For over 50 miles around Manchester, the second largest city after London, everything came to a complete standstill. The real initiative for linking the strikes to the Charter was largely the work of local activists. On 7 August a huge workers’ Assembly decided not to resume work until the People’s Charter was realised. A delegate meeting of Manchester trades put out the call:
“we most solemnly pledge ourselves to persevere in our exertions until we achieve the complete emancipation of our brethren of the working classes from the thraldom of monopoly and class legislation by the legal establishment of the People’s Charter. The trades of Great Britain carried the Reform Bill. The trades of Great Britain shall carry the Charter.”
Typically, the middle class Chartists were distinctly hostile to the trade unions, fearing such organisations would repel their middle and upper-class allies.
In effect, the leadership of the struggle for the Charter had fallen to the trade unions. The Chartist political leadership were completely taken by surprise by this turn of events. When the time came, they were found lacking. Even its left wing, in the person of Harney, opposed turning the 1842 general strike into an insurrection. In the end, they had no alternative but to support the strike:
Whilst the Chartist body did not originate the present cessation from labour, the conference of delegates from various parts of England express their deep sympathy with their constituents, the working men now on strike, and that we strongly approve of the extension and continuance of the present struggle till the People’s Charter becomes a legislative enactment…[8]
Women workers, who constituted a significant part of the workforce at this time, also played a prominent part in the movement. They turned out from the mills in their thousands to rally to the Chartist cause. The first female Charter Association was established in Birmingham in 1838, with a membership reaching 1,300. More than 100 women’s associations were established in the early years of the Chartist movement, and played their full role, alongside their men folk, in drilling and military affairs. “Women can no longer remain in her domestic sphere, for her home has been made cheerless, her hearth comfortless, and her position degrading”, stated a resolution from the women Chartists of Bethnal Green.
Women’s circle has been invaded by hired bands of police ruffians – her husband dragged from her side to the gloom of a dungeon – and her children trampled under foot – and this, for no other crime than that Labour cried for its rights, and Justice for its due.[9]
A further call was issued to turn the “Plug Plot” general strike into a general uprising. But without clear and effective leadership the general strike, let alone an uprising, was doomed from the start. This was again a reflection of its political immaturity. The Chartist leadership proved unable to direct the spontaneous movement of the working class into conscious revolutionary channels. Trade was very bad, and with depleted resources and government repression, the hungry strikers drifted back to work. “So deep was the distress, so universal the hunger, that they had to eat the dead carcasses of cows dug up after they were buried”, stated William Beesley.[10] Then, as support for the strike began to wane, the government stepped in to crush the movement – arresting practically the entire Chartist leadership. In all, fifteen hundred arrests took place, of whom, 200 were transported to Australia and Tasmania.
The ruling class regarded the situation in the gravest terms possible. Some years later, Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, remarked:
We had the painful and lamentable experience of 1842 – a year of the greatest distress, and now that it is passed, I may say, of the utmost danger . . . We had in this metropolis, at midnight, Chartist meetings assembled in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Immense masses of people, greatly discontented and acting in a spirit dangerous to the public peace. . . . What was the condition of Lancashire ? . . . All the machinery was stopped. . . For some time troops were continually called on, in different parts of the manufacturing districts, to maintain public tranquillity. . . For three months the anxiety which I and my colleagues experienced was greater than we ever felt before with reference to public affairs.[11]
The defeat of the general strike – and with it the insurrection – dealt the Chartist movement a heavy blow. The failure was primarily due to the lack of clearly defined objectives. There was considerable confusion, which again reflected the immaturity of the movement as well as its leadership. According to Engels,
The thing had begun without the working men having any distinct end in view, for which reason they were all united in the determination not to be shot at for the benefit of the Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For the rest, some wanted to carry the Charter, others who thought this premature wished merely to secure the wages rate of 1840. On this point the whole insurrection was wrecked. If it had been from the beginning an intentional, determined workingmen’s insurrection, it would surely have carried its point.
Many activists, disappointed by the Charter’s failure, turned once more from politics to trade unionism. In 1842, the Miners Association of Great Britain and Ireland was founded, in which the Chartist leaders – O’Connor and Duncombe – played a prominent role. Chartism provided, through its own activities, a training-ground where most of those who were later to become miners’ leaders gained their first knowledge and experience. As a result, it became difficult to find any prominent union member who did not have, at some time or other, Chartist connections.
New union organisations sprang up in the 1840s – the Potters’ Union (1843), the Cotton Spinners Association (1843) and the National Typographical Association (1845). Also in that year a new general organisation was founded, for the first time in a decade – the National Association of United Trades (NAUT) – that became a focal point for the smaller and less well organised trades. Unfortunately, as soon as it came into existence, a deep slump provoked a series of lockouts, which depleted its funds and brought the union near to collapse. Interestingly, these difficulties faced by the union raised the need for political action. The NAUT deserves to be remembered as the first trade union body to suggest the creation of a working-class party based upon the trade unions. But it would take a further fifty years before this idea was brought fully to fruition.
A further attempt was made to revive the Chartist cause with a fresh Convention in 1845, but the movement had effectively run out of steam. A new recruit, Ernest Jones, became O’Connor’s right-hand man, and attempted to keep the organisation going. But other causes, such as the Anti-Corn Law League and the Ten Hours Committees, sapped the movement’s strength.