Rethinking the Chartists: Searching for synthesis in the historiography of Chartism

Historical Journal

Volumn 39, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 479-495

  Taylor, Miles ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85009723421     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X00020343     Document Type: Article

References (139)

1. Asa Briggs, ‘Chartism reconsidered’, Historical studies. Papers read before the third conference of Irish historians, 2 (1959), 42–59
2. Briggs (ed.), Chartist studies (1959)
3. E. P. Thompson, The making of the English working class (1963).
4. Dorothy Thompson, ‘Chartism as a historical subject’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, XX (1970), 10–12
5. Thompson (ed.), The early chartists (1971).
6. See also her ‘Chartism: success or failure?’, in D. Rubinstein (ed.), People for the people (1973), pp. 90–97.
7. James Epstein and Dorothy Thompson (eds.), The chartist experience: studies in working-class radicalism and culture, 1830–1860 (1982)
8. Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of class: studies in working class history, 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983), ch. 3
9. Dorothy Thompson, The chartists: popular politics in the industrial revolution (1984).
10. For example, the 1967 Cambridge Ph.D. theses of John Foster and Iorweth Prothero, later published as Foster, Class struggle and the industrial revolution: early industrial capitalism in three English towns (1974) and Prothero, ‘Chartism in London’, Past and Present, XLIV (1969), 76–105
11. his later Artisans and politics: John Cast and his times (1979).
12. See also: Peter Searby, Coventry politics in the age of the chartists (Coventry, 1965)
13. G. Barnsby, Chartism in the Black Country (1965)
14. R. S. Neale, Class and ideology in a provincial city: Bath, 1800–50 (1966).
15. John Belchem, ‘Radicalism as a “platform” agitation in the periods 1816–21 and 1848–51: with special reference to the leadership of Henry Hunt and Feargus O'Connor’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Sussex, 1974) and his later ‘1848: Feargus O'Connor and the collapse of the mass platform’, in Epstein and Thompson (eds.), The chartist experience; James Epstein, The lion of freedom: Feargus O'Connor and the chartist movement, 1832–42 (1982)
16. T. M. Kemnitz and J. Fleurange, ‘J. R. Stephens and the chartist movement’, International Review of Social History, XIX (1974), 211–227.
17. W. H. Maehl, ‘The dynamics of violence in chartism: a case study in northeastern England’, Albion, VII (1975), 101–119
18. D.J.V. Jones, The last rising: the Newport insurrection of 1839 (Oxford, 1985)
19. R. Fyson, ‘The crisis of 1842: chartism, the colliers' strike and the outbreak in the Potteries’, in Epstein and Thompson (eds.), The chartist experience.
20. Iorwerth Prothero, ‘William Benbow and the concept of the “General Strike”’, Past and Present, LXII (1974), 132–171
21. John Belchem, ‘Republicanism, popular constitutionalism and the radical platform in early 19th century England’, Social History, VI (1981), 1–32.
22. For example, the 1982 Birmingham Ph.D. thesis of Clive Behagg, later published as Politics and production in the early igth century (1990)
23. Owen Ash ton, ‘Radicalism and chartism in Gloucestershire, 1832–1847’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1980)
24. Robert Sykes, ‘Popular politics and trade unionism in south-east Lancashire, 1829–1842’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1982).
25. Neville Kirk, The growth of working class reformism in mid- Victorian England (1985)
26. Henry Weisser, April 10: challenge and response (1983).
27. Owen Ashton, Robert Fyson and Stephen Roberts (eds.), The chartist movement: a new annotated bibliography (1995).
28. John Saville, 1848: the British state and the chartist movement (1987).
29. Margot C. Finn, After chartism: class and nation in English radical politics, 1848–1874 (Cambridge, 1993)
30. Miles Taylor, The decline of British radicalism, 1847–1860 (Oxford, 1995).
31. Michael Winstanley, ‘Oldham radicalism and the origins of popular liberalism, 1830–1852’, Historical Journal, XXXVI (1993), 619–643
32. Anthony D. Taylor, ‘Modes of political expression and working-class radicalism, 1848–74: the London and Manchester examples’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1992)
33. Martin Hewitt, ‘Structures of accommodation: the intellectual roots of social stability in mid-nineteenth-century Manchester’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1991)
34. Alan D. Little, ‘Chartism and liberalism: popular politics in Leicestershire, 1842–74’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1989).
