‘The Old Chartist’: Radical Veterans on the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Political Platform

‘The Old Chartist’: Radical Veterans on theLate Nineteenth- and EarlyTwentieth-Century Political Platformhist_495 458..476

ANTONY TAYLORSheffield Hallam University

AbstractFormer and veteran Chartists were a feature of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century political platform in Britain. This article argues that their function was aboutmore than mere adornment. Through their presence, lineages of political longevity wereestablished and memories of the radical past invoked. This article considers the totemicrole of the ‘old Chartists’. It locates their significance for successor movements, andscrutinizes their importance in augmenting and modifying the historiography of Char-tism. It argues that the personal stories of veteran Chartists were formative for laterdepictions of the movement, and remain integral to the creation of a radical historiogra-phy mediated through the lived experience of struggle, and the historical memory ofreform. By engaging with recent ‘continuity’ debates in the historiography of nineteenth-century popular politics, this article argues that the role of the veteran Chartist contri-buted to a radical inter-generational history of reform that frequently remainedindependent of both liberalism and Toryism.

Who is he?One who fought that you might be

Freedom’s child!Bore the torch of liberty,

Undefiled,Bore it well and bore it long,

In a world where greed and wrong,Curse the weak and aid the strong,

This is he.1

In 1862 the poet George Meredith published a poem entitled ‘The OldChartist’. Illustrated by the Pre-Raphaelite artist George Sandys, itappeared in the contemporary Victorian periodical Once a Week.

Both the poem and the accompanying illustration are well known.Depicting a former Chartist returned from transportation and exile, thepiece reflects his musings as he pauses momentarily at a riverbank on thelong road home. At the heart of the poem are his feelings about his

1 The Social Democrat, 1 April 1897, p. 99.

© 2010 The Author. History © 2010 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,Malden, MA 02148, USA.

radical past, inspired by his reflections on the gambolings of a water rat.Contemplating his recent radicalism, and the sorrow his career hasbrought both to himself and his family, ‘the Old Chartist’ vows to followthe example of the water rat, turn his back on politics, and renounceactive involvement in the world:

You teach me a fine lesson, my old boy!I’ve look’d on my superiors far too long.

And small has been my profit as my joy.You’ve done the right while I’ve denounced the wrong.

Prosper me later!Like you I will despise the sniggering throng,

And please myself and my creator.2

The poem is frequently cited.3 It is usually seen as an expression ofmid-Victorian equipoise. ‘The Old Chartist’ is a relic from a more tur-bulent time. With all passion spent and his youthful exuberance behindhim, ‘the Old Chartist’ is representative of the peace, passivity and pros-perity of the mid-Victorian years. His failure to renew his radical com-mitment symbolizes a renunciation of violence and direct-action politics.It represents a line drawn under the past, and a decision to embrace thepeace and harmony of a life lived quietly in later years.

I

Meredith’s vision of ‘the Old Chartist’ has coloured the image of surviv-ing veterans of the movement. The illustration for the poem by GeorgeSandys is a standard image, often used to close the book on the age of theChartists.4 The poem’s author, George Meredith, was a radical liberal. Agreat admirer of William Ewart Gladstone, he rubbed shoulders withadvanced liberals like the land reformer Frederick Augustus Maxse andJohn Burns.5 Meredith’s vision of the mid-Victorian years was essentiallya liberal one. In his eyes, liberalism had made great political strides andhad attained successes denied to the more fiery movements of the politicalpast. Its popularity and modest political gains suggested civic upheaval,replaced by harmony. Seen by some liberals as a successor and replace-ment for movements like Chartism, liberalism made real progress pos-sible through party politics.

Much of the liberal ambivalence about the Chartist past is summedup in Meredith’s poem. This liberal vision of a politics that had had itsday and was consumed by violence and political excess was only oneinterpretation of the radical inheritance. The liberal notion of the ‘old

2 Once a Week, 6 Feb. 1862, p. 184.3 Anne Janowitz, Lyric and Labour in the Romantic Tradition (Cambridge, 1998), p. 170.4 ‘The Old Chartist’ is the final image in Images of Chartism, ed. Stephen Roberts and DorothyThompson (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 105.5 J. A. Hammerton, George Meredith: In Anecdote and Criticism (1909), pp. 19 and 124–5, and aninterview with Meredith in the Manchester Guardian, 2 Feb. 1903, p. 5.

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© 2010 The Author. History © 2010 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Chartist’ as a remorseful penitent was not echoed in other political depic-tions of former and veteran Chartists. ‘Old Chartists’ featured often incontemporary accounts, in personal reminiscences, and as living linkswith the past. This article considers the totemic role of the ‘old Chartist’.In fact, the Chartist veterans who inhabited the landscape of mid-Victorian politics were often inspirational figures. Their legacy was animportant one with significant lessons for later movements. As Rey-nolds’s Newspaper commented in 1884, the Charter ‘gave birth to ageneration of workmen patriots whose honourable “records” are amongthe most precious memorials of their day and country’.6

Some recent literature on popular politics has tended to play down therole of Chartism. Once seen as the seminal movement of the nineteenthcentury, it is now much diminished in importance and reduced to therole of one movement amongst many.7 With the middle years of thenineteenth century no longer seen as a caesura, Chartism has lost itsrelevance. Moreover, the ‘continuity’ debate has contributed to this rel-egation of the agitation to the fringes of politics.8 Variously imagined asthe final flourish of a traditional style of eighteenth-century popularpolitics or as a transitional movement paving the way for a more suc-cessful liberalism, Chartism is no longer perceived as a movement thatstood (or is understood) on its own terms.9 Some recent emphasis on‘continuity’ amongst a school dubbed by Neville Kirk the ‘liberal revi-sionists’ has had a significant impact on perceptions of Chartism, depict-ing the movement as an agitation that, to all intents and purposes, simplyanticipated liberalism.10 This perception has drained Chartism of its sig-nificance. A more subtle analysis sees Chartism as providing the modelfor a persistent independent strain of democratic politics that navigatedbetween different political positions and often expressed itself in distancefrom the established Liberal or Conservative parties.11 For example,Logie Barrow and Ian Bullock have noted that organizations like theSocial Democratic Federation ‘were self-consciously in the shadow ofChartism’.12 Many of these arguments about the impact of Chartismrevolve around the careers of particular Chartist leaders or illustrioussurvivors, used to chart the post-Chartist trajectory of the agitation. The

6 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 3 Feb. 1884, p. 1.7 For the fullest recent account of the historiography of Chartism, see Matthew Roberts, PoliticalMovements in Urban England, 1832–1914 (2009), chs. 3–5.8 For the ‘continuity’ debate, see Eugenio Biagini and Alistair Reid, ‘Currents of Radicalism,1850–1914’, in Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics inBritain, 1850–1914, ed. Eugenio Biagini and Alistair Reid (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 1–19.9 Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working Class History, 1832–1982(Cambridge, 1983), pp. 90–178 and Rohan McWilliam, Popular Politics in Nineteenth-CenturyEngland (1998), chs. 2–5.10 Neville Kirk, Change, Continuity and Class: Labour in British Society, 1850–1920 (Manchester,1998), pp. 9–11.11 See ibid., pp. 190–2.12 Logie Barrow and Ian Bullock, Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, 1880–1914(Cambridge, 1996), ch. 1.

