Sources for Chartism: Hovell on 1842

Chartism stood helpless when the combination of Whigs and Tories had thrown out of Parliament the National Petition of 1842. The autocrat of Chartism [Feargus O’Connor] had staked everything on a false move. Once more “moral force” had failed to convince the representatives of the middle-class electorate. Once more there only remained the trial of “physical force.” But, however much he might bluster, O’Connor was neither willing nor able to fall back upon the alternative policy of the hot-bloods whom he had so often denounced. And O’Connor still dominated the movement to such an extent that a course of action of which he disapproved was condemned to futility. Hence the tameness with which organised Chartism bore the destruction of its hopes. Hence the weakness and incoherence of the measures by which the stalwarts of the party strove to maintain the Chartist cause after the failure of the Petition. Hence, too, their eagerness to adopt as their own any passing wave of discontent and claim the storm as the result of their own agitation.

The collapse of the Petition was followed by a few protests, much violent language in the Northern Star, and a few public meetings, notably in Lancashire, where the speaking was even more unrestrained than were the leading articles of the Chartist organ. A notable instance of these assemblies was the great gathering held on Enfield Moor, near Blackburn, on Sunday, June 5^th. Its business was “to consider the next steps to be taken to obtain the People’s Charter.” Marsden of Bolton put before the crowd the fatuous proposal that the people should collect arms and march in their thousands on Buckingham Palace. “If the Queen refuses our just demands, we shall know what to do with our weapons.” But nothing came of this or any other similar manifestations of Chartist statesmanship. It looked as if the leaders could no longer carry on an effective agitation.

The outbreak of a widespread strike in August added a real element of seriousness to the situation in the North. Here again Lancashire was the storm-centre, but the strike movement broke out simultaneously in other districts, ranging from Glasgow and Tyneside to the Midlands, where the colliers in the Potteries and in the South Staffordshire coal-field went out. It is very doubtful whether the strike had much directly to do with Chartism. Its immediate cause was a threatened reduction of wages, which was answered by the workmen in the Lancashire mills drawing the plugs so as to make work impossible. For this reason the operatives’ resistance to the employers’ action was called in Lancashire the Plug Plot.

Whatever the origin of the strike, the Chartist leaders eagerly made capital out of it. They attributed the proposed reduction to the malice of the Anti-Corn Law manufacturers, anxious to drive the people to desperation, and thus foment disturbances that would paralyse the action of the Protectionist Government. In a few days the country was ablaze from the Ribble to the confines of Birmingham. At a great meeting of the Lancashire and Cheshire strikers on Mottram Moor on August 7^th it was resolved that “all labour should cease until the People’s Charter became the law of the land.” A similar resolution was passed at Manchester and in nearly all the great towns of Lancashire. On August 15^th, the same resolution was passed at a meeting on Crown Bank at Hanley, at which Thomas Cooper presided. Despite his exhortations to observe peace and order, serious rioting broke out.

The Chartists’ leaders now gathered together at Manchester, where the Executive Council of the National Charter Association was joined by delegates from the Manchester and West Riding areas. It first assembled on August 12^th, but members came in by slow degrees. It met in Schofield’s chapel[1] and was dignified by the Northern Star with the name of a conference. In this McDouall took the lead, and was not displaced from it even when O’Connor, Campbell the Secretary, and Thomas Cooper, hot from his stormy experiences in the Potteries, joined the gathering. Cooper has left a vivid account of his escape from Hanley by night and of his vacillation between his desire to stay with his comrades in the Potteries and his wish to be in Manchester, where he rightly felt the real control of the movement lay. He trudged along the dark roads from Hanley to Crewe, a prey to various tumultuous and conflicting thoughts. But he was sustained by the noble confidence that O’Connor would be at Manchester and would tell everybody what to do. At Crewe he took the train and found Campbell the Secretary in it. Campbell, now resident in London, was anxious to be back in his old home and see how things were going there. As soon as “the city of long chimneys” came in sight and every chimney was beheld smokeless, Campbell’s face changed, and with an oath he said, “Not a single mill at work! Something must come out of this and something serious too!”

The conference speedily resolved that the strikers should be exhorted to remain out until the Charter became law. To procure this end, McDouall issued on behalf of the Executive a fierce manifesto appealing to the God of battles and declaring in favour of a general strike as the best weapon for winning the Charter. But divided counsels now once more rent asunder the party and made all decisive action hopeless. Even in the delegates’ meeting it had been necessary to negative an amendment denying any connection between the existing strike and Chartism. At Ashton-under-Lyne the strikers declared that they had no concern with any political questions.

The fatal blow came from O’Connor, to whom simple men like Thomas Cooper had gone as to an oracle for guidance. Even in the Convention his puppets had supported dilatory tactics. In a few days O’Connor fiercely attacked McDouall in the Northern Star, for “breathing a wild strain of recklessness most dangerous to the cause.” Good Chartists were advised to retire from a hopeless contest, reserving their energies for some later season when their organisation should have been perfected. The strike, far from being a weapon of Chartism, was a crafty device of the mill-owners of the Anti-Corn Law League to reduce wages and divert men’s minds from the Charter.

Riots and disturbances further complicated the situation. Cooper had fled from the burning houses of Hanley and the fusillade of soldiers shooting men dead in the streets. Now the trouble spread northwards into Lancashire and the West Riding. Shops were looted, gas-works attacked, trains were stopped, two policemen were killed in the streets of Manchester. Troops were rapidly poured into the disaffected districts. There were over two thousand soldiers with six pieces of artillery in Manchester alone. At Preston and Blackburn the soldiers fired on the crowd; Halifax was attacked by a mob from Todmorden. Widespread alarm was created, but there is little evidence that the disorders were really dangerous. O’Connor strongly urged peaceable methods in a public letter. “Let us,” he said, “set an example to the world of what moral power is capable of effecting.” His violent pacifism was largely attributed to lack of personal courage.

The vigorous action of the Government soon re-established order. Then came the turn of the leaders to pay the penalty. The panic-stricken authorities put into gaol both those who had advocated rebellion and those who had spoken strongly for peaceful methods. O’Connor himself was apprehended in London, while William Hill, the editor of the Northern Star, was taken into custody at Leeds. Cooper was arrested soon after his return home to Leicester. But there was long delay before the trials were concluded, and many were released on bail, among them Cooper and O’Connor. The most guilty of all, McDouall, evaded, by escape to France, the consequences of his firebrand manifesto. In the course of September the strike wore itself out. The workmen went back to the mills and coal-mines without any assurances as to their future wages. The economic situation was as black as was the course of politics. With a falling market, with employers at their wits’ end how to sell their products, there was no chance of a successful strike. The appeal from the Commons to the people had proved a sorry failure. Once more the Chartists had mismanaged their opportunities through divided counsels and conflicting ideals.

The discomfited remnant that was still free fiercely quarrelled over the apportionment of the blame for the recent failure. There was a strong outcry against the old Executive. It was denounced for insolence, despotism, slackness, wastefulness, and malversation. A warm welcome was given to a proposal of Cooper’s that the Association should receive a new constitution which dispensed with a paid Executive. As a result of an investigation at a delegates’ meeting towards the end of the year, the Executive either resigned or was suspended.

McDouall was made the scapegoat of the failure. He it was who had given the worst shock to the credit of Chartism. How many tracts might have been published and distributed with the money lavished upon McDouall. In great disgust the exile renounced his membership of the Association. However, he came back to England in 1844, and at once made a bid for restitution. His first plan was to drive home the old attack on O’Connor by an attempt to set up a separate Chartist organisation for Scotland independent of the English society. At the same time he denounced O’Connor for his ungenerous exploitation of his pecuniary obligations to him in the hope of binding him to him and gagging him. It was O’Connor, too, who had advised him to run away in 1842 in order to throw upon him the whole responsibility for the Plug Riots. Both accusations are only too credible, but no trust can be given to McDouall’s statements. His veracity and good faith are more than disputable, and his constant change of policy was at least as much due to self-interest as to instability. He was one of the least attractive as well as most violent of the Chartist champions. It is startling after all this to find that in 1844 O’Connor was welcoming McDouall back to the orthodox fold and that the Glasgow Chartists raised the chief difficulties in the way of the ostentatiously repentant sinner. There was no finality in the loves and hates of men of the calibre of O’Connor and McDouall.

