‘Revolutionary Chartists – From Whom May Heaven Protect Us’

This is a review recently published by Stephen Roberts on his excellent Chartism & The Chartists website

‘Revolutionary Chartists – From Whom May Heaven Protect Us’  – Cambridge Independent Press, 12 January 1856.

If you had been alive in the Victorian period you would certainly have known who the Chartists were.  This was a national movement.  In towns and villages across Britain working people gathered to read the Northern Star, collect signatures for petitions, organise marches and tea parties, listen to speeches by ‘missionaries’, paste up posters. Almost nowhere was impervious to the Chartist campaign.  You couldn’t even travel on a railway train without a Chartist demanding the Northern Star from the newspaper seller.  Of course, you might have been one of these Chartists.  If you were a weaver or a frame worker knitter or a wool comber, chances are you were. The Chartists were everywhere, demanding a say in law-making for working men.  And long after they were gone, they will still remembered … and feared.  Little wonder that, as late as 1856, the editor of the Cambridge Independent was still shaking in his boots at a return of the Chartists.

The publication of Chartist Studies, edited by Asa Briggs, in 1959 launched a flurry of research into the Chartist localities.  Whatever William Lovett and his friends were up to in London was for the time being set aside.  What was going on in Sheffield, Norwich, Brighton and a host of other places was what mattered now.  In the Amateur Historian Dorothy Thompson issued a clarion call for local investigations, offering guidance on how to frame that research and on the sources  that could be consulted (That essay has recently been reprinted in THE DIGNITY OF CHARTISM).  And so articles in local history journals and M.A and Ph.D theses began to appear.  Small saplings soon became dense woods.  As the years passed, we learned more and more about Chartist activities in the localities.  The peak of all this local research was in the 1960s and 1970s, but it continued after that point until we reached the point where we now are:  there is no local Chartist stone undisturbed.

Anyone who wants to read all these articles and theses will need to lock themselves in the stacks of a university library for a fortnight and make very good use of inter-library loans.  The material is that scattered.  The good news is that such extreme measures are no longer necessary.  Happily, Richard Brown has embarked on a two-volume project to survey all the Chartist localities.  The first volume has just been published.  CHARTISM: LOCALITIES, SPACES AND PLACES, Volume 1 examines London, East Anglia, and the Midlands.  The rest of the country will be covered in the second volume, due next year.  The first thing to say about this first volume is that it is extremely detailed.  Anyone interested in what the Chartists in Suffolk or Worcestershire or Derbyshire will  almost certainly find the answers they seek.  A notable strength of Brown’s work is the depth of his research.  Whilst he has, of course, delved into the many essays that have been published about local Chartism, he has also returned to the primary sources, particularly newspapers.  This first volume is an extremely useful addition to the study of Chartism. It is thoroughly-researched, clearly-researched and, above all, very handy.

Chartism: Localities, Spaces and Places, The Midlands and the South

 

Just Published

This, the third part of the series, looks at Chartism from the grassroots. Although I originally intended to deal with the local roots of Chartism in one book, the scale of the project necessitated dividing it in two. Although there is inevitably overlap with Chartism: Rise and Demise, these books focus on how Chartism played out regionally and locally reinforcing the point that local priorities and political agendas did not always correspond with those put forward nationally and that, although the national leadership developed principles and policies, operational details were frequently left to local leaders and organisations. Is it better to see Chartism as a network of semi-autonomous political organisations over which national control was limited rather than a unified political movement? Should we see Chartism as a national debate over the exclusion of the working-classes not simply from the parliamentary franchise but from playing any role in determining the future direction of society, the economy and cultural aspirations? The answer is neither one nor the other but both. The first volume covers southern England and the Midlands. The opening chapter examines Chartism in its local and regional context and how it related to different places and spaces, issues explored in greater detail in the remainder of the book. Chapter 2 examines Chartism in London and the South. Chapter 3 looks at East Anglia, an area of agricultural labour where industrial employment was based largely on the products of farming. Economic and social conditions were not conducive to the development of a mass regional movement. Dealing with the Midlands in one chapter would simply have been too large and consequently I divided it so that Chapter 4 examines the largely agricultural counties while Chapter 5 focuses on those counties where manufacturing and mining were predominant. A Postscript brings the first volume to a conclusion. The second volume looks at northern England covering Yorkshire and the North-East in Chapter 6, Cheshire, Lancashire and the North-West in Chapter 7 and at Scotland, Wales and Ireland respectively in Chapter 8, 9 and 10. It also includes the synoptic concluding chapter.

