CHARTIST

MOVEMENT
Sem VI
Paper- 614
Unit -1
Bhawana Singh ( Department of History)
WHAT IS CHARTIST
MOVEMENT?
 Chartism was a working class movement which emerged in 1836 in London.
 It expanded rapidly across the country and was most active between 1838 and 1848.
 The aim of the Chartists was to gain political rights and influence for the working classes. Their
demands were widely publicized through their meetings and pamphlets.
 The movement got its name from the People’s Charter which listed its six main aims:
 A vote for all men (over 21)
 secret ballot
 no property qualification to become an MP
 payment for MPs
 electoral districts of equal size

1. annual elections for Parliament

BACKGROUND
 The term Chartism emerged early in 1839 as a descriptor for the largest parliamentary pressure
movement in British history.
 The People’s Charter (published May 1838) had quickly become the focal point for a mass
agitation that sought to complete the work that Magna Carta (1215) had begun, namely the
transfer of political power down the social scale.
 The 1832 Reform Act had exploded the conceit that the British constitution was beyond
improvement. It was widely believed that the Act was only an initial instalment of parliamentary
reform. However, its primary beneficiaries, the Whig Party, were resolute in proclaiming its
finality and this strengthened a popular perception that Parliament acted only in the interests of
its (largely land-owning) members.
 Added to this was growing support for the reform of factory working conditions and hours of
labour, resentment at recent reforms to the Poor Law, and widespread concern about
government handling of trade unionism and of political unrest in the colonies. Over-arching all
these factors was a deepening economic recession.
PECULIARITIES OF CHARTIST MOVEMENT
 There had been earlier popular campaigns for parliamentary reform but Chartism was
different for four principal reasons.
 First, it was genuinely national, reaching from north east Scotland to west Cornwall. Its
mutual dependence with one of the first and most innovative mass-circulation newspapers, the
Northern Star, was a decisive factor here.
 Second, it was integrally linked with industrial workers’ grievances, to the extent that it has often
been characterised as the earliest political expression of mass class-consciousness.
 Third, it took the well-established tactic of mass-petitioning Parliament to new heights.
 Fourth, it broadened the repertoire of political campaigning in Britain, through the development
of a nationwide popular press, the employment of a professional staff to promote the cause, and
by encouraging many of its supporters to get involved in local politics (where qualifications
to vote were more generously defined than they were for Parliament).
COURSE OF CHARTIST
MOVEMENT
 Chartism emerged rapidly out of impatience with the 1832 political settlement and existing campaigns for
factory reform and against the Poor Law and Whig foreign and trade union policy.
 The People’s Charter itself was the work of the London Working Men’s Association and more specifically
its secretary William Lovett, a cabinet maker and socialist.
 Though Chartism did not lack middle-class or rural support, it was primarily a movement of industrial
workers.
 An organising body to direct the movement’s efforts, the National Charter Association (NCA), was not
established until the autumn of 1840.
 By 1842 the formal demands of the movement had broadened to include home rule for Ireland, complete
religious freedom and an end to all legislative links between the State and the Church of England, abolition
of the national debt, the standing army and the civil list, and an end to class bias in the administration
of justice.
 Chartism, which emerged, for the most part, before scientific communism became an integral part of the
proletarian movement, manifested a political incoherence characteristic of the proletarian struggle at that
time, whose participants were influenced considerably by non-proletarian views and Utopian socialism.
 Despite its immaturity, however, Chartism proved that even at this early stage the working class was capable
of independent political action, and it revealed an impulse among the working class toward solidarity and
organization. As Lenin stated, Chartism “in many respects was something preparatory to Marxism, the ’last
word but one’ before Marxism”
 On July 12, 1839, Parliament rejected the Chartist petition, which bore 1,280,000 signatures. The
convention and the movement’s supporters were unprepared to carry out contingency measures, which
included the organization of a general strike; nevertheless, the convention’s call for a strike to begin on
August 12 was answered by workers in Manchester, Bolton, Macclesfield, and numerous other
localities. On November 4, Welsh miners staged the Newport uprising, which was put down by troops.
