The London Democrats and the “Grand Uprising” of 1839

By Chris Ford

“Nonetheless the revolutionary slogans and methods of Chartism are even today, if critically dissected, infinitely higher than the sickly sweet eclecticism of the MacDdnalds and the economic obtuseness of the Webbs. ……In this sense the British working class can and must see in Chartism not only its past but also its future. As the Chartists tossed the sentimental preachers of ‘moral force’ aside and gathered the masses behind the banner of revolution, so the British proletariat is faced with ejecting reformists, democrats and pacifists from its midst and rallying to the banner of a revolutionary overturn……History is liquidating Liberalism and prepares to liquidate the pseudo-Labour pacifism precisely so as to give a second birth to Chartism on new, immeasurably broader historical foundations. That is where you have the real national tradition of the British labour movement!”

Two traditions: the seventeenth-century revolution and Chartism, from Leon Trotsky’s Writings On Britain

The popular image of Victorian era is of period dramas and the novels Charles Dickens, a scene of upper class decadence, lower class destitution and a stifling morality. Despite the horrors of the industrial revolution working people are passive, society is stable, and the best they can hope for is a rich philanthropist to save Oliver Twist from hardship. It is a fabrication, the great creation of historical spin doctors.

Hidden is the truth that the period was the scene of bitter class struggle, through which efforts were made to forge a difference society from modern capitalism being forged in the industrial revolution. For a decade the establishment was besieged by mass mobilisations for political and social reforms – the Peoples Charter. The Chartist movement was the first national workers movement and its traditions and goals stand in stark contrast to the labour movement and leaders we have today. In 1839 the first year of the Chartist challenge, Britain witnessed an unparalleled revolutionary upsurge of the working class. Amongst the most important figures of the period was George Julian Harney, a founder of the London Democratic Association, pioneers of revolutionary socialism.

The London Democratic Association (LDA) was founded during the springtime of working class self-organisation in the late 1830s. Outside of the nineteenth century it has remained all but forgotten by the labour movement, even with the rediscovery of Chartism by the post-war left. The lack of recognition for the LDA stands in sharp contrast to the position of figures such as Robert Owen well recognised for his role in the birth of socialism. The idea that the L.D.A actually pioneered social revolution ten years before Marx penned the Communist Manifesto has barely been considered by twentieth century historians.

Julian Harney said that the LDA had a distinct place in history: the “Democrats went beyond all other parties in the avowal of the extreme but righteous principles of political and social equality. They were – Chartists, but they were ‘Chartists and something more”. At the start of the twentieth century Theodore Rothstein, duly recognised them as the “most remarkable of all the organisations then existing” and Harney as “the first (one may almost call him) Bolshevik”. At the start of the twenty-first century as every effort is being made to rule out the working class as an agent of an alternative society Harney’s advise of the necessity to “keeping alive and promulgating the principles of which the Association had been the representative” hold true today. 

Uniting generations of revolutionaries

The London Democratic Association was established on the 10th of August 1838 – on the anniversary of the overthrow of the Monarchy during the Great French Revolution. It was a reconstitution on a pan-London basis of the East London Democratic Association formed on 29th January 1837. The London Democrats who came together in 1837 stood in direct opposition to the moderate London Working Men’s Association led by William Lovett a founder of Chartism. Lovett was identified with the ‘moral force’ wing of the movement who believed they could secure reforms by ‘moral persuasion’, but it was not only their reformism that the LDA objected to their advocacy of class collaboration with the middle-class. This in this period comprised sections of the capitalist class, who despite their economic power remained excluded from access to political power despite the electoral Reform Act of 1832.

The L.D.A reached a core membership of three thousand, overwhelmingly working class. It had an influence at the time far wider than the London, with Democratic Associations being formed in at least ten other areas including Leeds, Norwich, Hull, Nottingham and parts of Scotland. Democrat in this time was a term distinguished by being identified with the most with the revolutionary and republican political tradition. The LDA had deep roots, perhaps more than any other body in 1839 it brought together a range of activists uniting of young and old generations; this unique combination can be seen in the leading activists in its ranks.

Allen Davenport, aged 64 in 1839, was a member in the L.D.A Shoreditch division and had been active in metropolitan radicalism since 1818. Involved in the insurrectionary ‘Cato Street Conspiracy’ he described himself as an “out and out Spencean”. The continued influence of the radical ideas of Thomas Spence was ensured by Davenport’s publication of a biography of Spence in 1836. Another veteran was the sixty-five year old Thomas Preston, a member of the Jacobin inspired London Corresponding Society. He was active with Spence and continued the group after Spence’s death in 1814. Preston was directly involved in insurrectionary activity and after the Spa Fields riots was charged with High Treason. He was part of the movement towards a rising in 1820 that ended with the ‘Cato Street conspiracy’ (luckily, unlike some of the other conspirators, who were hung, he escaped with a three month sentence in Tothill Fields prison). Charles Neesom simlarly had a lucky escape after Cato Street. An active Spencean he worked closely with Davenport, was deeply active in early trades unionism, and was was active in the Owenite National Union of the Working Classes. Along with the young Harney Neesom resigned from the London Working Mens Association in March 1838 and at 52 he was founder of the East London Democratic Association with Harney and Devenport. Along with these veterans there was also Samuel Waddington (another Cato Street survivor); Henry Ross, who had been involved in the Glasgow struggles of 1819; Thomas Ireland a veteran of the free press struggles; and James Coombe editor of the London Democrat, who also broke with Lovett.

Less known are the pioneer women of the LDA such as Mary Ireland, Elizabeth Turner, Marthya Dymock and Elizabeth Neesom, who became secretary of the London Female Democratic Association formed in April 1839. Internationalism was prevalent and exemplified in the figures of Polish revolutionaries such as Major Beniowski a survivor of the 1830 Polish rising, and Martha Schellvietinghoff. United in the LDA was a wealth of experience and thought spanning working class radicalism from the impact of the French Revolution, through the struggles of post-Reform Act England of the 1830’s. But if one name more than any other has come to be associated with the Democratic Association it is that of George Julian Harney. 

Harney, an ex-sailor, grew up in the slums of Deptford and Bermondsey, and at twenty-two he was already a veteran of the movement. Active around the National Union of the Working Classes he became involved the ‘war of the unstamped press’, resulting in two sentences in London prisons for distributing the Poor Mans Guardian, and a third in Derby goal. Strongly influenced by Bronterre O’Brien his “guide, philosopher and friend”, he was steeped in the French Revolution. By 1839 Harney had already risen to national prominence in Chartism, he became a bridge between not only the different generations, but his internationalism allowed a unity of vernacular and international revolutionary ideas.

Revolutionaries and respectables

Writing on the motives which led to the creation of the L.D.A Harney stated:

“It is well known to the country that no efficient organisation of the masses has been established in the Metropolis, since the dissolution of the National Union of the Working Classes. True, there is in existence Clubs, Societies, and Associations, professing to represent the Working Classes; but this is a delusion, as evidenced in the simple fact, that these Societies are composed of a select few of the ‘respectables’.”

The meaning of the repeated repudiation of the ‘respectables’ by the L.D.A has been the subject of some speculation. Reports of the L.D.A. meetings describes the crowds as ‘mechanics and labourers’, or as ‘destitute-looking individuals’, or of miserable appearance’. Whilst accounts by the Police spies tend to reflect prejudiced views of the poor, there is no doubt that when Harney talked of the “respectables” as being “men raised above the common lot of their order”. The result of this, wrote Harney was they “cannot sympathise with their sufferings, and, as a matter of course are unfit, in the days of difficulty and danger, to guide the energies of the people in those bold movements which a nation must make, if that nation would be free”.

The L.D.A. still included in its founding Address the statement that “In the same spirit of pure democracy, we hold out the hand of fellowship to all who will sincerely co-operate with us to achieve the objects we have in view. We exclude no man because he may be wealthy”. Unity in ideas was crucial for the LDA not simply sociological background.

Capitalist society, with its industrial revolution had brought on to the stage two different classes with antagonistic interests engaged in a struggle with the same enemy – the English Aristocracy. Until 1832 the bourgeoisie had maintained an tenuous alliance with the working class, resulting the Reform Act of that year under the real shadow of revolution in the ‘Days of May’. The new reformed House of Commons, under a Whig government, had in turn waged an unrelenting class war on the working class in the process of its efforts to reshape old Aristocratic England to the needs of capital. The question of relations with the ‘middle class’ was decisive not only in determining a strategy for the day, but a vision of the future. The London Working Mens Association remained of the opinion that it was necessary to collaborate with the Middle Class, and placed some importance on maintaining an alliance with the so-called ‘Radical ‘ group of MP’s in the House of Commons as well as Daniell O’Connell’s Irish MP’s. According to Harney the LDA differed “as to the modus operandi; they repudiated all reliance on the middle class and all connection with the shopocracy”. The L.D.A being established “supply the deficiency hitherto existing of an efficient organisation of the masses, and enable them, through that organisation, to bear the whole weight of their mighty power…”.

The LDA deliberately set out to encourage the widest possible participation of the mass of workers as opposed to the elitism which marred many of the moderate bodies. In response to their critics they reponded:

“It will be asked by the ‘respectables’, ‘will you then unite with immoral and depraved?’ No! For the immoral and depraved will not unite with us. But who are the immoral and depraved? You (the ’respectables’) say the poor, who seek relief from their cares and sufferings in the public house; but we say the rich who cause this suffering, and consequent degredation, by the oppressive laws and institutions which they have enacted and upheld”

This rebuff was an important distinction between the L.D.A and the petit-bourgeois radicals and the so called moralism of the period. The solution to the problem of alcoholism was to “remove the causes of in-temperance by crushing the immorality of the rich (who cause the immorality of the poor), the immorality of oppressing, plundering and murdering their fellow creatures”. The L.D.A had no qualms on meeting in pubs, nor did they demand an expensive shilling a month subscription as the London Workingmen’s Association, but simply a voluntary sum “according to their means”.

