liverpool & Manchester & presumably elsewhere, but they talk of all meeting again in a few days. I hope that this will not be permitted & the absolute repression of them is called for by all, even by the Manchester people, who entertain a strange dislike to being robbed & plundered themselves altho’ they have no feeling for others. And now I thank God that he has disposed to avert mischief from our land, & may we be sensible of the inestimable blessing & so may we as a Nation so order ourselves that we may become an acceptable people in His sight & a glorious example of a righteous Nation - eschewing Evil & cleaving to what is good. [13 April] The Chartist petition to the H of Commons has been discovered to be a gross & insulting fraud upon the House. There are hundreds & thousands of pretended signatures in the names of various persons, such as the Queen, Prince Albert etc & then all sorts of low filthy & obscure words. In short this famed petition of 5 millions does not contain, such as they are, more than about 1½ millions & very many of them such as above described. By this all self respect has been forfeited, & I trust that on this account the petition will be indignantly rejected by the House.”

The meeting was ridiculed by many as a ‘fiasco’ and two days later O’Connor faced further criticism when his five ton petition was found to weight barely a quarter of a ton and contain less than two million genuine signatures. This was “the real ‘fiasco’ of 1848”.^[3] In fact, O’Connor saw the meeting as a decisive moral victory. He had insisted that the meeting went ahead and had ensured that it was peaceful. He was able to call off the procession without any dissent. As Belchem rightly concludes that he was able to “extricate the movement from the difficulty posed by the intractability of the government”.^[4] The constitutional right of assembly was maintained and violence avoided.

A historiographical perspective

Contemporaries interpreted the events of 10^th April in two different ways. The establishment declared that it was a ‘fiasco’ and that England had been saved by popular support from those who were loyal to the Crown. The other interpretation, held largely by Chartists saw a proper moral force demonstration facing an overwhelming counter demonstration of the government’s physical powers. Of these two views, the first was the orthodox position until the 1960s. In recent decades, historians have revived the Chartist interpretation and helped demolish some of the myths of 10^th April.

It is important to recognise that not all Chartists shared the Chartist interpretation. Strong anti-O’Connorite feeling spewed out in the aftermath of 10^th April. Lovett[5] blamed O’Connor and his ‘boasting physical force followers’ for allowing the Whigs to have their ‘triumph’. April 10^th was a ‘blundering demonstration’. Gammage[6] complained of the ‘boasting’ and how O’Connor had encouraged the ‘empty braggarts’ to think that the procession to the House of Commons would take place. However, he did think that O’Connor was right to abandon the procession but that his tactics caused disunion in the movement. Since Lovett and Gammage have been very influential for many writers, their denunciation of O’Connor on 10^th April has helped reinforce the establishment’s interpretation as the orthodox account.

George Jacob Holyoake[7] initially set out the Chartist interpretation in Bygones Worth Remembering, in which he denounced the establishment position as a ‘myth’ and showed ‘the wild way’ in which history could be written. There had been no revolutionary plans, no disorder was threatened and ‘no a man was armed’ on 10^th April. He was furious about the ‘utterly groundless and incredible representations’ of 10^th April in Charles Kingsley’s novel Alton Locke and in Thomas Hughes’ introduction to the work. Holyoake was convinced that the government knew the truth about the confrontations because it had informers everywhere and that it had been engaged in ‘political imposture’ in order to gain advantage from posing as ‘the deliverers of England’. This view was widespread among Chartists in the mainstream of the movement and appeared in whole or in part in numerous speeches and Northern Star editorials. The Chartist interpretation also had its more extreme explanations. One of these was that a great victory had been gained on 10^th April because the Chartists held their meeting and showed their resolute moral power. Writing in 1850, Ernest Jones[8] found the great display of government power a ‘homage paid to our power, and a tactic admission…that the bulk of the popular feeling was against the government’. Another extreme explanation was that a victory had been won because the people were heroically resolute in their restraint, depriving the government of its opportunity to use its powers of coercion. According to Reynolds’ Political Instructor on 23^rd March 1850, on the 10^th, ‘the people were goaded by insults and injury to expose themselves…unarmed and unprepared’ to ‘murder…by the bayonets, sabres and muskets’ amassed by the government.