460 ‘THE OLD CHARTIST’


political destinations of figures like Ernest Jones, Brontere O’Brien, G. J.Holyoake or William Aitken have been used to scrutinize the overlap oraffinities between Chartism and liberalism.13 Many accounts of the com-patibilities between the two movements stand or fall on examinations ofindividual events, notably Ernest Jones’s Liberal candidature forManchester in 1868.14 In this regard, Dorothy Thompson has questionedan analysis of the movement that is mediated too strongly through thecontext of national leadership and the foibles and quirks of ‘charismatic’orators.15 This opens the way for a more perspicacious view of the agi-tation that considers the tier of local leaders and the lesser figures whofought to keep the movement alive during periods of contraction. Theyhave traditionally attracted far less attention. Here, for contemporaries,the real soul of the movement resided and survived in the ageing ranks offormer Chartists. This article seeks to re-evaluate popular perceptions ofChartism through the images of surviving Chartist veterans, in line witha historiography that questions an unproblematic continuity betweenChartism and liberalism.

The figure of the ‘old Chartist’ was an important one. Often present inreminiscences and contemporary accounts, the ‘old Chartist’ symbolizedan unrepentant strand of popular and non-compliant radicalism, fre-quently impervious to overtures from the established political parties.Behind liberal images of the ‘Hungry Forties’, the role of Chartist radi-calism lived on in the memories of those who had experienced the periodat first hand.16 Issues of violence, suffering, poverty and deprivation hungaround the careers of many former Chartist veterans. Their long experi-ence in the reform struggle spanned periods of upheaval and social want.For Graham Wallas, writing in the 1880s, the generation of formerChartists were unique figures, produced by the special circumstances ofthe times in which they lived: ‘It seems to have been more fortunate thanany of the generations that immediately preceded or followed it in thenumber of cool enthusiasts with unquenchable hopes, iron constitutionsand extraordinary intellectual force who lived and learnt to know eachother at that time’.17 For those with direct memories of the period, theseexperiences created a lasting legacy. Despite its failures, Chartism wasoften portrayed as a benchmark that subsequent movements might aspiretowards, and as a warning of the ways in which true radicalism might be

13 Robert Hall, Voices of the People: Democracy and Chartist Political Identity, 1830–1870 (Mon-mouth, 2007), pp. 140–58, and for discussion of other Chartist veterans and their role in Chartistcontinuity debates see Margot Finn, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics,1848–1874 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 310–15.14 Antony Taylor, ‘ “The Best Way to Get what He Wanted”: Ernest Jones and the Boundaries ofLiberalism in the Manchester Election of 1868’, Parliamentary History, xvi (1997), 185–204.15 Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution (1984) [hereafterThompson, The Chartists], p. 95.16 The Hungry Forties: Life under the Bread Tax, ed. Jane Cobden-Unwin (1904), pp. 79, 234, 235–6.17 Graham Wallas, ‘The Chartist Movement’, Our Corner, xii (1888), 112–13.

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suborned by liberalism.18 For many veterans the result was a tense rela-tionship with the Liberal Party that placed these survivors on the marginsof the mid-Victorian liberal consensus growing out of Gladstonian con-cerns for free trade, economic retrenchment, and reform of parliamen-tary and religious institutions. Numerous liberals recognized the fracturelines between the Chartist inheritance and liberal politics. For them,Chartism presented an ambiguous legacy. At a Chartist reunion inManchester in 1898 to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the foundingof the movement, George Howarth, Liberal MP for Bolton, acknowl-edged the sacrifices of former Chartists, but described the ‘veterans withthem that night (as) the Conscript Fathers from whose loins the degen-erate sons of liberalism had sprung’.19

Advanced radicalism, labourism and socialism all saw themselves asthe direct heirs to the Chartist movement, more capable than liberalismof absorbing the transformative and physical force aspects of the move-ment. Looking back on the agitation from the eve of the Great War, thepioneers of the Labour Party believed that although ‘Chartism as anorganised movement disappeared . . . the seed remained’ to inspire itssocialist and labour successors.20 Reviewing Mark Hovell’s first historyof the Chartist movement, the Labour Leader saw Chartism as a livedexperience and a model of direct relevance for socialists: ‘indeed thepresent day social and political student in reading these pages will con-tinually have to remark the similarity of the problems which faced theChartists with those that have confronted us in modern times’.21 For thegeneration that founded the Labour Party, Chartism provided the start-ing point for an unfolding and organic struggle, capable only of realiza-tion in the future. Like many labour pioneers, the Lancashire dialect poetand Bolton radical, Allen Clarke, cherished these memories of Chartism.In his comic short story about Ernest Jones in 1848, he presents a portraitof the Chartist leader musing at Blackstone Edge about the adoption ofthe People’s Charter and the nature of the Chartist inheritance. Assum-ing a prophetic tone, he comments: ‘Indeed, you and I my friend, maynever see the day for which we are wishing. But what of that? The songsof it and the vision of it shall cheer our night. Chartism itself is not theend of reform – it is but a step. After Chartism – socialism.’22

Idealism, communal solidarity, good fellowship, and commitment –these were the characteristics that inspired the cult of the ‘old Chartist’.In memoirs and autobiographies the Chartist years were highlighted as aformative period that overshadowed other aspects of long lives and active

18 See comments by Tom Maguire in the Labour Leader, 1 Sept. 1894, p. 2.19 ‘Old Chartists’ Dinner in Manchester’, Manchester Times, 21 Oct. 1898, p. 4.20 Labour Leader, 26 April 1912, p. 259.21 Ibid., 22 Aug. 1918, p. 6.22 Allen Clarke, ‘The Last Public Appearance of the Clegg Hall Boggart’, in Teddy Ashton’sLancashire Journal, ed. Allen Clarke (Blackpool, 1925), pp. 10–11.