LDA Organisation

The organisational form of the LDA was “calculated to carry out and to direct the extensive combination of the masses which we have in view”, the structure was one of “divisions subdivided into sections of twenty five – the sections to be directed by a Leader, and each division to return two Tribunes to the Council, who guide and direct the whole”. It was a self-governing structure, in the “Council we have provided the members at large with the power of effectually controlling its proceedings, as all members of the Association, present at the sittings of the Council, have the right of voting on all questions brought under its consideration”.

The ambition of the LDA was “reducing in practice the beautiful theories of Babeuf, Buonarrotti, Bronterre, &c., by making the Tribunes the deliberators and perfectors of the will of the people, whilst with the people themselves is left the ultimate decision, by their retaining in their own hands the sovereign authority”. There was a similarity to the organisation which was led by the French communists Babeuf and Buonarroti in 1796 in their efforts to defend and extend the French Revolution. The role of their Agents, the revolutionary agitators, has a similarity to the that of the L.D.A’s Tribunes. However the association of the L.D.A with the Baboeuvists was more in theory than organisational ideal of the L.D.A was more the earlier self-governing Club’s and Communes of the Parisian masses. Indeed it was an earlier phase of English Jacobinism in the form of the London Corresponding Society that the L.D.A appears to have followed almost identically in how it set about organisatiing itself. In Thomas Preston they had a living link to that body which also organised into local self-governing Divisions. The central body of the London Corresponding Association also comprised delegates who were subject to the right of recall by local Divisions. This self-governing democracy contrasts sharply to the modern day labour movement and many of the socialist sects of today.

 All just means in our power

The L.D.A clear in its advocacy of the overthrow of the English ruling classes by means of revolution. In this they rejected outright any limiting of the Chartist movement to pacifist – or “moral force” -principles. It was declared in the L.D.A. Objects that: “We frankly state, that we consider the everlasting preaching of ‘moral force’, as opposed to ‘physical force’ to be downright humbug; for ourselves we shall be well understood in saying, that we are prepared to adopt all just means within our power for achieving the salvation of our country, so far as we can affect that object. We are resolved to be no longer slaves! We are determined to free our father-land, PEACEABLY IF WE CAN – FORCIBLY IF WE MUST!!”

Liberal historians, such a Hovell, have portrayed the L.D.A as no more than a “violently revolutionary clique”; formed to rival Lovett’s moderate L.W.M.A. Others have described it as the London representation of the ambitions of Feargus O’Connor to take over the leadership of Chartism. This history as pejorative reduces the L.D.A’s belief in the necessity of revolution as just a reaction to inadequate strategy of the LWMA, or a reckless romanticism on the part of Julian Harney. In fact, the L.D.A. had its own able leaders and thinkers, whose belief in revolution was reached from a grasp of the society in which they lived; their organisation was based on a body of thought which in itself challenged opponents of revolution both then and now.

In The Holy Family (1844) Marx outlined a trend towards a “real humanism” in the “logical basis of communism” stemming from Locke through the “socialist tendencies” within French materialism, to the Babouvists, returning to the “mother country” with the emergence of “English communism”, founded in Marx’s view by Owen. The Young Hegelians were, according to Engels, ignorant of the English Chartists: “no one in Germany had any idea” of “the vehemence of this agitation”. Yet on this path of developing ideas the LDA arriving at a more radical conclusions than Owen in their quest for a society of: “Social, Political and Universal Equality”. Amongst their influences was Spence who had advocated a revolutionary self-governing New Republic based on “convention of Parochial Delegates”. Spence’s critique formed a plebeian theory of liberation in the late eighteenth-early nineteenth century. Amongst Harney’s circle in the LDA his radicalism was entrenched, by and 1812 Spence was already extending his vision beyond agrarian radicalism to be inclusive of the new industrial proletariat, “shipping, Collieries, Mines and many other Great Concerns (which cannot be divided) can yet be enjoyed…in Partnership”. Similarly Davenport a founder of the London Democratic Association adhering to the “Spencean system” recognised that in addition to “merely seeing the land to be made public property, seeing the social system embraces all the powers of production and distribution of wealth.” Davenport fused Owen’s co-operative ideas for industry writing that the: “discovery of steam power has completely changed the aspect of human affairs, and caused such a stupendous revolution in the production and distribution of wealth,….honest and industrious people in this country are wasting away through want of common necessaries of life, and die, annually by sheer starvation; yet people persist in calling this murderous state of things civilisation”.

Davenport saw the Aristocracy’s subjugation of the agricultural labourer, now coupled with the “monopoly of capital”, the servant “monopoly of machinery is degrading, and starving the ingenious mechanic out of existence, by superseding manual labour by and uncomsuming power”. 

Babeuf, Harney and Social Equality

Harney also referred back to such concepts of the struggle for freedom rooted in the French Revolutionary conceptions of reason and the state of nature, “Kings, aristocrats, and tyrants of every description…..are slaves in rebellion against the sovereign of the earth, which is the people, and against the legislator of the universe, which is Nature”. He saw the accumulation of private property as an infraction on this state of nature and that the earth should be the common property of all. Whilst an avowed Spencean, Harney was steeped in the French Revolution and adopted the name of Marat and his paper Friend of the People, as his nom de plume. Like man of the time much of his knowledge of the revolution being drawn from from Bronterre O’Brien whose translation of Buonarroti’s History of Babeuf’’s Conspiracy For Equality in 1838, the influence was unmistakable, the first words uttered on the LDA Address are those of Buonarotti, “Let each of us depend upon institutions and laws, and let no human being hold another in subjegation”, a quotation further inscribed on the LDA membership cards.

O’Brien’s was the chief channel through which such ideas reached working people of his day, most importantly this enabled the ideas French communism to enter into the armoury of the early revolutionary democrats. O’Brien’s edition of Buonarroti’s work saw the first introduction of the designations “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat”, and we find their first uses in the Objects of the LDA. There is some similarity in the manner the the Baboeuvists, sought to use the ‘celebrated Constitution of 1793’and the LDA view of the Peoples Charter as a means to their ends, the Baboeuvists of “Liberty, Equality, and general happiness” the LDA the “destruction of inequality, and the establishment of general happiness”.

This influence of Babeuf has been challenged by Ian Birchall, in his The Spectre of Babeuf. The basis of his is O’Brien’s admiration of Robespierre, which led him to differ fundamentally from Babeuf on the question of private property. Birchall argues that “O’Brien can scarcely be seen as a follower of Babeuf”. But what of Harney? At the Festival of Nations held in London in 1845, Harney spoke in praise of Robespierre, before invoking Babeuf as one of his successors who advocated ‘a veritable republic…in which, private property and money, the foundation and root of all wrong and evil, should cease to be”. Birchall simply fails to make a distinction between Harney and O’Brien, and especially the different phases of O’Brien’s thought. Nor does he grasp how Harney interpreted Robespierre and the Constitution of 1793 for the class struggle of the English proletariat of 1839. The theme of the 1793 constitution was a repeated reference of revolutionaries in the nineteenth century in the same way that Marxists made the Russian Revolution a point of reference in twentieth century.

A Constant revolution

The experience of Babeuf taught Harney there could be no social equality with the privileged classes in “possession of property”, subjecting the proletariat to “social slavery”. The French middle-class had engaged in revolution out of selfish ambition only to debase the equalitarian principles of the revolution once in power. Bourgeois “liberty” was the freedom of the bourgeoisie to be the new ruling class, and to use the masses to obtain their ends they turned to reaction and suppressed the true representatives of those ideals, the proletariat. The comparison with the English middle-class in the aftermath of the Reform Act of 1832 was obvious. As such the LDA could agree with the Babouvists proclamation that the French Revolution is “but the precursor of another revolution, far greater, far more solemn, which will be the last”. Harney believed Chartist England could now set Europe aflame again.

‘Old Corruption’ and new forces

Rothstein, writing in 1905 considers the LDA was the “only organisation at the time which succeeded, to a certain extent, in properly connecting the ultimate aims of the economic emancipation of the proletariat with its political class action, thus creating the supreme synthesis which was subsequently to be embodied in the modern Labour movement”. The Industrial Revolution was forcing a redefinition of radical ideas, the fight could not be narrowed to one with “Old Corruption”, as radicals called the Aristocratic system, a new objective stage called up a new subject, “new passions and new forces”.

When the L.D.A drew up their Objects they set out “to obtain an effectual Reform of the Commons House of Parliament; the basis of which shall be Universal Suffrage, Equal Representation, Annual Parliaments, No Property Qualification, and Payment of all Members”. These points were identical to the Peoples Charter, and whilst the Charter was drawn up by the moderate London Working Mens Association, they were objectives which could not be claimed as the property of any individual or faction. To the modern reader these may seem moderate, but at the time their realisation struck fear into the heart of the ruling class. After the 1832 Reform Act the proletariat which first fought with the middle class, found itself shouldered out by this “great betrayal”. This conjuncture put an entirely different outlook on the question of electoral and Parliamentary reform in the minds of all social classes in England.

The L.D.A conceived of a system where “elections of the legislative assembly be taken annually”, and the only “qualification required to be the confidence of the electors” of a democracy. The “rotten” House of Commons, as it was described, was open only to the privileged, excluding from the bulk of the population with no vote – the proletariat. The Peoples Charter would have turned the system upside down establishing something very different from the bureaucratic parliamentary democracy of the twenty-first century. As opposed to the parliamentary assembly being estranged from the people that barrier would be broken down, MP’s would be fully accountable delegates subject to regular elections. Davenport wrote “It is time the working classes should decide on these important questions”; but their view of Universal Suffrage was not only for an equality of classes in access to Parliament, but inevitably the dissolution of the class division itself. Something the British ruling class was conscious of, thus when Parliament thought it safe to return to electoral reform in 1866 they still feared a proletarian electorate returning delegates mandated to enforce their interests undermining the entire system.

