Eddie Doveton

The Chartists: The Early Years

November 3, 2020 by Eddie Doveton Leave a Comment

In this article Eddie Doveton discusses the formation and early years of the 19th century working class movement known as ‘The Chartists’.

The Chartist Movement existed in Britain for a little more than ten years, between 1837 and 1850. It was perhaps the most significant working-class movements of the 19th century. At its widest extended it was felt throughout England, Wales and Scotland, and in a different way, both influenced and was influenced by the struggles in Ireland. At the heart of this movement was one of those rare historical situations where the economic and political struggle of the working class came together.

The Charter

The name ‘Chartists’ comes directly from the ‘People’s Charter’ a document of six demands which was first published in 1838. This charter formed a national focus point for a mass movement looking to change society in favour of the working class. The six demands were:

The vote for all adult males
Payment for members of Parliament
Each constituency should have roughly the same number of voters
Voting should be by secret ballot
No property qualification (the holding of property) in order to be an MP
General Elections held once a year.

One of the original printed leaflets of the Charter

All these demands centred on issues of voting, how voting should be carried out and the ability to be a Member of Parliament. History books often present the Charter as the working class demanding the ‘right to vote’ – a democratic demand which we would all support. It is however, presented as part of a smoothed out history showing the gradual development of modern democracy in Britain today. But this is a false picture, designed to brush away what was in reality a harsh class struggle. This type of history attempts to deny that the source of what little and limited democratic gains we do have in society today have been won through the blood and tears of the working class fighting for those rights.

Also hidden in this smoothed out history is how the working class and the ruling class, saw the Chartist movement and its demands. For both it was a question of which class would control the state and which class would have a majority in Parliament. For the working class, gaining the vote and having working class members sit in Parliament meant that they could enact laws that would favour the working class. The ruling class knew that they had to retain control, because at this time, the working class directly linked obtaining the vote to their economic struggles as a class. This point is critical to understanding the role of Chartism as a working class movement.

The meaning of the working class gaining the vote was widely understood at that time, by both the workers and the ruling elites. This was still expressed two decades later, when in 1860 the Chairman of the Huddersfield Conservative Association was still continuing to argue against reform on this basis, because: “to lower the franchise without any respect to class, must inevitably be a class reform bill, because it must throw the governing power into the hands of the least educated and of course the poorer classes of the community.” Consequently, he would oppose any bill “that should give to any class the exclusive power of the government of this country.” By which he meant that it should stay in the hands of the upper and middle classes and not pass to the working class, which would be the majority (Guardian 7th January 1860).

The House of Commons was full of the gentry and elites

We can understand this more by exploring two aspects of the history in more detail: firstly, how the workers at the time saw the six parliamentary reforms, and secondly, the relationship of the Charter as a parliamentary demand to the class struggle.

The Six Demands

The first demand of the Charter was for the vote for all males over 21, directly related to the idea was that the working class, including the agricultural labourer, were the majority class in society. The achieving the vote was not primarily a ‘human rights’ issue, but one of gaining class power.

The second and fifth demands of the Charter were designed to provide a salary for members of Parliament and the removal of property qualifications required as an MP. If we think about parliamentary salaries and allowances today, the Chartists would undoubtedly turn in their graves at the corruption and money grabbing of MPs. But this measure was put forward to ensure a living wage for working class people, so they could actually become MPs. Members of Parliament did not receive any salary until 1911, as a consequence only those with ‘private incomes’ could afford to be MPs. This effectively excluded members of the working class who did not have any other source of income than working for a living. The spirit of the Chartist demand lives today in the call for all MPs to receive only the average wage of a worker.

The reference to ‘property qualifications’ was more direct. Borough MPs (there were also MPs elected by the County) were required to have an annual income of at least £300 derived from the ownership of land. This was clearly designed to exclude both the working class and even small proprietors – who also often identified with their working class customers – and ensure that only the well-to-do middle class or the larger landowner, could sit in Parliament.

The landowning class excluded working people from the vote

The fourth demand was for a secret ballot. Again, this was a practical proposal. At a time when voting was open and conducted by a show of hands, local employers and landowners could intimidate any dependent voter. They did this by making it plain that unless the workers voted for the candidate of the employer’s choice, then the workers would lose their employment or be thrown off the farm. Equally, the wealthy could bribe the less committed voters. The secret ballot would enable workers to vote in their own interests and not that of the employers, and being a secret, undermined any attempts at bribery by those who could afford to bribe.

The final demand was for annual Parliaments. This was seen as the ability for working people to hold their representatives to account. If they did not like what they were doing in Parliament, they did not have to wait the seven years between elections (today the period is still five years). Representatives could be made accountable on an annual basis. This echoes the modern demand that all representatives should be subject to the right of recall, and not hold positions for years on end without any accountability.

The Charter and Class Struggle

Even though five of the six demands of the Charter have subsequently been won, this has been through struggle by the working class, not with Parliament’s willing consent. Parliament still remains an institution that is distant from the ordinary person, corrupted by professional politicians who make a career out of twisting the truth and hiding the facts. When the Chartist’s campaign developed, it was not just a set of demands upon Parliament, nor was it merely about voting in the abstract. It needs to be understood within the context of the historical circumstances and class struggle at that time. This brings us to the second aspect: the relationship of the Charter as a parliamentary demand to the class struggle.

Consider the role of parliamentary elections today. Why, for example, did the parliamentary elections in South Africa just after majority black rule was won, or in Venezuela over the past fifteen years, both formed an element of the class struggle in those societies, when by contrast, general elections in Britain have become a much more passive affair?

Gathering in South Africa, in 1954 demanding votes for all

In Britain, voting is at an all time low and all main parties are rightly seen as the same. ‘Voting won’t change anything’ is the mood in Britain. The difference between the South African and Venezuela examples and Britain lies in the changing meaning and significance of parliamentary elections. Elections can form part of the wider struggle of the working class, who are fighting for change, but can equally serve and reinforce the establishment. At heart the difference lies in the extent that significant layers of the working class link the elections and election campaigns as part of their struggle to bring about social and economic change.

We see a similar process with the demands of the historical Chartist movement. The political demands for democratic change were seen as a means to give the working class power, so that a working class Parliament could make economic changes in their lives: it could pass laws to tame the employers and support trade unions, improve wages and working conditions and close down the hated workhouses. What appears to us today as mere parliamentary reforms, were in the eyes of many of the Chartists a means to dramatically change the quality of their lives. It was a means to give them power in society. That is why the Chartist movement had such strength and wide-spread support, and why the ruling elites feared it so much. The question was not just about having the vote and turning out on Election Day, but rather gaining the vote was a means to an end; to bring about change in society.

