Fergus O’Connor was the leading editor of the ‘Northern Star’; the Northern Star was a weekly newspaper 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. Despite the massive success of the newspaper O’Connor still got into trouble for publishing seditious prints, because of this O’Connor was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment regardless of this O’Connor still managed to edit his newspaper from his prison cell. This can portray O’Connor in two different lights; the first being that he was a powerful and determined man that had little or no respect for higher authorities or it could show that he was determined to do whatever it takes to make the Chartist more powerful and to achieve the six points. This makes O’Connor a force for good as a leader of the Chartists as he enabled people to read and learn about the Chartists and their motives; especially the poor who could not necessarily afford books or for those of people who could not attend mass speeches. However for those who were very ill-educated it was a source of no good for them especially if they were unable to attend the speeches.
One of the biggest strengths of O’Connor would most probably be his speech making, O’Connor was very influential and passionate when he spoke out to big crowds. In the majority of his speeches O’Connor spoke of being willing ‘’to die for the cause’’ and promising to ‘’lead people to death or glory’’. However O’Connor was one for using phrases and words of physical force as a threat in his rhetoric however this outraged some other Chartist leaders at the time; Lovett and Hetherington. In one speech by O’Connor at Peep Green in July 1839, he implied acts of violence, ‘’should we be attacked today, come what will, life, death, or victory’’ this is proof that O’Connor is prepared to use acts of violence to fight for what he believes to be right, also in this speech O’Connor says ‘’I am repelling attack by attack.’’ This also shows that he is a firm believer of violence and is prepared to use acts of violence. With O’Connor’s firm belief of using physical force made moral Chartists become more and more dissatisfied with him. This implies that O’Connor could be a ‘force for good’ for the Chartist movement in some senses but not in others, for example his rhetoric would have made some people believe and support him however would have made the more moral supports dislike him and thus not agree with his causes and not support him.
There have been lots of different interpretations on O’Connor’s leadership to whether he had a positive or negative influence over the Chartist movement. Many historians agree that O’Connor emerged as the key successor of Henry Hunt, especially when he toured the north of England in 1835 when he did much to mobilise parliamentary reform. Other historians like Epstein and Royle believed that Fergus O’Connor did more than any other leader to develop the organisational structure of the Chartist movement and without O’Connor the Chartist movement would have crumbled, this is the view that many historians from, the 1970’s onwards share, O’Connor was also very demagogy so thus he knew how exactly to work a crowd and make them believe in his intentions. Fergus O’Connor was also the creator of The National Charter Association, started in 1841. The NCA was an organisation created to encourage as many working class people to join and support the Chartist movement, the NCA was considered by many to be a success, especially by the historian Royle who described the NCA to be the backbone of the Chartist movement with 400 branches and 50,000 members. There is one source that is highly praising of O’Connor and is a book by J. Epstein ‘The Lion of Freedom’ which stated that O’Connor’s leadership gained him popular support even if his ideas were not his own he always had ways to interpreter these ideas and make them happen. The source said ‘’As an organiser an agitator he made his greatest contribution.’’ This shows that despite all of his faults he was still a great leader and always strived to achieve his best no matter what the circumstance or of other people’s reactions to his motive and actions. Another source which is also highly praising of O’Connor is a book by D. Thompson, ‘The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution’ this source states that O’Connor is without doubt a important leader and was the centre of the movement and people supported him; he was a national figure. ‘’of the importance of Fergus O’Connor as a national leader, there can... be no question...’. These are all reasons and explanations to why and how O’Connor was a successful leader during the Chartist movement, however there are negative and critical views of O’Connor’s leadership during the movement.
One of the main reasons to why O’Connor could be seen as an awful leader is his use of physical force to achieve his political aims, his frequent language meant that large numbers of the working and middle classes did not find the Chartist movement as appealing as they would if its leaders did not voice such support for this use of violence. Some historians believed that O’Connor was only a Chartist leader to further his own career, one historian R. G. Gammage claimed that O’Connor only wanted followers of the Chartists to be a mob and his rival for the leadership, William Lovett, claimed that because of O’Connor the perception of the Chartists was that they were ‘’thieves, liars and traitors to the cause.’’ Also is has been stated that O’Connor was impossible to work with and did not collaborate well with others at all. He always wanted to be boss but he often had no clear policy, especially at the moment of crises when he said first one thing and then another and always came down on what he felt likeliest to be the winning side. Some historians also believe that despite the fact that O’Connor’s leadership through his personality united the movement it also divided the leadership. One source that is critical of O’Connor and his actions and motives is a book written by the historian R. G. Gammage ‘History of the Chartist Movement, 1837-54’’ which stated that despite the appearances of O’Connor he was not as clever as expected, his judgements were often unpredictable and he made a lot of mistakes so thus means less support. ‘’but this essential quality of greatness he lacked,’’ These are all reasons and explanations to how and why O’Connor was not so much of a good leader as some might have fault.
In conclusion I think that O’Connor was a successful leader and was a ‘cause of good for the Chartist movement’ despite all of his flaws he did contribute a huge amount to the cause, he was a very influential leader to many and event though he supported the use of physical force he rarely used it in his protests.