Though its prospects were increasingly unhopeful the Complete Suffrage agitation was not yet dead. At Sturge’s suggestion a new attempt was made to bridge over the gulf between Suffragists and Chartists, which was found impossible to traverse at the Birmingham Conference. With this object a second Conference met on December 27^th, 1842, also at Birmingham. Sturge once more presided over a gathering which included representatives of both parties. The Suffragists were now willing to accept the Chartist programme, but they were as inveterate as ever against the use of the Chartist name. To the old Chartists the Charter was a sacred thing which it was a point of honour to maintain. Harney thus puts their attitude:

“Give up the Charter! The Charter for which O’Connor and hundreds of brave men were dungeoned in felons’ cells, the Charter for which John Frost was doomed to a life of heart-withering woe! . . . What, to suit the whim, to please the caprice, or to serve the selfish ends of mouthing priests, political traffickers, sugar-weighing, tape-measuring shopocrats. Never! By the memories of the illustrious dead, by the sufferings of widows and the tears of orphans he would adjure them to stand by the Charter.”

The Conference was carefully packed by the O’Connorites, but there was more than O’Connorism behind the pious enthusiasm that clung to the party tradition. Nor can the Sturgeites be acquitted of recourse to astute tactics to outwit their opponents. Knowing that they were likely to be in a minority, they got two lawyers in London to draft a new Bill of Rights which they laid before the conference in such a way that they burked all discussion of the Charter in its old form. The New Bill of Rights embodied all the “six points” of the Charter, but the old Chartists bitterly resented the tactics which gave priority to this new-fangled scheme. Lovett came out of his retirement to move that the Charter and not the Bill of Rights should be the basis of the movement. He sternly reproached the Sturgeites for their lack of faith. O’Connor himself seconded Lovett’s proposal and strove, though with little effect, to conciliate with his blandishments the stubborn spirit of his old adversary. But even their momentary agreement on a common policy united for the time the old Chartist forces. In the hot debate that followed, the doctrinaire tactlessness of the Sturgeite leaders added fuel to the flames of Chartist wrath. “We will espouse your principles, but we will not have your leaders,” said Lawrence Heyworth, the most offensive of the Sturgeite orators. Years afterwards Thomas Cooper voiced the general Chartist feeling when he declared “there was no attempt to bring about a union--no effort for conciliation--no generous offer of the right hand of fellowship. We soon found that it was determined to keep the poor Chartists at arm’s length.”

In the end Lovett’s resolution was carried by more than two to one. Thereupon Sturge and his friends retired, and the Conference broke up into two antagonistic sections, neither of which could accomplish anything that mattered. The failure practically put an end to the Complete Suffrage Movement, which was soon submerged in the general current of Radicalism. No doubt the dispute in the form in which it arose was one of words rather than things, but it was no mere question of words that brought Chartists of all sorts into a momentary forgetfulness of their ancient feuds to resist the attempt to wipe out the history of their sect. The split of the Conference arose from the essential incompatibility of the smug ideals of the respectable middle-class Radical, and the vague aspirations of the angry hot-headed workman, bitterly resenting the sufferings of his grievous lot and especially intolerant of the employing class from which Sturge and his friends came. The gulf between the Complete Suffragist and the Chartist is symbolised in the extreme contrast between the journalism of the Nonconformist and that of the Northern Star.

The Birmingham failure was another triumph for O’Connor. He had dragged even Lovett into his wake and could now pose more than ever as the one practical leader of Chartism. It was to little purpose that Lovett, shocked at the result of his momentary reappearance on the same platform as his enemy, withdrew, with his friend Parry, from the O’Connorite Conference. The remnant went to a smaller room and finished up their business to their own liking. If Chartism henceforth meant O’Connorism, it was because O’Connor, with all his faults, could upon occasion give a lead, and still more because, lead or no lead, it was O’Connor only whom the average Chartist would follow.

The failure of this last effort at conciliation was the more tragic since it was quickly followed by the conclusion of the long-drawn-out trials of the Chartists, accused of complicity in the abortive revolt of the summer of 1842. Some of the accused persons, notably Cooper and O’Connor, were still on bail at the Conference and went back to meet their fate. Their cases were dealt with by special commissions which had most to do in Staffordshire and Lancashire. The Staffordshire commission had got to work as early as October, and had in all 274 cases brought before it. Thomas Cooper was the most conspicuous of the prisoners it dealt with. Acquitted on one count, he was released on bail before being arraigned on another charge. He finally received a sentence of two years’ imprisonment, which he spent in Stafford Gaol. In prison he wrote his Purgatory of Suicides, a poetical idealisation of the Chartist programme, which won for him substantial literary recognition. Most of the Staffordshire sentences were much more severe than that of Cooper, fifty-four being condemned to long periods of transportation. In Lancashire and Cheshire the special commission was presided over by Lord Abinger, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, whose indiscreet language gave occasion for a futile attack on him by the Radicals in Parliament. But the actual trials do not seem to have been unfairly conducted, and the victims were much less numerous than in Staffordshire. O’Connor was found guilty, but his conviction, with that of others, was overruled on technical grounds. His good fortune in escaping scot-free, while other Chartist leaders languished in gaol or in exile, still further increased his hold over the party. It was another reason why O’Connorism henceforth meant Chartism...

Mark Hovell, The Chartist Movement, 2^nd ed., Manchester University Press, 1918; 1925; re-print edition, 1963, pages 259-67.

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[1] James Schofield was the leader of the ‘Church Chartists’ in Manchester.

Sources for Chartism: Frank Peel on 1842

Trade in 1842, the year of the plug riots, was worse than ever, and the sufferings of the working classes throughout Yorkshire and Lancashire were very great. It was hoped that as summer came on matters might improve, but they grew gradually worse, and at the beginning of August the distress was at its height. The corn laws were then in full operation, and the ports being closed the people throughout the country were starving. In the north it was reported that a fourth part of the population was dying of famine. At Stockport, half the masters had failed and five thousand work-people were walking the streets, nor were they much better in any of the towns in Lancashire. The Chartist movement had gathered much strength during the past year, and the working classes in all the large towns were in a state of great discontent and disaffection. The masses of the people were still persuaded that the “People’s Charter” would enable them to secure higher wages and better food, and that for that very reason the “aristocrats,” against whom they inveighed so furiously would not grant it. Another immense petition in favour of the charter was presented in the House of Commons in May, and great meetings were of almost nightly occurrence in all the large towns of Yorkshire. At Leeds the pauper stone heaps now amounted to one hundred and fifty thousand tons, and the guardians offered 6s weekly for doing nothing rather than 7s 6d for stone breaking. Poor rates swelled to with dismay the heavy drain on their resources. Towards the end of June a meeting of tradesmen and shopkeepers was held in the Bradford courthouse, “to enable them publicly to make known the unparalleled distress which prevailed, and the decay of trade consequent thereon, and to adopt such measures relative thereto as might be deemed advisable with a view to avert impending ruin.