Workhouses were prisons for the working classes, brought in by Poor Law Act of 1834

But the focus on elections and voting also has a negative side. We see this in the history of Chartism and in what happened subsequently, many times, in the history of the labour movement. If the emphasis for change is put entirely within a parliamentary perspective, rather than also being part of a wider movement for change, then defeat is around the corner. Any effective change in society also needs to be backed up by active mobilisation of the working class, using its own numerical strength to push through change and impose its will against the resistance of the ruling class. If this is ignored or minimised, then the parliamentary system can only work to sustain and support existing society.

Within Britain today, the huge upsurge of support for Corbyn that arose in 2015, and the subsequent massive increase in Labour Party membership is a modern example of a potential social movement of change. A movement that could have combined linking activities within communities, workplaces and unions to parliamentary elections. Unfortunately, that opportunity was lost, as the new members remained disempowered, atomised and largely taken as isolated individuals, who are looked upon as a source of revenue and as foot-soldiers for election campaigns. In the absence of such a social movement linked to extra-parliamentary campaigns, the opportunity to realise the hope and aspirations that the Corbyn upsurge represented are quickly fading.

The Beginning of the Chartist Movement

The 6th August 1838 marks the formal beginnings of the Chartist movement. This is when, for the first time, a mass meeting in Birmingham formally adopted the six points of the Charter. However, the origins of the Charter itself goes back to 1836 when the London Working Men’s Association (LWMA), adopted five of the six points of the Charter and subsequently prepared a petition adding the sixth point by January 1837, with the intention of presenting this to Parliament.(Royle 1980)

But working class activists in the industrial areas of Britain did not welcome the initial publication of the Charter. They were busy engaged in front-line struggles against the Poor Law Act of 1834, a draconian piece of legislation, designed to force down wages by threatening incarceration into what amounted to prisons for the unemployed and the poor. They saw the Charter as a diversion from these struggles.

A “Poor Law Bastille”: A 1835 model design of a workhouse to hold 300 people

It appeared to the activists that a petition presented to a Parliament stuffed full of Liberal and Tory MPs — the very people who had passed the Poor Law Act — was a waste of time. Even more so, workers suspected that the idea of a petition was set up by Liberals to divert the class struggle away from direct action, to focus on a passive collection of signatures for the Chartist petition.

This attitude was based on the experience of workers, where whole numbers of petitions had been presented to Parliament, but were then simply ignored. As a consequence, the politically organised working class had developed a reluctance to use petitions as a political method. Added to this well-earned experience was the suspicious way in which the Charter and the idea of a petition actually emerged. Individuals within the LWMA (a moderate and reformist body who favoured links and association with the liberals) wrote the Charter.

When the petition first appeared, the main signatories included employers and older, less militant workers, not the militants fighting in the areas. In addition, six MPs, not particularly regarded as radical, also signed the petition and offered their support. Subsequently these individuals would not be associated with the Charter, as it developed as a movement and took on a mass form. But their names at the beginning of the process produced suspicion. This suspicion was given substance when one of these Member of Parliament, Daniel O’Connell, was quoted as saying that he signed the petition “only to divert workers away from more potentially dangerous political activities”. At the same time, Francis Place, one of the LWMA members who helped draft the Charter, also made it plain that he did so on condition that socialism should not be advocated (Thompson 1984).

Changing Character of the Charter

But three factors came together, which shifted this initial attitude and would make the Charter the focus of a national campaign.

Firstly, by the autumn of 1838, the direct-action campaign against the Poor Law legislation was failing. Despite local attempts to prevent the opening of the new workhouses, and pickets and protest meetings being held to hold up the appointment of the new Poor Law guardians, slowly and surely, the new system was put into place. This set the scene for working activists to look for a broader political solution, which the Charter, being published only a few months before, seemed to offer. The logic was plain: if you cannot affect the implementation of the Poor Law at a local level, it was necessary to change at a national level.

Secondly, a proposal to have a mass demonstration, whilst presenting the Charter’s petition to Parliament, was put forward. Traditionally, small delegations had made presentations of petitions; they would hand in the document to MPs or drop it off at the door of the House of Commons. The new proposal was that the Chartist petition would be presented to House of Commons as part of a mass demonstration. Thousands, therefore, would march through the streets of London, converging upon Parliament. In this sense, what had traditionally been an entirely passive activity tinged with deference to the high and mighty, was now turned into a ‘show of force’.

Thirdly, at the mass meeting in Birmingham on 6th August 1838, the Birmingham Political Union (BPU) proposed an innovation that changed the character of the Charter. The BPU, although a moderate body, put forward the idea of a national Convention of people’s representatives, as a means of coordinating the charter campaign and an opportunity to discuss the strategy of presenting the petition to Parliament.

It is doubtful that the moderate BPU understood the implicit significance of its own proposals. For combined with the idea of having a mass demonstration as the petition was presented, the calling of a convention involving representative delegates, proved a catalyst to giving a national identity to the charter campaign. The Convention would almost immediately be seen as the forming of an alternative ‘people’s Parliament’, and as a national leadership body of the working class.

These three factors effectively changed the character of the proposed Charter, creating the basis for a working class movement that could express the needs and aspirations of the working class.

Local Struggles

The huge amount of activity and preparation undertaken in local areas is critical to understanding Chartism. While there was a focus at a national level on the political campaign of the Charter, many Chartists also realised that they would have to achieve the demands by force of arms, precisely because the landlords and capitalists who dominated Parliament under a restricted franchise, would not grant the working class the vote. The preparations on the ground were seen as a necessary part of achieving the demands. There is significant evidence that the workers in many of the local areas were ready to ‘do battle’. As Chase (2007) comments, referring to the meetings that were held in 1838, including the incredible mass meetings of hundreds of thousands held on the moors in the day, or the many more smaller meetings held in touch-light at night; “…significant numbers attending were armed with stick and pikes.” “…As autumn turned to winter, the crowds became bolder. The discharge of firearms was reported at a number of meetings.”

Kersal Moor, (Manchester in background) The moor was one of several sites where massive meeting of hundreds of thousands were held

Gammage, a Chartist historian who participated in the events, paints an emotional picture of the mood at the time: “It is almost impossible to imagine the excitement caused by these manifestations.” “…The people did not go singly to the place of meeting, but met in a body at a starting point, from whence, at a given time, they issued in huge numbers, formed into procession, traversing the principal streets, making the heavens echo with the thunder of their cheers.” (Gammage 1894). This was the action that would give substance to the parliamentary campaign.

Electing Delegates to the Convention

The Seditious Meetings Act of 1817, a repressive law brought in by the British state, circumscribed the way in which the Convention would have to elect its delegates, and the total number of delegates it was allowed. This was designed to curtail the working class from developing effective national organisations. These laws stated that there could be no more than forty-nine delegates, and that these could not be from any specific organisation. These delegates could only be elected at a public meeting advertised in advance. Equally there were restrictions on raising finance to organise such events (Chase 2007).

