CHARTISM AND ITS LESSONS

turned out to the people's cost to be delusive and fraudulent;

therefore as the producing classes intend to regenerate their country, they must rely on themselves and themselves alone' It was this political subordination to the politics of the middle class that Chartism was to sweep away.

Ironically enough it was a small circle of highly-skilled workers, led by William Lovett and centred around Place who originally drew up the Charter with its famous Six Points.

No doubt Place intended to head off any more dangerous development in the working class.

Before consenting to help draw up the Charter in 1837, Place insisted that the Working Men's Association promise to prevent all speeches against the New Poor Law (which we shall deal with in the next article) and all those in favour of socialism.

Enemies

He declared at the time that they must be determined to cease using opprobious terms and epithets, and to receive everyone as a friend who will take the Charter as his guide, and to work on steadily with every such person for the accomplishment of their purpose'.

•The Working Menis Asso ciation' retorted Harney, 'are as an engine in the hands of some designing enemies . . .

of the working millions, whose endeavour is to concentrate, by the establishment of this and such other light delusions, the abilities and energies of the people, and then to vilify their effects.' But the limited aims of Lovett and Place were superseded as the campaign was taken up by thousands of workers in the towns and villages of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

And it was a movement which rapidly assumed a social character.

To win the Charter was to overthrow the system of private property, a conclusion which became clear to both sections of the ruling class as well as the most advanced Chartists.

The ultra-conservative 'Blackwood's Magazine' expressed this fear that the victory of Chartism implied the expropriation of private "Within three weeks,' it declared in 1842, 'were it merely to earn their wages, the new house of legislators would have abolished all funded property, under the showy pretence of remitting to the people that annual 30 millions of taxes requisite for meeting the interests.. The second step would be what already they parade as an "equitable distribution" of Underlining the narrow base on which the defence of property rested, 'Blackwood's Magazine' in one of its many anticles directed against the franchise estimated:

'Out of the 19 million heads in this island not 300,000 are connected with property sufficient to ensure the conservative instincts and sympathies of properties.' And in 1848, during the next great peak in Chartist activiRICHARD COBDEN, standing in the ties, the same magazine outlined some of the expected measures which could be expected to follow the triumph of the movement:

Knife-and-fork 'Repudiation of state engagements ... confiscation of property under the name of graded income tax; the abolition of primogeniture in order to ruin the landed interest; the issue of assignats, in order to sustain the state under the shock to credit which such measures would necessarily occasion, might with confidence be looked for' "The question of universal suffrage was, declared the Tory-Chartist. the Rev. J. R. Stevens, 'a knife-and-fork question.

League.

'If any man asked him what have declared their adherence to what is called the People's Charter, but few care for Universal Suffrage, Vote by Ballot or Annual Parliaments.

"The greater part feel the hardship of their social condition; they complain of their hard toil and insufficient wages, and imagine that Mr Oastler or Mr Fielden (two prominent Tory Chartists) will lead them to a happy valley, where their labour will be light and their wages high.' Grim picture Lord Macaulay also painted a grim picture of the England of the future when property rights would no longer be safeguarded by a parliament monopolized by those who had property of their own to protect:

... A great community of human beings-a vast people would be called into existence in a new position; there would be a depression, if not an utter stoppage of trade, and of all those vast engagements of the country by which our people were supported, and how is it possible to doubt that famine and pestilence would come before long to wind up the effects of such a system. The best thing which I can expect and which I think everyone must see as a result, is, that in some of the despenate struggles which must take place in such a state of things, some strong military despot must arise, and give some sort of pratection-some security to the property which may remain.' The basic force driving the working class to fight independently of the middle classes was the economic interests session? The New Poor Law for England. Why did that base Parliament pass both these acts? To place the labouring classes of both countries at the feet of the rich assasins, who rob, brutalize, and enslave the populations of both. It is in the nature of things that the middle classes must be wonse than any other part of the community.

"The Reform Act admitted the middle classes to a shane of that power which was formerly engrossed by the aristocracy ... but what is the consequence of the Reform Act to us, the people?

"Why, that the number of our opponents, of those interested to uphold the monopoly of legislative abuse, is more than doubled; and, instead of having the middle classes on our side, making common cause with us against the aristocracy, we have to contend against a combination of the aristocracy and the middle order.' (Chartist Publication, n.d.)

In addition, the reformed House, reflecting the now dominant interests of the Manchester manufacturing class, steadfastly refused to introduce any Factory Act which would have limited the hours of labour in the Lancashire textile industry. •The great advance which Chartism represents in the history of the working class can be seen in the sharp hostility which existed between the Chartist movement and the Anti-Corn Law League, a capitalist body established in 1839 to fight to abolish all duties on imported corn.

and other other leaders of the Despite periodic effonts on the part of Richard Cobden League to use Chartists as a weapon to force repeal they were unsuccessful.