Disturbances of an extraordinary character and on a large scale took place in Lancashire, which speedily assumed an alarming character. They commenced at Stalybridge. On Sunday, August 7^th, a large meeting was held at Mottram Moor, which was attended by eight or ten thousand people. The disturbances originated in this way. Some of the manufacturers of Stalybridge finding, as they stated, that others in the vicinity were paying lower wages than they were gave notice of a reduction. The workmen consented at one mill at the expiration of the notice to take the lower price. At another place, however, they refused to submit to the change. The workpeople of the firm last mentioned waited upon their employers, Bayley Brothers, and spake roughly on the proposed reduction, on which one of the masters said if they took the matter up in that spirit they had better play until they thought differently of it. On hearing this the deputation set up a loud shout, when all hands left the mill, without waiting for any formal answer to the demands of their representatives. Proceeding to the different mills in the town, the workpeople nearly all turned out and joined them, and their number soon swelled to more than 5,000, of whom one-third were females. Day by day they extended their march and emboldened by their numbers they determined to put an end to all work until their political demands were met. In accordance with this resolve they stopped all the collieries, and insisted upon men of all trades participating in the general holiday. Finding that all were not willing to join in the mad enterprise, they did not hesitate to overawe and coerce them, and procuring a number of formidable bludgeons, they tried to intimidate any workman who resisted them. Proceeding to the print works of Thomas Hoyle and Son, who had made themselves very obnoxious, they spoiled a great many of their goods, and then went on to Ashton, where they were joined by fresh crowds. An immense meeting was held there, when the passions of the mob were inflamed by the fiery oratory of reckless demagogues. They next proceeded to Oldham and Manchester, where, however, they found the military drawn up to check their excesses. As the mob did not at once commit depredations the military were withdrawn, but a scene of pillage and disorder soon followed, the chief sufferers being the provision dealers and bakers. The military again marched out and fourteen of the ringleaders were taken into custody. At Birley’s Mill a determined struggle took place. The rioters were first deluged with water, but as this did not compel them to disperse, some of the workpeople ascended the roof and threw pieces of iron, stones, and other missiles upon them. Many persons were very seriously hurt, and a young girl killed on the spot. From Lancashire the disaffection speedily spread into Yorkshire.

The Halifax Chartists were on the “qui vive” on Saturday, August 13^th, the leaders having received word that large detachments of turnouts were on their way from Lancashire. Groups of suspicious-looking people with bludgeons were seen entering the town. Evening came on, and about eight o’clock the bellman went round the town calling a public meeting to be held next morning at five o’clock. The gathering took place, and was well attended. About six o’clock, while Mr. Ben Rushton, a well known local democrat, was speaking, the special constables, who had been sworn in on the previous day, were seen approaching the gathering, headed by two magistrates, Mr. George Pollard and Mr. William Brigg, and were received with groans. Mr. Pollard at once rode in front of the platform and declared the meeting to be illegal. He advised that the proceedings should be immediately brought to an end, and that all should depart in quietness to their homes. Mr. Rushton attempted to resume his speech, but he was not allowed to do so by the special constables, and, eventually, the assembly formed into procession and perambulated the district. Ere they dispersed it was arranged that another gathering should take place early next morning.

On the afternoon of that same Sunday (August 14^th) a large gathering took place on Bradford Moor, under the presidency of George Bishop. Mr. Ibbotson, a well known news vendor, whose place of business was on the Bowling Green, addressed the gathering, which was estimated to number 10,000, and was followed by other speakers, stirring up the enthusiasm of the surging crowd, who received their treasonable utterances with wild cheering. The alarmed authorities summoned the chief inhabitants to meet the same evening at the Talbot Inn, when it was resolved that steps should be taken to put down the outbreak. Special constables were sworn in in large numbers, and troops were sent for from Leeds. Next morning another Chartist meeting was held in front of the Odd-Fellows’ Hall, Thornton Road, at the early hour of seven, when it was resolved that the people should never relinquish their demands until the Charter became the law of the land. The immense crowd then formed into military order, marched up Manchester Road towards Halifax, stopping at the mills on the way. The arrival of the Bradford contingent at Halifax was preceded by that of J. W. Hird, Esq., a magistrate, who announced to the startled authorities that thousands were on the way there that the rest of the Bradford magistrates and a troop of the 17^th Lancers were coming to the assistance of the Halifax authorities. As news had just been received in Halifax that a large body was also on the march from Todmorden, the alarmed authorities held at once a hurried consultation, and it was resolved to move the civil and military forces to New Bank, it being thought that the aim of the rioters would be to stop Messrs. Ackroyds’ and Messrs. Houghs’ mills. The cavalry, under the command of Captain Forrest, and a body of infantry, under Major Byrne, accordingly proceeded to the spot, and arrived at New Bank just as the rioters were seen coming over the brow of the hill. The first action of the lancers was to range themselves across the road in order to prevent the rioters from going further. Behind the cavalry were ranged the foot soldiers and the special constables. The rioters, pressed forward by the surging mass behind, came marching on until the two bodies met, but eventually the mob, seeing their way was effectually barred, got over the walls, ran across the fields, and formed again in Range Bank, where they encountered the Bradford contingent and joined forces, forming a compact mass of 25,000 men and women - for no inconsiderable number of the insurgents and women - and strange as it may seem the latter were really the more violent of the body. The mob thus reinforced proceeded down Crown Street towards North Bridge, and were met at the top of Park Street by the military and civil forces. Here the Riot Act was again read, but the magistrate who read it was jeered at by the crowd.

…After stopping Messrs. Haigh’s mill the crowd proceeded to Haley Hill, where they did the same at Mr. Dawson’s mill letting off the steam. They then went forwards to Messrs. Ackroyd’s mill where they stopped the works and turned the hands out. They forced the boiler plug, and, while this was being done, a party proceeded towards Booth Town to stop Atkinson’s silk mill, and another branched off into Mr. Ackroyd’s grounds for the purpose of letting off the reservoir.

At two o’clock in the afternoon, a meeting of ten to fifteen thousand people was held on Skircoat Moor, when resolutions were passed touching the “people’s rights,” and a deputation despatched to the Mayor to demand the release of the prisoners that had been captured by the authorities during the day’s “melees.” The women were very excited and were heard urging the men to attack the prisons in which the rioters were confined. Another gathering was held on Tuesday morning, and opened with singing and prayer, as was customary at most Chartist gatherings. The speakers were far more temperate in their language than on the day before. After the meeting they divided into hands and left for Greetland, Elland, Brighouse and other places to continue the work of stopping the mills. At Brighouse they seem to have first attacked Samuel Leppington’s mill at Brookfoot, where they drew the plugs; and from thence they proceeded to John Holland’s, Slead Syke; Perseverance Mill, and Victoria Mill (Rev. Benjamin Firth), Upper and Lower Mills; Robin Hood and Little John Mills, were all visited. At the latter place a local man, Joseph Baines, drew the cloughs in connection with the water wheel, and was tried at York for the offence afterwards, being sentenced to six months imprisonment. Thornhill Briggs Mill was also visited, and part of the crowd then went to Bailiffe Bridge and drew Holdsworth’s plugs. Several local ringleaders at Brighouse and Elland, who made themselves conspicuous, were afterwards punished, some, however, judiciously absented themselves until the storm had blown over.

The great pressure brought to bear on the Halifax authorities with respect to the prisoners, and the strong manifestations on their behalf, led them to think it would be better to remove them to safer quarters, and it was decided to convey them to Wakefield. For this purpose two omnibuses were procured, and six police officers being told off to escort the eighteen men in custody to Elland railway station, a band of eleven hussars accompanying them. Upon arriving at the bottom of Salterhebble hill the party encountered a large mob, who made way for the omnibuses, but sent a volley of stones after them. The soldiers, however, escaped without much injury, passing through Elland Wood in safety, and the prisoners were duly placed in the train. Upon returning, Mr. Brigg wisely resolved that the troops should proceed up the higher road by Exley to Salterhebble, as he feared another encounter with the mob in Elland Wood. In coming down Exley Bank the soldiers were observed by the mob, who rushed out of the wood in vast numbers. Mr. Brigg, who was a little in advance of the hussars, motioned them forward. This magistrate appears to have been a special object of attack, and the first stone that was thrown hit his horse a severe blow on the head. The soldiers galloped forward, but, when opposite the Elephant and Castle, they encountered the mob in force congregated on the rising ground. Scores were also on the tops of the houses. The mob had all large stones, and it was evident from the number that they must have accumulated them. These missiles they hurled with fearful violence upon the devoted soldiers in the road beneath. Mr. Brigg was hit in several places, his left arm being broken; his groom was hurt, and three of the hussars were unhorsed and taken prisoners. The soldiers fired upon their assailants, but the shots took little or no effect. Deeming that to continue the conflict would mean certain death, the hussars wisely retreated to a position on the brow of the hill, where they were joined by the remainder of the troop from Halifax, who had fortunately gone to meet them, expecting that their help would be required. Reinforcements were immediately sent for from Halifax, and the infantry with ten hundred special constables were shortly on their way to Salterhebble to disperse the mob. At another meeting held at Skircoat Moor, it was agreed to proceed to Haley Hill, which was now defended by the authorities, the entrance being protected by wool packs, &c. About four o’clock the turn-outs began to arrive, a large number of the malcontents being as usual, women. A shot was fired from the crowd at the military massed at the bottom of Haley Hill, and the bullet or slug struck one of the officers, but did him no great injury. Several stones were then thrown, whereupon the soldiers received orders to fire upon the mob, which they did, and several persons were wounded. The hussars also dashed up the hill at full speed and several sabre blows were administered to the flying crowd. The mob gave way, and then made for Bankfield, the residence of Mr. Ackroyd, but were met by a well directed fire from some defenders of the mansion, and about thirty persons were captured. After this the mob made no further headway in the town and on the day following order was restored.