Although the active members were able to get around some of these restrictions, the election of delegates at mass public meetings shifted the political balance of the delegates, away from local activists towards the election of nationally known figures. These were men who had either independent incomes or who made a living out of public speaking. The national speakers were personalities that travelled the national speaker’s circuit addressing public meetings. Working class organisations were mostly locally in single towns or areas; and there were only a handful of loosely organised regional organisations in London, Birmingham and what was known as the Great Northern Union.

Absent from this picture was any national organisation. It was into this vacuum that the individuals, who were able to travel from area to area, giving lecturers on working class issues, and supporting working class campaigns, became national figureheads. The consequence of this is that the national speakers from two of the larger organisations — the moderate London Working Men’s Association (LWMA) and the previously mentioned BPU — gained a disproportionate number of delegates, several of whom were also elected for areas outside London and Birmingham.

William Lovett, a moderate Chartist and founder of the London Working Men’s Association (LWMA)

Chase (2007) argues that the middle class background of the delegates to the Convention is overrated as an issue, suggesting that approximately two-thirds of the delegates were workmen; although Royle (1980), in his shorter work, suggests this is more like fifty percent. However, while the weight of the middle class delegates would be an important factor, this is less important than the political balance of the Convention, a factor not solely dependent upon class. As Trotsky has commented; “classes themselves comprise of different and in part antagonistic layers”, which fall “under the influence of other peoples who are likewise comprised of classes.” (Trotsky 1940). A significant proportion of the working class delegates were from the more moderate organisations or themselves from the artisan class of ‘self-made’ workers, giving them a different perspective from the majority of the other workers. Equally, the delegates who would attend the Convention, over the next year, were all elected in the early months of the formation of Chartism, before any critical issues were discussed and when the Convention as a whole was untested. This composition of the convention would subsequently have significant consequences to outcome to the 1838-1839 campaign.

The Convention

As 1838 came to a close, an economic recession, which had started during the year, deepened. For many workers, this would mean starvation or imprisonment in the new workhouses, named ‘the Bastilles’, after the notorious French prison that was stormed at the opening of the French Revolution in 1789. This was a disaster for working people and formed a backdrop to increasing working class militancy. As the year turned and 1839 opened, the Chartist movements focus and expectation was shifting towards the coming Convention of delegates. At this stage, signatures for the petition were still being gathered in the local areas. The emphasis was on how the Convention would develop a strategy to take the struggle forward in preparing for the presentation of the petition and organising a working class response, and what for many was the expected rejection of the petition by Parliament.

The convention first met at the beginning of February 1839, meeting in London, with the formal title of the General Convention of the Industrious Classes. As soon as the Convention opened, different opinions and strategies began to reveal themselves. Historically these divisions have been placed into two main groups: the physical-force and the moral-force Chartists. In modern terms, we might think of these as the left wing and the right wing of the Chartist movement. The physical-force Chartists embodied everyone from revolutionaries to those who sounded left, but in the end went for compromise. The moral-force Chartists were those who, from the outset, argued for compromise and agreements with the left wing of the Liberal Party (The Liberals were then in government, and the ‘left’ liberals were known as radicals). But the political opinions of individual delegates to the Convention were more complex than this simple division of physical and moral force Chartists. There were also individuals who that sat in the middle and would swing to support one side or another.

The establishments view of the divisions between physical and moral force Chartists (published 1839)

At the start of the Convention delegate James Cobbett, son of the Liberal reformer William Cobbett, took the most right wing position. He attempted to have the Convention activities confined solely to organising the presentation of the petition. This proposal echoed closely the views of the liberal government itself, who were quiet happy to merely receive and then reject any petition presented to it. Cobbett’s proposals however, were heavily defeated (Chase 2007).

Although within the Convention there was not any open discussion of the use of armed force as a tactic, its presence as a back up to the petition was implied in the debates. In particular this came out in the discussion around the using the tactic of the ‘national holiday’ or ‘holy month’, or what we would call a general strike. Here the right for workers to arm themselves as a means of defence against attacks by the state, who were expected to use force to coerce striking workers back to work, was discussed.

In the discussion on the general strike, the differences between the moral-force and the physical-force Chartists centred on the issue of timing. The moral-force Chartists advocated action at some point in the future; the physical-force Chartists argued for the strike to begin immediately or soon after the Convention, timing this to coincide with Parliament’s expected rejection of the petition. The arguments both sides rehearsed have a very modern ring. The moderates essentially arguing that the working class ‘were not ready’. Bronterre O’Brien, in the political centre, argued that before any action could be taken, at least two or three million signatures should be collected on the petition. On the left, Chartist Richard Marsden put forward the alternative militant argument in the Charter newspaper:

“The working men of the north signed the petition for the Charter, under the impression that the men who spoke for them of the holy week were sincere. None of the industrious classes, who signed the petition in this belief, ever thought for one moment that the legislature would grant the Charter. …all they had to do was to let the country know when the sacred week was to commence.”(Chase 2007)

Delay and Prevarication

History shows us that the character of the arguments of the moderates results in delay and prevarication, in which lie the seeds of defeat and disaster. It is precisely because the class struggle unfolds in a dynamic fashion, that waiting for some point of time in the future, means that the ruling elites, thier wealth threatened by ‘the masses’, have time to organise and strike back. At the same time, the mood of expectation and struggle dies down, weakening the movement. The practicalities of life mean there is a need to put bread on the table, and this strongly affects workers and their families: they cannot wait for a theoretical future, but need to act in the here and now.

” The practicalities of life mean there is a need to put bread on the table.”

The moderates at the Convention were focused on the quantity of signatures to the petition being submitted. But in many areas this was not the main concern of workers, rather organising to oppose the government took up much of the energies of local Chartists. The petition was a useful addendum to the campaign, but not its heart. In February, the Chartist movement witnessed hundreds of meetings around the country, many which were attended by tens of thousands of workers. Attendance on a national scale could be estimated in the millions. Yet the Convention delayed and set the submission of the petition nearly three months ahead, arguing, that in spite of the meetings, the lack of a wide national coverage of signatures on the petition was important. After much debate, the presentation of the petition was postponed until May 6^th.

Lovett, one of the moderates, pushed for time and effort to obtain more signatures before anything else could be done. This was agreed and delegates were sent from the Convention to different parts of the country to collect these signatures for several weeks.(Chase 2007) Therefore, the Convention was left in a state of uneasy flux from the end of February through to the middle of March, with the primary focus of the Convention centred on the collection of signatures, rather than developing a strategy to take the movement forward.

