Sources on Chartism: The Barnsley Manifesto, June 1838

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

To the Working People of Barnsley:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farewell.

George Uttey, Chairman

lsaac Lister, Treasurer

William Coates, Secretary

John Vallance

Charles Currey

John Esckycove

William Preston

William Thackray

John Green

Arthur Collins

Joseph Crabtree

Peter Hoey

Joseph Gagger

Thomas Lingard

Robert Hardcastle

Thomas Acklam

Robert Armitage

Jonathan West

Thomas Preston

Thomas Haughton

James Davey

Thomas Coastler

William Davey

Thomas Esketh

William Edwards

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[1] Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV.

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

Aspects of Chartism: The Local Dimension

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

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

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

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

Why were there divisions within Chartism: the traditional model?

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

Should we have a referendum on Europe?

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

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

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

Sources for Chartism: Mather on 1842

In the eyes of contemporaries the semi-revolutionary strike movement, which engulfed the manufacturing districts of Britain in the summer of 1842, assumed an importance which the historian has seldom recognised. Graham, who was then Home Secretary, thought it `more serious’ than the Chartist disturbances of 1839. To Melbourne, according to the Queen, it recalled the tumults of the Reform Bill struggle. Lieutenant Colonel Maberley, the Secretary of the Post Office, whose duties afforded him a unique insight into conditions prevailing in different parts of the country, went so far as to describe it as `a commotion such as we have not witnessed for half a century’.

It would be unsafe to dismiss these opinions as being wildly exaggerated. There are objective grounds for believing that, limited though they were in duration to a period of two months, the disturbances of 1842 were the most intense of any that occurred in Britain from the time of the French Revolution to that of the Chartist détente of 1848. They covered a wider geographical area than Luddism, embraced more trades than the Agricultural Labourers’ Rising of 1830, and broke with more concentrated force than the Chartist unrest of 1839 and 1848. No fewer than fifteen English or Welsh shires and eight Scottish counties were affected by them. The main impact, it is true, was upon the lowlands of Scotland and on a concentrated block of English territory stretching from the Aire and the Ribble in the North to Shropshire and Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire in the South. But there were ripples of the main wave in Cumberland and Glamorganshire, on Tyneside, and at Chard in Somerset. Even the capital was stirred. Public meetings were arranged there to take cognizance of the `awful state of the Country’, and a tumultuous procession surged through the City at midnight.

The movement has been described as a `general strike, the first not only in Britain but in any capitalist country’. The stoppage was never completely general in the sense of nationwide, but in many towns and districts there was, indeed, an almost complete suspension of labour in factories, coalmines and other large establishments, whilst domestic handworkers often turned out to demonstrate and to compel others to join them. But it was also much more than a strike. A local postmaster writing from Accrington at the height of the outbreak observed: `It is more like a revolution than anything else in this neighbourhood, and we fear that plunder and mischief is not at an end.’ Graham and Melbourne, too, harped in their correspondence upon the insurrectionary character of the strike. Nor was this mere moonshine. It would be wrong to conclude that a genuine revolutionary situation existed, for in the last analysis the state’s monopoly of power was not in imminent danger of being overthrown. However, authority was undoubtedly challenged. Workmen pledged not to return to work until the constitution was changed, many thousands of strikers took virtual possession of large towns for hours on end, and even thought of marching on London to set the nation right. On one occasion the mob even unseated a detachment of cavalry by pelting it with heavy stones. The speed with which rumour spread provided a further indication of abnormality, found in other societies when in process of dissolution. Sir Robert Peel, writing from his country house in Staffordshire, told of a report brought by a railway guard from London that the Queen had been assassinated at Windsor. This had apparently circulated like wildfire.

The 1842 outbreak furnishes the opportunity, therefore, to study revolutionary processes at work in a normally stable society, and this will be attempted briefly. We shall hope thereby to throw some light upon the extent of the danger to which the country was exposed, and also upon the reserves of stability.  But first the pattern of the disturbances must be briefly sketched. Although there had been sporadic local turnouts, provoked by wage reductions, from the earliest months of 1842, the period of continuous unrest may be dated from a strike which began on the North Staffordshire coalfield on July 8^th. From that time forward events unfolded in four main stages. During the first of these, which lasted until August 2^nd, the stoppage was confined to the collieries of North and South Staffordshire, and its purpose, like that of previous outbreaks, was the redress of certain economic grievances, notably low wages, truck payments and a fraudulent system of remuneration known as Bildas. Nevertheless, two essential features of the later, more generalised, disturbances became apparent. One was the raking out of boiler fires, and the drawing of boiler plugs, to prevent the pit engines from resuming work. The other was the practice of marching in force from establishment to establishment to compel a suspension of labour. Sometimes the distances covered by the mobs were quite considerable. The North Staffordshire miners got as far as the Poynton colliery near Stockport, a distance of some twenty-five miles, before being repelled by the troops. The second phase opened on August 3^rd, and continued until about the 11^th of that month. Its principal characteristic was an extension of the geographical and occupational coverage of the strike. On August 3^rd. 10,000 colliers and iron miners of the Airdrie district of Lanarkshire left their pits, and started to plunder the potato patches of the neighbouring farmers for food. Two days later there was a strike at Bayley’s cotton factory in Stalybridge, and roving cohorts of operatives carried the stoppage first to the whole area of Ashton and Stalybridge, then to Manchester, and subsequently to towns adjacent to Manchester, using as much force as was necessary to bring factories to a standstill. As yet the movement remained, to outward appearances, largely non-political. Although the People’s Charter was praised at public meetings, the resolutions that were passed at these were in almost all cases merely for a restoration of the wages of 1820, a ten-hour working day, or reduced rents.

During the third stage, from August 12^th to 20^th, the strike was at its height. By dint of the exertions of the large armies of turnouts which marched from town to town it quickly became general in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire, Cheshire and the West Riding, and began to spread into Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. Meanwhile, conferences of delegates assembled in Manchester to direct the movement, and these endeavoured, with some apparent success, to harness it to the People’s Charter. It was at this stage that the revolutionary and anti-governmental features of the outbreak were most in evidence. Manchester was placarded, as London had been at the height of the Reform Bill struggle, with notices calling for a run on the banks, and there were sanguinary clashes between the mob and the military at Preston and at Blackburn, in the Potteries and at Salter Hebble in Yorkshire. This was also, however, the period when the central government intervened, with troops and official exhortations, to curb the violence and procure the arrest of the leaders. The fourth phase, therefore, which stretched into late September in some districts, was anti-climactic. It was a period of diminished violence and steady trickle back to work, and although certain categories of workers, notably the cotton operatives of south-east Lancashire continued to hold out, it was for wage increases that they contended and not for the People’s Charter. The wheel had come full circle. What had begun as a wage dispute was a wage dispute once more.

