Chartism

After studying this section you should be able to:

• explain why the Chartists gained so much support
• account for the failure of the movement

The Chartists

The aim of Chartism was a democratic parliament, to be achieved by the Six Points of the Charter. The years of greatest Chartist activity were 1839, 1842 and 1848, in each of which a petition was presented to parliament. All three petitions were rejected and after 1848 support dwindled.

Chartism was a movement of the industrial working class, protesting against their living and working conditions. It arose as a response to the economic depression of the late 1830s and 1840s. The Chartists sought political reform as the first step to a better society. It can therefore be seen as reflecting working-class disappointment with the 1832 Reform Act. It also reflected working-class anger at the Poor Law Amendment Act and the collapse of Owen’s Grand National Consolidated Trade Union. It was a movement with much local diversity and only loosely held together by its leaders, its organisation and its press. These were years of high unemployment. Hence the description of Chartism as a ‘knife and fork question’.

The main reasons for its failure were:

• Poor leadership – Lovett, Attwood and O’Connor all had their differing faults.
• Divisions over tactics – Moral Force versus Physical Force.
• Lack of co-ordination, reflecting the essentially local nature of much Chartist activity.
• Improving economic conditions from the mid-1840s (except in 1848).
• Firm action by the government.
• Lack of middle-class support; in this respect it was at a great disadvantage compared with the Anti-Corn Law League.

KEY POINT - The Six Points of the Charter were unacceptable to the middle classes, who had just gained the vote by the Reform Act. Without their support the Chartists were almost bound to fail.

Although the Chartist movement failed, it was not insignificant. It drew attention to working-class grievances. Peel’s aim to make Britain ‘a cheap country for living’ may be seen as a response. Although much Chartist activity was local, the movement achieved a higher degree of organisation than any previous workingclass protest movement. Some historians would see it as an important step on the road to organising an effective working-class movement in the Labour Party.