Policing lawlessness

Initially recruiting for the police was difficult. Wages bore no comparison to potential earnings on the diggings. Also, most possible police recruits were unreformed convicts, many lacking the honesty necessary for law enforcement. The diggers recognised ‘good’ authority when they saw it and were largely unimpressed with the new police. Despite the financial constraints imposed by the Legislative Council in 1851 and 1852, La Trobe raised daily wages from 2/6d to 6/- and accepted anyone who was willing to join the force. This attracted many young, inexperienced recruits and ex-convicts, who would prove to be harsh and corrupt as they collected the gold license fees. This lack of respect escalated into outright contempt when a force of 130 military ‘pensioners’ from VDL was used to relieve a regiment stationed at the Mount Alexander diggings. [1] Instead of inspiring respect for their experience and age, the response from the diggers as the pensioners arrived was laughter and derision. It was only a fortnight later that the Commissioner petitioned La Trobe for further troops.

Recruitment problems proved temporary. [2] By March 1852, the Melbourne force was at full strength. By mid-1853, there were 875 police stationed in Victoria and a year later 1,639 establishing the relatively high police to population ratio of 1:144 in the colony.[3] La Trobe’s government invested, if tardily, in badly needed bridges and roads for the diggings and recruited extra police, who were paid 12/6d a day, plus board and lodging. In September 1852, a new cadre of police ‘officers’ was set up to lead the disorganised troopers: educated individuals or immigrants who had found themselves unsuited to digging. [4] This new ‘gentrified’ police force further inflamed the diggers. Their methods of policing were clearly antagonistic, the result in part of what they saw as their superior social status, and they bore the brunt of digger contempt and cooperation between diggers and authority deteriorated further. In 1853, the government removed control of police from local magistrates and established the centrally controlled Victoria Police. [5] The reorganisation allowed the government to enforce its goldfield policies effectively and to check movements for reform that had emerged amongst the small independent miners. In September 1853, the Colonial Secretary wrote to the Chief Commissioner of Police asking that police attend political meetings on the goldfields: ‘it is very desirable that intelligent men should attend all public meetings to watch the proceedings and to take down accurately such words used as may appear to them desirable’. [6]

Policing sly-grogging

The Police Regulation Act of 1853 was modelled on the London Metropolitan Police Act, however policing in rural areas and on the goldfields continued to be militaristic. Large numbers of heavily armed police along with soldiers were dispatched to the goldfields; for example at Castlemaine in 1854 the ratio of police to population was 1:56. [7] The purpose of the show of force was to overcome resistance to the license fee. It was not only the license that was odious; the way the tax was enforced was also resented. Rather than combating crime, the police operated as a repressive tax-gathering and surveillance force. License or ‘digger’ hunts regularly interrupted work; police demanded to see licenses several times a day and forced even those not working to pay. This repressive, inefficient approach was compounded by the government’s decision to grant half the proceeds of fines for evasion of license fees and sly-grogging to those police responsible for convictions. As a result, the police concentrated on securing license fees and fines rather than combating crime and this led to widespread corruption. Many police, some accustomed to a system of convict discipline performed their duties in a rude, bullying manner. Others, like Superintendent David Armstrong, were brutal thugs. Armstrong’s habit was to burn the tents of suspects and beat those who questioned his methods with the brass knob of his riding crop. He was eventually dismissed, but left boasting that in two years at Ballarat he had made £15,000 in fines and bribes. This strategic concentration of resources was not seen as an attempt to contain increased crime, but a conscious attempt to control the civilian population on the diggings. When giving evidence to the Gold Fields Commission of Enquiry in 1855, Chief Commissioner MacMahon admitted that police at Ballarat were used primarily as tax collectors and could not operate efficiently as law enforcement officers while this remained their role. [8]

This policy and practice of policing generated hatred for the licenses, contempt for the force and ultimately resistance from the diggers. They were angered by the lack of policing of actual crime and outraged by a system that portrayed them as criminals. As J. B. Humffray observed:

Honest men are hunted down by the police like kangaroos, and if they do not possess a license...they are paraded through the diggings by the commissioners and police...and, if unable to pay the fine, are rudely locked up, in company of any thief or thieves who may be in the Camp cells at the time; in short, treated in every way as if they were felons. [9]

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[1] The ‘pensioners’ were non-commissioned officers and privates who had agreed to serve out their army careers as convict guards in exchange for a grant of land and a cottage.

[2] Victoria Police, Police in Victoria 1836-1980, (Victoria Police), 1980, pp. 5-10, and Haldane, R., The People’s Force: A history of the Victoria Police, (Melbourne University Press), 1986, pp. 7-47.

[3] Ibid, Gold seeking, p. 75.

[4] Ibid, pp. 78-79, discusses this élite group.

[5] Ibid, Victoria Police, Police in Victoria 1836-1980, p. 7; see also above, Haldane, R., The People’s Force, pp. 29-30

[6] Colonial Secretary Foster to Chief Commissioner of Police, 24 September 1853, cit, Goodman, D., Gold seeking, pp. 74-75.

