Loading the dice or dishing the exams!!

Is the introduction of Diplomas a good idea?  Yes, I think so.  There is a need to provide a real alternative to the existing GCSE and A Level structure and the Diplomas with their progressive from Foundation to Higher and Advanced/Progression provides a viable alternative to the increasingly discredited existing system.  The 'gold standard' looks increasingly beleaguered and somewhat tarnished.  This does beg the question of why major reforms for A Level are to be introduced in 2008 if the Diploma is to replace it and that appears to be the clear intention of the government.  I have never understood the argument for further reform of A Level anyway.  It seems to me that, after a very rocky introduction, the AS-A Level system worked rather well at least it appeared to do so in my subject.  Students liked the variety, the option of doing coursework and research assignments and the ability to cover a range of subjects and periods though that appears not to be what most teachers did.  The 'Hitlerisation' of the curriculum was well attested in the press. Not, I suspect, that the new courses is going to change that.

But, I do have a problem with how the Diplomas will be judged against existing courses at Advanced Level and this gives further evidence of the government's intentions.  How can you have a Diploma that is allocated the same time as three A Levels and then give it a higher tariff of 420 UCAS points split with up to 300 for the "principal and generic learning" components, and 120 more for additional and specialist learning compared to 360 for the A levels.  If a Diploma is 'broadly the same as three A Levels', then it should have the same tariff.  To do otherwise is seriously loading the dice in favour of Diplomas.  In addition, £28m Diploma funding for the first year would mean schools and colleges getting an extra £1,000 or so for each Diploma student they taught.  I can't remember an equivalent sum being offered when the new A Levels were introduced. 

In late October, Ed Balls stated that 'If Diplomas are successfully introduced and are delivering the mix that employers and universities value, they could be come the qualification of choice for young people. But, because GCSEs and A-levels are long established and valued qualifications, that should not be decided by any pre-emptive government decision but by the demands of young people, schools and colleges.'  I would have though that accepting QCA's recommendation about the tariff is the equivalent to a 'pre-emptive government decision'!  While there may be a strong case for replacing GCSEs with the Higher Diploma (and given that it is the equivalent of seven grades A*-C many schools mindful of league tables will take it up), the case for all students taking courses that are a mix of theoretical and practical and applied study is less clear.  Getting universities to accept them is crucial to their success.  However, a survey this summer suggested that fewer than four in ten university admissions officers saw the Diploma as a 'good alternative' to A-levels and the Russell Group of leading universities has expressed reservations.  So even if the government loads the dice in favour of Diplomas that does not mean that they will inevitably become acceptable to universities, well at least the leading universities. 

If the government thinks Diplomas are such a good thing, then it should be honest about it and abolish A Levels and GCSEs instead of trying to get them accepted by the back door.  But then honesty is not a characteristic of this government!

Aspects of Chartism: Leeds 1

Leeds Chartism[1] was different and distinct from Chartism in Lancashire, as was the economy. Leeds[2] was a woollen town with a longer history of radicalism than Manchester and was a mixed zone of traditional domestic and new mill manufacture of woollen cloth. In this sense, Leeds was very similar to Birmingham. Rivalry existed between the Yorkshire woollen and Lancashire cotton industries. There was also a strong tradition of Tory radicalism in Yorkshire: Tories believed in economic reform.

The industrial revolution in Yorkshire was distinct from that in Lancashire. The priorities of the woollen industry were different from those of cotton because wool relied on home-produced raw materials[3]. Consequently, the woollen industry was as affected by the Corn Laws and trade recessions. A quarter of all the handloom weavers in England lived in Yorkshire and there was still a close link between masters and men in many areas. Putting-out and small workshops dominated the industry. There is more evidence in Yorkshire of self-help movements and moderate, traditional radicalism than there is in Lancashire. There was a very strong connection between the workers, the Tory party and Tory Radicalism. Wilberforce, Sadler, Oastler and Shaftesbury were all from the county.

Background

In the 1820s and 1830s, Leeds was second only to Manchester as a centre for working-class radicalism and working class movements. In 1819, the Association of the Friends of Radical Reform was set up in Leeds. Radical literature and ideas flourished in the town and working men attended meetings where there would be readings from Wooler’s Black Dwarf, Carlile’s Republican and Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register. All of these demanded political reform. This agitation did die down after 1823.

In 1829, the Leeds Radical Reform Association was formed and was part of the Political Union network. The Association organised meetings on Hunslett Moor that were addressed by Cobbett and Hunt. It had a programme of annual elections, a secret ballot and universal suffrage. In 1831, the Leeds Radical Political Union was founded with William Rider as secretary. He later became an active Chartist leader. In the 1830s, the support of Leeds’ working class men was also attracted to

• Trade Union activity
• Short-Time Committees for factory reform
• The struggle for the unstamped press
• Co-operative shops
• Extension of the franchise

All were expressions of a general discontent and for a desire for an equitable society. Eventually they merged. In 1835, the Leeds Radical Association was formed and displayed a deep distrust of Whiggery and had a strong alliance to Toryism as the potential socio-economic reformers, after Peel’s Tamworth Manifesto of 1834. The Association had a programme of equal representation, annual parliaments, universal suffrage, secret ballot and no property qualification for MPs. When the Six Points were adopted in 1838, they were familiar ideas to the Leeds radicals.

In September 1837, a meeting was held on Woodhouse Moor to form a Leeds Working Men’s Association. John Cleave[4] and Henry Vincent[5] of the LWMA spoke at this meeting. The Leeds WMA drew in diverse elements of earlier movements and its leaders all had been involved in other agitations for social improvement.  The shape of Leeds Chartism was determined by its origins in earlier radical and working-class movements, underlying which were economic and social factors. In the 1830s Leeds was a rapidly expanding centre of woollen, flax and engineering industries and a growing commercial and manufacturing population. By 1839, ten thousand operatives were employed in power-driven mills. In addition, Leeds had a strongly Nonconformist middle-class. At least ten thousand handloom weavers could be found in the out-townships and around the Leeds area but only 1,289 handloom weavers lived in Leeds itself. Leeds had a total population of 61,675. There were few depressed hand-workers unlike Bradford[6] and Halifax[7]. In Leeds, there was no basis for a continuing mass Chartist organisation drawing its strength from a large class of desperate hand-worker. Chartism had to win support from the factory operative, shopkeepers and small tradesmen.

Chartist Leaders

Joshua Hobson[8] was born in Huddersfield in 1810 and had little formal education. He was apprenticed to a joiner, and then became a handloom weaver near Oldham. He wrote for local papers there and then returned to Huddersfield and was caught up in the work of local Short-Time Committee that was formed to support Hobhouse’s Factory Bill of 1831. Hobson became associated with the Tory radical Richard Oastler and the ‘Yorkshire Slavery’ campaign. In June 1833, the first issue of Hobson’s Voice of the West Riding appeared. It was intended as the voice of the Short-Time Committees but led Hobson into other forms of working class agitation. In August 1833, Hobson was imprisoned in Wakefield gaol for publishing an unstamped paper. He was gaoled for the same offence in 1835 and 1836. In the autumn of 1834, he moved to Leeds and set up as a printer and publisher. For twelve years, he was the main publisher of radical material in the West Riding, including the Northern Star (1837-1844) that he also edited for a time. In addition, he printed and published Owen’s New Moral World (1839-41). He was responsible for printing and publishing almost all the Owenite and Chartist pamphlets and books in this period and wrote pamphlets defending Owenite Socialism.

John Francis Bray was the first treasurer of the Leeds WMA[9]. He was born in 1809 in Washington, America but was from a family of Huddersfield farmers and clothiers. He returned to England in 1822 and was apprenticed to a printer in Pontefract and then in Selby. He later ‘went on the tramp’, looking for work; during this time he experienced great hardships. In 1832, he got a job as a compositor in Leeds and in 1833 he volunteered to go to Huddersfield to print the Voice of the West Riding while Hobson was in gaol. He then went to York to discover why the working class was so poor. As a result of his discoveries he decided to become involved in the labour movements of the time.

Between December 1835 and February 1836, Bray published a series of letters in the Leeds Times called “Letters for the People” which dealt with natural rights and human equality. In 1837, he found employment as a compositor with The Yorkshireman. He went on to play a leading role in the founding of the Leeds WMA. He stressed the need to change society as well as to obtain political changes. In November 1837, Bray gave three lectures on ‘The Working Class - Their True Wrong and Their True Remedy’. He said that every man should own the whole product of his labour. Hobson printed the lectures in 1842 in his Labourer’s Library series. Marx used Bray’s work later but at the time it was too philosophic and intellectual for general consumption. His work is a good example of the best contemporary working class thought and shows the importance of Owenism as an element from which Chartism was to emerge.

William Rider[10] and George White[11] were both members of the Leeds WMA in 1837 and were the chief exponents of O’Connorite Chartism in Leeds. Neither was influenced by Owenite Socialism. White was an Irish wool-comber. He was determined, inflexible and brave; ready to do anything for the cause, from collecting subscriptions to beating in the heads of policemen. Later O’Connor employed him as a correspondent for the Northern Star. In 1844, he moved to the more militant Bradford. Rider probably was a printer and was employed by O’Connor.

