Aspects of Chartism: Chartism and the State 2

The army

When the military acted in support of the civil power they were in theory, and in some important matters in practice, under the control of the civil authorities. At the Whitehall level, it was the Home Secretary who was responsible for the distribution of troops throughout the United Kingdom, although there was consultation with the War Office, and with the commanders of the military districts. When the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland requested another regiment, the decision would be taken by the Home Secretary, usually in consultation with the Prime Minister, sometimes with the Cabinet, and it was the Home Department which issued the instructions. There would normally always be consultations with the Commander-in-Chief or, in 1848, more likely with the Military Secretary, since the Duke of Wellington seems often to have been by-passed.

At the local level, it has often been assumed that the magistracy had the power to requisition the military forces that were within reach of the actual or threatened disorder. The practice had grown up during the eighteenth century of the Secretary of State issuing a general order authorising military commanders to give aid to the civil power; and magistrates became accustomed to call upon the military without a previous application to the central government. This precedent was accepted during the first half of the nineteenth century, but it was always possible for the officer in command to refuse a request if he considered the call for assistance had been made on insufficient grounds or he could refer the request to a superior officer. Most of Britain was divided into military districts. London, including Windsor, was directed from the Horse Guards, and there were quite a large number of rural counties not included in any military district which were also administered from Whitehall. The largest district was the Northern and Midland that from 1842 took in the whole of the north of England from the Scottish border south through Durham, Yorkshire and Lancashire down to Birmingham and the counties of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. The headquarters of the district were in Manchester, and the General Officer Commanding was Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Arbuthnot. He had taken command in mid August 1842. His senior officers were Major General Sir Willaim Warre, with headquarters at Chester, and responsibility for the North-West including the key town of Liverpool; and Major-General Thorn with his headquarters at York. The other districts were the South-West (Portsmouth); the Western (Devonport); Monmouth and South Wales (Carmarthen); Scotland (Edinburgh); and the Channel Islands, Jersey being separately administered from Guernsey and Alderney.

The military commanders were mostly veterans of the French Wars that ended in 1815, and in the main were able and efficient men. Sir Thomas Arbuthnot seems to have been quite outstanding, as interesting, although not so radical in political outlook, as Sir Charles Napier, but much less well known. He died in 1849 at the age of seventy-three. Both Graham and Sir George Grey used Arbuthnot for many services for which they judged the civilian authorities less competent; and his long reports to Grey during the troubled months of 1848 were intelligent, markedly shrewd and very informative. He was probably the most useful single source of intelligence during the spring and summer months of 1848 for the whole of the industrial North.

The military forces stationed in the United Kingdom were divided broadly between mainland Britain and Ireland: and the respective levels of order and disorder largely determined their distribution between these two main parts of the kingdom. In the late 1830s, for example, the Litchfield House compact between the Whigs and O’Connell, together with a Whig administration in Dublin Castle meant relative tranquillity in Ireland and the practicability of withdrawal of troops from Ireland to the mainland: a matter of considerable importance in the years 1839-40. In 1840 there were 26,845 troops (excluding officers and NCOs) in Britain and 13,112 in Ireland. It was indeed O’Connell’s boast that he had saved Britain from the Chartists. In 1848 the situation was quite different and the figures were 33,738 in Britain and 28,942 in Ireland. A large part of the army, it must be remembered, was overseas, and one of the favourable factors for the government in 1848 was the return of several regiments from overseas service. What helped the situation even more was the rapid extension of the railway network. The Quartermaster-General emphasised in evidence before a committee in 1844 how the railways[1] had enabled the army ‘to do the work of a very large one: you send a battalion of 1,000 men from London to Manchester in nine hours: that same battalion marching would take 17 days; and they arrive at the end of nine hours just as fresh, or nearly so, as when they started’.