By the second week of March, the physical-force Chartists were demanding that firm decisions be made about the actions the movement should take. This was the recognition that it was necessary to prepare to meet the likely oppressive acts of the government with organised resistance. O’Connor most eloquently put the argument: “Peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must.” This debate forced to the surface of the division between the moral-force and the physical-force Chartists. As a result, some of the moderates went to the non-Chartist press to denounce ‘the extremists’, while others resigned from the Chartist movement, soon aligning themselves to the Liberal Party. In the meantime, the Convention broke up again, agreeing to adjourn without having made any clear decisions, so that delegates could return to their own areas over the Easter period.

Government Reaction

After Easter the Convention met again, as the month rolled on towards May, tension within the Chartist movement was building, along with the preparations by the government to repress the movement. The government had already passed a law banning meetings. However, meetings were still taking place in defiance of this ruling. At a local level, magistrates were fearful of provoking a reaction and were cautious about making arrests. At the beginning of May, Lord Russell, then Home Secretary, reacted to this and the obvious prevarication of the Convention, and issued more stringent instructions to local magistrates. They should attempt to form anti-chartist ‘volunteer associations’ from the pro-government sections of the population. As a counterweight to Chartist forces, these gangs were to be armed as Special Constables. Equally, he suggested the magistrates should act upon the ruling banning meetings and start directly arresting Chartist speakers. On the 7th May the arrest of the first prominent Chartist leader Henry Vincent, took place.

The government actions and the arrest of Vincent shifted the mood within the Convention, which now agreed to relocate to Birmingham, where Chartist forces were stronger and the government weaker. This change was important in shifting the perception of the Convention of its role. Whilst in London, the focus and intention of the Convention was geared towards its petition to Parliament; moving the Convention to an alternative city, in one of the heartlands of Chartism, promoted the idea of an alternative seat of government.

In the final weeks in London, the Convention had also begun to draft a more general statement of its aims. It called this the Manifesto of the General Convention of the Industrial Classes. Its language was uncompromising in exposing the class nature of the emerging conflict.

“Countrymen and fellow-bondsmen! The fiat of our privileged oppressors has gone forth, that the millions must be kept in subjection! The mask of CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY is thrown for ever aside and the form of Despotism stands hideously before us: for let it be no longer disguised, THE GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND IS A DESPOTISM AND HER INDUSTRIOUS MILLIONS SLAVES.”(Hovell 1925)

The Whitson Meetings

The next development within the Convention centred on a series of planned mass meetings over the Whitson holiday weekend. It was decided that the Convention adjourn so that delegates could return to their areas and judge the mood for the next stage of the campaign.

The answer given was clear. The support from these meetings were massive, the Manchester meeting on 25th May, was reported as having as many as 500,000; in Newcastle a meeting of around 100,000, with similar numbers in meetings of all the major industrial towns of Britain, and many more smaller meetings elsewhere.

Backing up these mass meetings there had also been a slow but steady preparation by workers for the coming conflict with the government. Unlike today, it was still lawful for any person to hold arms in Britain. This was much like the current American constitution, which gives US Citizens ‘the right to keep and bear arms’. This right was later removed by the British government through the 1903 Pistol and 1920 Firearms Acts, the latter quickly past during a period of working class militancy and radicalisation. But in 1838, the purchase of firearms was readily available, and workers up and down the country had begun to accumulate arms as part of their preparation to ensure that the demands of the Charter would be met.

The extent and range of the firearms accumulation is quiet staggering. For example the actual manufacturing of ‘caltrops’ (spiked iron balls to throw under the feet of charging cavalry), which were mass produced secretly at the Winlaton ironworks in Tyneside, or where caseloads of rifles were purchased in Sheffield by Staffordshire Chartists.(Chase 2007) In the south west, William Potts was amongst others who was later found by the authorities with an arms cache and who had displayed in his shop window bullets with the label ‘pills for the Tories’ – he was a chemist! (Challinor 1990)

Back at the Convention

The petition itself had now been ceremoniously handed to John Fielden MP on May 6th, at his house in London. But this event had not been organised as part of a mass demonstration as originally intended. It also meant that the petition had not been presented to Parliament. Rather, it was now sitting in Fielden’s front room waiting for him to present the petition to Parliament. The delay, and the manner of presenting the petition, had a damping effect on the movement. If the rejection of the petition was the sign for the next stage in the campaign, the timing had now passed out of the hands of the Convention; many of the delegates now seemed content merely to wait upon events.

Fielden, a radical liberal, then waited for a month after the Whitson mass meetings, before he finally presented the petition to Parliament on the 14^thJune. Although the petition now contained well over a million signatures and at that time was the largest ever presented to Parliament, when Fielden rolled out the document the Liberals and Tories greeted it with mocking laughter. But the delay in having a definitive rejection of the petition was not yet over. Parliamentary procedure required a formal proposal to debate the petition — and this was not done until a further five weeks had passed. Another radical liberal, Thomas Attwood MP, finally proposed it on 12th July. Only at this point — as expected — the petition was summarily defeated by 235 votes to 46.

More Delay and Prevarication

By the beginning of July, the Convention had been in session for five months. But for the past two months, as the petition had been languishing in the hands of the liberal MPs, during which time, one Chartist leaders after another had been arrested. This seriously depleted the movement’s national and local leadership. The government’s strategy was calculated to weaken the movement, by taking one a piece at a time, but to avoid making any large scale arrests, which would generated a mass response, and a likely general strike. Picking off the local leaders and Convention delegates one by one in different parts of the country, was proving a successful strategy. Although the sweep of those arrested was widespread, including the moderate William Lovell, the physical-force Chartists were the most prominent. This led to the Convention being both depleted with delegates and increasingly confused as to the direction which it should take, which was weakened further by the return of some delegates to their home towns who could no longer afford to be absent from their work any longer.

On the 16th July, this deteriorating situation prompted Robert Lowery, a delegate from Newcastle, to propose a resolution for a general strike to start on 12th August. After some debate the Convention was split amongst the remaining delegates, and the resolution was passed only on the casting vote of the chair.(Chase 2007) However, within a week, Bronterre O’Brien, a delegate who had hovered between militancy in words and moderation in action, moved a resolution to change the vote, requiring now that the delegates return to their areas and put the proposal of a general strike to mass meetings and only then return to Birmingham. After a heated debate, this resolution was then past.

This however, now left the Chartist movement in a state of confusion. The date of the 12th August still stood; and although it was only three weeks away, there was as yet no confirmed decision. This now awaited a report back from delegates of opinion at the mass meetings, but the picture presented to these meetings was only of the ‘possibility’ of a general strike. It was at this point, that Fergus O’Connor, who was strongly associated with the physical force Chartists, used his authority, through his popular paper, the Northern Star, and printed an editorial strongly arguing against the strike. This action, combined with the prevarication of the rest of the leadership, blunted the response.