Robert Nicoll was a traditional radical. He edited the Leeds Times and urged the formation of the Leeds WMA along the lines of the earlier Radical Political Union. He was impressed by the LWMA and wanted to establish an independent working-class organisation to agitate for the five political points of his ‘Radical Creed’.

From the start, the Leeds WMA was divided into at least three separate groups.

• Hobson and Bray were Owenites, wanting social rather than political change. They attracted some factory workers to the Leeds WMA, but it largely consisted of artisans and ‘little mesters’ who sympathised with the Charter but were mainly Owenites.
• Rider and White were supporters of O’Connor and attracted factory workers to the National Charter Association.
• Robert Nicoll believed in moral force and the traditional radicalism of political agitation through peaceful association. His followers were mainly craft-orientated artisans.

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[1] J.F.C. Harrison ‘Chartism in Leeds’, in Asa Briggs (ed.) Chartist Studies, Macmillan, 1959, pages 65-98 remains the most detailed examination of the movement in Leeds.

[2] Derek Fraser (ed.) A History of Modern Leeds, Manchester University Press, 1980 is the best introduction to the subject especially pages 270-326 and 353-409.

[3] D.T. Jenkins and K.G. Ponting The British Wool Textile Industry 1770-1914, Scolar Press, 1987 is the most accessible introduction to the woollen trade in Yorkshire.

[4] Valuable biographical information on John Cleave can be found in Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour Biography volume vi, Macmillan, 1982, pages 59-63 and Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 138-141.

[5] William Dorling Henry Vincent: A Biographical Sketch, London 1879 remains the only detailed study of his life. Additional material can be found in Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour Biography volume i, Macmillan, 1972, pages 326-334 and Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 519-522.

[6] Theodore Koditschek Class Formation and Urban Industrial Society: Bradford 1750-1850, Cambridge University Press, 1990 considers in depth the social and economic development of a ‘boom’ town and provides an important context for Chartism. Adrian Elliott ‘Municipal government in Bradford in the mid-nineteenth century’, in Derek Fraser (ed.) Municipal reform and the industrial city, Leicester University Press, 1982, pages 111-162 is excellent on municipal politics in the 1840s and 1850s.

[7] A.J. Peacock Bradford Chartism 1838-1840, York, 1969 looks at developments in the first phase.

[8] Stanley Chadwick ‘A Bold and Faithful Journalist: Joshua Hobson 1810-1876, Huddersfield, 1976, a short biography including Hobson’s years as printer and publisher of the Northern Star.

[9] A short biography of John Francis Bray can be found in Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour Biography volume iii, Macmillan, 1980 and Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 79-81. Bray was born in 1809 in Washington, DC, of English parents and went with father to Leeds at age of 13. He became a printer, trade union organiser in Leeds in 1829 and a ‘Moral force’ Chartist. He was the author of Labour’s Wrongs (1838); A Voyage from Utopia (1839); American Destiny (1864) and God and Man, a Unity (1879). He visited France, 1842 and left the UK for Boston, Mass., the same year to join brother. Married and went to farm in Pontiac, Michigan. Printer and trade unionist in Detroit till his death in 1897. Bray was described after his death as ‘the Grand Old Man of American Socialism’.

[10] William Rider (?-?) can be examined in detail in Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 435-436. Rider was a member of the provisional committee of the Leeds Working Men’s Association, founded in 1837. Rider had been secretary of the Radical Political Union established in 1831. He chaired a meeting at Walton’s Music Saloon in Leeds in October 1838 in preparation for a public meeting planned the following week at which delegates to the first Chartist Convention would be elected. Rider was himself to be elected a delegate, with Feargus O’Connor and Pitkeathley. Rider resigned from the Convention when it failed to support his call to arm itself. He left Britain in 1855 and stayed at Bussey’s Boarding House in New York. He returned home ‘after twenty years in America’, according to letter received by Gammage: see Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, page 414.

[11] George White is considered in Stephen Roberts Radical Politicians and Poets in Early Victorian Britain, Lampeter, 1993, pages 11-38. He was a member of the provisional committee of the Leeds Working Men’s Association, founded in 1837, and mover of the resolution to establish it. White was an Irishman who worked as a woolcomber, who was later employed by Feargus O’Connor as a reporter and agent for the Northern Star. White became secretary of the Leeds Northern Union set up to replace the Leeds Working Men’s Association. White was first arrested and imprisoned after visiting shops in Leeds in 1839 with a subscription book (in aid of the Chartist movement) and a black book into which he entered the names of “enemies of the people” who would not contribute. Imprisoned again in 1840 at Wakefield House of Correction, he suffered considerable hardship and was said to have fallen from the treadmill twice through ill health. Later White moved to Bradford, where he worked with a more militant group of Chartists than could be found in Leeds. He left Britain in 1850 and was reported in Kansas City and California but returned to Leeds in 1860s.

Aspects of Chartism: Birmingham 3

Church Chartism

There was a vital and organic link between politics and religion in the nineteenth century. Chartism reflected this and used religious language and gained the support of religious leaders. Protestant evangelicalism was at its height and many Christian Chartists gathered strength from their belief that they were truly the agents of God’s work. In part, especially in 1838 and 1839 battle lines were drawn on religious grounds. In some areas, clerical attitudes to working class action appear to have been crucial. At least forty clergymen sympathised actively with the Chartist movement from the Unitarian Yeovil minister Henry Solly and the Baptist Thomas Davies of Merthyr to the eloquent Congregationalist Alexander Duncanson. They stood on the ‘moral’ wing of the movement but that did not stop their chapel invective from being fiery. J.R. Stephens gave an apocalyptic sermon on 3^rd August 1839 before his trial at Chester. He warned of God’s ruin of unrighteous civilisations and proclaimed the Second Coming. Some, like preachers in the West Riding, shared the lives of their congregations. Benjamin Rushton was a working handloom weaver, William Thornton a wool-comber and John Arran variously a blacksmith, teacher and dealer in coffee and tea. Clerical support was strongest from the oldest and newest branches of Nonconformity and this raised hopes of an alliance between Chartism and Nonconformity over issues like education, the relationship between church and state and political reform. It would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of religious radicalism. Even the NCA membership card carried the words: ‘This is Our Charter, God is Our Guide’. It was also evident in the frequent inclusion of some form of religious ceremony into Chartist rituals, from blessing the food at radical dinners, singing ‘Chartist Hymns’ to holding Chartist funerals[1].

By March 1840, permanent congregations had been formed in some places and this formed the beginnings of the Christian Chartist Churches. Some Chartists thought that a Chartist Synod should be set up to embrace all the local Chartist churches. In January 1841, a delegate conference of all the Chartist churches in Scotland was held to consider how they could help each other and whether any central organisation was necessary. No further delegate conferences were held and after 1841 there appears to have been a steady decline in the number of localities where Chartist services were held. Despite this, when Reverend William Hill toured Scotland in August 1842, he found that the Christian Chartist churches remained the main strength of Scottish Chartism.

The focus for Church Chartism had already moved south into England. Arthur O’Neill[2] preached to Chartist congregations on Sundays and built up the organisation during the week. He was appointed a delegate to the demonstration arranged for the release of John Collins and William Lovett from Warwick gaol in July 1840. His sincerity made a great impression on Birmingham Chartists. Moreover, though he went back to Scotland for a short time, he returned to Birmingham, at Collins’ invitation, in late 1840 to give a series of lectures and sermons at the opening of a Chartist Church. The Birmingham Chartist Church was opened on 27^th December 1840 at Newhall Street with O’Neill as its pastor. He believed that the true church could not remain aside from daily events but ‘must enter into the struggles of the people and guide them’. The Chartist Church was overtly political and its ideology and practice reflected the strengths and weakness of the Birmingham radical movement. O’Neill believed in the importance of links with the middle class. His attitude to the middle class was not uncritical. In the tract The Question: what good will the Charter do?, he challenged the new industrial society criticising the middle class for its failure to fulfil the promises of the 1832 Reform Act and denouncing the inhumanity of both the New Poor Law and the factory system. Despite this, O’Neill always leaned, even in his most radical phases, towards the middle class alliance.

O’Connor saw the Chartist Church as a diversion from the ‘true’ aims of the movement. He opposed the Birmingham Church on particular as well as general grounds. He argued that it was objectionable to set up a church that barred Irish Catholics. George White, the leader of the NCA in Birmingham, supported his outlook. O’Neill returned their antipathy by not allowing members of the Chartist Church to join the NCA. There were occasions when the two groups came together – the joint petitioning for the release of Frost, Williams and Jones and their common opposition to the Anti-Corn Law League. However, the basic opposition of the Church to physical force and O’Neill’s support for a middle class alliance remained a serious obstacle to closer ties. Yet O’Neill remained a Chartist. He sided with the Chartist majority when Joseph Sturge and many of the middle class members of the Complete Suffrage Union withdrew from the December 1842 conference after the vote to endorse the Charter though the experience confirmed his fears about the Chartist leadership.

The rift with Sturge was short-lived. In January 1843, O’Neill attended a meeting of the council of the Complete Suffrage Union where his plans for strengthening its organisation were accepted. He was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in August 1843 and on his release returned to the Newhall Street Church declaring that, he was ‘still a Chartist’. The context of Birmingham Chartism had, however, changed and no longer implied support for the national movement led by O’Connor. The revival of ‘harmonious co-operation’ between the classes was renewed. It absorbed both the Complete Suffrage Union and the Chartist Church that dissolved respectively in December 1845 and the following year. This change in O’Neill’s attitude can be seen in 1848 when, as elsewhere, Chartism revived in Birmingham. With other former Christian Chartists O’Neill joined middle class radicals in forming a short-lived Reform League in the town supporting Joseph Hume’s agitation for the ‘Little Charter’.