political careers.23 For veteran Chartists, their appearances at publicmeetings, or as figures of honour on open platforms from which theywere once excluded, vindicated their pasts. When the former Chartistprisoner William Henry Chadwick chaired a meeting at the Free TradeHall in Manchester in 1880 his presence validated a radical vision of themovement as one that had breached accepted conventions and effectedlasting political change.24 These selective treatments of the radical pastreveal a strain of what Raphael Samuel dubbed ‘ancestor-worship’ inBritish popular politics, in which the individual actions of committedreformers stood revealed as a force capable of broadening the politicalnation for the better.25

II

In the 1920s Raymond Postgate was sceptical about the continuing influ-ence of veteran Chartists in their communities. He saw ‘old Chartists’living on as ‘interesting survivals in an alien world’, almost as fossilizedrelics of a previous age.26 An apostate Communist, his image of Chartismwas refracted through a Fabian disdain for the legacy of crowd politics.In areas of former Chartist strength, however, the memory of the move-ment for a younger generation was often sanctified by exposure to itsphysical survivors. Within radical culture much respect was traditionallyaccorded to those who had experienced its highpoints. This was some-times described in comic vein. The Lancashire dialect author BenjaminBrierley conveyed this sense in his humorous sketch Old Radicals andYoung Reformers, dealing with the misunderstandings between older andyounger generations of reformers. For the radical survivors gathered inthe tap-room of the ‘Unicorn’ in Church Street Manchester, the newgeneration had lost their way, accepting compromises and losing sight ofthe certainties that had characterised the post-Peterloo and Chartist gen-eration. The fiery former radical Neddy comments: ‘Ay, bo’ it wurno’ soi’ my day. Thoose ut wurna radikils wurn tories, an’ thoose ut wurnatories wurn radikils. Ther’ no go-betweens nor hawve-an-hawve’ (‘But itwasn’t so in my day. Those that weren’t radicals were Tories, and thosethat weren’t Tories were radicals. There were no go-betweens or half andhalfs’).27

For a younger generation of reformers, Chartist veterans were oftenremote, but inspiring figures. Charles Shaw in his reminiscences of hischildhood in the Potteries, recalled his old Chartist neighbour ‘who was

23 Kelly J. Mays, ‘Subjectivity, Community, and the Nature of Truth-Telling in Two ChartistAutobiographies’, in The Chartist Legacy, ed. Owen Ashton, Robert Fyson and Stephen Roberts(Woodbridge, 1999) [hereafter Ashton, Chartist Legacy], pp. 196–231.24 National Reformer, 22 Aug. 1880, p. 169.25 Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Unravelling Britain (1998), pp. 272–5 and idem, ‘People’sHistory’, in People’s History and Socialist Theory, ed. R. Samuel (1981), xiv–xxxix.26 R. W. Postgate, A Short History of the British Workers (1926), p. 50.27 Ben Brierley, Old Radicals and Young Reformers: A Sketch for the Times (Manchester, 1860), p. 7.

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in the habit of patting me on the head, stroking my hair, and alwaystelling me to be a good boy . . . His name was Joseph Capper, and noman in Tunstall was better known or more highly esteemed.’28 The rec-ollections of such figures are often studies in quiet influence. WilliamCudworth, a local antiquarian of Horton near Bradford, recalled theimposing figure of John Jackson, ‘the “old Chartist” as he was latterlystyled’. An autodidact, theologian, horticulturalist and political econo-mist, ‘he along with Mr. Squire Ferrar, Mr. Wm. Richardson, and a fewothers, established the old Radical Reform Club in Bradford, out ofwhich all subsequent organisations of a like character have sprung’.29

Early curiosity and political awakenings were often stirred by exposure tosuch individuals. Allen Clarke vividly recalled childhood memories of ‘anold man you could not help noticing, a conspicuous figure with a whitetall hat. My father said he was an old Chartist, and he was known as“Radical” Grimshaw.’30 Remembered as a strong individualist, and‘probably . . . one of the dying out race of handloom weavers’, ‘Radical’Grimshaw’s white hat was much in evidence at election time.31

The fate of such figures frequently contributed to the notion of aradical martyrology and reaffirmed the image of veteran Chartists asboth ascetic teachers and guides. Successful Chartists fitted uneasily intothe image of zealots, suffering for their cause and their ideas. In mostaccounts, the classic ‘old Chartist’ lingered on in destitution. Theirpoverty suggested a life of selfless devotion, dedication to the cause, anddetermination to pass on the flame of reform to a new generation. Earlydeaths, premature bereavements and habitual poverty were a regularfeature of the reported lives of these radical politicians. The post-Chartistcareers of numerous minor figures listed by J. T. Ward in his study ofChartism were social and political failures.32 Both John Jackson and‘Radical’ Grimshaw died in poverty. Jackson lived on ‘in hermit fashion’;Grimshaw, recorded Clarke, ‘as my friend John Kirkman writes to me“like most reformers of his class, died in the workhouse” ’.33 Suffering,victimization and intimidation were often the characteristics of theselater stories of Chartist decline. The anonymous ‘Rex the Chartist’ whosecareer in Exeter radicalism was profiled in the Social Democrat at the ageof 92, had been driven out of Exeter by the Tories, and lived on in povertyafter arson attacks on his business premises and home. The author of thesketch lamented:

28 Charles Shaw, When I was a Child (1903; Hampstead, 1983), pp. 141–2.29 William Cudworth, Rambles Round Horton: Historical, Topographical and Descriptive (Bradford,1886) [hereafter Cudworth, Rambles Round Horton], pp. 203–4.30 Allen Clarke, Moorlands and Memories: Rambles and Rides in the Fair Places of Steam-EngineLand (Bolton, 1920) [hereafter Clarke, Moorlands and Memories], pp. 17–18.31 Allen Clarke, ‘Amongst the Agitators: Memories of the Labour, Socialist and Other Movements’,Teddy Ashton’s Northern Weekly, 10 June 1905, p. 5.32 J. T. Ward, Chartism (1973), pp. 241–4.33 Cudworth, Rambles Round Horton, p. 204; Clarke, Moorlands and Memories, pp. 17–18.



There, surrounded by his books in which he still takes a deep interest, I feelhow neglectful of the honest, brave, good this world is. Here is a man – aman to the backbone – one who has given his life, money, pen, time, for thebenefit of his fellow beings, yet who has been left to eke out an existencethat would have spelt poverty itself were it not for a few friends and twoclever girls of his.34

Middle-ranking radicals frequently fared little better. A number of pos-sible fates were ascribed to Peter Murray McDouall, but admirers con-cluded that he probably died in poverty in Ashton-under-Lyne.35 SomeChartists drifted into obscurity or changed their identities. GeorgeHowell recalled that the minor Chartist leader, James Finlen, was blamedfor his wife’s insanity, and hounded for his devotion to the Fenian cause.When Howell last saw Finlen in 1888, ‘he was hiding as it were in astrange town in Lancashire under another name’.36 For most impover-ished radicals, their reduced circumstances placed them outside theliberal consensus, converting them into spectres at the feast for the newage of mid-Victorian prosperity.

