File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-27.112, message 13


From: Adam Rose <Adam-AT-pmel.com>
Subject: M-I: The English working class, 1830 - 1848.
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 16:25:02 -0000



This is all from memory. It is not intended to be controversial.
But I wanted to fill people in on what happened in the years
in England. Perhaps Charlie could provide us all with a reading
list ! It would include Dorothy Thompson's "The Chartists" , a
book on the 1842 General Strike by someone called Jenkins,
I think, Saville's 1848, at least. I have a book at home on the North
Eastern Coalfields - can't remember the author.

Obviously this is an interpretation of history. My memory may be at 
fault
on this or that detail - but I believe it can be shown that my 
interpretation
does grow out of the real facts, and is not an alien imposition upon 
them.

E.P.Thompson leaves us in 1830 with the Owenites. Whatever we can
say about Owen himself, this was a socialist trade union movement, one
which was opposed to the nuclear family, and tried to organize across 
the
different trades. I do not know the precise reasons for the eventual 
decline
of this movement, although I assume them to be the normal ones 
associated
with such movements - as the first wave of militancy subsides, the 
socialist
and general nature of the movement leaves socialists on the one hand 
and
quite weak, sectional union organization on the other. Also, in some 
areas like
the North Eastern Coalfields, trade based organisation seemed a very 
militant
option for working class militants, since one trade dominated the area.

In 1832, parliament accepted the Reform Act. This reformed the most 
rotten of the
rotten borough's, where the local landowner controlled the few hundred 
electors to
enable him to sell the seat in parliament to someone who would 
represent his
interest. But it gave the vote only to property owners - in effect, 
only the middle
class ( not even all the middle class ).

In 1838, the Chartist movement started. This was organised around "The 
Charter".
This consisted of five points. I can't remember them all - but the 
important ones were :
universal suffrage, payment of MP's, and annual parliaments. In the 
context of the time,
these demands were not merely radical and democratic, but proletarian 
and revolutionary.
I do not believe this is a controversial point - everyone on all sides 
at the time understood
the social content of the demands.

The agitation for the Charter involved very little petitioning. From 
the beginning, the
majority of the movement subscribed to the "physical force" wing of the 
movement -
they understood that the ruling class would not voluntarily give up its 
power. A 
minority were "moral force" Chartists, and believed that persuasion 
would work.
In 1838, there were huge battles against the new poor law and the 
associated
work houses. In 1839, there was an aborted rising in Wales, centered on 
Mythyr
Tydvil, I think.

In 1842 there were what the ruling class has written off as "the Plug 
riots". This was
in fact the first General Strike ever, and the first occurrence of the 
sort of working
class organisation that the Russians later christened "Soviet". The 
ruling class just
about managed to stay in control, by not attacking the movement until 
it petered out,
and judiciously galloping units of troops around the North of England. 
It had the
characteristic features of most rank + file workers rebellions : mass 
pickets ( who
pulled the plugs out of the boilers - hence "plug riots" ) , battles 
with the army
( there was no viable police force in the North ) , mass meetings etc. 
The workers
convention in Manchester had as its main demand the implementation of
the Charter ie political revolution. As the strike wave subsided, the 
economic demands
which had given rise to the movement ( reversing the wage cuts ) came 
back to
the fore.

1848 was the year of revolution throughout Europe.
Britain was no exception. Queen Victoria was ordered to go the Isle of 
Wight for her
own safety. Hundreds of thousands of people converged on London. The 
movement
in some ways was more advanced than that of 1842 - it was more 
"national" , simply
by concentrating itself on London. But it did not have the strength of 
the 1842 movement
Earnest Jones, a Marxist at the time, understood that insurrection 
based on the
great demonstration was premature - quite like April 1917 in Russia. 
The ruling class,
again by judicious use of mild repression and containment, rather than 
all out attack,
maintained control.

I think it is correct to argue that the defeat of the revolutionary 
tide in April in London was
the turning point in the European revolutions. After April in London, 
the bourgeoisie gained
control in France, the Irish rebellion fizzled out, and the German 
bourgeoisie played its
infamous cowardly role.

"Issues" :

i) 	Working Class Political Organisation.

Not only do we have the first soviet ever in Manchester in 1842, we 
also have
the first mass working class party, the National Democratic 
Association, and
a paper associated with its leader Feargus O'Connor, the first "Morning 
Star".
This was a genuinely mass organisation, carrying on the tradition of 
the democratic
clubs. Literate people read the Morning Star to the illiterate in 
taverns. While there were
countless other papers in circulation, the Morning Star really was the 
paper of the
movement, reflecting its ideology and spreading news from one part of 
Britain to the
others.

It was genuinely the scaffolding of the party.

When Marx says "Communists do not set a party distinct from other 
parties" what
he meant was "we are part of the Chartists movement, not a rival to 
it".

ii) 	Ireland

In Dorothy Thompson's book, she argued that it was commonly understood 
that
Ireland freedom was part and parcel of the struggle in England. Irish 
workers were
intimately involved in all levels of the movement. The leader of the 
NDA was called
FERGUS OCONNOR, after all. But, she goes on to argue that the reason 
that there
was not closer cooperation between the  Chartists and the Young Ireland  
ers was that
the Yound Irelanders were too right wing - they were the radical 
section of the
bourgeoisie and as such hated the trade unions and workers as much as 
the English
colonists. 

iii) 	Models of insurrection

I personally believe that the NDA could more accurately be described as 
"centrist"
in a loose sort of way. While the majority were  "Physical force" 
chartists, they
were really "Moral Force is possible, physical force if necessary". I 
believe most 
of the Chartist leaders saw the Great Demonstration in 1848 this was.
I also believe that the left, the committed insurrectionists in the 
movement, never
really understood the nature of working class revolution in contrast to 
radical
democratic types of nsurrection, even though their explicit aim was 
working class
power. So it took another 50 years to develop the theory of the Soviet.

Adam.

Adam Rose
SWP
Manchester
Britain.































































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