How successful were the Chartist Leaders?

1. How successful were the Chartist Leaders?

2. Their Background and what did they stand for?

3. Henry Hetherington In the 1830s Hetherington published a series of radical newspapers including: The Penny Papers (1830); The Radical (1831) and The Poor Man's Guardian (1831-1835). Hetherington was punished by the authorities several times for these activities. This included being fined on numerous occasions, imprisoned in 1833 and 1836, and having all his printing presses seized and destroyed in 1835. Hetherington played a leading role in the campaign against the heavy taxes on newspapers and pamphlets. This campaign resulted in several reforms in the law. In 1833 when the four-penny tax on newspapers was reduced to one-penny. The same year Parliament agreed to remove the tax on pamphlets. In his newspapers Henry Hetherington campaigned against child labour, the 1834 Poor Law and political corruption. Hetherington joined William Lovett, James Watson and John Cleave to form the London Working Man's Association (LWMA) in 1836. Hetherington, who became the LWMA first treasurer, helped draw up a Charter of political demands. Hetherington was a moral force Chartist and was very critical of the ideas of Feargus O'Connor and in 1849 helped create the moderate Peoples Charter Union. Hetherington continued his campaign against taxes on newspapers and in 1849 formed the Newspaper Stamp Abolition Committee. A few months later, on 23rd August 1849, Hetherington died of cholera. Two thousand people gathered at Kensal Green cemetery to pay their respects to the man who had spent his adult life fighting for social reform.

4. James Bronterre O'brien O'Brien began contributing articles to Henry Hetherington's Poor Man's Guardian. He signed these articles with the pseudonym 'Bronterre' and James O'Brien eventually adopted it as his middle name. He worked very closely with Hetherington and when he was imprisoned for publishing an unstamped newspaper, O'Brien took over the editorship of the Poor Man's Guardian. O'Brien and Hetherington also collaborated on other unstamped newspapers such as The Destructive and the London Dispatch. In 1837 O'Brien began publishing Bronterre's National Reformer. In an attempt to avoid paying stamp duty, the journal included essays rather than news items. During this period, Henry Hetherington and O'Brien led the struggle against the stamp duty and were consistent in their arguments that working people needed cheap newspapers that contained political information. In 1838 O'Brien added his support for a more militant approach to winning the vote that was being advocated by Feargus O'Connor and George Julian Harney. However, O'Brien, unlike O'Connor, refused to support the use of violence to achieving universal suffrage. O'Brien argued that the Chartist should adopt a policy that was midway between the petitioning supported by William Lovett and the Moral Force Chartists, and the violence being threatened by O'Connor's Physical Force group.

5. Thomas Cooper In November 1840 he was sent to report on a Chartist meeting in Leicester. Cooper was impressed with the speaker, John Mason, a Tyneside shoemaker. He was also shocked by the accounts that people in the audience gave about their working and living conditions. As Cooper wrote in his article: "I had never, till now, had any experience of the condition of a great part of the manufacturing population." After the meeting Cooper decided to become a member of the Chartists. It was not long before Cooper was the leading Chartist in Leicester. A devout Wesleyan Methodist, all meetings were started and ended with prayers. He was also involved producing a book of Chartist songs and hymns. In 1841 Thomas Cooper was chosen as the Chartist candidate for the Nottingham constituency. He won the by-election but failed to hold the seat in the general election three months later. In August 1842, Cooper attended the National Charter Association Conference in Manchester. At the meeting Cooper supported those like Feargus O'Connor and George Julian Harney who were advocating Physical Force. When this was followed by strikes and riots Cooper and other supporters of militant methods were arrested and charged with sedition. Cooper was found guilty of organising the Plug Plot Riots and spent the next two years in Stafford Gaol.

6. William Lovett William Lovett, Life and Struggles (1876) ‘As regards the best means of obtaining our Charter. We are of those who are opposed to everything in the shape of a physical or violent revolution, believing that a victory would be a defeat to the just principles of democracy. The political despots; and as such a sanguinary warfare, calling up the passions in the worst forms, must necessarily throw back for centuries our intellectual and moral progress.’ Lovett began attending evening classes at the London's Mechanics' Institute. It was at the Institute that he met the radical publishers, Henry Hetherington and John Cleave. These two men introduced Lovett to the socialist ideas of Robert Owen. William Lovett now abandoned his Methodist beliefs and became a supporter of the Civil and Religious Library Association.

7. Lovett also joined Hetherington and Cleave in London Co-operative Trading Association. Lovett worked for a while as the Co-operative Trading Association's storekeeper and in 1828 replaces James Watson as the secretary of the British Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Knowledge. In 1831 William Lovett's name was drawn for service in the London Militia. As a punishment Lovett's household goods were seized. Lovett responded by establishing the Anti-Militia Association. Lovett's organisation adopted the slogan "No Vote, No Musket". The campaign was a great success and the authorities decided to abandon the idea of militia drawings. Lovett's victory brought him a great deal of attention and he was now a national political figure. In 1839 Lovett was arrested for making a speech in Birmingham. The authorities claimed that his description of the Metropolitan police as a "blood thirsty and unconstitutional force" was seditious libel. Lovett was found guilty and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment in Warwick Gaol.