[7] Ibid, The Goldfields Commission Report, pp. 60-61, concluded that abolishing the license fee would reduce the size of the police force by between half and two-thirds.

[8] Mellor, G., ‘Sir Charles MacMahon (1824-1891)’, ADB, Vol. 5, pp. 189-190.

[9] Ballarat Times, 21 October 1854.

The problem of lawlessness

How critical was the nature of policing to the development of resistance among miners in Victoria in the early 1850s? [1] The development of policing in Victoria was influenced by two traditions of law enforcement: a crime preventative, ‘civilian’ style of policing epitomised by the London Metropolitan Police, consciously non-military and unarmed, supposedly working in partnership with and with the consent of the local community; and the ‘paramilitary’ style of the Irish Constabulary, centralised, armed and kept away from the local community in barracks, whose function was to check social and political disorder and dissent, as much as crime. [2] The first model of policing was adopted in colonial Melbourne but the more militaristic style was applied to the goldfields. [3] The 1855 Report of the Goldfield Commission Enquiry neatly summed up the situation:

Instead of that happy accord between the police and the orderly citizen, exemplified everywhere but on the goldfields... [there was] a force requisite to defeat them [the miners], should their mutual irritation come to a crisis. [4]

Opinions vary as to the scale of crime on the gold fields particularly between 1851 and 1855. [5] An unknown journalist wrote that ‘All the letters from Mt Alexander dwell upon the lawless condition of the place and the deeds of rapine and bloodshed that disgrace it’.[6] Others, like the future Lord Cecil, were pleasantly surprised, finding ‘less crime than in a large English town, and more order and civility than I have witnessed in my own native village of Hatfield’. [7] Even within the same goldfield it is evident that there were local variations in the level of criminality. The problem is that the possible sources for this are all tinged with their own political agendas. The Argus, for example, probably exaggerated the level of crime to embarrass the Government, something repeated in the Sydney and Adelaide papers to discourage migration to Victoria. By contrast, La Trobe had a vested interest in playing down the extent of crime while his police officers often left him ill-informed about real levels of criminal activity.

The problem of lawlessness on the diggings was made worse by a drastic shortage of police in the early days of the gold rush. In July 1851, all but two of Melbourne’s forty police resigned and fled to the gold fields and there was considerable fear for public order. The ‘police’ presence at the gold fields was provided by a small contingent of Native Police. [8] Established in 1837, the Native Police played an important role in the discovery of gold and the early government regulation of the Victorian diggings. Native Police troopers escorted the first pack-horse convoys carrying gold to Melbourne from the goldfields. In January 1852, La Trobe reported of the Mount Alexander diggings: ‘The field now became the general rendezvous of…the most profligate portion of the inhabitants of this and the adjacent colonies…’ [9] He clearly needed to employ additional police, but the Legislative Council stubbornly refused to allow him to spend the government’s general revenue on any service connected to the gold fields except administration.

A degree of self-regulation became necessary, with some crimes receiving summary justice, and most disputes being settled between diggers ‘in a practical manner’. In February 1852, for example, the Miners’ Association tried to organise patrols by diggers at night in the Castlemaine area. The most frequent crime was theft and normally the punishment was banishment from the goldfields or lashings. Expulsion was no small matter: those punished felt ‘every mark of disgrace and ignominy’, and were considered a ‘pariah amongst diggers all over Australia’. Crime and punishment was widely publicised in newspapers to ensure such banishment was complete. Diggers’ justice was a response to the lack of formal policing on the goldfields and was a far from perfect legal model with punishments determined by the makeshift ‘jury’ at hand. It was an unarguably simplistic judicial system but one that kept a tenuous order over the goldfields.

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[1] King, Hazel, ‘Some Aspects of Police Administration in New South Wales, 1825-1851’, Royal Australian Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, Vol. 42, (1956), pp. 205-30; Sturma, Michael, ‘Policing the Criminal Frontier in Mid-Century Australia, Britain, and America’, in Finnane, Mark, (ed.), Policing in Australia: Historical Perspectives, (University of New South Wales Press), 1987, pp. 15-34; ibid, Neal, David, The Rule of Law in a Penal Colony, pp. 141-165; Finnane, Mark, Police and Government: Histories of Policing in Australia, (Oxford University Press), 1994, pp. 3-30, provides a useful context for this issue.

[2] Brogden, Michael, ‘An Act to Colonise the Internal Lands of the Island: Empire and the Origins of the Professional Police’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, Vol. 15, (1987), pp. 179-208; Anderson, D. M., and Killingray, David, (eds.), Policing and the Empire: Government, Authority, and Control, 1830-1940, (Manchester University Press), 1991.

[3] Taylor, David, ‘Melbourne, Middlesbrough and morality: policing Victorian ‘new towns’ in the old world and the new’, Social History, Vol. 31, (2006), pp. 15-38, provides an interesting comparative focus for the late nineteenth century.

