Aspects of Chartism: The strikes of 1842

 The experiment of class collaboration in 1842 took place in an atmosphere of widespread industrial unrest and Chartist activity. No lasting gains were forthcoming and the revolutionary undercurrents of 1839 were far less in evidence but this was another high point in the movement’s popularity and again coincided with a severe trade depression.

 The 1842 Petition

Chartism’s resurgence as a mass movement perhaps began with the release of O’Connor from York Castle at the end of August 1841. This began a succession of mass demonstrations and triumphal processions as O’Connor toured the country and signatures were gathered for the second great Petition, which with plans for a Convention were launched in September. The latter eventually met in London for three weeks in April 1842 to oversee the presentation of the Petition that went further than that of 1839 in demanding the repeal of the Poor Law Amendment Act and the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland as well as attacking various economic abuses. The attachment of other demands to the Charter was controversial especially in Scotland. The Convention was much better organised with elected delegates limited to 24 from English constituencies and 25 from Welsh and Scottish ones. They were elected by paid-up members of the NCA rather than at mass meetings. Gammage commented that[1]

“Meanwhile the Executive were directing the attention of the country to the subject of another petition for the Charter, and they submitted a draft of the same for adoption. This second Petition did not, however, stop at the Charter; but, as well as stating a host of grievances, prayed for a repeat of the legislative union between Great Britain and Ireland. Here again was a bone of contention. A portion of the Scottish Chartists were opposed to the introduction of any other subject into the Petition than the Charter, and a controversy on the subject took place between Dr. M’Douall and John Duncan, one of the best and ablest of the Scottish Chartists. The majority, however, went with the Executive, and the signing of the Petition proceeded very briskly. A Convention was appointed to sit in London for three weeks, for the purpose of superintending its presentation. It consisted of twenty-five members, whose names were as follows:--Abraham Duncan, E. Stallwood, James Leach, J. R. H. Bairstow, C. Doyle, W. P. Roberts, George White, Feargus O’Connor, N. Powell, R. Lowery, James Moir, S. Bartlett, William Beesley, J. M’Pherson, G. Harrison, P. M. M’Douall, Morgan Williams, R. K. Philp, Ruffy Ridley, W. Woodward, J. Mason, William Thomason, Lawrence Pitkeithly, J. Campbell, and J. Bronterre O’Brien. It will be seen that only six out of the twenty-five were members of the first Convention. This body met in London on the 12^th of April, 1842, and received the signatures to the National Petition, which in the aggregate were stated to amount to thirty-three thousand.”

The petition was also better organised and contained three million signatures; Epstein calls this ‘a testament to Chartism’s enormous popularity’[2]. This achievement needs to be emphasised as there were twice as many signatories as in 1839. Gammage again[3]

“The Petition was presented to the House of Commons by Mr. Duncombe on the 2^nd of May, on which occasion there was a large procession, which left the Convention Room and proceeded through several of the principal thoroughfares to the House of Commons. The authorities had strictly ordered that no vehicles should pass along the thoroughfares, so as in any way to interfere with the procession, which order was rigidly enforced. The concourse of people assembled on the occasion was immense; many strangers being present from the country to witness the proceedings. Duncombe presented the Petition, which was wheeled into the House, and stated the purport of its prayer; he then gave notice of a motion that the petitioners be heard at the bar of the House, through their counsel or agents, in support of the allegations which the Petition contained. When Duncombe brought forward his motion there was the usual quantity of speaking. Macaulay was the great opponent of the motion. He stated that he had no objection to any one point of the Charter but universal suffrage, which he described as amounting to nothing short of the confiscation of the property of the rich. He uttered during his speech the most unfounded and abominable calumnies against the working class. Duncombe’s speech was noble and manly, and elicited the warm esteem of men of all parties; but no amount of good speaking was sufficient to draw forth a response from the House of Commons, and only fifty-one members, including tellers, were found to vote in favour of his motion. That House was too cowardly or too callously indifferent to the condition of the people, to consent to meet the veritable representatives of the suffering poor face to face, and listen to an exposure of their wrongs from those who were best qualified to make it. Duncombe declared that so much was he disgusted with the conduct of the House of Commons, that if the people ever got up another petition of the kind, he would not be a party to their degradation by presenting it...”

