Chartism

Tally historical

The economic context and social of the United Kingdom of the 19th century makes it possible to explain the social claims of the chartists.

The industrial revolution upsets and reorganizes the British company

The United Kingdom entered since the end of the 18th century the Industrial revolution, which makes of it the most modern nation in the world, but this Industrialization implies enormous changes on the level of the territorial organization, social structure through the Démographie and of the relationship between classes.

The organization of the territory is upset: the fast urbanization passes by the creation of new industrial towns, the landscape is transformed by the appearance of “black cities” (Manchester, Birmingham,…), overpopulation worsens in badly built cities, which very often implies insalubrity.

The population knows a expansion without precedent: 7 million inhabitants in 1750,14 in 1820 and 23 in 1860.

In fact, the majority of the population does not feel progress: indeed, in spite of the Economic growth and the world statute of the United Kingdom, much feel on the contrary a regression, because of use of working labor not qualified with the detriment of the traditional artisanal qualifications.

“However, despite everything these elements of national prosperity (…) we are crushed private and public sufferings” (petition chartist of 1838).

This situation is evoked in difficult times of Charles Dickens.

On a life scale, the structure of the company completely changed. The proportion of workmen increases, much men and women reach the precariousness of working employment (10 work hours per day and of the horrible work conditions). Moreover Friedrich Engels will compare this evolution with the French revolution, so much it seems to mark a rupture. In fact it is less the extent of the change than its speed which makes think of a revolution.

Lastly, the company is divided. The social divergences are accentuated; the United Kingdom and its constituent nations were never up to now levelling countries, but with these economic and social upheavals one still witnesses a fragmentation of the more thorough population. One attends for example a true urban segregation, with the appearance of residential districts and popular quarters. This phenomenon is especially perceptible in the new cities. Thus, with Manchester, there is approximately 60% of workmen in a rather middle-class city, while with Stalybridge, new city with a few kilometers in the east, there is 90% of workmen.

The idea of social classes progresses to the industrial owners as in the working classes.

The framework is thus that of a divided population where the working class matures its resentment, it is thus enough to an economic crisis or policy to start a conflict.

A social context which calls into question the government policy

The Corn Laws

Following a very important fall of the prices concerning hard the owners, the Parlement, very mainly composed of land great landowners, voted into 1815 the laws on the corn ( Corn Laws ) prohibiting any corn importation as long as the price of a quarter did not exceed 80 shillings, which causes to support these prices. The counterpart as of these high prices was the increasing impoverishment of the people, in particular of the workmen without qualification.

The critical Charter of 1838 the laws which make the more expensive food, which rarefies the money, which returns badly work remunerated, and which taxes the activity more than the property.

The electoral system

In 1815, the electoral system did not adapt yet to the evolution of the population. The representativeness with the House of Commons does not have anything uniform. Thus, in the counties, the right to vote or “electoral frankness” belonged to the landowners enjoying an income of 40 shillings (50 francs germinal). In the boroughs or municipalities, one voted aloud, and the voters were subject to almost always the influence of a “owner”, i.e. of a rich person owner of the vicinity which imposed its candidate to them. The case was particularly frequent in the boroughs of no importance, called boroughs of pocket. The list of the boroughs had not been modified since the 17th century. One found there into 1815 of the almost abandoned villages - called “rotted Bourgs” - which continued to elect two deputies, while cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds - whose importance was recent - did not have representatives.

First handing-over in question and agitations

As of the years 1770, one in particular witnesses handing-over in question of this system, which are the stages preliminary to Chartism:

1774-1775: James Burgh written Political Disquisition and calls with the Vote for all male,
1776: John Wilkes in a speech at the Parliament is made of it the echo,
1791-1792: Thomas Paine tackles off the British system in Rights Man .

These works are read by days laborer, apprentices, etc, and allow the diffusion of a requirement of radical reforms.

The French revolution also exerts a considerable influence. Several organizations, publications, newspapers show with the working class that the Human rights belong to the rich person as with the poor. For example: local clubs, Henry `Orator' Hunt, Cobbett (newspapers with 1 penny).

In 1819, a vast meeting is organized with Manchester by the radicals which make countryside for the vote for all; it is repressed in blood by the national army with Saint Peter' S Field (called “massacre of Peterloo”, in reference to Waterloo), this event is regarded as the baptism of the Chartiste movement.

The social movement from there was driven in political movement.

Appearance of Chartism

Foundation of the Trades Unions

It is this context of Economic crisis (difficulties of the workmen of nourishing their family) and of devastations of the “wild” Capitalisme - disastrous terms of employment of the workmen (up to fifteen work hours per day) and of the wages re-examined with the fall - which pushed the workmen to be assembled in unions of workers; the first are illegal, but the right of coalition and strike is painfully acquired in 1825. These Trades Unions constitutes a true “league of the workmen against the Masters”.