The Lancashire turn-outs commenced operations in the Huddersfield district by stopping two manufactories at Milnes Bridge. They met with a slight resistance at Armitage Bros’. Mill; and one still more determined at Starkey’s at Longroyd Bridge, the gates being closed against them, but they had to be opened or soon would have been broken down by the enraged mob who congregated round them. At Folly Hall, a very extensive factory, the workpeople, being apprized of the approach of the rioters, left the mill to avoid any collision. At places where the mob encountered any opposition they threatened to return next day, when, if they found the mills running, they would pull them down. The first halt they made in the town was at Joseph Schofield’s Scribbling Mill in New-street, where, meeting with some resistance, they drew the plug and let out the water. The crowd then divided, parties proceeding to Paddock, Marsh, &c., the main body next visiting Lockwood’s factory in Upperhead Row. Thence they proceeded through the town to the factories of Messrs. Roberts and Mr. W. Brook. At the latter place Mr. Brook hesitated to turn his workpeople out, and endeavoured to reason with the mob, but they refused to listen to him, threw him While this was progressing, other parties proceeded down into the engine house, and drew the boiler plug to every mill in the neighbourhood, stopping them all. A meeting was then held at Back Green. The speakers were chiefly Lancashire men, and their utterances were resolute and determined. After the meeting, a raid was made upon many of the shops and houses for eatables. Mr. Brook, a magistrate, attempted to harangue the people at a meeting on Back Green, but the crowd refused to disperse and would not listen to him. The streets were by this time filled with people. In front of the George Hotel the mob was especially demonstrative, brandishing their bludgeons, and shouting and gesticulating wildly. Here some of the leaders were captured by the military, and taken into the inn. Rescue was attempted, but the result was that several others of the more prominent mob leaders were taken into custody. At this time the Market Place, New-street, Kirkgate, and Westgate presented one dense mass of human beings, and the aspect of affairs was very threatening. The military were commanded to clear the streets, and an awful scene took place as the trumpets sounded and the lancers dashed into the crowd, cutting down or riding over all who stood in their way. The crowd, thus assailed, ran in all possible directions, screaming dreadfully in their terror. Every street and corner was soon speedily cleared, the mob rushing wildly into the open country to escape the soldiers and by eight o’clock on Monday evening the town was comparatively quiet.

…By this time all the towns and villages in Yorkshire were in a state of great excitement and confusion. On Tuesday, the 16^th of August, a considerable mob entered Cleckheaton, and met with much opposition from the people at work in the mills. They succeeded in stopping one mill, and then went on to the works of Mr. George Anderton. Here they were gallantly opposed by the workmen within the mill, who with the assistance of a large number of the inhabitants drove them out of the mill yard, and pelted them with stones, until they finally expelled them from the town. On the same day mob law was put in force at Dewsbury. A large meeting was held at the Market Cross at six o’clock in the evening, after which a procession was formed, and the crowd proceeded to Batley Carr, Batley, Birstall, Littletown, and Heckmondwike. They tapped all the boilers on the way and turned out all the hands, after which another meeting was held at the Cross, at which it was stated that thirty-six boilers had been “let off.” The Dewsbury shops were closed as soon as word came that the rioters were returning, and the public-houses closed at six o’clock. Next morning another gathering took place after which the mob marched through Earlsheaton, and Horbury Bridge, coming back by way of Thornhill Lees. They had some time to wait at the colliery of Joshua Ingham, Esquire, to get out the men and horses before they tapped the boilers. Here a field of turnips belonging to the Rev. Henry Torr, the rector, was nearly stripped of its produce. Another meeting was held at the Cross on their return and it was arranged that the next muster should be held at Birstall. The shops were again closed although it was market day. The men, who were all armed, went from house to house begging, and in many instances, if refused and only women happened to be in the house, force was resorted to. The magistrates, J. B. Greenwood and John Hague, Esquires, attended from early in the morning till late at night to swear in special constables, and many hundreds from Dewsbury, Batley and Heckmondwike offered their services.

On Thursday morning, all the factories and collieries round Dewsbury were stopped by a mob 5,000 strong. The same mob then visited Batley and stopped Bromley’s and Ellis and Sons’ mills, where they drew the plugs without any opposition. They then resolved to pay a second visit to Cleckheaton, to do the work they had been unable at their previous visit to accomplish, and strong parties were told off to stop the mills, collieries, etc., at Gomersal, Millbridge, and Heckmondwike. It does not appear that any opposition was offered at any of those places, and as the various mobs passed rapidly through the towns to rejoin the main body of their comrades at Cleckheaton their ranks were swelled by a large number of local chartists, who, deceived by the apparent impotence of the authorities, were persuaded that they were about to inaugurate a revolution…The first attack of the mob at Cleckheaton was on the mill of Mr. Sutcliffe Broadbent, where they were suffered to draw the plugs without any serious resistance being offered, and being joined by some of the other detachments, they proceeded in a body numbering some five or six thousand to St. Peg mill, and had withdrawn the plugs from two of the boilers when an alarm was raised that the soldiers were coming. As soon as it became known that the rioters were approaching Cleckheaton in strong force, the late Mr. Jas. Anderton, of Upper House, then a young man, rode, it is said, from Cleckheaton to Bradford in the incredibly short space of half an hour to fetch a troop of the Lancers then stationed there, but before they arrived a troop of the Yorkshire Hussars came from Leeds, where Prince George of Cambridge was acting against the insurgents. When the Yeomanry reached Cleckheaton they were joined by some hundreds of special constables, and then proceeded in a body to Peg Mill. The mob had, as we have stated, withdrawn the plugs from two of the boilers, and were proceeding to the third when they saw the soldiers defiling down the lane. Hastily massing themselves, those who were unarmed proceeded to pick up all the loose stones in the yard, while those who were armed with bludgeons, scythes, &c., were thrust to the front. The appearance of the rioters, as they somewhat unsteadily waited for the arrival of the troops, was certainly formidable, but the discipline of the little band who came to attack them more than counterbalanced the disadvantage of the great disparity of numbers. The leader of the friends of law and order called out for a halt as they neared the mob, and addressed to his men a few simple words of encouragement, appealing to their sense of duty to the throne and the peace of the realm. He then waited for the reading of the Riot Act. Before this could be done the mob advanced in disorderly fashion and threw pieces of dross at the compact mass before them, and several men were knocked senseless and bleeding from their horses.

The moment was critical, as the mob, taking advantage of the confusion occasioned, were advancing with stones in their hands once more, Clissett, who was in the front rank, excitedly waving his arms and crying, “Follow me, my brave boys!” when orders were given to fire. Though this and a second volley was fired in the air, the crowd fell back in disorder, and the Yeomanry, taking advantage of the confusion, rode rapidly upon them, flourishing their sabres over their heads and striking them with the flat sides. The special constables followed up the advantage thus gained and drove the rioters towards the beck, on reaching which they scattered in all directions, some crossing the stream and others rushing into a neighbouring corn field, where they hoped by lying flat to hide from their pursuers. In a few minutes about twenty or thirty were taken into custody, and all the fields and lanes in the neighbourhood were black with wild struggling masses of human beings trying to escape from the horsemen, who rode after them flourishing their weapons. The following is a list of those taken into custody:-Charles Leighton (18), farmer, Gomersal; Richard Thomson (26), clothier, Gomersal; Thomas Barber (22), collier Gomersal; David Walker (17), clothier, Batley Carr; Charles Brierley (32), machinist, Batley Carr; John Hey (18), collier, Hightown; Matthew Parkinson (30), dyer, Dewsbury; Josh. Holdroyd (20), raiser, Dewsbury; David Brooke (34), sawyer, Dewsbury; Joseph Farnhill (35), weaver, Dewsbury; W. Allport Bell, Dewsbury; Robert Waterson (16), no trade, Birstall; Matthew Mawson (26), collier, Birstall; J. Hodgkinson (30), weaver, Birstall; Samuel Newsome (14), clothier, Hanging Heaton; Josh. Blakeborough (39), weaver, Batley; Edward Exley (22), weaver, Earlsheaton; Wm. Wild (17), collier, Alverthorpe; and Matthew Castle, hawker, Bradford.

