Disucss the conention that weak leadership, rather than any economic or political factor was the main reason for the failure of Chartism?
To what extent was weak leadership rather than any political or economic factors, the main reason for the failure of Chartism?
By Samuel Nurding Candidate Number: 0175
Centre Number: 65217
Word count:
How close did Britain come to having a major working class movement cause a full-scale political revolution in mid-Victorian England? It's an intriguing question, and historians still argue the point. It is questionable that Chartism was doomed to fail from the beginning; nonetheless, weak leadership has been blamed by many historians as a vital cause for the disintegration of the Chartist movement in 1841, but to what extent is this true?
Chartism was a movement established and to an extent controlled by working men in 1836 to achieve parliamentary democracy as a step towards social and economic reform. Probably the best way to interpret the implications of the movement is to appreciate that it emerged towards the end of a long period of agitation by political outsiders. The Charter made six political demands but the organisation was naive in the belief that constitutional reform would automatically provide a better socio-economical environment. Perhaps Chartism was a matter of feeling. It was an emotional reaction against a changing economy and society, which was unjust and bewildering to the working man. Great social, political and economic changes took place between 1830 and 1850, speeded up by railways. The balance shifted from old 18th century values to new commercial values; agriculture declined as industry flourished. It was an age of paradox, to determine the 'Condition of England Question'. Chartism was a paradox because it reflected this society. It attracted its support from all those with a sense of grievance - whatever the grievance was about.
During the late 1830's and early 1840's, pressure for further political reform had been building up in three main areas; Firstly, in London, the home of the original London Working Men's Association and the long-established heart of radical activity. Secondly, resistance to the implementation of the New Poor Law was both ferocious and importunate in the industrial north such as south-east Lancashire a west Yorkshire. Samuel Kydd, a young shoemaker in the late 1830's, emphasised the crucial link between the new poor law and the loss of rights which was so important to the emergence of Chartism:
"The Passing of the New Poor Law Amendment Act did more to sour the hearts of the labouring population, than did.....all the poverty of the land...The labourers of England believed that the new poor law was to punish poverty; and that the effects of that belief were, to slap the loyalty of the working men, to make them dislike the country of their birth, to broad over their wrongs, to cherish feelings of revenge, and to hate the rich of the land" 1
Samuel Kydd was in no means wrong with his interpretation of the link between the new poor law act and the rise of Chartism, but this quotation was quoted in 1984, over one hundred and fifty years after Chartism occurred, and therefore the date of the Authors work can affect the source's reliability. With the benefit of hindsight, D.Thompson may have used too many unreliable sources to write a non-biased interpretation.
It was widely noticeable that both the Tories and Whigs supported the Poor Law Amendment Act, which enabled the leaders of the working class to build on their attacks that the Reform Act of 1832 was a facade and emphasised the extent in which groups were using their power to pass laws which attacked the interests of working people.
Thirdly, a number of new radical associations were founded in 1835-36 in Scotland. In August 1839, most of these associations joined together to establish a new Universal Suffrage Centre Committee for Scotland. A national convention, as an alternative and more democratic assembly to parliament, was proposed during 1838 and Chartist lectures toured the country persuading mass meetings of its value.
Though the five out of six points were eventually passed in the late 1880's, Chartism short term was seen as a failure. Despite the fact that Leadership was crucial to the Chartists, many Historians such as Mark Hovell saw the main motive for the failure of Chartism weak leadership. If leaders were not divided by tactics and ideas, then they were by vanity and contending egos. Hovell thought that both faults fatally under-mined the movement:
"Very soon the breach between the preachers of violence and the preachers of peaceful agitation was already complete and a campaign of denunciation had began O'Connor scoffed at the 'Moral philosophers'. Stephens denounced the Birmingham leaders as 'old women', whilst the young and more reckless leaders, like Harney, who was to represent Newcastle-Upon-Tyne at the forthcoming Chartist National Convention, loudly proclaimed their lack of confidence in such things as conventions. The crisis came in early December. The Edinburgh had passed a series of resolutions commending violent language and repudiating physical force. These 'moral-force' resolutions called a forth a torrent of denunciation from O'Connor, Harney and others. A furious controversy followed. Various Chartist bodies threatened to go to pieces on the question...." 2
Hovell has Cleary used evidence selectively. However, was Hovell's harsh judgement justified or has he made a sweeping generalisation? In other words, have historians since presented a more sophisticated, as well as a more sympathetic understanding of the nature of chartist leadership and their problems it faced? In addition, Hovell relied for his sources on Chartist autobiographies or chartist newspapers to aid him with his book, and therefore Hovell may have easily been influenced by extreme Chartists or have a biased context and purpose. Nevertheless, Mark Hovell's The Chartist Movement, is in many ways is an impressive book, ...
