Anyone want to edit my history paper? :-)
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Q1. To what extent did Chartism represent a challenge to established political structures in Scotland?
The Chartist movement grew out of displeasure amongst those still left disenfranchised after the 1832 Reform Act and their realization that the working men and women of Britain were still as powerless as they had ever been. Their response, the People’s Charter, first presented by the London Working Men’s Association and drawn up by prominent reformers William Lovett and Francis Place in May 1838, would become with its Six Points the would become the rallying and unifying point for a movement that was often in danger of splintering over policy or leadership decisions . Yet for all the actions of the Chartists, this supposedly British movement had decidedly different flavors in each country of the British Isles, and even developing unevenly within countries , though it was a national movement. This paper will focus on the Scottish Chartist movement, addressing the question of its impact on the established political structures in Scotland. Did the Chartists change the shape of politics both at home and in the broader Empire? The answer that will be explained in the following pages is that Scottish Chartism, even more so than English Chartism, had a minimal short-term effect on the political status quo of Scotland due to its structure, policies, and nature, and that its largest effect, as also seen in England, was to encourage the eventual creation of a class consciousness and an increasing political consciousness among the working people of Scotland:
We may not be producing great effects upon the government [concluded the Scottish Patriot], but we are forming a character for the people which they have never before possessed—making them intelligent by instruction, and moral by inculcating the principles of total abstinence … Universal Suffrage has now been carried from the public arena into the domestic hearth of the working classes. It has become a part of the social character of the people. It is associated with their amusements. It has become identified with their religion .
The first question to be addressed is what exactly is Chartism, and how does Scottish Chartism stand apart from the English Chartism that defined common perception of the system on behalf of contemporaries, who saw Chartism for the novel and threatening social character of the movement, an uprising of the working classes who would take away the right to property. It was seen not as a political movement but as a social phenomenon . Chartism in its most basic form was a political movement that began to develop around the notion of gaining “the vote,” as E.P. Thompson put it , in order to gain the ability to address economic problems confronting the working classes. The movement, while gaining a strong backing due to the poor economic conditions, was assuredly not a wholly economic response—while “the political message of Chartism did find its readiest, most widespread and most violent responses in years of business depression and high bread prices” , support among working-class Scots actually declined during 1842, when many people were just trying to survive the economic downturn .
The Six Points that would serve as the focal point of all Chartist activities were: “Manhood Suffrage, Annual Parliaments, the Ballot, Payment of MPs, Equal Electoral Districts, and the Abolition of the Property Qualifications for Parliament” . Adherence to these points, wrote Gareth Stedman Jones, held the movement together despite its national character invoking regional differences . At the time, the idea of universal suffrage as a right was not invoked—Chartists wanted the vote so that they could elect individuals who would address their concerns, thus, Chartism was not ultimately an end, but a means to an end . Were it merely an economic movement, as many historians have argued, surely it would have been less hostile to economic reforms that could bring short term relief, like the actions pursued by the Anti-Corn Law League. “Only political reform,” the Chartists believed, “would alter a system where law could be corrupted and where law was monopolized by those who held political power” . Scottish Chartism dated back to April 10, 1938, when the Birmingham Political Union’s leader, MP Thomas Atwood, introduced the People’s Charter and the National Petition to a crowd of tens of thousands in Glasgow . Within a year, there were 76 Chartist or Radical Reform associations in Scotland , though the primary foci of the movement could be found in the “central valley of Scotland and the east coast lowlands … with the Glasgow area predominating” .
Scottish Chartism, from the start, was an outside-motivated movement, with the upticks in activity often being traceable to barnstorming tours across the country by prominent Chartists like Feargus O’Connor, who operated primarily out of England . Yet, there was little original motivation within Scotland, as “the prospects that local political leaders would be forthcoming and that political associations would continue to function were not in fact very promising. Very largely they depended on the progress of the National Petition campaign in England” . Even so, there was a highly Scottish tinge to Chartism that developed after the initial birth of the movement in 1838—the Scottish love of organization led to the cropping up of various side movements that may not have aided the political aims of Chartism, but did contribute to the creation of a tight-knit Chartist community. This “found expression in the social reformist offshoots of the agitation, in the Chartist co-operative movement, the Chartist temperance movement and the Christian Chartist church movement” .