Chartism was more popular than ever and was better organised. The result was, however, the same: rejection by the House of Commons by 287 to 51 votes. This created much bitterness in Chartist localities, a situation made worse by the worst economic recession of the century. The movement again faced the problem of what to do when constitutional agitation failed, especially as there was now general agreement that insurrection, or the threat of it, was no longer credible given the confidence of the authorities and the effectiveness of its repressive apparatus. It was at this high point of enthusiasm and frustration that the strike wave of the summer of 1842 broke and was (partially and temporarily) channelled into the Chartist cause.

Protests and strikes

The biggest popular disturbance associated with Chartism was the wave of strikes and protest meetings which took place in August 1842 in many industrial districts in the Midlands, Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire. The names historians use for these events are interesting in themselves. ‘Plug Plot riots’ was one such term. ‘Plug’ referred to one method of spreading and enforcing the strike, by compelling the withdrawal of boiler plugs in order to deprive factories of the steam needed to run their machines. ‘Plug plot strikes’ or ‘General Strike’ were other terms. ‘Plot’ conjures up the idea of conspiracy and planning; riots by contrast of disorder and lack of control. The term ‘strike’ draws attention to the industrial aspect of the action. The use of the term ‘General Strike’ suggests a broader political significance and invites comparison with 1926.

Whatever term is used, it is generally agreed that this was the most formidable mass action of the Chartist period and, arguably, in 19^th century Britain. Study of it can tell us a great deal about the relationships between economic and political protest, leaders and led, local and broader action, popular protest and the response of the propertied classes and government. Furthermore, the general strike of 1842 had a great influence on the subsequent development of popular politics, up to and including in 1848. Because of this, and also because the general strike was a much more formidable mass action than anything which took place in Great Britain in 1848, there is a lot of material for you to work through

In 1842, the challenge to local and national authority came directly from the opposition of working class districts of the North and Midlands to unemployment, high food prices and wage reductions[4]. Up to half a million workers were involved in the series of strikes that swept across many of the industrial districts of the north and Midlands in July and August 1842. The strikes began in early July in the Staffordshire coalfields where the issues were wages cuts, a system of employment called ‘buildas’ (working without pay) and the truck system. However, the resolutions setting out the demands of the south Staffordshire miners on 1^st August were proposed by two Chartists, Joseph Linney and Arthur O’Neill. This set a pattern. The Chartists did not create the grievances or the economic depression but they did organise workers’ reaction and turned local strikes and an inclination to riot into a concerted challenge to the authority of employers, the forces of law and order and ultimately the government itself. They did this effectively largely because they were not outside agitators with an abstract political programme, but members of their own local communities caught up in their own and their neighbours’ grievances.

At then end of July, factory masters in the Ashton-Stalybridge area, south-east of Manchester announced a twenty-five per cent reduction in wages. On 26^th July, a large public meeting was chaired by William Woodruffe, an Ashton Chartist delegate and where the two main speakers William Aitken and Richard Pilling were both Chartists. A further meeting at Stalybridge on 29^th July was also addressed by known Chartists. Both meetings were primarily about wage issues but they also supported the Charter and called for arms to be raised to protect the working classes. Further meetings were held over the next few days in Hyde and Dukinfield with the same and similar speakers to the same effect. As a result, some employers withdrew the cuts. On Sunday 7^th August, a large meeting was held at Mottram Moor where the main speakers were again Chartists. Resolutions were carried in support of a strike for a fair day’s pay and the Charter and, in was announced that there would be a general turn-out throughout Lancashire and Cheshire the following morning.