Protest in 1853: the beginnings

At the beginning of 1853, a series of unconnected incidents when the police acted corruptly or over-zealously contributed to mounting bitterness. A petition from Korong in January protested against police perjury and brutality and a month later, La Trobe brought a policeman to trial for wounding an escaping digger. [1] Incidents like this undermined what little faith the diggers had in the police but they were isolated occurrences. However, a more extended episode occurred on the new Ovens field near Beechworth where ten thousand miners were concentrated at Reid’s Creek. In early February, a trooper accidentally killed a digger during a police raid leading to the Police Camp being stormed and the destruction of all their weapons. Order was quickly and sensitively restored by J. M. Clow, the able commissioner at Spring Creek. [2] At a meeting on 11 February chaired by Dr Owens, the miners decided to petition for a full enquiry. [3] La Trobe agreed to change police personnel on the field and assured the petitioners that he would not tolerate those who abused their authority. Owens was nominated as the diggers’ representative at a promised enquiry into the past management of the goldfields on 14 March. [4] By late March, it was reported that Chief Commissioner Wright, in the absence of instructions otherwise from La Trobe would take evidence alone and that Owens should submit his evidence both to Wright and La Trobe.[5] This evaded an understanding that Owens would sit with him on a board of enquiry resulting in a furious meeting on 5 April when, for the first time the diggers’ movement called for the vote. [6]

Photograph of Ovens printed in 1857 Ovens Directory

That in passing this resolution, this meeting cannot refrain from expressing a hope that the day is not far distant when the right of representation in the Legislative Council will be conceded to the Diggers of Victoria.

The meeting submitted their resolutions in the form of a petition to the Legislative Council. [7] The diggers’ organisation on the Ovens field became less vibrant once miners had been ‘much scattered’ to other fields and there was no long-term public movement when Anti-Gold License-Tax meetings were held on other gold-fields in July and August.[8] Owens continued advocating diggers’ rights notably in a letter to the Argus in late July 1853 in which he identified the ‘important three points of the diggers’ rights’:

1st To obtain at once the total withdrawal of the entire license-fee tax, not to accept as a final measure the reduction to ten shillings—and thus establish free labor for the poor man of all countries on the gold-fields’

2nd To obtain an entire change in the government of the gold-fields, in accordance with the common rights of Englishmen and thereby do away with the inefficient and obnoxious system of Commissioners altogether.

3rd To obtain for the mining districts a full and fair representation in the Legislative Council of this colony. [9]

Owens also attended and spoke at meetings in Bendigo in September. [10]

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[1] Geelong Advertiser, 12 January 1853, p. 2.

[2] ‘Scraps from the Ovens’, Argus, 8 February 1853, p. 4, details the incident on 3 February and its immediate aftermath.

[3] Johnston, Allan, ‘John Downes Owens (1809-1866)’, ADB, Vol. 5, pp. 385-386. ‘Scraps from the Ovens’, Argus, 15 February 1853, p. 4, ‘The Ovens Petition’, Argus, 7 March 1853, p. 11,

[4] ‘Scraps from the Ovens’, Argus, 22 March 1853, p. 4.

[5] ‘Scraps from the Ovens’, Argus, 29 March 1853, p. 9. Correspondence between Wright and Owens was printed in Argus, 16, 17, 24, March, 9 April 1853.

[6] ‘Important Public Meeting at the Ovens’, Argus, 8 April 1853, p. 9.

[7] Kent, B., ‘Agitations on the Victorian Gold Fields’, Historical Studies, Vol. 6, (1954), pp. 265-269.

[8] ‘Scraps from the Ovens’, Argus, 6 August 1853, p. 4. A meeting was nonetheless held on 8 August, Argus, 26 August 1853, p. 4.

[9] ‘To the Diggers of the Ovens Gold-Fields’, Argus 29 July 1853, pp. 4-5. See also his letter to the editor, ‘The Diggers and the Press’, Argus, 22 August 1853, p. 5.