A faded glamour hung around many of the survivors of the Chartistperiod. Much of the appeal of these figures lay in their ardour for thestruggle that in numerous reminiscences remained unquenched. Danger-ous in their youth, and still not entirely tamed, ‘old Chartists’, had oftenexperienced conflict with the authorities at first-hand. Howard Evansremembered shaking hands with John Frost and commented: ‘Grievousas was his error, I think that if I had been a man in his time I shouldprobably have shared his offence.’37 Equally, George Jacob Holyoakerecalled the dangerous reputation of the radical survivors of his day:

If the reader notices in my book Sixty Years of an Agitator’s Life howmany of my friends have been in prison, he will think he has fallen intodangerous hands. All counted, they may be thirty in number. But this onlyproves that within the memory of living men the path of political and otherpilgrims lay by castles of giants, who seized them by the way.38

Physical force and its application remained a sensitive issue. InEdward Hamer’s study of the Chartist rioting in Llanidloes in 1839,written against the background of the reform crisis of 1866–7, the authorwas careful to protect the identities of key figures involved in the distur-bances. The introduction to the second edition commented that ‘over all

34 The Social Democrat, 1 June 1897, p. 103.35 P. Pickering and S. Roberts, ‘Pills, Pamphlets and Politics: The Career of Peter Murray McDouall(1814–54)’, Manchester Region History Review, xi (1997), 34–43 and the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle,8 March 1884, p. 5.36 George Howell, ‘Autobiography of a Toiler’, MS autobiography, CI, Bishopsgate Institute,London and Reynolds’s Newspaper, 30 Aug. 1868, p. 5 and 20 Sept. 1868, p. 3.37 Howard Evans, Radical Fights of Forty Years (1913), p. 25.38 Quoted in F. J. Gould, The Pioneers of Johnson’s Court: A History of the Rationalist PressAssociation from 1899 Onwards (1929), pp. 11–12.

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the leading Chartists a cloak of anonymity is cast’.39 Both Evans andHolyoake, with direct exposure to the radical politics of the period,exhibited a tendency to forgive former Chartists their excesses. This senseis even stronger amongst those younger admirers who mingled with ‘oldChartists’ and fell under the spell of these veteran agitators. In the late1870s the aspiring Lancashire author James Swinglehurst becameintrigued by the elderly handloom weavers he met taking the air inBolton’s public park. Discovering their passion for politics and longpolitical histories, he recorded their stories. A number were former Char-tists and unrepentant advocates of physical force. The most vociferous, aman called Sharpe, recalled establishing a fund for the purchase of pikes,pistols and ammunition and drilling in the centre of Bolton ‘in battlearray, brandishing our weapons aloft’.40 Swinglehurst represented thesemen as part of a dying breed, and, whilst acknowledging their folly,evinced some admiration for them:

Many of the weavers were Chartists and enthusiastic admirers of FeargusO’Connor. To put the matter shortly, they carried their radicalism to theverge of folly and looked with favour on almost any scheme which prom-ised anything to the working man, however wild and extravagant; but letno one condemn them for this, as it was much more a natural outcome ofmisgovernment, than the fault of the men’41

Swinglehurst’s account was not untypical in showing a tendency both toexcuse and to condone. Many ‘old Chartists’ openly paraded theirinvolvement in conspiracies, and periods of imprisonment, vindicatingthemselves through their arguments about the context of the times.William Henry Chadwick, who described himself as ‘the last of theManchester Chartists’, was open about his confinement, commentingthat ‘he knew all the Chartists . . . who were imprisoned in Wakefieldgaol in 1842. He himself served six months in Kirkdale Gaol, and he hadto go to the court house in leg irons weighing 9lbs.’42

III

Old Chartists were a link with the past, a solemn survival of moreturbulent times. Their presence at public meetings or in the audiencedemonstrated a lived lineage of radical struggle. With their appearanceon the platform or in the chair, the covenant with the past might berenewed. From the 1860s onwards, former Chartists were visible in theagitations that succeeded the movement. Most radical newspapers com-mented on their presence as both symbolic and inspiring. In the crowdthey represented the survival of radical energies against the odds. At a

39 Edward Hamer, A Brief Account of the Chartist Outbreak at Llanidloes (1867; Llanidloes, 1939),p. viii.40 James Swinglehurst, Summer Evenings with Old Weavers (Manchester, n.d.), p. 30.41 Ibid., p. 5.42 The Weekly Tribune, 27 Feb. 1904, p. 13.



Social Democratic Federation meeting in Victoria Park, Hackney, in1884, ‘amongst those present were several who had taken an active partin the Chartist movement of 1848’.43 The appearance of Chartist veteransin the crowd allowed later movements to claim the blessing of the agita-tion’s survivors and assume the mantle of the radical inheritance. Radicallecturers were always keen to connect with these aged warriors. On theLand Nationalisation Society’s Red Van tour of the East Midlands,proceedings were enlivened by ‘an old Chartist [who] . . . spoke stronglyin support’ at Leicester, and Mr Topham, ‘an old Chartist’ who presidedat Derby.44 Chartists on the platform or in the chair garnered the mostfrequent accolades and provided the most visible link with the past. At anelection meeting in Leeds in 1880 the presence of Mr Rawlinson as chairwas highlighted. He was described as: ‘one of the “old guard” of Char-tism, and a fine specimen of the veteran radical’.45 Veteran Chartists weremuch sought after as the figureheads for later agitations. Edmund Jones,president of the Working Men’s League for the Repeal of the ContagiousDiseases Acts in 1877, was a former Liverpool Chartist who had beenpresent at the Kennington Common meeting, and worked to deter physi-cal force conspiracies in the aftermath of the failure of the petition of1848.46

In the radical club-land of the 1880s survivors of the movement werea feature of the political landscape. Many clubs could boast a formerChartist as president or chair. Walter Besant noted this aspect of metro-politan politics in his novel, All Sorts and Conditions of Men about socialconditions in the East End of London. An old Chartist is prominent in adebate he records in his fictionalized Stepney Advanced Club:

The Chairman, a man striken in years, with grey hair and a grizzled beard,and one of those old Chartists of whom we have spoken, took the chair,hammered the table and opened the debate. He was a man of great repu-tation, having been all his life an Irreconcileable, and he was suspected ofbeing a Socialist, and was certainly a Red Republican.47