So distant from Westminster both politically and location-wise, Scottish Chartism grew up with a stronger focus on social means than political means. Lacking their own Parliament, the Scots could hardly exert the same degree of political pressure as the English; in addition, the Scots’ extreme reluctance to declare an intention of violent struggle served to alleviate any fears the government might have.
While Scottish Chartism was in part a reaction to the “rapid growth of industry and of population, and the urbanization and concentration of that population, especially in the areas around the coalfields of central Scotland” , the Scottish Chartists lacked the same degree of popular backing due to several conditions. Several historians have laid out a list of reasons for the lesser degree of hostility in Scotland, foremost among them Hamish Fraser. He points out that many of the middle-class in Scotland, especially the skilled workers, weren’t enfranchised due to lower rent prices existing in Scotland; that none of the Scottish working class, unlike their English counterparts, were actually disenfranchised by the 1832 Reform Act; due to these two facts, there was less of a feeling of betrayal by the middle class; due to the later date of industrialization, industrial unrest existed to a much smaller degree; unlike England, there was no 1834 Poor Law passage in Scotland; and the conservative nature of Scottish Liberalism, as well as the religious and moral convictions of many Scots, meant that Scotland was already better-prepared to move onto the paternalism of the Victorian era, where Scottish Liberals would feel obligated not to respect the wishes of the working-class, but to look after them as ones who were not able to support themselves . There was little questioning among the Scottish mainstream as to whether the system of political representation was itself unjust, as the Chartists claimed.
The question of Chartism’s influence on the established political structures of Scotland is not a tough one to provide a crude answer too. In the short run, there were no changes evidenced by the Chartist actions. Few local officials were elected as Chartists, Feargus O’Connor was the only Chartist ever elected as such to Parliament, going in 1847 for Nottingham , and many published accounts of Chartism gloss over Scotland’s role in the political agitations, focusing instead on the rise of alternative institutions such as Chartist churches. This points much more to the socially transformative effect that the Scottish Patriot hinted at in the earlier quote—Chartism’s greatest effect, both in Scotland and England, was to raise political consciousness and activism in an excluded group that had previously existed nearly outside of the system as far as politicians were concerned. While the MPs at Westminster were able to vote down numerous appeals to consider the National Petition, people both inside and outside of Parliament were no longer ignorant of the demand for universal suffrage. MP Benjamin Disraeli, who argued for the consideration of the Charter , would later, as a Conservative Prime Minister, pass the second Reform Act in 1867 , greatly expanding the electorate once again, and paving the way for further expansions of suffrage.
But even with this explanation, why exactly did Chartism in Scotland fail to create political change or challenge the established structure, when the reformers of 1832 were able to pursue a similar goal and achieve a degree of success? Chartism in Scotland failed to make an immediate impact due to its inability to become a truly popular movement or be viewed as such, the fluidity of its membership, its unwillingness to make physical threats, and most importantly, because of the structure of the entire movement, which was unsuited to achieving the task at hand given the circumstances at the time.
Edward Royle points out that, “Chartism was not, then, a popular movement at all, and certainly not a popular political movement. The mass of the people was largely indifferent to, or oblivious of, the efforts of the Chartist leaders” . Among those uninvolved were the middle class activists who had been so crucial in lending respectability to the Reformists, as well as crucial groups like the Irish, who had been involved in “pre-Chartist radical movements,” but sat out this struggle . Without the middle class respectability, it was much more difficult for the Chartists to win over the masses, for “fear and dislike of government extremism was counterbalanced by anxiety about the threatening and potentially insurrectionary character of Chartist discontent. The electorate therefore voted for a strong government promising to maintain and protect existing institutions” . The uninvolvement of the Irish, who were 4.8 percent of Scotland’s population and primarily working-class , was caused in large part by the opposition to the Chartists by MP Daniel O’Connell, the most prominent Irish politician, who detested the violent language of O’Connor Chartists and believed that a Chartist Parliament would do no more to advance the cause of Irish Home Rule than would the current Whig government that O’Connell was allied with .