To return to our main task, discussion of the mechanics of revolution is bound sooner or later to raise the question of the necessity of leadership. This has long been an open question among writers on the subject, whether they be historians or political scientists, sociologists or active revolutionaries. As Crane Brinton formulates it, the division lies between, on the one hand, the ‘school of circumstances’, which regards revolution as a ‘wild and natural growth’, the more or less spontaneous reaction to intolerable oppression, and on the other, ‘the school of plot’, which sees it as a ‘forced and artificial growth’, sparked off by `a series of interlocking plots initiated by small but determined groups of malcontents’. Broadly speaking, the conflict reflects the divergence between the apologists for revolution and the conservative opponents of it, although Communist explanations with their unashamed emphasis on the role of leaders consciously planning a revolt provide an exception to this rule. We may perhaps agree with Crane Brinton that both extremes are nonsense. ‘Chance’, as Pasteur said, ‘favours only the mind which is prepared’, and while sudden and unexpected events like famines, or slumps, or the dislocations of war, do provide the motive power of revolution, the presence of leaders who can channel the anger or despair of the mob into purposeful activity is essential to the achievement of real success. Depending upon the nature of the objects sought, these leaders need not be instruments of an intellectual elite or concentrated pressure group. They may, as Chalmers Johnson implies, be mere hedge preachers and village prophets, but leadership in some form and to some degree is indispensable.

It will be useful to apply this analysis to the General Strike of 1842. The explanation of this which found most favour at the time was that of ‘the school of plot’. The Chartists blamed the Anti-Corn Law League; the Leaguers blamed the Chartists; the Conservative government blamed both, and added the trade unions for good measure. The case against the Anti-Corn Law League need not detain us long. Elaborated by John Wilson Croker in a clever political polemic which appeared in The Quarterly Review, it ran to the effect that, pursuant to a long-term plan, the League engineered the strike both by incitement and by the action of its member millowners in effecting a reduction in the wages of the cotton operatives. Croker made many telling points against the League, and there can be little doubt that the continual harping upon the damage inflicted by the Corn Laws, and on the selfishness of landlords, helped to encourage the insurgents and to demoralise the upholders of law and order when the conflict came. Nevertheless, the League can almost certainly be acquitted of direct conspiracy to foment the outbreak. Both in Staffordshire and in southern Lancashire Tory employers shared with free-trading liberals the responsibility for making the offending wage reductions, and Bayleys of Stalybridge, whose stubbornness was immediately responsible for the outbreak in Lancashire, were in the last resort prepared to withdraw their notice of reduction. It was the men who then refused the olive branch.

But what of the Chartists and the trade unions? It was upon these, acting as he supposed in concert, through a conference of trade delegates meeting in Manchester, that the Home Secretary’s suspicions first alighted. `It is quite clear,’ he wrote to General Sir William Warre on August 15^th, ‘that these Delegates are the Directing Body: they form the link between the trades unions and the Chartists.’ Later historians, however, reacting sharply against such conspiratorial explanations, have emphasised the strike’s total spontaneity. Mr. Christopher Thorne writes that ‘the Plug Riots, manifestations of utter misery…following wage cuts in the summer of 1842, were by no means Chartist-inspired…’, while Dr Ronald Read makes explicit the assumptions of the modern consensus in the words: ‘There was no causal connection between Chartism and the outbreak…The Chartists…merely attempted to exploit it once it had occurred.’ This paper is designed to suggest that the truth lies in between the contemporary and more recent interpretations.

It seems to me that the role of conscious, creative leadership did assert itself at two successive stages in the development of the strike. First in the inception. It is true that the ordinary coalminer or cotton operative, who struck work and endeavoured to persuade others to do likewise, did so out of a sense of exasperation induced by a long series of wage reductions. Without this impetus no amount of oratory would have produced an outbreak as widespread as the Plug Plot. Given this factor, however, the importance of leaders, who suggested when the time was ripe to strike, which factories should be turned out by force, and what should be demanded as the price of returning to work, can scarcely be denied. There is evidence that, in Stalybridge and in the Staffordshire Potteries, the workpeople had local trade committees to formulate their demands, but enthusiasm was principally sustained at large open-air meetings, where directions were also issued as to where the mob should proceed, what should be their terms, and how they should behave. From the official reports of the subsequent trials at the Lancaster Assizes, and from the columns of the Northern Star, it is possible to compile a list of the chairmen and principal speakers at the meetings in Stalybridge and Ashton, and also in Manchester, in the early days of the outbreak. Research into the background of these figures shows that they were mostly Chartists, and that many had no connection with the cotton industry, where the grievances which provoked the strike occurred.

The Star lists the speakers at a meeting in Stalybridge early on August 8^th, which, after an adjournment, ended in a resolution to turn out factories in Stalybridge and Dukinfield. Six names were mentioned. The Chairman, Alexander (‘Sandy’) Challenger, was a hatter, who had once proposed a memorial to the Queen that she should employ only Chartist ministers. William Stephenson was nominated as a representative of Stalybridge to the General Council of the National Charter Association; so also was John Durham (mistakenly described as ‘Derham’), a Stalybridge newsagent. Patrick Brophy was an Irishman who had once been secretary of the Irish Universal Suffrage Association, and had become a Chartist lecturer. Fenton was presumably the notorious pike-selling Chartist from Ashton, once described in a piece of local doggerel as one of ‘Fergus’ dupes’. At a later meeting that afternoon which adopted a resolution `that the people of Ashton go to Oldham and those at Stalybridge and Dukinfield to Hyde’ the principal speakers were Brophy and Richard Pilling, a member of the South Lancashire delegate conference of the National Charter Association. Pilling afterwards headed the Ashton turnouts to Oldham. In Granby Row Fields, Manchester, on August 9^th seven speakers were mentioned; four were certainly Chartists and two more probably so. At a further meeting in the same place on the following day Christopher Doyle, who had been a member of the Chartist Convention of 1842, urged the people to form a procession. In the Ashton context mention should be made of William Aitken (Aitkin), a local schoolmaster and Chartist leader, who went with Challenger as a delegate to Preston, to persuade the workpeople there to strike; also perhaps of Thomas Mahon, who formed the link between the Chartists and the Operatives’ Committee. Similar evidence of Chartist leadership comes from other regions, from the Potteries, from South Staffordshire, where Arthur O’Neill, the Christian Chartist, attended a meeting at West Bromwich on August 1^st and moved resolutions embodying the miners’ grievances, and from Scotland.

It would be tempting to deduce from these cases a nucleated Chartist conspiracy to work up a general strike in favour of the People’s Charter. Only three years earlier a Chartist Convention had adopted such a plan, to rescind it when it found the project lacking in support. Closer examination of the evidence, however, casts doubt on this interpretation. For one thing Chartism was in 1842 too divided to be capable of devising a single national plan. It was split not only between O’Connorites and Complete Suffragists, but also between O’Connor and his editor of the Northern Star on the one hand and the chiefs of the Executive of the National Charter Association on the other. Moreover, the Chartists who put themselves at the head of the strikes in South Lancashire seemed uncertain themselves whether it was for the Charter or for the redress of trade grievances that they were contending. John Leach told a meeting at Hyde that `it would be more proper for them to stand out for the wage than the Charter question’, as `it was impossible for them to get the Charter at present’. At a meeting at the Haigh in Stalybridge on August 11^th Fenton and Durham argued for the wages question; Stephenson and Mahon for the Charter. Yet all were Chartists.