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Hovell has Cleary used evidence selectively. However, was Hovell's harsh judgement justified or has he made a sweeping generalisation? In other words, have historians since presented a more sophisticated, as well as a more sympathetic understanding of the nature of chartist leadership and their problems it faced? In addition, Hovell relied for his sources on Chartist autobiographies or chartist newspapers to aid him with his book, and therefore Hovell may have easily been influenced by extreme Chartists or have a biased context and purpose. Nevertheless, Mark Hovell's The Chartist Movement, is in many ways is an impressive book, for the clarity of its narrative and the intense effort in which it takes to link Chartism to the progress of rapid industrial change.
Many Historians used to think that Chartist leaders failed to match up to the task of leadership; all too quickly they split over tactics. It is true that there were serious separation and disagreements among the leaders whether to implement 'moral-force' on the authorities to grant the Peoples' Charter or to put much more faith in direct action using 'physical-force. Moral force arguments were much more likely to have originated from the London Working Men's Association (LWMA), the educated and more established tradition of artisan radicalism. The background of the Chartist leaders varied a good deal. Many, like Hetherington, Waston and Vincent were all printers, Lovett, a cabinet-maker, and Thomas Cooper, a shoe maker, were artisans in origin. The four main leaders of the chartist movement had been involved in political campaigns for many years and had all experienced periods of imprisonment. However, they were all strongly opposed using any methods that would result in violence. One of the first Ironically, William Lovett was imprisoned in Warwick Gaol in 1839 for making a speech that was wrongly described as calling for fellow Chartists to use "blood thirsty and unconstitutional force". William Lovett, one of the founders of the LWMA, aimed to 'draw into one bond of unity the intelligent and influential portion of the working classes in town and country'. Moral Force Chartists believed that peaceful methods of persuasion such as the holding of public meetings, the publication of newspapers and pamphlets and the presentation of petitions to the House of Commons would finally convince those in power to change the parliamentary system. This statement from Thomas Attwood emphasise the Moral-force purpose:
"Remember PEACE, LAW, ORDER, LOYALTY AND UNION, these are our mottoes- under these banners we will gather and strength of the people-under these banners the people possess a giant's strength; but if they abandon them, they become but an infant in a giant's hand". 3
This group constituted what might be called professional leadership, which, by its very professionalism, was in danger of becoming detached from the movement it led.