The success of the turn-out in the Ashton-Staleybridge area suggests that this was not a spontaneous action but was organised by that group of Chartist speakers who had led the preliminary meetings. Richard Pilling, a weaver from Ashton was central to this process and in 1848 he boasted that he “was the sole cause of the turn-out in Lancashire, the originator of the whole proceeding”. On 8^th August, he led a party from Ashton to Oldham to spread the strike and on the following day the strikers were ready to march on Manchester. The rally addressed by Pilling passed off peacefully and most factories turned-out with little or no violence. The Birley Mills in Oxford Street resisted and here a battle dragged on until the next day when it was ended by soldiers with fixed bayonets but by Saturday 13^th August Birley’s too was forced to close.

The turn-outs spread northwards and eastwards to Rochdale and Bolton and over the Pennines to Halifax as the strike went into its second week. Factories were immobilised by driving in the boiler plugs and bringing the factories to a standstill. Very little damage was done and there was little indiscriminate looting. Outright violence was the exception and where there were clashes with the police or military, the main weapons were stones. In Preston, a stone-throwing crowd ran up against a small detachment of troops who killed four rioters when they opened fire and on 15^th August at least three rioters were killed and several injured when troops confronted strikers at Burslem in the Potteries.

Despite such events, most of the strike was conducted with considerable restraint. The extent of the organisation of the strikes from Manchester was what worried the Home Secretary most. The central leadership of the strikes took the form of the Great Delegate Conference under the chairmanship of Alexander Hutchinson, an Owenite Socialist and Chartist who was secretary of the Manchester smiths and a member of the NCA executive. On 11^th August, a delegate conference of mechanics, engineers, millwrights, moulders and smiths met to agree a common programme of action. The following day, a delegate conference of the mill trades did the same thing. Both conferences also carried almost identical resolutions in favour of the Charter. The two conferences arranged to meet on Monday 15^th August but this was postponed until the following day. 141 delegates representing eight-five trades met and voted by a large majority to cease work until the Charter became the law of the land. As the conference was coming to a close, it was ordered to disperse by the chief constable supported by troops and police. Hutchinson refused on the grounds that the meting was legal. After the magistrates had declared it illegal, the delegates then complied. Their ranks thinned by arrests and hurried departures out of Manchester, the rump of the delegates met the following day when they formed a central committee and urged the formation of local committees to direct the strikes.

The NCA executive was in Manchester on 16^th August to commemorate Peterloo and clearly needed some response to the strikes. Previously, O’Connor had been reticent to support the strikes seeing them both as an Anti-Corn Law League plot and as a trap to discredit the Chartists. However, the resolution and two addresses that accompanied it agreed by most of the executive on 17^th August committed Chartism to the strikes represented a reversal of policy. Although the strikes continued well into September, hunger, the arrest of leaders and a tightening of control by the police and military were already beginning to turn the tide against the workers. The national Chartist leadership had put its support behind the strikers too late and now found itself in the position of being blamed for something over which it had never had any real control. The strikes soon ended and various explanations have been suggested for this:

• Misery forced men back to work.
• O’Connor attacked the strikes in the Northern Star.
• Trades delegates recommended a return to work (20^th August).
• The harvest of 1842 was good.
• Trade improved.
• Pay reductions were withdrawn.

Demand for the Charter was fading by the end of August as immediate wage-related issues returned to the fore. Gradually, groups of strikers returned to work in September but it was not until the end of the month that Manchester weavers went back and in most cases the proposed wages cuts were withdrawn. In some areas, wage increases were achieved. The strike itself can be seen as an impressive achievement though it never passed beyond a regional core of intense activity and never genuinely promised to achieve the Charter.

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[1] R.G. Gammage History of the Chartist Movement 1837-1854, 1894, pages 208-209.

[2] Epstein The Lion of Freedom, page 294.

[3] R.G. Gammage History of the Chartist Movement 1837-1854, 1894, page 209.