Divided between partisans of " the force physique" (like Irish O' Connor) and in favor of the " force morale" , the leaders of the movement chartist were priests, innkeepers, workmen, and also of the demagogs. They drew their ideology from the methodism or the Jacobinism, as well as writings of the anarchist William Godwin or the Socialist utopian and paternalist Robert Owen. In 1838, under the influence of Owen, of the unions gather in only one trade union: national union of the work, of which the goal was the suppression of employers and wage-earning by the institution of working co-operatives of production. But government and other industrialists broke this movement.

Consequently the political action found partisans, especially among the miserable workers: one needed the majority for the Parliament to make accept electoral reforms.

The disillusion of the Reform Bill of 1832

“the fruit which seemed so beautiful is broken up once gathered. ” (Charter of 1838)

An immense popular hope is placed in this electoral reform. The campaign for a bill of reform is conducted by O' Connell, the radicals, some Whigs like John Russel, and even some tories. The popular masses were agitated because in particular of a rigorous winter. The Duke of Wellington, Prime Minister since 1828, refuses immediately, but the French revolution of 1830 ensures the success of the countryside reformist. In front of revolutionary agitation, a majority against Wellington is formed at the Parliament and it is reversed by Lord Grey. Grey has presented a moderate reform which is refused, it dissolves then for the first time for 50 years. The majority passes to Whigs, the bill voted by the deputies is refused by the Lords; finally in front of the working class unrest the reform is voted by the House of Lords in June 1832.

The contents of the reform are disappointing:

one redistributes the seats of deputies by removing some one with the rotted boroughs but distribution still very unequal,
the electoral frankness is decreased and not removed; it is always necessary to be rich but the number of voters increases half,
it especially benefits the middle-class, the popular masses remained excluded from the political life.

The weak range of the bill involves a feeling of treason at the popular classes.

The Poor Law Act of 1834

Since 1601, at the end of the reign of Elisabeth I^re, the State deals with the poor ones of England and obtains a legislation, the Poor Laws or “laws on the poor”, dedicated to the problem of disinherited. The organization of this assistance is entrusted to the parishes on which the Poor Laws also force to provide an employment to the valid poor. It is thus as of this time that the link between misery and unemployment is established. In 1832 is named a royal commission, which includes/understands Nassau Senior; she concludes that the system is too gravitational and too expensive. The law of 1834 hardens the conditions of assistance, but does not follow all the recommendations of the commission.

In this context develop the workhouses , “houses of work” dissuasive where, according to Nassau Senior, one tries “to make there the life less desirable than that of most unhappy of the independent workmen”. As for their financing, it is also subjected to the laws of the market. Each area is imposed according to the number of people “profiting” from the government aid. Therefore, more one area counts the poor, more it knows a high tax rate.

The reform of 1834 is seen like a “great treason of the whigs”.

Birth of Chartism as an political organization

The movement the anti-law-on-the-poor ( anti-Poor Laws ) passes to Chartism during the Années 1830. Chartistes, which has different claims in the beginning:

political members of unions,
salesmen of illegal press ( unstamped close ),
trade unionists,
members of committees claiming a shortening of day's works,
adverse with the law on the poor,

acquire the feeling to fight a common cause.

Moreover they do not think solely any more of the local scales but the movement acquires a national dimension. The radicals are present in all the industrial parks thus the countryside chartist is based on this presence.

Political concretization of Chartism

The popular Charter of 1838

In October 1836, the London Association of the workers already adopted five of the six resolutions contained in the Charter. The six points initially were born in a petition addressed to the House of Commons in January 1837, but which never reached him because of many times (incomprehension, loss of confidence, of seats to the Room…).

Finally Lovett and Place publish the Charter in May 1838 and present it to Glasgow at the time of a meeting of 200 000 workmen. These vast meetings are intended to collect signatures and to elect the delegates of a General convention of the working classes, left phantom Parliament excluded from the right to vote.

The Charter contains six points:

vote for all for all the men as from 21 years,
of the right and equal districts (not of rotted boroughs, of the seats for the new cities),
secret ballot,
abrogation of the obligation to be owner like condition of eligibility,
a parliamentary compensation to allow the workers to sit and of being able to live,
annual elections.

The contents of the Charter are thus political. The change is effective. The Charter collects 1.250.000 signatures in one year.

In 1839 meets Convention charged to submit the Charter to the Parliament, there but this one is quickly put on side by this last, showing the weaknesses of the means offered by the petition.

