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Wednesday 3 October 2007

Aspects of Chartism: Chartism and the middle classes 1840-1842

The ‘new move’ was marginalised after damaging conflict in which accusations of intimidation and dictation from the O’Connor party were difficult to discount. The differences between O’Connor and the relatively small section of the Chartist leadership involved in the ‘new move’ (Lovett, Vincent, Hetherington, Collins, O’Neill and Lowery) reflected contrasts in style and emphasis. ‘Rational’ protest was increasingly opposed to O’Connor’s assurance that the mass platform was the means of achieving the Charter. It should, however, be recognised that those who rejected the ‘new move’ were not opposed to temperance or Christianity or educational reform being associated with Chartism. What they feared was the dissipation of the movement’s energies through the spread of rival organisations with different additional agendas and that shared much common ground with middle class radicalism. They also feared the intervention of middle class reformers, with their own priorities, in the movement and the debate with the Complete Suffrage Union in 1842 suggests that their fears were not unfounded. This posed a far more divisive threat to Chartism, especially in 1842-3.

The broadening of Chartism in the early 1840s left the central problem of how to achieve the Charter unanswered. What Epstein calls ‘the middle class embrace’ was one potential means of breaking the impasse. Increasingly, some Chartists concluded that without co-operation with sections of middle class radicalism, they lacked the strength to achieve their objectives. Between 1840 and 1850 there were various attempts by middle class radicals to re-forge the alliance with the working class radicalism: the Leeds Parliamentary Association 1840-41, the Complete Suffrage Union 1841-3 and the ‘Little Charter’ and National Parliamentary Reform Association 1848-50. The sticking point was O’Connor’s inflexible insistence on the full Charter and his direction that Chartism must maintain its independence from all forms of middle class radicalism. He opposed advances from sections of the Anti-Corn Law League and from calls for ‘limited’ suffrage. This was clear by early 1840[1]

“Join them now, and they will laugh at you; stand out like men and THEY MUST JOIN YOU for the Charter.”

The failure to obtain Corn Law reform from the Whig government in 1840 led to growing frustration with the narrowness of its concerns among some middle class radicals resulting in a more outward-looking attitude to reform in which suffrage reform appeared a better possibility. The Leeds Parliamentary Reform Association was formed in May and held its first public meeting in late August[2]. The ‘Leeds new move’ favoured household suffrage, the ballot, equal constituencies, triennial elections and the abolition of the property qualification. However, it reflected the opinion of certain sections of the Leeds middle class and, while it could count on the support of Working Men’s Association members and on workers who followed middle class radical leadership, it encountered widespread opposition. Edward Baines[3] and his son, proprietor of the influential Leeds Mercury, did not support the Association believing that free trade could be achieved without a dangerous tinkering with the 1832 reform settlement. Richard Cobden and the Lancashire leadership of the Anti-Corn Law League took a similar position. There was implacable opposition from the main Chartist leaders and from the columns of the Northern Star. The Association petered out in early 1841 and was eventually absorbed by the Complete Suffrage Union.

Chartism and the 1841 election

The creation of the Complete Suffrage Union was in part a response to the modest though genuine success of the Chartist intervention in the general election of 1841. Several Chartist candidates stood, though none came close to election. However, contemporaries were impressed by the disciplined way in which Chartist voters acted collectively in support of candidates recommended by their leaders. Where there was no Chartist candidate, voters were asked to support whoever was thought the most radical, with support for democratic reform (as in the case of J.A. Roebuck in Bath) coming ahead even of opposition to the new Poor Law as a touchstone.

Where there were no radical candidates, votes were to go to the Tories rather than the Whigs. J.T. Ward[4] suggests that this was a continuation of the affinity between O’Connorite Chartism and Tory Radicalism that had been forced in the factory reform and anti-poor law campaigns. James Epstein[5] disagrees arguing that such an alliance was always illusory where the Charter was concerned and that opposition to the Whigs was simply based on their record min government and in the hope of undermining them as a party leaving a gap that might be filled by a more radical party with Chartist sympathies.