After 1842

Reorganisation of Chartism took place in Birmingham in late 1843. Chartism in the district had been disorganised since the miners’ strike of August 1842. There was a suggestion that the different localities in the town merge but this was opposed. Eventually a resolution setting up localities was passed and a large Birmingham committee of thirty-two men was then elected. An important degree of district organisation was achieved by the setting up of the Birmingham and Midland Counties Charter Association in early 1843 but this appears to have achieved little. There appears to have been a shift in focus by many working class radicals in Birmingham in 1843 and 1844 towards trade unionism. This may have been linked to the revival in trade but at the annual Chartist convention in April 1845, there was no delegate from Birmingham. There was some involvement by Chartists in the town in the Land Plan and a revival, of sorts in 1847 and 1848. Though Chartist persisted in the town until February 1860 and co-existed with Secularism throughout the 1850s, Chartism ceased to play as significant a role in the town compared to the years between 1838 and 1843.

Conclusions

Historians have traditionally divided Birmingham’s style of Chartism into two differing types.

• In Birmingham, radicalism was based either on artisans or on the middle classes. It was characterised by a focus on moral force or philanthropy.
• In the surrounding Black Country, working class radicalism was more important and, under the influence of Feargus O’Connor grounded in physical force.

This oversimplifies the situation and is based on a false view of the ways in which Birmingham’s economy functioned. The notion that there was a significant degree of class co-operation in the town is, after 1839 invalid. Working class radicalism, in one form or another was endemic in the town during the 1830s. The belief that the revival of the BPU that led to the development of working class radical leadership in the town is largely the creation of historians from Gammage onwards.

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[1] H.U. Faulkner Chartism and the Churches: A Study in Democracy, New York, 1916 provides a somewhat dated view of the development of ‘Church Chartism’ in the early 1840s but should be supplemented by Eileen Lyon Politicians in the Pulpit: Christian Radicalism in Britain from the Fall of the Bastille to the Disintegration of Chartism, Ashgate, 1999.

[2] Valuable biographical information on Arthur O’ Neill can be found in Joyce M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds.) Dictionary of Labour Biography volume vi, Macmillan, 1982, pages 193-198 and Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 391-394.

Aspects of Chartism: Birmingham 2

Chartism in Birmingham: the early phase 1838-1840

The conventional view of Chartism in Birmingham has been accepted by historians since R. G. Gammage[1]. Chartism, it is argued, grew directly from the revival of the BPU in 1837. This time, its middle class leadership was frightened off by the violent rhetoric of the national leadership, notable in the persons of Stephens and O’Connor. There followed a brief, and for Birmingham uncharacteristic, period of class conflict culminating in the Bull Ring riots of July 1839. The conflict allowed O’Neill’s Christian Chartists and Joseph Sturge’s Complete Suffrage Union of 1842 to restate the essential unity of interests between masters and men.

There was initially no necessary connection between the Charter, published in May 1838 and the Petition. As the depression deepened, the BPU became more active. Early in 1838, R.K. Douglas (editor of the Birmingham Journal) drafted a National Petition setting out the demands of the BPU and Thomas Salt talked of collecting two million signatures in support of Chartist demands. P.H. Muntz worked out plans for a National Convention and Attwood planned a ‘sacred week’. Letters of encouragement were sent to other reformers and John Collins[2] was sent to Glasgow on a ‘missionary’ visit, followed in May be a deputation from Birmingham. It was here that the BPU made contact with the LWMA. On 14^th May 1838, the LWMA adopted the national petition for reform and on 5^th June 1838, the BPU council adopted the Charter. The LWMA had approached the BPU as early as June 1837 without result, but was the first to respond to the BPU. Ideas for a Charter and petition came together. On 17^th July 1838, the BPU met and planned for a convention to elect delegates.

Tensions between working and middle class radicals appeared in the middle of 1838. On 6^th August 1838, a rally was held on Newhall Hill, attended by about 200,000 people. Birmingham led the way and chose delegates for the national convention. Mark Hovell commented that the BPU[3] “died in giving birth to the Chartist movement”. At this meeting, working class radicals demanded the election of seven working men to the BPU Council and also the adoption of John Collins as one of the Chartist delegates. By November, tensions became increasingly evident when some of the working class councillors began to complain of the way the BPU council worked.  These tensions cannot be adequately explained as the clash between moral and physical force that it has been portrayed in the past. Arguably, the whole tenor of the BPU’s approach was one of physical force especially its support for a general strike (the ‘sacred month’) if the petition was rejected.  Nor were the tensions a result of the clash of personalities between O’Connor and the BPU leadership. The question of control of the movement was central, but it revolved around the level of participation allowed to the working class radicals. It was this that was the central issue. Middle and working class elements within the BPU had arrived at Chartist from two different positions. They certainly shared the same political programme but their conception of the emergent democratic form was very different. Working class aspirations within Chartism lay not only in obtaining political rights but using them effectively. The approach of the BPU was far more pragmatic and questioned the validity of the notion of equality of citizenship.

Tensions built up within the BPU on the second half of 1838 culminating in the resignation of Hadley, Muntz, Salt and Douglas from the Convention in March 1839. It is often suggested that it was the flagging interest of the BPU’s middle class radicals that created a local working class leadership in the spring of 1839. This is to confused cause and effect. It was the strength of working class leadership, in both its local and national forms, that convinced many middle class radicals that Chartism would not provide the kind of democracy they envisaged. To the Chartists, there was an inescapable correlation between the success of middle class radicals in the municipal elections of December 1838 and their gradual withdrawal from the Chartist movement.  Success in the local elections for key figures on the BPU council, transformed a mass-based agitation in which they took part into a problem of law and order. This was most clearly exemplified in the question of the meetings in the Bull Ring. From January 1839, under working class direction, these meetings demonstrated graphically the tension between working and middle class radicals in the town. On 10^th May 1839, they were declared illegal by the magistrates now including P. H. Muntz: a classic case of poacher turned gamekeeper.

In February 1839, the First Chartist Convention took place and on 7^th May 1839, the National Petition was ready to be presented by John Fielden and Thomas Attwood. However, Attwood was unhappy at the idea that if the Charter became law, the Irish would get two hundred of the six hundred seats proposed for the new House of Commons. The “Bedchamber Crisis” intervened.  On 13^th May 1839, the Convention reconvened in Birmingham at the Owenites’ Lawrence Street chapel. Birmingham Chartists had become more provocative since the demise of the BPU but neither the LWMA nor the BPU could work with the northern Chartists under O’Connor. A ‘Sacred Month’ or ‘national holiday’ was proposed for August 1839; in effect a general strike. It was even attempted in Bolton and two men (John Warden and George Lloyd) were tried at the Liverpool Assizes for riot. The proposal for a ‘Sacred Month’ shows the divisions in Chartism: London and some in Birmingham wanted a peaceful protest; O’Connor and the northerners wanted greater direct action.

The government used sixty London police to control the rioters and to arrest the leaders, which was less provocative than using troops. After the leaders had been arrested, the rank and file Chartists were temporarily disunited and dispersed. The events of 1839 were important because they resulted in moderate men abandoning Chartism because they disliked riots and social disorder.

Historians have tended to see a ‘collapse’ in the movement with the arrest of its leaders. Revival only occurred when these leaders began to return from prison. This is too stark a chronology and in Birmingham, there is ample evidence showing continuity between 1839 and 1841-2. During 1840, the major concern of Chartists in Birmingham was sustaining the families of imprisoned Chartists and discussions on the future of the movement. From August 1840, some Chartists leaders were being released. When William Lovett and John Collins were freed from Warwick gaol, their reception in Birmingham was tumultuous and perhaps marks the high point of working class radicalism in the town.

Most of the Chartist leaders were released in 1841 bringing with them differing thoughts about the organisation of Chartism. Some of these reflected in Birmingham. One centre of these differences was the Birmingham Christian Chartist Church formed by Arthur O’Neill in December 1840. Another complication arose in January 1841 with the creation of the Birmingham Total Abstinence Chartist Association. Parallel to these developments was the creation of the National Charter Association led by O’Connor. He was opposed to any dilution or compromising of working class Chartism by Christian, Teetotal, Education or any other middle class brand. His view was that such varieties were useful as long as their supporters adhered to the main NCA body. This, the minorities refused to do.

The first attempt to reconcile differing views was made in March 1841 by George White who had been made Northern Star correspondent for the Birmingham area. This initially proved successful, but divisions soon returned. The growth of Chartism from the beginning of 1841 was rapid. The movement was stirred by the death in prison of John Clayton, a Sheffield Chartist. The NCA continued to seek unity and criticise the separatists and channels of communication were kept open with the Christian Chartists and Owenite Socialists in the town.

