Despite the repression, agitation rapidly took hold within the Chartist rank and file for the organisation not of a general strike, but of an insurrection centred in Wales and Yorkshire, the strongholds of “physical force” Chartism. Arms were acquired and secret meetings of those who had survived the Convention were held to prepare the rebellion. A Bolton magistrate reported, “…a large number of pikes was in the course of being manufactured in the towns.” From the Liverpool Assizes a witness reported:
… they formed themselves into squads… there were three squads and about thirty or forty in a squad… the men went through what [the] witness who has been a soldier calls facings… they formed sections and marched in line across the field and wheeled to the right and marched forward and wheeled again both right and left.[2]
The Chartist leader Peter Bussey from Bradford urged, that
“every man before him should be in possession of a musket, which was a necessary article that ought to provide part of the furniture of every man’s house. And every man ought to know well the use of it, that he may use it effectively when the time arrives that requires him to put it into operation. . .”[3]
A certain Ben Wilson obtained a gun and joined the “physical force” Chartists, while his friend, also a “physical force” man, was busy moulding bullets in his cellar.[4] Insurrection was on the order of the day. However, insurrection is an art, to quote Marx. A serious business, that should not to be trifled with. “Never play with insurrection”, wrote Lenin in 1917, some months before the successful Bolshevik insurrection.
The industrial valleys of South Wales were a hotbed of Chartism. In May 1839, the first “Rebecca Riots” broke out, where mobs of workers, with blackened faces and dressed in women’s clothes, destroyed the hated road tollgates. “Rebecca” and her daughters probably originate from a reference in Genesis 24:60, a verse which states that the seeds of Rebecca will inherit the gates of those that hate her. The destruction of tollgates, which lasted until the end of 1844, symbolised a more general revolt against the heavy burden of rents, rates and tithes that bore down on the already oppressed population. “The South Wales coalfield”, said Home Secretary Viscount Melbourne, “is the most terrifying part of the kingdom.” The feeling of revolt was everywhere. The arrest of Henry Vincent, a leading Chartist, served to galvanise the movement of discontent. Amongst the Chartists, military preparations reached a fever pitch, with drilling and the rehearsal of tactics taking place by night. Following the rejection of the Charter by Parliament, the South Wales Chartist leader John Frost, who was in contact with the “physical force” leaders, Julian Harney, Peter Bussey, and Dr. John Taylor, decided to take the initiative into his hands.
On 3 November 1839, Frost commanded three divisions, which planned to march on Newport, rescue Henry Vincent from Newport prison and seize the town. Frost organised his men, spear-headed by some 20,000 colliers, into brigades, companies and units. Armed with guns, muskets, pistols, coal mandrills and clubs, they marched on Newport. What was planned was a large-scale insurrection that was to spread throughout the land. Zephania Williams planned to set up a British Republic, while others believed in a Chartist Executive Government of England, with Frost as president. However, the insurrectionists found themselves isolated when the “physical force” Chartists in the north of the country – due to a lack of serious preparation – failed to respond. Revolts later broke out in Sheffield and Bradford, but remained isolated. The inevitable bloody encounter with government troops in the Westgate Hotel in Newport ended in a bloodbath, with 30 dead, and the arrest of the South Wales leadership. Among them, John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones were tried and sentenced to death by hanging. Courageous men, they did not flinch. They were all prepared to die for the Charter. George Shell, a 19-year old who was shot dead at Westgate, wrote a note to his parents before he joined the insurrection:
I shall this night be engaged in a struggle for freedom, and should it please God to spare my life I shall see you soon; but if not, grieve not for me, I shall fall in a noble cause. My tools are at Mr Cecil’s, and likewise my clothes.
After mass protests, involving a petition signed by two million people, their sentences were commuted to transportation for life to Van Diemen’s Land. Nevertheless, wholesale arrests followed which served to decapitate the Chartist movement. By the end of June 1840, at least 500 Chartists were incarcerated in prison in the most terrible conditions imaginable. Had the revolt succeeded, it is likely that it would have sparked other uprisings, as can be judged from the abortive risings in Sheffield and Bradford the following month. The unsuccessful heroic uprising in Newport served to mark the end of the first phase of Chartism.