Probably, therefore, these local Chartists headed the turnouts over wage grievances not simply to exploit them (although it would be naive to suggest that they were not, in many cases, also feeling their way to turn the situation to the advantage of the People’s Charter) but out of a deep-rooted sense of commitment to working-class interests which Chartism engendered. There was an established pattern of Chartist leadership in trade disputes going back for at least several months before the Plug Plot commenced. Aitken and Pilling were to be found taking the lead in resistance to a proposed 10 per cent reduction of wages in Ashton as early as March 1842. The action taken in August was in one perspective merely a legitimate extension of this.

If, however, at first, the Chartists contributed little to the shaping of the objects of the strike, they exerted quite a profound influence on the tactics that were pursued. It is possible to discern in the speeches which they made evidence of a design to unify discontents into a single focus of confrontation with the employers. This was apparent in Chartist contributions to strikes even before the Plug Plot began. O’Neill told a West Bromwich strike meeting in May that ‘the whole district should be forthwith canvassed, united and organised to enable them to resist not only the present reduction but also future attempts’. Perhaps there was something in Chartism with its class-conscious appeal to general working-class interests that led its adherents to advise union of forces as an appropriate weapon of defence in trade disputes, for when the strikes broke out in Lancashire in August, it was again the object of the Chartist orators to bring a concerted pressure of the whole area to bear upon the employers. It was resolved at a meeting on Mottram Moor on Sunday, August 7^th ‘that on the Tuesday, they would march to Manchester, stop all labour, visit the Exchange and teach “the merchants how to give better prices for goods”‘. The events of the two following days were fully consistent with such a plan. By a sequence of rallies and turnout marches the operatives of the Ashton, Stalybridge, Hyde and Dukinfield district were slowly shepherded together, until a joint invasion of Manchester became feasible. It occurred on Tuesday, August 9^th, when a section of the invading force did in fact make its way at the earliest opportunity to the Exchange. In this way the Chartists helped to expand and to unify the movement when it occurred, though it is by no means clear that they were acting in accordance with any revolutionary plan conceived before the outbreak began. At least they cast their influence against recourse to violence.

Once the strikes had been successfully launched, a second organised intervention occurred--that of the delegate conferences. These were of two kinds--a national conference of the National Charter Association held in Manchester on August 16^th and 17^th, and a series of regional conferences consisting of delegates from the trades of Manchester and district, which met in the same city from August 11^th to 20^th. In most historical accounts of the Plug Plot the former plays a central role. The latter, however, was in some respects the more important. It was the trade conferences that gave the first general lead to adopt the People’s Charter as the prime object of the strike. On August 12^th, a meeting of the trades and mill-hands of Manchester and its vicinity with delegates from various parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, adopted a resolution: ‘that this meeting recommend the people of all trades and callings to forthwith cease work until the above document becomes the law of the land’. This was confirmed at a differently constituted conference in the Carpenters’ Hall that same afternoon. The deliberations coincided with and strengthened a growing movement in the country to give the turnout a political colouring. Moreover, in the Manchester district, at least, which was the home of the strike, the trade delegates rather than the Chartists came to be regarded as the leaders. Their continued sessions from August 15^th onwards, held after further elections had taken place, were besieged by large crowds, which gathered in the streets outside their meeting halls, eager to know what transpired within, so much so that the delegates themselves, anxious to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities, repeatedly and vainly urged them to disperse.

The assembling of these delegates apparently ex nihilo, and their uncompromising stand for the People’s Charter, is a phenomenon which calls for explanation. To Home Secretary Graham they formed the nub of the supposed conspiracy, linking the Chartists with the trade unions. Events, however, are capable of a less sinister interpretation. The immediate urge which led to the gathering of these bodies, appears to have been more or less spontaneous. Shortly after the march of the turnouts from Ashton into Manchester two separate initiatives were taken in the town to procure the appointment of trade delegates, one by the power-loom weavers and the other by the mechanics. There may, in fact, have been more than two, but that of the mechanics proved the most fruitful and eventually burgeoned into the conference in the Carpenters’ Hall on August 11^th and 12^th, which adopted the resolution to strike for the Charter. It seems that the mechanics were first goaded into an appeal for support from their fellow tradesmen because one of their own meetings had been interrupted by the soldiery. Behind these occurrences, however, lay a long period of unintended preparation. In Manchester and the surrounding towns the tradition of uniting trades by delegates for mutual support upon a regional basis stretched back at least to the Philanthropic Society of 1818, which included the towns of Manchester, Stockport, Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham and Bury. During the nine months preceding the outbreak at Stalybridge this tradition was revived by the attempts of both the Anti-Corn Law League and the Chartists to draw out an expression of support from the trade societies. As early as October 1841 a gathering of the Manchester Operative Anti-Corn Law Association had appointed a committee to invite the trades, mill hands and other bodies of working men to attend a meeting for the purpose of obtaining the extinction of the corn monopoly and compensation for those who had been robbed by it. By New Year’s Day 1842, a conference of deputies from the different working men’s associations of the Kingdom was being held in the Anti-Corn Law League’s rooms in Manchester, and this commissioned a deputation of workmen from Messrs Sharp and Roberts’ engineering works in Manchester to organise the trades upon the subject of Corn Law repeal, which was to be accompanied by an ‘equitable adjustment’ of the National Debt, financed by the landlords out of taxation.

Significantly, the leader of the deputation from Messrs Sharp and Roberts was Alexander Hutchinson, a smith, who was to serve as the standing chairman of the trade delegate conferences held in Manchester in the second week of the disturbances of August. Hutchinson was an Owenite Socialist, who, at the time of his arrest during the Plug Plot, planned to emigrate to the backwoods of America for the purpose of founding or joining a communitarian experiment there. His position was somewhat compromised by the fact that, when he was arrested, the police discovered in his house in Manchester a collection of firearms and gunpowder, which he had intended to take with him on his journey.

But to return to events earlier in the year, Hutchinson and his colleagues fulfilled their commission from the Anti-Corn Law League to organise the trades. Meetings, consisting of delegates from the bricklayers and the mechanics, the silk dyers and the calico printers, the engravers and the glass cutters, the shoemakers and the tailors were duly held. At the last of these, in the Hop Pole Inn, Manchester, on March 14^th, with Hutchinson in the chair, the unexpected happened. Delegate after delegate rose to substitute an agitation for the People’s Charter for one in favour of Corn Law repeal, and eventually a motion for uniting the trades and political bodies of Manchester on the basis of the Charter alone was carried by fifty-nine votes. It was further resolved to invite the trades of Manchester and Salford to attend a demonstration on Good Friday, when Feargus O’Connor would lay the foundation stone of a memorial to Orator Hunt. The lead in favour of the Charter was begun by the representative of the silk dyers and was followed by those of the calico printers and the fustian cutters.

