Robert G. Hall. Voices of the People: Democracy and Chartist Political Identity, 1830-1870. Chartist Studies Series. Monmouth: Merlin Press, 2007. ix + 218 pp. $32.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-85036-557-3.

Reviewed by Rohan McWilliam

Published on H-Albion (January, 2009)

Commissioned by Mark Hampton (Lingnan University)

In June 2008, I was privileged to speak at the Northern Star, is now available in a searchable, annual Chartism Day conference at the University digital form. Not long ago, Malcolm Chase pro‐ of , Newport. During the course of the event, duced his narrative history of the movement, there were four papers followed by a walking Chartism: A New History (2007), which is clearly tour of some of the nearby locations most associ‐ going to be a standard work. This is not bad for a ated with Chartism. We were taken to see where movement that often has been written of as a and the Chartists had gathered prior to failure. the in November 1839 and then The frst historians of Chartism were, of proceeded to the Westgate Hotel where the cata‐ course, Chartists themselves. Robert G. Gammage strophic confrontation with the military took wrote his history of the movement as early as place. One of the most encouraging aspects of the 1854, History of the Chartist Movement, day was the large number of people (not all of 1837-1854. However, despite the work of such fg‐ them academics) for whom Chartism still matters. ures as Mark Hovell and G. D. H. Cole in the frst There was a passion and an excitement for peo‐ half of the twentieth century, the modern wave of ple’s history that reminded me of the old History research really dates from the publication of Workshop conferences. Chartist Studies in 1959 where Asa Briggs brought Chartist studies continue to fourish in a quite together the work of a group of scholars who had remarkable way. The volume under review is part been delving into the history of the movement in of the Merlin Press Chartist Studies series (seven diferent localities. Briggs's edited collection be‐ titles published so far). The Chartist Ancestors came a founding text of modern labor history and Web site has proven to be extremely popular Chartism was seen as one of the key episodes that (www.chartists.net). The Chartist newspaper, The defned the particular nature of Victorian politics H-Net Reviews and society. Broadly speaking, Chartism was used Chartist historians, argues that Ashton was "‘the to explore issues of class and locality in the 1960s most radical and Chartist of all the factory towns’" and 1970s. This mutated into a focus on Chartism (quoted on p. 2). Hall commences the book by not‐ as an attempt to create a new way of life and to ing that there were fourteen thousand signatures generate forms of democratic participation that from Ashton on the 1842 Chartist petition, which went beyond the right to vote. It says something amounted to 62 percent of the town’s population. about the signifcance of Chartism that, in the However, the reader would be wrong to assume 1980s, the critique of traditional labor history that Hall is simply going back to the kind of ap‐ (much of it generated by the Left) was partly ex‐ proach found in Briggs’s Chartist Studies with its pressed through discussions of the movement. Ex‐ discreet accounts of the movement’s history in a amining the peculiarities of its language and polit‐ range of diferent localities. Hall is interested in ical arguments, Gareth Stedman Jones’s rethink‐ Ashton as an example of the smaller, medium- ing of Chartism queried the Marxist analysis that sized factory town, which, he argues, was more saw the movement as a product of industrial-capi‐ characteristic of the movement than the large talist society.[1] Since Stedman Jones, Chartism cities studied in the Briggs collection. Moreover, has been interpreted in terms of gender and na‐ he is concerned to develop a perspective that ex‐ tional identities, while there has also been a plores Chartism through the relationship between greater focus on Chartist fction, literature, and the culture of the national movement and one of poetry, once routinely ignored. A lot of research its most important centers. The book is not a (evident in the Merlin Press series) has gone into study of Ashton Chartism or Chartism as a whole uncovering more about Chartist lives and consid‐ but of the complex interplay between the two. The ering the movement in terms of the development pitfall with this approach (which the book does of the press and mass communications. not always avoid) is the danger of falling between two stools. Hall insists he is not ofering a micro- This is the context within which we should history of the Ashton community, but the book read Robert G. Hall’s new book on the movement. sometimes lacks a sense of place, which would The title is presumably meant to allude to Patrick have been useful to the argument. However, at its Joyce’s Visions of the People: Industrial England best, the book ofers a productive way of thinking and the Question of Class, 1848-1914 (1991), one about local history in a sophisticated and complex of the key revisionist works on Victorian political way. What matters to Hall are issues of identity, culture. Voices of the People is also a contribution democracy, and political strategy. to what is increasingly being called “Post-Chartist Studies.” Unlike the generation of the 1960s who The book begins with an examination of mule were interested in radicalism up to the early spinning in Ashton, which grounds the interpreta‐ 1850s, Hall insists that we need to look at how tion in a material base. The chapter is intended Chartism related to diferent forms of radicalism not just to alert the reader to a part of the eco‐ and liberalism in the mid-Victorian period. This nomic history of Ashton but also to raise issues yoking together of the Chartist and post-Chartist about gender and skill. This focus on the labor periods has been one of the most distinctive shifts process and the politics of work seems curiously in the history of radicalism over the last twenty cut of from the rest of the book as workplace is‐ years. sues only reappear from time to time. Hall goes on to examine the kinds of political arguments At one level, the book is a study of the politics that Ashton Chartists deployed. For example, they of Ashton-under-Lyne from 1830 to 1870. In itself, developed their own view of British history, this is long overdue. Dorothy Thompson, doyen of