It was now only one week before the 12th August when the Convention met again to discuss the whole issue. In spite of reports back from the areas of a positive response, the Convention changed the proposal yet again, moving to a compromise suggestion to accommodate both the physical and moral force Chartists. Areas were asked to decide individually on either a one, two or three days’ stoppage, with the expectation that different areas would do different things. Consequently, the response, almost predictably, was patchy, in some areas strong, in others workers did not want to waste their time on what seemed an empty gesture.

The cancellation of the sacred month and the fiasco of the one, two or three days, coupled with O’Connor’s opposition, ensured that the first period of a national Chartist movement whimpered to a close. Parliament had rejected the petition; the workers had armed themselves; they had drilled and prepared themselves for a conflict; the mass meetings at Whitson had shown the way forward; but over the long months, the leadership had failed to act. The leaders had wavered and lost faith in the ability of the working class to take action and were fearful of the government. This lack of determination and the prolonged sessions of the Convention blunted the national movement.

The highpoints and opportunities afforded in both the February and the Whitson mass meetings had passed by. The petition, originally intended as part of a mass demonstration, had been merely handed to a Liberal MP. The opportunity to create a national movement was splintered. The movement dissolved into a series of sporadic outbreaks of localised conflict between the authorities and Chartists. Responding spontaneously to one provocation or another, each isolated incident had no particular direction. Each demonstration, meeting or protest led nowhere; rather, they enabled the authorities to pick off the local and national leadership one by one. The result was that no focused or concerted effort was organised to bring the full power of the working class to win the Chartist demands.

The last session of the 1838-1839 Convention assembled in London on 2nd September 1839 and continued until 14th September with little or no direction. The mood was downbeat and fatalistic. The discussion points were largely reports on the various sentences being handed out to Chartists up and down the country, ranging from imprisonment from of few months to several years. (Chase 2007)

The Convention finally ended, with no clear or defined way forward. As the delegates dispersed back to their areas, the national movement of Chartism of 1838-1839 came to an end. But this was not the end of Chartism, or of the activity of the working class. A national movement of Chartism would rise up again building up to a major confrontation in 1842, including the 1842 General Strike. Some of the experience from 1838 to 1839 would be learnt and integrated into the renewed movement, but mistakes in strategy would also be repeated. And in 1848 there was again a further large scale upsurge.

At a local level, following 1839, Chartist agitation continued and exploded into an open revolt in South Wales with the Newport Rising on the 4th November 1839. These events, their analysis, and the later history of the Chartist movement will need to be discussed in future articles.

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Challinor, R. (1990). A Radical Lawyer in Victorian England: W.P. Roberts and the struggle for workers’ rights. London, I.B.Tauris & Co.

Chase, M. (2007). Chartism: A New History. Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Gammage, R. C. (1894). History of the Chartist Movement 1837-1854. London, Merlin Press.

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The Myth of 1983

November 2, 2020 by Eddie Doveton Leave a Comment

“The Labour party is in danger more mortal today than at any point in the over 100 years of its existence… If Jeremy Corbyn becomes the leader, it won’t be a defeat like 1983 or 2015 at the next election. It will mean rout, possibly annihilation…” (Tony Blair, writing in the Guardian, 13th August 2015)

Blair, Leader of the Labour Party for 13 years

A myth is a story handed down by a tradition, a story that is told and retold, and which, in its classical form, is usually about the origins of the world. Modern politics and the Labour Party have their myths, stories that are retold, and shared as a sound-bite, used to reinforce a created narrative. One of these more enduring myths is that surrounding the 1983 General Election. So the story goes: “Labour drastically lost that election because of its hard left policies and left-wing leader”. (The leader at that time was Michael Foot.) And, the myth continues, as a consequence of this defeat, we must “never return to the dark days of the 1980s”. Or at least this is the story told by the BBC, the Daily Mail, the Guardian, and those in the Labour Party today who are hostile to Jeremy Corbyn and the policies and ideas he is seen to represent.

You might, of course, wonder why Labour losing one single election, the one in 1983, was so critical, such that it should shape all future policy. After all, Labour has failed to win some nineteen General Elections since it was founded, most of these under leaders who could reasonably be regarded as being on the right wing of the Labour Party. Five of these election defeats came after 1983, with four of these under right-wing Labour leaders, except the 2017 election under Jeremy Corbyn. And in this case, it was a situation where Labour did not win, but did destroy an existing Conservative majority. So why is the one election defeat in 1983 presented as some type of existential crisis, while all the other elections defeats are seen differently, with responses as flippant as putting it down to the need to improve election presentation? (This was the “analysis” made after the second Labour defeat under Kinnock.)

Labour entered the 1983 General Election under the left-wing leadership of Michael Foot and with an NEC comprised of a majority from those on the left of the party. Labour had already endured some three years of back-biting and negative stories in the press from MPs on the right of the party, angry that the left now had a majority and that a prominent left-winger was the party leader. Sound-bites designed to undermine the Labour Party were used. Phrases that often had their origins in the editorial offices of the Daily Mail, now regularly appeared on the lips of these hostile MPs, along with damaging “leaks” and disparaging remarks about the party leader.

If all this has a familiar ring, it is because once again Labour has a left-wing leader and once again we have several MPs writing regularly for anti-Labour papers, appearing in the media with stories designed to undermine the party, along with the inevitable “leaks”. Although the words, themes and sound-bites have changed, we appear very much to be in déja vu territory.

The defeat of the 1983 General Election was immediately used by those who had been attacking the party for the previous three years to go into overdrive and attack the left within the party. The progressive and radical policies developed over the years at party conferences in the early 1980s were made “responsible” for the 1983 defeat. They were even “’a threat to the future existence of the Labour Party” (a tome repeated by Blair about Corbyn in 2015). In consequence, these commentators concluded, Labour needed to move to the “’centre-ground” and adopt “sensible policies”, which, in the context of that time, meant adopting some of the policies of the Thatcher government.

The base facts of the 1983 election results are clear enough. The three largest parties were the Conservatives with 397 seats, Labour with 209, and the Alliance (Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party SPD) with 23 seats. In terms of actual votes, the Conservatives had 13,012,316, Labour 8,456,934, and the Alliance 7,794,770. The Conservatives received 42.4% of the total votes cast, Labour 27.6%, and the Alliance 25.4%, with all other parties, totalling less than 5%.

In terms of parliamentary seats, and because of the peculiarities of the election system, the Conservatives gained a large majority, but the principle reason for this was the three-way split in the votes, with non-Conservative voters split between the Labour Party and the Liberal/SDP Alliance. At the same time, there was no viable contender to challenge the Conservatives for their votes, such as UKIP and the Brexit Party have done in recent politics. In actual fact, support for the Conservatives in that election dropped by several hundred thousand votes compared to their vote share in 1979. In a situation where the majority of those voting (nearly 60%) did not vote Conservative, alongside the actual drop in voting numbers, it would be hard to present the election results as a national endorsement of Conservative philosophy and policies. Yet, the media and those on the right of the Labour Party went into overdrive to present it as such, and in turn to attack existing Labour Party policy and its leadership. What the establishment wanted was a Conservative- lite Labour Party, not a Labour Party with socialist policies.