The outcome of this meeting reflects a development, the importance of which historians have only just begun to appreciate. Until recently it has been often assumed that Chartism and trade unionism were two mutually exclusive expressions of working-class endeavour. By some historians, notably Professor Asa Briggs, a pendulum explanation had been invoked to clarify the relationship between them. Working men concentrated upon trade union activity in times of good trade and turned to politics when trade was poor. This thesis is both valid and useful, as a general case, but it must admit of significant exceptions. Certain trades, the skilled handicrafts in particular, retained their organisation through the worst years of depression, and these sometimes turned collectively to Chartism, in response to wage cutting or the threat of downgrading, because reflection had taught their members that a political solution was relevant to their economic difficulties. The columns of the Northern Star during the first six months of 1842 furnish many examples of initiatives by various groups of tradesmen to declare for the Charter or join the National Charter Association. The ‘cordwainers of Colne’, the ‘associated shoemakers of Wigan’, the fustian cutters of Manchester, are all cases in point. Particularly interesting is the conversion of the engineering trades of Manchester, which took place in the two months prior to the outbreak of the Plug Revolt in Lancashire. On May 31st the mechanics, and on July 12^th the hammermen, adopted at their general meetings resolutions to become members of the N.C.A. It is not suggested that these bodies were anything more than local societies or branches or that their conversion to Chartism in any way typified the attitude of national organisations like the Journeymen Steam Engine and Machine Makers Friendly Society, which were often as scrupulous as the Methodists in adopting ‘No Politics’ rules. Nevertheless, at the regional level, in places like Manchester, London and Glasgow, there was a marked coalescence of Chartism and the trade societies, and this exerted a profound influence upon the character of the General Strike.

Success in converting the unions to the Six Points was partly the result of a deliberate Chartist effort to achieve it. Numerous initiatives were taken in the two or three months before the Plug Plot, some of them local and uncoordinated, like that of the Preston Chartists in June for the establishment of a standing joint conference of Chartists and trade unionists, which would refuse to separate until it had achieved the protection of trade and the constitutional liberties of the people. As yet Feargus O’Connor and the editor of the Northern Star newspaper showed no interest in the movement, but three of the leading members of the Executive of the National Charter Association appear to have been involved in it, whether individually or collectively. P. M. McDouall and James Leach were active in lecturing to the trades on the virtues of Chartism, whilst John Campbell, the Secretary of the Association, published a Letter to the Chartists of Great Britain in the Star on June 11^th, calling for a union of the Chartists and the trade societies. `Without union’, he urged, ‘we are powerless; with it we are everything’. There are strong indications, however, that the missionary activity undertaken by the Chartists was only successful because it coincided with a spontaneous development within the trades themselves. Some groups were clearly influenced in their decisions for the Charter by deputations sent to them by other trades--the hammermen by the mechanics, the mechanics by the carpenters. Moreover, in the dialogue conducted at the lodge meetings, the argument for becoming Chartist which carried the greatest weight was the economic one. Political power was necessary to secure the object for which the unions had themselves been founded--the protection of the labour of working men. This could be made relevant to the needs even of those aristocratic trades, which were merely threatened with wage cutting, dilution of labour and machine competition, and not yet seriously oppressed. In this connection it is useful to note an address issued in June 1842 by the Committee charged with the responsibility of preparing the monument to Henry Hunt in Manchester. It reminded ‘the aristocratical portion of the trades’, which had hitherto stood aloof from Chartism, that ‘the same circumstances are at work still which have brought down the wages of, and impoverished other trades, and will continue, if not checked, and operate upon theirs also’. In an age when, as Mr Edward Thompson has shown, the forces of economic change were operating to produce a widespread insecurity among artisans of all kinds, this was a powerful case to use. Its employment reveals not merely the greater sophistication with which Chartists were coming to present their arguments, but also the extent to which the trade societies were deflected towards Chartism by factors present in their own shop-floor experience.

It would seem, therefore, that the sudden assembling of the trades delegates during the Plug Plot disturbances and their declaration for a strike in favour of the People’s Charter can be satisfactorily explained by these features of the recent history of the trades, and without recourse to any notion that the delegates were the instruments of a Chartist plot.

Thus far pursued, our investigation tends in its result to support the generally accepted conclusion that no deep or premeditated nodal conspiracy underlay the disturbances of 1842. We have been led, nevertheless, to attribute to leadership a larger part than has been usually allowed. This leadership was opportunistic and often decentralised, moulding events rather than creating them, arising from disseminated assumptions rather than responding to a single controlling voice. Nevertheless, it existed and its presence rendered the outbreak more serious than it would otherwise have been. It remains to consider briefly how effectively direction was exercised when it reached the level of the conferences of trade delegates.

The men who assembled in the Sheardown Inn, Tib Street, on 15^th August, 1842 to resume the task of directing the strike took a serious view of their responsibilities. They clearly regarded themselves as a sort of alternative government, charged with the duty of bringing order out of the chaos that had arisen. In a published Address to the Trades of Manchester and the Surrounding Districts they claimed to be the ‘true and bona fide representatives of the people of those districts’ and a ‘personification of the public will’. One of their number told the crowds assembled outside their meeting place that they ‘considered themselves a committee of public safety at the present crisis’. Perhaps this was largely rhetoric, derived from Tom Paine and the English Jacobin tradition, which had formed part of the culture of the artisans since the time of the French Revolution. It had, nevertheless, practical implications. The delegates were deeply aware, almost pathetically aware, of the need to provide the country with leadership. When the magistrates of Manchester broke up their meeting on August 16^th, they used the last few minutes available to them to pass a resolution re-affirming their recommendation to the people to cease work until the Charter became the law of the land, and proposing to send delegates to every part of the United Kingdom to enlist the co-operation of the middle and labouring classes in carrying the same. Admittedly, there was a dissentient minority in their ranks anxious to order a return to work, but of eighty-five delegates assembled on August 15^th, fifty-eight declared for going on with the strike until the Charter had been enacted. Even after the disaster of Tuesday 15^th, when the authorities entered their meeting place at the Hall of Science and gave them ten minutes to disperse, the delegates met again each day that week, and carefully explored every avenue of approach for keeping the strike going. This they did notwithstanding the fact that their ranks were being continually thinned by arrests.

It is true, of course, that the exertions of the delegates were strangely out of proportion to the extent of their direct authority. Elected upon a local basis, they were in no sense the apex of a nationwide organisation. Although it was claimed that one of their meetings, on August 12^th, was attended by delegates from Yorkshire as well as from Lancashire, the subsequent gathering on the 15^th, which was more carefully screened, seems to have been mainly constituted by the trades of Manchester and a group of towns and townships lying to the north and east of Manchester. From the lists given in the local press it seems that there were representatives from Oldham, Royton, Clayton and Lees, from Bury, Heywood, Middleton and Radcliffe Bridge, from Ashton, Stalybridge, Hyde and Mossley, and from the cotton spinners of Bolton. But the only delegates from the west of Manchester were from the vicinities of Eccles and Leigh, while none were recorded from the towns to the south. Indirectly, however, the delegates had scope for exercising a much wider influence. If only they could have rallied the trades of the Manchester district behind the strike for the People’s Charter, they could have carried far distant regions with them too, for there was a pronounced tendency in many areas to look to Manchester for a lead as to what to do. At Merthyr Tydfil, while the miners hesitated whether to strike or not, the authorities placarded the town with notices of the failure of the turn out in Manchester in order to place a damper on the proceedings. The Chief Constable of Glamorganshire commented as follows on the situation there: ‘Unless the news from the North be bad I do not apprehend an outbreak. I believe this to be a shadow of the Manchester affair and their object the Charter, and their cry is now or never.’ Likewise at Carlisle, in the week beginning August 14^th, public meetings were held on three successive evenings to hear reports from `the conference of the working classes’ and on the state of the Manchester district. At Trowbridge in Wiltshire, also, the working men waited upon information that the operatives elsewhere intended to persist in the struggle before deciding whether to commit themselves to it. They expressed the desire for a public body to sit either in London or in Manchester to direct the movement.