Especially popular in the metropolitan radical clubs were veterans wholectured on the great days of the movement or the reasons for its demise,drawing lessons for contemporary agitations in the process. In 1876 theEleusis Club in Chelsea heard a lecture on ‘The True History of theChartist Movement’ from a physical force veteran who on the run in 1848‘hid in London for 18 months’.48 The former Leicester Chartist, John

43 Justice, 9 Feb. 1884, p. 6.44 Land and Labour, 1 Oct. 1891, p. 7.45 The Radical, 18 Dec. 1880, p. 5.46 See the National League Journal, 1 Oct. 1877, pp. 3–5.47 Walter Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (Oxford, 1997, first published in 1887) [hereafterBesant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men], p. 254.48 National Reformer, 19 March 1876, p. 188; for a talk on ‘Chartism, Socialism and Republicanism’at the Mile End Branch of the Working Men’s National Reform League, see National Reformer, 13Feb. 1870, p. 108, for an article on Chartism by a veteran, H. V. Mayer, ‘The People’s Charter and

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Sketchley, also frequently spoke about the radical past. One admirercommented of his talk at Colne in 1900 on radical movements from 1817to 1849: ‘taking into account Sketchley’s age, I think his pronunciationand voice wonderful’.49 Some former Chartists were conscious of theirunique position and clearly believed that their pedigree differentiatedthem from other members of the crowd. A number reserved the right tocomment or interject at public meetings. Prominent amongst them wasJohn D. Nieass, a fixture of the metropolitan radical scene and an invet-erate intervener and heckler, who remained conscious of his special statusas an ‘old Chartist’ throughout his career.50

For those old Chartists who did not attend meetings, writing to thenewspapers provided an alternative outlet for their ideas. Former Char-tists often recorded their experiences in the radical press to bolster theresolve of a younger generation of reformers in the present. These letterssought to inspire, to encourage and sometimes to warn. Often suchcorrespondence was intended to rekindle radical faith and energies. In1893 the 78-year-old William Serle wrote to the newspaper Justice toenthuse about the paper and the work of the Social Democratic Federa-tion. A former Southampton Chartist, veteran of 1848 and friend ofWilliam Cuffay, Serle asserted that at the time of its first publication thepaper renewed his confidence in the victory of the radical cause:

I felt when I saw your paper Justice that came out, there was some hope leftfor humanity, after such a long lapse of time after Robert Owen’sdeath . . . I sprang to my feet and ordered a quire of Justice and travelledsome seven miles on the Saturday to try to circulate it till I lost by it. I wasthen 67 years of age. Let some of your young men do likewise.51

Other letter-writers expressed disquiet with the current state of politicsand the condition of the political parties. An anonymous Chartist ‘whohas not yet became a Tory’ wrote to the Manchester Guardian criticizingthe emergence of a caucus system within the Liberal Party and its role insuppressing local party autonomy. It provided, he argued, a ‘House ofLords’ created in the very heart of the governing body, and not beholdento constituents.52 In such writings the Chartist era persisted as a goldenage of community organization and political activity.53 The experience ofradical politics at the height of the nineteenth century was a formativeone. Ultra-radicals felt that they had lived through important events thatneeded communicating to a younger audience. Such correspondence

its Advocates’, see National Reformer, 30 April 1871, pp. 204–5, and for general discussions see adebate at Leeds Secular Society in ibid., 2 Jan. 1876, p. 158.49 Justice, 30 March 1901, p. 2.50 See Reynolds’s Newspaper, 9 Jan. 1870, p. 3, and the National Reformer, 20 Dec. 1874, p. 398 and19 Oct. 1879, pp. 673–4.51 Justice, 8 July 1893, p. 5.52 Manchester Guardian, 19 Feb. 1885, p. 7.53 See James Vernon, Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture c. 1815–1867(Cambridge, 1993), ch. 4.



remained significant, and the resort to open letters and reminiscences waspassed on to the post-Chartist generation of radicals emerging to matu-rity in the 1860s.54

The lives of many former Chartists were held up as both an exampleand inspiration. From the 1890s onwards their life histories were oftenused as a rebuke to counter the perceived indolence, the lack of enthusi-asm and the supine nature of the young. The popular entertainmentculture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was argued,dulled radical ardour and sapped the will of the young to continue thehistoric struggle against injustice.55 The veteran Chartist Joseph Sharpewas an inspirational figure at Edward Carpenter’s utopian colony atTotley in Derbyshire in the 1880s. A harpist and custodian of Derbyshirefolk memories, the ‘minstrel communist’ symbolized the high seriousnessof purpose of artisanal self-help culture and the commitment of theradical pioneers. Carpenter argued that bank holidays, cheap travel bytrain and the pull of the popular entertainment market had renderedSharpe’s popular recitals redundant.56 Old Chartists like Sharpe symbol-ized the stern, unbending vigour of the true radical patriot, opposed tothe superficial complacency of more recent movements, and the dilutionof radical energies by gaudy and frivolous pastimes. These ideas harmo-nized with the vision of the first generation of Labour leaders who in theirautobiographies recorded their battle against the ignorance and apathyof the masses.57 Here the ‘old Chartist’ was an important link, issuing acall to arms and for radical renewal. Herbert Burrows, writing in theearly 1900s, drew a stark contrast between the commitment of theLabour Party’s radical forbears, and the current youth of his day:

But then in Chartist times men were in earnest, and meant something bytheir political work. We may well sigh sometimes for those old days ofenergy and moral enthusiasm. And not only men, but women and childrenalso. Years ago I had the pleasure of meeting in Manchester an old Char-tist, who at nine years of age carried the cap of liberty at the massacre ofPeterloo. In those days the poor did not spend most of their time inmafficking, betting (generally on the loser), yelling their insides out atfootball matches (not that I dislike football in reason), or loafing about thebars of their clubs and thinking that thereby they are the wheels of politicalprogress.58

54 Lansbury’s Labour Weekly, 24 April 1926, p. 14.55 See for the broader themes around socialist Puritanism and its rejection of popular culture, ChrisWaters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884–1914 (Manchester, 1990), ch. 1.56 Sheila Rowbotham, Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love (2009), pp. 66–7, and for anobituary of Sharpe, The Commonweal, 9 March 1889, pp. 74–5.57 Jon Lawrence, ‘Labour – the Myths it has Lived by’, in Labour’s First Century, ed. DuncanTanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 344–7.58 Justice, 19 Jan. 1901, p. 5. The Manchester Chartist who carried the cap of liberty at Peterloo asa child was in all likelihood the veteran Owenite, Chartist and founder of the Hall of Science in thecity, Nathaniel J. Ridgway. He frequently claimed this distinction. See for his obituary and funeral,the National Reformer, 12 June 1887, p. 382 and 19 June 1887, p. 398.

