CHARTISM, the name of a revolutionary democratic agita tion in Great Britain which came into prominence in 1838 and disappeared after 1850.
The "People's Charter" was the name given to a bill containing the famous six points—equal electoral areas, universal suffrage, payment of members, no property qualifications, vote by ballot, and annual parliaments—all but the last of which have since been secured. These points, which from 1768 had been, partially at least, the common property of all radical agitation, were first collected into one petition on Feb. 18 1837, by the London Work ingmen's Association, founded by William Lovett, as a result of the great disappointment of the Reform Bill of 1832, which enfranchised only the middle class. These six points were drafted into a bill known as the Charter by Lovett, with possibly some assistance from Francis Place, which was published on May 8 1838; and the formal constitution of the Chartist movement is commonly dated from a great meeting held on Aug. 8 on Newhall Hill at which the Charter was approved.
The ultimate aims of the movement were economic—"social equality" or, in the phrase of G. J. Harney's London Democrat, (April 27 1839) "that all shall have a good house to live in with a garden back or front, just as the occupier likes; good clothing to keep him warm and to make him look respectable, and plenty of good food and drink to make him look and feel happy." The Chartists were not unanimous about the means of securing this social equality, but a provisional agreement on universal suffrage as the necessary first step provided the basis of the movement. The London Workingmen's Association, which launched the cam paign by sending out "missionaries" all over Great Britain, con sisted of skilled workers mostly above the poverty line : not so the supporters to whom they appealed. The factory workers, colliers and handloom workers of the North and Midlands, who became the chief adherents of Chartism, were passing through a period of extreme misery and degradation, which was not at this time mitigated by any effectively administered Factory Act (except one which limited, in some cases, the working hours of certain children to 12) . Two Tory factory reformers, Richard Oastler and the Rev. J. R. Stephens, were, moreover, conducting, in an exceedingly violent manner, a campaign against the pro visions of the Poor Law of 1834, which aimed at making poor relief more unpleasant than the most unpleasant means of gain ing a livelihood outside. Oastler and Stephens, whose campaign in several areas succeeded in postponing its application, threw their weight into the Chartist movement, and over the whole of the Northern area torchlight meetings were held at night on the moors, in which armed insurrection was freely advocated. Scot land, and the west of England, which was evangelized by Henry Vincent, the most eloquent Chartist orator, were the moderate areas : the Welsh miners were the most revolutionary. Feargus O'Connor (q.v.), an Irish squire who had formerly (1832-35) been one of O'Connell's "tail" in Parliament, became rapidly the most popular leader, and rarely made a speech without alluding to physical force.
The new Chartist plan of campaign was, however, provided by a banker, Thos. Attwood, M.P. for Birmingham, who trusted that a Charter parliament would adopt his views on currency. He pro posed the election, by the disfranchised, of an anti-Parliament to be called the Convention which would sit as a rival to the House of Commons and present a petition, signed by the mass of the working class, for the enactment of the Charter as the law of the land. If the Commons refused, the Convention would then call a general strike (the "Sacred Month"). This exhilarating programme was enthusiastically taken up; the petition was signed by 1,280,000 people and the members of the Convention, elected by public meetings, held their first sitting in London on Feb. 4 1839. The Convention was at the beginning controlled by the "moral force men" headed by Lovett, but it was not able to pre vent frequent violent conflicts with the police (in which the Chartists were not uncommonly victorious) and the moderates entirely lost control when on July 12 the Commons, after long delays, rejected the petition. Post-dated orders for the General Strike were forthwith issued, amid great excitement. Only a few days had passed, however, when the Convention realized that it had behind it no organization and no preparations, and in consequence somewhat ignominiously cancelled the orders on July 22.