Strikes of mass and agitations

In 1839, there are some violent acts and great demonstrations and even an attempt at riot to the Wales.

In May 1842, a second petition is submitted to the Parliament. It collected more than three million signatures, and it is related to an escorted tank of 20.000 signatories. Again, the Parliament rejects the petition.

The depression of 1841-1842 causes strikes of mass, 500.000 people are then committed in the movement chartist. In addition to the strikes for economic motives, some are started for claims chartists, in particular in the Midlands, the Lancashire, the Yorkshire, and part of the Scotland. The practice to break the machines and to draw the stoppers from the tanks of the steam engines is worth the nickname Plug Plot (“plot of the stoppers”) with the strikes in Lancashire. The strikes are particularly followed in the triangle Manchester - Ashton-Stalybridge.

The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, is not favorable to an intervention, but the duke of Wellington requires to deploy the troops to repress the strikers. The strikes are violently repressed, of many chartists are stopped (of which O' Connor, George Julian Harney, and Thomas Cooper), 79 of them are condemned to custodial sentences.

Other Chartistes activities

In spite of this wave of arrests, the continuous Chartiste activity. As from 1843, O' Connor suggests that the ground is the solution with the problems of the workmen. Its idea is concretized in the form of the Chartist Co-Operative Land Company , which will become the National Land Company . The workmen buy shares of the company, and the company uses this capital to buy grounds, which are then divided into pieces. Five properties are thus bought between 1844 and 1848. In 1848, the Parliament names a committee to inquire into the financial viability of the operation, and ends up prohibiting it.

Chartistes candidates present themselves to the legislative elections between 1841 and 1859; O' Connor is elected in 1847. The same year, Harney is presented against Lord Palmerston to Tiverton.

End of Chartism

The French revolution of 1848

The French revolution of 1848 precipitates the events. Initially, Chartistes congratulate French people, but the range of the French revolution frightens:

“the French revolution of 1848 saved the English middle-classes. The pronounced socialist inclinations of the French workers frightened the small English middle-class and disorganized the movement of the working class”. (Friedrich Engels)

This lack of support of the middle-classes will make it possible the government to act as strong position, and to wait until the movement becomes exhausted itself.

The petition of 1848

April 10th, 1848, Feargus O' Connor organizes a meeting with Kennington Common, in the south of London, in order to form a procession to submit a new petition to the Parliament. The government chooses the showdown and interdict to the militants to cross the the Thames.

Separately, of the rioters try to take by storm of the workhouses to Manchester. It follows a confrontation with the police force, which ends up taking the top after three days of violence.

Chartistes had envisaged to create a “phantom” National Assembly if their petition were ignored once more, and to ask the queen Victoria to dissolve the Parliament; their assembly would sit as much as the government would refuse to accept the Charter. However, their indecision and their bad organization the mine: the assembly finishes by autodissoudre, by declaring that it missed support.

The petition of O' Connor contained less than two million signatures, far from the 5 706 000 that he had announced. Many forgeries are discovered; certain Chartistes then show O' Connor to have destroyed the credibility of the movement, but this one is maintained for a few months before being blown, torn by the internal dissensions.

Conclusion

Chartism thus appears as a political movement resulting from the social unrest which the United Kingdom victorien of 1837 to 1848 knows. The nature of Chartism remains discussed but can be is necessary it to break the dichotomy social/political and to admit that these two elements are indissociable in the history of Chartism.

Historically one could regard Chartism as a failure due to the structure of the company (because of a strong opposition: Powerful state, linked elites, army); the six points of the Charter of 1838 were rejected. However it contributed to the modernity of the United Kingdom.

Continental side one regarded this movement as a failure: no deaths, not of barricades, not of guns… but these criteria are not adapted; indeed, the social and political structures are not the same ones and the revolutionary step was perhaps simply not adapted to the United Kingdom which prefers the progressive reforms. Moreover the government will yield to a reforming tendency in the Années 1840 under the government of Robert Peel and his successors:

Mines Act (1842),
Factory Acts (1844-1847),
abandonment of the Corn Laws (1846),
abolition of the commission of the law on the poor (1847),
law on the public health (1848).

The movement chartist strongly influenced the socialist movement , it inspired the Marxist theories and marked the end of dumbness and working insulation, with the appearance of the Syndicalisme. This movement allowed education partial of the popular classes and their awakening of legitimacy of the correlation between social democracy and political democracy. Chartism was thus an outline, not finalized certainly, but of a necessary utility and a rich person posterity.

“ The Chartists' greatest achievement was Chartism, has movement shot through not with to despair goal with hope ” Edward Royle

All the points of the Charter were adopted since, except for the annual elections.

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