Natalie Simmons
14/12/02
Chartism has been described as ‘the creed of the excluded’.
Use the evidence of source F, G and H and the information in focus
7.1 to comment on the aptness of this view.
I feel that this description of Chartism, to an extent, is true. Although much of the evidence and sources available are likely to be distorted and biased because they are either being used to gain support for the movement or written by someone involved in the movement; also the statement could have been written sometime after the incident and simply remembered incorrectly. The chartist movement, I feel, mainly consisted of the working class who were in a great deal of poverty and needed assistance because they could not help themselves. Many of the working class families were starving, even if the breadwinner worked many hours and had a high income. When analysed, it was in times of economic depression when chartist activity reached its peaks. The first being 1839 when the first petition was declined, the second was in 1842 when it also failed and the third in 1848. After 1838, when the economy improved and living conditions for the working class improved, chartist activity decreased. This shows that the working class were not in so much poverty and had some say so they did not feel the need to campaign. Chartists were described as ‘unshaven, illiterate, working men, shifty and loud mouthed and often worse for too many hours spent in beer houses or taverns. This shows that they were described by the upper classes as dirty and didn’t try and help themselves to get out of poverty. Carlyle stressed the importance and claimed that chartists were not motivated for political reform but by the need to improve social conditions for themselves. Gammage and other historians stressed the political nature of the movement. They comment on how chartists wanted equal rights as the higher classes in the political sphere. Hovell believes that the reason that motivated chartist activity was the industrial revolution. This was due to the working class loosing there jobs and sinking into even deeper poverty and therefore causing a slump. Most of the poor felt that the aim of the poor law was to punish those in poverty when instead it was actually supposed to help.