What the "moral force men" would not do, others were pre pared to attempt. During the Convention a secret military organi zation had been formed, directed by a committee of five : its plans were completed at a private conference held in the autumn at Heckmondwike. The signal for the insurrection was to be given by the capture of Newport (Mon.) and the release of Vincent from Monmouth Castle. The other centres of revolt appear to have been in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The attack on Newport was led by the ex-mayor and J.P., John Frost, on the morning of Nov. 4. It was to have been in three columns, but owing to mismanagement the columns failed to unite at Risca and Frost attacked alone with about 3,00o men armed with rifles and man drils (collier's picks). Warning had been given and the Chartists walked into a trap in the square outside the Westgate hotel. They were defeated after a very brief struggle, leaving a considerable number (the figures are disputed) of killed and wounded. The leaders, Frost, Jones and Williams, were sentenced to death, after wards mitigated to transportation. The police also rounded up nearly every other Chartist leader of importance, and secured sen tences of one or two years' imprisonment.
On the release of the leaders in 184o and 1841 renewed quarrels broke out between the "physical force men" led by O'Connor and his assistant on the Northern Star, G. J. Harney, and the "moral force men" led by Lovett and Bronterre O'Brien. The latter con sidered that the working class had not sufficient strength to achieve reform alone and should now invite the aid of sympa thetic middle-class groupings: O'Connor and his allies declared that the middle-class reformers, responsible for the deception of 1832, were also the worst oppressors of the operatives in the factories and mines. O'Connor, with the assistance of his journal the Star, which secured a hitherto unparalleled circulation, carried the day and drove the other section out of the movement., His popularity became enormous, due to his hard work, his hatred of the middle class and his remarkable invective, of which the fol lowing is a specimen : "You—I was just coming to you when I was describing the materials of which our spurious aristocracy is composed. You, gentlemen, belong to the big-bellied, little brained, numskull aristocracy. How dare you hiss me, you con temptible set of platterfaced, amphibious politicians?" A national organization, technically illegal, called the National Charter Asso ciation, was founded, which gave some coherence to the move ment. It secured the allegiance of a number of trade union branches and promoted a second petition which received the star tling number of 3,315,752 signatures. The year 1842, when this was presented, marks the high water-mark of Chartism. After its rejection on May 2, the Chartist executive turned an existing small strike at Ashton into a general strike for the Charter (Aug. 12). They brought out Lancashire, Cheshire, the Potteries and several other industrial districts; the strikers marching from town to town knocking the plugs out of the boilers where resist ance was offered (hence the name Plug Riots). Owing to inade quate communications, the strike spread slowly, but trades as far north as Aberdeen had decided to come out, when, his nerve failing, O'Connor suddenly declared the strike was a plot of the Anti-Corn Law League. This action broke up the strike which ended almost at once in defeat. Thereafter Chartism entered into a period of decline, in which interest was chiefly directed to a financially unsound scheme for settling Chartists on the land as smallholders, by means of a National Land Company directed by O'Connor. One settlement only (O'Connorville, 1847, Herrings gate, Bucks) was opened. Enthusiasm was revived in 1847 by the election of O'Connor as M.P. for Nottingham, and in 1848 by the sensational series of revolutions on the continent. Fired by the hope of similar victories, O'Connor promoted a petition, which he said had 6,000,000 signatures, and arranged for the calling of a "National Assembly." The petition was to be presented by a pro cession of Chartists marching from Kennington Common to the House of Commons on April 1 o 1848. Believing this to be the day fixed for the revolution, the Government garrisoned London so heavily that the procession was abandoned. The petition, fur ther, was announced by the Government to contain under 2,000,000 signatures, and it was also discovered that the Land Company was bankrupt. Under the influence of this series of fiascos, O'Connor became distracted in his mind: his successor, Ernest Jones, endeavoured in vain to revive the legal movement which by about 1854 may be regarded as extinct. The illegal revolutionary organization prepared an insurrection for Whit t Monday 1848, later adjourned to Aug. 15, but as it was carefully watched and, indeed, partly directed by police informers, its effort was suppressed without difficulty.
The disappearance of Chartism was due not so much to the folly of its leaders as to the increasing comfort of the working class in the period of prosperity following on the Corn Law Repeal (1846), and the enforcement of the factory reforms secured by Lord Shaftesbury (q.v.). Working-class interest hence forward was diverted to the co-operative movement and the new craft trade unions, of which the most famous, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, was founded in 1851.