[4] The Goldfields Commission Report, 1855, (Red Roster Press), 1978, pp. 17-18.

[5] Serle, pp. 35-36.

[6] Cit, ibid, Annear, Robyn, Nothing But Gold: The Diggers of 1852, p. 268.

[7] Scott, Ernest, (ed.), Lord Robert Cecil’s Gold Fields’ Diaries, (Melbourne University Press), 1935, pp. 18-19.

[8] Fels, Marie Hansen, Good men and true: the Aboriginal police of the Port Phillip District, 1837-1853, (Melbourne University Press), 1988, and Bridges, B., ‘The Native Police Corps, Port Phillip District and Victoria, 1837-1853’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 57, (1971), pp. 113-142, examine this issue.

[9] Cit, The Ragged School Union Magazine, Vol. 6, 1854, pp. 27-28.

The dog that didn’t bark!

Today we have entered that nether space between the end of the election campaign and the advent of its results.  Time to reflect perhaps on what was both  a ‘safe’—from the politicians’ point of view—and dull—from the public’s—six weeks.  I’ve seen ballets with less orchestration.  We were all waiting for something, anything to happen.  Early on we had Michael Fallon’s mention of Ed’s relationship with his brother when talking about Trident for which he was roundly attacked in the media and by his opponents for ungentlemanly conduct.  Then we had Ed’s stumble in the last TV debate but no tumble.  There were no Gillian Duffy moments as in 2010.  Politicians kept to the script—or were kept to the script—and unsurprisingly the polls did not really change dramatically with the nightly Newsnight poll showing up one seat, down two…with dull monotony.  And where were the politicians?  Yes there was 24/7 coverage of what the party leaders and their deputies were doing with the occasional outing for other leading figures but where were Theresa May, Vince Cable and the rest.  Well apart from sporadic interviews on television and radio when their particular departments were under scrutiny, they have been largely invisible.  The highlights (if that’s what you can call them) of the campaign were the TV debate when the ‘public’ finally had the opportunity of interrogating Cameron, Clegg and Miliband and the inexorable rise and rise of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.  Douglas Murray in his excellent article in yesterday’s Spectator is right when he argued that ‘This election campaign has shown a democracy in a horrible state of disrepair’.

Now you could argue that none of this is surprising in a political society dominated by the traditional and social media.  What the public knows or is allowed to know is tightly controlled both by the campaign teams and by what the media chooses to cover and social media is often characterised by pundits and politicos talking to each other.  The key was always to be on message.  So the Conservative narrative focused on the economy and persuading voters not to allow Labour to mess it all up (again).  Labour banged on about the NHS only being safe in their hands because of ‘creeping privatisation’ while omitting to say that there had been more privatisation between 1997 and 2010 than in the last five years, and how the better-off in society benefitted from Conservative government while the less well-off and especially those on benefits suffered from an aggressive and inhumane policy of austerity proposing to replace the inequity of the ‘bedroom tax’ with the morally superior ‘mansion tax’.  Conservatives promised to enshrine tax policy for the next five years in legislation while the recent ‘Ed-stone’ from Labour contained promises so vacuous that I’m reminded of the notion of ‘let he who is without sin throw the first stone’.  There has been a great deal of promises but very little substance of how any of them will be funded.

What has been remarkable in the campaign has been the failure of all those involved to address what many people regard as the central political issues.  Given the anger felt in many communities about unfettered immigration from the EU and whether or not Britain should remain within Europe—the silence has been almost deafening.  This is hardly surprising as neither Labour nor Conservative have a good record on either.  The upsurge of immigration took place under Labour’s watch after 1997 while David Cameron’s promise to bring down immigration to tens of thousands a year has spectacularly failed.  The Conservatives argued that the only way to get a referendum on Europe is to re-elect them but then focussing too much on the issue throws up the splits in the Conservative Party over Europe.  For Labour, no referendum unless there are treaty changes—well we’ve heard that before from Labour but we didn’t get a referendum over the Lisbon Treaty under the last Labour government despite the same promise.  The campaign was also bereft of any serious discussion of Britain’s place in the world apart from the Trident question and that’s settled anyway as both Conservative and Labour support Trident just disagreeing over whether it should be three or four submarines.  There was equally little discussion about Libya or Syria or Iraq.  Or law and order, the environment—apart from by the Greens—fracking and HS2…I could go on and on about the things that barely made it on to the political stage.  If an election campaign is to motivate the public, then it needs to address those issues that lead to political engagement and that has been largely missing from what has been a highly controlled, anodyne process. 

Predicting the outcome—a fool’s errand!

The election is too close to call according to all the polls.  Some give Labour the edge, others the Conservatives but they are united in their view that Labour will be, as near as damn it, wiped out in Scotland by the SNP.  The consequent ‘hung’ parliament and the post election horse-trading will leave an unholy mess that we could be stuck with for the next five years under the fixed term parliaments something that I was always dubious about  with five as opposed to four year parliaments.  The Cabinet Manual, designed to address the hung parliament in 2010, will be dissected and deconstructed to provide justification for why, should the Conservatives form the largest party but do not have an overall majority in the Commons, even with the support of other parties, they should make way for a government led by Ed Miliband and his equally unholy alliance of the ‘progressives’.  The problem is, whoever ends up in Number 10, getting any policy through Parliament will be difficult and time-consuming with every vote on every issue contested.  That is not a recipe for effective government or good decision-making. 