The orthodox interpretation was created in the euphoric atmosphere immediately after 10^th April. It was underlined by countless sources, enshrined in the cheap, popular histories of the nineteenth century and featured in textbooks. The myth of 10^th April has been so pervasive that even historians of aspects of the British working class movement have incorporated it uncritically into their accounts. Mark Hovell[9] described the event as a ‘tragic fiasco’, the day ‘the government finally laid the Chartist spectre’ low. More recently, David Rowe[10] has written of the ‘farcical official conclusion of the movement in the Kennington Common meeting’ and F.M. Leventhal[11] in his biography of George Howell called the meeting ‘pathetic’. Another interpretation can be found in the writings of the Communist historian Reg Groves[12] who saw the ‘ignominious surrender’ of 10^th April as a disaster stemming from the ‘centrism’ of O’Connor who appeared to ‘advocate mass action, leads the workers almost to the point of struggle and then falls back into confusion and defeat’.

Other historians have reasserted the fundamental Chartist Interpretation beginning in the 1950s with the seminal article by John Saville in 1952-3[13]. He vigorously attacked the ‘commonplace’ account of the fiasco of 10^th April that he found ‘almost always the same’. He reasserted the view that the demonstration of 10^th April was ‘never intended to be anything more than a demonstration’ and that the press and the government blew it up into something else. Historians have built on Saville’s views reasserting the Chartist interpretation. John Stevenson[14], David Large[15] and David Goodway[16] all assert that the Chartists never intended that 10^th April to be anything more than a peaceable mass demonstration and Edward Royle[17] points out that the attempt to portray 10^th April as a fiasco is ‘as much ideological as historical’.

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[1] William Cuffay (1788-1870) was transported in 1848 and died in Australia. He was the son of a Caribbean clave and a prominent London Chartist. J. Bellamy and J. Saville (ed.) Dictionary of Labour History, volume vi, London, 1982, pages 77-80 contains a useful biography.

[2] Extracts from the diaries of the fourth Duke of Newcastle, Archives Department of the University of Nottingham, published by Open University in Arts: A Third Level Course. The Revolutions of 1848, Unit 3, Document Collection, pages 108-09.

[3] John Belchem ‘1848: Feargus O’Connor and the Collapse of the Mass Platform’, in Epstein and Thompson (eds.) The Chartist Experience, page 282.

[4] John Belchem ‘1848: Feargus O’Connor and the Collapse of the Mass Platform’, in Epstein and Thompson (eds.) The Chartist Experience, page 282.

[5] William Lovett Life and Struggles, 1876, page 285.

[6] R.G. Gammage History of the Chartist Movement, 1854, page 331.

[7] G.J. Holyoake Bygones Worth Remembering, two volumes, London, 1905, volume 1, pages 73-81

[8] John Saville Ernest Jones, London, 1952, pages 109-111, where he quotes an open letter in the Northern Star dated 9^th July 1850.

[9] M. Hovell The Chartist Movement, 1918, pages 292, 343.

[10] D.J. Rowe ‘The Failure of London Chartism’, Historical Journal, volume xi, (1968), page 482.

[11] F.M. Leventhal Respectable Radical: George Howell and Victorian Working Class Politics, London, 1971, page 22.

[12] Reg Groves ‘The Class Leadership of Chartism’, The Labour Monthly, volume 2 (April 1929), page 128.

[13] John Saville ‘Chartism in the Year of Revolution, The Modern Quarterly, (Winter 1952-3), later extended into his full-length book 1848: The British State and the Chartist Movement, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

[14] John Stevenson Popular Disturbances in England 1700-1870, Longman, page 268.

[15] David Large ‘London in the Year of Revolution’, in John Stevenson (ed.) London in the Age of Reform, Oxford, 1977, pages 177-203.

[16] David Goodway London Chartism 1838-1848, Cambridge University Press, 1982.

[17] Edward Royle Chartism, 1^st ed., Longman, 1980, page 43.