Inasmuch as the trade delegates in Manchester endeavoured to rise to their responsibilities it would be difficult to maintain that the general strike for the People’s Charter failed for want of leadership. Why, then, did it fail? There are three main reasons.

Firstly, it failed because it was bound to fail. The time-scale was against it. In a society less artificial than our own, the mere suspension of labour by the industrial working class could not subdue the government in less time than it would take to reduce the strikers by starvation. By their insistence on abstaining from work until the People’s Charter had become the law of the land, whilst at the same time refusing to countenance any violence, the trade delegates sitting in Manchester committed themselves to logical inconsistencies which they were ultimately unable to resolve. The dilemma was recognised in their debates. Candelet, a delegate from Hyde, observed in terms which recalled Benbow’s fiery pamphlet of 1832, that ‘there was plenty of provisions for them on the hills--plenty of good crops with which they might supply their wants’, but another member immediately inquired: `How could supplies be obtained during the turnout consistently with “Peace, Law and Order”? To be sure they were told to go to the hills and find provisions, but the man who had reared those vegetable productions had a first and inalienable right to them.’ The point was a fair one for at their meeting on the previous Saturday the delegates had issued a placard headed `Justice!!!, Peace!!!, Law!!!, Order!!!’ In fact, the only way in which a general strike could have been sustained for a lengthy period without violence was by getting the shopkeepers to extend credit to the workpeople while the turnout lasted; and by drawing on voluntary contributions from the well-to-do. The delegates entertained hopes of being able to effect these purposes, for they negotiated through a friendly shopkeeper named Williscroft both with other shopkeepers and with meetings of dissenting ministers. Almost their last throw before giving up the struggle was to convene a meeting of shopkeepers on Friday, August 19th. Nevertheless, despite the fact that printed invitations were delivered at several thousand shops, the project turned out to be a fiasco. Only a handful of people attended. The truth was that, although the shopkeepers and publicans of Stalybridge and Ashton-under-Lyne formed committees to assist the operatives to obtain `a fair days wage for a fair days work’ in the early stages of the strike, these bodies issued notices threatening to withdraw their support as soon as the movement took a political turn. The delegates could rely on some aid from the lower middle classes in a struggle for higher wages, if only because the repeated wage-cuttings of recent years had diminished the shopkeepers’ custom, but they could not have it in a strike for the Charter.

Some delegates--they were in a minority--were ready to cut through the knot by diminishing the insistence on Law and Order. The extremists were mainly Irishmen, like William Duffy, who had once been a lecturer for the Anti-Corn Law League, but had apparently turned against his former employers by the time that the delegates met, because, having threatened the government to stop the supplies if the Corn Laws were not repealed, they had then proceeded, as magistrates of Manchester, to put down public meetings during the strike. Duffy was the principal activist during the meetings of the delegates. He was continually striving to bring the conference into conflict with the authorities by urging it to issue a placard denouncing a proclamation, made by the magistrates against public meetings, as unjust and unconstitutional, and to call for a run on the banks. The wonder is that he was not prosecuted. This could indicate that he was still secretly an agent for the Anti-Corn Law League and that the magistrates of that party managed to protect him. My own conviction is that he appears to have been primarily an Irish nationalist, seeking to make trouble for the Tory government without overmuch concern for the English faction which he happened to be in league with at the time. The same explanation almost certainly goes for Patrick McIntyre, who eventually stormed out of a meeting of the delegates, accusing his fellows of being ‘frightened from their propriety by the very “name” of an army’, affirming his belief that `the way to an Englishman’s understanding was through his belly’ and thanking the Almighty that `he did not belong to a nation whose intellectual susceptibilities were aroused by such carnal instincts’. The role of Irish discontents in the Plug Plot is a subject which, so far as I am aware, has never been investigated, but, to judge by the names of men who played a leading role in fomenting it--Patrick Brophy, Daniel Donovan, Bernard McCartney, Patrick McIntyre, William Duffy, Christopher Doyle--one which would repay exploration.

The general strike for the People’s Charter failed secondly because it lacked sufficient support from workers in the basic industries. This is sometimes obscured by the fact that the conference of trade delegates had so large a majority in favour of it. The delegates, however, although they represented a wide range of occupations, were not nicely proportioned in number to the strength and importance of their constituents. More than a half of those present on August 15^th came from what is loosely designated the aristocracy of labour: the unrevolutionised skilled handicrafts and the mechanical or engineering trades. Out in the country, in the mill towns about Manchester, nothing like a firm consensus for adopting the Charter developed at any stage in the outbreak. Some towns like Hyde and Glossop declared enthusiastically for a Chartist strike; others such as Stockport, Macclesfield, Stalybridge, Mossley, Lees and Bury, remained basically in favour of keeping to a demand for higher wages. Chartist orators, or invading mobs from other towns, sometimes persuaded their inhabitants to declare temporarily for the Six Points, but the decisions thus reached were often quickly rescinded. The divisions within the working classes cannot be easily explained. They were often more a matter of locality than of occupation. It is, nevertheless, clear that the proposal to abstain from work until the People’s Charter became the law of the land was not endorsed by the workmen in some important sectors of British industry. The dissentients included not only the men of the cotton towns of south-east Lancashire, who had begun the strike for higher wages, but also the colliers of Monmouthshire, who answered an appeal from their colleagues of Merthyr with the words: ‘You left us in the lurch at Newport, and now you may go to the devil your own way.’

Finally, the strike failed because of the action taken by the government to restore order. This was swift and determined, more vigorous perhaps than that of any government since Lord Sidmouth was at the Home Office. It quickly removed the leaders, demoralised the participants in the turnout mobs, and created a framework of stability within which a return to work could and did commence. One incidental effect of the Home Secretary’s policy was that, by encouraging the magistrates to suppress all large meetings in the disturbed areas on the grounds that in present circumstances they had ‘a manifest tendency to create terror and to endanger the public peace’, he removed one of the principal means by which advice to strike until the People’s Charter became law was disseminated. This was instrumental in robbing the strike of its political character. It did not, however, take away the matter of the discontent on which Chartism fed. Only time and the adoption of a more humane approach to social problems could do that.

F. C. Mather, ‘The General Strike of 1842: A Study in Leadership, Organisation and the Threat of Revolution during the Plug Plot Disturbances’, in Popular Protest and Public Order: Six Studies in British History 1790-1920, eds. R. Quinault and J. Stevenson, George Allen & Unwin, 1974, pages 115-35.