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The same spirit is apparent in accounts of Chartist histories in the1920s. The Labour Party Huddersfield Citizen commented of a rally tocelebrate the election of a Labour MP for Huddersfield in 1929 at the oldgathering place of the Chartists at Sandhouse on Crosland Moor:

The roads leading to Crosland Moor were black with people. The tramswere totally inadequate to deal with the situation. It has often been saidthat when the people treated their politics with the same enthusiasm thatthey treated their football, the better day which we might want might thenbe possible. If Sandhouse meant anything that better day cannot be fardistant. Mr Hudson reminded the audience of the vast concourses ofworking people who had foregathered in similar meetings during the pastcentury. The Sandhouse meeting would not be far from the spot at whichthe Chartists held their great Crosland Moor meeting.59

IV

Collections and testimonials for old Chartists reaffirmed the bondbetween radical veterans and this later generation of reformers. Theydemonstrated a unity of purpose that spanned the generations. Collec-tions, testimonials and presentations to imprisoned reformers or thefamilies of deceased veterans were a long-standing part of radical culture.From the 1860s, they were a feature of the Newcastle Weekly Chronicleunder the editorship of the former Chartist W. E. Adams.60 In thesetestimonials individual acts of heroism and political distinction wererecognized. Presentations to those who had distinguished themselves inthe service of the cause over many years were very much in this tradition.J. G. Stratton, a former Birmingham Chartist and ‘worn-out soldier ofdemocracy’, received a testimonial from Reynolds’s Newspaper in 1898.61

The appeal for financial help reminded readers of Stratton’s role in 1842‘as one of the mounted marshals in the procession with the great petitionto the House of Commons when the great doors were broken to admit thepetition into the house’.62

Some radical newspapers made exceptions to their own rules in thecase of former Chartists. Such collections recognized the unique place ofthe movement in radical history. Justice declared of its collection forJames O’Shaughnessy, ‘a veteran of labour who has worked in the Char-tist and trade union movement for some fifty years’: ‘it is contrary torule(s) to make appeals in Justice for individuals, unless under veryexceptional circumstances, as we have so many comrades needing help’.63

Most of these accounts reiterated the circumstances of extreme want inwhich some veterans found themselves. The appeal for John Sketchley

59 The Huddersfield Citizen, 5 July 1929, p. 6.60 A. R. Schoyen, The Chartist Challenge: A Portrait of George Julian Harney (1958), pp. 274–7.61 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 24 July 1898, p. 8.62 Ibid., 12 June 1898, p. 4.63 Justice, 2 March 1901, p. 2.



noted that ‘during the last few years Mr. Sketchley has sustained severalserious misfortunes and is anxious to re-establish himself’.64 Theseappeals frequently paved the way for the reunions and commemorationsthat were such a marked feature of late nineteenth-century radical cul-ture.65 Here Chartists were able to reassemble once more in the limelightbefore they slipped finally from living memory. J. G. Stratton appealedfor one final act of memorialization by veterans of the agitation:

As there are very few of the old Chartists left, I should like to know theirnames and also to meet them, if it were possible, for a day before we aremarched off on our long journey and our career is finished, like those, goodand bad, who have preceded us uncared for by the present generation, stillconscious of the fact that we have done some good, even at the expense ofour own interest.66

The lives of many of these figures were examples of dedication, service,consistency and self-sacrifice. Their memories lived on after their deathsas models of inspiration for the generation that came after them. In theirlong and selfless political careers, they placed the cause for which theylaboured above all else. The reverence in which they were held emergedstrongly at the time of their deaths and in their obituaries. With theirdemise there was a marked sense of a generation passing. The obituary ofthe old Chartist Frederick Riddle, buried close to his hero BronterreO’Brien in Abney Park Cemetery, declared that ‘in him liberty has lostone of [its] best apostles’.67 Many had touched the hem of the garments ofmajor platform leaders like Feargus O’Connor and Ernest Jones. Remi-niscences of these figures set the average radical career above the mun-dane.68 John Bowman of Cramlington, Northumberland, ‘a veteran ofthe old school of reformers’, ‘was an ardent follower of Ernest Jones andFeargus O’Connor’ and ‘was locally closely identified with the Chartistand Corn Law movement’.69 Some provided a last tangible link with thegreat days of radical protest. When former Chartist Mr G. French, ‘oneof the oldest and most prominent of local political reformers’ in Swindon,died at the age of 73, he symbolized the end of an era.70 Imprisonmentand suffering recorded in the obituaries of old Chartists confirmed theirstatus as committed adherents prepared to endure the most appallingdeprivation for the cause. Edward Harrop, ‘one of the oldest of theChartists’ who joined the movement in 1838, was incarcerated in aManchester gaol; ‘several of his colleagues were transported to VanDieman’s Land, but Harrop managed to get away with hard labour at the

64 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 19 Aug. 1900, p. 1.65 Antony Taylor, ‘Commemoration, Memorialisation and Political Memory in Post-Chartist Radi-calism: The 1885 Halifax Chartist Reunion in Context’, in Ashton, Chartist Legacy, pp. 255–85.66 Reynolds’s Newspaper, 24 July 1898, p. 8.67 National Reformer, 4 July 1875, p. 15.68 ‘Rex the Chartist’ possessed a picture of Ernest Jones given to him by Jones himself in 1848; seeThe Social Democrat, 1 April 1897, p. 101.69 National Reformer, 25 Jan. 1891, p. 63.70 Ibid., 8 May 1887, p. 302.