In the early 1840s the Chartist leadership came under attack from people like Joseph Rayner Stephens, Feargus O'Connor and James Bronterre O'Brien who raised doubts about the Moral Force campaign. Feargus O'Connor was highly 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". During March 1838, George Julian Harney formed the London Democratic Association, intending to be much more 'popular' in supporting O'Connor and use of the rhetoric of violence. O'Connor was said to have created a 'physical-force' counterpart to the LWMA;
"They had had a slight taste of physical force in the North. A short time since some of the metropolitan police were sent down to Dewsbury, but the boys of the noble town sent them home again. His desire was to try moral-force as long as possible, even to the fullest extent, but he would always have them to bear in mind, that it is better to die freemen than to live slaves. Every conquest which was called honourable had been achieved through physical force.....He hoped and trusted that out of the exercise of that judgement which belonged exclusively to the working class, a union would arise, and from that union a moral power would be created, sufficient to establish the rights of the poor man; but if this fails, then let every man raise his arms in defence of that which his judgement told him was justice" 4
It is futile to deny that Chartist leaders frequently disagreed with each other over how the Chartist movement should be governed, which debatably lead to the inevitable split of Chartism. Two of Chartism's most impressive leaders, Fergus O'Connor and William Lovett loathed for what the other stood for. This discontent brought weak leadership among the Chartist leaders. Chartist never won sufficient middle class support. Many potential backers who sympathized with the six points were frightened off by the Chartists' violence and by their attacks on wealth and property, they preferred to put money into the more respectable Anti-Corn Law League as suppose to Chartism. Additionally, these divided leadership problems and violence within physical force "alienated" the public, and caused a vast deal of confusion. Regional differences started to emerge as a result bad co-ordination within the leadership. Division was so much a condition of early working-class radicalism that to expect anything different would be idealistic. Chartism therefore was destined to be lead by "unquestionably the best-loved, as well as the most hatred man in the Chartist Movement".5
Until the 1980's, judgments about O'Connor and physical force were the main motives for causing insignificant middle class support. One opponent of O'Connor claimed that Chartism would have been the better for O'Connor's absence, 'What Chartism might have been and achieved if O'Connor had not pulled it down into the gutter it would be useless to speculate'. 6
Recently, however, O'Connor has been transformed as the essential inspiration which drove Chartism on in the demanding days of the 1840's. O'Connor was questionably the most important and significant leadership because he was able to combine elements of democracy and paternalism. To historians such as Mark Hovell and J.T.Ward, O'Connor was the man who took Chartism out of the hands of thoughtful moderates and transformed it into the victim of his own megalomania.
Historian David Jones attempted to explain why O'Connor had so long been undervalued:
"Resentment is at the heart of early Chartist history. Broken hopes and injured pride turned memories into thinly disguised denunciations of Chartist leadership. Men who had always been wary of excessive hero-worship attacked O'Connorites for their exaggerated claims of popular support, their obstruction and inconsistencies, and their willingness to divide the Chartist body and plunge the country into revolution" 7
Historian J.Epstein's study of O'Connor, also explains why O'Connor was such an important figure in the Chartist movement:
"Chartism was a class movement. It was O'Connor's insistence upon the need to construct and maintain an independent working-class movement which won him the respect of the working class radicals....As an organiser and agitator...he made his greatest contribution to the Chartist movement" 8
A similar view is supplied by Dorothy Thompson from the title "The Chartist: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution". This source was useful to a certain degree but I decided not to quote from it, as D.Thompson is renowned for being a Marxist Historian it contained very biased points, thus reducing the reliability of the whole context of the book. Marxist and social historiography has attempted to rescue the reputation of O'Connor, not be seeing him as a vain man who mislead his supporters but as a true peoples' champion. Furthermore, the book was a series of essays rather than a comprehensive book, and seems to be the work of amateurs covering a wide range of topics, with simple answers to complex topics.
Nevertheless, weak leadership was not the sole reason for the breakdown of the working-class movement. One major mistake that the Chartists created was having too many local differences, which made unity difficult and central organization to work. There were many different types of Chartists in different cities, such as Birmingham Chartism which included artisan, middle-class, moral force, philanthropy or South-Yorkshire Chartism. This increased the confusion with the different classes, and strengthened other support. However, even though the Chartists were to an extent unorganised, other movements were even more unorganised, and many Historians believed that Chartism was one of the most organised movements in Britain at the time.
Politically, Chartism was never really a popular movement with politicians. As Disraeli observed in the debate of the Petition in 1839:
"Political rights had so much of an abstract character, their consequences acted so slightly on the multitude, that he did not believe they could ever be the origin of any great popular movement". 9
Unlike the Anti-Corn-Law League, the Chartists had problems through the lack of funding and no parliamentary representation. Both of these problems were mainly due to the fact that the Chartist were supported by the poorest paid sector of society (working class) and consequently had little or no spare capital which to support a movement like Chartism. It is also argued that Chartism was betrayed by the "aristocracy of labour" (usually referred to more skilled labourers with secure jobs). Those who had originally support Chartism throughout the late 1830's were frustrated with the lack of success, and started to look for other organisations to protect their interests i.e. trade unions or co-operative societies.
