Do you agree with the view that the 1832 reform act was a conservative measure with limited effects?

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Joseph Powell

Do you agree with the view that, in the years 1838-48 attempts to enact the Charter failed because the Chartists political campaigns were undermined by Chartist violence?

In this essay, i plan to look at the afore mentioned titled concerning whether or not the violence used by Chartism undermined the cause and slowed down the movement. To do this i plan to examine three sources, One primary, two secondary and use my own knowledge to come to a conclusion. It is often been the stance of many historians such as Asa Briggs and others that Chartism was a total failure and a major contributor to this was the violence used, however it may be too rash a judgement to say such a thing and i plan to examine that now.

Firstly i plan to look at the arguments for violence undermining the cause. I shall firstly cross-examine source 5 from an Autobiography of leading Chartist Journalist, Thomas Cooper written in 1872. In this speech he says that, in reference to violence in Longton “I warned all who had been part of it that they were not the friends, but the enemies of freedom. I told them that this strike for the Charter would bring ruin, if those who claimed to be its supports broke on law”. From this source we can clearly see that he believes the violence undermined the Chartist cause. He states that if the people involved in the violence admitted to being Chartists then the cause would just been seen as a bunch of hooliganistic thugs. Obviously not the image the Chartists were going for when wanting to be taken seriously amongst a cabinet completely full of middle to upper class Ministers. Thomas Cooper clearly believed, being a leading member of the movement, that any violence would undermine the cause. However from this source we can clearly identify a key weakness of the Chartist movement. Thomas Cooper says that the violence that day was at Longton, Lancashire. This is case in point to a very common downfall of the Chartist movement, its simple lack of National Unity. The uprising was only located in Longton, no where else in the country much like the Newport Riots before it. Without one major challenge to authority what hope did the Chartists have. The reliability of this source i am also somewhat inclined to doubt. This is an extract from an autobiography from a leading chartist journalist written in 1872, a considerable amount of time after the Chartist movement had been and good. The expression “Hindsight is always 20-20” comes to mind when noting the years of this extract. Writing after the movement had been gives the journalist a great advantage when trying to leave a chivalrous legacy. These may not have been the views of the man, but as the movement had already failed saying that his stance was anti violence can only make him look Good. Also he only would have had access to one part of the large chartist organisation making his views hardly representational of the whole movement. As i know from my own knowledge the Chartist movement did eventually fail.

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Source 4 is a secondary source written by historian John Briggs, in which he says, in reference to how the Chartist were to apply pressure without crossing the moral/physical force line “If that happened, the immediate consequence was the loss of respectable support and a gift to the government of perfect justification for repressive action”. Although chartism was good at gaining public support, clearly shown by the 3 million signatures for the second petition, it poor at channelling this support into a revolutionary movement. As a result the violent movements were soon as sporadic and were not taken seriously at ...

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