[4] Mick Jenkins The General Strike of 1842, London, 1980 surveys the wave of strikes with a particular emphasis on Lancashire and Raymond Challinor and Brian Ripley The Miners’ Association: A Trade Union in the Age of the Chartists, Bewick Press, 2^nd ed., 1990 looks at the 1842 strikes and beyond from the viewpoint of one occupation. Robert Tyson ‘The crisis of 1842: Chartism, the Colliers’ Strike and the Outbreak in the Potteries’, in James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (eds.) The Chartist Experience, Macmillan, 1982, pages 194-220 is a valuable local study. Brian R. Brown ‘Industrial Capitalism, Conflict and Working Class Contention in Lancashire, 1842’, in Louise A. Tilley and Charles Tilley (eds.) Class Conflict and Collective Action, Sage, 1981, pages 111-141 where the author engages in a sociological analysis of Lancashire Chartism and the mass strike of 1842.

Aspects of Chartism: Chartists and the 1841 election

The 1841 election was a major triumph for Peel[1]. It produced a victory for the Conservatives by more than seventy seats (a majority of 76) and was also the first time in British electoral history that a party with a theoretical parliamentary majority had been replaced by another with a majority.

Analysing the election: a context

The analysis of the election by type of seat appears to support the conclusion that Peel broadened the Tory base. The Conservatives won almost as many seats in the English and Welsh boroughs as the Whigs and this was a notable achievement for a party grounded in the land. However, a closer look at the types of boroughs is important. Only 44 of the seats won in English and Welsh boroughs were in paces with electorates over 1000. In the 58 largest boroughs, the Whigs won almost three times as many seats as the Conservatives and Peel’s party suffered a net loss of two seats compared to its performance in 1837. These larger boroughs were concentrated in the industrial midlands and north where Peel was seeking to broaden the party’s electoral base. But it was here that the Conservatives did least well. The larger towns where the Conservatives did have some success were older ports and commercial centres like the City of London, Bristol and Hull rather than industrial centres like Manchester and Leeds.

In general, the Conservatives did best in those boroughs that were little changed by the 1832 Reform Act. Several of these were still old-style ‘rotten boroughs’ where the patronage of a substantial landowner, rather than electoral popularity, was the decisive factor. Many had little to do with industry but were market towns whose economy was dominated by farming. In addition, there were only contests in 47 per cent of the country’s constituencies, considerably less than in the elections in 1832, 1835 and 1837 which the Whigs had won, albeit with reduced majorities.

The Conservative majority was based on small boroughs and especially the counties of England. The Whigs were all but wiped out in the English counties winning only 20 (14 per cent) of the 144 available seats. By contrast, Ireland and Scotland returned Whig or Whig-allied majorities of roughly three to two. The Conservatives hardly made any showing in the Scottish boroughs.

The Conservatives won in 1841 because they had majority support where the seats were thickest on the ground in southern England and not where the electorates were more numerous or changed by recent industrial and commercial developments. The Conservatives were the party of rural England, were not strong in the United Kingdom as a whole and the Conservative party remained dominated by old-style Tory opinion. Not surprisingly, a large number of Conservative MPs elected in 1841 were fervent Protectionists.

Peel did not advertise his unease about Protection to either the voters or his own supporters. He relied on his growing reputation as an expert in financial and commercial issues to give him votes in the towns while encouraging rural Tories to act in defence of the Corn Laws. Tory votes appear to have been cast overwhelmingly for the party most likely to protect landowners and the Protestant Church. Peel had a broader vision, though he did little to inform potential Tory voters of his real intensions in economic policy, but his party’s creed was far narrower. The 1841 election was a victory for Protectionist Toryism not Peelite Conservatism. Yet much of Peel’s policies as prime minister from 1841 to 1846 ignored this fundamental distinction. It was not long until differences within the Conservative party began to appear.