The Chartists' had little parliamentary representation to put their case to parliament as a result of the Great Reform Act of 1832, which disenfranchised a large section of the working class. The necessary parliamentary representation, which played such a significant role in securing the repeal of the Corn Laws, was not granted to the Chartists until Feargus O'Connor was elected to parliament in 1847. By this time, it was too late, largely because of Peel's socio-economic reforms of the 1840s. O'Connor tried to solve the Chartists' economic problems through his Land Plan in the late 1840s.
O'Connor's plan was the structural imbalance between population and resources in an early industrial society, but it is easily forgotten that the population of Britain almost doubled between 1808 and 1851 and that pressure on space became ever greater. O'Connor was attempting to restructure the balance between people living in town and countryside. Nevertheless, the shares were far too expensive for the working class to be able to afford and O'Connor lost most of his money in the scheme. Additionally, there was no scarcity of condemnation between chartist leaders. Bronterre O'Brien supposed that the system only "extended the Hellish principle of landlordism". Whereas, others disagreed that is was a delusory form of escapism, disrupting Chartists from the central issue of improving life for the working class.
Arguably, another cause for the failure of Chartism was the power of the state, Chartism was faced by anti-democratic forces of overwhelming superiority, for instance; police spies had informed them about the Newport Rising in 1839. Both Whig government and Peel's Conservatives had long experience of handling radical disaffection and took prompt action in arresting leaders. Two new developments in society and technology also strengthened the power of the Government; under new legislation passed in 1829 professional police forces were being created, the policy of arresting Chartist leaders disrupted their movement and brought huge success for the Government. Secondly, by late 1830's, immense expansion of the railways had enabled the Government to transport troops swiftly to areas of disturbance:
"You send a battalion of 1,00 men from London to Manchester (by train) in nine hours; the same battalion marching would take 17 days, and they arrive at the end of nine hours just as fresh, or nearly so, as when they started." 10
Economic causes were also motives for the failure of Chartism. Since Chartism had gained predominance in the "Hungry Forties" (1838-42) it was hardly surprising that it declined after Peel's reforms started to work. Through Peel's socio-economic reforms (e.g. his free trade budgets of 1842 and 1845 and the Bank Charter Act of 1844), economic conditions were improving and the socio-economic reasons for Chartist's existence were removed. Just as O'Connor called Peel "an incipient Chartist" in 1846, Harney recognised in 1848 that "When trade is good, political agitation is a farce" (Northern Star, 2 September 1848). This socio-economic improvement combined with the government's repressive use of the railway and telegraph systems helped to ruin the Chartist movement.
Nonetheless, for every other argument as the reason for the collapse of the Chartist movement, from the advantage of hindsight, there are always counter arguments. For instance, even though the Chartist support declined after the end of the servere economic depression, it is difficult to prove that living standards among working class people as a whole increased significantly until the 1870s and 1880s. Secondly, although the Government grew in self-confidence during the period of economic boom and began to pass legislation designed to reduce the social hostility, it is argued that the amount of legislation designed to improve conditions was limited and had little practice. Government's self-belief is undoubtedly embellished and The New Poor Law remained a symbol of deprivation and disgrace which humiliated those who needed it. Thirdly, even though O'Connor's credibility was shattered and physical force led to further dispute among Chartist leaders and followers, there were other leaders after O'Connor, notably Ernest Jones and Bronterre O'Brien who remained powerful and dedicated. Fourthly, some of the Chartist followers of O'Brien who remained committed to the cause were as revolutionary as any nineteenth-century political leaders, by joining socialists and other extremist in Europe with the aim of creating an international proletarian revolution. Finally, Chartism was strongest in its early days in small and relatively open communities where neighbours shared common experiences and local radicals had influence. As communities grew in size, employment increased, and police forces were extended along with the churches, chapels and schools, the scope for a movement like Chartism was limited. It was not so much defeated, or failed, but transformed into other formal organisations, like Trade Unions or co-operative and friendly radical clubs.