Class collaboration revived

In 1842, the Birmingham Complete Suffrage Union (CSU) was formed[4]. This was an attempt by Joseph Sturge and Edward Miall[5] to unite moral and physical force Chartists. They tried to persuade Chartist leaders to go for only universal suffrage. The also tried to link Chartism to the Anti-Corn Law League. Joseph Sturge is a good example of a Utopian leader. He was a Quaker and pacifist, a close friend of Richard Cobden and John Bright and close ally and member of the Anti Corn Law League up to 1841. He opposed slavery, and stood against the Police Act of 1839. In November 1841, he proposed founding a movement for franchise extension at an Anti Corn Law League meeting, which got a mixed reception because the leaders of the ACLL were unwilling to become involved with political radicalism. Sturge did find support from among the Nonconformists and the Chartists who opposed O’Connor supported the Complete Suffrage Union.

On 5^th April 1842, a conference was held in Birmingham attended by such men as O’Brien, Collins and Lovett. The Six Points were carried to Sturge’s surprise and the dispute between Chartists and the CSU was reduced to whether or not the CSU should commit itself to support the Charter in name. The middle class objected because Chartism was associated with violence. The Chartists thought the middle classes were lukewarm.  In December 1842, a further conference was held, attended by O’Connor and many of his followers. Once again, the meeting divided over the adoption of the ‘name’ of the Charter. Sturge was prepared to compromise because he had already decided that free trade should come after the Charter had been obtained. He had proposed prohibitive tariffs on slave-produced goods, which had caused him to break with the Anti Corn Law League. Sturge’s group was overwhelmingly defeated. At its peak, the CSU had had about sixty branches in different towns. The National Charter Association was strengthened because the moderates were divided and disillusioned. All of them abandoned Chartism and left it to O’Connor and the violent elements.

The Plug Plots also helped to divide Chartism, as did the failure of the second Petition. The moderates discovered that they had been too idealistic with regard to the working class and had not realised how gullible they were, nor how illiterate and uninformed. They had attributed too much ability to the working class man, who needed to be educated and informed before movements like Chartism could succeed. Lovett then began to devote his attention to his National Society for Promoting the Political and Social Improvement of the People, with Place and Hetherington: a London self-help organisation especially to educate the workers. Asa Briggs[6] comments that: “Lovett had lost faith; not in his doctrinaire principles, but in the men through whom alone they could be made actual”.

Sturge also abandoned Chartism. He had hoped to ally Chartism with the Anti Corn Law League but this was impossible because the middle and working classes had little common ground as evidenced by the 1832 Reform Act, the Ten-Hour Campaign, the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and the differing attitudes towards Trade Unions. The Chartists regarded any Chartist allying himself with the Anti-Corn Law League as a traitor. The Anti-Corn Law League could not guarantee better wages for the working classes and the Chartists believed that any profits from free trade would not benefit the workers. Thus, the Birmingham Chartists put their hopes on universal suffrage and left economic reform to the Anti-Corn Law League. Sturge promoted voluntary education schemes and world peace. He became President of the Peace Society. He was also a Birmingham philanthropist. As G.D.H. Cole[7] notes, “Sturge was, indeed, from first to last, indefatigable in his pursuit of good causes. His weakness was that he looked much less at causes than at effects, and never penetrated below the surface ills of the society that he so ardently desired to reform…He had, in effect, the essential qualities of a great philanthropist, but he lacked those requisite for the successful political reformer.”

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[1] R. G. Gammage History of the Chartist Movement, 1894 edition, pages 83-4 and 107-135 saw O’Connor and ‘physical force’ as the major disruptive influence on an otherwise unified BPU, a view echoed by subsequent writers from Mark Hovell through to J. T. Ward.

[2] For John Collins (?-1850) see, Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 147-148.

[3] Mark Hovell The Chartist Movement, Manchester University Press, 1918, page 108.

[4] On the Complete Suffrage Union, Alexander Wilson ‘The Suffrage Movement’ in Patricia Hollis (ed.) Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England, Edward Arnold, 1974, pages 80-104 considers the 1840s and the 1850s with a useful section on the CSU. Alex Tyrrell Joseph Sturge and the Moral Radical Party in Early Victorian Britain, Croom Helm, 1987 is the standard biography but a shorter biography is in Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 493-495.

[5] On Edward Miall (1809-1881) see, Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 343-349.

[6] In the 1965 introduction to G.D.H. Cole Chartist Portraits, page vii, quoting Cole in the 1941 edition, page 61.

[7] G.D.H. Cole Chartist Portraits, Macmillan, 1941, pages 185-186.

Aspects of Chartism: Birmingham 1

Geographically, Birmingham is situated in the Midlands, half way between London’s crafts and the industrial north[1]. Economically it is also split between crafts and industry, an uneasy mixture that was reflected in Birmingham’s Chartism. Industries included the precision metal trades such as silver crafting and small arms manufacture. Artisans and silversmiths also made buckles and buttons; pottery thrived in the area. In addition, heavy industry such as coal and iron could be found. Birmingham was the hub of the canal network. The traditional view is that Birmingham Chartists were more akin to the London Working Men’s Association than to the northern Chartists because they were artisans rather than factory hands. Clive Behagg has effectively demolished the view of Birmingham as a town in which class collaboration and class peace were widespread[2].

Traditional views challenged

Behagg argues that the traditional view of Birmingham as a town in which there was a community of interest between employer and employee is based on the predominance of the workshop within the town’s economic structure[3]. This, it is suggested explained the degree of unity between working class and middle class radicals in the Birmingham Political Union in the 1830s. This analysis focused on the closeness between masters and men forged by a combination of close physical proximity in workshops, the indispensability of skilled labour to small-scale production, the absence of large-scale capital investment and the acknowledged possibility of upward social mobility from employee to employer status. This, historians suggested, created a degree of social cohesion that led to stability in local political relations. The problem with this view of the town is that recent research fits uneasily into the pattern. R. B. Rose has suggested that by the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 a working class with a political consciousness was beginning to emerge in the town. Michael Frost, in his study of the education of working class children suggests that the extension of schooling in Birmingham was a response to the breakdown of traditional authority. Interest and investment in education for working class children corresponded to times of social upheaval, particularly in the 1790s, 1815-20 and 1827-33. Hooper’s analysis of the town in the 1850s emphasises the importance of trade unionism while Bramwell shows a clear segregation of the classes in the town at the same period. Behagg shows that in the early nineteenth century, the economic and social relationship between the artisan and small master was strong. However, by the 1850s, the small masters had been marginalised and replaced by small manufacturers with their emphasis on the ethos of individualism and the Victorian gospel of achievement. The individualism of this petit-bourgeoisie set them increasingly apart from the collective attitudes of the working community.

The Birmingham Political Union

In December 1829, the Birmingham Political Union[4] was founded by Thomas Attwood[5], deliberately designed for class co-operation. Attwood was a banker and is a rare example of a Chartist with any economic sense. He said, “The interests of masters and men are in fact one. If the masters flourish, the men are certain to flourish with them; and if the masters suffer difficulties, their difficulties shortly affect the workmen in a threefold degree.” Attwood was a conservative at heart; he favoured currency reform. He made the BPU the strongest and most influential radical organisation in England between 1829 and 1832. Daniel O’Connell commented, “It was not Grey and Althorp who carried [the Reform Act] but the brave and determined men of Birmingham”.

The BPU’s middle class leadership often claimed to have actually created any sense of political awareness that existed among the working class in Birmingham in the 1830s. In fact, by 1830, the working class elements within the town’s radical movement had a long tradition of political activity. Many of the artisans who were active in the BPU were veteran reformers of the post-1815 period when there was little support from the town’s upper middle class. Radical organisations had centred on a local Hampden Club in 1816-17. The Club began a tradition of open-air meetings and radical publications attacking Old Corruption and calling for economic retrenchment and representative government through universal suffrage. Two important points emerge from this.  First, by the 1820s, artisan radicalism had evolved a political programme centred on universal suffrage.  Secondly, this period of agitation took place without the support of that section of the upper middle class that played a central role in the BPU. This lay the movement open to attack from local Tories who organised in 1819 as the Loyal Association for the Suppression and Refutation of Blasphemy and Sedition. It was involved in the prosecution of leading radicals and by 1821 eleven of the local leaders were in prison for seditious offences.

The vulnerability of the radical movement without ‘respectable’ support was the great lesson of the post-war agitation as far as Birmingham’s radicals were concerned. This helps explain the willingness of the working class leadership in the Reform agitation to subsume its wider programme and identity within the broader complexion of the BPU. Bronterre O’Brien, editor of the Midland Representative, announced that the working class were “willing to receive [the Bill] as an instalment, or part payment of the debt right due to us”. Attwood, though he consistently opposed universal suffrage in the early 1830s shrewdly kept the notion of further reform open at BPU meetings. The notion of piecemeal reform had yet to be discredited.

In the aftermath of the Reform campaign, working class activities were contained in three separate organisations: the Committee of the Non Electors, the United Trades and the Committee of the Unemployed Artisans. Once the full impact of the failure of the Reform campaign to provide comprehensive suffrage reform became obvious, the working classes fell back on the programme of the earlier radical tradition. A meeting of the Unemployed Artisans in September 1832 declared for universal suffrage, the ballot, annual parliaments and the abolition of property qualifications for MPs. This programme was endorsed at a meeting to form a Midland Union of the Working Class (MUWC) in November as a branch of the National Union of the Working Classes. Though short-lived, the MUWC is important since its creation followed the rejection by the BPU leadership in July 1832 of a petition of the National Union for the adoption of universal suffrage as part of its programme. The MUWC showed potential tensions within the BPU and was an indication that the town’s working class entered the 1830s with both a radical leadership and a political programme. However, a direct challenge to the BPU was not possible at this time. Its middle class leadership retained its credibility among the working class and Attwood’s popularity was increasing.