[10] Argus, 2, 5 September 1853, p. 5, p. 4.

Unlocking the Land

At the beginning of 1853 the Government established a programme of public works helped by the ready availability of finance and labour. Improvements to roads supported by expenditure by the Legislative Council and supplemented by tolls were aided by setting up a Central Roads Board. [1] There were improvements to street lighting and drainage in Melbourne and Geelong and an act in January 1853 authorised the creation of a university. [2] Despite this and recognition that the Government was now working more effectively, the attacks on La Trobe in the Argus were unrelenting and in December 1852 he resigned, though he remained in office for over a year until his successor was appointed. In the early months of 1853, the Government was severely criticised by the miners over two issues; the need for land reform, and the increasingly vexing issue of police brutality.

Until 1851, squatters’ privileges were not a major concern since there was sufficient agricultural land available to meet demand. Between 1846 and 1851, more than 100,000 acres of land had been sold in the ‘settled’ districts near Melbourne, Geelong and the coastal towns. The Imperial Waste Lands Act 1846 and the Order-in-Council of March 1847 granted leases of up to fourteen years to squatters in the ‘unsettled’ districts covering the northern half of Victoria and for up to eight years in the ‘intermediate’ districts that included the Western District and Gippsland. In both areas, squatters had the sole or pre-emptive right to buy any part of the land during the period of their leases. However, a precise survey was necessary for this to have legal effect, and this had hardly begun by 1851. [3] Once the gold rushes began, growing demand for farming land put pressure on the government to open some of the squatting areas. [4]

This situation created major problems for La Trobe. Should squatters be given pre-emptive rights if leases could not be issued? Squatters were buying and selling land on the assumption that pre-emptive rights applied. Equally pressing was whether the Government could sell any public land outside the ‘settled’ districts where there was little unsold land left. La Trobe was not a defender of the squatters and argued for a liberal interpretation of the 1846 Act believing that it was the duty of government to sell land when and more importantly where it was needed. Consequently in late March 1853, he reserved 700,000 acres ‘for public purposes’ where pre-emptive rights did not apply.[5] The Argus saw this as evidence that ‘the lands are really to be unlocked at last’. [6]

Some members of the Legislative Council were highly critical of the squatters but in July 1852, they were defeated on a motion of extend the boundaries of the ‘settled’ districts and that leases be issued for the ‘intermediate’ districts so that the Government could bring forward land for sale without having to rely on its reserves. Squatters were unwilling to compromise and La Trobe’s executive voted with them to demand the immediate issue of leases for all pastoral land outside the ‘settled’ districts. [7] This was a short-lived victory and radical members of the Council mounted a strident public campaign that led to a compromise of sorts. Protests against the squatters were bitter reflecting long established hostility and the need for outlets for capital than genuine land hunger. [8] Growing demand for land came from successful diggers and urban speculators. For miners, land signified social status; for urban businessmen it was a way to break the economic and political dominance of the ‘squattocracy’.

On 18 August 1852, La Trobe informed the Council that he did not have the power to issue leases immediately and that he would refer the issue to the Colonial Office. In the interim, squatters would be allowed to buy their homestead blocks (up to 640 acres) and the existing policy of reserving land for future sale would continue. [9] While this may have satisfied many squatters, some extremists such as William Campbell reacted bitterly. [10] In early September they restated their position and La Trobe forwarded their views to the Colonial Office along with a wordy dispatch on the issue.[11] La Trobe then gradually brought more land on to the market. With growing demands from diggers for land, in December 1852 a deputation from Castlemaine with a petition signed by thirteen hundred miners was promised that land near the diggings would be sold as soon as they were surveyed. In early 1853, the movement concentrated on the need for sales of 20, 40 and 80 acre lots near the fields. Calls for a colonial reform association were initially voiced at a conference in April 1852 but it was not until November 1852 that an association with a broad radical platform was formed. [12] Increasingly the Colonial Reform Association concentrated on the land question supported by the Argus that, with monotonous regularity, called on the government to ‘Unlock the Lands’.

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[1] ‘Legislative Council’, Argus, 21, 28 January 1853.

