Introduction
In 1838, the ‘Chartists’ demanded Parliamentary reforms which gained wide sympathy, especially in the industrial North West. But by the following summer violent radicals who were no friends of liberal democracy were hijacking the movement, as Major-General Charles Napier discovered for himself when keeping the peace at a rally in Manchester in May, 1839.
ON May 25th [1839] a great meeting took place on Kersal Moor near Manchester. It passed over quietly. Napier had concentrated two thousand men and four guns in the vicinity, and he had further taken the original precaution of getting an introduction to a meeting of Chartist leaders, and telling them plainly that if they meant only to lay their grievances* before Parliament they would have no opposition from him, and that neither soldier nor policeman would be allowed to disturb them, but that if there was the least disturbance of the peace he would use the force he had to quell it.
Another step he took too in this same direction of prevention which should not be lost sight of. He had heard that the Chartists were very confident that their possession of five or six brass cannon was of immense importance to them, and that when the day of action would arrive these guns would give them victory.*
Six years after the Great Reform Bill, the Chartists demanded further and broadly desirable reforms including universal male suffrage, secret ballots, paid MPs who were not required to meet minimum property qualifications, and more seats for industrial towns. A petition of 1,280,000 signatures was presented to Parliament that June, but the Commons consistently rejected Chartist Bills. The better reforms were adopted piecemeal in later years.
What began as a praiseworthy attempt to free Westminister’s electoral process from vested interests was soon hijacked by a bewildering variety of them, all attempting to bend Parliament into adopting their agendas. They included a vocal minority of intellectuals crying ‘serfdom’ and ‘capitalism’ very much like Marx and Engels (who settled in England in 1848 after being thrown out of Cologne, and took a great interest in Manchester), and demanding that Parliament tamely put their ivory-tower economic and social theories into practice or face a civic fear campaign until it did.
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