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hand loom’.71 The graves of the honoured dead were often places ofradical pilgrimage in their own right. During plans for a demonstrationto mark the death of the Chartist leader, Ernest Jones, in London, theorganizers suggested that the procession pass through the East End ofLondon to pay homage at the graves of the 1848 internees, Sharp andWilliams, who were buried in the area.72

Posthumously, the memory of many Chartist veterans lived on in theirchildren. Transmission of ideas across the generational boundary is afixture of British radicalism, locating Chartism in older traditions ofpopular politics dating back to the 1790s and drawing on an establishedgenealogy of reform.73 Recently Malcolm Chase has reiterated the impor-tance of these Chartist sons and daughters, sometimes named afterprominent radicals, and proud of inheriting the torch of progress fromtheir parents.74 The notion of a lineage of radicalism that survived inoffspring and family members was strongly embedded in post-Chartistpopular politics. In a profile of the Bolton radical John Kirkman, AllenClarke emphasized the influence of his old Chartist father and the for-mative environment of his upbringing in the ‘Hungry Forties’. Both wereimportant factors in his development and later political beliefs: ‘reformblood was in his pedigree. His father was a Chartist and trade unionist inthe pioneer days, when our rulers, those in power and authority, capital-ists and employers, sought by means of law and prison, and scaffold, tocrush those justifiable demands of the workers.’75 Such offspring cher-ished family memories of paternal struggles in the great days of theagitation. Kirkman, a local Labour politician, knew a number of oldChartists well and attended the centenary commemorations of the Peter-loo massacre in Manchester in 1919.76 These inter-generational relation-ships cemented the feeling of belonging to a group, and of occupying aspecial place within it. Old Chartists communicated the experience,feeling and memory of being part of the agitation. Post-Chartist radicalsfrequently saw themselves as carrying on the work of their parents.Justice recorded at the time of the death of Mrs W. Jones, ‘daughter ofthe well-known Chartist John Rogers’, that ‘from girlhood she took agreat interest in all public questions relating to social and politicalimprovement and always made it a point to instil into her children thespirit and principles of socialism’.77 For some, vindicating Chartism, and

71 Labour Leader, 19 Feb. 1909, p. 124.72 The Bee-Hive, 13 Feb. 1869, p. 11.73 Brian Harrison, ‘Teetotal Chartism’, History, lviii (1974), 193–217, David Jones, Chartism and theChartists (1975), p. 63, Thompson, The Chartists, pp. 144–6, and for multi-generational radicalfamilies within secularism, Edward Royle, Radicals, Secularists and Republicans: Popular Free-thought in Britain, 1866–1915 (Manchester, 1980), p. 131.74 Malcolm Chase, Chartism: A New History (Manchester, 2007), pp. 267–9.75 Allen Clarke, ‘The Story of a Working Man: John Kirkman of Bolton’, in Teddy Ashton’sLancashire Journal, ed. Allen Clarke (Blackpool, 1922), 107.76 Ibid., p. 109. For the Peterloo centenary commemoration, see the Manchester City News, 23 Aug.1919, p. 2.77 Justice, 10 Sept. 1892, p. 3.



recalling memories of the period became lifelong crusades. AurelisBasilio Wakefield, a secularist and the son of a West Riding Chartist,devoted much of his later life to commemorating the political career ofErnest Jones.78 On the platform he frequently invoked his Chartist father:

I speak as the son of an old Chartist and hope as such to do something, ifnot for the Chartist cause, for the freethought cause with which I have beenassociated for 9 or 10 years. But I will say that we have received a legacyfrom our forefathers which should inspire us to make greater efforts thanwe do.79

Memories of the movement frequently extended as far as grand-children.The writer, playwright and critic George R. Sims was much influenced bythe memory of his Chartist grandfather, an old ‘48er’ present at theKennington Common meeting. A picture of him with the Charter underhis arm hung in Sims’s bedroom. The influence of his grandfather was alasting one. Sims recalled in later years: ‘My grandfather’s companionshipmade me a little Radical in the sense in which the word is used today. It wasmy grandfather, the old Chartist, who shaped my early political views.’80

Old Chartists often kept memories of the movement alive throughtheir collections of Chartist ephemera. Later contact with former Char-tists was possible through their scattered possessions and curios. Fre-quently these became significant posthumous relics after their deaths.Books were particularly esteemed and honoured. The book collectionsaccumulated by old Chartists reflected their lives of quiet dedication andcontemplation. The old Chartist bibliophile was a common figure in thememories of those who became politically active in the years followingthe end of the movement. James R. Lancashire, a Manchester freethinkerand internationalist, remembered the influence of an old Chartist book-seller with a collection ‘exceptional in its heterodoxy’ on his early devel-opment: ‘This man was a friend of Kossuth, Mazzini, Cavour, LordBrougham, Holyoake, Feargus O’Connor, Robert Owen and the leadersof the Chartist movement.’81 During the dotage of radical veterans,books were companions and friends, mirroring their continued dedica-tion to the cause. Veteran Chartists were often depicted surrounded bytheir libraries.82 When the old Chartist Myles McSweeney died in povertyin 1882, his book collection was auctioned off to raise funds for hiswidow.83 By these means £25 5s was collected for the relief of his family.84

78 See for the obituary of Wakefield, The Halifax Courier and Guardian, 30 Nov. 1928, p. 5, andAntony Taylor, ‘Down with the Crown’: British Anti-monarchism and Debates about Royalty since1790 (1999), p. 93.79 National Reformer, 5 June 1887, pp. 364–5.80 George R. Sims, My Life: Sixty Years Recollections of Bohemian London (1917), pp. 9–10.81 Frank Hall, A Northern Pioneer: the Story of J. R. Lancashire (1927), pp. 71–2.82 See the setting for the interview with ‘Rex the Chartist’, in The Social Democrat, 1 June 1897,p. 103.83 For reference to McSweeney’s death and his burial by the parish, see the National Reformer, 31May 1885, p. 411.84 Ibid., 5 Nov. 1882, p. 311.

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These dispersed libraries and collections became treasured relics. In the1870s George Howell in his Notes on Books and Reading recommended‘the purchase of some of the old political publications issued during theChartist agitation . . . many of them are full of suggestive thoughts’.85

Chartist ephemeral material was eagerly snapped up by the generationthat built the Labour Party. Allen Clarke recalled the thrill of encoun-tering a copy of Ernest Jones’s Chartist Songs in the window of a second-hand bookshop. Such experiences were often about holding the faith withthe generation that had built the movement. Clarke wrote: ‘The men whohad fought for the poor and oppressed were always my heroes; their verynames and the history of the period they filled in our national life had asorcery for me; upon them and their writings and books was a glamour.’86

Many old Chartists and their families were repositories for and collectorsof materials relating to the movement. William Henry Chadwick kept theEnglish Labourers’ Chronicle regularly supplied with copies of ErnestJones’s speeches for re-publication in its columns.87 Aurelis BasilioWakefield was a great hoarder of the clutter and detritus of Chartism. Inthe 1890s he was instrumental in attempts to organize a commemorationand biography of Ernest Jones that drew on his collection. GeorgeHowell, commissioned to write it, wrote to him to thank him for the 15lots of books and papers he had sent him ‘in 4 trunks’ to provide the rawmaterial for the work.88