So what will we end up with on 8th May?  The Conservatives will end up with 288 seats, the Liberal-Democrats 31 and UKIP 3—I’ve always thought that the polls have underestimated Lib-Dem and UKIP—that would give a 322 seats and that’s not taking account of the Irish parties.  In parliamentary terms this would be more messy than in 2010 but would ensure the continuance of a Conservative-led government.  In part, this outcome depends on a degree of tactical voting in constituencies where Conservatives and Lib-Dems are the leading parties.  You could well argue that there’s little point in the two parties fighting each other in these areas while in constituencies where Labour is the challenger then Conservative and Lib-Dem voters ought to be voting for the candidate more likely to defeat Labour.  Labour will end up with 267 seats, SNP 48, Plaid Cymru 4 and Greens 1 or 320 MPs.  Labour or SNP voting intentions do not alter the political arithmetic in either current Labour or SNP controlled seats even if they change hands to the other party.  The consistent position of the SNP in the polls does not necessarily mean that this will be translated into the large number of seats predicted.  In the isolation of the polling booth, people do not always vote as the polls predict.

Sitting on a knife edge or negotiating legitimacy

Whether or not a single political party can form a government has constitutionally been determined by whether or not it has a majority in the House of Commons, has the 'confidence of the House' and is consequently able to get its political programme through..  If not, then the party with the largest number of MPs is given the first opportunity of trying to establish a working relation with another party to provide that majority.  This is what happened in 2010 when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats established a formal coalition that, to the surprise of many commentators, lasted the full five year term.  There had been previous coalition governments: the Conservative-dominated one under Lloyd George from 1916 to 1922 and the wartime coalition under Churchill and Attlee during the Second World War.  But it was the National Government formed under Ramsay Macdonald in 1931 at the beginning of the depression in the 1930s that is the closest parallel with the government after 2010.  Coalition governments have traditionally been formed to deal with some sort of national emergency: the effects of a global economic slowdown or the threat posed by Germany in 1914 and 1939.  Once that emergency ended, so did the coalition government—though after 1918 it did continue for a further four years.  In each case, some within the political parties involved demurred and went into opposition, something that did not occur after 2010.  No one suggested that these coalitions challenged the constitutional legitimacy of parliament.

When the pundits say that the winners of last night’s ‘audience with the party leaders’ was the audience itself, it demonstrates just how detached many people feel—even at this stage of the campaign—that politicians are from ordinary voters and how little their ideas and proposals have been challenged by the public—largely because the public has really not been given the opportunity to do so.  Meetings, with the exception of the SNP’s, have been rigorously managed and packed with sympathetic faces.  With the emphasis on getting your core voters out, there has been little engagement with people other that supporters and this has made the whole campaign predictably gaff-free and rather dull.  The policies that have been put forward and their potential costs have not been spelled out in any real detail.  We still do not know which departments will see their funding cut under either Labour of the Conservatives…it’s really a case of voting on a wing and a prayer.  Whoever gets the largest number of seats—and every indication is that neither Labour nor Conservative will get an overall majority—government will only be possible by forging some deals with the smaller parties and the bookies’ favourite to do this is Labour.

The target for forming a majority government is generally regarded as 326 seats.  In practice, however, the figure is lower than that.  Of the 650 MPs elected, you can discount the Speaker and also any Sinn Fein MPs elected as they do not attend Parliament since they refuse to swear allegiance to the Crown.  This has been the case since 1918 and there is no indication that the party intends to change this.  If Sinn Fein gets five seats, this would mean that having the confidence of 322 MPs would be sufficient for form a majority government…just.  Tonight's Newsnight Index suggests that a combination of Labour (269), SNP (50), Greens (1) and Plaid Cymru (4) would get them over the 322 figure and that's without taking the Northern Ireland parties into account.  The Conservatives (280), Lib Dems (26), UKIP (1) plus support from the Northern Ireland parties would probably get to around 316 MPs.  This has already raised questions about the legitimacy.  The former Labour First Minister in Scotland, Jack McConnell, has warned that public opinion might not accept the next government unless it is led by the party with the biggest number of seats.  He said: ‘even if Cameron was to lose a few seats, if he still has a few seats more than Labour then public perception will be that he has won. Therefore the SNP argument that everybody else could gang up on him will not work.’ 