The Social Democratic Party Logo, the first attempt by right-wing Labour MPs to create a separate centre party

Fifteen years later, under Tony Blair, that wish came true. With the right-wing now firmly in control of a muted Labour Party and on the back of mounting disgust and hostility towards the then Conservative government, election success eventually came in 1997. Labour was now seen by the establishment as more the inheritor and child of the Thatcher period, than its socialist history. What was the result?

Apart from a couple of good policies, such as the introduction of a minimum wage and creation of Sure Start Centres (both which had been strongly pushed by the trade union movement rather than the “leaders office”), the New Labour government fully embraced pro-capitalist and neo-liberal policies. Thus, we saw the introduction of PFI, which has since ripped off hundreds of billions from the public sector. We saw the beginning of the privatisation of the education system, through the introduction of the Academies programme. And we saw the continuation of Conservative policy to block the building of council houses and a refusal to end the sale of council houses, both polices which have contributed to the housing and rent crisis of today. Eventually, as a sort of tragic culmination of these attitudes, we saw Britain becoming part of America’s war machine which bombed Iraq, leaving hundreds of thousand dead and millions in destitution and poverty.

As these neo-liberal policies came to fruition, and working people continued to suffer under the New Labour brand, not only were people’s individual lives ruined, but deep damage was done to traditional communities of Labour supporters. In the election that followed that of 1997, in 2001, Labour retained a majority, but the result was marked by a dramatic increase in voter apathy, with turnout falling to 59.4%, the lowest since the General Election of 1918. In the 2005 General Election, Blair was again returned as Prime Minister, with Labour having 355 MPs, but with a popular vote of only 35.2%, another record figure, being the lowest percentage of any majority government in UK election history. These were the historic fault-lines for future election defeats and brought with them the rise of xenophobic attitudes, and fears and worries about the quality of life. These fault-lines would be inflamed and built upon after the 2008 crash and the Coalition government’s ramping up of their austerity programme, a programme that was actually begun under New Labour.

What then of the policies and programme of Labour in 1983?

One of the lines of attack on the left in 1983 was Labour’s policies and programme and the contents of the 1983 Election Manifesto. The mainstream media and right-wing Labour MPs have consistently echoed a phrase used by right-wing Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman, that the manifesto was “the longest suicide note in history”. The phrase has even garnered its own Wikipedia page.

Yet, there is little or no evidence that the policies of the Labour Party at this time were an issue of concern for the majority of voters. We should leave aside the Alice-in-Wonderland suggestion that in 1983 all Labour voters ordered the manifesto and read it. Or that their behaviour was entirety different from all other elections, where decisions are based on a range of factors, including leaflets, discussions on the door and at work, people’s own circumstances at that moment, and, of course, the baneful influence of the media.

In reality, only a few thousand ever read the actual manifestos, and this remains the case today, even with such manifestos being available through the Internet; whereas in 1983 they were only printed in limited numbers. But the reality, in this case, should not spoil a good sound-bite. What is important in any election campaign is the dynamism of that campaign, and the policies and programme put forward and highlighted during the campaign itself. Here there were clear failings in the organisation of the election by the Labour Party, and undoubtedly this could have been better. But such failings were not critical in themselves to the final result, and related much more to campaigning rather than problems with individual policies.

Specific Factors in the 1983 Election: The Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Falklands War

The outcome and results of all General Elections are always influenced by a range of factors. This can be a short up- or downturn in the economy, perhaps due to world economic factors, or changes in the price of oil, as well as changes influenced by government policy. There are also longer, more deep-seated, moods, such as that which brought Labour to power in 1945, when there was a clear demand for the type of society Labour was offering and a rejection of Conservatism, in spite of Churchill’s personal popularity at that time.

The structure of the electoral system can also heavily influence outcomes and results. The UK’s First Past The Post (FPTP) election system means that the candidate in each constituency with more votes than the next single candidate wins. However, in many cases, the winning candidate does not have a majority over all other candidates combined, which means that MPs can be elected on a vote of less than 50 per cent. Roll that forward, and we find that governments are nearly always elected by a minority of the people who voted because governments are formed if they have a majority of MPs in the House of Commons, not because they have a majority of votes.

In the 1983 election, the FPTP system helped the Conservatives win a bigger majority than mere voting numbers would indicate. In marginal parliamentary seats, where Labour might have won, the newly established Social Democratic Party took some of Labour’s votes. As the anti-Tory vote was thus split, it meant that the Conservative could sneak through and become the winning candidate. In some Liberal marginal seats, the competition between Labour and the SPD/Alliance also helped the Conservative candidates win. Without this factor, the Conservatives are still likely to have won the election, but on a much smaller majority.

The other specific issue of the 1983 election is known as the Falklands Factor, or a spin-off from the Falklands War. The war lasted for around twelve weeks, from April to June 1982. Before April, the Conservative ratings in opinion polls regularly put them in a potentially losing position should an election be called. However, from the start of the war through to its aftermath rolling into 1983, Conservative ratings shot up, with the highest rating being achieved in May 1982, which was at the height of the conflict. The higher ratings although falling a little after, generally retained a higher level of support for the Conservatives, although this support was beginning to wear-off when Thatcher called the snap election for June 1983.

Labour’s front-bench stand on the war was not actually against British intervention, and as a front bench, they acted in the standard manner of Her Majesty Opposition, supporting the government in the war. Some Labour MPs rightly did question the rush to war, rather than attempts at negotiation; they questioned what appeared to be careless warmongering by Thatcher. But these issues of holding the government to account, much like Corbyn’s recent questioning of the Gulf oil tanker attacks in June 2019, was immediately branded by the mainstream media as anti-war, as being “against our troops”, and that Labour as a political party “would stab our troops in the back”, etc. The vitriol in 1982/3, as it is today with Corbyn, was unfounded, and was constructed to push an anti-Labour political agenda. Nevertheless, in 1983 it was a contributory factor in the Conservative victory.

Drawing together these general factors that influenced the 1983 elections, we see that none of them relates directly to the political composition of the Labour Party, or more specifically, to the fact that it was left-wing and therefore supposedly unelectable. Rather, they relate specifically to the election circumstances at that time.

Different or similar factors could also be looked at about any of the nineteen General Elections that Labour has lost. The creation of the 1983 myth, however, was necessary for the right-wing to use that election defeat as a battering ram to regain control of the Labour Party. As we look back in history, we can say that they were uniquely successful in their attempts to do so.