Frank Peel, The Risings of the Luddites, Chartists and Plug-Drawers, 4^th ed, Frank Cass & Co., 1968, pages 329-43.

Sources for Chartism: Riots in the Potteries 1842

The Staffordshire potteries saw the worst of the 1842 general strike and the harshest crackdown. During the strike, which had been sparked by wage cuts, workers stopped the pumps that kept coal mines clear of water and closed down every factory that they could. But the strike leaders failed to keep control, and in the riots that followed police stations were raided for arms, prisoners were released, poor-rate books seized and destroyed, and the houses and offices of magistrates, coal mine owners, rate-collectors and parsons set on fire or pulled down. A detailed account of events is contained in the far from sympathetic account by John Ward in his The history of the Borough of Stoke-on-Trent, published in 1843.

“Early in the month of July, 1842, a dispute arose between Mr. Sparrow, a principal iron and coal-master of Longton, and his workmen, on account of a reduction he required in their wages. The men refused to submit to his terms, and turned out in a body from his employ. They imagined that by inducing the colliers in general to follow their example, and stopping the works of the other proprietors, they should obtain the rate of wages they contended for. 

They proceeded, therefore, systematically to compel the vast body of working colliers in the district to cease working, visiting the different pits, and threatening or coercing the refractory. This state of things having lasted for several weeks, bands of colliers proceeded through the Pottery towns, and all round the neighbourhood, soliciting relief for supporting themselves and families during the struggle with their employers; and the boldness of these beggars became at length most annoying and alarming. 

On Saturday, the 6^th August, three men, carrying a begging-box through the alleys of the shambles in Burslem-Market, were taken into custody by the police-constables, and placed in the lock-up, under the Town-Hall, on a charge of vagrancy. Their incarceration becoming known to their Hanley comrades, they assembled there towards midnight, to the number of about 200, proceeded to Burslem, broke open the Police Station, carried off their friends in triumph, committed much other mischief, by the demolition of windows, and the illuminated dial of the Town-Hall clock, and then retired before dawn of day, without being known or identified. A general stoppage of the manufactories was necessarily produced by the stoppage of the Collieries, and the workman, suffering from these privations, became the convenient and ready instruments of the seditious demagogues, who had been long disseminating the deleterious doctrines of “The People’s Charter,” as the sovereign and sole remedy for poverty, and all political grievances. 

These notions had taken deep root among the ignorant and most excitable portion of the working people, and many were ripe for insurrection. Although danger was apprehended from the combinations of the Colliers, and the distress produced by the stoppage of business, and the magistrates took precautionary means, by swearing in special constables, to maintain the peace, yet was the district very ill prepared to meet any outbreak of popular fury. No military force was at hand until, upon the urgent representations of the magistrates, a small troop of dragoons and a company of infantry were sent to Newcastle about the beginning of August. The weather was beautifully fine, the fields covered with abundance, and the ring-leaders of sedition hence conceived that the time was particularly auspicious for the assemblage of large mobs, and the achievement of their traitorous designs.

The very general stagnation of trade at this period produced similar effects in Lancashire, und the town of Manchester was for some time at the mercy of a mob. The “Delegates” of the Chartist conspiracy had (there. is good reason to believe) resolved upon a grand demonstration on the 16^th of August, the anniversary of the “Peterloo Massacre”. It was commemorated indeed at Burslem, as will presently be seen. On Monday the 15^th, after some inflammatory sermons by Cooper (a talented Chartist orator from Leicester), on the day before at Longton and Hanley, the fraternity of Chartists and the surly advocates for a fair day’s wages (which was all the Colliers in general sought for, and no more than they had a right to expect), assembled in formidable array at the Crown Bank in Hanley, where the Chartist Meetings had been usually held, proceeded thence to stop the engines at Earl Granville’s works, broke open the Police Office at Hanley, also a print-works, also a principle pawnbroker’s shop there, and the house of the tax collector; proceeded to Stoke, demolished the windows of that Post Office, and afterwards those of Fenton and Longton.

The rectory-house at the latter place was the especial object of their fury; it was gutted and set fire to, though the fire was extinguished before it destroyed the premises. The house of Mr. Mason at Heron Cross, that of Mr. Allen of Great Fenton, and that of Mr. Rose, the police magistrate at Penkhull, were in like manner visited and treated by parties of marauders, who, returning to Hanley in the evening, were again lectured, and commended by Cooper for what they had done, though he reproved them for their drunkenness, as being likely to expose them to detection. Terror and consternation spread around, and many families left home for security. The scenes of the night were expected to surpass the atrocities of the day, and so they did.

Religion and justice must be exhibited as public victims on the altar of Chartist divinity.  Accordingly the parsonage of the Rev. R. E. Aitkens in Hanley, and Albion House in Shelton, the residences of William Parker, Esq., one of the county magistrates, were, with all their valuable furniture, burnt and destroyed. The offices of Earl Granville in Shelton shared the same fate. The morning of the 16^th discovered their smoking ruins. The mob, after the excesses of the night slowly congregated at their usual place of rendezvous and was addressed in violent language by Ellis, a local Chartist, who encouraged them to proceed in their laudable career till the Charter was established as the law of the land. It appears the Chartist emissaries had made previous arrangements for a general inroad of their forces on the morning of this day in the town of Burslem. A large body from Macclesfield and Congleton bivouacked during the night in the streets of Leek, and pressed all they could lay hold of the accompany them. These were to form a junction at Burslem with the Hanley brigade. The latter entered Burslem at about nine o’clock in formidable numbers, and immediately forced the George Inn, rifled the money drawers, and being then driven out by a few soldiers, broke all the front windows of the house. This was the second serious injury of the kind which Mr. Barlow, the landlord, had sustained within a few days, his house having been one of the objects of attack on the morning of the 7^th.

The town of Burslem was fortunately prepared for a proper reception of the Banditti. A small troop of the 2^nd Dragoon Guards had arrived there from Newcastle, under the command of Major Trench, and a large body of volunteers, from among the friends of law and social order of all classes of society, had been hastily organised as special constables, by the praiseworthy exertions of Samuel Alcock, Esq., he chief constable of Burslem.

About the time of the arrival of the Hanley mob, Capt. Powys, an active magistrate, aware of their movements, rode into the town, and under his directions the troop of Dragoons were assembled, and the constables called out. The military as the proceeded to form were assailed by the populace, the riot act was then read by Captain Powys, and after an interval of about an hour, passed in preparing and skirmishing, the mob from Leek arrived with which the Hanley forces formed a junction on their approach. Their united phalanx numbered from 6000 to 8000 men, armed with cudgels, or furnished with stones, eager to repeat the scenes of spoliation and destruction which had been acted the preceding day in other parts of the Borough. The military were drawn up at the entrance into the market-place from Leek, opposite to ‘The Big House’, with the special constables in their rear. The mob advanced upon them, brandishing their cudgels and discharging at them collies of stones; their fury and numbers could be checked only by the weapons of the soldiers. They were ordered to fire on the insurgents, when one man fell dead upon the spot, another received a wound all but mortal, and several others wounded less or more, ran or were carried away, some of whom are supposed to have afterwards died. A charge was made by the Dragoons and constables upon the rioters, who then dispersed in all directions, and thus the authority of the law vindicated, and anarchy subdued at Burslem on the memorable 16^th of August, 1842. 