Anti-poor law attitudes

Agitation against the new Poor Law had been building up in the north of England since the legislation was passed by the Whigs in 1834[2]. Initially the Act was received favourably by the powerful provincial northern press because it was felt to be irrelevant to the industrial areas where poor rates were much lower than in the south and parochial relief had often already been organised. Implementation in the north from the end of 1836 aroused serious and sometimes violent opposition, much of it organised by Tory radicals such as Michael Sadler and Richard Oastler. These middle class reformers, already prominent in campaigning for factory reform, provided an effective campaign against the new Act that the resistance in the south had lacked. The anti-poor law movement in the North represented a temporary alliance between working and middle classes against legislation that was widely regarded as unjust and intrusive; in a sense it was also a local reaction against centralisation that cut across class lines. Eventually differences in emphasis and ideas between Tory radicals, who emphasised the value of paternalism and the emerging Chartist leaders, with their belief in universal suffrage, ruptured the alliance. By the end of 1838, the violent phase of resistance had died down as poor law unions were gradually established and the poor law commissioners made concessions that allowed boards of guardians to give outdoor relief in Lancashire and Yorkshire if the situation required it. By 1839, the campaign began to disintegrate as working class resentment was appeased by the continued use of outdoor relief and rivalries between middle class and working class elements of the movement came to the fore. Increasingly Chartism attracted the more radical supporters of the agitation.

It is difficult to assess the impact of anti-Poor Law sentiment as a campaign issue in 1841. Its electoral potential had been tested at a by-election in Nottingham in April 1841 held several weeks before the general election. The results were not promising for the Whigs. Nottingham had long been a Whig borough and Whigs had been returned to both parliamentary seats since 1818. They also dominated municipal politics holding fifty office of the corporation in 1839 compared to the Conservatives six. Whig dominance was grounded in an extensive popular franchise with voting rights resting with the 40s freeholders and the freemen of the borough. The largest single occupational group among the freemen was the framework-knitters who had traditionally been anti-Conservative. However, rising levels of unemployment and the new Poor Law made the borough electorate a fertile recruiting ground for the Conservatives. In early 1841, anti-poor law feelings focused on the construction of a new workhouse ‘of extreme size’[3] and, for the increasingly depressed working class in Nottingham it seemed large enough to house them all[4]. The alarm of the poor was matched by the dismay of the ratepayers who bore the cost of constructing this ‘pauper palace’ and at a protest meeting an opponent of the new workhouse succinctly summed this up when he declared in favour of the Old Poor Law that it ‘was far more satisfactory than the present sweeping system of centralisation, with all its cumbrous machinery—a system which abridged the comforts of the poor and increased the taxes of the ratepayers.’ [5]

The death of one of the sitting Whig MPs, Sir Ronald Ferguson came at the height of this controversy. The ensuing by-election pitted a Whig, George Larpent (named ‘Larpent the Sarpent’ by his working class opposition) against John Walter, the editor of The Times. Larpent stood on a progressive platform: he supported the ballot and Corn Law abolition and was opposed to church rates; all issues that he hoped would gain him working class support. Walter simply stood as an anti-poor law candidate and this allowed him to represent himself as the popular candidate despite his Conservative credentials. Though corruption was not uncommon in Nottingham elections and both candidates used this tactic in the election campaign, the issue of the Poor Law was the deciding factor. Walter won by slightly over 200 votes out of a total poll of 3,600 but critically he won just over half the votes of the framework-knitters[6]. This was a warning to the Whig government. If they could not hold Nottingham, what seat could be called ‘safe’?

Some effort was made by the Conservatives in their selection of candidates to take advantage of the anti-poor law mood of the north. Disraeli[7], for example, was urged to stand for Leicester because of his known opposition to the Poor Laws. During the campaign, speeches against the Poor Law were made in several constituencies including Ipswich, Plymouth, Maidstone, Northampton, the City of London, North Northumberland and the West Riding of Yorkshire. Conservative candidates usually represented the Poor Law as a dangerous centralising tendency by concentrating too much power in the hands of the Poor Law Commission. The speech of Fitzroy Kelley at Ipswich (where he lost) was typical[8]: he condemned the Commission as ‘those three Inquisitors’ and called for a return of the administration of the Poor Law to local authorities.

