Early Chartism and Trade Unionism in South-East Lancashire

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1 Skip Early to main Chartism contentand trade unionism in south-east Lancashire SpringerLink Search SpringerLink Submit Home Log in The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working-Class Radicalism and Culture, pp Cite as Early Chartism and Trade Unionism in South-East Lancashire Authors Authors and affiliations Robert Sykes Chapter 1 Citations 1 Downloads Abstract The early pioneering studies of both Chartism and trade unionism presented a picture of two very separate almost hermetic movements. More recently it has been shown that there was substantial trade union participation in 2 Chartism in London and Scotland. Yet the assumption that the connections 1

2 between the two movements were minimal and unimportant remains widespread. This proposition in fact forms a central part of what has been called a compartmentalist or reductionist approach to early working-class 4 history. This emphasises the essential separation of various strands of working-class activity, and extent of sectionalism, in order to question the extent of working-class consciousness and working-class support for Chartism. This viewpoint dovetails with a conception of the social composition of Chartism, similarly rooted in the pioneering studies, as essentially a movement of the most depressed outworkers, with the skilled workers in their unions being absent and aloof. In Lancashire Chartism is thus portrayed as quintessentially a movement of the handloom weavers, with the factory workers at best lukewarm and the other trades largely ignored. In consequence, in the momentous Plug Strikes, the 1842 general strike, the evident confluence of Chartists, trade unionists and factory workers has been seen as a novel development, and a momentary aberration. Keywords Trade Unionism,Trade Union,Factory Worker,General Strike, Class Consciousness, These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access. Preview Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF. Notes

3 1. S. and B. Webb, The History of Trade Unionism, 2nd edn (London, 1920) pp ; M. Hovell, The Chartist Movement, 3rd edn (Manchester, 1966) p I. J. Prothero, London Chartism and the Trades, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XXIV, 2 (May 1971); A. Wilson, Chartism, in J. T. Ward (ed.), Popular Movements c (pb. edn London, 1970) pp See A. E. Musson, British Trade Unions, (London, 1972) pp for a convenient summary. 4. F. K. Donnelly, Ideology and early English working-class history: Edward Thompson and his critics, Social History, II (May 1976); R. J. Morris, Gass and class consciousness in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1979) pp D. Read, Chartism in Manchester, in A. Briggs (ed.), Chartist Studies (London, 1959) pp. 30 2, H. Pelling, A History of British Trade Unionism, 2nd edn

4 (Harmondsworth: Penguin pb. edn, 1971) p. 43; G. Rude, The Crowd in History (London, 1964) p. 187; Musson, British Trade Unions, pp R. Soffer, Attitudes and Allegiances in the Unskilled North, International Review of Social History, III (1965); Read, Chartism in Manchester, p. 48. Of course skill and skilled status are themselves complex notions, involving not just technical factors such as manual dexterity, but social factors concerned with such as custom and the workmen s control over the work process. In addition there were more similarities in the attitudes and aspirations of the adult male factory workers and the traditional artisans than has often been realised. 13. R. G. Kirby and A. E. Musson, The Voice of the People (Manchester, 1974) pp and chs VI, VII; R. Postgate, The Builder s History (London, 1923) esp. chs 3 4; The Trades Journal, passim but esp. 1 March Butterworth diary (Oldham Public Library) 19 April, 27 June For this strike see J. Foster, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1974) pp , ; Kirby and Musson, Voice of the People, pp For a local Chartist study acknowledging the importance of the trade union affairs of 1834 see A. J. Peacock, Bradford Chartism , Borthwick Papers no. 36 (1969) esp. pp. 7 9, and for a local labour agitator, whose own account of his career proceeds directly from

5 involvement in union affairs in 1834 to Chartism see The Reminiscences of Thomas Dunning ( ) and the Nantwich Shoemakers Case of 1834, W. H. Chaloner (ed.), Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society (1947) p. 1ll and passim. CrossRef 17. For the Glasgow strike itself see W. Hamish Fraser, The Glasgow Cotton Spinners 1837, in J. Butt and J. T. Ward (eds), Scottish Themes (Edinburgh, 1976). For the meetings see MSA 30 September, 7, 21 October, 4, 11 November, 23 December 1837; MSA 27 January, 10 February, 10, 17 March 1838;Wheeler s Manchester Chronicle 27 January 1838;NS 10, 17 February, 17 March For Richardson, a carpenter by trade, and an active Manchester radical throughout the 1830s, see the political portrait in Operative 3 March MSA 14 October 1837; 27 January 1838; 6 January 1838; A. R. Schoyen, The Chartist Challenge (London, 1958) pp NS 10, 17 November 1838; D. J. Rowe, Some aspects of Chartism on Tyneside, International Review of Social History, 16 (1971) 24. According to Gammage every trade including the most aristocratic of these bodies, and he mentioned the coach-makers in this respect, attended at Newcastle; R. G. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement (facsimile of 1894 edn, London, 1976) p. 28; seventy trades societies attended the first great Glasgow meeting, itself largely organised by trade delegates: A.