I believe it is fair to say that every political organisation strives for unity and is hindered by splits or disagreements. The split of Chartist leadership over ideology and tactics did have important consequence. Another way of looking at Chartist leadership starts with the scale of which it faced, as David Jones supposed,
"The task of bringing together men with varying levels of political and social consciousness was an enormous one" 11
Even though weak leadership has been recognised as a motive for the failure of Chartism, it was much more effective than is generally allowed. It transformed the confidence and expectations of the working people, produced top quality journalism both informed and educated and rose to the challenge of transforming artisan radicalism into something both broader and deeper, making it more effective to the rapid changed social and economic needs of the working class population in an urban, industrial culture.
In conclusion, Chartism was a failure in the political world, as it made scarcely any impression at its time, even though five out of the six points did eventually pass later on. Unquestionably weak leadership was a big factor in the failure of Chartism, but other aspects such as the better life style for working class after free trade or the governments anticipating on the Chartist movements were all causes for failure.
To what extent weak leadership was the main failure to the Chartist movement can only be looked that if the Chartists had good leadership then some issues might never have occurred, such as lack of middle class support, local differences or confusion with its followers, which might have helped the Chartists in achieving their aims. Whatever the divergence and the disagreement, one key point must be stressed; Chartism marked them all. It left an everlasting legacy of independence, self-determination and often caused bloody-mindedness.
I believe that David Jones's assessment of Chartism catches the essence of Chartism and why it continues to matter for up to a half-century after 1848:
"The history of Chartism after O'Connor's fall from power revealed....that each person had his own order of priorities, his own definition of freedom, and his own views of the relationship between power and knowledge and between the individual and the Government. For this reason Chartists reacted differently to the economic and political progress of the mid-Victorian era. Some settled down to an advanced Liberalism; some moved into independent Labour politics, and others retired in confusion and bitterness. But almost all of them retained that tough and independent spirit which made them 'Irreconcilables'. 12
Bibliography
Introduction Studies
Norman Lowe, Mastering Modern British History, Third Edition (Palgrave Master Series)
H. Cunningham, 'The Nature of Chartism' in Britain 1815-67, (1990)
E. Royle, 'The Origins and nature of Chartism' in History Review, Vol. 33 (1990)
Collins, "Flagship History: Britain 1783-1918'
General Studies of Chartism
D. Jones, Chartism and the Chartist, (1975)
J. T Ward, Chartism (1970)
R. G. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, 1827-54 (1869)
M. Hovell, 'The Chartist Movement' (1918)
D. Thompson, 'The Chartist: Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution' (1984)
J. Saville, 'The British State and Chartist movement' (1848)
Specific approaches
J. Wiener, William Lovett (Manchester University Press, 1989)
W. Lovett, Life and Struggles (Garland, 1948) - originally published in 1876
J.Epstein, The Lion of Freedom (Croom Helm, 1982)
Samuel Kydd, Quoted in D.Thompson, The Chartist: Popular politics in the Industrial Revolution(1984)
2 M.Hovell, The Chartist Movement (1918; Manchester University Press)
3 Thomas Attwood, accepting an invitation to address a meeting on Glasgow Green, 5th May 1838 quoted in J.T Ward, Chartism (1970)
4 Feargus O'Connor, Speech at Westminster Palace, 17th September 1839, quoted in R.G.Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement, 1827-54 (1869)
5 J.Epstein, The Lion of Freedom (Croom Helm, 1982)
6 Republican, 1St June 1871
7 D.Jones, Chartism and the Chartists (1975)
8 J.Epstein, The Lion of Freedom (Croom Helm, 1982)
9 Hansard, House of Commons, 12th July 1839, Col. 246
0 Evidence of an army general to a parliamentary committee on Railways, quoted in J.Saville, 1848: The British State and Chartist movement.
1 D.Jones, Chartism and the Chartist (1975)
2 D.Jones, Chartism and the Chartist (1975)