1852: a faltering administration

In the first half of 1852, La Trobe became more confident as his government gradually established its authority. The Legislative Council, which ended its first session in January, was not summoned again until June. [1] The Government concentrated on recruiting police and building up the goldfield administration appointing W. H. Wright, formerly in charge of Mount Alexander, as Chief Commissioner in May and by June La Trobe considered both to be operating effectively. [2] Wright warned La Trobe of the defects of the 1851 license system and opposed the compulsory license hunts that enraged the diggers; however, his flexibility kept the situation under control. The number of licenses issued increased from nearly 8,000 in January to 20,000 by April and nearly 25,000 the following month with two-thirds of miners paying.[3] This was reflected in the decline in the number of articles in the Argus in 1852 in which gold licenses were mentioned. [4]

For the moment, although the intensity had gone out of the license issue, it was not what the Government did in these months but what it did not do that caused problems. No attempt was made, for example to build a road to Castlemaine and Bendigo despite the increase in gold revenue and the availability of labour. The Colonial Office in London recognised that it could not interfere in Victoria. Communications were too slow and only the local executive could make effective decisions. However, the Colonial Office did three things to aid La Trobe. It immediately sent four companies of the 59th Regiment [5] followed soon after by a volunteer force of London police while the Admiralty agreed to send a man-of-war. It also unlocked the constitutional impasse between executive and legislature by quickly agreeing to transfer control of the goldfields and gold revenue to the Legislative Council. Finally, whatever it thought privately, La Trobe was praised for his handling of the crisis. [6]

By the middle of 1852, as the first waves of gold-seekers from overseas arrived, all needing accommodation, food and transport, the government was fully aware that the discovery of gold had created more intractable problems than it had solved. [7] These concerns were matched by others who were troubled by the possible lasting effects. It seemed that the gold rushes threatened to destroy social stability; indeed to some this was a world turned upside-down. For them the lower orders were unable to enjoy the fruits of their fortune sensibly and their futile attempts to copy the behaviour and dress of higher classes was a constant source of humour in the early days of the gold rushes as, for example when several thousand fortunate diggers descended on Melbourne over Christmas and New Year. [8] In fact, most miners did not squander their new-found wealth. Many young miners married because they could now afford to do so; some used their wealth to improve conditions for their families while others paid the fares of relatives and friends from Britain; farms were bought and businesses established. Many simply saved their money: deposits in savings banks rose from £29,000 in January 1852 to over £102,000 by June. If anything this increased rather than diminished the alarm of the established social order. Serle concluded that, ‘In social relations, though not in politics, a ‘French Revolution’ had indeed occurred’. [9]

The administration of Victoria reached its nadir in the second half of 1852. Its government was distrusted, the Executive Council mocked and the Legislative Council ignored. The colonists complained of deadlock over pastoral leases, lack of public works, of trespassing miners and indecision on the question of transportation. Immigrants were scandalised by mismanagement of the goldfields and by the cost of everything. La Trobe invariably dithered. This was exacerbated by the volatile membership of the Executive Council with three resignations by mid-1852 and little reliable support from the official and non-official members of the Legislative Council with 31 different representatives filling the 10 nominee positions between 1851 and 1853. La Trobe’s problems were further complicated by his inability to control the legislature, only surviving a motion of no-confidence in November 1852 by two votes (15 votes to 13).[10]

The Colonial Office instructions giving the Legislative Council control of the goldfields and their revenue arrived in early September 1852. [11] The government, however, interpreted tentative suggestions about the licensing system as clear directives that La Trobe, always unwilling to deviate from instructions, now saw as permanent. Within a week, the government prepared and introduced a bill imposing an export duty of 2/6d an ounce in addition to the existing fee.[12] The timing was good and the levy fell on successful miners (and then only indirectly) rather than everyone who worked on the diggings. The price of gold had risen sharply in August and this might limit digger opposition. The bill passed its second reading comfortably. No member wanted to abolish the license system and only a few representatives spoke against extra taxation on the miners. Notwithstanding, the Government adjourned the Council for six weeks and when it reconvened the bill was rejected by one vote with two government nominees voting against the bill. [13] This first review of the license system ended with no change and almost no consideration of its fundamental principles. Had the Government proceeded in September it is likely that the bill would have passed, but widespread opposition developed among urban radicals and diggers during the six week adjournment. Melbourne merchants came out against the proposal and had established links with the digger organisation at Castlemaine in order to prepare a concerted campaign. The Melbourne Chamber of Commerce, led by William Westgarth unanimously passed a hostile resolution based on the laissez-faire principle that no obstacle to trade was acceptable and that it was unjust to tax the diggers more heavily. [14]

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[1] For a detailed discussion of the first session of the Legislative Council, see above Wright, Raymond, A Blended House, pp. 21-35.

[2] Blake, L. J., ‘William Henry Wright (1816-1877)’, ADB, Vol. 6, pp. 444-445.

[3] La Trobe to Grey, 8 July 1852, printed in Clark2, pp. 9-13.

[4] Between May and December 1851, discussion of gold licenses was contained in 271 articles. The number per month rose steadily from 19 in June to 54 in December. During 1852, this only occurred on 198 occasions with a low of 8 in August and 22 in April with an average of 16 per month across the year.