The Interests of the Proletarian Classes

The L.D.A declared in its Objects the “desire to unite the unrepresented of all classes into one common bond of fraternity, for the attainment of Universal Suffrage, this Association being convinced, that, until the Proletarian classes are fully and faithfully represented, justice in legislation will never be rendered unto them”. The Objects and ideas of the L.D.A bore a direct relationship to the struggle of the workers at the time. The rebellion against the new Poor Law more than any other ignited Chartism as a militant mass movement, the LDA declared for: “Total unqualified repeal” of the hated Poor Law; but not in order to retrogress to the “spirit” of the old law in the reign Queen Elizabeth, restored with “such improvements as the circumstances of the country may require” in the new conditions of industrial capitalism. Long before the struggle for a ten-hour working day was viewed by Marx as the “Magna Carta” of the English proletariat, the Short Time agitation struck at the barbaric heart of the Industrial Revolution. Following the emasculating of the Factory Bill of 1833 fresh agitations took place in 1838 and 1839. The L.D.A promoted an “abridgement of the hours of labour in factories and workshops, and the total abolition of child labour” and even went further, stating that; “Even in the present artificial state of society, no adult person should be required to work more than eight hours per day, especially while so many thousands are without any employment at all”. In linking the creation of jobs in times of high unemployment to a shorter working day, the L.D.A anticipated a demand of many socialists of the following century.

The L.D.A did not speak the language of inter-class “fraternity” but pledged to support “by all available means, every rational opposition made by working men against the combination and tyranny of capitalists, whenever the latter shall seek to reduce the wages of labour, extend the hours of toil, or institute proceedings against the labourer.” In this object they stood above other bodies such as the L.W.M.A who in their desire for friendship with the middle-class Radicals betrayed struggles such as the Glasgow Spinners strike.

Alongside freedom of association the L.D.A also championed the freedom of the press in calling for the repeal of the laws “which prevent the free circulation of thought, through the medium of untaxed and honest press”. In parallel they strove for a proper system of education through “public instruction, and the diffusion of sound political knowledge”. The treatment of the benefits of state education inseparable from the nature of what was taught was echoed by Harney that the “ruling class will never grant the working class that kind of education by which they will learn their political rights”. The “great object” of the L.D.A was the “destruction of inequality and the establishment of general happiness”.

Social classes and revolution

The L.D.A was the first organisation of English workers to define itself by the term “proletarian”,, they spoke of the “interests of the proletarian classes generally” among the first to consider distinct working class interests. Their evaluation of other social classes judged them not only by their exploitative position but also in relation to the object of Social Equality. Class was viewed as the embodiment of an artificial division in a society of inequality and oppression, the proletariat in a condition of what Harney branded “social slavery”. The L.D.A definition of the Proletariat was written by Harney: “Proletarians, (so called from the Latin word proles,) means the multitude who, possessing no fortune or property, have only their offspring, (proles) to offer as guarantee for their attachment to the state”. His definition was without doubt taken from O’Brien, who wrote that the working classes “bequeathed to us by the ancient world under the name of Proletarians”. As early as 1831 O’Brien had been arguing that “labour is held in servile subjection by a tyrant called Capital”.

The L.D.A may have agreed with O’Brien in his analysis of the proletariat but they did not completely agree with him with regard to the position of the middle-class in England. This fact has been overlooked by historians. E.P.Thompson noted that historians “would not accept O’Brien’s over crude assimilation of the post-Reform Whig administration to the interests of the middle-class”. The L.D.A similarly, in analysis of class relations in1839, pointed out that “the middle class are still not the most powerful in the state. The Aristocracy are still able to maintain a system from which they alone derive the benefits…They have failed in their favourite question, repeal of the Corn Laws and now are raising Household Suffrage and Triennial Parliaments”. The L.D.A was fiercely against any alliance on the lines of 1832, despite the common enemy of the Aristocracy. In this they had learned already what it would take the rest of the European revolutionary movement to learn through the defeats of 1848.

The London Democrat declaring the “middle class have taken to part in the struggle for the Peoples Charter and show no sympathy for the workers miseries. Miseries engendered by the present anti-social system, for which they are using every means and straining every nerve to maintain”. From the experience of the Great French Revolution “C.R.” drew the lessons:

“Had the working classes of France in the first French Revolution relied on themselves alone and refused co-operation of the few treacherous Aristocrats…. and rejected the interference of the basest and most perfidious of men, in the Gironde faction…. their Revolution would have triumphed. The failure of the revolution is to be attributed to the Middle classes of France, who desirous of overthrowing the Aristocracy, in order that they might be able to appropriate wealth and property of the Aristocracy, and the Church, to their own purposes joined in effecting the Revolution”. 

The Democratic Association did not have the categories of bourgeois or proletarian revolution as clearly defined as they would be in the Communist Manifesto; but rather of a constant revolution being carried through to its absolute of “Universal Equality”, a truly natural and human society. They judged the middle-classes in relation to this objective, and concluded that their role was to be another counter-revolutionary exploiters vying for positions of privilege. The L.D.A. declared that in “the spirit of pure democracy, we hold out the hand of fellowship to all who will sincerely co-operate with us to achieve the objects we have in view”. That opportunity arose with the rise of Chartism in 1839.

The convention of the Industrious Classes

The General Convention of the Industrious Classes opened in London on 4th February 1839, riding high on a wave of popular unrest and unparalleled mass mobilisations. London Democrat William Cardo wrote that the “Parliament of the House of Lords and Commons would soon be assembled…and at the same time another Parliament, the Peoples Parliament would assemble …there would be the spirit of the English people”. Historians may point the moderate Artisans of the L.W.M.A as authors of the Charter, or the middle-class Radicals of the Birmingham Political Union having proposed a Convention. But it was not their achievement. The General Convention was the first elected body of the disenfranchised working class. It has been criticised for its inadequacies, but its achievements at this historic moment should not be undervalued. The Convention was raised to its positon by a massive and energetic wave of workers self-organisation with an array of local associations and organisations emerging across the country. These bodies, which elected their delegates through mass meetings, which often workers attended armed in a display of force, created a counter-power; in the eyes of many the Convention held more legitimacy than any other institution in England at the time. The Convention’s delegates adopted the title “MC”: Member of the Convention! To counter the MP’s of the parliament of the upper classes.

The L.D.A, could count on three Convention Delegates as their own, William Cardo for Marylebone, Harney for Derby, Newcastle and Norwich, and Neesom from Bristol. The main representatives of London came from the L.W.M.A. who had manoeuvred like modern labour bureaucrats to obtain a monopoly over London. The LDA viewed the Convention as a potential revolutionary assembly on a collision course with the Government and as the elected assembly of the people expected it to prepare for the actions required in such a showdown. 

In the Convention the L.D.A, allied with physical force revolutionaries, such as Richard Marsden, Peter Murray M’Douall and Dr.Taylor. On the right, were the advocates of moral force, the L.W.M.A leaders such as Lovett and middle class Radicals such as the Banker Thomas Atwood who believed the “interests of masters and men are in fact one”. They saw the Convention’s role as the presentation of the petition and adhesion to legal means only. The most influential body in the Convention was the centre being Feargus O’Connor and O’Brien. O’Connor was already on the ascendancy as leader of the movement, if not yet within the Convention itself. The policy of the centre was of a self-limiting revolution believing they could use intimidation of the mass movement to force reform along the lines of the agitation for the Reform Bill of 1832. But times had changed, and the workers were not the middle class. By the time the Convention met these differences of expressed over the strategies had already split Chartism.

The Red Flag of Defiance

Harney believed it inevitable the House of Commons would reject the Peoples Charter, and argued that debate over how many signatures were on the petition was superfluous. He demanded the Convention as whole decide on the question immediately it was due to be presented on 28th February 1839. But instead it was postponed to be presented on May 6th after gathering more signatures and send out agitators to win wider support. Even worse, O’Brien came up with the idea of a meeting of the “Members of the Convention and Members of Parliament” to secure support for the Charter. Harney said it would be an “absurd waste of time, and moreover degrading to the character of free-chosen representatives of the people.” He saw these delays not only as a concession to a moral-force strategy doomed to failure, but more worrying an invitation for the government to repress the movement. The government could not forever co-exist with a mass movement on such a scale if the domination of the Convention by the moral-force faction was vulnerable to the challenge of the Democrats. As the Convention opened, Queen Victoria in her speech to Parliament said: “I have observed with pain the persevering efforts which have been made in some parts of the country to excite my subjects to disobedience and resistance to the law, and to recommend dangerous practices”.

The L.D.A warned that the government may not feel able to repress them wholesale and would instead engage in a creeping repression to “crush the present national movement” in a counter-revolution, Harney appealed in March they should “rather than bow to the intended hateful despotism, we must and will unfurl the red flag of defiance.” 

Harney saw the glaring contrast between the militancy of the movement outside the Convention and the moderation within it, warning a rally in Newcastle that they “were likely to have Girondists in the Convention of the men of England”. The L.D.A sought to utilise the poorest and most militant section of London workers with whom they had support. On the 28th February the day the Peoples Charter was originally to have been presented, they held a mass rally at the Hall of Science, City Road which unleashed a veritable broadside on the Convention’s moderation. A series of resolutions from the floor were passed declaring that “if the people and their leaders did their duty” the Charter would be Law within a month. The resolutions called for the Convention to: meet all acts of oppression with immediate resistance, proceed urgently with the presentation of the Peoples Charter, immediate preparation for ulterior measures

The press responded with a witch-hunt against Harney led by the Morning Chronicle, and began the historical myth of the dagger waving young romantic. There was uproar within the Convention. When the moderates demanded apologies from Harney, Rider and Marsden for bring the movement into disrepute. This lasted for a week. An unbowed Harney stated that he would “stand by his principles and if he could preserve union without abandoning them he would do so if not he must sacrifice that.” He charged the Convention for “all the consequences that might arise out of this protracted personal discussion” and that he would continue to “appeal to the working men of the country”.