35. Owen Ashton, W. E. Adams: chartist, radical and journalist (1832–1906) (Whitley Bay, 1991)
36. Stephen Roberts, Radical politicians and poets in early Victorian England (Lampeter, 1993).
37. Barbara Taylor, Eve and the new Jerusalem: socialism and feminism in the nineteenth century (1983)
38. Catherine Hall, ‘The tale of Samuel and Jemima: gender and working class culture in early 19th century England’ [1986] reprinted in her White, male and middle class: explorations in feminism and history (Oxford, 1992)
39. Joan Scott, ‘On language, gender and working class history’, International Labor and Working Class History, XXXI (1987), 1–13.
40. Jutta Schwarzkopf, Women and the chartist movement (1992)
41. Anna Clark, The struggle for the breeches: gender and the making of the British working class (1995).
42. For an overview see Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor, ‘The poverty of protest: Gareth Stedman Jones and the politics of language - a reply’, Social History, XVIII (1993), 1–15
43. Miles Taylor, ‘The linguistic turns in British social history’, Bollettino del XIX secolo [Naples], IV (1995), 5–13.
44. Neville Kirk,‘ In defence of class: a critique of recent revisionist writing upon the nineteenth-century English working class’, International Review of Social History, XXXII (1987), 2–47
45. Kirk, Labour and society in Britain and the USA, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 1994), 1, 140
46. Dorothy Thompson, ‘The languages of class’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, LII (1987), 54–57
47. Paul Pickering, ‘Class without words? Symbolic communication in the chartist movement’, Past and Present, cxii (1986), 144–162
48. John Belchem,‘ Radical language and ideology in early 19th century England: the challenge of the platform', Albion, XX (1988), 247–259
49. Bryan Palmer, Descent into discourse: the reification of language and the writing of social history (Philadelphia, 1990), pp. 128–133
50. James Epstein, Radical expression: political language, ritual and symbol in England, 1700–1850 (Oxford, 1994).
51. Dorothy Thompson, ‘The languages of class’. It should be noted that Thompson herself differs from Saville's interpretation of the state's behaviour in 1848. See her review of 1848 in History Workshop, XXVIII (1989), 160–166.
52. Briggs, ‘The local background of chartism’, p. 2.
53. G. Kitson Clark, ‘Hunger and politics in 1842’, Journal of Modern History, XXV (1953), 355–374.
54. Dorothy Thompson, ‘Chartism as a historical subject’.
55. Thompson, The early chartists, pp. 12–13.
56. ‘Working-class culture and working-class politics in London, 1870–1900: notes on the remaking of a working class’ [1974] reprinted in his Languages of class.
57. Stedman Jones, ‘Class struggle and the industrial revolution’ [1975] reprinted in Languages of class.
58. For Stedman Jones on Engels and on modernization theory see Lawrence and Taylor, ‘The poverty of protest’, p. 7.
59. For the differences compare C. Lin, The British new left (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. 132–136
60. with Harvey Kaye, The British marxist historians: an introductory analysis (Cambridge, 1984), ch. 7.
61. Robert Gammage, History of the chartist movement, 1837–1854 [1854] (1969 edn), ed. John Saville
62. G. D. H. Cole, Chartist portraits (1941).
63. Craig Calhoun, The question of class struggle: social foundations of popular radicalism during the industrial revolution (Oxford, 1982)
64. Patrick Joyce, Work, society and politics: the culture of the factory in later Victorian England (1980).
65. Alastair Reid, ‘Politics and culture in the formation of the British working class: a response to H. F. Moorhouse’, Social History, 111 (1978), 347–361.
66. Trygve Tholfsen, Working-class radicalism in mid-Victorian England (1976)
67. Geoffrey Crossick, An artisan elite in Victorian society: Kentish London, 1840–80 (1978)
68. Robert Gray, The aristocracy of labour in nineteenth-century Britain, c. 1850–1914 (1981).
69. ‘Rethinking chartism’, passim.
70. Kirk, ‘In defence of class’, pp. 12–35
71. Palmer, Descent into discourse, pp. 128–133
72. Dorothy Thompson, ‘The languages of class’. Thompson's criticism of Stedman Jones on this point represents a throw-back to her dismissal nearly thirty years ago of the work of Reba Soffer and D.J. Rowe.