[5] This was announced in the House of Lords on 17 May 1852, ‘Emigration to Australia’, Hansard, House of Lords, Debates, 17 May 1852, Vol. 121, cc.672-674. Sydney Morning Herald, 4 September 1852, p. 8.

[6] Pakington’s despatch is printed in Argus, 8 September 1852, p. 2.

[7] Annear, Robyn, Nothing But Gold: The Diggers of 1852, (Text Publishing), 1999.

[8] Argus, 16 December 1851, commented that 500 diggers in one band was heading for Melbourne, ‘it is to be dreaded the revelry of our countrymen will become a Saturnalia. Low debauchery, profligacy and crime, instead of the innocent festive scene and social merriment.’

[9] Serle, p. 30.

[10] Sweetman, pp. 141-144. ‘Want of Confidence’, Argus, 20 November 1852, p. 4, outlined why there was no confidence in the Executive Council, Argus, 24 November 1852, pp. 4-5, prints the debate on the no-confidence motion.

[11] See, Pakington to La Trobe, 2 June 1852, ‘Argus, 8 September 1852, p. 4, prints Pakington’s letter and the Government Order dated 7 September 1852.

[12] The Bill for granting duties of Customs upon Gold exported from the Colony of Victoria is printed in Argus, 14 September 1852, p. 3.

[13] ‘The Export Duties upon Gold’, Argus, 3 November 1852, p. 4, provides an editorial critique of the legislation. Argus, 17 November 1852, criticised the passage of the further stage of the bill. Geelong Advertiser, 26 November 1852.

[14] Cooper, J. B., Victorian Commerce 1834-1934: In which is Incorporated the Story of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce, (Robertson & Mullens), 1934, and ‘Reports of the Conditions and Progress of the Colony of Victoria since the Discovery of the Goldfields’, in Westgarth, William, Victoria: Late Australia Felix, Or Port Phillip District of New South Wales, (Oliver & Boyd), 1853, pp. 80-85. The petition, written on 4 October, is printed in Argus, 6 November 1852, p. 5.

The Dignity of Chartism

Stephen Roberts (ed.)

The Dignity of Chartism: Essays by Dorothy Thompson

(Verso), 2015

xxx, 206pp, £14.99 paper, ISBN 978-1-78188-849-6

The historian Dorothy Thompson, who died aged 87 in 2011, was best known for her writing on the social and cultural aspects of the nineteenth-century Chartist movement. The documents she edited in The Early Chartists (1971) brought to life the intense and dangerous interior world of working-class meetings, conventions and newspapers, while The Chartists (1984) revealed greatly neglected areas such as middle-class involvement, women’s role, the part played by Irish radicals and schemes for land settlements. Her collection Outsiders: Class, Gender and Nation (1993) demonstrated a mix of exacting scholarship and conceptual clarity.

The volume is divided into five parts. 'Interpreting Chartism' includes six essays that consider various aspects of the historiography of the movement. ‘Chartism as an Historical Subject’, a succinct discussion, originally published in 1970 a decade before ‘the linguistic turn’, examines the nature and importance of Chartism and, linked with her essay on historiography published in Outsiders: Class, Gender and Nation makes an excellent introduction to the subject. This is followed by a characteristically combative review of ‘The Languages of Class’ through a critical analysis of Gareth Stedman Jones’ work. The remaining four essays in this section extend what is, I think, the most innovative section of The Chartists—‘Who were the Chartists?’ ‘Who were ‘The People’ in 1842?’, first published in 1996, examines the use of language as a major historical ‘source’ against the backdrop of the climatic events of 1842. ‘Women Chartists’ is an excellent summary of her findings on what was, until she resurrected them, a neglected dimension of radicalism. The other two essays are reviews of Gregory Claeys’ six volume collection of Chartist tracts and David Vincent’s book on working-class autobiographies.

The second section, in many respects the heart of the book, consists of two essays originally written in the 1950s. There is a short essay on ‘Chartism in the Industrial Areas’, still a valuable synopsis. It is, however, the study of Halifax as a Chartist Centre, from which the book gained its title, which is the jewel of the collection. Originally written with her husband Edward Thompson as part of Asa Briggs’ Chartist Studies and unpublished until now, it is a detailed study of how Chartism developed in one community. At over 30,000 words in the original that is available on the Internet, the essay, which was never completely finished, has been sympathetically edited to make it a more manageable length. Although it reflects the historiography as it stood in the 1950s, it remains a model for how the local study of Chartism should be written and its publication is important.

The third section examines the leaders of the people. There is a short essay on O’Connor, for Thompson the most important of Chartist leaders originally written in 1952 when he remained under a Gammage-Lovett-Hovell dominated cloud and two decades before his resurrection to his rightful position at the heart of the movement as an innovative, combative, if erratic, radical leader. This is followed by a chapter that combines two reviews on George Julian Harney ‘a radical to the end of his days’, something evident in David Goodway’s recently published collection of Harney’s journalism. Miles Taylor’s book on Ernest Jones is subjected to a review originally published in 2003 while books on Joseph Sturge and John Fielden, two middle-class supporters of the movement, were subjected to not uncritical review in 1987.

