The Chartists

The Chartists is a major contribution to our understanding not just of Chartism but of the whole experience of working-class people in mid-nineteenth century Britain. The book looks at who the Chartists were, what they hoped for from the political power they strove to gain, and why so many of them felt driven toward the use of physical force. It also studies the reactions of the middle and upper classes and the ways in which the two sides - radical and establishment - influenced each other's positions. This book is a uniquely authoritative discussion of the questions that Chartism raises for the historian; and for the historian, student and general reader alike it provides a vivid insight into the lives of working people as they passed through the traumas of the industrial revolution.

Chartism, the mass movement for democratic rights, dominated British domestic politics in the late 1830s and 1840s. It mobilised over three million supporters at its height. Few modern European social movements, certainly in Britain, have captured the attention of posterity to quite the extent it has done. Encompassing moments of great drama, it is one of the very rare points in British history where it is legitimate to speculate how close the country came to revolution. It is also pivotal to debates around continuity and change in Victorian Britain, gender, language and identity. Chartism: A New History is the only book to offer in-depth coverage of the entire chronological spread (1838-58) of this pivotal movement and to consider its rich and varied history in full. Based throughout on original research (including newly discovered material) this is a vivid and compelling narrative of a movement which mobilised three million people at its height. The author deftly intertwines analysis and narrative, interspersing his chapters with short ‘Chartist Lives’, relating the intimate and personal to the realm of the social and political. This book will become essential reading for anyone with an interest in early Victorian Britain, specialists, students and general readers alike.

This is the first collection of essays on Chartism by leading social historian Dorothy Thompson, whose work radically transformed the way in which Chartism is understood. Reclaiming Chartism as a fully-blown working-class movement, Thompson intertwines her penetrating analyses of class with ground-breaking research uncovering the role played by women in the movement. Throughout her essays, Thompson strikes a delicate balance between down-to-the-ground accounts of local uprisings, snappy portraits of high-profile Chartist figures as well as rank-and-file men and women, and more theoretical, polemical interventions. Of particular historical and political significance is the previously unpublished substantial essay co-authored by Dorothy and Edward Thompson, a superb piece of local historical research by two social historians then on the brink of notable careers.

Chartism, the British mass movement for democratic and social rights in the 1830s and 1840s, was profoundly shaped by the radical tradition from which it emerged. Yet, little attention has been paid to how Chartists saw themselves in relation to this diverse radical tradition or to the ways in which they invented their own tradition. Paine, Cobbett and other ‘founding fathers’, dead and alive, were used and in some cases abused by Chartists in their own attempts to invent a radical tradition. By drawing on new and exciting work in the fields of visual and material culture; cultures of heroism, memory and commemoration; critical heritage studies; and the history of political thought, this book explores the complex cultural work that radical heroes were made to perform.

This book, the first full-length study of metropolitan Chartism, provides extensive new material for the 1840s and establishes the regional and national importance of the London movement throughout this decade. After an opening section which considers the economic and social structure of early-Victorian London, and provides an occupational breakdown of Chartists, Dr Goodway turns to the three main components of the metropolitan movement: its organized form; the crowd; and the trades. The development of London Chartism is correlated to economic fluctuations, and, after the nationally significant failure of London to respond in 1838-9, 1842 is seen as a peak in terms of conventional organization, and 1848 as the high point of turbulence and revolutionary potential. The section concludes with an exposition of the insurrectionary plans of 1848.