73. See her ‘Notes on aspects of chartist leadership’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, XV (1967), 28–33.
74. John Foster, ‘The declassing of language’, New Left Review, c l (1985), 29–45; Epstein, Radical expression; Pickering, ‘Class without words’.
75. Kirk, ‘In defence of class’, pp. 37–41
76. Thompson, ‘The languages of class’, and see her ‘Chartism and the historians’ in her Outsiders: class, gender and nation (1993), pp. 34–35.
77. A much more explicit account of chartism as ‘false’ consciousness can be found in Theodore Koditschek, Class formation in urban industrial society: Bradford, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), ch. 17.
78. Robert Gray, ‘The deconstructing of the English working class’, Social History, xi (1986), 363–373.
79. By way of contrast Richard Ashcraft has suggested that the same intellectual tradition actually produced a class-conscious political language evident in chartism: ‘Liberal political theory and working-class radicalism in 19th century England’, Political Theory, XXI (1993), 249–272.
80. ‘Rethinking chartism’, p. 95.
81. ‘Rethinking chartism’. p. 98.
82. The classic account remains Sidney Buxton, Finance and politics: an historical study, 1783–1885, 2 vols. (1888), 1, chs. 2–3.
83. Clive Behagg, ‘An alliance with the middle class: the Birmingham political union and early chartism’, in Epstein and Thompson (eds.), The chartist experience.
84. The main history of this episode denies any such ‘middle-class’ revolt: Mick Jenkins, The general strike OF 1842 (1980), pp. 57, 171, 173
85. but John Bright did moot just such an idea: Keith Robbins, John Bright (1979), pp. 36–37.
86. Belchem, ‘1848: Feargus O'Connor and the collapse of the mass platform’, in Epstein and Thompson (eds.), The chartist experience, p. 276.
87. Kirk, ‘In defence of class’
88. John Saville, Ernest Jones. Chartist. Selections from the writings and speeches of Ernest Jones with introduction and notes (1952), p. 41.
89. Stedman Jones, ‘Rethinking chartism’, pp. 177–178.
90. Saville, 1848, passim; Dorothy Thompson, The chartists, chs. 4, 10.
91. F. C. Mather, Public order in the age of the chartists (1959)
92. Stanley Palmer, Police and protest in England and Ireland, 1780–1850 (Cambridge, 1988).
93. Peter Mandler, Aristocratic government in the age of reform: whigs and Liberals, 1830–52 (Oxford, 1990)
94. Jonathan Parry, The rise and fall of Liberal government in Victorian Britain (1993), ch. 3.
95. Christopher Barnett, ‘Fears of revolution, finality and the reopening of the question of parliamentary reform in England, 1832–1867’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1981), p. 168.
96. Boyd Hilton, ‘The political arts of Lord Liverpool’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., XXXVIII (1988), 147–170.
97. See also his ‘Peel: a reappraisal’, Historical Journal, XXII (1979), 585–614.
98. John Garrard, Leadership and power in Victorian industrial towns, 1830–80 (Manchester, 1983)
99. John Prest, Liberty and locality: parliament, permissive legislation and ratepayers' democracies in the nineteenth century (Oxford, 1990).
100. John Brewer, The sinews of power: war, money and the English state, 1688–1783 (1989)
101. Joanna Innes, ‘The domestic face of the military-fiscal state: government and society in eighteenth-century Britain’, in Lawrence Stone (ed.), An imperial state at war: England from 1689to 1815 (1994)
102. David Eastwood, Governing rural England: tradition and transformation in local government, 1780–1840 (Oxford, 1994)
103. Philip Harling and Peter Mandler, ‘From “fiscal-military” state to laissez-faire state, 1760–1850’, Journal of British Studies, XXXII (1993), 44–70.
104. Frank O'Gorman, Voters, patrons and parties: the unreformed electoral system of Hanoverian England, 1734–1832 (Oxford, 1989)
105. John Phillips, The great reform bill in the boroughs, 1818–1841 (Oxford, 1992)
106. Charles Tilly, Popular contention in Great Britain 1758–1834 (1995).
107. And see the perceptive review article by Joanna Innes, ‘Representative histories: recent studies of popular politics and popular culture in 18th and early 19th century England’, Journal of Historical Sociology, IV (1991), 182–211.