Sources for Chartism: Harrison on 1842

…Meanwhile throughout the summer of 1842 preparations were going forward for the November municipal elections. A Central Municipal Election Committee was set up in July to organise the return of Chartist councillors. The officers appointed at the first meeting were Joshua Hobson (chairman), William Barron (treasurer) and William Brook (secretary). Ward committees were established as it was hoped to put forward several Chartist candidates. The Northern Star in an eve-of-poll editorial stressed the ‘necessity for the Chartists acquiring local power’; and urged Chartists to capture ‘those outposts to general government, the local offices’, since ‘local power is the key to general power’. This power is within the reach of Chartists - ‘It rests with themselves to put forth their hand and clutch it. It offers itself to their grasp - let them seize it!’ However, only two Chartist candidates actually stood in 1842 and neither was successful. Hobson, who contested the West, Hunslet, and Holbeck wards polled 205 votes in Hunslet, where the main contest was fought, nearly 400 in Holbeck, and in the West ward a mere 53. William Barron polled only a handful of votes in the East ward.

This result was not unencouraging, however, for the immediate background to the elections had been by no means auspicious. In August. the West Riding had been convulsed by the Plug Riots. Beginning in Lancashire the movement had spread across to Todmorden and the towns of the West Riding, where the prevailing unemployment and distress provided ample basis for spontaneous sympathetic action. During the third week in August excitement in Leeds ran high. On Saturday came news of the turn-outs in the West Riding, to be followed on Sunday by movements of troops through the town. William Beckett, M.P. (Colonel of the Yorkshire Hussars), the Earl of Harewood, Prince George of Cambridge, and Lord Cardigan, all arrived to command various units of Hussars and Lancers; and on Monday 1,500 special constables were sworn in. Reports of riots and clashes in Halifax came in during Tuesday, and a meeting of 4,000 operatives on Hunslet Moor passed resolutions in favour of the Charter. Then on Wednesday the turn-out began in the villages near Leeds. Some 6,000 operatives stopped all mills in Calverley, Stanningley, Bramley, Pudsey, and the immediate neighbourhood. Next they drove in the plugs at mills in Armley, Wortley, Farnley, Hunslet and Holbeck. By five o’clock in the evening they were marching down Meadow Lane, Leeds, from Holbeck. All mills in the town were stopped, including Marshall’s, where J. G. Marshall attempted to defend the mill gates, but was driven back. There was a clash with the police at one of the mills, and Prince George and the Lancers were brought up to disperse the strikers. During an attack on the mill of Titley, Tatham, and Walker, in Water Lane, the Riot Act was read, two pieces of artillery were paraded, and thirty-eight people were arrested. On Thursday morning the town was quiet, except for a turn-out at the coal pits at Hunslet and Middleton. The pits were again visited on Friday when fourteen prisoners were taken. A meeting on Hunslet Moor was dispersed by police and soldiers. About 1,200 infantry arrived in the town, the White Cloth Hall was used as a temporary barracks, and General Brotherton was sent from London to take command of the district.

Such was the extent of the disturbances in Leeds. Of the thirty-eight prisoners taken during the affray on Wednesday evening, twenty-seven were committed to York for trial on 3^rd September, and received sentences varying from two to eighteen months’ imprisonment. The fourteen prisoners from Beeston and Churwell, who were mostly colliers, were similarly treated. There is little evidence to show that the local Chartists were responsible for the riots, though they were certainly prepared to make political capital for the Charter out of them. None of the leading Chartists in the town were among the prisoners, nor were there many strangers among the rioters. The affair was basically a violent reaction of unemployed operatives, spurred to desperation by hunger and destitution. Nevertheless the Chartist name was almost inevitably connected with the outbreak; and this, coupled with the government’s policy of arresting Chartist leaders, did not augur well for the Chartist cause in the autumn of 1842

J.F.C. Harrison, ‘Chartism in Leeds’, in Chartist Studies, ed. A. Briggs, 2^nd ed., Macmillan, 1965, pages 88-90.

Sources for Chartism: Donald Read on 1842

Yet although by the summer of 1842 despair about the prospects of Chartism was setting in, as it had done in 1839, this time despair did not lead to apathetic acceptance of distress but (after a pause) to direct industrial action. Economic distress was now at its peak.

‘Any man passing through the district’, wrote the Manchester Times on 9^th July, ‘and observing the condition of the people, will at once perceive the deep and ravaging distress that prevails, laying industry prostrate, desolating families, and spreading abroad discontent and misery where recently happiness and content were enjoyed. The picture which the manufacturing districts now present is absolutely frightful. Hungry and half-clothed men and women are stalking through the streets begging for bread.’

‘Stockport to Let’, one wag chalked on the door of an empty house in Stockport: one house in eight was empty in the town. A soup kitchen in Manchester was dispensing a thousand gallons of soup per day to the poor. This was the background to the Plug Plot strikes.

The spark which set off the explosion was a threatened reduction in wages, already much reduced. A meeting of protest was held on Mottram Moor on Sunday, 7^th August at which some 8,000-10,000 operatives were present. The meeting passed resolutions calling for the Charter and for ‘a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’. Events soon proved that this latter demand was much the more widely supported. All work had ceased in Ashton on the 5^th, and on the 9^th the strikers there marched into Manchester. Within hours the strike had spread throughout the cotton districts. In nearly every town work stopped and excited meetings of operatives assembled to demand fair wages and fair hours of work. A meeting of about two hundred trade delegates gathered in Manchester on 11^th August and demanded a ten-hour working day and fair rates of wages for both weaving operatives and factory workers; detailed wage rates were drawn up for every branch of the trade.

Thus within a few days a great and spontaneous upsurge of feeling had taken place: extreme suffering had led to sudden action.

‘The people in the neighbouring towns were entirely ignorant of what was coming; there was no combination among them to have a general strike; no deputies had travelled to arrange it, and yet there was a bond of union so firm, that by almost universal consent the movement was sanctioned and adopted. This bond was stronger than a written and sealed bond; it was the bond of suffering and of servitude; it was the feeling that life was become a round of helpless drudgery, or the endurance of forced idleness with want and starvation.’

The strike was thus a sudden economic explosion, not the beginning of a planned political revolution. There was no causal connection between Chartism and the outbreak. Many of the strike meetings did indeed pass vague resolutions in favour of the Charter, but the audiences were much more interested in work and wages than in Chartism. The Chartists made no attempt to claim the credit for the outbreak, but merely attempted to exploit it once it had occurred. By a coincidence a national Chartist delegate meeting had been called to meet in Manchester in the third week of August; O’Connor, McDouall, Cooper, and most of the national leaders of the movement were present. The meeting passed a resolution strongly urging the strikers to remain out until the Charter had been won: ‘while the Chartist body did not originate the present cessation from labour,’ it declared, the Chartist delegates none the less wished to express ‘their deep sympathy with their constituents, the working men now on strike; ... we strongly approve of the extension and continuance of the present struggle till the PEOPLE’S CHARTER becomes a legislative enactment’. This appeal does not seem, however, to have had much effect. Its impact was seriously undermined by differences within the Chartist leadership. O’Connor advocated peaceable action in support of the strikes and the Charter. McDouall, on the other hand, was all for physical force; he urged the people to ‘leave the decision to the God of justice and of battle’. The Chartists were thus seriously divided at a vital moment, and their division lost them whatever chance they may have had of gaining control of the strike movement. Nothing was more remarkable, observed the North of England Magazine in retrospect, ‘than the feebleness and incapacity of the Chartist body’ during the Plug Plot crisis. Not that their ineffectiveness saved the Chartist leaders from arrest; by the beginning of October virtually all of them, national and local leaders alike, had been arrested.