Right-wing Labour Leader Neil Kinnock announcing his second General Election defeat

The story of the aftermath of 1983, leading up to the Blair years is, however, another story. What we can say is that the right-wing succeeded. They did so principally because they were able to pull over a significant proportion of trade union leaders and a significant number of MPs who had previously been on the left. Individuals such as David Blunkett, who had once been the radical socialist leader of Sheffield Council, but who became an arch-Blairite. The role of these ex-lefts was critical in the journey away from Labour’s socialist roots and towards neo-liberalism. Leading this move was ex-left MP Neil Kinnock, who replaced Micheal Foot as leader. Kinnocks “credentials” as a left-wing MP helped him subdue and minimise the influence of the left in the Labour Party for what became more than 30 years.

The shift of some of the left in the Labour Party towards a right-wing agenda was more complicated and nuanced than merely a gut reaction to the 1983 defeat. The election did play an important role, particularly for trade union leaders, but this was in the context of both a massive media campaign against the Labour Party and shifts in the attitudes and views of some on the left.

There was an influx of ideas that believed the old working class had changed, and that capitalism was now more about consumer society and life-style. These trends within capitalism inevitably had an influence. And in the wake of the ’83 election these ideas were given voice by some of those on the left in the Labour Party.

Capitalism’s effects on people’s lives has always been a changing experience. In the early 1980s we saw the beginnings of a feature that dominates our world today: a greater predominance of finance capital, with the rapid flow of capital across national boundaries and a greater commodification of everyday life. In this climate, a variation on the old idea that capitalism could be reformed rather than completely changed emerged; the emphasis of working “with” capitalism rather than changing it re-emerged with a vengeance.

This was described colloquially as working with capitalism “as you found it”. In an irony of history, this set of ideas – loosely termed Euro-Communism – had germinated in the Communist Parties of Western Europe, in a reaction to their previous subservience to the Soviet Union. These ideas were also dominant in the British Communist Party, and through this party trickled into both the trade unions and the Labour Party itself.

Perhaps most notable, in terms of the 1983 myth, was an article by Eric Hobsbawm titled Labour’s Lost Millions, published in October 1983 in the Communist Party journal, Marxism Today. Hobsbawm effectively provided an intellectual justification for moving away from what was then Labour’s policies and, by implication, blamed the left within Labour for the defeat of 1983. There is insufficient space in this article to look at these ideas in detail, but I will do so in a future article in this journal. It is perhaps interesting, however, to note that Hobsbawm himself was consulted by Kinnock as he began the attack on the left within the Labour Party and as he started the organisational changes in the Labour Party that would lay the basis for the Blair years.

Conclusion

The myth of 1983 is still with us today, lying in the background to be taken out, brushed off, and used when the opportunity arises. Like hungry wolves, right-wing Labour MPs are waiting in the wings to pounce on any poor election results under the Corbyn leadership. They are also happy to help such results along the way. In what is becoming an almost regular-as-clockwork occurrence, there is a sudden upsurge in denunciations and complaints about “Corbyn’s Labour” by several Labour MPs in the lead-up to elections and during campaigns. We see a series of carefully placed articles in the newspapers, and these same stories are then run at length by the BBC. The narrative the right wishes to create around Jeremy Corbyn includes linking him to the myth of 1983. In one such desperate response, while Corbyn was still standing in the election for leader in 2015, Tony Blair wrote: “Those of us who lived through the turmoil of the 80s know every line of this script [referring to Corbyn]. These are policies from the past that were rejected not because they were too principled, but because a majority of the British people thought they didn’t work.” Blair here repeats the lies about Labour’s policies and stokes up an image of a maligned and miscreant decade of the 1980s. Presumably, before he brought sanity and goodness into the world.

What was learnt from this episode and the myth of ’83 is that one of the key dangers to the Labour Party comes from its determined right-wing MPs – and the PLP has plenty of these at the moment. But danger also comes from influential figures on the left, who use their past left credentials to undermine and subvert the political processes in the party, pulling democratic decision-making away from the membership, and creating a leader-centred model of control. Are there such figures lurking within Labour at the moment? When we look at the leadership of Momentum today and the series of announcements from their London offices that have been undermining Jeremy Corbyn, we can only hope that history will not repeat itself, even if this happens as a farce.

The Struggle to Set-Up a Party of Labour in Britain

October 31, 2020 by Eddie Doveton

THE LABOUR PARTY was founded in 1900, first as the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) then changing its name to the Labour Party in 1906. It emerged as a broad-based organisation, reflecting the diverse range of existing organisations already developed by working people under capitalism. It encompassed the varied working-class political trends: the newly organised, militant, unskilled workers; the more traditional skilled workers; others focused on the co-operative movement; and others focused on issues such as education. Within its ranks were socialists, both Marxists and reformists such as those in the Fabian Society. The Labour Party, in this sense, became an arena within which the political arguments for socialism, and the different policies and tactics to achieve it, were argued and debated. The working class increasingly saw it as a tool with which it could fight, as a class, for change.

An extended period of struggle had preceded this foundation of the Labour Party; this struggle was centred around the idea of establishing an independent political representation of the working class, separate from the existing capitalist parties. In the 1890s the significant obstacles to the new worker’s party were two-fold: the organisational support given by the traditional trade unions to the Liberal Party and the mass vote at elections for the Liberal and Tories by those working-class men who did have the vote.

In an ironic twist of history, the situation in the 1890s has similarities a hundred years later in our present-day politics. Once again, socialists and class-conscious trade unionists have begun struggling for the creation of a new workers party. But this time, the major obstacle is not from the Liberal Party, but New Labour. This party has become a clone of the very capitalist parties it was set up to replace!

In the 1890s the major trade unions of the day saw themselves as being attached to the Liberal Party. Although the trade unions were not formally affiliated to the Liberals, they saw them as the political party which would most represent their interests. Trade union officials both at a national and local level were often Liberal Party members and were wined and dined by the Liberal Party hierarchy. Trade unionists would put forward a version of Liberal ideology, that the economy of ‘the country’ was important, and within this, that the interests of capital and labour could often be the same.

This attachment of trade union officialdom to the Liberal Party had begun forty years earlier in 1867, during the culmination of a mass working-class movement demanding the right to vote. The years 1866 and 1867 had witnessed large scale demonstrations all over the country and a mass rally in London which ended with a riot in Hyde Park. The establishment parties were fearful of a growing mood that hinted at revolution; to stem the tide, they quickly passed legislation giving the vote to millions of urban working-class males. The victory was incomplete, not least the exclusion of women and rural workers from the franchise, but in the ensuing general election the Liberal Party establishment moved quickly to absorb the trade union leadership in a successful attempt to capture sections of the new working-class voters.