At this stage, fundamental differences did exist between middle and working class radicals in Birmingham. In October 1832, Henry Hetherington arrived to spread propaganda for the National Union of the Working Classes. He wanted separate working-class action and universal suffrage. His ideas were unacceptable to Attwood, but Attwood was also disillusioned with the 1832 Reform Act. He also criticised the Whigs and Tories, attacked the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act and wanted the extension of the franchise. The BPU shrank in size in the period of relative prosperity, but Attwood believed that it would revive if the economy worsened. Attwood noted in the Birmingham Journal on 12^th November 1836 “Mr. Cobbett used to say, ‘I defy you to agitate a fellow with a full stomach.’ Nothing is more true. Men do not generally act from abstract principles, but from deep and unrewarded wrongs, injuries and sufferings.”

Attwood’s position in the mid-1830s was ambiguous largely because Birmingham’s middle class was ambiguous in its attitude to universal suffrage. Substantial sections of the middle class remained outside the BPU and though sympathetic to the representation of the urban interest in Parliament, drew back from a popular campaign. This came to a head in the agitation for a Charter of Incorporation after 1835. This has been seen as a struggle for supremacy within the urban middle classes in Birmingham and was a successful attempt to break of dominance of local administrative bodies by family-oriented factions and move towards cheap, efficient local government responsive to the needs of ratepayers. It was also an attempt to sever links with the county families. The campaign ran from late 1837 to December 1838 when the first municipal elections took place. Of the thirty-four members of the BPU Council, fourteen were elected to the new Town Council.

In September 1836, a Reform Association was set up following the first indications of economic collapse to maintain the radical momentum of the original BPU. It was aimed at alleviating the distress, but quickly developed into a political movement. In March 1837, Birmingham merchants, manufacturers and others tried to tell the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne how serious things were. In April 1837, workmen asked the BPU to be revived. The middle classes wanted working class support, which was forthcoming. Consequently, in May 1837 the BPU was formally revived and on 19^th June 1837 the revival was celebrated with a mass meeting on Newhall Hill that advanced a programme of parliamentary reform: household suffrage (changed to universal manhood suffrage in November), vote by ballot, triennial parliaments, payment of MPs and Abolition of the property qualification for MPs.

Parallel to this, independent working class activity organised by the Working Men’s Memorial Committee occurred. This included a petition with 13,000 signatures requesting a joint meeting of masters and men to discuss distress that took place on 30^th May 1837. In October, the Committee called a town meeting to petition parliament over distress. The BPU supported this petition but received little support from the government. This further emphasised the need for manhood suffrage and raised the question of what could be done if parliament refused to introduce measures to relieve poverty and extend trade. The BPU was moving towards an acceptance of manhood suffrage that it had previously resisted. This was endorsed on 15^th January 1838 together with the idea of lobbying other towns for a projected National Petition for political reform[6]. On this basis, the Working Men’s Memorial Committee committed itself to association with the BPU on 23^rd January 1838.

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[1] Eric Hopkins Birmingham: The First Manufacturing Town in the World, 1760-1840, Weidenfeld, 1989 is the most accessible history of the town in this period.

[2] Behagg’s views in relation to Chartism are best approach through Clive Behagg ‘An Alliance with the Middle Class: the Birmingham Political Union and Early Chartism’, in James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (eds.) The Chartist Experience, Macmillan, 1982, pages 59-86 and Politics & Production in the Early Nineteenth Century, Routledge, 1990, especially pages 184-222.

[3] The view of Birmingham as a centre of class collaboration can be found in Robert Kirkup Dent Old and New Birmingham, Birmingham, 1880, Robert Kirkup Dent The Making of Birmingham, Birmingham, 1894 J. A. Langford A Century of Birmingham Life: or a Chronicle of Local Events from 1741 to 1841, Birmingham 1868 and John Thackeray Bunce History of the Corporation of Birmingham, three volumes, Birmingham, 1878-1902. The modern myth perpetrators include Conrad Gill History of Birmingham, 1952 and Trygve Tholfsen ‘The Chartist Crisis in Birmingham’, International Review of Social History, volume III, (1958).

[4] Carlos Flick The Birmingham Political Union and the Movements for Reform in Britain 1830-1839, Dawson, 1978 is the best study of the BPU and covers its ‘Chartist year’. George Barnsby maintains in the bibliography to his Birmingham Working People, Wolverhampton, 1990, “This is something of a rogue item. Flick’s thesis is that the reputation of the BPU as the national leadership of the fight for the Reform Act was a figment of Attwood’s imagination and a result of his propaganda machine. This would seem to take debunking too far…”

[5] David J. Moss Thomas Attwood: The Biography of a Radical, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990 is the most valuable biography but see also Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Grossman (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals since 1770, volume 2: 1830-1870, Brighton, 1984, pages 28-33.

[6] Two events perhaps help to explain the change of policy by the BPU. In November 1837, Lord John Russell made clear in his ‘Finality speech’ that the Whigs would not introduce further reform. Attwood claimed that his conversion to manhood suffrage stemmed from shock at the Queen’s recent speech in which she made no reference to distress at home.

History in Danger again!

Maria Grever and Siep Stuurman (eds.)

Beyond the Canon: History for the Twenty-First Century

(Palgrave, 2007)

222pp., £45 hard, ISBN 978-0-230-51650-2

Why is government throughout the Western World increasingly concerned about national identity and the transmission of historical knowledge? The answer perhaps lies in the increasingly fluid world in which we live where substantial population migration appears to be the norm and where ‘our’ history is no longer accepted with the same quietism that was the case a generation ago. Defining who were are and what our history is used to be relatively straightforward; in many respects the early attempts to produce a National Curriculum reflected, though not without disagreement, what the ‘great and the good’ saw as important in our history. That certainly no longer exists as we now try to come to terms with our past, a process that had parallels in Germany, the United States, the Netherlands, France, South Africa and Canada. Take, for example, the debate over the slave trade and whether the government should apologise for this. Is it possible to apologise to people long dead and should one apologise to their descendents? Are we applying today’s moral imperatives to the past and is that, in fact desirable? The slave trade, for all its barbarity, existed and apologising now for events two hundred years ago and more seems to me a token but then perhaps it is a necessary token.

I remember a discussion with year nine students on the slave trade where we looked at its morality. Those who did not really think about the issue quickly concluded that we should apologise because slavery was wrong, a moral judgement without doubt but perhaps not a historical one. However, those who thought more deeply about the issue began to ask the sorts of questions that politicians ought to be asking before reaching heavily-spun and simplistic conclusions. Why did some people in 1780 believe that slavery was morally right? Would we have supported the slave trade in the eighteenth century? The students split on the issue with some arguing that if they were merchants and wanted to make a good profit they probably would have traded in slaves. Would we support slavery today? No contest, of course not. As one student, not the brightest in the ground, said, it all depends on the context.

Our historical identity demands a clear historical context and narrative. The problem is that in a world of flux neither the context nor the narrative are as clear as they once were. I had thought that Butterfield buried Whig approach to history but it seems not; it has undergone a dramatic revival enhanced by the historical application of political correctness. So has history come down to relativism? Has it become yet another too of government?

These issues form an important theme in an excellent collection of fourteen papers that consider old canons and new histories. Part 1 considers the framing of historical knowledge and contains an excellent paper by Peter Lee on the issue of historical literacy. Part 2 looks at the foundations and revisions of the Western Canon considering issues such as the Enlightenment as a possible canon for modernity, citizenship and the crisis in the Humanities, rethinking the nation in historical museums and gender. The final part considers the transmission of historical knowledge in multicultural settings including a powerful chapter on slavery. This is an important book for history teachers since it places some of the issues that are raised in the classroom and by revisions to the history curriculum in a global context. If it is true that every generation rewrites the history of the previous generation, then the message for history teachers in Britain is that you are not alone in your concerns.

Aspects of Chartism: Barnsley Radicalism

In the spring and summer of 1838, delegations from the Birmingham Political Union toured Scotland and northern England to promote the Union’s famous ‘Petition’ for parliamentary reform. On 11^th June, one of the delegations addressed a large public meeting in Barnsley. The Barnsley meeting unanimously adopted the petition and resolved to form a local association on the Birmingham model. A 24-man committee, consisting mainly of linen handloom weavers, was elected to collect local signatures for the petition. In its quest for local support, the committee later issued a 4000-word manifesto[1] addressed to their ‘fellow workmen’ of Barnsley and the neighbourhood.

The working class in the northern industrial districts largely responded to Chartism because of their economic plight. Unlike the men of London and Birmingham, whose pursuit for the Charter was based on noble ideals, the northern working classes acted according to the dictates of the stomach. The Barnsley Manifesto itself, which dwells on working class hunger, misery and exploitation, lends support to this. However, radicalism was deeply embedded in Barnsley, as in many other northern towns and its driving force transcended short-term economic hardships.