8. Feargus O'connor In November 1836, O'Connor joined the London Working Men's' Association. The following year he moved to Leeds where he established a weekly paper, the Northern Star, that supported the reform of Parliament. The newspaper was a great success and by the spring of 1839 was selling over 48,000 copies a week. O'Connor became active in the Chartist movement. However, he was critical of leaders such as William Lovett and Henry Hetherington who advocated Moral Force. O'Connor questioned this strategy and began to make speeches where he spoke of being willing "to die for the cause" and promising to "lead people to death or glory". In a speech in Manchester he gave a date, 29th September, 1839, for violent action if Parliament did not grant the six points of the Charter. O'Connor's speeches outraged Lovett and Hetherington and he was excluded from the platform of a mass meeting organised by the London Working Men's Association. O'Connor responded by forming a new Chartist organisation, the East London Democratic Association. O'Connor's speeches and newspaper articles became more threatening and he was blamed by the Moral Force Chartists for encouraging John Frost and the unsuccessful Newport Rising on 4th November 1839.

9. His vicious attacks on other Chartist leaders such as William Lovett, Bronterre O'Brien and Henry Vincent split the movement. Some like Lovett, who were unwilling to be associated with O'Connor's threats of Physical Force, decided to leave the National Charter Association. Following the Plug Riots of August 1842, O'Connor was tried for his part in the rebellion. He was acquitted on most of the charges and escaped being sent to prison on a technicality By May 1847, O'Connor had persuaded 70,000 people to pay £100,000 into a fund that enabled him to purchase Herons gate (renamed O'Connorville) in Gloucestershire to create a ‘English Paradise’. O'Connor's Land Scheme was a disaster and by 1850 the company was virtually bankrupt and the settlers were being evicted.

10. What were their successes in the Chartist movement?

11. Feargus O'connor • Northern Star- published and promoted ideas of the chartist movement to the public. • In 1832 he was elected MP for Cork with the help of Daniel O'Connell, leader of the Irish radicals. • Consolidated the power of the chartists, by forcing Lovett to leave over future policies. • “No-one matched O’Connor in the qualities demanded of a national leader” – From 1848 by John Saville • O'Connor denounced these variations - Church Chartism, Teetotal Chartism, Knowledge Chartism and Household Chartism - in an article in the Northern Star as "calculated to lead to sectional and party dispute“ Successes

12. FAILURES • O'Connor had various disputes with practically all of the other leaders because of his domineering temperament. • For example, in 1843 O'Connor split with Bronterre O'Brien over O'Connor's controversial solution to the "Condition of England Question", his Land Plan. • The fact that O'Connor was emotionally involved with, and could be said to share their grievances of Chartism, this could partly explain Chartism's failure. • O'Connor denounced these variations - Church Chartism, Teetotal Chartism, Knowledge Chartism and Household Chartism - in an article in the Northern Star as "calculated to lead to sectional and party dispute“ • As well as disagreeing with O'Brien in 1843 O'Connor also split with Harney in 1849 over Harney's red republicanism.

13. William Lovett (Will lovinit) • 'Whatever is gained in England by force, by force must be sustained; but whatever springs from knowledge and justice will sustain itself'. • He helped in the drafting of the Benefit Societies Act of 1836, and was a founder-member of the London Working Men's Association which was formed on 16 June 1836. • Lovett wrote the appeal to the nation on the franchise question, and agitating for the reforms which became the ‘six points’ of the ‘People's Charter.’ • Lovett drafted the ‘People's Charter,’ and originally included universal female suffrage. • 1844 Lovett formed the ‘Democratic Friends of All Nations,’ principally composed of French, German, and Polish refugees and wrote the society's first address ‘to the friends of humanity and justice among all nations. Successes

14. FAILURES • He was tried on 6 August 1839 at the Warwick assizes for seditious libel. He defended himself, was convicted and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment. His health suffered permanently from the conditions in Warwick • Never consolidated power, he got forced out of the movement because of lack of control. • In 1848 – the year of the final Chartist petition - he again attempted to find some way of uniting the middle class and the workmen adherents of radical reform, and a conference passed a resolution in favour of universal suffrage, but in terms less wide than those adopted by the conference in 1842. The People's League was attacked so fiercely by the violent Chartists that it proved abortive, and was finally dissolved in 1849

15. Summary Overall there was a serious divide in the chartist movement between the leaders, disputes between several groups of chartists; Church Chartism, Teetotal Chartism, Knowledge Chartism, Moral Chartism, Physical Chartism and Household Chartism . This divide meant to lack of organisation or solid leadership of one united party e.g. O’Connor vs. Lovett.

16. “Contrary to Gammage's opinions Feargus O'Connor did not ruin Chartism but sustained it. If it had not been for O'Connor's efforts through the Northern Star, Chartism would have disappeared soon after the moderate Chartists had deserted it in 1842. Because of Chartism's diversity of aims and membership, its lack of organisation, the lack of parliamentary representatives, and the repressive actions of the government, Chartism was a spent force by 1842. This was partly a result of the fact that Chartism was a reflection of the decadent period 1830-50 and "was essentially an economic movement with a purely political programme" (from G.D.H. Cole, A Short History of the British Working Class Movement 1789-1847,