In opposing the moderate and middle-class delegates and trying to radicalise the Convention, the L.D.A made further efforts to get the Convention to keep up the momentum of the movement and “rouse support” with simultaneous mass meetings across the country. But the Convention continued to whittle away its energies by concentrating on getting more signatures to the petition, thus putting of the decisive questions until after its presentation. Harney defended his position and the L.D.A in a Manifesto addressed to the Democracy of Northumberland, Norwich and Derby, asserting that the Convention was a self-governing assembly whose duty was “to hear and receive the opinion of the people”, instead of treating them with the “bitterest hostility.” The most poignant criticism was reserved for those who made militant speeches outside the Convention but were moderate inside, “Is it because I am honest enough to utter the feelings of my heart…. that I have not one set of speeches for the North, and another set for the Metropolis?” The Manifesto did not argue for a withdrawal from the Convention but appealed to the Chartist rank and file to “strengthen the Convention” by ensuring their delegates take a different course; “you must and will have the Peoples Charter law of the land in this present year 1839”

Times to try men’s souls

In the localities Chartists were arming and drilling, in a number of industrial towns there was gun running and workers produced weapons at work behind the employers backs. This caused panic amongst local magistrates who flooded the government with demands to sanction the formation of militias of the privileged. The Times criticised the Ministers for leniency, Lord John Russell, on the other hand, wrote to the Duke of Newcastle on 16th March that he doubted that “those who have encouraged their followers to provide themselves with arms are ready to encounter so fearful a risk”. The indecisiveness of the Convention and the anti-revolutionary stirrings of the ruling classes could only give confidence to an otherwise weak and cautious government. Harney’s warning of the danger of delaying was soon vindicated. Para-phrasing Thomas Paine’s The Crisis, he wrote in the Chartist national paper The Northern Star that the “times are coming to try mens souls”, already “the Democratic Association is attacked – its members are denied a place of meeting”. Barred from their usual venue at the Hall of Science the L.D.A was now having difficulty finding meeting rooms. There was clearly a divergence not only between the Whig Government and ruling classes in the localities but also between the Convention and the Chartist rank and file. Faced with a weak Government and massive movement in the country, the Convention had an historic opportunity.

O’Connor, who had been ill during the first two months, re-asserted his leadership through an alliance with the London left. At a rally of three thousand on the 16th March at the Crown and Anchor in London provided a platform to round on the moderates, with Harney joining O’Connor, and O’Brien as main speakers. It was a militant affair with O’Connor asserting that petitions could not defeat Dragoons, and a resolution was passed stating the Convention should take whatever means necessary to achieve the Charter, Harney as said there should be no more petitions unless “signed by steel pens”. His focus was on the looming presentation of the Peoples Charter to Parliament: “The 6th of May should be the last day for doubt or hesitation. The people should then set about asserting their rights in earnest and should have before the close of the year Universal Suffrage or death”. An ominously prophetic conclusion.

The Crown and Anchor rally saw the final separation of the middle-class Radical elements from the working class movement. The Birmingham Political Union delegates resigned from the Convention on 28th March, declaring that the rally had shown the Convention was prepared to put in “peril the success of Radical Reform on an appeal to the last and worst weapon of the tyrant and oppressor”. Their apparent defeat of the saw the L.D.A step up a gear with the launch of one of the best publications of the Chartist movement, The London Democrat. 

For Old England and Freedom

The new unstamped penny weekly, the London Democrat, was launched under the editorship of Harney and J.C.Coombe. The Operative predicted from the manner in which it is conducted it was “likely to obtain an extensive circulation”. The L.D.A had previously been reliant on other papers to get its statements published, now they had their own means to get their ideas across. It could boast a wide readership with a network of distributing agents not only in London but Birmingham, Bath, Bristol, Bradford, Derby, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Norwich, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.

Harney adopted the pen name of Marat’s paper ‘The Friend of the People’, and no doubt with the recent attacks against him in mind in the editorial he wrote:

“I am aware that the remedies I shall propose will call down upon my head the hatred and vengeance of the enemies of equality. I can foresee that I shall be slandered, calumniated, and persecuted. I can even suppose that misled by prejudice, and the villainous misrepresentations of my enemies, even the working classes, in whose cause I have devoted my existence, may themselves oppose me”.

Harney set out to expose “the causes of the evils under which they groan, and the remedies for those evils” through “Scenes and Sketches from the French Revolution’ to give certain extracts from the different histories of that mighty event”; so that the “present generation may derive a lesson from the deeds of the past, and that, in the revolution which will speedily take place in this country” avoid the errors and “imitate” the deeds of revolutionary France. Harney blamed the “inhuman selfishness of the middle classes” for the subsequent bloodshed in the French Revolution and warned that whilst the degradation of the people of England was not identical to France of fifty years prior, “similar causes will produce similar effects”.

On the current situation the London Democrat concluded that the workers’ “enemies do tremble; and more fool you if you keep much longer in doubt. It is an old saying, that you may as well kill a fellow as frighten him to death. Of this then I am sure, that if frightening them will kill them, they’re not far off from death’s door.” That the people do possess the power and the “means of success are in your hands: ‘tis your eyes-only that requires to be cleansed of the film that covers them”.

The L.D.A’s internationalism found expression in the support of the Polish democrat Major Beniowski, veteran of Polish Revolution of 1830 he contributed a regular column on the history of Polish rising. He subsequently ran a treatise On Military Science with practical advice on resisting dragoons and cavalry.

Many observers by this time were now anticipating a working class rising and the L.D.A focused on May 1839 bringing success for the proletariat as the Days of May in 1832 had to the middle-class. Harney wrote that the; “6th of May is approaching; tyrants are preparing, traitors deserting; but the honest ‘Democrat’ unfurling the standard of liberty; will rally the poor and oppressed,…to strike the home blow, … for old England and freedom”.

The Second International Marxist, Max Beer in his History of British Socialism described the London Democrat derogatorily as a “mine of Anarchist phrases”, and of Harney that his “tongue could no longer be curbed”. One of the problems of even sympathetic writers is a tendency to see the London Democrat’s audience as in London alone. At this point in 1839 the localities of Chartist strength were increasingly militant well beyond London. According to F.C.Mathers study of the Government it was the most favourable time for a rebellion.

“Had the Chartists risen on 6 May they would in fact have found the Government’s defences in a parlous state of disorganisation – troops scattered in small detachments; the reinforcements from Ireland not yet arrived; the magistrates inert from fear or indifference and the propertied inhabitants afraid to come forward as special constables to defend themselves”.

This opinion is further confirmed by Army’s officer corps whose Naval and Military Gazette reported in March 1839 that the army was “totally inadequate to meet a general outbreak in the North”.

Harney of course was not forming his revolutionary opinions out of access to Home Office documents but on the pulse of the movement where he was most intimate. Alternative conclusions have since viewed Harney as being the “most intelligent and best informed of the revolutionaries” in this period. Support for the movement was still strong as was the agitation. Whilst it is an issue of historical dispute, the reports to the Convention by agitators they had dispatched around the country could only give confidence to the advocates of revolution. For example John Richards, one of the agitators sent out to the Potteries reported a bleak and explosive situation:

“As regards the Condition of the different towns I have visited, I can only say that poverty destitution and its accompanying feature Squalid Misery form the principle feature…. but I fear all will be of no avail, this being the Language used in those places – Better to die by the Sword than perish with Hunger.

Your whole social system requires revolution

The London Democrat saw Chartism as a historically unique movement, called forth in opposition to the “different features” of this new society. In consequence the movement required goals equally unique going beyond the bounds of freedom envisioned in the past. In addressing this task the London Democrat anticipated many the ideas of the 1848 revolutions. Writing on the ‘Middle Class’, “CR” informs us: “The Past history of the world does not afford another example of the people resolved to annihilate such a complicated and overwhelming tyranny. It has different features, and bids for to be more effectual and attended by happier results than any movement which has occurred in past times from the fact that it is a real working class movement”.

This new revolution was to transcend the Peoples Charter itself. “Unless the ‘Peoples Charter’ is followed by actions to ‘equalise the conditions of all, the producing classes will still be oppressed and the country will still be involved in the most disastrous calumniates”. That the Peoples Charter was not an end in itself was emphasised .by Coombe, who said “I have a great objection to it’s being considered a panacea for all the evils under which you labour”. Freedom required a more total uprooting of these “artificial” social relations;

“The disease which is now preying on your vitals is much too deeply seated to be affected by remedies of this kind. Your whole social system requires ‘revolution’, your commercial system requires ‘revolution’, and nothing short of actual convulsion will affect a cure…Establish the ‘Peoples’ Charter tomorrow, and the working man would have not one difficulty less to contend with”.

This new movement was “confined entirely to the working classes” and in the historic opportunity placed before it the London Democrat reiterated the break with bourgeoisie in 1832: “They will probably pretend to join the working classes in their movement. The working classes will do well to have nothing to do with them.”

The principles of self-emancipation outlined in the London Democrat were pioneering: “Whatever the middle class have ever taken into hand has turned out to the people’s cost to be delusive and fraudulent; therefore, as the producing classes intend to regenerate their country, they must rely on themselves and on themselves alone”. The counter-revolutionary role of the exploitative classes was further outlined by Harney drawing on the Polish Revolution of 1830: “But why my friends did the revolution fail? The revolution failed because Poles themselves wished to keep millions of their own countrymen in bondage”.