To escape arrest McDouall fled the country. His appeal to physical force had met with almost no response: the strike movement in Lancashire was remarkable for its peacefulness. Plugs had been pulled out of factory boilers (hence the name given to the movement), but this was generally the limit of popular violence. ‘The object has not been to destroy, but simply to stop,’ remarked the Manchester Times on 20^th August; ‘and the simplest and least destructive manner has been chosen .... While at a distance Manchester is thought to be in a state of siege, the whole town may be traversed without a single act of violence being witnessed.’

But peacefulness could not in itself make the strike movement a success. Bound by laissez-faire economic beliefs and confident in the support of the military, the cotton masters offered no concessions. Reluctantly but steadily the operatives returned to work. Some mills in Manchester were already back in production as early as 17^th August. Within a month the great strike had petered out.

The fact that the Plug Plot strikes could break out without Chartist assistance and the ineffective part played by the Chartist leaders during their course, showed how weak the Chartist movement in Lancashire had become by the summer of 1842. It was in fact destined never fully to revive again. Between 1842 and 1846 a great change came over the social atmosphere in Lancashire. The hostile feeling of the operatives towards their employers which had poisoned the social atmosphere for so long and which the Chartists had exploited so assiduously, at last began to lessen. Between 1842 and 1846 both the attitude and the aspirations of the Lancashire working classes underwent a remarkable change.

D. Read, ‘Chartism in Manchester’, in Chartist Studies, ed. A. Briggs, 2^nd ed., Macmillan, 1965, pages 53-56.

Source for Chartism: Ward on 1842

In the industrial areas 1842 was a year of depression, widespread unemployment and wage reductions. The choice for many operatives, as Factory Inspector Horner reported, was ‘employment on any terms, or starvation’. Inevitably, tempers in many districts ran high. There were riots at Blackburn in May, and on 5 June Marsden told a large crowd on Enfield Moor that they should march under arms to London to demand the Charter from the Queen. Emotions were heightened by the case of Samuel Holberry, the young Sheffield Chartist imprisoned for conspiracy and riot in March 1840. Holberry, like other West Riding Chartists, was imprisoned at Northallerton but after the death of his associate John Clayton was removed to York Castle, following the appeals of his friends. But the young revolutionary’s health could not stand prison conditions, and the Home Office agreed to his release, subject to sureties for his future behaviour. However, Holberry died on 21^st June and was thereafter celebrated in Sheffield as ‘a martyr to the cause of Democracy’. His funeral on the 27^th provoked an immense rally and a new folklore. Harney delivered a graveside oration:  “Our task is not to weep; we must leave tears to women. Our task is to act; to labour with heart and soul for the destruction of the horrible system under which Holberry has perished. . . . Compared with the honest, virtuous fame of this son of toil, how poor, how contemptible appear the so-called glories that emblazon the name of an Alexander or a Napoleon! . . . Come weal, come woe, we swear . . . to have retribution for the death of Holberry, swear to have our Charter law and to annihilate for ever the blood-stained depotism which has slain its thousands of martyrs, and tens of thousands of patriots and immolated at its shrine the lovers of liberty and truth.”  Holberry scarcely deserved his eulogy; but Chartism needed its martyrs after the rejection of the second petition.

Chartists were not alone in talking of possible violence. The League’s determination to embarrass the Conservative government had led some of its supporters to make equally threatening gestures, and Oastler cautioned his Northern supporters against falling into the ‘trap’: ‘if the Leaguers urge you to violence, leave that work to them!’ As the 205 remaining NCA localities elected a new executive (McDouall, Leach, Campbell, Williams and Bairstow) in June rumours were spreading that the League planned to provoke major strikes by extensive wage-cuts or lockouts. Indeed, reductions in the West Midlands had already provoked some strikes.

In early August the strike enthusiasm spread to the North. Here, Chartists had certainly discussed striking, but were scarcely in a position to organise it. Workers were provoked by threatened 25 per cent reductions at Ashton cotton mills in July and started a wave of strikes on 5^th August. A rally on Mottram Moor combined the demand for the Charter with the Oastlerite call for ‘a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work’. There-after touring mobs of ‘turn-outs’ travelled through the Lancashire mill districts, forcibly drawing the boiler plugs in order to create a general strike. As the ‘Plug Plot’ spread, Chartists naturally sought to use it, by carrying resolutions to ‘stay out’ until the Charter was accepted. Chartist leaders assembling at Manchester were astonished at the scene. ‘Not a single mill at work! Something must come out of this and something serious too’, Campbell declared on the first sight of Manchester, to Cooper who had narrowly escaped arrest in the rioting Potteries. The sixty delegates honestly confessed that they ‘did not originate the present cessation from labour’ but ‘strongly approved of the extension and continuance of the present struggle till the PEOPLE’S CHARTER became a legislative enactment’. But though, for once, the Chartist leadership was near the scene of action, its chronic divisions prevented it from assuming command; McDouall raged about `leaving the decision to the God of justice and of battle’. The rioters took little notice of philosophies, as they engaged in the sort of spontaneous outburst which Oastler had long predicted and which the NCA was unable to organise. Working people closed the mills in Ashton, Bacup, Blackburn, Bolton, Burnley, Bury, Chorley, Crompton, Droylsden, Dukinfield, Heywood, Hyde, Manchester, Newton, Oldham, Preston, Rochdale, Stalybridge and Stockport. The ragged hordes who swept over the Pennines to close Yorkshire mills in Batley, Bingley, Birstall, Bradford, Bramley, Calverley, Cleckheaton, Dewsbury, Gomersal, Halifax, Hebden Bridge, Heckmondwike, Holmfirth, Honley, Horbury, Horton, Huddersfield, Keighley, Leeds, Littletown, Marsden, Millbridge, Mytholmroyd, Ossett, Pudsey, Skipton, Stanningley, Thornhill and Todmorden cared little for Chartism. Their protest was against foul industrial conditions…And up the brave men of the ‘Union’ briefly went. But they ‘went’ without much Chartist support. The Star attacked McDouall’s ‘wild strain of recklessness’, and O’Connor desperately tried to prove his own moderation. McDouall’s bravery immediately evaporated, as he fled abroad.

Unrest spread via Carlisle to Scotland, where conditions were desperate in several areas. The weaving town of Paisley faced near starvation; the Lanarkshire miners struck in protest against wage cuts; rallies of the unemployed on Glasgow Green demanded instant relief; Dunfermline weavers burnt down local factories; in several burghs it was resolved to strike until the adoption of the Charter. Yet in general the moderation of the Scottish radical press and Chartist leadership restrained Scottish Chartists. The principal scene of activity was the flax and jute town of Dundee, where the shoe-maker-preacher John Duncan and the Democratic Society organised a strike at a series of excited meetings on Magdalen Green in August. But the affair ended with the tragi-comic march of a ragged group of Chartists to Forfar, the arrest of the leaders and the real tragedy of Duncan’s death in a lunatic asylum in 1845.