Support for the Tories was not universally accepted within the Chartist leadership. Bronterre O’Brien, for example, argued that where the choice lay between Whig and Tory, the only principled position for a Chartist to take was to abstain. The new political alignment did not happen in 1841 but the Chartists’ efforts to influence the outcome of the election was viewed by contemporaries as making a material contribution to the Whig defeat. This helped to create a frame of mind in which Sturge and his allies chose to reach out to suitable figures within the movement.

The Complete Suffrage Union

Class co-operation had been the Birmingham message under Attwood and now Joseph Sturge was updating the Attwood agenda[6]. The Complete Suffrage Union developed out of the anti-corn law agitation in the autumn of 1841 following the Whig general election defeat[7]. The Rev. Edward Miall[8], editor of the Nonconformist, and Joseph Sturge, a wealthy Birmingham corn dealer, aimed at uniting the middle and working classes in a crusade to obtain ‘full, fair and free representation’ of the people in Parliament. Sturge wanted to reconcile the middle and working classes through the repeal of class-based legislation and a declaration that the exclusion of the bulk of the population from the franchise was both unconstitutional and unchristian. The movement reflected anxieties among parts of the middle class about the class tensions of the early 1840s and growing belief that Corn Law repeal would not occur without suffrage reform. What made the Complete Suffrage Union different from earlier attempts at class reconciliation was its acceptance of universal suffrage as necessary to forge a cross-class alliance. This posed a real problem for O’Connor and throughout 1842, while expressing personal respect for Sturge, he consistently opposed any Chartist alliance with the CSU. The Northern Star opposed the formation of the CSU in April 1842 on the grounds that two national associations committed to universal suffrage could not co-exist.

Some Chartists, mostly those who had already approved class collaboration, were sympathetic to the CSU. Lovett and Francis Place lent support and at the meetings organised by the CSU in Birmingham In February and April 1842 and the moderate nature of the movement was emphasised by the systematic exclusion of O’Connorites. Lovett and his allies would not budge on the Charter itself. No alternative definition of complete suffrage was acceptable. The April conference postponed a definite decision on the status of the Charter until the autumn. Sturge’s middle class supporters wanted to shed the Charter with its insurrectionary symbolism and association with threatening and fierce rhetoric. However, those who fought for it, Lovett included, celebrated its history and would abandon neither the name or the ‘six points’.

By late April 1842, there were fifty local associations and the CSU presented a rival parliamentary petition to that of the NCA. O’Connor’s attitude was ambivalent. The CSU was too closely associated with free trade and the Anti-Corn Law League to be acceptable. O’Connor initially conducted a fierce campaign against the CSU, which was obliged to adopt the Charter in all but name, but recognised the tactical advantage of an accommodation with middle class radicals and came out in favour of class collaboration in July 1842. This strategy of infiltration led to widespread Chartist support for Sturge when he stood for the open and radical constituency of Nottingham at a by-election in the summer. O’Connor did not seek an alliance with the CSU but rather the incorporation of a section of the middle class into the Chartist movement. He told a Chartist meeting at St Pancras in September 1842[9]

“We will stand firm and united – We will listen to no coalition, no half measures. Mahomet must come to the mountain…We are the mountain – we are the people.”

By the autumn, under pressure from Chartist hard-liners and by his failure to attract substantial middle class converts, he reversed his position and again attacked the CSU as ‘a League job’. A conference to try to determine a common programme was called to take place in the saloon of the Mechanics Institution, New Hall Street, Birmingham from 27th to 30th December 1842. Weeks of jockeying for position now ensued, with each faction trying to send the most delegates. O’Connor and other representatives of the NCA stood in the election to nominate delegates. This proved successful and O’Connor was elected as one of the six delegates for Sturge’s home town of Birmingham. The result was a conference packed with Chartist delegates despite prior agreement. The middle class radicals insisted on the adoption of a 96-clause ‘New Bill of Rights’ for universal suffrage instead of the emotive ‘Charter’. This was an attempt to disassociate middle class radicalism from the anarchic confusion associated with O’Connor and his supporters.