[2] Argus, 1 January 1853.

[3] No leases were ever issued under this legislation and throughout the 1850s squatter occupancy of their runs continued with annual licenses.

[4] Roberts, Stephen H., The Squatting Age in Australia 1835-1847, (Melbourne University Press), 1935, reprinted, 1964, pp. 350-358, is useful on the land question in the early 1850s; Clark2, pp. 179-180.

[5] Geelong Advertiser, 24 March 1853.

[6] ‘Unlock the Lands’, Argus, 14 July 1853, reported the creation of the reserve at Kyneton on 12 July, evidence that ‘the squatters shall give way, when necessary, to land purchasers and legitimate settlers’.

[7] ‘Legislative Council’, Argus, 29 July 1852, p. 6, indicates that this was defeated by 18 to 9 with ‘the Nominees and Squatters coalescing in opposition to the popular representatives in the mode which is making both so odious…’ See also, ‘Legislative Council’, Argus, 6 August 1852.

[8] See, for instance, ‘The Squatter Swindle’, Argus, 14 December 1852, p. 6, and ‘Anti-Squatter Meeting’, Argus, 16 September 1852, p. 6, reporting a meeting at Geelong while Argus, 25 August 1852 p. 6, reported a similar meeting in Melbourne two days earlier.

[9] ‘The Leases’, Argus, 21 August 1852, commented on La Trobe’s indecision.

[10] William Campbell’s position can be found best in his The Crown Lands of Australia being an Exposition of the Land Regulations, and of the Claims and Grievances of Crown Tenants, (John Smith & Sons), 1855, pp. 31-54.

[11] ‘Legislative Council’, Argus, 1 September 1852, p. 4.

[12] ‘The Conference’, Argus, 15 April 1852, p. 4.

Sir Richard Tangye 1833-1906

For the past year or so I've been helping Stephen Roberts to publish his work on Victorian Birmingham. This includes biographical studies of A. J. Langford and Sir Benjamin Stone, MP and pioneering photographer, as well a Mocking Men of Power, a highly illustrated study of comic art in Birmingham between 1861 and 1911 written with Roger Ward. Today, the fourth book on Sir Richard Tangye is published.

'We launched the Great Eastern and she launched us' – Sir Richard Tangye.

In January 1858 Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Great Eastern, at that point the largest ship ever built, was, after several failed attempts, finally launched into the Thames. The powerful hydraulic jacks that enabled the ship to get afloat were manufactured by Tangye Brothers of Birmingham. For this firm of Cornish-born engineers the launch of this great ship was the breakthrough they had been waiting for. By the end of the nineteenth century the Tangye Brothers' business employed 2000 workers and had come a long way from a packing room divided into two by brown paper stretched over a wooden frame. The life-story of Richard Tangye was held up in Victorian Britain as an outstanding example of what a man could achieve by determination, single-mindedness and sheer hard work. Born in a cottage in a small village near Redruth, he died in a mansion near the Thames. Tangye was undoubtedly a brilliant entrepreneur, but, as he acknowledged, his brothers were also brilliant engineers. Bound together by family ties, the talented Tangye Brothers created one of the most famous industrial success stories of the nineteenth century. Using autobiographies, periodicals and letters from the time, this book tells the story of how five brothers, with Richard leading the way, left Cornwall to establish a great engineering company, how they became generous benefactors in their adopted town, establishing the Art Gallery and School of Art, and how, in search of profits and adventure, they travelled across the globe. The reader will be left in no doubt as to why Richard Tangye was known as 'the foremost Cornish man of his day'.

Protest in 1852

Protest had decreased in the early part of 1852 but the appalling winter conditions and the dramatic increase in crime led to its revival at Castlemaine and Bendigo. This was less an attack on the license system than a protest against Government inefficiency and especially the lack of protection from criminals. By September, there was so much crime that moves towards ‘lynch-law’ were made and on 30 September a Mutual Protection Association was formed that threatened to stop paying the license fee and use the money to pay for patrols. [1] The police were seen as ineffective at anything other than collecting licenses and prosecuting sly-groggers (illegal sellers of spirits). It is difficult to assess just how bad the problem of crime was in the Castlemaine area but news of the proposed export duty turned a small agitation into a mass movement.