2 H-Net Reviews which refused elite constructions of the past in fa‐ meant to be a stepping stone toward further re‐ vor of a narrative that stressed the ongoing strug‐ forms that aimed for material improvements in gle for liberty. Democracy was not some foreign working-class life. innovation but an essential part of what it meant The key passage that defnes Hall’s approach to be British. Radical banquets toasted the memo‐ comes when he argues that Ashton Chartism ries of Tom Paine and Wat Tyler. The spirit of rad‐ “broke through to a broader and more revolution‐ ical patriotism ran through Ashton Chartists, al‐ ary sense of itself as a class movement” but that though I was delighted to read about the Chartists “this vision was feeting and elusive.” He goes on who put on a reportedly popular play at various to argue that “there was a constant tension in local venues about the Irish revolutionary Robert Chartist politics between class antagonism and a Emmet. There was later a union between Chartist longing for class conciliation” (p. 55). I have al‐ and Irish Confederates in 1848. At these moments, ways been persuaded about the militancy of the Hall really captures the texture of early Victorian Ashton situation (and indeed Hall is right to argue popular politics. that Ashton was by no means untypical), but the Ashton Chartists did not have things all their “revolutionary” character of the local situation is own way. Hall recognizes the existence of the lo‐ perhaps open to question. There was mass arming cal Operative Conservative Association and in‐ and there were attempts at a general strike in deed the appeal of Tory radicalism. I was sur‐ 1842, but that is not quite the same as arguing prised that Joseph Rayner Stephens, a signifcant that a revolutionary situation existed as opposed local fgure (sometimes described as a radical to a moment of serious civil disorder. Hall sees Tory), did not feature in the book quite as much this militancy as the product of a particular con‐ as one might have expected. The extent to which vergence of political and economic crises in the Stephens was an actual Chartist is, of course, ar‐ later 1830s. Social reform and economic improve‐ guable, but he was one of the prominent individu‐ ment thereafter “undermined the movement’s als associated with the movement in its early sense of identity and mission,” although Hall does years. argue that economic improvements in mid-Victo‐ rian Ashton were patchy (p. 109). In general, Hall Following the work of Anna Clark (The Strug‐ is at his best when he talks about the ambiguities gle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of of Chartist radicalism and the competing and of‐ the British Working Class [1995]) and Jutta ten contradictory forces that shaped strategy. Schwarzkopf (Women in the Chartist Movement [1991]), there has been a tendency to view Char‐ Hall is concerned about the relationship of tism as shaped by a form of gender politics that national leaders and supporters in Ashton. Here, prioritized a masculine frame of reference and in‐ he emphasizes the role of literacy and “cultural creasingly excluded women (the decision to sup‐ sophistication” in shaping how leaders were per‐ port universal manhood sufrage was only one ceived (p. 86). This allows Hall to discuss local tra‐ part of this). Hall registers the force of this analy‐ ditions of autodidacticism, a familiar issue when sis, although his study stresses the diversity of we think about radical politics. Hall fnds little ev‐ opinion on the issue of female sufrage. His view idence of this culture of learning involving the of Chartism is also diferent from that of Stedman adoption of bourgeois norms of culture and poli‐ Jones who refocused attention on the People’s tics. It did, however, create problems of identity. Charter, analyzing it as a continuation of previous Local Chartists spoke about a united people with democratic and purely political demands. For whom they identifed, but Hall shows that the Hall’s radicals, the People’s Charter was always kind of worker-intellectuals who supported Char‐