The Yeomanry

In addition to the police, the special constables[2] and the army there were two other groups that could be used by those responsible for maintaining public order. The Yeomanry had been in existence since the 1790s. It was a volunteer force, made up in most counties from the better-off farmers and the lesser gentry. Certain of the metropolitan counties by the second quarter of the century were served by Yeomanry drawn from business and professional groups; but most of the Yeomanry forces were rural. They were the equivalent of a regular cavalry force, armed and to some extent trained. They had a standard six-day training each year and were inspected annually by a Field Officer of the regular army. On active service, under an Act of 1804, they were subject to military discipline, but their control was by the civil authorities. The Yeomanry were called out by the Lord Lieutenant or by the local magistrate but, as always in a period of crisis the chain of command could be superseded by Whitehall. The Home Secretary could authorise the Commanders of military districts to call out the Yeomanry and retain them under their command.

Governments never forgot the Peterloo ‘massacre’ of 1819 or the consequences of making martyrs; and during the Chartist years there was considerable reluctance to use the Yeomanry in the control of riot and disturbance. The Yeomanry were exceedingly unpopular, much more disliked than the army, and their presence might often worsen a difficult situation. The Whigs especially were critical of what Sir Charles Napier in his Memoirs described as the over-zealousness of the Yeomanry ‘for cutting and slashing’: and during his period as Home Secretary, Lord John Russell carried through a reduction in the numbers of the Yeomanry: ‘for his part he would rather that any force should be employed in case of local disturbance than the local corps of Yeomanry’. The cost of the Yeomanry was also a consideration, for they were paid during their days of service. They were mostly agriculturalists and farmers of one kind and another, and the seasonal round, especially harvesting, could be seriously interrupted. It was a matter that governments always tried to take into account. Opposition to the use of Yeomanry must not, however, be exaggerated. The Tories used the Yeomanry extensively in the difficult years of 1841 and 1842, and Whig scruples were never pushed beyond the real needs of internal security, as the events of the summer of 1848 clearly demonstrated.

Enrolled Pensioners

The last auxiliary group at the disposal of the law and order enforcers were the Enrolled Pensioners. Army pensioners had long been used in times of social unrest as special constables. In 1843, as a result of the massive turbulence of the previous year, retired soldiers were enrolled into local uniformed corps. They were given eight days training each year. The total number enrolled was not to exceed 10,000 and the normal age of retirement from the new corps was 55, although volunteers could be taken up to the age of 58. In 1846, a further Act brought in the naval pensioners. When called out on active service the Pensioners were armed with muskets and bayonets. The total number of Enrolled Pensioners in Britain in 1848 was 8,720; and a War Office memorandum listed the following numbers for certain towns in the industrial North: Bolton 211; Preston 141; Stockport 87; Liverpool 350; Manchester, First Division 378, Second Division 378; Halifax 157; Sheffield 175; Hull and York 130. The authority to call out the Enrolled Pensioners was vested in the Home Secretary, but he could, and often did, issue general warrants to selected persons that enabled Pensioners to be called out on local initiative. Warrants were normally issued to Lords Lieutenant and to the Mayors of incorporated boroughs. Again, as with the Yeomanry, in times of crisis the Enrolled Pensioners could be put directly under the commanders of the military districts. Enrolled Pensioners could be called out for twelve days in any one year under warrant; thereafter, only volunteers were available. In practice, because of the ‘high rates of pay’, there was never any difficulty in assembling sufficient numbers. The Enrolled Pensioners were highly cost-effective. In evidence before an 1850 Select Committee, Fox Maule, Secretary at War, reported that the cost of Pensioners for a normal year was about two pounds and ten shillings per head, exclusive of clothing that was issued once every five years.