108. John Belchem's ‘Beyond Chartist studies: class, community and party in early Victorian popular polities’, in Derek Fraser (ed.), Cities, class, communication: essays in honour of Asa Briggs (Hemel Hempstead, 1990) contains some thoughtful suggestions as to how a local studies framework may be still be utilized in this respect.
109. Humphrey Southall, ‘Mobility, the artisan community and popular politics in early 19th century England’, in G. Kearns and C. W.J. Withers (eds.), Urbanising England (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 103–153
110. P. M. R. Howell, ‘“A free trade in politics”: a geography of chartism's political culture, c. 1838–48’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1994).
111. Although here it has been suggested that the overlap was tactical, and did not imply any ideological sympathy: Felix Driver, ‘Tory radicalism ? Ideology, strategy and locality in popular politics during the 1830s’, Northern History, XXVII (1991), 120–138.
112. Eileen Groth, ‘Christian radicalism in England, 1830–1850’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1993), p. 281.
113. Brian Harrison and Patricia Hollis (eds.), Robert Lowery: radical and chartist (1979), p. 5
114. Alex Tyrrell, ‘Making the millennium: the mid-nineteenth-century peace movement’, Historical Journal, XX (1978), 75–95.
115. Paul Pickering, ‘Chartism and the “trade in agitation” in early Victorian Britain’, History, LXXVI (1991), 221–237.
116. Gregory Claeys, Machinery, money and the millennium: from moral economy to socialism, 1815–1860 (Cambridge, 1987)
117. Malcolm Chase, The people's farm: English radical agrarianism, 1775–1840 (Oxford, 1988).
118. Margaret Hambrick (ed.), A chartist's library (1986).
119. On the ideological differences between chartism and free trade, see David Stack, ‘Nature and artifice: the life and thought of Thomas Hodgskin’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1995)
120. John Belchem, ‘Chartism and the trades, 1848–50’, English Historical Review, xcviii (1983), 558–87 and his ‘Beyond Chartist studies’.
121. Keith McClelland, ‘A politics of the labour aristocracy? Skilled workers and radical politics on Tyneside, c. 1850–1874’, Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, XL (1980), 8–9
122. McClelland, ‘Time to work, time to live: some aspects of work and the reformation of class in England, 1850–1880’, in Patrick Joyce (ed.), The historical meanings of work (Cambridge, 1987),pp. 180–209
123. Eugenio F. Biagini, ‘British trade unions and popular political economy, 1860–1880’, Historical Journal, XXX (1987), 811–840.
124. Winstanley, ‘Oldham radicalism’
125. Finn, After chartism
126. Taylor, Decline of British radicalism
127. Peter Taylor, Popular politics in early industrial Britain: Bolton, 1825–50 (Keele, 1995), pp. 128–138
128. Ryland Wallace, ‘Organise, organise, organise!’: a study of reform agitations in Wales, 1840–1886 (Cardiff, 1991)
129. Bill Lancaster, Radicalism, co-operation and socialism: Leicester working-class politics, 1860–1906 (Leicester, 1987), pp. 79–81.
130. Alastair J. Reid and Eugenio F. Biagini, ‘Introduction’ to Currents of radicalism: popular politics, organised labour and party politics in Britain, 1850–1914 (Cambridge, 1991)
131. Patrick Joyce, Visions of the people: industrial England and the question of class, 1840–1914 (Cambridge, 1991).
132. Dennis Whomsley, ‘Radical politics in the 1850s and 1860s: Joshua Hobson and the tenant right dispute in Huddersfield’, Journal of Regional and Local Studies, VII (1987), 14–33
133. Malcolm Chase, ‘Chartism, 1838–1858: responses in two Teesside towns’, Northern History, XXIV (1988), 146–171
134. Garrard, Leadership and authority.
135. Joyce, Visions of the people.
136. Geoff Eley, ‘Edward Thompson, social history and political culture: the making of a working-class public, 1780–1850’, in Harvey J. Kaye and Keith McClelland (eds.), E. P. Thompson: critical perspectives (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 12–49
137. James Vernon, Politics and the people: a study in English political culture, c. 1815–1867 (Cambridge, 1993).
138. Schwarzkopf, Women and the chartist movement
139. Clark, Struggle for the breeches.