6 Wilson, The Chartist Movement in Scotland (Manchester 1970) pp CrossRef 32. Wilson, Chartist Movement in Scotland, pp. 35, 80 1; Prothero, London Chartism and the Trades, p. 203; cf. D. J. Rowe, The Failure of London Chartism, Historical Journal, XI (1968). 34. Read, Chartism in Manchester, pp The subscriptions were positive demonstrations of allegiance, and their relatively modest scale should not obscure that fact. Radical organisations had always operated on miniscule budgets and Chartism in 1839 was not in especial need of large, regular subscriptions. The National Convention actually left a large unspent surplus. K. Judge, Early Chartist Organisation and the Convention of 1839, International Review of Social History, XX (1975) p I. J. Prothero, William Benbow and the Concept of the General Strike, Past & Present, 63 (1974). Benbow was actively propagating his political conception of the strike in Lancashire in National Convention letter books Add. MSS B fos , Watson to Fletcher 3 September 1839; Rowe, Chartism on Tyneside, p. 24 T. R. Tholfsen, The Chartist Crisis in Birmingham, International Review of Social History, III, 3 (1958) p. 473; J. L. Baxter, Early Chartism and Labour

7 Class struggle: South Yorkshire in S. Pollard and C. Holmes (eds), Essays in the Economic and Social History of South Yorkshire (Sheffield, 1976) p E.g. Rudé, Crowd in History, p. 187; A. Jenkin, Chartism and the trade unions in L. M. Munby (ed.), The Luddites and Other Essays (London, 1971) p Two existing studies do not exhaust the material or the issues needing discussion. A. G. Rose, The Plug Plots of 1842 in Lancashire and Cheshire, Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society Transactions, LXVII, 1957; and F. C. Mather, The General Strike of 1842, in J. Stevenson and R. Quinault (eds), Popular Protest and Public Order (London, 1974) ch G. Stedman Jones, Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution, New Left Review, XC (March-April 1975) p. 61, and see the criticisms in H. F. Moorhouse, The Marxist theory of the labour aristocracy, Social History, III (1978). 80. The most complete wage statistics are to be found in David Chadwick, On the rate of wages in Manchester and Salford and the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire, , Journal of the Statistical Society, March 1860; and Proceedings of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 27

8 April 1833 reprinted in A. Redford, Manchester Merchants and Foreign Trade, vol. 1 (Manchester, 1934) pp For the bookbinders see MG 20 August (The delegate, Benjamin Stott, was however a genuine member of the society, very active in the efforts to raise money for the 1839 London Bookbinders strike). For clear documentation of the printers aristocratic attitudes, see A. E. Musson, The Typographical Association (Oxford, 1954) esp. ch. V. 86. For example A. Briggs, The Background of the Parliamentary Reform Movement in three English cities, Cambridge Historical Journal, X (1952) p It is as labour aristocrats that the spinners are portrayed in H. A. Turner, Trade Union Growth Structure and Policy (London, 1962). 90. For the calico printers see J. Leach, Stubborn Facts, pp Geoffrey Turnbull, A History of the Calico Printing Industry of Great Britain (Altrincham, 1951) esp. chs. 2, 3, 6. For the dyers see the union meeting MT 3 March 1832 and the interview with a dyer who had been a member from 1839 in Webb Trade Union MSS (London School of Economics Library) A. vol. XXXVII fos Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (London, 1968) vol. 3, p

9 D. Bythell, The Handloom Weavers (Cambridge, 1969) pp CrossRef Copyright information Clive Behagg, John Belchem, Jennifer Bennett, James Epstein, Robert Fyson, Gareth Stedman Jones, Robert Sykes, Dorothy Thompson, Kate Tiller, Eileen Yeo 1982 Authors and Affiliations Robert Sykes There are no affiliations available About this chapter Cite this chapter as: Sykes R. (1982) Early Chartism and Trade Unionism in South-East Lancashire. In: Epstein J., Thompson D. (eds) The Chartist Experience: Studies in Working-Class Radicalism and Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, London DOI Publisher Name Palgrave Macmillan, London Print ISBN Online ISBN ebook Packages Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies Collection Buy this book on publisher's site Actions Log in to check access

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