Things did not start well. Thomas Beggs, a Nottingham delegate, presented a series of resolutions, supporting the six points of the Charter, asking that the conference support “such means only for obtaining the legislative recognition of them as are of a strictly just, peaceful, legal and constitutional character” and take as the basis for discussion a Bill of Rights prepared by the council of the Complete Suffrage Union. The two measures were substantially identical, as both parties to the conference admitted, but there was an absolute deadlock over the term ‘Chartist’. Lovett, as leader of the Chartist faction at the conference, proposed in the interests of harmony that both bills be withdrawn or that both be considered clause by clause. But all attempts at conciliation failed, Lovett was not prepared to accept this and tactically (and temporarily) joined with O’Connor in substituting ‘Charter’ for ‘Bill’ and his original motion carried by the decisive majority of 193 to 94. When it became clear that the Charter had the support of the majority of delegates, Joseph Sturge resigned from the chair and withdrew from the conference with many of his supporters. Further splits followed as the conference went on, and by its end the 300 to 400 delegates present at its opening had fallen to just 37. Neither side would accept the other’s conditions for joint action. Class collaboration was ended, the CSU was allowed to wither and O’Connor’s grip of the movement was tightened.


[1] Northern Star, 28th March 1840.

[2] On the LPRA see Epstein The Lion of Freedom, pages 265-273 and Fraser Urban Politics in Victorian England, pages 260-61.

[3] On Baines see Derek Fraser ‘Edward Baines’, in P. Hollis (ed.) Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England, London, 1974, pages 183-209.

[4] J.T. Ward Chartism, pages 150-51, 156.

[5] Epstein The Lion of Freedom, pages 276-86.

[6] On the Complete Suffrage Union, Epstein The Lion of Freedom, pages 286-302 is the best examination of Chartist responses. Alexander Wilson ‘The Suffrage Movement’ in P. Hollis (ed.) Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England, London, 1974, pages 80-104 considers the 1840s and the 1850s with a useful section on the CSU. Alex Tyrrell Joseph Sturge and the Moral Radical Party in Early Victorian Britain, London, 1987 is the standard biography.

[7] The defeat of the Whig administration in the general election of 1841 and its replacement with the Conservative administration of Sir Robert Peel posed problems for both the Anti-Corn Law League and Chartism. The Conservatives, especially the Tory wing of the party, had opposed Whig constitutional reforms and were in favour of retaining the Corn Laws.

[8] On Edward Miall, see David M. Thomson ‘The Liberation Society 1844-1868’ in P. Hollis (ed.) Pressure from Without in Early Victorian England, London, 1974, pages 210-238.

[9] Northern Star, 17th September 1842.

Monday 1 October 2007

Aspects of Chartism: The National Charter Association--a working class party?

 

In its early stages, the Chartist movement consisted entirely of local groups with no central co-ordination. In 1839, the main co-ordinating force for Chartism had been the National Convention. Though this represented a breakthrough in radical structures, it proved organisationally and financially weak and this, combined with perceived lack of unity among the leadership, helps explain the defeat of the movement in 1839-40. O’Connor and other Chartists recognised that reorganisation was essential if Chartism was to survive. Following the failure of the first Charter petition and a series of arrests up and down the country, many of these local groups had become disorganised. Despite this diversity, a significant degree of unity and national organisation was provided by the National Charter Association (NCA) formed on 20th July 1840 at the Griffin Tavern in Manchester.