Rothstein argues that the L.D.A, and Harney in particular, had anticipated “some of the things subsequently taught by Marx and Engels”. What was of lasting significance, and was argued in the principles of the L.D.A was that they did not accept the argument of “get the Charter first and consider what we will do afterward”. Harney posed the question: the “Charter was means to an end, but what was the end?”

Means versus ends – revolution and Utopian Socialism

Gregory Claeys asserts the end was not socialism and that Utopian Socialists of the time, led by Robert Owen held hegemony of this emanicpatory ideal: “No Chartist revolutionary had ever explained at length why violence alone could terminate the existing system…These doctrines were anathema not only to the Owenites but equally to most social Chartists”. Cleays argues that the “idea of socialism-as-revolution was therefore new to Britain”, and the origin for the transformation of socialism from moral force Owenite socialism to physical force socialism only came about under the influence of the 1848 revolutions and the presence of Continental socialist émigrés. But to accept as Claeys does that Owen held such hegemony over the very term of socialism deters us from finding what was truly revolutionary in 1839 other than the advocacy of physical force. Claeys argues that socialism at the time was identified eclusively with Owenite Socialism.

In fact this monopoly of Utopian Socialism was already being challenged, readers of the Northern Star were told in October 1838 under “Socialism v Owenism” that “it has long seemed a misfortune in the discussions upon Socialism, that it is synonymous with Owenism”. To identify the two as one was an obstruction to “true Socialism”. The resurgent class struggles of 1837-39 gave fresh growth to Owenism and sales of the New Moral World. However Owen was no advocate of proletarian self-emancipation; class struggle was anathema to him. Whilst there was co-operation on the ground between Owenites and Chartists, Owen and many of his followers remained antagonistic to Chartism. The Owenites criticised the Chartists as putting political rights before the resolution of social questions. In fact it was from the ranks of the workers themselves that the demand was made to address the social questions, the question of capital and labour. O’Brien in the Operative noted that “I am repeatedly urged by friend and correspondents to write articles on wages or, what amounts to the same, on the conflicting claims of labour and capital”. O’Brien wished to put off the matter as “I think that until the question of universal suffrage is settled, we cannot with advantage enter deeply into that of labour and capital”. However when he did express his opinions in the Northern Star the paper had record sales.

The Westminster Review noted in the same month the London Democrat was launched that “Owenism, as those are aware who habitually watch the progress of opinion, is at present in one form or another, the actual creed of a great portion of the working class”. To the extent that the militant section of the proletariat adopted the belief in a new society the barrier was broken between this goal of a cooperative society and its realisation by the workers themselves. The transcending of this problem of means-versus-ends through workers self-emancipation, was progressed by the L.D.A, Harney spoke of the “Charter being a means to an end, the means being their political rights, and the end being social equality. Did he mean that they all should have their food dressed in, their houses built in parallelograms…no such thing”. In this he echoed James Elishama Smith’s condemnation of Owen’s “system of uniform and everlasting parallelograms”. Harney criticism of Owen’s paternalistic schemes showed a remarkable insights of the danger in the Utopian socialist’s plans of a new society in which the workers do not plays any part in shaping our own freedom – a tyranny which only the twentieth century could fully experience with Stalinism. 

Females daring to be free

There was another force breaking the mould at this historic moment – Women. Unlike the L.W.M.A which did not allow women members the L.D.A had done so since its foundation. On the 14th April the Operative reported a new initiative in self-organisation with the London Female Democratic Association, the Secretary of which was Elizabeth Neesom. Chartism was one of the first modern mass movements of working people, which saw widespread self-organisation of women. Female radical associations were born throughout the country issuing numerous addresses and statements.

If Universal Equality was the goal then Chartism should have been the first suffragette movement. During consultation with the localities on the content of the Peoples Charter it was proposed to include women’s suffrage. The LWMA confirms that: “Against this reasonable proposition we have no just argument to adduce but only express our fears of entertaining it, lest the false estimate man entertains for this half of the human family may cause his ignorance and prejudice to be enlisted to retard the progress of his own freedom”

Spence had argued in favour of women’s rights including the vote, but as his heirs the L.D.A fell behind short. The Objects of the L.D.A advocated extending “suffrage to every adult male”, in contradiction to the actual practice of the organisation. Even in the context of the time they were advanced, but one cannot disguise the fact that male chauvinism impacted even on the most revolutionary of bodies; even if, Harney said, good as the men were “the women were the better men of the two”.

In an address to the Women of England, and Particularly the Women of the Metropolis, Elizabeth Neesom wrote that: “We the Members of the London Female Democratic Association, consider it our duty to co-operate with our patriotic sisters in the country, to obtain Universal Suffrage in the shortest possible time”. The Female Democrat’s set out their aim as being not only Universal Suffrage but the to “annihilate the cruel, unjust, and atrocious New Poor Law” and to support those engaged in the “struggle for freedom”. The question of the barbaric treatment of children at this time came under scathing attack with a pledge to “to destroy forever” the system that subjugates them the “horrid cotton hells, and treating them worse than black slaves, for no other crime than that of being poor”. Neesom wrote:

“Sisters and friends, we intreat you to shake off that apathy and timidity which too generally prevails among our sex (arising from the prejudice of a false education) and join us in our holy cause, to show to the oppressors that even women, domesticated women, leaving her homestead will battle for the rights of those dear to us”.

The Female Democrat’s reiterated the arrival of militant organised women in a manner that was overtly republican in its aside to Queen Victoria in defiance of the sovereignty of the people:

“To those who may be, or rather appear to be, surprised that females should be daring enough to interfere with politics, to the we simply say, that as it is a female that assumes to rule this nation in defiance of universal rights of man and women, we assert in accordance with the rights of all, and acknowledging the sovereignty of the people our rights as free women (or women determined to be free) to rule ourselves.”

The newly organised Female Democrats called on women to join the Associations weekly meetings at the, Elizabeth Neesom has rightly been asserted as being “perhaps the leading women Chartist in London”.

That women were engaged such open defiance of the stifling chauvinism of Victorian society is further evidence just how revolutionary this moment was. Over a hundred known womens associations sprung into life at this time. In a sign of further agitation the May issue of the London Democrat reported a Female Democratic Association in existence in Norwich. The Secretary Eliza Chapman wrote welcoming the launch of the London Democrat:

“We say go on and prosper, strike terror into the hearts of tyrants; and be assured that when the death struggle shall come, the Women of Norwich will be found in the front rank, fighting for that which is dearest of all things, liberty!”.

London, apathy and agitation

“Apathetic” is the term usually used by historians to describe London’s role in 1839. This is an unfair generalisation, relative to previous years London radicalism was actually in a resurgent phase; but it was certainly weak in comparison to the insurgent North. Harney noted how in the mobilisations to elect the London delegation to the Convention “In point of numbers this was far inferior to the meetings in the North of England and Scotland”. London, he believed, “can only be moved in sections; even fifty years ago it was too vast to be moved as a whole.”

Whilst the L.D.A was conscious of the better-off state of many of the London workforce the London Democrat insisted that there were still London workers as “reduced to as wretched a state of degradation, as they are in any part of the country”. At the opening of the Convention delegates bemoaned the contrasts and according to David Goodway: “It is clear that many of the provincial delegates (in addition to Harney and his fellow ‘Jacobins’) had come to London in the anticipation that the metropolitan masses would play the same role – and sweep them to power – as the Parisian sans-culottes had in the French Revolution”. The Convention saw a problem in this and set up an agitation committee to rouse London. The Spring saw an energetic campaign with a series of mass meetings, and the Northern Star was reporting; “Who shall say that London is apathetic”. The intense activity did bear fruit, with the number of Chartist branches growing from twenty in January to thirty-eight in April 1839.

The L.D.A played no small part this agitation and saw its ranks swell to three thousand members, with a string of new Divisions established. Despite their role the London Democrats still felt under-represented in the Convention. An opportunity to remedy this arose when a mass meeting was called at the Bell Inn, Old Bailey on 16th April to set up a unified London wide, Metropolitan Charter Association. The L.D.A was not about to accept a repeat of the manoeuvres of the previous meeting to elect the delegates and turned out in force. This outraged the moderates, The Charter, aligned to Lovett, attacked a body Democrat’s who attended passing a resolution which was “throwing the whole organisation of London into the hands of the ‘Democratic Association”. On the nineteenth April further progress was made with a fusion with the West London Democratic Association, and the L.D.A now turned to representation within the Convention itself.

To those within the Convention who talked of unity between the “Peace, Law & Order Chartists” and to the “peaceably if we may forcibly if we must” Chartists, Coombe’s responded scathingly. In his view, the desertions of the middle class were no loss but an opportunity for the Convention to prepare for a showdown with the authorities. That the time was ripe was very much reflected in the London Democrat of a few days later: “The principles are understood, and recognised as far as they are likely to be, and the banner of the Charter has aroused a greater number than it could possibly have been expected”. In the opinion of the London Democrat they had now won over more than enough support to “enforce the demands of the people. The time was ripe for a “plan of action to be laid before the people”. The LDA were clearly stating that they desired a far more radical transformation, that even with the Peoples Charter achieved, “There is nothing to captivate in the term ‘Universal Suffrage’ it might only supplant one faction by another”.