On 23 October, a well-organised ‘monster meeting’ was held at Castlemaine. [2] The export duty was condemned, unless it replaced the license fee, as a grossly unfair additional tax. It was agreed that police protection was a ‘mockery’ and that any delay in dealing with the lawless state of the fields would be disastrous. A petition was sent to the Legislative Council and a deputation was appointed to visit La Trobe and that if no reply had been received by 15 November, further action would be taken though non-payment of licenses was viewed as a last resort. In Melbourne, a meeting of several hundred people welcomed the delegates and their attack on this ‘monstrous tax’ and the ineffectiveness of the police. La Trobe was conciliatory when he met the delegates almost apologising for the conduct of the police. The delegates reported back to the diggers and a resolution was passed that if the export tax was imposed, they would all refuse to pay the license fee and offer themselves for arrest. However, the following day unaware of this threat, the Council voted out the bill.

“Dancing Saloon and Grog Shop, Main Road, Ballarat, May 30th/55", by S T Gill

Victory on this issue is insufficient to explain the decline in the digger movement yet by the beginning of 1853 the main diggings were again comparatively quiet. In spite of this, the government did address their other grievances: the Castlemaine police were reformed and an assize court established in December 1852 and a start was made to a macadamised road from Melbourne. Nevertheless, a Select Committee of the Legislative Council also established in December, but despite the critical evidence of Chief Commissioner Wright and Commissioner Gilbert, produced a weak report supporting the license fee. Twice, diggers had successfully resisted proposals to increase taxation, yet the license system remained unchanged.

NSW had handled the gold crisis with ‘masterly commonsense’ and the mining license was effectively and more important sensitively collected with little organised opposition. Yet, in Victoria both the license fee and the ways in which it was extorted from the diggers was a source of growing irritation and resistance. Blainey called it ‘administration by the tape measure rather than the brain’. Without this decision, probably the ‘most mindless’ in the long history of appropriating Australia’s natural resources, he argues, ‘the rebellion at Eureka in 1854 would not have occurred’. [3] Although Blainey is right to focus on the importance of the license as a cause of resistance in Victoria, policing played a decisive role. The colony was policed to an ‘extraordinary degree’ in the 1850s, policing was regarded as an instrument of government and the police were active agents of an interventionist and regulatory state. [4]

Conclusions

The criticisms made of La Trobe during 1851 and 1852 by miners and politicians and in the press were largely justifiable. How far La Trobe was responsible for this situation is more difficult to assess. Temperamentally, he was better suited to acting as a subordinate able to gain acceptance of his decisions from his superiors but this option was no longer available once Port Phillip gained its independence. This combined with the maelstrom created by the discovery of gold placed him a challenging situation. Without a strong political base to support and force through his policies, La Trobe floundered from one pragmatic solution to another. He found himself in that most dangerous of political situations of reacting to circumstances rather than controlling them. His licensing policy, even though based on that introduced largely without difficulty in NSW, was poorly managed and failed to gain any real support of diggers. Insensitivity in application and enforcement by some corrupt officials and police turned licenses into a toxic source of growing political confrontation. Sir Charles Hotham may have been responsible for events in Ballarat in late 1854 but La Trobe’s previous mishandling of miners played a significant role in this catastrophic deterioration of relations between politically conscious workers and a seemingly intransigent colonial state.

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[1] ‘Mount Alexander’, Argus, 2 October 1852, p. 4, ‘A Vigilance Committee at Mount Alexander’, Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Review, 23 October 1852, p. 5.

[2] ‘Mount Alexander’, Argus, 30 November 1852, p. 4.

[3] Ibid, Blainey, Geoffrey, A history of Victoria, p. 44.

[4] Ibid, Gold seeking, pp. 75-77.

Policing lawlessness

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

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

Policing sly-grogging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[9] Ballarat Times, 21 October 1854.

The problem of lawlessness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[5] Serle, pp. 35-36.

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

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

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

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

The dog that didn’t bark!

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

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

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

Predicting the outcome—a fool’s errand!

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

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

Sitting on a knife edge or negotiating legitimacy

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

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

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

1852: a faltering administration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[9] Serle, p. 30.

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

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

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

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

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