Establishing the NCA

At local and district levels this process began in the spring of 1840. For example, the Northern Political Union was reformed by the Newcastle Chartists, a Radical Association was revived in Carlisle and the Durham Charter Association was formed by Sunderland Chartists. Birmingham Chartists regrouped and an unsuccessful attempt was made to unite all London Chartists in the Metropolitan Charter Union. There is no doubting its vitality though, as Mark Hovell noted[1], it “was much more localised than in 1839 but within its narrow bounds it was stronger and healthier”. This provided the impetus for national reorganisation and during the late spring and summer the Chartist press was filled with calls and plans for a parallel national process. O’Connor, now in prison, monitored developments closely and supported moves for a national delegate conference in Manchester in July. The problem, as O’Connor rightly recognised, was not the creation of a permanent Chartist national executive but how this should be funded. Various schemes were discussed when the twenty-three delegates[2] met on 20th July at the Griffin Tavern in Manchester and the organisation established signified the desire of the movement’s leadership and grass roots to move towards a permanent, national, centralised organisation.

Organisation: national and local

A NCA Executive Council, consisting of seven full-time, paid members, was responsible for the co-ordination of the national Chartist movement.

  • The general secretary was to be paid £2 a week, and members of the executive were to receive 30 shillings a week while they were sitting.
  • The Executive Council was to be elected annually by a ballot of all NCA members with each county being able to nominate one candidate.
  • Members of the NCA had to sign a declaration agreeing to the Association’s principles and buy a 2d quarterly membership card. Where possible members were organised locally into classes of ten under a class leader who was responsible for collecting each member’s 1d subscription.

Classes were grouped into wards or divisions and monthly ward meetings heard reports from class leaders.

  • There was to be a ‘collector’ for each ward responsible for forwarding subscriptions to the National Executive.
  • The membership was divided into classes of ten, whose leaders fed into was, town, ‘county and riding’ that had its own councils with officers elected democratically.
  • There were to be local branches, and an annually elected general council and an executive.
  • Half of the money collected by local branches was to be at the disposal of the executive and plans were formulated to stand Chartist candidates at the next general election.

The success in establishing this local structure was variable. This pioneering structure took democratic, mass party organisation into new areas of political life. It sought to address the problems posed by funding political organisations and recognised the need to accommodate local and occupational diversity within a national framework[3].

The NCA remained the major national organisation for the next decade, though its membership and influence declined after 1842, and some historians have seen it as the first independent working class political party. Epstein argues that[4] “…the NCA, together with the leadership of O’Connor and the Northern Star, provided an essential source of radical working-class radical unity and direction. There can be no doubt that the establishment and growth of the NCA marked a major qualitative advance in working-class organisation and leadership.”

The NCA was not, however, a unique organisation. Working class voluntary organisations were becoming increasingly sophisticated and the NCA drew from their experience. The Methodists had used class organisation for evangelism and collecting subscriptions within a national framework for half a century. The Owenite movement, reorganised from 1835, had a system of districts, paid national officials and subscriptions. Attempts to form national trade unions, especially the Miners’ Association in 1842, had organisational parallels with the NCA. The major difference between these bodies and the NCA was that they tended to be exclusive organisations while the NCA sought inclusiveness.

There is disagreement among historians as to whether this system owed more to trade union, Methodist or parish government and precedent. John Charlton[5] argues the model was a trade union one but without any direct supporting evidence, though it did have certain affinities with trade union modes of organisation with which many Chartists were familiar. However, many Chartists also had experienced Methodist ways of organising[6]: “Class meetings, weekly subscriptions, hymns, camp meetings and Love Feasts were all employed by the Chartists.” Eileen Yeo[7] puts this in perspective by showing that Chartism, unlike Wesleyan Methodism, safeguarded popular control through the election of class leaders. She also pointed out that links could be drawn between Chartist organisation and the parish system of local government, where the quarterly meeting of the vestry had been attracting increasing popular participation in the early nineteenth century. This was a commonsense way of organising and was reflected in parallel developments in Owenism, friendly societies and trade unions at about the same time and perhaps historians should not read too much into these competing explanations of the roots of the NCA.

