In the 1830s Hetherington published a series of radical newspapers including: The
Penny Papers (1830); The Radical (1831) and The Poor Man's Guardian (1831-1835).
Hetherington was punished by the authorities several times for these activities. This
included being fined on numerous occasions, imprisoned in 1833 and 1836, and having
all his printing presses seized and destroyed in 1835.
Hetherington played a leading role in the campaign against the heavy taxes on
newspapers and pamphlets. This campaign resulted in several reforms in the law. In
1833 when the four-penny tax on newspapers was reduced to one-penny. The same year
Parliament agreed to remove the tax on pamphlets.
In his newspapers Henry Hetherington campaigned against child labour, the 1834 Poor
Law and political corruption. Hetherington joined William Lovett, James Watson and
John Cleave to form the London Working Man's Association (LWMA) in 1836.
Hetherington, who became the LWMA first treasurer, helped draw up a Charter of
political demands. Hetherington was a moral force Chartist and was very critical of the
ideas of Feargus O'Connor and in 1849 helped create the moderate Peoples Charter
Union.
Hetherington continued his campaign against taxes on newspapers and in 1849 formed
the Newspaper Stamp Abolition Committee. A few months later, on 23rd August 1849,
Hetherington died of cholera. Two thousand people gathered at Kensal Green cemetery
to pay their respects to the man who had spent his adult life fighting for social reform.
O'Brien began contributing articles to Henry Hetherington's Poor Man's Guardian. He
signed these articles with the pseudonym 'Bronterre' and James O'Brien eventually
adopted it as his middle name. He worked very closely with Hetherington and when he
was imprisoned for publishing an unstamped newspaper, O'Brien took over the
editorship of the Poor Man's Guardian. O'Brien and Hetherington also collaborated on
other unstamped newspapers such as The Destructive and the London Dispatch. In 1837
O'Brien began publishing Bronterre's National Reformer.
In an attempt to avoid paying stamp duty, the journal included essays rather than news
items. During this period, Henry Hetherington and O'Brien led the struggle against the
stamp duty and were consistent in their arguments that working people needed cheap
newspapers that contained political information.
In 1838 O'Brien added his support for a more militant approach to winning the vote that
was being advocated by Feargus O'Connor and George Julian Harney. However, O'Brien,
unlike O'Connor, refused to support the use of violence to achieving universal suffrage.
O'Brien argued that the Chartist should adopt a policy that was midway between the
petitioning supported by William Lovett and the Moral Force Chartists, and the violence
being threatened by O'Connor's Physical Force group.
In November 1840 he was sent to report on a Chartist meeting in Leicester.
Cooper was impressed with the speaker, John Mason, a Tyneside shoemaker. He
was also shocked by the accounts that people in the audience gave about their
working and living conditions. As Cooper wrote in his article: "I had never, till
now, had any experience of the condition of a great part of the manufacturing
population." After the meeting Cooper decided to become a member of the
Chartists.
It was not long before Cooper was the leading Chartist in Leicester. A devout
Wesleyan Methodist, all meetings were started and ended with prayers. He was
also involved producing a book of Chartist songs and hymns. In 1841 Thomas
Cooper was chosen as the Chartist candidate for the Nottingham constituency. He
won the by-election but failed to hold the seat in the general election three months
later.
In August 1842, Cooper attended the National Charter Association Conference in
Manchester. At the meeting Cooper supported those like Feargus O'Connor and
George Julian Harney who were advocating Physical Force. When this was
followed by strikes and riots Cooper and other supporters of militant methods
were arrested and charged with sedition. Cooper was found guilty of organising
the Plug Plot Riots and spent the next two years in Stafford Gaol.
William Lovett, Life and Struggles (1876)
‘As regards the best means of obtaining our
Charter. We are of those who are opposed to
everything in the shape of a physical or violent
revolution, believing that a victory would be a defeat
to the just principles of democracy. The political
despots; and as such a sanguinary warfare, calling
up the passions in the worst forms, must
necessarily throw back for centuries our intellectual
and moral progress.’
Lovett began attending evening classes at the London's
Mechanics' Institute. It was at the Institute that he met
the radical publishers, Henry Hetherington and John
Cleave. These two men introduced Lovett to the
socialist ideas of Robert Owen. William Lovett now
abandoned his Methodist beliefs and became a
supporter of the Civil and Religious Library
Association.
Lovett also joined Hetherington and
Cleave in London Co-operative
Trading Association. Lovett worked for
a while as the Co-operative Trading
Association's storekeeper and in 1828
replaces James Watson as the
secretary of the British Association for
the Promotion of Co-operative
Knowledge.
In 1831 William Lovett's name was drawn for
service in the London Militia. As a punishment
Lovett's household goods were seized. Lovett
responded by establishing the Anti-Militia
Association. Lovett's organisation adopted the
slogan "No Vote, No Musket". The campaign
was a great success and the authorities
decided to abandon the idea of militia
drawings. Lovett's victory brought him a great
deal of attention and he was now a national
political figure.
In 1839 Lovett was arrested for making a speech
in Birmingham. The authorities claimed that his
description of the Metropolitan police as a "blood
thirsty and unconstitutional force" was seditious
libel. Lovett was found guilty and sentenced to
twelve months imprisonment in Warwick Gaol.