The three essays in the next section ‘Repercussions’ consider Chartism from the perspective of 1848 and beyond. ‘The Chartists in 1848’ published in 2005, and one of the final things Dorothy Thompson wrote on the movement, places greater emphasis on the role played by Irish radicals as a stimulus to continued Chartist activity after Kennington Common. There is a valuable review of John Saville’s 1848: The British State and the Chartist Movement that has much to say about her view of the significance of 1848 and her criticism of Saville’s notion of the ‘radical triangle’ of Paris, Dublin and London. ‘The Post-Chartist Decades’ combines reviews originally published in 1994 and 1995 of Margot Finn’s After Chartism and Miles Taylor’s The Decline of British Radicalism and considers the question of what happened to Chartists after Chartism ceased to be a mass political movement—‘Poor people’s movements do not have the resources to sustain a permanent organization: they gain their effect in particular short-term ways…’

The collection ends with a section appropriately entitled ‘Looking Back’, an essay in which Dorothy Thompson reflected in 2003 on how Marxist ideas shaped her thinking both as a political activist and as an historian. This essay exemplifies much about how Dorothy Thompson approached the writing of history and particularly the humanity and elegance of her writing. It is a fitting way to end this invaluable collection. There is also a valuable and succinct bibliography and an excellent index.

The Dignity of Chartism collects together Dorothy Thompson’s essays and reviews, previously published in many different places, into a single volume making her writing on Chartism easily available. Stephen Roberts, one of Dorothy’s doctoral students, has done a great service for historians of nineteenth century radicalism in bringing this material together which he does with considerable aplomb in his introductory essay, a combination of personal reminiscences and historiographical analysis, and in the sureness of his editing. This is volume that all historians of Chartism should read and provides further evidence, if any was needed, that Dorothy Thompson was the most important historian of Chartism in the past half century.

Is it all crazy?

Over the last twenty years, the political systems of the western world have become increasingly divided-not between right and left, but between crazy and non-crazy. What’s more, the crazies seem to be gaining the upper hand. Rational thought cannot prevail in the current social and media environment, where elections are won by appealing to voters’ hearts rather than their minds. The rapid-fire pace of modern politics, the hypnotic repetition of daily news items and even the multitude of visual sources of information all make it difficult for the voice of reason to be heard. In his Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring sanity to our politics, our economy, and our lives to be published in the UK in July though already available on Kindle but published in Canada last year,  Canadian philosopher Joseph Heath argues for ‘slow politics’.  It is, he suggests, impossible to restore sanity merely by being sane and trying to speak in a reasonable tone of voice. The only way to restore sanity is by engaging in collective action against the social conditions that have crowded it out.

While it is doubtful whether the campaign in the past week has restored sanity to the election, what has been evident is how far news reporting has slipped.  Other issues, such as the refuge situation in the Mediterranean—though the implication of what Ed said about Libya was unfortunate especially as he voted for British intervention--and the Gallipoli centenary, have rightly taken prominence.  On the front page of today’s BBC News website, the election is mentioned in two stories and in none of the Watch/Listen videos, though of course there is the specific election section.  Is this simply because the election campaign has really yet to leap into life…possible given that there are 10 days before the election? In fact, much of the news coverage is still concentrating on the aftermath of the election and the constitutional implications of another hung parliament.  With Labour and the Conservatives still locked together—though there is a suggestion that the Conservative are edging ahead—this is perhaps not surprising but what is also the case is the growing recognition amongst the electorate that neither Labour or the Conservatives are coming clean about the financial implications of them becoming the next government.  This lack of transparency, though hardly new in elections, is becoming increasingly annoying for voters.  For instance, we know that both parties will make further cuts in public spending but we do not know where the cuts will fall and there is little likelihood that we will before 7 May.  This is a ‘crazy’ situation and is based on the premise that voters just have to trust politicians making it impossible for choice to be based on any rational principles at all…you know we’re going to make cuts and you just have to believe that the cuts we make will be the right ones!

The electoral arithmetic is becoming increasingly complex.  If the current projections are right, the Conservatives will be the largest party on 8 May.  The Newsnight index last night gave them 286 with Labour on 267.  With Lib-Dem support this would give a Lib-Dem-Conservative coalition 310 seats while a Labour-SNP ‘arrangement’ would have 315 seats, both short of the majority they need to govern.  This leaves 25 others, including the Greens, UKIP, Plaid Cymru and the Northern Ireland parties effectively holding the balance of power..a very messy outcome to the election.  The critical issue therefore is how far tactical voting will come into play.  For instance, the polls are certainly looking bad for Labour in Scotland as the SNP builds on the momentum it achieved in the referendum campaign--even though it lost. The result in some parts of Scotland is 'vote for your sitting MP irrespective of which party you support as a way of keeping the SNP out'. This could work if, say Labour supporters can hold their noses and vote say Lib-Dem. It all depends on whether the share desire to hold back the nationalist onslaught is stronger than often long-held party loyalties.  If the same approach were used in England, it could buttress support for Lib-Dem and Conservative sitting MPs…the argument is that to keep Ed out of Number 10 and prevent the SNP calling the tune vote for your incumbent.  In effect, a Lib-Dem-Conservative electoral pact.  Whether this would be popular with the electorate or would be simply seen as electoral opportunism is unclear but it could finally break the electoral deadlock in England.  Now if people vote this way then it will be a rational decision…an assertion that the ‘crazies’ cannot always have things their own way.

