Chartism - The 1848 Petition

The 1848 Petition

With Europe ablaze in the Revolutions of 1848, the time seemed at hand to revive the movement, focusing on moral suasion, petitions and mass meetings. The result was a failure—opponents showed that many of the signatures on the petitions were forged, and the mass meetings petered out. Chartism faded away, with the main thrust of work class mobilization moving toward the trade union movement.

On 10 April 1848, a new Chartist Convention organised a mass meeting on Kennington Common, which would form a procession to present another petition to Parliament. The estimate of the number of attendees varies depending on the source (O'Connor said 300,000; the government, 15,000; The Observer newspaper suggested 50,000). Historians say 150,000. The government was well aware that the Chartists had no intention of staging an uprising. However, there were fears that a revolution would start spontaneously and the authorities were intent upon a large-scale display of force both to counter this threat and if possible stamp out Chartism in a year of revolutions across continental Europe. 100,000 special constables were recruited to bolster the police force. In any case, the meeting was peaceful. However the military had threatened to intervene if the Chartists made any attempt to cross the Thames.

In a separate incident, rioters in Manchester attempted to storm the hated workhouse. A pitched battle resulted with Chartists fighting the police, eventually the mob was broken up, but rioters roamed the streets of Manchester for three days.

In Bingley, Yorkshire, a group of ‘physical force’ Chartists led by Isaac Ickeringill were involved in a huge fracas at the local magistrates court and later prosecuted for rescuing two of their compatriots from the police.

The original plan of the Chartists, if the petition was ignored, was to create a separate national assembly and press the Queen to dissolve parliament until the charter was introduced into law. However the Chartists were plagued with indecision, and the national assembly eventually dissolved itself, claiming lack of support.

The petition O'Connor presented to Parliament was claimed to have only 1,957,496 signatures – far short of the 5,706,000 he had stated and many of which were discovered to be forgeries (some of the false signatories included Queen Victoria, Mr Punch and 'Pugnose'). But many people were illiterate, and did not know how to write their own signatures. Though O'Connor mishandled the defence of the petition in the House of Commons, Chartism survived the episode. The high-point of its threat to the establishment in 1848 came not in on April 10 but in June. The banning of public meetings, and new legislation on sedition and treason (rushed through Parliament immediately after April 10) drove a significant number of Chartists (including the black Londoner, William Cuffay) to prepare an uprising in August.

O'Connor has been accused of destroying the credibility of Chartism. This was a common theme in histories of the movement until the 1970s. Since the 1980s, however, historians (notably Dorothy Thompson) have emphasised the indispensable contribution O'Connor made to Chartism. Further, she argues that the causes of the movement's decline are too complex to be blamed on one man. Historians have recently shown interest in Chartism after 1848: the final National Convention, for example was held in 1858.