The Barnsley working class had been involved in serious radical politics for a long time. Two of the signatories to the manifesto, John Vallance and Arthur Collins, took part in the Grange Moor Insurrection of 1820, a climax of post Napoleonic war radicalism in Barnsley. In the early 1830s, many Barnsley workingmen took part in the Owenite co-operative movement, the trade union and Reform Bill agitation and the ‘war of the unstamped’. Joseph Lingard, father of one of the signatories to the manifesto, was the local distributor of unstamped papers. He opened a reading room where workingmen not only read the illegal literature but also held political discussions. It was an experience to which some of the radicals and Chartists owed ‘whatever knowledge they possessed in politics’. Local agitation for parliamentary reform was revived as early as 1835 when a local Radical Association was formed. The association worked closely with sister associations in such neighbouring towns as Leeds and Huddersfield, and with O’Connor’s Radical Association in London. The local association not only held annual dinners to celebrate Henry Hunt’s birthday but also petitioned for a reform of Parliament, and discussed issues such as ‘taxes on knowledge’, the relationship between church and state, and the New Poor Law. During 1837-8, the level of activity rose to a new pitch. In the following years, Barnsley was one of Feargus O’Connor’s strongholds.

The Barnsley Manifesto expresses mainstream Chartist thought. It appealed to working class poverty and suffering and the authors were well versed in exploitation theory. Labour was the creator of all wealth, but those who never worked siphoned off most of this wealth. The latter monopolised political power that they used to enact laws that were as partial as they were extortionate. According to this analysis, the ruling class used its monopoly of power to rob labour of the fruits of its own industry through heavy taxation. Because of its insatiable appetite for ‘sumptuous revellings’ and other forms of upper-class extravagance, the ruling class never ceased devising means of getting the larger share of whatever additional wealth labour produced. Thus, the exploitation of the poor lay not so much in the economic processes of production, distribution and exchange, as in the political process of law making. It was, therefore, logical to argue that the exploitation of the working class would end only when they gained admission into the political system. The Chartists do not seem to have questioned seriously the economic system that condemned them to the status of wage earners.

By the mid-1830s, the concept of the ‘industrious classes’ that recognised that both the working class and the industrial middle class were exploited producers of wealth, had completely broken down. The Barnsley Manifesto stated that ‘there is no wealth but what the working class creates’. The middle class was on the side of those who exploited industry. One Barnsley Chartist once referred to the middle class as ‘the aristocracy of pounds, shillings and pence’, who were ready to ‘starve the people and, if possible, would coin the people’s hearts’ blood to prolong their reign’. The Chartist platform defined the relationship between property and power, though not always clearly. The middle class came under attack less often for its conduct as the employers of labour than for its participation in such class legislation as the New Poor Law,

Other strands of Chartism are revealed in the document. Thomas Paine’s appeal to natural rights and liberty is an important element, as is the influence of religion. The manifesto condemned the religious intolerance of the Established Church and confronted the opinions of the local religious leaders who had delivered a barrage of theological invective against the Chartist movement from their pulpits. Finally, the Chartists believed that the working class was not only the source of wealth but also of power. The power of the ruling class lay only in the working-class submission to its authority. It was only by its own exertion that the working class would liberate itself. The angry language of the manifesto was aimed at arousing the Barnsley working class to the realisation of its potential strength.

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[1] The Barnsley Manifesto is printed above.

Sources on Chartism: The Barnsley Manifesto, June 1838

On 11^th June, one of the delegations from the Birmingham Political Union addressed a large public meeting in Barnsley. The Barnsley meeting unanimously adopted the petition and resolved to form a local association on the Birmingham model. A 24-man committee, consisting mainly of linen handloom weavers, was elected to collect local signatures for the petition. In its quest for local support, the committee later issued a 4000-word manifesto addressed to their ‘fellow workmen’ of Barnsley and the neighbourhood. Unlike the men of London and Birmingham, whose pursuit for the Charter was based on noble ideals, the northern working class acted according to the dictates of the stomach. The Barnsley Manifesto itself, which dwells on working-class hunger, misery and exploitation.

To the Working People of Barnsley:

The Committee appointed to carry into effect the resolutions which were unanimously and triumphantly passed at a very large public meeting held in Barnsley on the 10^th of June, 1838, have thought it advisable to address the following observations to the labouring people of Barnsley and its neighbourhood, for the information of those who were not at the meeting:

Fellow workmen, -- We need not tell you that your condition in life has gradually deteriorated or grown worse, year by year, as sure as time has passed on, almost ever since the memory of the present generation: we need not tell you that, with all your labour, frugality, and industry, you are unable to procure even the necessaries of life, much less those comforts which every industrious man and his family ought to enjoy. These things you know by sad experience; and you know also, that while you, with all your toil, cannot procure the necessaries of life, one portion of society are enjoying all the good things that this world can produce, and that portion of society which are enjoying all the good things are they who produce nothing and, if left to themselves, they would be the most pitiable objects that ever existed; and this state of things will continue, and the condition of the working people will grow worse and worse, as sure as cause produces effect, until labour has no other reward than a bare animal subsistence (and in many cases not that}, unless the working people themselves remove the cause. To prove to you that this must and will be the case, so long as the present state of things continues, we invite your special attention to the following simple comparison between the reward of labour and the reckless and wanton extravagance of those who never work, but who live upon our labour. We will mention one case out of many hundreds: it is that of a poor widow[1] who could not keep herself, and on whom our law-makers[2] have settled a pension of one hundred thousand pounds a year. It is said that we can only conceive the largeness or smallness of anything by comparing it to some other thing which is larger or smaller; and as this woman’s pension has to be paid by the working-people, let us just see how long an able-bodied man would have to work to earn as much money as would pay her one year’s salary. A weaver would have to weave twelve yards of good substantial linen a day for six thousand five hundred and seventy- five years to earn as much money as she receives in one year; and an agricultural labourer would have had to commence working when the world began, and worked to the present time, at the wages that many of them are receiving to have earned as much money as would pay her one year’s pension: or, in other words, it would take four thousand men, and those four thousand men, with the assistance of animal power, must cultivate two hundred thousand acres of land, or two thousand farms of one hundred acres each, to earn as much money as our law-makers give annually to this one woman, who is a foreigner, and who never did a penny’s worth of good for England in her life. But this is not all that preys upon the people’s mind; they cannot efface from their recollection that it was the husband of this woman who signed that inhuman Bill, the design of which is, if the widow of a poor man cannot provide for herself and children, she must be sent to a prison, separated from her children and all that is dear to her in life, and kept on prison’s fare! and these are the tender mercies which the working people will ever receive from their rulers, until they have a voice in sending Members to Parliament.

We are happy to inform you that the people of Birmingham, who were the main instruments in carrying the Reform Bill, are fully satisfied that the miscalled Reform Bill will never end the condition of the working people, but that their condition has been made a great deal worse since it passed, and they are quite convinced that nothing short of universal suffrage will ever secure to the people those wages for their labour which will support their families in comfort and respectability. Therefore, they have set about in right good earnest to prosecute those plans, which will, if they are assisted by the people, most assuredly obtain a great Charter, namely, the right to vote for Members of Parliament; then will the working man enjoy the fruits of his own industry and become a respectable member of Society, and never till then. It has long been our opinion that whenever the rival strength of the whole working people should be brought to bear on this one point, they must and would gain their object and to do this is the design of the people of Birmingham. They have drawn up a petition demanding universal suffrage, annual parliaments and vote by ballot; and in order to induce Parliament to concede the demands of the petition they desire that it may be a national one, signed, if possible, by every working man in the nation; and for this purpose the people of Birmingham have sent a deputation through England and Scotland to see if the people will assist them to obtain our natural rights; and upwards of one million men have declared that they will, to the utmost of their power, assist them in their patriotic enterprise, and that they will never cease their demands until they have obtained their rights.

Now, will the people of Barnsley and its neighbourhood refuse to come forward and lend a helping hand to raise themselves from their present degraded situation? No we hope not. We believe they have had enough of poverty and suffering, and we also think that experience has taught them, that if they were to produce ten times as much by their labour as they now produce, it would be no better for them, but worse, for more wealth the people produce, the more oppressors they create. It is quite erroneous for the people to think that by their increased labour and toil, they can maintain that respectability in society which it is the ambition of every honest and industrious person to maintain, while things remain in their present state; for it is the design of our law-makers that the working men shall only have a bare subsistence for his labour, let him produce ever so much. The present system of government works precisely as explained in the following simple exposition: Suppose twenty men produce wealth to the extent of twenty pounds a week, and suppose four other men had been imposed on them to persuaded, that they (the four men) had a right to make laws by which the twenty men should be governed. Well, the four men proceed to make laws, and the first law that they make is that the twenty pounds’ worth of wealth which the twenty men produce shall be divided and the twenty men shall have one-half for producing the whole and the other half must be given to the four for making laws and governing the twenty men. Well, things go on pretty smoothly under this law for a while, but by-and-by the extravagance of the four law-makers is so great that their income will not meet their expenditure; so they call their legislative abilities into exercise and devise plans to increase their incomes; they know well where to begin, for they know that there is no wealth but what the working class create. So in order to make a successful attack upon that share of wealth which their own law allowed to the twenty men, one of them makes a great banquet, and invites his brother-law-makers to it.

