The class character of Chartism
ED DOVETON’S article on Chartism in the last edition
of Socialism Today (No.129, June 2009) was interesting and informative.
But it didn’t fully discuss the class nature of the different strands
within the movement. The simple division of Chartism between ‘moral
force’ and ‘physical force’ obscures the underlying class tensions. The
London Working-Man’s Association was a bastion of ‘moral force’
Chartism. Mostly relatively prosperous artisans, they had, in the words
of AL Morton, "habits of political discussion, rather than political
action" (A Peoples’ History of England). They saw the charter
as no more than a political step to a greater say in the running of the
country. Many later moved easily into the Liberal Party.
For the working class areas the charter embodied
social demands; demands for fair working conditions, for trade union
rights, for support for the unemployed. Workers supported ‘physical
force’ Chartism, seeing that none of these demands could be achieved
without class struggle.
The Welsh working class was a stronghold of
‘physical force’. By the 1830s they had already learned many lessons
which still had to be learned in the rest of Britain. They had fought to
set up trade unions which had been smashed by mass sackings. They had
invented flying pickets and guerrilla industrial action with the ‘Scotch
Cattle’. In Merthyr in 1831 they had even staged an uprising which held
the town for a week until soldiers were shipped in from outside Wales.
So Chartism based in the mining areas of South East
Wales took on a much more politically advanced form. Less is known about
it because most of the debates took place in the Welsh language, less
amenable to police spies. However like most young movements, its
leadership was unusual. The main leaders included John Frost, a tailor
and ex-mayor of Newport; Zephaniah Williams, Blaina pub landlord and
ex-organiser of ‘claim jumpers’; and Dr William Price, a hippie 150
years before his time – a strong supporter of conservation, vegetarian,
and an opponent of marriage. There were shadowy characters such as Jack
the Fifer, an old soldier who claimed to have fought for the Texas
republic at the Alamo (www.socialistpartywales.org.uk/rev1.html).
There were many strands to their debates, but one
was certainly the idea of establishing a ‘Silurian republic’ to take
over the major towns and river crossings, to block off the military and
give the signal for a general revolt. On 3 November 1839, Chartists from
South East Wales organised an armed march on Newport to free the gaoled
Chartist speaker Harry Vincent. Disorganisation, atrocious weather, and
zero support from England meant the attempt was defeated by the military
stationed in Newport. Frost and Williams were charged with treason and
sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. Despite a clamour for their
execution, the sentence was commuted to transportation for life. Price
fled to France and the other leaders faded away. As Gwyn A Williams put
it "The respectable press drenched working people in the spittle of a
truly ferocious class hatred and contempt" (When Was Wales).
The 1840s saw an explosion in demand for iron rails
from South Wales and the flame of revolt was, for the time being,
extinguished by a period of relative prosperity for workers.
For socialists, the analysis of a historical
movement or event must take a major consideration of the cross currents
between classes. Mass movements without proletarian leadership are
almost commonplace today in the ex-Stalinist states and in Asia. We must
learn the lessons from our own history of the almost inevitable failure
of such movements due to the fact that only a conscious proletarian
leadership can lead a mass uprising to a genuine social revolution.
Geoff Jones
Llanwrtyd Wells