Sturdy bands of the discomfited mob went about the country for some days afterwards, terrifying and plundering wherever they came, and robberies and burglaries were committed to a great extent. The slow, but no less sure, arm of the law however followed these proceedings, and the county jail was soon filled with prisoners. Cooper and Ellis were apprehended, the former in Leicester, the latter in Glasgow, and Ellis was committed on a charge of high treason (but which was finally relinquished, and he indicted and convicted of arson). A special commission was appointed for trial of the delinquents concerned in these outrages, with others of a less aggravated kind committed in the South of Staffordshire. The trials occupied three learned judges, sitting in three separate Courts, for the space of a fortnight (i.e. from the 1^st to the 15^th of October).

Sir W. Follett, Solicitor-General, with several auxiliary Counsel, conducted the prosecutions, which were carried on at the sole expense of the Government and superintended by the Solicitor to the Treasury. Many acquittals took place, rather from the humanity of the judges than from defect of evidence; but enough was done to satisfy the demands of justice.”

Aspects of Chartism: Chartism and the State 2

The army

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

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

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

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

The Yeomanry

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

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

Enrolled Pensioners

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

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

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

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

Aspects of Chartism: Did Chartism affect Government policies?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aspects of Chartism: Chartism and the State 1

 

Relations between the government and Chartism were of mutual hostility[1]. Chartists denounced Whigs and Tories as ‘tyrannical plundering’ governments. Politicians of both parties saw Chartists as enemies of property and public order. In 1842, the Duke of Wellington said of the Chartists that: “Plunder is the object. Plunder likewise is the means”. Chartists had little political muscle and little education, and thus were powerless. Politically they were not dangerous. They were generally more conscious of the government than government was of them. The governments were firm but mostly fair and did not rush to turn out the troops. No martyrs were created, so there was no crusade. The police were much used. Government attitudes helped to defeat Chartism[2].

Coercive powers of the state

The county magistrates in England were appointed on the recommendation of the Lord Lieutenant. There were property qualifications to be met, set low enough for small landowners to be eligible, but the problems of recruitment were often serious. The county nobility often showed a marked reluctance to sit on the bench. One consequence of the selectiveness of Lords Lieutenant in their choice of magistrates and of the unwillingness of many of the gentry to serve was the large number of Anglican clergymen as Justices of the Peace: although by the 1840s the situation in most areas was beginning to change. Whig politicians were always concerned to reduce the Anglican element among the county magistracy and to increase middle-class representation. For one thing, the traditional authorities in rural areas were often troublesome to Whitehall, whatever the politics of the government. County magistrates often panicked about the seriousness of threats to public order and just as easily allowed their political prejudices to bias their magisterial judgements. Governments, especially Whig administrations, were constantly apprehensive in times of trouble about the reactions of the backwoods gentry and their Church allies, and they were conscious always of the social damage that could be inflicted. In late 1830s and the 1840s, however, it was not the rural areas but the industrial regions of the North, together with London, that were the main centres of radical agitation and unrest; and it was here that the most important structural changes in the character of authority had taken place.

The police

Outside London, the crucial legislation for the great towns of the provinces was the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The incorporated towns were now free from the inconveniences of the county bench. The new places on the borough commissions were filled, in most places, by Liberals and Whigs who formed the majority parties. These magistrates were much superior to their predecessors who had often lived outside the town boundaries. They demonstrated energy and a vigour that was in sharp contrast with what was still the lethargy of magisterial practices in many of the unincorporated towns. These new justices had a direct interest in the preservation of law and order in their own urban areas: it was they who owned the mills and the warehouses and the shops. And they were also more sensitive to the social problems of their rapidly growing towns than the traditional county bench. Sympathy did not affect the toughness of their attitude towards disorder and turbulence, but many among the business classes understood that repression was a beginning and not an end: an appreciation that was certainly not pervasive among the old order of magistrates, whether lay or clerical.

The most important single consequence of the 1835 Act was the obligation it imposed upon the incorporated towns to establish a Watch Committee whose responsibility it was to appoint and maintain an adequately sized police force (the phrase was ‘a sufficient number’ of constables) to be financed out of local rates[3]. Progress in the country at large was uneven for there were many vested interests to be overcome and much opposition to professional policemen of the new type, but in most large towns by 1848 the size and the competence of the police forces proved to be more or less adequate for the special problems of that year. This was certainly true of Manchester and Liverpool. The metropolitan police of London[4], who came directly under the control of the Home Office, were by far the most efficient in the country; and their aid was at times requested by local authorities in other parts of the country. By contrast, the Home Office in London, except in times of crisis, had almost no influence over local police forces in the incorporated boroughs.

The 1835 Act obliged Watch Committees to send quarterly reports, with quite minimal information, to the Home Office, but these were not apparently used to improve those police forces that were backward. It was in the rural areas that the development of professional forces was most uneven. The Rural Police Act of 1839 was permissive, and the most important element in the many strands of opposition or reluctance to its adoption was the expense involved and the future burdens on the rates. It was to the Home Office that magistrates reported or requested advice, and it was the Home Office that issued instructions: either local, to a particular individual or bench, or, in times of national crisis, by means of circulars throughout the country. In times of stress the closeness of contact was impressive, and the Home Office was never slow to remind local benches and commissioners of the peace of their duties, including the obligation to keep Whitehall fully informed. There were occasions, in very critical periods, when a town mayor would write three times in one day to the Home Office and daily correspondence, both ways, was quite usual.

The magistrates

The magistrates had the responsibility of maintaining public order in the area of their jurisdiction. A disturbance that involved three or more people was in common law a riot, and if it led to an arrest, the prisoner would be charged with a misdemeanour, punishable by imprisonment or a fine. If, however, more than twelve persons were involved in a disturbance and refused to disperse, the Riot Act of 1715 could be read, and once read, the riot became a felony, allowing the authorities concerned to use force including the use of firearms. These matters were the responsibility of the magistracy. It was the duty of the local magistrates to gather a sufficient force and to lead it in person to the scene of the disturbance; and it was their decision whether the Riot Act was read and they alone could give the order to open fire. The magistrates had to rely in the first instance upon the local police force and if this proved insufficient, two or more magistrates were entitled to swear in special constables: or, if a disturbance was feared at some time in the future, special constables could be sworn in against that possibility. The magistrates could also require aid from the local military, or they could call out, on their own authority, the local Yeomanry. By 1848, they also had the power to summon a detachment of the Enrolled Military Pensioners[5] and request the Home Office to issue a warrant retrospectively to legalise their action. The police in Britain were not armed, but the magistracy could, and often did, apply to the Home Office for arms to be distributed. In almost all cases their requests were refused, but in the summer of 1848 sections of the metropolitan police, and the police forces in selected industrial towns of the North, were issued with cutlasses. Special constables, in spite of a good many requests, were never allowed arms by the Home Secretary at any time during the Chartist years.

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[1] F. C. Mather Public Order in the Age of the Chartists, Manchester University Press, 1959 remains the standard text on the reaction of government to Chartism.

[2] This chapter extends my paper ‘Chartism and the State 1838-1848’ published in Modern History Review, November 2003.

[3] In Bolton with a population of 51,000 in 1841, there were only 10 police and 13 constables. Compare this with the city of Bath that had a similar population with 10 inspectors and 132 constables. In Manchester, the new incorporated borough created a police force of 48 officers and 295 constables but there was opposition to the levying of a police rate and the old police commissioners established a rival force of 240 men. Local politics prevented the creation of an effective police force. Birmingham also lacked a properly constituted civil force. For a population of 180,000, Birmingham had only 30 day street keepers, 170 night watchmen and 2,300 special constables for emergencies.

[4] The Metropolitan Police had been established by Sir Robert Peel in 1829 hence their nicknames ‘Bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’.

[5] Enrolled pensioners were men less than 55 years of age retired from active military duty. Many lived in working-class communities but threats to their pensions lowered any opposition to service they might have.

Aspects of Chartism: The reaction of government

Lord Melbourne’s ministry: 1835-1841

The Whigs were traditionally the party of ‘liberty’ and so were not anxious to set out on a repressive course of action against popular movements until necessary. Lord John Russell as Home Secretary (18^th April 1835 to 30^th August 1839) and the Marquess of Normanby (30^th August 1839 to 6^th September 1841) were responsible for dealing with Chartism in its early stages. Russell was devoted to the idea of liberty and wanted to allow freedom of discussion on political issues. Unfortunately, he was not sufficiently aware of the depth of working-class discontent. Anti-Poor Law agitation in the north was treated with great toleration, very much an example of advanced thinking for the time. On 18^th September 1838, Russell said “So long as mere violence of language is employed without effect, it is better, I believe, not to add to the importance of these mob leaders by prosecutions”.