The anti-Poor Law attitudes cultivated during the campaign contributed significantly to an electoral alliance between Conservatives and Chartists. By making it as electoral issue, the Conservative platform proved temporarily attractive to the Chartists, for whom opposition to the Poor Law was an important source of support. In addition, Chartist distaste for the Whig government had grown since 1839 with the attempted suppression of Chartism and the arrest of Chartist leaders. ‘Whig tyranny’ was a popular cry among Chartists, something that the Conservatives could and did exploit.

Anti-free trade attitudes

A further basis for co-operation between Conservatives and Chartists was their distrust of the growing free trade movement. To the Chartists, the Whig tariff revision scheme proposed by Francis Baring in April sounded suspiciously like the free trade ideology of the Anti-Corn Law League. Chartists believed that manufacturers’ support for Corn Law repeal was not based on a genuine impulse to provide cheaper food for workers, but on the assumption that cheaper brad would enable them to reduce labour costs by reducing wages. A pamphlet produced in 1833 by Henry Ashworth, a well known Lancashire cotton master had advocated cheap bread on precisely those lines[9]. Ashworth actively supported the League and served as director and president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce for several years and was a close friend of Richard Cobden and John Bright. It is therefore not surprising that many Chartists saw the League as an instrument of middle class exploitation and sought to disrupt its activities and meetings whenever possible.

Chartist disruption of free trade meetings had begun before the election. They were especially active in the Staffordshire potteries. At Hanley, for example, a local Chartist named Richards reportedly supported by hundreds of Chartists spoke against Corn Law abolition at a free trade meeting[10]. A similar free trade meeting at Wednesbury was taken over by a Chartist called Candy[11]. In Leicester, the Chartists set up a rival platform at a free trade meeting and attacked the proposed Whig tariff reductions as useless to working men[12]. At York, James Leach, a Chartist lecturer denounced anti-Corn Law statements: ‘the burden of the people ought first to be removed’, he said, ‘and then they may talk of free trade’[13]. The Chartist Charles Harris became co-chairman of a free trade meeting in Gloucestershire at Stroud simply by mounting the platform and seating himself next to the delegated chairman. Later in the meeting, Harris spoke of Chartist disappointment with the Whig government and of the real purpose of Corn Law reduction[14]: ‘He would tell the meeting what the gentlemen wanted who called for a repeal of the corn law—they did not want cheap bread—they wanted cheap labour’. The Chartists were able to counter the Whig electoral cry of ‘cheap bread’ with their own cry of ‘low wages’.

Chartists in the election

The Chartists sponsored a few candidates of their own: Peter McDouall stood for Northampton, Henry Vincent for Banbury and George Julian Harney and Lawrence Pitkeithly for the West Riding[15]. The Northampton election provides the clearest example of the Chartist-Conservative alliance. Weeks before the election, Northampton Chartists were already speaking out against the Whig government. The Conservative Northampton Herald encouraged this by opening its pages to Chartist letters and noted with approval Chartist speakers who ‘uttered sentiments with which we and every sound Conservative must cordially coincide’. The Chartist campaign was, however, unsuccessful. McDouall was last out of four and the Conservative Sir Henry Willoughby was third. However, the poll book demonstrates the impact of the Chartist-Conservative alliance. Of the 176 votes cast for McDouall, only 22 split with the Whig candidates while 149 split with Willoughby. Of these 149, it was said that 114 were well-known Conservatives[16]. A more successful alliance occurred in Bradford where the Conservative John Hardy headed the poll[17]. This was the climax of four years intensive Conservative electioneering among Bradford’s working men that began with the formation of the Operative Conservative Society in 1837. From 1837 to 1840, when technologically displaced handloom weavers formed the bulk of support for Bradford Chartism, the Conservatives maintained their efforts to win the working class constituency while the Whigs focussed on organising a local anti-Corn Law campaign. Conservative election overtures to the Chartists in 1841 assured Hardy of his victory[18].