Expansion and difficulties

The NCA grew gradually during 1840. By the end of the year, fewer than 70 local associations had affiliated. These were concentrated in Lancashire and Yorkshire, the Nottinghamshire-Derby area and in London. Birmingham and the West Midlands and Scotland showed little interest. Count and district organisations were established in Lancashire, the West Riding, the East Midlands, Durham and Gloucester and full-time NCA missionaries had been employed in each of these areas apart from Gloucester. Some Chartists hesitated. There were three main reasons for this.

  • First, some Chartists opposed the principle of centralisation and the loss of local independence and control. It was though dangerous to[8] “Give such monstrous powers into the hands of a set of reckless politicians, sitting in Manchester to determine the fate of any agitation that may be honestly and assiduously taken up by the people?” There was also some concern that keeping a central register of members provided the authorities with the opportunity of playing the illegality card.
  • Secondly, they objected to the appointment of paid itinerant orators or men ‘making a trade of politics’.
  • Finally, there was the question of the legality of NCA activities especially correspondence between NCA secretaries[9]. This was addressed at a delegate meeting in late February 1841 that adopted a new plan of organisation. The major change was to stress that all NCA members belonged to one society. This, it was hoped, would get round the law by having all correspondence within one national organisation rather than between affiliated branches and localities. This appears to have calmed Chartist fears but despite this prominent Chartists like William Lovett and John Collins stayed out of the NCA.

After a slow start, which probably owed something to these reservations, the NCA grew rapidly and spread outwards from its original heartland in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. During 1841, local Chartist and Working Men’s Associations were drawn into the NCA and from February 1841 to the end of the year, the NCA grew from eighty associations to 282 with twenty thousand members. NCA election results from eighty-three localities in June 1841 suggested about 5,000 active participants but the petitioning campaign for the return of Frost from transportation had already generated two million signatures and too much should not be read into the limited electoral involvement. By June 1842, there were over four hundred local associations and fifty thousand members and by the autumn of 1842, when the NCA reached its peak, some seventy thousand membership cards had been issued.

On the basis of membership cards taken out between March 1841 and October 1842, the NCA’s strongholds were

  • In the Lancashire cotton towns.
  • The West Riding textile district around Leeds and especially Bradford.
  • The centres of the footwear and hosiery trades in the East Midlands from Sutton-in-Ashfield to Northampton.
  • The Staffordshire Potteries.
  • The Black Country in the West Midlands.
  • The north-eastern coalfield around Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
  • The South Wales valleys.
  • The towns in the West Country from Gloucester to Trowbridge where there were also declining craft industries, including footwear in Bath, that shared with Cheltenham and Brighton the unexpected distinction of combining a high-class resort and residential economy with a strong and ensuring Chartist presence.

There was also a growing presence in London where eight thousand membership cards were issued. Scotland did not embrace the NCA having developed a different set of institutions of its own. The membership figures formed only the tip of the iceberg with many committed Chartists being unable to afford or to keep up the small subscriptions or holding themselves aloof from the increasingly O’Connorite politics of the NCA or simply scornful of this system of organisation, preferring to celebrate spontaneity and independence.

The defeat of the mass strikes of 1842, concerns surrounding the NCA’s accounts ferociously attacked in the columns of the Northern Star, attacks on the leadership in 1842 and 1843 as well as the general decrease in radical activity seriously affected further growth and its influence declined. Reorganised again in 1843, it moved its base to London. Nevertheless, the NCA offered a structure and organisational framework that had previously been lacking in Chartism. John Belchem[10] argues that “The NCA was the cornerstone of a democratic, counter-culture of Chartist schools, stores, chapels, burial clubs, temperance societies and other facilities for education, recreation and the celebration of radical anniversaries.”