Popular meetings often stirred the memories of those who had sat atthe feet of radical veterans. In 1885, at a meeting in Silkstone nearBarnsley in Yorkshire, the advanced Liberal MP for Sheffield, H. J.Wilson, deferred to the aged radical on the platform alongside him: ‘Hedared say there were those who could remember the days of the oldChartist agitation. Possibly some might remember the first reform bill.He dared say his friend on the left (Mr. Joshua Shaw) could tell themsomething about it (Mr. Shaw nodded his assent).’89 Places that weresanctified by an association with the Chartist movement became sacredsites to many radicals. There was something especially atmospheric incontinuing the work of the Chartists at sites and in locations familiar tothem. Worsboro’ common near Barnsley had long connections with theradical reform cause and at meetings in the mid-1880s was still describedas ‘the headquarters of the Chartist movement’ where Barnsley Chartistshad once gathered.90 After their deaths the memories of ‘old Chartists’lived on in the assembly places with which they were most associated.New Cross in Ancoats in Manchester was closely identified with the

85 George Howell, Notes on Books and Reading (1875), p. 16.86 Teddy Ashton’s Northern Weekly, 28 April 1900, p. 786.87 English Labourers’ Chronicle, 8 Jan. 1881, p. 7, 5 March 1881, p. 3, 19 March 1881, p. 5 and 23April 1881, p. 5.88 George Howell to A. B. Wakefield, 9 March 1896, Ernest Jones Memorial Committee: Letters toWakefield, Manchester Central Library.89 Barnsley Chronicle, 5 Sept. 1885.90 Ibid., 26 Sept. 1885.



career of the aged Chartist veteran William Henry Chadwick. J. R.Lancashire wondered: ‘How many times old Chadwick has haranguedthe crowd and told the story of his imprisonment of two years at the ageof eighteen for the principles he held’ there.91 At Crosland Moor nearHuddersfield in 1929, the great gathering to celebrate the election of aLabour MP was sanctified by its association with meetings of the Char-tists in the 1840s. The Huddersfield Citizen noted that Philip Snowden’sfather had been present: ‘That was the meeting to which PhilipSnowden’s father had tramped from Cowling, there and back in oneday.’92 As late as the 1930s there remained a shrine-like quality about thegutted remnants of the old Chartist People’s Hall in Heyrod Street,Manchester, where old Chartists had continued to debate into the 1860s.Despite merging with the Ancoats Mission and Ragged School, someChartist decoration survived in the building: ‘On the wall of the Char-tists’ hall which the Mission absorbed in 1861, there was inscribed untilrecently the Chartist motto “No Surrender”.’93

V

Not all veterans were mesmerized by the memory of Chartism, and theirexperiences in the ranks of the movement. J. E. Benson, a Leigh Chartist,recalled his former radical colleagues with distaste: ‘Very many of thepoor men who were Chartists were not able to read. At a branch nearOldham I found their local leader, an old man, teaching other old mento read and write. I found that in all matters apart from “the People’sCharter” they were most conservative and protectionist.’94 Some veteransundoubtedly exaggerated, embellished or embroidered their stories.95 Formost reformers who remembered the movement, however, survivingChartists were charismatic figures. Aged, wearing the marks of sufferingon their faces, and still able to inspire an audience with their tales, theywere formative individuals who exercised a considerable hold over theimaginations of those who came after. Usually they were depicted in themanner of Old Testament prophets and sages. In a ‘Lecture by an OldChartist’ at the County Forum debating society in Manchester, the oldChartist is impoverished, poor, weather-beaten, suffering, yet unbowed:

91 J. R. Lancashire, ‘Memories of New Cross: A Forerunner of Henry George’, Manchester CityNews, 6 Nov. 1920, p. 4. For memories of Chartist and radical meetings at New Cross, see PhilipWentworth, ‘A Memorable Meeting Place’, Middleton Guardian, 15 Feb. 1890.92 Huddersfield Citizen, 5 July 1929, p. 6.93 Manchester Guardian, 29 April 1932, p. 11.94 The Labour Prophet, 1 Feb. 1893, pp. 13–14.95 One obituary of William Henry Chadwick, ‘the last of the Manchester Chartists’ cast doubt onwhether he was actually a Chartist at all at the time of his arrest in 1848; see The Liberator, 104(1908), 98. He was described as ‘The Last of the Chartists’ in the account of his funeral in theManchester Guardian, 2 June 1908, p. 5. He was certainly not the last surviving Chartist resident inManchester in 1908; see the obituary of Edward Harrop (who post-deceased Chadwick) in theLabour Leader, 19 Feb. 1909, p. 124. For the shifting and adaptable personal histories of someChartists, see Miles Taylor, Ernest Jones, Chartism and the Romance of Politics, 1819–1869 (Oxford,2003), chs. 1–3.

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His stooping attitude and drooping head;His trembling hands and hesitating tread;

His threadbare coat and broad, strong and crinkled shoes –All, all conspired to stamp him a recluse,

Or, say a man whose lot the gods had castFar from the pleasant places of the past.96

For many members of the new generation supplanting the thinningranks of the Chartists there was much sadness and nostalgia for thepassing of the survivors of the great age of reform. ‘It is indeed painful torealise how many of these good men and true have gone from amongstus’ wrote a correspondent to Aurelis Basilio Wakefield in 1890.97 Tingedwith regret and a determination to carry on the work of a previousgeneration of reformers, radical journals lamented the passage of Char-tism from lived experience into memory.98 The decades of the 1880s and1890s, when Chartists still occasionally appeared on the political plat-form, were important in moulding subsequent perceptions of the move-ment. Images of sacrifice, heroism and dedication clung around the figureof the ‘old Chartist’ and inspired many of the earliest historical accountsof the movement. There was much reverence for the sacrifice made by oldChartists in expanding the boundaries of the political nation. For mostradicals who came after, their role was to inspire by example. Talking tothe young reformer, Dick Coppin, in Walter Besant’s All Sorts andConditions of Men, the ‘old Chartist’ makes the debt to the movementclear: ‘For we’ve got all the power at last Dick; we’ve got all the power.Don’t forget, when we old uns are dead and gone, who done it for you.’99

96 From a sketch of William Henry Chadwick in S. Pullman, Forum Echoes and Other Pieces: TheSubstance of More than Twenty Debates at the Manchester County Forum (Manchester, 1910), p. 77.97 Thomas Shaw to Aurelis Basilio Wakefield, 27 Dec. 1890, Ernest Jones Memorial Committee:Letters to Wakefield, Manchester Central Library.98 See a commentary on Wallas, ‘The Story of the Chartist Movement’, in the National Reformer, 3Sept. 1888, p. 156.99 Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men, p. 314.



Documents

‘The Old Chartist’: Radical Veterans on the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Political Platform