In November 1836, O'Connor joined the London
Working Men's' Association. The following year he
moved to Leeds where he established a weekly
paper, the Northern Star, that supported the reform
of Parliament. The newspaper was a great success
and by the spring of 1839 was selling over 48,000
copies a week.
O'Connor became active in the Chartist movement.
However, he was critical of leaders such as William
Lovett and Henry Hetherington who advocated Moral
Force. O'Connor questioned this strategy and began to
make speeches where he spoke of being willing "to die
for the cause" and promising to "lead people to death or
glory". In a speech in Manchester he gave a date, 29th
September, 1839, for violent action if Parliament did not
grant the six points of the Charter. O'Connor's speeches
outraged Lovett and Hetherington and he was excluded
from the platform of a mass meeting organised by the
London Working Men's Association.
O'Connor responded by forming a new Chartist organisation, the
East London Democratic Association. O'Connor's speeches and
newspaper articles became more threatening and he was blamed
by the Moral Force Chartists for encouraging John Frost and the
unsuccessful Newport Rising on 4th November 1839.
His vicious attacks on other Chartist leaders such as William Lovett,
Bronterre O'Brien and Henry Vincent split the movement. Some like Lovett,
who were unwilling to be associated with O'Connor's threats of Physical
Force, decided to leave the National Charter Association. Following the Plug
Riots of August 1842, O'Connor was tried for his part in the rebellion. He
was acquitted on most of the charges and escaped being sent to prison on
a technicality
By May 1847, O'Connor had persuaded 70,000
people to pay £100,000 into a fund that enabled
him to purchase Herons gate (renamed
O'Connorville) in Gloucestershire to create a
‘English Paradise’. O'Connor's Land Scheme was
a disaster and by 1850 the company was virtually
bankrupt and the settlers were being evicted.
•Northern Star- published and promoted ideas of the chartist
movement to the public.
• In 1832 he was elected MP for Cork with the help of Daniel
O'Connell, leader of the Irish radicals.
•Consolidated the power of the chartists, by forcing Lovett to
leave over future policies.
•“No-one matched O’Connor in the qualities demanded of a
national leader” – From 1848 by John Saville
•O'Connor denounced these variations - Church Chartism,
Teetotal Chartism, Knowledge Chartism and Household
Chartism - in an article in the Northern Star as "calculated to
lead to sectional and party dispute“
•O'Connor had various disputes with practically all of the other
leaders because of his domineering temperament.
For example, in 1843 O'Connor split with Bronterre O'Brien over
O'Connor's controversial solution to the "Condition of England
Question", his Land Plan.
•The fact that O'Connor was emotionally involved with, and
could be said to share their grievances of Chartism, this could
partly explain Chartism's failure.
•O'Connor denounced these variations - Church Chartism,
Teetotal Chartism, Knowledge Chartism and Household
Chartism - in an article in the Northern Star as "calculated to
lead to sectional and party dispute“
•As well as disagreeing with O'Brien in 1843 O'Connor also split
with Harney in 1849 over Harney's red republicanism.
•'Whatever is gained in England by force, by force must be sustained; but
whatever springs from knowledge and justice will sustain itself'.
•He helped in the drafting of the Benefit Societies Act of 1836, and was a foundermember of the London Working Men's Association which was formed on 16 June
1836.
•Lovett wrote the appeal to the nation on the franchise question, and agitating for
the reforms which became the ‘six points’ of the ‘People's Charter.’
•Lovett drafted the ‘People's Charter,’ and originally included universal female
suffrage.
•1844 Lovett formed the ‘Democratic Friends of All Nations,’ principally composed
of French, German, and Polish refugees and wrote the society's first address ‘to
the friends of humanity and justice among all nations.
•He was tried on 6 August 1839 at the Warwick assizes for seditious libel. He
defended himself, was convicted and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment.
His health suffered permanently from the conditions in Warwick
•Never consolidated power, he got forced out of the movement because of
lack of control.
•In 1848 – the year of the final Chartist petition - he again attempted to find some
way of uniting the middle class and the workmen adherents of radical reform, and
a conference passed a resolution in favour of universal suffrage, but in terms less
wide than those adopted by the conference in 1842. The People's League was
attacked so fiercely by the violent Chartists that it proved abortive, and was finally
dissolved in 1849
Overall there was a serious divide in the chartist movement between the
leaders, disputes between several groups of chartists; Church Chartism,
Teetotal Chartism, Knowledge Chartism, Moral Chartism, Physical Chartism
and Household Chartism . This divide meant to lack of organisation or solid
leadership of one united party e.g. O’Connor vs. Lovett.
“Contrary to Gammage's opinions Feargus
O'Connor did not ruin Chartism but sustained it. If it
had not been for O'Connor's efforts through the
Northern Star, Chartism would have disappeared
soon after the moderate Chartists had deserted it in
1842. Because of Chartism's diversity of aims and
membership, its lack of organisation, the lack of
parliamentary representatives, and the repressive
actions of the government, Chartism was a spent
force by 1842. This was partly a result of the fact
that Chartism was a reflection of the decadent
period 1830-50 and "was essentially an economic
movement with a purely political programme" (from
G.D.H. Cole, A Short History of the British Working
Class Movement 1789-1847,