It has been claimed that the NCA was the first working class political party. It deserves at least as much attention as the Anti-Corn Law League in studies of extra-parliamentary organisation, especially given the difficult legal and financial circumstances in which it operated. There are some aspects of the organisation of the NCA that had some of the characteristics of modern political parties: it had a centralised and bureaucratic structure; it linked centre and localities; and it had a clear ideological stance. However the NCA is labelled, it was certainly an important and perhaps path-breaking organisation.

O’Connor’s ‘party’?

The NCA was very much O’Connor’s organisation and was often denounced as ‘O’Connor’s party’. He believed that the Charter could only be achieved by a united working class organised in an independent, national party. The NCA was established as a model of democratic leadership and O’Connor defended it vigorously. This led to significant personal opposition. Many Chartists, including Lovett, refused to join[11]. O’Connor feared, not without foundation, the movement would fragment. Lovett’s association had considerable middle-class backing and the success of Chartist municipal candidates in Leeds owed something to the efforts being made to re-forge a Chartist-Radical alliance. O’Connor took the view that the Anti-Corn Law League offered working people minimum support to achieve its own ends but the winter of 1841-2 saw agreement reached in several cities between Chartists and Corn Law repealers. However, his relationship with the NCA was highly ambiguous: for example, he remained off the executive council until September 1843. His status and the legitimacy of his leadership came from being an independent gentleman very much in the Hunt and Cobbett tradition. This older tradition of the ‘platform’ coexisted with the newer and more formally organised forms of radical protest characterised by the NCA. In this process of transition O’Connor’s role was pivotal.


[1] Mark Hovell The Chartist Movement, Manchester, 2nd. ed., 1925, page 196.

[2] The names of the delegates to the Manchester conference according to R.G. Gammage History of the Chartist Movement, 1837-1854, 1894, page 183 were: John Arran and Joseph Hatfield, West Riding of Yorkshire; James Leach and James Taylor, South Lancashire; J.Deegan, Staleybridge and Liverpool; David John, Merthyr Tydvil and Monmouth; J.B. Hanson, Carlisle; William Tillman, Manchester; George Halton, Preston; Samuel Lees, Stockport; Richard Littler, Salford; Mr Andrew, Glossop; Mr Lowe, Bolton; Samuel Royse, Hyde; William Morgan, Bristol, Bath and Cheltenham; James Cooke, Leigh; George Black, Nottingham; James Williams, Sunderland; Thomas Raynor Smart, Leicester and Northampton; James Taylor, Loughborough; Richard Spurr, London and Richard Hartley, Colne

[3] Epstein The Lion of Freedom, page 225 suggests that political historians have tended to see the Anti-Corn Law League as the model of Victorian extra-parliamentary political organisation and have tended to ignore the considerable and ‘much more ambitious’ achievement of the NCA. He makes a compelling case. However, he neglects to mention the seminal role of the anti-slavery movement from which all extra-parliamentary pressure groups drew inspiration.

[4] Epstein The Lion of Freedom, page 220.

[5] John Charlton The Chartists: the First National Workers’ Movement, Pluto, 1997, page 28.

[6] David Hempton Methodism and Politics in British Society 1750-1850, Hutchinson, 1974, page 211.

[7] E. Yeo ‘Some Practices and Problems of Chartist Democracy’, in James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (eds.) The Chartist Experience, Macmillan, 1982, pages 345-380, especially 353-60.

[8] The Chartist Mayall Beaumont in Northern Liberator, 28th November 1840.

[9] The Corresponding Societies Act 1799 provided the basis for this concern. Albert Goodwin The Friends of Liberty, London, 1979, pages 451-499 provides the context.

[10] John Belchem Industrialization and the Working Class, Aldershot, 1990, page 114.

[11] Dorothy Thompson ‘Who were ‘the People’ in 1842?’, in Malcolm Chase and Ian Dyck (eds.) Living and Learning: Essays in Honour of J.F.C. Harrison, Scholar Pres, 1996, pages 118-132 is a valuable discussion of who the Chartists were in the second phase.