Forerunners of 1848

Harney wrote that “before taking a prospective glance at the future” of the need to “indulge in a retrospective view of the past”. Up until this time many working class radicals remained within a nostalgic view of the past – Cobbett saw the solution to the barbarities of the Industrial Revolution in the restoration of the former way of life. In contrast Harney wrote that in history:

“we shall find, that in all ages, in all countries, with but rare and momentary exceptions, the many haven been the slaves of the few, – we shall see the human race, the eternal prey of blood-stained kings and conquerors, of tyrant aristocrats, of hypercritical, lying persecuting priests, and the last and worst of all, of scoundrel-cannibal usurers, schemers, and profit mongers. We find the whole of these vampires kings and priests, lords and usurers, in one never – ending conspiracy against their fellow -creatures…”

This view of history anticipated some of the ideas of the Communist Manifesto, published in Harney’s Red Republican eleven year later. Harney wrote that oppressors had reduced the earth, which could be a “paradise for man into a hell, from which the oppressed and suffering people have found no relief but in the grave”. But an earthquake had changed everything – “the great French Revolution” and the “eternal ‘Rights of Man were asserted”. Whilst that revolution had fallen due to enemies from within the fact that it had happened had changed everything. “But if the Revolution failed, the principles that gave it birth are immortal”. If the arrogant ruling classes of England believed they were secure with the fall of Jacobinism they were but “Miserable fools” for they were now transplanted into England. Harney was confident in declaring the masses had “seen through the delusions of your enemies; nearly nine years of ‘liberal’ government, of ‘feelosofical’ legislation, have taught you the blessings of middle-class sway”. Having realised who their “worst enemy” was the working class relied on “themselves alone” to built their own movement. The only tragedy of the situation in Harney’s opinion was the absence of support from the Irish movement who under O’Connell’s leadership remained in alliance with the Government: “Deluded by sham-patriots, you have forgotten the deeds of your fathers, and are content to wear the chains of your soul-less oppressors: be it so, with you or without you Britain shall be free”.

There was however no chauvinism in Harney’s critique he cautioned “Let me not be misunderstood. I do not yet despair of the co-operation of the Emerald Isle”, he hoped yet downfall of O’Connell bringing about the unity of the movements. The London Democrat was now viewing Chartism as the anchor of European revolution with Harney citing the hopes of freedom across the continent “but Englishmen all look to you”.

Harney called on the workers to prepare for the 6th of May in a manner that could not be misunderstood and one can only consider it miraculous good fortune he was not arrested: “One word of advice. In the two or three weeks you have remaining, let me exhort you to ARM. I mean you that are yet unarmed”. This was a call already being taken up in practice and Harney knew it. The mood that April can be taken from subsequent Prosecution evidence against Timothy Higgins secretary of the Ashton-under-Lyne Radical Association. “For some time back a considerable number of fire arms have been sent into the town…Up to the month of April last, large bodies of men have met together late at night and early in the morning for the purpose of training to military exercise.” It was not all-clandestine, ten thousand Chartists, many openly armed, demonstrated on twentieth April in the town and speakers were repeatedly interrupted by the workers discharging their weapons. In Harney’s opinion there should be no delay, the “man who would now procrastinate is a traitor”. If there would be procrastination it would be in the Convention and it was there that Harney and the L.D.A were focussed.

A meeting had been arranged for 22 April on Kennington Common to elect a delegate for East Surrey. The L.D.A seized the chance and mobilised their divisions and sections. In a demonstration of thousands behind their banners the meeting saw the moderate Charles Westerton defeated by Joseph Williams by a large majority. In the Convention there were incriminations at the action of these “self-styled Jacobeans”. The opposition to Williams was defeated on the intervention of O’Connor who secured the acceptance of Williams. O’Connor declared that “if Jacobin clubs or Democratic Associations infuse fresh zeal in into the Convention, so much the better”.

The agitation of the L.D.A in preparation for the 6th May continued with mass meetings on 22nd and 29th April at Smithfield Market. Monday 22nd saw the arrival of the Peoples Charter in London, and under the banner of the L.D.A a mass meeting carried the Peoples Charter into the City. Within the Convention the reality of the looming decision of what to do next was invading the walls of the ‘Peoples Parliament’, the convention. O’Connor carried a resolution on 22’nd April to bring to an end all the work of the agitators delegated around the country. He now expected the Convention to set itself on a war footing and meet permanently. The Convention would have to act on the rejection of the petition they should consult the country on the way forward, which in his opinion was a general strike; the workers would “meet the cannon with the shuttle and present the web to the musket”. If such a course was taken then the ruling class see it as nothing less than the commencement of a revolutionary challenge. As such it was the duty of the Convention to prepare for such consequences – but there was no hint of this in O’Connor’s proposals.

The Sacred Right of Insurection

The very next day General Sir Charles Napier entered into his diary that “These poor devils are inclined to rise, and if they do what horrid bloodshed”. Napier had taken command of Northern England on 4th April 1839, responsible for any counter insurgency. He took seriously the possibility of rebellion and set about constructing a strategy to counter it. The Government was now responding to the growing unrest with greater resolution. With O’Connells refusal to unite with the Chartists the government could confidently removed troops from Ireland, three regiments were transferred to the industrial heartlands along with a number of other troop and artillery movements. Amidst social tension now verging on breaking point Harney was considering another possibility, which the Convention had not even contemplated, a possibility just as dangerous as repression – delay. The Whig Government of Lord Melbourne was in crisis and there was now real possibility of it falling completely. In his column in the London Democrat Harney wrote that in the event of Parliament being dissolved before the petition could be presented and a decision given “what should the people do?”

“A dissolution of the House of Commons, before the presentation of the petition, or the House can be tested respecting the Charter, is something more than possible. The people should therefore be prepared for such an event. And should such be the case will they quietly await another session of Parliament? Will they destroy their own energies, and waste the means of victory they now possess, by stupidly ‘kicking their heels’ for another three or four months?”

Harney’s answer to the government misfortune was to take the initiative and make it their opportunity. The people should “take their affairs into their own hands”. Harney returned to the ideas espoused by O’Brien in the old Poor Mans Guardian. In the event of a Queens writ for a new election “let the people of each county, city, and borough, wherever democracy hath reared its head, assemble at the place of nomination on the day appointed, and then and there nominate the men of their choice”. The assemblies of the disenfranchised workers would “nineteen cases out of twenty” elect the Chartist, the process would show they legal election of the tiny few entitled to vote as an undemocratic sham. “Should the shopocracy demand a poll, so be it; but let the devils poll by themselves – let the democratic electors and non-electors take no part is such a swindling proceeding”.

On O’Brien’s hustings plan Harney posed the question of what the role of these elected representative was, “co-operate or superseding” the existing Parliament. It must be a revolutionary course, for to “elect representatives without enabling them to take their seats in the Legislature, would be the veriest farce imaginable.”. The role of electing the representatives would be as part of an unfolding struggle; the next stage would be to form an organising centre for a mass mobilisation. The representatives once elected would be “furnished with a body-guard of sturdy sans-culottes” organised and varying in “according to the strength of the democracy in the district”. Harney proposed that this body enforce its authority: “What army could resist A MILLION OF ARMED MEN?”

It was this plan, not a rising on 6th May, which General Napier was most concerned about. According to F.C Mather, Napier was planning his counter-insurgency out of concern for the “prospect of an outbreak in the Manchester area at Whitsuntide (c.25.May) and about the idea of a march on London from the provinces, which Harney was popularising at Chartist meetings”. Harney’s comrades in the Northern Liberator, writing on the “Coming Revolution”, claimed that the Chartists could put on the field a force of half a million, Napier’s preparations involved plans for street fighting in Manchester and to use artillery from Nottingham to engage a Chartist march on London in the Derbyshire hills.

Harney believed the movement was at a decisive phase – “We are on the eve of a ‘Coercion-Bill for England. Our right of meetings and associations is about to be attacked”. Within Government circles discussion was taking place over measures of repression, Lord Melbourne was considering moves to halt the arming of the masses for the purposes of insurrection and Lord John Russell informed Parliament of the possibility being still open for a disarming bill. In the London Democratc Harney appealed: “Arm, and be prepared, if need be, to fall back upon your first and holiest right – the sacred right of Insurrection.”

The war of classes

By May 1839 Melbourne’s Government operating on a tiny majority became exposed by the crisis of over colonial rule in Jamaica. From the provinces the demand for troops was pouring into the Home Office. When the state moved against Welsh Chartists the response saw The Times declaring a “Chartist Outrage – The Town of Llanidloes in the possession of revolutionists”. The myth that the workers would not fight was exposed. Prisoners were released and the town held for three days before troops arrived in numbers. Harney’s warning of a Coercion Bill was bearing fruit, and whilst the counter-revolution was not in one violent blow it was a process of mounting repression. The arrest of Convention delegates Vincent and McDouall was ordered by the Home Office and on the 3rd May a Royal Proclamation was issued against those “unlawfully assembled together for the purpose of practising military exercise, movements, and evolutions.” The L.D.A was not escaping attention either, Home Secretary Lord John Russell was questioned in the House of Commons about their planned demonstration of 6th May. The Lord Mayor subsequently banned the ‘Great Day’ as the London Democrat had termed the event.

With repression mounting Harney argued in the Convention they should move to Manchester where they would have the support of “250,000 men who would be determined to defend their liberties”, he expected the Government to “commence the attack and they should be in a situation to meet the attack”. It would also be the North that could be used as a launch pad for Harneys idea of a march on London. No decision was taken, Lovett and the moderates were for staying in London, they could see the revolutionary consequences of the ulterior measures, and they wished to avoid such a clash. Writing in the London Democrat Coombe furiously wrote of the of the “moral-force humbugs” that “yes, the time is coming when something must be done, and the traitors wish to get out of it – they shall get out of it, never to be admitted again”. With or without a decision in the Convention the agitation continued with expectation, undeterred by the ban the L.D.A defied fate and continued to organise their May demonstrations as planned.