Local Chartist leaders actively collaborated with the Conservatives elsewhere. At an election meeting in Leeds, a Chartist-Conservative called Parker pledged his support to the banker, William Becket. Becket was placed top of the poll at Leeds displacing one of the Whig incumbents.[19] Chartist speakers also appeared at the Norwich, Newcastle, Ipswich, Salford and Tower Hamlet elections. In Gloucester, Henry Vincent urged the electorate to vote for the Conservatives[20]: he ‘admitted that the Tories were bad enough in all conscience [but] they were possessed of more political honesty than their opponents, and have never evinced, even in the palmy days of Castlereagh and spies, such savage cruelty as the Whigs had done in their crusade against the Chartists.’

The Chartists looked on the Conservatives with hardly more favour than they regarded the Whigs. The alliance was purely a tactical move. They hoped to defeat the Whigs and then to force them to make political concessions to get Chartist support. O’Connor put the case simply[21]: the Chartists must ‘use the Tories for the purpose of beating the Whigs’. A Chartist in Leicester put it slightly more graphically[22]: they must make use of the Tories ‘in order to cut politically the throats of the Whigs, but when they had procured all that the people required, then they would turn round and cut the throats of all the Tories’. Conservative candidates were ambivalent in their attitude to the Chartists. Henry Halford shared the hustings with Chartists in his successful Conservative candidacy in South Leicestershire but confessed he felt himself to be in a ‘somewhat strange’ position and that he could only explain the Chartist preference for Conservatives as a preference given to ‘open and determined enemies, above treacherous and deceitful friends’[23]. Some Conservatives were more enthusiastic and openly embraced Chartist support. Edward Goulburn made a direct appeal to Chartists at the Carlisle election. In his pre-election address, he condemned the Whig prosecution of Chartist leaders. Though unsuccessful, Goulburn managed a respectable poll given that Conservatives had not contested the seat since 1832[24].

The Chartist-Conservative alliance thoroughly alarmed the Whigs. As early as the Nottingham by-election, they thought that an alliance was forming and the Whiggish Bristol Gazette had written of 22^nd April of the ‘unholy alliance’ operating in Nottingham. The Leeds Mercury was equally concerned at the Nottingham result and hoped to discredit the Conservatives by linking them to disreputable individuals. It said, on 1^st May, ‘It would both disgust our readers and the public to detail the arts which the Tory-Chartist-Revolutionary-Socialist-Infidel coalition resort to’. Even in Birmingham, where there had been significant co-operation between middle and working classes, the Whig majority was significantly reduced at the general election to such an extent that Thomas Attwood made a public statement deploring Chartist tactics[25].

1841: a Chartist success?

There were limits to Chartist influence on the 1841 election and it is important not to over-emphasise this. There was more talk than action and many Chartists could exert no direct influence since they remained unenfranchised. Neither was support for the Tories universally accepted within the Chartist leadership. Bronterre O’Brien, for example, argued that where the choice lay between Whig and Tory, the only principled position for a Chartist to take was to abstain. Chartist leadership was notoriously weak, often divided and occasionally corrupt. For example, the Norwich Chartist named Dover apparently accepted a bribe to withdraw the name of a Chartist candidate for the borough. When the Chartist crowd discovered this deception of nomination day, they chased Dover from the public house where he lodged and he was in danger of his life when rescued by the borough police[26].

Several Chartist candidates stood, though none came close to winning. However, contemporaries were impressed by the disciplined way in which Chartist voters acted collectively in support of candidates who were recommended by their leaders. Where there was no Chartist candidate, voters were asked to support whoever was thought the most radical, with support for democratic reform (as in the case of J.A. Roebuck in Bath) coming ahead even of opposition to the new Poor Law as a touchstone. Where there were no radical candidates, votes were to go to the Tories rather than the Whigs. J.T. Ward[27] suggests that this was a continuation of the affinity between O’Connorite Chartism and Tory Radicalism that had been found in the factory reform and anti-poor law campaigns. James Epstein[28] disagrees arguing that such an alliance was always illusory where the Charter was concerned and that opposition to the Whigs was simply based on their record in government and in the hope of undermining them as a party leaving a gap that might be filled by a more radical party with Chartist sympathies. If Epstein is right, then it was a strategy that completely failed.

