Near Revolution Chartism Crusade in England

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 85, 27 April 1937, Page 15

Near Revolution Chartism Crusade in England

fA HUNDRED .years after the blrth of Chartism it is difBcult to believe that this country was brought so near to civil war over a claim for rights now so well recognised as constitutional piinciples (writes Llewellyn Chauter in the Daiy Telegraph), Yet more is it a cause for wonder that such a frenzied clamour, extending over a period of some 12 years with varying •tempo, should have been raised to gain iprivileges which were, prima facie, of a purely polltical character. The six points of the Charter from which the movement took its name— .adult suffrage, secret ballot, annual i parliaments, abolition of the property qualification for members, payment of members, ahd equal electoral districts— had presented demands which were not new in themselves. The Charter was merely a more preclse presentation of an old demand for full parliamentary democracy, preached in the early days of the nineteenth century Reform Movement.

The passing of the Reform Bill produoed a new orientatlon in the groups strugging for enfranchisement, The larger part of the middle class had had their electoral clalms satisfled, and were not disposed to carry the fjght further. Even had the desire been latent "Flnality Jack," as Lord Russell was styled, had declared that the Act of 1832 put an end to the question for all time. So that it was the disfranchised work!ng classes who thus became the vanguard of a new movement which took shape In the London Working Men's Association, founded quietly in 1836 by William Lovett, a cabinet maker, with headquarters at 14, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. THE objects of the Association, which throw into sharp contrast the terrorising events which followed, were "to draw into one bond of unity the intelligent and influentlal portion of the working classes in town and country, and to seek by every legal means to place all classes of society in possession of equal political and soclal rights." One reads in the records of the Association that a "gradual improvement- of the working classes" was desired "without commotion or violence." It was on the last day of Pebruary, 1837, that the Association made its first public appeal, at the Crown and Anchor in the.Strand. It is xecorded that 3000 attended, and undoubtedly a great Impression was created on the public mind. A petition to the House- of Commons resulted, embodying thfe ihe points1 of the Charter. "Missionary" work carried out by the Association in the Midlands and the North soon found itself in close contact with another and more deeply-rorited agltation— that against . the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, under which Commissioners were endeavouring to introduce the Union system. Ihe. .two movements became inextricably linked, and the Association lost its identity, together with its quieter agitational methods, in one vast revolt. The story of the rise and decline of Chartism, the abortlve attempt to set up a "Parliarrteht'V.of the disfranchised to sit as a rival to Westminster, the failure of the general strike during what was to be called the "Sacred Month," the Newport Rising, the PlugPiot, and the ill-

conceived . O'Connor Land Scheme are well-worn facts of history.The nightmare of those years, during which even the Queen's life was thought to be in danger, and the narrow Solent, which divided her sanctuary from th£ ugly temper of her people, was thought to be "not altogether impasslble," cuiminated in the grand fiasco played oiit on Kennington Common when the petition of over 2,000,000 signatures was driven oft to Westminster in a cab. Lord Palmerston, in a letter written three days before the general mobilisatlon of forces under the aged Duke of Wellington to meet the expected hostilities at this time, said:— "I conClude that ali the necessary arrangements for the security of the Queen at Osborne have been made, but it is rather an unprotected situatlon. Would it not be worth while to press on the manufacture of muskets? If you had to raise volunteer corps or to form fettcible corps in Ireland, you would want, perhaps, more arms than we have in store disposable for such services."

TN Europe the revolutionary tide was running high: a rising in Sicily, insurrections ln Paris, Vienna, Prague, Copenhagen, Berlin; a nationalist rising in Ifcaly under the King of Sardinia. and another in Hungary under kossuth. There was#a clamour for constitutional changes in Belgiuin, Holland and Denmark. The hopes of the Continental revolutionaries were dAshed. England preferred to play the game in her own way. By 1848 Chartism had died out as an active force, yet it lingered long endugh afterwards to fertilise the ground in which Karl Marx and the First International were to take root and flnd nourlshment. Is it correct to assess Chartism as a failure? In doing so one must take into consideration Its dual nature. It set out to accomplish a political change for an economic purpose, but neither the political change nor the economic amelioration was possible at once. As the pioneer independent political movement of- the working class it had no experience to draw upon, save the fate of the Dorchester labourers, who were transported for seven years for administering unlawful political oaths, and the grandlose "Grand Natiorial Moral Union of the Productive Classes of Great Brltain and Irelahdi" Which lived for less than a year. 'gUT even if Chartism is to be placed among the great "lost causes" of history, like many another lost cause it sowed the seeds • from which future generations reaped a rich harvest. Most of the aims for which it strove were achieved in due time, and absorbed into the constitutional structure without any of the revolutionary effects anticlpated. Perhaps the most penetratlng criticlsm of the movement, and one that is capable of a more general application, was made by the Earl of Shaftesbury wtiting three days after the Kennington Common affair: — "A Sanitary Rlll," he said, "would, In flve years, confer more blessing and obliterate more Chartism than universal suffrage in half a century. But the world when ill At ease, flies always to politics and omits the statistics of the chimney corner, where all a man'S comfort and dlscomfort Ue." I