The venerable democracy of London

H.M.Hyndman considers that “supposing the time had been ripe in England, as many then believed, for a great social revolution, one important fact stood in the way of both the political and physical force revolutionists. In all serious upheavals, previous… London had taken a leading part… This was not the case in the days of Chartism”. The L.D.A believed that it was in the metropolis “that the battle should be fought”, they knew they faced difficulties and did seek solutions.. A fact all but ignored by writers of “apathetic London”. The masses in the industrial districts could play a key role in energising London whether through direct intervention or leading by example. The power of ideas were equally important to the L.D.A who believed that to rouse the “venerable democracy of London” the question of Universal Suffrage was not enough. “It might only supplant one faction by another. Let the measures to follow upon Universal Suffrage be delineated”. In the demand for a more radical course there was a need for a “plan of action to be laid before the people” what kind of plan was determined by the L.D.A’s view that that there “there are two parties in the Chartist ranks, and what is more they have different objects in view…. The Peoples Charter Peace, Law, Order etc or the People Charter Peacefully if we can forcibly if we must”. J.C Coombe warned that it was for the Metropolitan Charter Association to “choose which – blend them it cannot”.

The L.D.A was still faced a middle class challenge in London radicalism, this conflict surfaced on May Day, the first of a rolling programme of mass meetings called by the L.D.A. The Bethnal Green Working Men’s Association, formed to undermine the election of L.D.A man William Drake at Stepney Green and when Drake attempted to take his seat in the Convention as the representative for Tower Hamlets he was refused admittance on 6th May. The failure to get Drake accepted cut short the efforts of the L.D.A to influence the Conventions affairs through further elections. Days before this decision the London Democrat had been encouraging its readers to “tell those who have assumed the leadership, that you are ready…. you are determined to wait no longer, not even should the Convention advise you to do so.” After a year of agitation for the Peoples Charter the time was speedily approaching for the Convention to face its destiny. J.C. Coombe asked: “Has it not been generally understood that if Parliament rejected your demands this time, which you were to be prepared to enforce them? I say it has been so understood …What else has been the meaning of ‘peacably’ if we can, ‘forcibly if we must?’ It has no other meaning..”

Question on which freedom depends

As the L.D.A plunged into a week of rallies and demonstrations Harney asked “What should the people do, in the event of the House of Commons rejecting the Charter?”. A number of options stood before the movement, many of which were not new and indeed pre-dated Chartism:

“Various plans have been suggested; such as ‘Petitioning again!’ – ‘Meeting and Remonstrating with Parliament’ – ‘Abstaining from the use of Excisable Articles’ – ‘A National Holiday’”, that is the general strike. Far from Harney’s youth being a hindrance he ably stripped away one by one the old options under consideration, and espoused the necessity of revolution as the only viable course to obtain the Charter. Harney repudiated all consideration of a second petition being submitted to Parliament; “Are the wiseacres who recommend this really serious in what they say….The people of England have, in the sight of Heaven and the universe, unanimously and solemnly swore upon their swords to PETITION NO MORE!”. With regard meeting with Parliament and holding “simultaneous meetings” in order to merely remonstrate, it “would be as absurd as ‘petitioning again’. The tyrants would as much bid defiance to our empty threats, as they at present scorn our ‘humble petitions’.” As for ‘consumer’ boycotting as a weapon, he said:

“It is enough you say, upon the proposition of ‘abstaining from excisable articles’ that the people of England have already laughed to scorn the attempt to humbug and deceive them in this line. It forms no part of the philosophy of Englishmen, because they may happen to be oppressed and deprived by cannibal institutions of nearly the whole of the necessaries of life, to give up what few they have hithero been able to retain”

Harney was able to cite a section of the proletariat among whom the L.D.A had sizeable support: the impoverished silk handloom weavers of Spitalfields. He noted that there were “some thousands living, as the handloom weavers are, upon potatoes and oatmeal”. The very idea of such impoverished masses entering into a boycott campaign was folly. “The short and the long of the matter, is that Englishmen are miserable enough, and they know that to make themselves more wretched is not the way to be freed from their misery”. On the rejection of the petition there was left only one feasible alternative and Harney spoke clearly of its meaning.

Harney and the theory of the general strike

Harney believed “only one of the plans here proposed, which appears to me to be at all feasible, is the national holiday”, a general strike. The idea was not new; it was popularised in 1832 by the old Radical William Benbow in his pamphlet the Grand National Holiday and Congress of the Productive Classes. But in the storm year of 1839 it took on an entirely context. Its practical implementation was being read and debated throughout the mass movement. Harney has been criticised for thinking in terms of “street fighting and barricades, of sans-culottes rather than industrial workers in factories and mines”. But he was more than familiar with the changed conditions of the industrial revolution and articulated the revolutionary logic of this most forms of class struggle.

It was entirely in this context that the London Democrat addressed the question in May 1839. Similarly O’Brien opposed the strike in the Convention as “many would regard it as the beginning of a revolution, and to a certain extent that was his own view”. Harney took the general strike “to mean nothing short of insurrection!” Within the movement there was not only opponents who understood this consequence, but also those who anticipated the anarchist argument that capitalism would simply collapse in the face of the General Strike. Even moral-force Chartists saw it leading to bankruptcies and the government’s collapse. Attwood believed during the “sacred week” that “solemn payer’ and “legal exertion” would win the Charter.

Harney already had accepted the necessity of the strike even without all sections of the working class. “I shall pass over all minor objections, and will even grant that which I feel assured would not be the case, viz., that it really would be a ‘national holiday;’ that is, a general strike of the whole of the working classes throughout the country.” Far from romanticism, Harney’s argument was rooted in the conditions of the workers themselves:

“I ask how are the people to subsist during the ‘sacred week’? I presume I shall be answered that the people must provide themselves with a week’s subsistence beforehand. This I assert would be, on the part of the people, an impossibility; as this proposed holiday would be no secret, the upper and middle classes would have previously provided for themselves with a week’s, aye, and more than a weeks subsistence. But not so with the people”.

The country was in a depression, the workers pay was gone within days and the dynamic of hunger would drive the workers to “take by force the food from those who possessed it”. Harney believed if a clash with the state did not come from repression it would arise from necessity, from these impoverished conditions would come “the deadly conflict between those who had and those who had not the food. And what would this be but an insurrection and civil war? I would not object to this plan, but that those who have been its loudest advocates have, at the same time, denounced the arming of the people”.

The consequences were a strikingly accurate prediction of events. “Supposing a conflict, such as I have imagined, to take place in some one petty district, the people unarmed would suffer a murderous defeat.” The effects of the defeat would demoralise and break the movement elsewhere forcing a “return to their task-masters”. A general strike for the Charter was not like any other strike; the dynamic of such a mass political strike was of a revolutionary challenge. As such Harney wrote, “let there be no blinking the question. These are not times to be nice about mere words; the fact is, there is but one mode of obtaining the Charter, and that is by INSURRECTION!”

As opposed to the view of the general strike held by the pacifists and advocates of a “self-limiting revolution” as a method of blackmailing reforms from the government, Harney saw the general strike as a strategy for revolution. As such if disaster was to be avoided it was vital to prepare beforehand. It has been argued with regard to the prospects of revolutionary success in 1839 that “William Lovett, in particular, called for ideas and not for leaders. The revolutionaries provided neither”. It is this author’s opinion that if ideas articulated in the London Democrat on the general strike had gained hegemony in the movement, then the chances of success were open for history to judge.

The Days of May

May was a crucial month for the Chartist movement, as it was planned to deliver the national petition and all eyes were on the outcome and the fateful decision on the ulterior measures. In the build-up the L.D.A held a series of mass meetings, and they had also been agitating amongst the army. William Rider reported that the London Democrat had a readership in the Army, and of a meeting in the Barracks Tavern in South London attended by 70-80 soldiers chaired by Sergeant David Black. Rider concluded that “I believe the soldiers will be our supporters in the coming struggle. I do fear the moral-force men will be traitors to the cause”.

The L.D.A had planned a series of demonstrations for the week, a notice was issued informing Londoners; of a public meeting to be held on 6th May in Smithfield Market, “BY ORDER OF THE LONDON DEMOCRATIC ASSOCIATION. SECRETARY J COOMBE.”. Important as this week was to the L.D.A contrary to the myth perpetuated by some historians there is no evidence that the 6th of May was, as David Goodway, writes ” the beginning of an uprising in London”.. The London Democrat had called on the movement as a whole to arm in advance of the presentation of the Peoples Charter, and move to ulterior measures. The L.D.A called the movement to adopt their principles and strategy. They did not seek to go it alone separate or against the movement in a sectarian manner. Indeed Harney was adamantly opposed to a premature uprising!

In the convention, whilst the moderates strength had declined, the L.D.A were not able to increase their influence. William Drake was elected amidst controversy on May Day, but was refused admittance on 6th May; the same day the Government majority in the House of Commons was reduced to a mere five and some ministers resigned. This meant that the Charter could not be considered by Parliament for some time; and made petitioning irrelevant to immediate problems. The Convention issued a statement urging the people not to be provoked into a premature outbreak but to resist attempts to repress their agitation by force if necessary. Nevertheless as reports came of renewed fighting in Llanidloes, that evening the L.D.A defied the Lord Mayor’s ban on their meeting and the City Police sent to deal with it. When they arrived, six thousand people marched from Smithfield Market to Islington Green. Harney chaired the meeting and is reported, by a police observer much relied on by historians, as having informed the crown to “shouts of applause” that “They would shortly be called upon to act, …resist oppression and assert their just rights”. On Tuesday 7th the Prime Minister resigned and the L.D.A held another demonstration. Coombe and Beniowski addressed six thousand people on Clarkenwell Green, where it was declared that: “In London they would plant the Tree of Liberty and Bleed the veins of the Government to succour it”. Two thousand then marched to Shipyard Temple Bar to hear Skeffy, the delegate for Derby.