With the eventual release from prison of Feargus O’Connor and other leaders, the agitation for the Charter was revived once more. Both Lovett and O’Brien now favoured an alliance with middle-class Free Traders who also desired a broader franchise. But O’Connor, who spoke for the mass of Chartists, forcefully opposed them and their proposed alliance. After the bitter lesson of 1832, the majority refused all co-operation with the middle-class radicals who had cheated them out of the vote.
“Our movement is a labour movement, originated in first instance by the fustian jackets, the blistered hands and the unshorn chins,” stated Feargus O’Connor. The proletarian character of the Chartists was further reinforced in 1840 with the formation of National Charter Association (NCA). At this point, the Chartist movement established itself as a working class political party – the first of its kind in history – with national rules and constitution. Prior to the formation of the National Association, Chartist bodies had been of a purely localised character. Now a national body, the NCA reached a total of 40,000 members, paying two pence a quarter, and organised in hundreds of branches all over the country.
“The agitation of Chartism,” wrote the Newcastle Journal, clearly displaying its upper class hatred for the movement, “brought to the surface of society a great deal of scum that usually putrefies in obscurity below.”[5]
Chartism, primarily a conscious class movement, drew towards itself all the separate progressive movements within the working class. According to the historian Max Beer, “the expressions Chartist, Socialist, trade unionist and working man were synonymous terms.” Chartism became closely related to the mass struggles against the New Poor Law, the Ten-Hour Bill movement, as well as to the trade unions. In contrast, the Chartists were very hostile to the Anti-Corn Law League, regarding it correctly as a false friend of the workers.
“Chartism is essentially social in nature, a class movement”, wrote Engels. “The “Six Points’ which for the radical bourgeois are the beginning and end of the matter… are for the proletarian a mere means to further ends. “Political power our means, social happiness our end,’ is now the clearly formulated war-cry of the Chartists.”
The working class certainly did not regard the Charter as an end in itself, but rather as a means to an end. Although it did not contain any distinct working-class social or economic demands, it was perfectly clear what they wanted. This was ably expressed in the words of the Rev. JR Stephens, who was greatly admired by the workers for his caustic attacks on the factory system:
Chartism, my friends, is no political movement where the main point is your getting the ballot. Chartism is a knife and fork question: the Charter means a good house, good food and drink, prosperity, and short working hours.
The working class Chartists believed that the six points would give them not only political equality, but economic and social equality. Without doubt, they saw it as a key to a new egalitarian society.
“These six points, which are all limited to the reconstitution of the House of Commons, harmless as they seem, are sufficient to overthrow the whole English Constitution, Queen and Lords included”, stated Engels.[6]
Marx also emphasised that at that time:
“universal suffrage is the equivalent for political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat form the large majority of the population, where, in a long, though underground civil war, it has gained a clear consciousness of its position as a class… The carrying of universal suffrage in England would, therefore, be a far more socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the Continent. Its inevitable result here is the political supremacy of the working class.”[7]
In 1842, a new Convention met and launched a further Petition, gaining over three million signatures. When laid out end to end the Petition was said to be three miles long. This time its rejection by Parliament (by 287 votes to 49) sparked off a new movement that spilled over onto the industrial front. The specific economic demands adopted by the second Petition served to draw the trade unions closer to the cause of the Charter. Meeting after meeting resolved that “all labour should cease until the People’s Charter became the law of the land.” A storm of unrest broke out in the summer of 1842, which started among the Lancashire cotton spinners, spread to the Midlands and even to Wales and northwards into Scotland. It was called the “Plug Plot”, because in the factory areas the strikers marched from factory to factory, removing the boiler plugs in order to bring the steam engines to a standstill. The ironworkers and coal miners of Lancashire, the Potteries and Staffordshire took action. Huge demonstrations of the unemployed were organised in Glasgow. Strikes then spread to the textile workers of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The movement snowballed into a general strike – the first modern general strike in history – where the economic demands were entwined with support for the Charter.