The new political alignment did not happen in 1841 but the Chartists’ efforts to influence the outcome of the election was viewed by contemporaries as making a material contribution to the Whig defeat. If Chartist influence was likely to be decisive, it was only in a few constituencies and then only where the electoral arithmetic was already leaning towards the Conservatives. However, it was another electoral blow that cost the Whigs the election. This helped to create a frame of mind in which Sturge and his allies chose to reach out to suitable figures within the movement. The creation of the Complete Suffrage Union was in part a response to the modest though genuine success of the Chartist intervention in the general election of 1841.

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[1] There are three important papers on the 1841 election: R.H. Cameron ‘The Melbourne Administration, the Liberals, and the crisis of 1841’, Durham University Journal, volume 69, (1976), pages 83-102, B. Kemp ‘The General Election of 1841’, History, volume 37, (1952), pages 146-152 and B. Jaggard The 1841 British General Election: a Reconsideration’, Australian Journal of Politics & History, volume 30, (1984), pages 99-114.

[2] Detailed analysis of opposition to the introduction of the 1834 Act can be found in N. Edsall The Anti-Poor Law Movement 1833-1844, Manchester University Press, 1971 and J. Knott Popular Opposition to the 1834 Poor Law, Croom Helm, 1985

[3] It was 364 feet long with a roof reservoir providing hot and cold water and there was also a water closet on each floor. However, these amenities did little to allay the fears of working people.

[4] Nottingham Review, 2^nd April 1841.

[5] Nottingham Mercury, 18^th June 1841.

[6] An Alphabetical List of the Burgesses, Occupiers and Freeholders who poled at the election of a Burgess to Represent the Town of Nottingham….April 1841, Nottingham, no date shows that about twenty per cent of the Nottingham electorate who voted in the by-election were framework-knitters: 728 out of a total of 3,728. 366 voted for Walter and 362 for Larpent. This represented a significant shift in support by framework-knitters towards the Conservatives since the 1837 election.

[7] Hughenden MSS: B/1/B/6, 26^th May 1841, C.H. Frewen MP to Disraeli.

[8] Ipswich Journal, 26^th June 1841.

[9] Rhodes Boyson The Ashworth Cottob Enterprise: the Rise and Fall of a Family Firm 1818-1880, Oxford University Press, 1970, pages 170-171.

[10] Staffordshire Advertiser, 29^th May 1841.

[11] North Staffordshire Mercury, 22^nd May 1841.

[12] Leicester Mercury, 5^th June 1841.

[13] York Herald, 26^th June 1841.

[14] Bristol Gazette, 27^th May 1841.

[15] Harney and Pitkeithly later withdrew their candidacy to avoid election costs: A.R. Schoyen The Chartist Challenge: A Portrait of George Julian Harney, 1958, pages 107-108.

[16] Northampton Mercury, 17^th July 1841.

[17] A.J. Peacock Bradford Chartism 1838-1840, Borthwick Papers, number 36, York, 1969 and D.G. Wright ‘A Radical Borough: Parliamentary Politics in Bradford 1832-1841’, Northern History, volume iv, (1969), pages 132-166 provide the context.

[18] A report in the York Herald, 3^rd July 1841 confirms the importance of the Chartist vote to Hardy,

[19] Leeds Mercury, 29^th May 1841.

[20] Nottingham Review, 30^th April 1841.

[21] Northern Star, 19^th June 1841.

[22] Leicester Mercury, 29^th May 1841.

[23] Leicester Mercury, 23^rd July 1841.

[24] Carlisle Patriot, 26^th June and 3^rd July 1841.

[25] Birmingham Journal, 10^th July 1841.

[26] Accounts of this can be found in the Norfolk Chronicle, 3^rd July 1841 and the Norwich Mercury, 3^rd July 1841.

[27] J.T. Ward Chartism, Batsford, 1972, pages 150-51, 156.

[28] James Epstein The Lion of Freedom, Croom Helm, 1982, pages 276-86.