Whilst the government may have been in crisis, the state was starting to move. A Royal Proclamation was issued on 7th May for the establishment of armed associations of the upper classes. This impacted on the L.D.A who continued with their agitation calling further meetings on Clarkenwell Green on Wednesday 8th and Friday 10th May. On the Friday the Finsbury Police Superintendent considered that the “language if possible was stronger than it has hithero been” and on searching a pub on the Green he discovered five pikes. The authorities now moved against the L.D.A and raided their headquarters at Ship Yard, Temple Bar. The headquarters were draped in the French tricoleur flag and amongst the banners was the cap of liberty encircled with the words: “Free we live and free we die”. In the raid three banners, Association papers and a number of weapons were removed. Thirteen men were arrested including Thomas Ireland and Samuel Waddington. The move against the L.D.A was not out of the blue; the Police had already been harassing the Association and warning publicans not to let rooms for local meetings.

The Convention adjourned and moved to Birmingham where it arrived on Monday 13th May, Harney addressed a 50,000-strong crowd: “It might be if the government began the reign of terror, the people would end it… It might be that the people should oppose them with the musket and the pike”. The same day in Newcastle which had elected Harney to the Convention, Chartists fought a pitched battle with Police and Special Constables. Unkown to Harney a warrant for his arrest was issued on the seventeenth May. The test of the movement had now arrived.

The tide of revolution and reaction

The state harassment combined with the decampment of the Convention to Birmingham may have left some in the L.D.A feeling isolated, but they were not broken. J.C.Coombe wrote candidly that although London was “ripe and ready”, the workers lacked confidence in themselves. he spoke of “a large body who will act in concert with the North” but, he added, “London cannot be relied upon” to act alone. The L.D.A was increasingly scathing of the Convention. Since the beginning of May the Convention followed O’Connor’s strategy a ‘self-limiting’ revolution to intimidate the government to concede. This was criticised by the London Democrat with regard to the slogan; “Peaceably if we may, forcibly of we must…” it was considered “vague – it can mean anything or nothing – The only matter worthy of the attention of the people is how, when, where force is to be acted upon”. It was a question the Convention still could not answer but instead was put to the people to answer. The Convention issued a Manifesto to be put to the country for approval.It declared that: “The mask of CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY is thrown forever aside and the form of Despotism stands hideously before us: for let it be no longer disguised, THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND IS DESPOTISM AND HER INDUSTRIOUS MILLIONS SLAVES”. At every Chartist meeting until July 1st the following questions as to whether there was support for:

Cause a run on the banks by withdrawing all money placed in savings banks, etc?

A “Sacred Month”, general strike to secure the Charter?

Refusing payment of rents rates and taxes?

Preparing themselves with arms?

Supporting Chartist candidates at a general election?

Resisting all counter and rival agitations?

Boycotting hostile newspapers?

Obeying the requests of the Convention?

These were the ‘ulterior measures’ under consideration for the day the Charter would be rejected by Parliament. On May seventeenth the Convention adjourned for consultation meetings to commence over the Whitsun weekend of nineteenth May. The response in the last issue of the London Democrat was hardly enthusiastic, stating the “people are getting tired of meetings and speeches”, and told the Convention “not one of your ‘leaders’ posses one spark of enthusiasm, or any other qualification requisite in the coming struggle”.

The London consultation meeting was held on Kennington Common with up to ten thousand assembling. Harney meanwhile was on a speaking tour, at Newcastle on twentieth May he addressed a reported 100,000 strong meeting. In the industrial heartlands excitement was mounting and the possibilities for a general strike and armed rebellion were more favourable than ever. Harney said that in the event of a general election the workers should elect their own representataives and organise a march on London.. “Were they prepared to carry out the resolution? (Yes, yes) Were they tired of the present House of Commons, or rather he should call it House of Theives?…..Well, then, he believed the days of the present house were almost numbered, and the Convention would shortly be in office in its stead”. Harney stated that the difference of opinion that had once existed between physical force or moral force men had all disappeared, “but a shade between the two”. In the following month Harney addressed forty public meetings arguing for the general strike and revolutionary action. But his confidence in the new unity around O’Connor was to be short lived;

Over the summer events moved towards a final showdown, the Convention reconvened on July 1st in Birmingham. Harney was absent due to illness, but fellow London Democrat Neesom argued for the general strike to be called on 15th July; three days after Parliament considered the Charter. Instead the decision on the date was put off until after Parliaments decision; in the meantime every other measure was to be enforced immediately. Yet again the Convention was moved, back to London on 6th July for the presentation of the petition!

Simultaneously as the agitation increased in tension, so was the state repression. The workers of Birmingham had turned the city centre into a venue for constant meetings and discussion. On 4th July without provocation London police were brought by train and set about attacking the people. Eighty were arrested. For three days there were running battles between workers and the authorities, Convention delegates Taylor and McDouall were then arrested after attempting to calm situation. Martial Law was declared and Birmingham was gripped by a strike wave, if the general strike had been called at this point it would have spread like wildfire. Instead a militant statement was issued that resulted in Lovetts arrest on 6th July and a year in Warwick prison. Then on the 7th at half-past midnight the foremost leader of the L.D.A Julian Harney was arrested in Bedlington near Newcastle. Within three days two of the delegates for Durham and Northumberland were under arrest. If Harney popularity was ever in doubt, it was no longer. On news of his arrest workers in the area downed tools, and from Winlaton and surrounding villages armed Chartists marched into Newcastle. Troops and artillery were brought in, and there was stand off. Both state and Chartists sources confirm the mood was revolutionary. The Northern Political Union preached caution that with the outcome of the petition due in days their object was “revolution not riots”

The Peoples Charter rejected

Parliament finally considered the Peoples Charter on July 12th 1839. The petition which bore over a million signatures was contemptuously rejected by 235 votes to 46. Lord John Russell stated that to grant it would brig about the destruction of the Monarchy, House of Lords and the institutions of the state: how could it ever be otherwise? When news of the rejection reached Birmingham the anger of the workers took to the streets on July 15th. Houses of their enemies were burnt, there was no looting, the shops and businesses were set to flames. The wealthy fled with the Mayor and it was five days before the infantry and cavalry regained control. Harney was released by the authorities on the evening of the 15th , remained in Birmingham during the street fighting, and returned to London on the twentieth.

The Convention had rejected Atwoods demand for a further petition and voted on seventeenth July to call the general strike to begin on 12th August. This was the final showdown that the movement had waited on for so long; but again the Convention faltered. After some negative feedback O’Brien returned to the decision on Monday 22nd July; he argued now that there was not enough support in the country and that the “Convention should leave the holiday [general strike] to the people themselves”. For a man who contributed so much to revolutionary thought such an abdication of duty by O’Brien was a tragedy. O’Connor now also attacked the plan. The self-limiting of the movement was resulting in fiasco, and now faced with leading a rebellion, the leadership balked. The Northern Star now clouded the retreat: “Any attempt to bring about the ‘Sacred Month’ before an universal arming shall have taken place, will ruin all”. Yet the fighting was already breaking out, in Newcastle another skirmish with troops took place on 26th July. When Harney returned to the Convention on 26th July it was to launch into a tirade against this betrayal. He reported that on his mission to Northumberland and Cumberland he addressed forty meetings, the people though poor in provision were perfectly prepared in spirit for the strike.

“If ever the Charter was to be won, it would be the men of the North, and if they were not prepared now, they never would be. The Convention had begun in Birmingham to take steps, which had excited the expectations of the people, that they would adopt energetic measures. But he was sorry to be obliged to say that he believed the Convention, if it had not lost, was rapidly loosing the confidence of the people through its conduct on the subject of the Scared month”.

Harney demanded they bring forth the strike to the 5th August when the news of trials of arrested Delegates to the Convention was due to arrive. As to further consultation as asked; “What then were the simultaneous meetings, a farce?”. It was time to call on the people and place them on a “collision with their tyrants. This movement could not fail, unless through the misconduct of their leaders”. Harney criticised the retreat from the general strike as being based on false facts of the state of support accusing the leaders of Lancashire and Yorkshire as having “deceived the Convention, for the people were fully prepared”. This was he last chance for the Convention to prove it was fit for leadership, O’Connor’s response was that if the people did not feel sufficient interest in the strike the “Convention could not excite them. He feared among the leaders not the traitor or the spy, but the fool. He did not mean to say that Mr.Harney was either but this he knew, the people would not be misled by Mr.Harney”.

The Secretary of the Hull Democratic Association, Bufomin Bell issued a statement on the 29th July that the miners will fight if need be to obtain the Peoples Charter and deliver the general strike. The next day the ‘Battle of the Forth’ broke out at Newcastle, six thousand Chartists struggled with two companies of infantry, a troop of dragoons and 500 police. The government was prepared to meet the Chartists head on and issued instructions to the authorities to deal severely, at the start of August widespread arrests were underway. On the 3rd of August the Convention met again and abandoned the strike completely, instead calling for three days of public demonstrations. As Rothstein writes the Convention had “pronounced its own death sentence”.

The Convention abandoned the leadership of the movement having failed in its strategy of intimidating the ruling class with the treat of revolution, but never intending to carry it out. Dorothy Thompson writes if there was a possibility of an all out rebellion at this moment. “It is quite impossible to predict how such an action might have developed, but it is at least possible that the tensions which were undoubtedly present throughout the manufacturing districts might have been increased to the point of civil war by strike action on a large scale, as Harney had prophesized”. Instead what was being realised was Harney’s other forewarning of the isolation of localised outbreaks and defeat.

The London Democrat had declared in its last issue in June that; “You have been duped, betrayed and deceived”. Now what little faith the London Democratic Association had in the Convention was all but lost, Coombe furiously attacked the Convention for its failure to mount an adequate defence of the Birmingham Chartists who were under sentence of death. On the 12th August demonstration it was the L.D.A who made up the bulk of twelve thousand who assembled on Kennington Common, but already the many revolutionary democrats amongst the Chartist movement were going back to earlier form of radicalism, conspiracy and insurrection.