Fellow workmen, -- We wish to impress it deeply on your minds, that attacks on our liberty and industry are never first made in open Parliament, but at the sumptuous revelling of the law-makers when their appetites are satiated with all the luxuries, that can be produced by earth and air and sea. And their hearts cheered with wine; then do they cowardly devise schemes to deprive labour of the comforts of his humble fare. Just give us your attention, while we expose the deliberations of those four law-makers at the above banquet, whose conduct is a true simile of the conduct of our present law-makers at their great entertainments. We will do it in as few words as possible, and endeavour to be so plain that the humblest reader will see into the workings of the machinery of government. When the four law-makers had eaten to their full, the first rose to propound his scheme to extricate themselves from those embarrassments into which their extravagance had brought them; he said, ‘ Gentlemen - I need not tell you that there is no wealth or riches but what is produced by the working classes; you know that well and that there is no source which we can have recourse to, to obtain supplies to meet our increased demands, and maintain our dignity, but the production of the working classes; therefore, I suggest that we pass a law that the labourers shall only have one third of their produce, instead of one half, which they have hitherto had, and that we have two thirds, and I think it will be as much as it wise to take from them at one time, but I only submit this to you as my opinion; perhaps some of my worthy and learned friends may hit upon a better scheme.’ He then sat down and the second rose and said, ‘ My Lords, and Gentlemen; I quite agree with the law suggested by my right honourable friend, but I must acknowledge that I have great apprehension of the consequence, that may probably result from taking so large a portion of the comforts of the people from them at one time, and in so direct a manner; I would, therefore, suggest that instead of taking one third of what they now enjoy we should take one sixth, and make them produce one sixth more, and by adding one sixth more to their labour, they will not have so much time to look after what we are doing, for we must keep the people from thinking as much as possible; having made these remarks I will sit down and give my other friends an opportunity of stating their view, for in the multitude of councillors there is wisdom’. The third then rose and said, ‘I was very much delighted with the ideas of the preceding speaker, but I think his plan may be carried further out, and made more imperceptible to the people. I will illustrate my meaning in this simple way. I conceive that to take one sixth of the food which the men have allowed them at present, in one lump, would be like taking one dinner, from them, out of six, and leaving them without dinner on the sixth day; and when we take into consideration, that they have one sixth more labour to perform, and if it should so happen that they had a double share of work to do on the sixth day, and no dinner, it might lead them to serious reflections; now I would propose that we take one sixth from every dinner, and let them have six dinners, that is a dinner every day, but one sixth less food to it than usual, and by doing so they will scarcely know their loss.’ He then sat down, and the fourth rose and said, `Gentlemen, I am quite enamoured with the result of this night’s deliberation; the deep thought and fine calculations which the different speakers have displayed this night fully prove, if proof were wanting, that we are master-hands at legislation, and fully competent to grapple with any difficulty that may arise in governing this great nation; only observe, how every succeeding speaker has enlarged and improved on the ideas of the preceding speaker, and I am persuaded that when I have explained to you my ideas, which are only an improvement of the ideas that you have suggested, we shall have nothing to do but congratulate each other in having accomplished our object, in such an imperceptible way that will prevent us from ever being detected. I would remind you, gentlemen, that the labourers have breakfasts and drinkings and suppers, and clothing, as well as dinners, and I propose that there be taken from them a part of every article of food and every article of clothing which they consume, and by taking a little from everything, they will never perceive that they have any less; and in order to convince you that this will be the case, I have only to remind you that the people are ignorant, that they cannot calculate so fine as we can; my plan is like taking one-sixth from a penny, which is a fraction, and I am sure the people are so ignorant they cannot reckon to fractions.’ Here all the four rose from their seats, clapped their hands, and shouted as if they had gained a great victory; and after shouting and congratulating each other for their profound wisdom in having so nicely imposed on the people, they sat down, saturated their stomachs with wine, and then retired to rest. Fellow workmen, the above simple report of the supposed four law-makers is no vain imagination, but it is a true picture of the purport of all the counsels of our present law-makers; they watch over your powers of production with an eagle’s eye, and if they observe you can possibly earn one penny more than will barely keep you alive, they never cease scheming till they have gotten it from you; therefore, if God were by a miraculous exercise of His almighty power, to create another island, equal in size and fertility to England, and join it to England, His benevolence would not benefit the people, for our law-makers would instantly seize it, divide it among themselves, make the people cultivate it, and give them (the lawmakers) the produce.

At this present time, while the people are starving for food, the granaries are filled with corn, and the Government will not let the famishing poor have a morsel of it; the owners of the corn have petitioned Parliament to let them grind it into flour, and send it into foreign countries to feed foreigners. The starving poor of this country have begged and prayed time after time that the law-makers would allow them to have the food which is over and above what they (the law-makers) can possibly consume, and which may be very properly designated the crumbs that fall from their tables; but the law-makers have invariably declared by their treatment of the prayers of the people, that, before they who produce all the food or corn, shall have what there is to spare after they and their children, and cattle, and hunting dogs, and wild beasts, and fancy birds. and every other animal that they keep for their profit or pleasure, have been well fed, the surplus food shall rot in their granaries, and be thrown on the dunghill for muck. Oh! ye poor degraded, despised, and insulted people, have you never enquired, and will you never enquire, who gave your callous-hearted law-makers the power thus to oppress you? Their power lies in your sufferance; you allow them to do so; and this is all the power they have; and will you continue to allow them to do so? Have you no love or feeling for yourselves? If you have none for yourselves, let me place before you your pined, naked, ignorant, and despised children. Can you think on the degradation that awaits them without being cut to the very heart?

Oh! Fellow workmen, have you ever felt those glowing pleasures that rise in a parent’s mind at seeing his little child neatly attired, with its basket in its hand, and with a cheerful gait, repairing to a place of instruction, where its little mind would be expanded and stored with profitable learning? Did you ever feel that holy pride, that parental tenderness, that inward adoring of God for having made you a father, which arises in a father’s breast at hearing his little boy read the Scriptures, or any other pleasing book to his listening little brothers and sisters? We ask, have you ever felt the pleasure that such a scene, and such soul-inspiring accents are calculated to raise in a parent’s mind? If you have, can you ever after allow the idea to enter your minds that others of your children and those of your friends and kindred are doomed through poverty to be brought up like the wild ass’s colt, and as ignorant as the Indian’s brood, and to become the dupes and slaves and victims of their oppressors, who go prowling about like a wolf after its prey to rob your daughters of their virtue and chastity? And to do this they impose on your ignorance, and tempt their poverty by bribes; and when they have gratified their lusts, which are as insatiable as their selfishness, they leave their victims to their fate with all the indifference of an infernal spirit. Oh! our feelings recoil at these ideas; they are like the assassin’s dagger entering our hearts. and before we would submit to this fate, and have every principle of our nature outraged by the insatiable selfishness of a few mortal men, if we had the power, and we speak it with the greatest reverence to our God, we would raze the earth to its foundations, and scatter the huge fabric into its original chaos.

What avails the picturesque landscape, the pleasant scenery, the melodious grove, the yellow crops, the teeming harvest, the general shout when the fruits of the earth are safety gathered; I ask, what avail all these to the people, when prison walls and prison’s fare are all that greedy wealth can spare for them? Need we, fellow workmen, say anything more to induce you spontaneously, with one heart and one soul, with the shouts of ten thousand times ten thousand voices, to determine that these things shall continue no longer. If these be your feelings, come and sign the national petition, and join your fellow sufferers in demanding that all who have to obey the laws shall have a voice in making the laws through their representatives. Do not think that you are too poor, too despised and too destitute of influence to be of any service to this great cause, you are the very people that can do this great work. There are gentlemen of great wealth, great knowledge, and great influence, who will lead the van, and venture their lives to gain this great victory; but they can never do it, except the people generally assist them. Will you, men of Barnsley and its neighbourhood, assist them? He who is not for us is against us; and he who remains neutral in this crisis does no more to jeopardise this great cause, than the people’s worst enemy can do. We could go up at once, and wrest our liberties out of the hands of our oppressors, if they must stand on their own ground; but. O! this fatal, this fatal, this fatal neutral ground! - We cannot, we cannot, we cannot conquer on this accursed neutral ground, namely, the supineness of the people. That man who will not assist to remove that incalculable weight of human misery, which distracts this unfortunate nation, except it is through the grossest ignorance, is a coward to himself, a murderer to his children, a traitor to his country, and a despiser to his God.

We ground our claims on the laws of God, the laws of nature, the dictates of conscience, of reason, of justice, of charity, of benevolence, and brotherly love; we ask nothing for ourselves which we would not concede to others; our desire is to diffuse peace on earth and good will towards man, and this can never be done until that injunction of our Lord’s is inculcated, enforced, and generally practised, `do ye unto others as ye would others should do unto you’. We think we see the timid apprehensions of the poor pious and sincere Christians, tanned into a flame by the insinuations of his mistaken or wicked Spiritual Adviser, that the Radicals are laying the axe to the root of all his Christian privileges, and consequently to all the comforts that flow from those privileges. The poles are not more opposite than our desires are, to those insinuations. We maintain that religious toleration should be as free as the air we breathe; and that, that beautiful picture of liberty contained in the scriptures, be enforced to the very letter, that every man should be allowed to worship his God under his own vine and fig tree, none daring to make him afraid; that the state should render ample protection to every man in his conscientious devotions to his God, whether he be Protestant, Catholic, Jew or Gentile; and that that man who dares to be so impiously wicked, as to assault or oppress another for his religious opinions, should be branded as one of the worst characters in society, and brought to condign punishment.