Russell intended to deal with developing Chartism as he had dealt with earlier agitation. In the winter of 1838-39, Chartist activity peaked. Melbourne had taken charge, and he had a reputation for severity. Repressive measures led to more violence. Russell decided in early in 1839 that there was little danger of insurrection, so he adopted less severe tactics. He was criticised for being ‘soft’ on Chartism. His attitude stiffened in April 1839 as the Chartists began to arm and drill. When Birmingham needed police in 1839, controversially Russell sent down a force of metropolitan policemen on the train. However, from the middle of 1839, increasing numbers of Chartist leaders were arrested including Feargus O’Connor and William Lovett and hundreds of local Chartists were hounded and arrested in the months that followed. Short prison sentences removed Chartist leaders from circulation. The Newport Rising in November 1839 and the abortive insurrections in January 1840 in Sheffield, Bradford and Newcastle were easily dealt with by either by regular troops or local authorities with transportation to Australia rather than the noose as the chosen punishment. Neither short terms of imprisonment or transportation created political martyrs.

Sir Charles Napier was the commander of troops in the Northern District, based on Nottingham, between 1839 and 1841. In April 1839, Napier, who came from the West Country, was put in charge of 6,000 troops in the Northern District. He was sympathetic to the Chartist cause. Napier knew that the people were discontented because they were hungry, and made this plain in his reports. He blamed “Tory injustice and Whig imbecility” for the problem -- in private. He pitied, rather than feared them and attributed much of the trouble to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act: in his Journal in 1839, he said, “An anonymous letter comes, with a Chartist plan. Poor creatures, their threats of attack are miserable. With half a cartridge, and half a pike, with no money, no discipline, no skilful leaders, they would attack men with leaders, money and discipline, well armed and having 60 rounds a man. Poor men! A republic! What good did a republic ever do? What good will it ever do?” His fear was not revolution, but widespread disturbances. He sought to prevent these by concentrating his forces to limit the risk of conflict and overawing his opponents, because prevention was better than cure. He wished to avoid deaths among rioters that would occur if widespread disturbances broke out. Napier out-thought the Chartists rather than out-fought them.

Sir Robert Peel’s ministry: 1841-46

Sir James Graham was Home Secretary (6^th September 1841 to 6^th July 1846). Chartism had been reviving since 1840 and gathered strength in the bad winter of 1841-42. By spring 1842, the depression had reached its worst point. As strikes and turnouts spread (including the Plug Plots), so the violence grew. Graham took a more serious view of threats of disorder than Russell had done in 1839. Napier’s approach suited Russell and Normanby, both of whom paid insufficient attention to detail. Graham was different. Napier was sent to India in September 1841; and during the summer of 1842, both the Northern and Midland District was put under the overall command of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Arbuthnot, based in Manchester.

He still showed discretion and propriety in dealing with the disturbances. When it became clear that law and order was breaking down, Graham acted with great administrative efficiency, a feature of the new Conservative Party. However, the strike movement had two negative effects on the Chartists. First, the effort made by some to organise the strikes for their own ends allowed Peel and Sir James Graham, to blame them for the strikes. There was a wave of arrests in September. Harsh sentences were handed out: in Staffordshire, for example, of 274 cases tried, 154 men were imprisoned and five men transported for life[1]. By early 1843, there was less need for harsh treatment, as the strikes were over and unrest had quietened. Peel and Graham recognised, as Russell had done in 1839-40, that pushing repression too far was counterproductive, alienating public opinion and creating public sympathy. Secondly, trade union disillusion with Chartism probably increased. To unionists the issue was economic not political and, for them, the strikes were, in part successful.

In April 1839, when General Napier wished to put the yeomanry on permanent duty, both Melbourne and Russell declined to do so. Sir James Graham continued this preference for regular troops. His reasons were financial: the yeomanry were paid only when they were called out but regular troops had to be paid anyway. There were also political considerations. He appreciated the need not to call out farmers at harvest time. There were also tactical reasons. Graham knew that the yeomanry was hated and its appearance would be as likely to cause a riot as prevent one.

Lord John Russell’s ministry: 1846-52

In 1848, Chartism was closely linked to Irish discontent. Ireland was in the grip of the Famine at the time Whig treatment of Chartism was little different to 1839 although there were genuine fears of revolution. Elaborate plans were made for keeping the peace at Kennington Common. By the 1840s, the government recognised that the strength of justice tempered with mercy. In the wake of the Chartist disturbances of 1848, most sentences passed were of between six months and two years. This avoided making martyrs, but took troublemakers out of circulation for long enough to ensure the forces of law and order would prevail. Moderation and restraint by the authorities deprived would be revolutionaries of their moral case for rebellion.

By 1848, the position of the forces of law and order was considerably greater than in 1839 and 1842. First, the small number of troops had been made more effective by the establishment of the railway network. Already by 1839, Napier was able to move some troops by train, but when the national network was established, the logistical situation was transformed. The second development was the London police. Their handling of crowds in the late 1830s had been poor and ineffective but by 1848, they had learned a great deal about crowd control. Not only were they able to confront the peaceful demonstration on 10^th April with firmness and without provocation, but they also survived the must more testing time during the summer evenings of May, June and July.

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[1] J. F. Ariouat Rethinking Partisanship in the Conduct of the Chartist Trials, 1839-1848’, Albion, volume 29, (1997), pages 600-615.

Aspects of Chartism: Further thoughts on Women Chartists

The part women played in the Chartist movement involved, in the main, indirect supportive activities, but also some very direct and organised activities. The ways in which women participated appear to have been constrained to some extent by the domestic ideals of the time[1]. In the north, the principal Chartist leader was Feargus O’Connor who instigated and became proprietor of The Northern Star based in Leeds[2]. O’Connor attended mass meetings organised by Halifax Chartist leaders such as Ben Rushton. Many of the smaller meetings possibly excluded many women as the meetings tended to occur in alehouses where primarily working class men met. Queenshead was renowned for its beer shops which, though seen by local magistrates in 1836 as ‘strongholds of the devil’, did in fact provide meeting places for one the earliest radical groups[3].  However, women did attend mass meetings either with fellow male Chartists, or by themselves. One such meeting reported on by The Northern Star in 1847 records a meeting of 2,000 women Chartists at Oddfellows’ Hall, Halifax on August 9th.

In the late 1830s, women appeared to be primarily concerned with opposition to the New Poor Law legislation. In 1839, the Female Political Union in Nottingham, headed by Mary Savage, represented an elderly woman who had been sent to stone-breaking by the Poor Law authorities. They held protest meetings and provided financial help for her[4].  In February 1838, some members of the Elland female association took it upon themselves to roll in the snow a commissioner whose intention was to set up new procedures in Yorkshire for implementing the new Poor Law[5].  This association, led by Elizabeth Hanson preceded the Charter, but subsequently supported Chartism by donating funds to the first Chartist Convention. The Bradford Female Radical Association was formed in 1839 and comprised factory workers, woolcombers and weavers who were probably the wives and daughters of male Chartists. In fact, over 100 female radical associations were recorded in the first few years of the Chartist movement which suggests independent activities on the part of women at the beginning of the movement.