By 1848, the coercive forces at the disposal of those acting on behalf of the Crown, and the administrative machinery of central and local government for their direction and control, were more efficiently organised than at any previous period. The growth of the great urban areas which went with industrialisation had created qualitatively new problems of social and political control for the governing classes. The definition of adequate security measures had become inextricably intertwined with the political problems of power sharing between the landed groups and the rapidly growing numbers of the middle class in the towns; and given that Ireland was always on a quite different level of social tension than the rest of Britain, it became the laboratory for experiment and exploration of new ways of dealing with insurgency. The much more urgent problems of law and order in Ireland provided patterns of control and coercion that could be applied, suitably adjusted and modified, to the rest of the United Kingdom. It was the emergence of mass movements, in both Ireland and Britain in the two decades before 1850 that forced Dublin Castle and the Home Office in Whitehall to improve the chain of command and increase the weight of coercive power that could quickly be applied to the areas of unrest and turbulence. In England the years 1839 to 1842 were crucial in these matters. What was new in 1848, compared with all previous years, was the stimulus to revolutionary action by the events in France at the same time as Ireland was apparently moving in parallel with the radical movement in Britain. For the first time the seemingly intractable problem of internal security in Ireland had now close links with radical activity in Britain. The coming together of Irish nationalists with English Chartists provided new dimensions to the security problem overall, and to contemporaries the conjuncture looked alarming and potentially highly dangerous. Revolutionary Paris, Irish insurgency and the Chartist mobilisation all came together to produce a situation in which the ranks of the propertied - the large and the small and the high and the low - joined in a striking demonstration of unity against what was felt to be a serious threat to the foundations of social life. The impressive response to the call for special constables in 1848 all over Britain exhibited the determination of the middle strata to preserve their economic and social positions. It was, for middle-class Britain, a levée en masse of quite remarkable proportions.

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[1] The 1830s and especially the 1840s were great decades of railway building. By 1840, 1,500 miles of track were open, linking most of Britain’s large towns and cities with London. By 1850, 6,000 miles were open and a genuine railway network was in operation. This was important because it enabled the authorities to transport troops and police to trouble spots more easily than before. The railway companies could help this process. In 1848, for example, the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company enrolled seven hundred of its workmen as special constables in anticipation of public disorder, despite many workmen’s reluctance.

[2] Special constables were recruited among the middle and working classes to support the regular police at times of crisis.

Aspects of Chartism: Did Chartism affect Government policies?

The extent to which the activities of the Chartists affected government policies between 1838 and 1850 is a matter of degree. The problem is establishing causal links. Was policy-making a response to Chartism? At the level of public order, both Whig and Conservative governments did respond to the threat from the movement. In other areas, for example economic and social policies it is more difficult to establish such close connections. The coincidence of policies with particular Chartist activities does not mean that they were a response to the perceived threat from the movement.

• There were no concessions to the Chartists’ six points while Chartism lasted. Government was prepared to negotiate with the Chartists and where negotiations did take place, as for example over the 10^th April 1848 demonstration the government was in the stronger position.
• Chartism merely determined the Whigs and Conservatives to resist further constitutional reform. The question here is whether further constitutional reform was ever a policy option in the late 1830s and 1840s. Russell had made the Whig position clear in his ‘Finality’ speech in November 1837 and the Conservatives never envisaged further constitutional reform as part of their political programme between 1841 and 1846.
• Governments did try to improve working class conditions. The problem with this point is that reform did not coincide with Chartist activity. However, by 1840, some Whigs and Conservatives recognised either that something needed to be done to improve working class conditions either as a means of preventing public disorder or because it was right to do so.
• The 1848 phase of Chartism was two years after the repeal of the Corn Laws. Again, historians have failed to establish whether there was any connection between these two events.
• Conservative reaction to Chartism was much more rigorous than the reaction of the Whigs. It may have strengthened the Conservative determination to better conditions for the working classes by socio-economic methods.

The notion that there was a ‘softening’ of the attitudes of the state after 1843 and that it began to make legislative and administrative concessions to Chartist grievances remains a useful way of approaching an explanation for the decline of Chartism. Stedman Jones[1] argues that Chartist rhetoric in its early years was directed against a state that recognised and protected all kinds of property but those of labour and skill and that seemed to be waging war on working-class living standards through a series of measures that excluded working people from local and national political processes and threatened them with oppression and control through the new Poor Law and the new police. Chartism inherited and deployed the assumption that the state was irredeemably corrupt and that under the current political system all legislation would be turned to the advantage of the landed aristocracy and financiers (the ‘moneyocracy’) and used for further exploitation and repression of the wage-earning and taxpaying majority.

