4. Breaking the yoke

The “Great Betrayal” of 1832, with the connivance of the middle-class radicals, created a widespread revulsion within the disenfranchised working class. Four years later, after the death of William Cobbett and Henry Hunt, new men came forward in the vital struggle for working-class political rights, above all for adult male suffrage. Henry Hetherington, John Gast, William Lovett, Julian Harney and other skilled craftsmen founded the London Working Men’s Association in June 1836. Along with the bourgeois reformer Francis Place and other Radicals, they drew up a “People’s Charter” for a new reform movement that was to change the course of history.

This was followed by another meeting, this time a mass meeting in the Strand, London, in February 1837, attended by some 4,000 supporters, which proceeded to draw up a petition based on the Charter. Similar associations sprung up throughout the country and became the foundation stones upon which the epic Chartist movement was built. This was to prove another watershed in the history of the British labour movement, the beginning of independent working class action. “Men of the East and West, men of the North and South, your success lies with yourselves, depends upon yourselves alone…” stated The London Democrat, the paper of Henry Hetherington, and organ of the Chartist Association.

The Charter contained six essential points, outlined below from a handbill issued in June 1837. While today such demands seem far from revolutionary, at the time they sent palpitations through the ruling class:

1. A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for crime.
2. THE BALLOT – To protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
3. NO PROPERTY QUALIFICATION for members of Parliament – thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.
4. PAYMENT OF MEMBERS, thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the country.
5. EQUAL CONSTITUENCIES, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, – instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of larger ones.
6. ANNUAL PARLIAMENTS, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since though a constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each ensuing twelvemonth; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now.^[1]

The membership of the movement was originally made up in large measure of skilled artisans, who were by no means free from the influence of middle-class ideology. In its formative stages, middle-class radicals, who regarded Chartism as little more than a pressure group, dominated its higher levels. Despite this, the Charter constituted a programme of fundamental political change that would open a new future of working-class hope. It became a catalyst for the mass discontent that existed in society. Within a few years, the class composition had radically changed. Given the hostility of Tories and Whigs alike, the Chartist movement quickly attracted wide-scale support amongst working people. The “Cause” blazed a trail across the country as the word spread and took root in the hearts and minds of the most oppressed layers. With the break-up of the national trade unions a whole layer of activists were attracted to Chartism. Men like Thomas Hepburn, the miners’ leader, took their talents into the Chartist movement. Others, like the powerful orator, Feargus O’Connor, who became its most popular mass leader, were also drawn to its cause.

Already in the North of England, a huge movement was swelling up against the new Poor Law, against child labour and in support of new factory legislation. Giant meetings were held everywhere. For instance, a meeting in the West Riding in May 1837 was attended by 250,000 people to hear the leaders, Richard Oastler and the fiery Reverend Stephens. These figures had courageously broken from their upper-class Tory background and had come over to the standpoint of the proletariat. As such they were hated by the bourgeoisie, but worshipped by the workers. Oastler was affectionately known as “the king of the factory children”. While the Reverend Stephens proclaimed that the ownership deeds of every mill were “written in letters of blood on every brick and stone in the factory.”

The London Working Men’s Association, together with the Birmingham Political Union, the Northern Union and the London Democratic Association joined forces to rally support for a Chartist Petition. This was to be presented to Parliament by a delegate Convention, due to meet in London in early 1839. It was to bring together the seething discontent that was rife in all the industrial areas of Britain. The adoption of the term “Convention” was deliberately taken from the French Revolution and was regarded by many as a legitimate alternative parliament to the corrupt House of Commons.

“How can we emancipate ourselves from this state political bondage? Not by pandering to the fears of that timid and irresolute class of politicians who have lately appeared among the Radical ranks, not by relying on the dastardly Whigs, not by placing faith in the tyrannical Tories, but by full reliance on our own strength, upon the inherent justice of our claims”, stated a rank-and-file Chartist.

However, before the Chartist Convention took place, sharp differences emerged over how the aims of the Charter would be achieved. These divisions, essentially between the old leadership and its new-found mass base, were between the supporters of “moral force” and those of “physical force”. The former insisted that the Convention was no more than a constitutional body with the task of presenting the Charter to the Whig government by moral persuasion, whereas the “physical force” school regarded it as a rival form of government, and a dire threat to the Old Order. The Northern Chartists, based upon the downtrodden proletariat, were especially enthusiastic supporters of “physical force” Chartism.

The supporters of “moral force” tended to be more respectable, middle class and artisan in composition. They tended to regard the Chartist movement in terms of the workers and middle class against the ruling Oligarchy. In contrast, the “physical force” supporters tended to be drawn from working-class factory areas, especially in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and were prepared to overthrow the government with arms if need be. What on the surface appeared as a personal struggle between the Chartist leaders William Lovett and Feargus O’Connor was at bottom a class issue.

“If peace gives law, then I am for order; but if peace giveth not law, then I am for war to the knife”, stated O’Connor. The movement was in fact divided between a right wing (Lovett and the leaders of the London Association), a centrist wing (O’Connor), and a left wing (Julian Harney and Ernest Jones). The unity of the movement, however, was centred on the compromise formula, “peacefully if we may, forcibly if we must.”

A Convention was to be elected to present a petition to Parliament, which, if it should fail, would be met with a general strike, lasting a month (the “sacred month”), to bring the government to its knees.

Throughout 1838 huge meetings were held throughout the country, often by torchlight, which selected delegates for the Convention. It looked as if the whole country had lined up behind the Charter. Intermingled with Chartist agitation was mass heightened opposition to the wretched New Poor Law.

The Convention eventually assembled in London in February 1839 amid wild enthusiasm, and adopted, among other things, a resolution establishing “the right of the people of this country to possess arms”, and to turn their back on “the hypocritical Whigs and the tyrannical Tories”. The Chartist Petition was launched with a series of demonstrations and rallies before the Convention moved to Birmingham. On 21 May, more than 200,000 persons took part in a monster demonstration in Glasgow, followed by mass meetings in Newcastle (80,000), Birmingham (200,000), Manchester (300,000), Bradford (100,000), Sheffield, Bristol and London. Every political union or club and all trade organisations, with their banners, took part in these huge demonstrations.

In July, an enormous national Petition containing 1,280,000 signatures was presented to Parliament. During the debate, Lord John Russell warned that the adoption of the Charter would mean the confiscation of all private property. As expected, a hostile House of Commons overwhelmingly rejected the Petition by 46 votes to 235 votes. On receiving the news, opinion within the Chartist Convention quickly shifted towards the supporters of “physical force”. The delegates then set a date of 12 August for a general strike to secure their demands. Consequently, an appeal was launched calling on trade unions to “co-operate as united bodies with their more distressed brethren in making a grand moral demonstration on the 12th.” However, there were major difficulties in achieving these aims. The Convention itself recognised that “desertion, absence, and arbitrary arrests” had depleted their ranks, and there were divisions over the practicality of the strike given the growing unemployment and distress at the time. In the end, these deficiencies proved insurmountable and the Convention decided unanimously to temporarily “abandon the project of a sacred month”. This retreat served to embolden the government, which swiftly stepped in and arrested 130 Chartist leaders.

1. Quoted in Cole and Filson, op. cit, p.352

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