Along with the lack of mass involvement came a lack of coverage of Chartism by the mainstream Scottish media. When the People’s Charter was introduced in Glasgow, the local media barely noticed anything more than the number of people who had turned out . Chartism was mainly covered in Chartists newspapers with smaller circulations and shorter lives , and despite the support of the Scots Times in Glasgow for universal suffrage, its support led to little in the way of actual coverage. Among other papers like The Scotsmen, the Chartists were viewed as an alarming threat or nuisance that deserved little attention .
Secondly, the same fluidity of the membership that led Radicals to become Reformers and Reformers to become Chartists highlighted the greatest weakness of Chartism: it could be merged with other movements . Chartism relied on the assumption that real reform was not possible unless the system was reformed; but when movements like the Anti-Corn Law League began to agitate for reform within the system, weaknesses in this system supporting absolute change quickly became apparent . Additionally, while tensions began to occur between those who were willing to consider gradual change (which was very popular in Scotland ) and those who would live only for the Charter and nothing else, the government became more immune to the Chartists. “What is certain, however, is that government policy became less and less vulnerable to radical critique as the 1840s wore on, while the coherence of radicalism became increasingly blurred” .
Thomas Atwood, MP, reminded Glasgow men that their “motto was ‘Peace, law, order, loyalty, and union’. Under these banners ‘the people possess a giant’s strength. But if they once abandon them, they become but an infant in a giant’s hand’.”
The lack of physical threat on the part of the Scottish Chartists—“for if the term ‘physical force Chartism’ were to be applied only to those who believed that violent measures would be required if they were ever to gain the demands of the Charter, then it would be difficult to find more than a handful of ‘physical force Chartists’ in Scotland” —meant that the Chartists, lacking any respectable allies with political power or wealth, were forced to apply pressure through the power of petitions alone. Andrew Wilson pointed out that, “There had never been any danger of widespread Chartist insurrection in Scotland” , and while not all Scots were willing to rule out the use of force, no sizeable group ever came to the consensus that the country was prepared for the “ulterior measures” which would require substantial organizational strength . A rift appeared between the English and Scottish delegates to the 1839 General Convention when O’Connor’s followers began to advocate violent conflict, with John Taylor recommending that people begin to stockpile weaponry . Several delegates, including Patrick Matthew and W.S. Villiers Sankey, resigned, with Sankey declaring that, “The people of Scotland were too calm, too prudent, and too humane to peril this cause upon bloodshed” . The official policy of many Scots was “peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must” , but the life of the movement was such that this policy was never seriously considered in Scotland.
The paradox of the Chartist movement, especially in Scotland, was that it acted like a 20th century pressure group, run by an elite group and depending on the voice of the people to lend it credence through the signatures on the National Petitions, but it did so when the exact problem it was addressing was the unresponsiveness of Parliament to the voice of the people. If Parliament wouldn’t listen before, a few million signatures from the people it wasn’t listening to wouldn’t lead to a second Reform movement. “The Chartists did not … simply represent the logical extension of a political theory accepted in 1832: they represented a new world which the old was not yet ready to receive” . The lack of threat of force lessened the consequence of ignoring their demands, and since “Chartism was an extra-parliamentary pressure group operating outside the traditional political world” . Royle, who has most clearly addressed this issue, judged that the moral force argument of soft persuasion that predominated in Scotland “now appears singularly naïve, for it failed to appreciate the nature of the parliamentary world and the real reason for the middle-class success in 1832. For, although the ‘people’, as the source of labour and producers of wealth, were at least as much an economic fact in the life of the country as were the middle-class manufacturers of 1832, the ruling class in Parliament did not see the matter in this light. The manufacturers were held to represent the whole manufacturing interest, and sufficient of them already had the vote to persuade the existing country interest of the need for reform” .
While it cannot be said that Chartism failed to arouse consciousness of the desire for universal suffrage, it failed to galvanize activity in the decades to come. While there was an obvious increase in political activity and knowledge among the working-class Chartists, the failure of Chartism to alter the established governmental structures in Scotland and Britain as a whole was indicative of its inability to gain respectable support, galvanize mass movements on a larger scale than seen, control the media coverage, or pressure the government through threats of uprising.