 In the 1840’s, the Chartist movement entered a new phase. On July 20, 1840, the National Charter
Association was founded in Manchester; it reached a membership of 50,000 in 1842.
 Although it was unable to clearly define goals and tactics and suffered from a certain lack of
organization, the National Charter Association waged a struggle to enable the working class to assume
political power and use that power to transform society.
 The convention that met in April 1842 reflected the desire of most Chartists to create an independent
class movement. Several social demands were included in the new petition, notably the abrogation of
the Poor Law of 1834, whose only provision providing relief to the poor was the workhouse. The
petition also demanded a reduction in taxes, a shortened workday, and higher wages.
 More than 3.3 million signatures were gathered for the new petition, which was nevertheless rejected by
Parliament. In response, miners, textile workers, and pottery workers in Staffordshire, Worcestershire,
and Scotland went on strike in August 1842.
 From August 9 to August 16 the strike engulfed Lancashire and part of Cheshire and Yorkshire,
assuming the character of a general strike in these areas. Uprisings broke out spontaneously in several
places, and bloody clashes took place in Preston, Blackburn, and Halifax, with workers fighting police
and troops.
 In late 1842 the Chartist movement temporarily went into decline owing to the failure of the strike, to
internal separatist tendencies, and to the immature social and political views of its members. Many
Chartist leaders believed, with O’Brien, that a crucial means of solving social problems lay in land
nationalization. Others saw the solution in the workers’ returning to the land; to accomplish this goal,
O’Connor helped found the National Land Company in 1845.
 The revolutionary trend nevertheless gained strength as the Chartist leaders tended towards
proletarian socialism and internationalism. Leftwing Chartists, notably Harney,
established close ties with K. Marx and F. Engels. In 1845 leftwing Chartists and
revolutionary exiles from Germany and other countries founded the Fraternal
Democrats, an international society, in London. Harney and Jones, the most progressive Chartist leaders,
joined the Communist League.
 In 1847 and 1848 the Chartist movement took on a wider scope under the influence of the.
economic crisis and disturbances in Ireland and revolutionary events on the Continent.
In response to the upsurge in the proletarian struggle, Parliament in 1847 was
compelled to pass a bill establishing a ten-hour workday.
 O’Connor was elected to the House of Commons. Harney and Jones were unable,
however, to persuade the convention that met in April 1848 to plan an armed struggle. A
peaceful demonstration by the Chartists on April 10 was broken up by the
government.
 An attempt by the left wing to prepare an armed uprising proved unsuccessful. Most of the
Chartist leaders, including Jones, were arrested, and on Aug. 14, 1848, a Chartist uprising in
Ashton-under-Lyne was put down.
 After 1848 the Chartist movement declined, and the adherents of O’Brien and O’Connor split into two mutu
ally hostile sects. In response, the leftwing Chartists, supported by
Marx and Engels, sought to revive Chartism on a socialist basis.
 The first English translation of The Communist Manifesto was published in the Chartist
press. A new Chartist program was adopted in 1851. In it the movement proclaimed
socialist goals for the first time; they included the establishment of the political. hegemony of
the working class through the implementation of the demands of the People’s Charter,.
the nationalization of land and banks, and the cooperation of labor.
 The Chartists sought to take part in the strike movement and to combine economic
struggle with political agitation. On their initiative the Labour Parliament convened in March 1854; it was
attended by representatives from the trade unions and nonorganized workers.
 The Chartists failed to create, however, a mass organization. Using Great Britain’s worldwide industrial and
colonial monopoly, the bourgeoisie, by creating a privileged stratum, the labor aristocracy, were able to divi
de the working class and thereby temporarily
weaken its revolutionary energy. As reformist tendencies in Great Britain’s working class
movement became dominant, Chartism steadily lost its influence among the working class, and at the end of
the 1850’s it finally disappeared from the historical stage.
 Chartism, which Lenin described as “the revolutionary period of the English labour
movement” , strongly influenced Great Britain’s social development. The ruling classes
were compelled to implement in one form or another the main democratic demands of the
Chartist program. Great Britain’s workingclass movement, despite the malign influence
of reformism, preserved the traditions of Chartism. Chartism and its lessons were of international importan
ce.