3 H-Net Reviews tism recognized the extent of apathy and disunity eral perspective of the 1860s, Aitken still empha‐ among the working class. Working-class radicals sized the distinctiveness of Chartism. The chapter have often developed an insider/outsider status provides one of the thoughtful analyses of an indi‐ when it comes to proletarian life. vidual Chartist that we have.

Taking the narrative into the mid-Victorian Chartism used to be interpreted as an ances‐ years allows Hall to explore the ways Ashton Lib‐ tor of the Labour Party. More recently, there has erals and Tories had to accommodate workers been a tendency to see it as one source of the with a Chartist past. By the early 1860s, about half Gladstonian Liberal Party. The new wave of of the electorate were part of the working class Chartist studies (like Hall’s), by contrast, brings leading to a greater focus on class conciliation out the peculiarities of the movement. We are go‐ and the mutual interests of capital and labor in lo‐ ing to be arguing about it for some time to come. cal political rhetoric. Many Chartists gravitated to‐ Note ward the Liberals but workers also looked to the Tories who capitalized on anti-Irish sentiment. [1]. Gareth Stedman Jones, “Rethinking Char‐ The militancy of the period 1838-42 was no more. tism," in Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832-1982 (Cambridge: The real hero of the book is the Chartist Cambridge University Press, 1983), 90-178. William Aitken who features throughout and is the subject of the fnal and best chapter in the d book. Aitken represents the shift from Chartist militancy to Liberalism. He began life as an Ash‐ [1] ton cotton piecer and (later) mule spinner but often used his passion for self-education to become a school teacher. In 1840, he was sent to prison for often sedition after he became a prominent Ashton [2] Chartist. He was later arrested for sedition in 1848 such although the charges were dropped. In the 1850s, [3] however, he found himself supporting the Liber‐ als, making him emblematic of the course of Ash‐ It ton Chartism. This fnal chapter is rather diferent of from the rest of the book (it is described as a con‐ itself clusion, which it really is not). Shortly before he 4 died (he committed suicide in 1869), Aitken pub‐ lished his autobiography in a local newspaper. s Hall, who has published an edition of this autobi‐ 14,000 ography, employs it as an opportunity to refect on % working-class life writing, the formation of identi‐ (p. 2) ty and the ways in which Chartism was remem‐ bered in the mid-Victorian period. Unlike some to be historians who have emphasized the similarities of between Chartism and radical Liberalism, Hall’s (p. 36) reading of the autobiography brings out the real diferences between the two traditions. Even (pp. 39-40) though he wrote his autobiography from his Lib‐ R

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the fgure of fgures [5] (p. 48) rather Gareth thing to not un (p. 99) (pp. 101-102) (p. 127) the was written Robert

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Citation: Rohan McWilliam. Review of Hall, Robert G. Voices of the People: Democracy and Chartist Political Identity, 1830-1870. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. January, 2009.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=23926

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