The strike wave soon ended. By late August many workers were returning on the employers’ terms; by late September all was over. And it soon became apparent that the Chartists had made another strategic error. They could never have organised the strikes; they had only sought to take advantage of disputes caused by industrial troubles; but they were widely blamed for the events. The overworked Graham at the Home Office and the Tory publicist Croker continued to suspect that the League might be at the root of the trouble, but were never able to gain proof. Graham was ‘by no means prepared to use Military force to compel a reduction of wages…’ He regarded the government’s role as being ‘to preserve peace, to put down plunder and to prevent…intimidation’. But although he accepted that workers had ‘just cause of complaint against their masters’ and was sickened by the panic of cowardly justices, he considered that ‘a social insurrection of a very formidable character’ could only be met by force. And it was the Chartists who were arrested. By late September, John Mowbray was complaining of the ‘languid state’ of the cause in the North East.

In the autumn of 1842, Chartism was once again rent by bitter recriminations. McDouall, Cooper and others had undoubtedly been excited enough by the opportunity offered by the strikes to advocate violence in some form. But O’Connor had opposed such talk, and the NCA had limited itself to asserting that ‘all the evils which affected society…arose solely from class legislation’ and urging workers to stay out until ‘the only remedy for the present alarming distress and widespread destitution’ -- the Charter -- was adopted. Lovett added his voice, urging workers to ‘avoid violence…[and] restrain outrage’. But Chartists were widely arrested and sentenced. From October, 274 cases were tried in Staffordshire, resulting in 54 sentences of transportation and 154 of imprisonment; Cooper, initially released, was later sent to Stafford Gaol for two years, during which he wrote his celebrated Purgatory of Suicides (1845). Fewer cases were tried in Lancashire, culminating with the trial of O’Connor and fifty-eight others in March 1843. Chartists again raised defence funds.

O’Connor, as usual, had temporised. While Hill had condemned the strikes entirely as a League plot, O’Connor had seized the main chance. Both men had opposed McDouall’s fatal motion, but O’Connor had agreed to its being publicised by the NCA executive (of which he was not a member). Feargus was therefore surprised to be arrested in late September, and henceforth blamed McDouall for the disaster--even opposing the collection of funds to support him in exile. McDouall returned to Britain in 1844, blaming O’Connor for his flight and subsequent poverty. It is difficult to decide between two such convincing liars. Another whipping boy was the executive, which appears to have been neither efficient nor altogether honest. Cooper consequently proposed its replacement, and a December investigation of its activities and accounts led to its disappearance. The League itself remained highly suspect in many Chartist (and Tory) minds. O’Connor therefore turned another policy somersault, condemning ‘the leaning of the Complete Suffragists to the Free Trade party’: now the CSU must be destroyed as a ‘League Job’. The opportunity was soon at hand. The CSU-Chartist alliance was to be cemented at a Birmingham conference on 27 December, which was to be elected (on Lovett’s plan) half by electors and half by non-voters. O’Connor denounced this scheme and urged Chartists to secure election wherever possible. After some bitter arguments, the result was a Chartist victory: to Sturge’s mortification, O’Connor was returned for Birmingham. The CSU and others were aware of the danger; as O’Brien wrote, “A conference composed of such materials as Mr Feargus O’Connor would pack into it would soon find itself utterly powerless and without influence for any purposes but those of mischief …”  But the CSU could do nothing against O’Connorite packing. ‘The Chartists were anxious to get their men elected if possible at the Complete Suffrage meetings,’ recalled Gammage, ‘in order to avoid the expense falling on themselves alone, and in many cases they succeeded in so doing.’

The conference, attended by 374 delegates, assembled in the Birmingham Mechanics’ Institute. The arrogance of a section of the CSU, in rejecting the Chartist name and presenting a secretly prepared 96-clause ‘New Bill of Rights’ in place of the Charter, achieved the almost impossible by uniting the Chartists. Lovett proposed and O’Connor seconded a motion to substitute the Charter for the Bill -- although Lovett (whose ‘lip…was curled in scorn’ as O’Connor spoke, according to Gammage) scarcely enjoyed the alliance. Middle-class CSU men were dismayed by Lovett’s opposition; his known hostility to O’Connor and sympathy with a class-collaboration policy had seemed to guarantee his support. But honest Lovett could not accept the dropping of that document which had advocated  “just and equal representation…in plain and definite language, capable of being understood and appreciated by the great mass of the people…[and for which] vast numbers had suffered imprisonment, transportation and death…”

It was in vain that Lawrence Heyworth maintained that ‘it is not your principles that we dislike, but your leaders’. To Chartists there was something sacred about the old cause and the old styles; and there was a blasphemy, a sacrilege in the proposed change. ‘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!’ roared Harney. He would not give way,  “to suit the whim, to please the caprice or to serve the selfish ends of mouthing priests, political traffickers, sugar-weighting, 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.”  Chartists were simply not prepared to be patronised by tactless and supercilious Complete Suffragists. To Cooper it seemed that “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.”

The varied Chartists carried Lovett’s motion by 193 votes to 94 on 28 December. Sturge thereupon led a secession of the majority of CSU delegates to the local temperance hall, to prepare a Bill for presentation by Crawford. The breach was accompanied by expressions of hope for future collaboration. But the fact was that O’Connor had broken another danger to his controlling position.

O’Connor’s constant purges inevitably cut down conference membership. Having done his duty, Lovett departed. By 31^st December only thirty-seven delegates remained in the NCA-dominated section. And even now the NCA men (who were joined by a few CSU delegates, including Solly, while Vincent threw in his lot with the CSU) were divided. Cooper wanted an annual convention, from which a five-man executive should be elected annually, with only the secretary being paid a regular salary. His plan was (for the moment) generally accepted. But White bitterly opposed Parry’s proposal for continued co-operation with the CSU, and O’Connor, while professing to calm matters, provoked further divisions. Many Chartists left the conference to face their trials, often with great courage: White, while conducting his defence, insisted on the provision of sandwiches and wine and William Jones maintained a running fight with Baron Gurney. The sheer guts of men about to go to prison deserved a worthier cause than the highly personalised, self-centred O’Connorite dream. Place might protest; Lovett might be sickened; Oastler was inevitably almost unheard. What was left of organised English Chartism was now controlled by the megalomaniac Irishman. Place’s rival Metropolitan Parliamentary Reform Association soon disappeared.

The triumph was almost complete. Real or potential rivals to the despot were either running ineffective evening classes (like Lovett) or about to be imprisoned (like the now doubting Cooper). The CSU was cut down to its appropriate size. Its Bill, proposed by Crawford, was rejected by 101 votes to 32 on 18^th May 1843. And when, on 31^st January 1844, it dared to hold a rally under Crawford at the traditional venue of the Crown and Anchor tavern, O’Connor and his supporters contrived virtually to destroy it. But O’Connor was now the monarch of a declining kingdom. By fair means and foul, he had converted the Chartist remnant into a personal following. He was now to try to mould it to new purposes. A sign of coming attitudes was given in the Star in January 1843:  “Chartism is superior to Christianity in this respect, that it takes its name from no man…There should be no sectarianism in it. Chartism is no invention of one man, any more than truth is. Our cause has no father but the First Great Cause…What greater honour can a man have than to be a Chartist? …We worship Truth -- we worship God.”  This was not the first or the last appearance of such arrogance. And it was sadly unfounded. 1842 marked a Chartist peak never to be reached again.

J. T. Ward, Chartism, Batsford, 1973, pages 160-67.