But, dost thou think, O Christian! that it requires the great, the noble, and the learned, with all the eloquence of oratory and wisdom of words; dost thou think that it requires all the pomp, parade, and pageantry of state, and din of war to make the universal love of God acceptable to man; look in thy Bible and see if it is so. No they are like ten thousand anchors, holding the majestic ark of God’s eternal benevolence. Sever the anchor and let it float on the sea of its own intrinsic worth, and it will shine like the lamp that burneth, and go forth in all the majesty of conquering love, and spread and never cease until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of God end his Christ. Amen, and Amen.

These are the Radical principles and Radical opinions; do not hastily condemn them; read your Bibles, and ponder them in your minds before you come to your decisions.

Farewell.

George Uttey, Chairman

lsaac Lister, Treasurer

William Coates, Secretary

John Vallance

Charles Currey

John Esckycove

William Preston

William Thackray

John Green

Arthur Collins

Joseph Crabtree

Peter Hoey

Joseph Gagger

Thomas Lingard

Robert Hardcastle

Thomas Acklam

Robert Armitage

Jonathan West

Thomas Preston

Thomas Haughton

James Davey

Thomas Coastler

William Davey

Thomas Esketh

William Edwards

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[1] Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV.

[2] This refers either members of Parliament or Parliament itself.

Aspects of Chartism: The Local Dimension

The publication of Chartist Studies in 1959 altered the focus from leaders to the localities and resulted from the emergence of sociologically based regional and local studies of the Chartist movement in different parts of the British Isles. These studies underlined the diverse nature of the movement and the difficulty of making generalisations about Chartism as a whole. Briggs argued that Chartism was not merely a movement that meant different things in different parts of the country but also represented an attempt to create a sense of class unity among the three disparate groups that made up the working class.

Chartism may have won support among the superior craftsmen but the new-style craftsmen, like machine-builders were never prominent in the movement. Those whom William Lovett described as “the intelligent and influential portion of the working classes in town and country” were often converted to reform before the Charter and remained faithful supporters irrespective of the trade cycle. Nonconformity exercised a powerful influence on this group that facilitated any dealings withy middle class radicals but hindered them from reaching an accommodation with the manual working class. Factory operatives formed the second group and were concentrated in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire but were also found in parts of Cumberland, Derbyshire, Wales and the West Country and in the West of Scotland. This group was often severely affected by a transformation of methods of production. The support of factory operatives was dependent on the trade cycle and support ebbed and flowed with the economic tides. The third group were domestic outworkers, whether nail-makers from the West Midlands or hand-loom weavers from Lancashire, Yorkshire and the West Country. Their plight was heightened by the advance in new technology that made their work obsolete. For them, Chartism was essentially a knife and fork issue. While they retained some hope of restoring their old position, they looked to Chartism to achieve it, but once their industry had been destroyed, they abandoned all hope and political agitation.

To Briggs, a diverse labour force produced a variety of responses to a working class movement that ordered its priorities according to region. This point was well made by Frank Mather in 1965[1] “Because Chartism was a product of diverse social forces, the movement itself lacked unity. The division in the Chartist ranks of which historians have been most acutely conscious is that between the advocates of rival methods of winning the Charter – moral force and physical force. This distinction has often been made to appear too clear-cut. What existed was not two schools, but a range of opinions which shaded into one another, and individual Chartists often shifted the emphasis of their views so markedly as to give the impression of having changed sides.”  The result of this was a more rounded but fragmented picture of the movement. This is evident in Dorothy Thompson’s The Chartists published in 1984. It is an analysis rather than a history of Chartism and provides a multi-dimensional account of its social composition and values.

By the late 1970s three types of writing about Chartism had clearly emerged -- the broadly narrative approach, biographical studies and studies of regional and local events – within two historiographical traditions: the broadly Fabian approach and Marxist analysis grounded particularly in the class dimension. These provided a picture of considerable richness and diversity. There were, however, important questions that had not been resolved satisfactorily. The emergence of local studies led historians to question how far Chartism was a movement. Mather quoted an American writer who described Chartism as “a series of responses, not a movement”. The unity of 1839, he suggested, did not endure and that the history of Chartism “must contain not one story, but several interwoven stories”. This kaleidoscopic view of Chartism is important in broadening understanding of what happened in particular areas of Britain and of the experience of Chartists in those areas, their concerns, their priorities and their particular political, social and economic agendas. However, it did pose a challenge to those who saw Chartism as a united campaign at the forefront of an emergent labour movement.

Why were there divisions within Chartism: the traditional model?

The subdivision of Chartism into “moral” and “physical” force is too simple a generalisation. Divisions between leaders at national level were repeated within each provincial centre. Not all were agreed on the objectives of Chartism, let alone the methods to be used to achieve those objectives. The main centres of provincial Chartism were the Yorkshire woollen and Lancashire cotton manufacturing areas -- home to the Northern Chartist Association and the area of long-standing working-class radicalism. These areas tended towards direct action. The woollen and cotton industries themselves were not only different but were in mutual competition. The workers in the mills were rivals and shared a rivalry with the hand-workers.

 

Artisan Chartism	Weaver Chartism
Moral force	Physical force
Political and prosperous	Economic ‘hunger’ Chartism
Peaceful, constitutional and educational (manifestos and committees)	Violent, conspiratorial (arming and drilling)
Southern: London and Birmingham	Northern industrial towns
Worked with the middle classes	Class-conscious
Potentially proto-liberal	Potentially proto-socialist
Leaders: Lovett, Place, Attwood, Sturge	Leaders: O’Connor, Harney, Taylor, O’Brien

 

This view is too simplistic. Regional studies show that the divisions were not as clear-cut as the model suggests.

How far do studies of localities broaden historical understanding of Chartism?

• They examine the particular social and economic conditions in different areas and the ways in which these affected the development of radical politics.
• They provide explanations for the emergence of Chartist support in different localities.
• They consider the diversity of working class radical experience during the late 1830s and 1840s. In particular, they look at the different approaches that the working classes adopted to Chartism.
• They provide detailed analysis of the tensions between middle and working class radicalism and between those within the Chartist movement who called for physical action and those who opted for a persuasive approach.

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[1] F.C. Mather Chartism, London, 1965, page 15.

Should we have a referendum on Europe?

Today the European Reform Treaty is signed by the EU leaders in Lisbon.  Gordon will sign later today because of a 'prior commitment' in Parliament.  The painful passage (or not) of the legislation will take place in Parliament next year,  As someone who campaigned for a 'yes' vote in the 1975 referendum and given that we were promised a referendum on any further EU constitutional changes in the Labour manifesto in 2005, I am persuaded by the argument that we ought to have a referendum on this Treaty.  Although the Conservatives have been clamouring for one since the defunct EU constitution, I am not making a party political point here but a purely practical one.  Most commentators seem to believe that although 'constitution' is missing from the Treaty's name, to all intents and purposes it is a EU constitution albeit with a few bits missed out and having ploughed my way through the EU constitution and the Reform Treaty I'm inclined to agree with them.  If that is the case, we were promised a referendum and we should have one.

The problem is that referendums often turn out not to be a vote on the specific proposal but a judgement on the government of the day.  That was certainly the case with the French referendum.  It's yet another way of hitting an unpopular government and is probably the main reason why Gordon has set his face against the whole thing.  The difficulty he faces is that no one actually believes that the Treaty is simply a tidying up operation and, with some justification, accuse the government of weasel words.  Despite this, there remains a strong case for a referendum on this issue just as there was for the Maastricht Treaty two decades ago.  The danger is that the people will simply have the Treaty imposed on them and the government will then find it difficult to maintain its much vaunted 'red lines'.  I have no truck with those who say that we should exit the EU and believe that, on balance, our membership has been beneficial to the country and would certainly campaign in favour of the Treaty.  However, for many people that is not their view and anti-EU views are hardened by the intransigence of government on the issue of a referendum.  Harold Wilson got it right in 1975 when he allowed MPs to campaign and vote on a non-party basis and he recognised that attitudes towards the EU, for and against, were cross-party in character.  The sovereignty of Parliament is grounded in the sovereignty of the people, something that successive governments find convenient to ignore.  It is not enough for government to say it knows best...people have their own views and should have the opportunity to express them.

I understand why the government is frightened of a referendum; it thinks it would lose and given its attitude to the people that may be right.  That should not preclude the people having a vote on the issue.  It's up to those of us who favour the Treaty to go out and sell it to people, to make the case for the EU and robustly answer those for whom the EU is a betrayal of our constitutional sovereignty.  Unlike the government, I think that we could win a referendum once the myths, falsehoods and misrepresentations of those opposed to the Treaty are exposed.  Fear of failure is an excuse for weak government.  So Gordon, call a referendum and allow those in Parliament opposed to the Treaty of whatever party to campaign against it so that those of us in favour of the EU, instead of hiding in the thickets can get out and campaign in favour.  You have little to lose and a great deal to gain!