However, enfranchisement for women was not part of the Chartist agenda, even though the movement relied to a large extent on the activities of women, for example in exclusive dealing. Exclusive dealing was in effect the boycotting of tradesmen and shopkeepers who did not support the Charter. Women, who tended to do most of the shopping, were instrumental in maintaining pressure on these non-supporters. In August 1839, the Northern Star newspaper reported: ‘The female radicals of the Bradford district, amounting to upward of 600, walked in procession through the principal streets…at the head of the procession there was carried by a woman a large printed board with the words “exclusive dealing”.[6]

Some women did speak out about enfranchisement and in 1839, Elizabeth Neeson of the London Democratic Association, argued for women’s suffrage by pointing out that if a woman can be given the task of ruling a nation then why shouldn’t women be free to rule themselves?[7]  Though some Chartists advocated enfranchisement for all adults, the arguments put forward by men usually alluded to domestic ideals to which women were expected to aspire. Industrialisation was possibly seen as not only a threat to family life which had started to fragment as a result of labour moving from the home into the factories, but also a threat to male employment. J. R. Richardson’s paper, The Rights of Women, on the one hand, argues that women’s increasing contribution to the nation’s wealth through industry was a good enough reason for their having a right to parliamentary representation, yet on the other hand, refers to factories as ‘hideous dens’ and both female and child labour as ‘slavery’ from which they should be freed[8]. As if to underline the importance of women in domestic life Richardson argued that only widows and spinsters should be allowed enfranchisement implying that married women were be expected to agree with their husband’s political preferences.

The emphasis on the family by the Chartist movement is not surprising considering the economic climate of the late 18^th century when, for the family to survive, most members had to work. Traditionally women’s work had always been low status and low paid[9].  However, the Chartist movement did not seek to improve women’s low wages even in the factories. In fact they sought to resolve this issue, in part, by supporting Richard’s Oastler’s movement for the Ten Hours Bill. This, it was thought, would not only reduce the misery of women and children who currently worked twelve or more hours a day, but would hopefully mean more men would be needed to take their places in the factories and mills.

In 1842, parliament rejected the second Chartist petition. In the same year, in a provocative article in The Halifax Guardian, Edward Akroyd, now one of the leading industrialists in Halifax, was quoted as saying that ‘machinery was a blessing’. These events galvanised local Chartists into supporting the strikes and plug riots that were spreading from Lancashire across the region. On August 15^th a procession of several thousand strikers entered Halifax singing Chartist hymns. Women headed the procession, four abreast, and the strikers dispersed after being directed to local mills by a man on horseback. On the same day a larger procession arrived from Bradford[10].  Again the procession comprised a large proportion of women many of which were ‘poorly clad and walking barefoot’ who stood in front of the military and dared them to kill them if they liked. In fact women appear to have been subjected to the same violence as men in these demonstrations. Undisciplined Specials were reported to have ‘broken the heads’ of some women that day. That women who were prepared to fight and even go to prison is illustrated by the actions of Elizabeth Cresswell, a 43 year old framework knitter who was arrested in Mansfield during a demonstration in support of the National Holiday. She was found to be carrying a loaded revolver and spare ammunition. In 1839, a delegate reported to a meeting in Lancashire that the women he represented were ‘in a state of progress, and were purchasing pikes in large numbers’. 

Women also involved themselves through other more practical activities such as banner making, providing presents for visiting speakers at meetings, holding tea parties, teaching in local Chartist schools etc.[11]  For example a description of a soiree held in honour of Ernest Jones (the first Chartist candidate for the Halifax Borough) included the fact that the hall was decorated with banners that displayed slogans and portraits of radical leaders. The women who attended the soiree wore green ribbons and even green dresses[12]. Some male Chartists appear to have felt more comfortable with the domestic involvement of women within the movement rather than with those who directly took part in processions and demonstrations. Another example of this ambivalent attitude is an article in 1839 in the radical Scottish Patriot newspaper. On the one hand, the writer praised the formation of a new radical female group in Scotland, but on the other wished the Chartist movement did not have to rely on the political activity of women. These women could best serve the Chartist cause by remaining at home with their families. The writer further argued that Chartists should not drag women away from the family home like the aristocracy had done by forcing them into factory labour.  The idea that men should be allowed the dignity of being the family breadwinner prevailed, even though women had always contributed to the family income, either informally, e.g. through casual work such as back-street brewing, child-minding etc. or through home-based proto-industrial employment which usually required input from the whole family.

Women also appear to have been instrumental in facilitating the emergence of temperance within the Chartist movement. For example the Nottingham women’s friendly societies were very keen to move from their alehouse meeting place to other meeting rooms in the area unconnected with drinking alcohol[13].   Temperance meetings may possibly have been encouraged by the Chartist leaders as a means of adding respectability to Chartist meetings and also as a way of encouraging more family involvement. The growing emphasis on temperance may also have been a deliberate attempt to rally more middle class support by emphasising the domestic family unit as a Chartist’s ideal. One of the first temperance groups was formed at Queenshead, having also been the location of one of the first radical groups[14].

Women did not appear to thrive as leaders within the Chartist movement. This was possibly a result of domestic constraints in that they were unable to travel far and stay away from the family home overnight and their lack of skills in public speaking. Their lack of political ambition may also have resulted from the perceived notion that such ‘political’ women, especially single women, were considered too ‘bold and forward’. They therefore wanted to protect their jobs and their reputations as much as possible. In Bradford, in 1845, a Miss Ruthwell who was treasurer to the Power Loom Weavers Society gave a remarkable speech describing the victimisation of herself, her sister and father who were all sacked from their jobs for being active members of the Society. Some women were able to move beyond these constraints such as Anna Pepper, secretary to an association of women in Leeds, who spoke at various meetings in the West Riding and even in London[15].

Women clearly did not shy away from active participation in the Chartist movement, though the extent to which they took a lead in it was much less marked. At the beginning of the movement many working-class women were more focused on opposition to the New Poor Law and matters closer to the family and home. They appeared to organise more independently of men. This may have been because their initial concerns differed or it may have been that women were discouraged from meeting with their male peers because in the early years these revolved around beer shops. It appears to have been a natural step to take for early female radical associations to support the mainstream Chartist movement either financially or by giving support at mass demonstrations. Significantly the issues that affected women, such a low factory wages or even female enfranchisement were not of any serious concern to the mainstream Chartists. Even J.R. Richardson in his The Rights of Women seems to have failed to realise that if every working woman, married or not, was able to vote as well as every working man the political strength of the working class would be even greater. It seems that many of the women who were involved in the movement saw themselves as supporting their husbands, brothers and fathers in their struggle. Women were generally encouraged to believe that they should be spared the indignity of working in the factories and allowed to devote their time to their homes and families. However, many of the women who worked in the factories were single and possibly even pleased to gain some independence from their families. It appears that some women wanted to become more politically involved in the Chartist movement, and were well qualified to do so. However due to their domestic ties they were unable to participate to any great extent in the National Charter Association and this constrained promotion of their own ideas and needs.

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[1] On the role played by women see the collection of papers edited by Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson Women in British Politics 1760-1860: The Power of the Petticoat, Macmillan, 2000 that places protest by women in a broader context. Helen Rogers Women and the People: Authority, Authorship and the Radical Tradition in Nineteenth-Century England, Ashgate, 2000 pages 80-123 is an excellent study of the role of women within the Chartist movement and is part of an extremely important study placing women within the radical tradition. Anna Clark The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class, University of California Press, 1995 seeks to place the struggle of working class women within the broader struggles of the working class. On women and Chartism, there are two specific studies: David Jones ‘Women and Chartism’, History, volume 68, (1983) is less critical and Jutta Schwarzkopf Women in the Chartist Movement, Macmillan, 1991 is a more detailed, but not entirely satisfactory, study.

[2] G.R. Dalby ‘The Chartist Movement in Halifax and District’ Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, (1956), page 94.

[3] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, pages 244-245

[4] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 137.

[5] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 134.

[6] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 135.

[7] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 120.

[8] D. Thompson The Early Chartists, Macmillan, 1972, pages 115-127.

[9] June Purvis Women’s History: Britain, 1850-1945, UCL Press, 1995, page 29.

[10] D.G. Wright The Chartist Risings in Bradford, Bradford Libraries and Information Service, 1987, page 30.

[11] Eileen Yeo ‘Some Practices and Problems of Chartist Democracy’, in J. Epstein and D. Thompson (eds.), The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working Class Radicalism and Culture 1830-60, Macmillan, 1982 page 350.

[12] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 141.

[13] Anna Clark ‘The Rhetoric of Chartist Domesticity: Gender, Language and Class in the 1830s and 1840s’, Journal of British Studies, volume 31, (1992), pages 62-88.

[14] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, pages 122-123.

[15] D. Thompson The Chartists. Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution, Wildwood, 1984, page 245.