Stedman Jones argues that developments in the early and mid-1840s undermined these assumptions. The new Poor Law proved to be less threatening in practice than the rhetoric of its introduction suggested especially in the northern factory districts where it took a long time for new workhouses to be built and new officials to be appointed[2]. The Andover workhouse scandal[3] from 1844-5 led to a substantial review of the operation of the system and the 1847 Poor Law Act swept away the unpopular and increasingly ineffectual Poor Law Commission replacing in with a Poor Law Board accountable to parliament. The burden of taxation began to shift from necessary consumables to property and substantial incomes, especially as local graduated property taxes took up the burden of urban improvement as well as poor relief and the reintroduction of income taxes from 1842 moved national taxation irrevocably away from indirect taxes on goods and services. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, a symbolic victory for the middle classes even if it did not result in dramatic reductions in the price of bread. Movement began on the issue of factory reform with legislation regulating the employment of women and children in mines in 1842, an extension of the principles of the 1833 Factory Act in 1844 and with the ‘Ten Hour Bill’ visibly becoming attainable by mid-decade with legislation in 1847 and 1850 bringing it in[4].

By the mid-1840s, many Chartists acknowledged the benefits of the new, more benign attitude of the state. Reformism became credible because reforms were being introduced even if this did not include the Charter. The state may have softened its attitude on areas of social and economic policy but it continued to build up the police force, barracks and telegraph network and other technologies of control that were to make it easier to suppress the last Chartist upsurge in 1848. Chartism became popular as a conduit of popular grievances against an array of legislation that interfered with working class institutions and survival strategies in the 1830s. It began to decline once these abuses began to be remedied. What is remarkable is how little it took to dampen the impetus from the movement. The state gave ground only where there was scope to do so without undermining the possession and protection of property. The extension of the police force, also a working class grievance was not dealt with and in fact was essential to the repression that played a central part in Chartism’s decline. It was the combination of flexibility and strength that proved very effective in stabilising the constitution and proved sufficient reforms to counter many of the Chartist grievances about living and working conditions while maintaining state control through the legal system, systematic policing and military discipline.

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[1] Gareth Stedman Jones ‘The Language of Chartism’, James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (eds.) The  Chartist Experience: Studies in Working Class Radicalism and Culture 1830-1860, Macmillan, 1982, pages 3-58 and in an extended version as ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in his Languages of class: Studies in English working class history 1832-1982, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pages 90-178.

[2] P. Wood Poverty and the Workhouse in Victorian England, Alan Sutton, 1991 is a useful book on the introduction and operation of the 'new' poor  law

[3] The Andover scandal was not unique but it was highly publicised and used by those critical of or opposed to the new system. Bone crushing was used in some workhouses as a ‘useful’ occupation for paupers. The Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, disapproved of it as a means of employing the poor but Commissioner George Nicholls was a great enthusiast and a second Commissioner, Sir George Cornewall Lewis vacillating in his attitude. Andover was regarded, from the Commissioners’ point of view, as a model union. All outdoor relief was stopped as soon as the workhouse was opened and it was one of the few unions not to relax this rule during the ‘great freeze’ of January 1838. The Board’s ruthlessness shocked even the Rev. Thomas Mozeley, a convinced opponent of the old system.

