Chartism — British Democratic Reform Movement
Chartism was the first mass political movement of industrial workers anywhere, and it failed at everything except changing what was thinkable. The People's Charter of 1838 had six points: universal male suffrage, the secret ballot, equal electoral districts, annual parliaments, payment of members, and the abolition of the property qualification for standing. Five of the six are now unremarkable features of British politics. The sixth, annual parliaments, is the only one nobody adopted. The movement came out of disappointment. The Reform Act of 1832 had enfranchised the middle class and left working men where they were, and the New Poor Law of 1834 had abolished outdoor relief and built workhouses designed to be worse than the worst available employment. Three national petitions were presented and rejected: 1.3 million signatures in 1839, over three million in 1842, and a third in 1848 whose claimed six million included obvious forgeries that the press made much of. The movement divided permanently over method. The moral force wing under William Lovett wanted petition and persuasion; the physical force wing around Feargus O'Connor did not rule out other means, and a rising at Newport in 1839 was fired on by troops with about twenty killed and its leaders transported. The Kennington Common meeting of April 1848 was met by 85,000 special constables and the Duke of Wellington's arrangements, and dispersed in the rain. Its leaders went to prison, to Australia and to the newspapers. The franchise was extended in 1867, 1884 and 1918.
- Year: 1838 CE
- Category: Political