Uninspiring so far but there’s three weeks to go!

We’re about half way through the general election campaign.  The manifestos—plush aspirational documents--are published, though few I suspect will read them, party election broadcasts appear each evening, most of the television debates are over and there’s wall-to-wall coverage on the news programmes with every nuance of what is being said debated and re-debated by the pundits.  It’s almost as if the election campaign is panning out in a parallel universe—yes, it’s that uninspiring.  In fact, despite being billed as the most important election ‘for a generation’, I think it’s the most uninspiring campaign that I’ve watched since 1975.  Even the momentously boring 1992 election, notable only for John Major literally taking to a soap box and Neil Kinnock embarrassingly celebrating too early in Sheffield, was more interesting.  Now it could be that I’m being slightly premature and that the public will become really engaged with the campaign as 7 May approaches but, at present, there’s little indication that this will be the case.

There are various reasons for this.  There is a widespread belief—though whether it is true is questionable—that it doesn’t actually matter which party/parties form the government as there’s really little difference between the Conservatives and Labour, it will be politics as usual.  We will still have austerity policies.  People also don’t think that politicians are telling the truth or rather being economical with it particularly over taxation.  They remember being told that the Conservatives had no intention of increasing VAT in 2010 and then, once they were in power they did precisely that.  Their justification was that, as they hadn’t seen the books, they didn’t know how bad things were.  For the Lib-Dems, the albatross of tuition fees has hung around their necks since 2012 and will almost certainly contribute to their standing or rather lack of it in the polls after 7 May.  Apart from UKIP, all the parties have been quiet about immigration and membership of the EU, but these are issues on which the public, particularly in areas where immigration is high, have very strong views. 

Yesterday I received my postal vote containing, not only local and national ballot papers, but a local referendum about increasing the amount of money collected through Council Tax to fund policing.  Though I’m opposed to this—for me it’s the responsibility of those in power to operate, as I do, within their budgets—but at least it’s an honest and transparent approach to taxation.  What this election ought to be about, and it’s the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens that have got it right, is whether as a country we are prepared to pay for things like the NHS and ‘living’ pensions through higher taxation.  You cannot have an effective ‘welfare state’ without being prepared to pay for it.  The problem is that people don’t trust government, of whatever political persuasion, to spend our money effectively.  There’s also the danger, and the police referendum exemplifies this, that if the money runs out you just ask the people for more.  Therein lies the problem and the primary reason why the campaign has yet to take off.

Why personal progressive taxation has failed

If only to emphasise the triumph of Mammon over Christianity, today the emphasis in the election campaign is on taxation.  The problem with personal taxation is that its progressive nature—those who earn more pay at a higher rate—almost inevitably means that people will try to avoid paying some of their taxes by one means or another.  In addition, there is no agreement what the higher level of taxation should be: 45per cent as it is now, 50 per cent as it would be under Labour or 60 per cent if the Greens win (so chance of that then!).  In practice, no agreement at all about what would be an equitable higher rate of taxation. This means that it’s a political question: how far should we screw the rich?

The current taxation regime with its inevitable loopholes and legal—if not moral--means of tax avoidance is the creation of evolution and general election results.  Personal taxation  is in need of a radical overhaul because , in essence, its progressive character has now failed.  So we have to go back to basics and establish the principles on which a taxation system should be based:

1. It is generally agreed that those who earn more should pay more taxation---the rich should pay more than the poor.

2. It is generally agreed that the tax liability of the poorest in society should be reduced, that is if they pay tax at all, through an increase in personal allowance…one of the major achievements of the Lib-Dems while in coalition. 

That’s it.  Now how do you best achieve this?  This does not require any particularly radical thinking simply that everyone should pay the same taxation on their income with no loopholes, exceptions, being able to claim against taxation or whatever.  So if you earn £20,000 a year you pay 20 per cent of your income after personal allowance; if you earn £200,000 a year you also pay 20 per cent of your income after personal allowance.  If you seek to hide your income, then that’s a criminal offence with a mandatory jail sentence and mandatory fine of ten times your annual salary.  All bonuses from whatever source, whether in cash or shares, are taxed in the same way: so £2,000 shares worth £5.00 each would give a tax liability of £2,000.  My only exception to this system would be for those earning over £200,000 who would pay an additional wealth tax of 2 per cent. 

The result would be a taxation system that is easy to understand, remove the need for people to avoid paying tax particularly if a draconian system of punishment was introduced for those who try and ensure that those who earn more, pay more.