Motives

Writing to a friend in 1841 Cobden made clear the cynical motives of those in the middle Class who wanted some alliance between the League and the Chartists:

'All present ... were : of tinct from the question - At the same time there was an impression that it would be desirable to get as many individuals prominently engaged in Corn Law agitation as possible to sign in arder to conciliate the people... I am not sorry to see Sturge (a supporter. of repeal and also a Chartist) taking up this question. It will be something in our rear to frighten the Aristocracy. And it will take the masses out of the hands of their present rascally leaders.' Trade union deep hatred for the middle class amongst the most militant Chartists. The demand for cheap , corn was widely understood to be only a pretext for cheap wages.

'Monday next is to be the greatest day that ever Yorkshire " saw, declared the 'Northern Star'. 'Fustian against broadcloth! The dignity of nature against the distinction of wealth! ... Not one kid glove for either (Harney or Pitkiethly). Therefore let not a blister appear as a willing brand by being held up for Whig or Tory' Reporting on the situation in Bolton in 1840, the 'Northern Star' made clear its awareness of the strategy of sections of the middle class:

'The sham of agitating for Household Suffrage by this party (the League) appears to be abandoned-and a desire to Thi Brazer Coller Realy Hun hear adnitod a Member of the WRET OF ACOTLAND til negated the hatrey inor 19 Mavelerss Pisras: is "go the whole hog" with the people has been hinted at if the Chartists will only change —nat their principles, but their name. It is said they wish coalition and a committee of individuals selected from both parties has been appointed to confer together. The middle classes feel that the landed aristocracy is too powerful for them when unaided by the working men... The Chartists are quite alive to the move and determined not to be jockied.' Disrupted In fact the 1840s were to see the campaign of the League constantly disrupted by the activities of the Chartists.

London,' complained Place writing to Colonel Thompson, 'the interruption is made and sustained from about first two parts are of particular value for the S&B Webb 'A History of Trade Unionism': A classical study of the emergence and development of trade unionism. Although openly Fabian in its approach, still the basic work from which M. Hovell, 'The Chartist Movement': Despite its distortions, still a useful book for the basic facts of the Chartist movement, especially in its G. Wallace 'The Life of Francis Place': An old work, written by a prominent early Fabian. Provides a good insight into the role of radicalism in the early working-class movement. R. J. Harrison 'Before the Soclalists': A series of specialist studies in working-class politics, 1860-1880. Useful work which tries to overcome some of the distortions of Stalinist historians. A. Saville, 'Ernest Jones': A brief account of Jones's life and its relationship to Marx. Also includes a selection of Jones's articles, letters G. Dangerfield, 'The Strange Death of Liberal * These books and pamphlets available from New Park Publications Limited, 186a Clapham An artist's impression of the inside of a workhouse.

120 to 200 men, many of them youths. They go from place to place where Anti-Corn Law lectures are given; they make a disgraceful broil, which is reported in the "Northern Star" as a "glorious victory".

These 150 men call themselves the people and their impudence and tyranny is without example ...

I have a letter before me from the editor of the "Glasgow Argus" in which he says "Nothing is done here in public. The Chartists have put down public speaking"!

I have seen many uproarious meetings,' wrote Place to John Collins, the Birmingham 'mortal force' Chartist who had been imprisoned with Lovett in 1841, 'but I never saw anything which would bear even a distant comparison with what I saw last night.

I was very much vexed at and very much ashamed of, the people before me. There I sat thinking of the terrible evils of the French Revolution in its earlier periods, and sure I am that if the men who composed by far the greater portion of the audience were not restrained by "their fellow subjects", the policeman and the soldiers, all the horrors and the worst scenes in the French Revolution, all its monstrous cruelties and enormous evils of every kind would be outdone by the men whose hands would speedily commit them' Whatever its actual courset this was the great gain Chartism and hence Lenin's description of Chartism as the 'first broad and politicallyorganized proletarian-revolutionary movement of the masses'.

'Six or seven years ago' declared James Williams addressing a Chartist meeting in Sunderland in 1838 *they had met on that ground for the attainment of what they thought would be freedom.

They joined the middle class that were then struggling for their rights. They obtained for them political freedom, and they trusted to their gratitude for assisting to secure the rights of the great masses of the community-they had been deceived, but they now stood forward together again in their own right and majesty and again they would triumph.' • In our next article we shall examine the reasons why Chartism was unable, in the conditions of the 1840s, to effect this triumph which many of its leaders hoped for and expected.