At Andover, the work was hard, the discipline strict and the diet scanty. No little indulgences were allowed to creep in. This was due to the choice of ex-sergeant Colin M’Dougal, a veteran of Waterloo, as workhouse master and his wife, Mary Ann, as matron. The local Guardians acknowledged that even this admirable couple had their faults but were only too ready to leave the management of the union’s affairs to their domineering chairman. Attempts to end bone crushing at Andover in December 1844 were voted down by the chairman and his supporters. However, during the next few months ugly rumours began to circulate about what went on in the bone-yard in terms of inmates eating the marrow from the decomposing bones. The Guardians took no action, apart from suspending bone crushing during hot weather. Hugh Mundy, a local farmer frequently at odds with his colleagues whom he infuriated by paying his labourers ten shillings a week, two shillings more than his fellow landowners, went public. He turned to Thomas Wakley, who on Friday 1^st August 1845, rose to ask the Home Secretary about paupers eating bone marrow at Andover. Sir James Graham replied that he could not believe this situation but promised to institute an enquiry. The following day Henry Parker, the Assistant Commissioner responsible for Andover, was dispatched to ascertain the facts.

His enquiry began on Monday 4^th August 1845 and by the next day he was able to report back to London that the charges were true. On 14^th August Parker was instructed to investigate any alleged ‘neglect or misconduct on the part of the Master or officers of the workhouse‘. M’Dougal offered his resignation on 29 September but when Parker, now summoned back to London, suggested consulting the Commission’s solicitors about prosecution the lawyers advised against it. The Commission was left with a hostile press, a critical Parliament, a seriously alarmed public and no scapegoat. Parker now found himself cast in this role. When he drafted a letter from the Board to the Andover Guardians he was accused of trying to throw the blame on the Commissioners. On 16^th October Parker was called upon to resign and his only reward for years of devoted service was a suggestion that he should seek work with one of the expanding railway companies. If the Commissioners felt that they had saved themselves by dismissing Parker, they were mistaken. The former Assistant Commissioner published a long pamphlet in his own defence, which indicted his recent superiors, and his case was rapidly taken up by a group of anti-Poor Law MPs.

The public were unhappy about Parker’s dismissal and provided too valuable an opportunity for Edwin Chadwick, still bitter about his treatment by the Commission, who encouraged MPs to keep the issue alive. On 8^th November 1845 the Poor Law Commissioners tacitly acknowledged the justice of the attacks made on bone crushing by issuing a General Order forbidding it. This came too late. Public opinion was now seriously alarmed and the government bowed to it. On 5^th March 1846 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was established to investigate the Andover scandal, the conduct of the Poor Law Commissioners and the circumstances surrounding Parker’s resignation. The fifteen members of the ‘Andover committee’ included three well-known opponents of the workhouse, John Fielden, Thomas Wakley and Benjamin Disraeli and began work two weeks later. For the next three and a half months, they heard evidence from witnesses and their words were reported at length in the press. The New Poor Law, the Whigs who had created it and the gentry who administered it were on trial.  The Report was published in August 1846. It filled two large volumes totalling several thousand pages and contained a scathing indictment of everyone involved. The government announced that it proposed to take no action but it had privately decided that the Commission must go, partly to placate public opinion but also because it had done its work. The poor rates had been cut; outdoor relief for the able-bodied had all but ceased and almost the whole country had been unionised. The time had come when ‘the three kings of Somerset House’, as the Poor Law Commissioners had been nicknamed by their critics, could safely be replaced by a body with fewer dictatorial powers and directly responsible to Parliament.

[4] Northern rejoicing was still premature. From 1848 there were reports of evasions in Lancashire and of masters’ campaigns to repeal the Act. Several employers resorted to the relay system that meant that hours of work could not be enforced: the 15 hours per day clause in the 1844 Act had not been repealed. Gradually, a new campaign emerged to protect the Act but it was increasingly obvious that the Factory Movement was divided: Ashley Cooper and a ‘liberal’ group were prepared to accept some compromise while Oastler was not. A test case on the illegality of the relay system -- Ryder v Mills -- was heard in early 1850 and failed. The Factory Act 1850 increased weekly hours from 58 to 60 hours in return for banning relays by establishing a working day between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Attempts to include children in the standard day failed and, as a result, men might work 15 hours, aided by relays of children beyond the hours allowed for women and young persons. Children only received their fixed day in the 1853 Factory Act and Disraeli only restored the ‘10 hours’ in 1874. In the meantime, however, similar legislation had been extended to a wide range of workers.