Throughout the following three decades the links between the trade unions and the Liberal Party remained solid. Over this period the Liberals were seen by many as the ‘natural party’ for the working class. Some workers became Liberal councillors, and in mining areas where the working class vote was overwhelming, trade unionists became Liberal MPs (to become known as the Lib-Lab MPs). Trade union leaders would argue that their relationship with the Liberal Party was beneficial, and would point to minor pieces of legislation, passed by Liberal governments, that helped the working class or the trade unions directly. The term used by these working-class liberals was ‘labour representation’. This concept was expressed year after year during the 1880s and early 1890s at the TUC annual conference, as the TUC parliamentary committee reported on its work with the Liberal establishment.

Yet within this convivial partnership, there were constant tensions. A relationship between a capitalist party like the Liberals and the working class was full of contradictions. When it came down to a direct decision about favouring profits and capitalism against working-class interests, it was always the former which was supported. Often employers headed the local Liberal Party establishment, or at a national level, the Liberal Party would ignore calls for more deep-seated reforms such as the call by the trade unions for the eight-hour day. The antagonism was also expressed in an attempt by the Liberal Party to ‘keep out’ the undesirable working class from representing the party as councillors or MPs; not dissimilar to the control on these positions exercised by the contemporary New Labour machine, who regard socialists as an alien species who should not belong to their party.

Some of these tensions and conflicts would eventually spread into annual TUC conferences. As early as 1887, the president opened that year’s congress by arguing: “One thing is certain, this labour movement is the inevitable outcome of the present condition of capital and labour, and seeing that capital has used its position in the House of Commons so effectively for its own ends, is it not the strongest policy of labour now that it has voting strength to improve its surroundings?”. This speech set the tone of a debate to set up a new workers party headed by the then young delegate, Kier Hardie, representing the Ayrshire miners in Scotland. But the idea was soon squashed by a series of delegates, who were Liberal Party members. They put forward the argument, later often repeated, that a new party would split the Liberal vote and let the Tories in. The voters were not ready for a new party of labour and it would be much better to keep with the Liberal Party. Indeed Hardie was ferociously attacked by the Liberal MP, C Fenwick (delegate of the Northumberland miners), because he dared raise the anti-working class record of a Liberal parliamentary candidate recently supported by leading Liberal trade unionists at a by-election in Northwich.

A change came in 1889, in what would later be seen as a historic turning point. This was the victory of newly organised trade unionists in the gas workers’ dispute, leading to the formation of the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labours. Later that same year came the London dock strike, which also saw the setting up of a new union. These disputes brought previously unorganised workers into the trade union movement, led by men who were both socialists and supported the demand for a new workers’ party.

By the 1893 TUC congress one of these leaders, Ben Tillett, was moving a motion calling for a separate fund to support independent labour candidates and an elected committee to administer these funds, with a worked-out process to select candidates who pledged to support the policies of the trade unions.

James MacDonald, later an early leader of the Labour Party, put forward an amendment, (passed by 137 votes to 97) calling for all candidates to “support the principle of collective ownership and control of all the means of production and distribution”. It was the first move in the creation of what would eventually become the Labour Party. But in the manoeuvrings of the congress, the Liberal Party members would ensure that this resolution became a dead letter. This was signalled in the defeat of a further resolution by Kier Hardie calling on labour members of parliament to sit in opposition to the Liberals.

The next few years was spent by the socialists and militant trade unionists attempting to put flesh on the bones of this resolution and by the obstruction of the Liberal Party trade unionists in blocking its effectiveness. A critical issue centred on finance; the Liberal Party trade unionists prevented the funds of the trade unions they controlled from being used to support working-class candidates who were standing independently of the Liberal Party. Unlike today when MPs make themselves rich by gaining a parliamentary seat, being an MP was a non-paying job. Only the rich could afford to sit in parliament, so it was necessary for trade unions to find the money, not only for the election campaign but to pay a salary to the candidate should they be elected. By holding up funds, the Liberal trade unionists could hold up the creation of a new workers’ party.

Equally the Liberals were able to curtail further debate within the TUC on this issue, defeating resolutions and proposals at the 1894, 1895 and 1896 congresses. Indeed in 1895, the congress president, councillor Jenkins, a Liberal and a delegate from the Shipwrights’ Society and also president of Cardiff trades council, used his opening speech to carry out a full-frontal attack on the Independent Labour Party (ILP) for standing candidates in the 1895 general election. He even attempted a slur that because standing independent labour candidates undermined Liberal Party votes, that the ILP was being funded by the Tory Party.

But the tide of history was about to turn against the Liberals in the trade union movement. The conflicts between labour and capital were intensifying as the economic upturn of the early 1890s took a dip towards the end of the decade. Additionally, British manufactures were experiencing sharpened competition from the expanding economies of the USA and Germany. As a squeeze on their profits developed, the bosses turned to recoup their losses by reducing wages and attacking the power of the trade union movement to defend their member’s interests. Although it was the Conservatives who were in power, having won the 1895 and subsequently the 1900 general elections, the Liberal Party was reluctant to commit themselves to reverse the attacks on the labour movement. Many Liberals Party members, also employers, were the very people carrying out some of these attacks.

At the same time over the decade of the 1890s in one local area after another, small but determined groups of socialists were beginning to influence the organised movement, enabling them in a few places to replace liberal trade unionists with socialist representatives. This activity by socialists on the ground combined with the numerical growth of the new trade unions, such as the gasworkers and dockers, helped transform the situation. This process, combined with the alienation of some of the more traditional unions from the stance of the Liberal Party in the late 1890s, began shifting the ground of support within the TUC.

The eventual formation of what would become the Labour Party was not automatic; rather there was a dialectic between the general economic forces creating a conflict between labour and capital, the old and new trade unions, and the conscious intervention of socialists acting as a catalyst of change. As the famous phrase of Karl Marx states, ‘man makes his own history, although not in circumstances of his own choosing’. But within this, it is necessary that he does indeed ‘make his own history’.

Historians often cite two legal judgements as being critical in the development of the Labour Party, the Taff Vale judgement of 1900-1901 and the Osborne judgement of 1909, both of which were strident attacks upon trade unions. But these judgements acted more to rapidly increase a trend which was already underway than to spark the creation of the Labour Party itself. The creation of the Labour Representation Committee had been agreed a year before the Taff Vale judgement at the 1899 TUC congress. This laid the foundation for what would become the Labour Party, and it brought to an end the period of the pre-birth of the new worker’s party.

The next two decades would see the growth and spread of the new party in working-class communities, reflected within trade unions, in local council elections and increasingly in parliamentary seats. But like the previous decade, success would not be automatic. The working-class voter was still embedded to the habits of the past and remained attached to the capitalist Liberal Party. Many of the old Liberal trade unionists were still influential. They would continue to claim that the Liberal Party remained the party for workers, citing as evidence the fact that large numbers of workers still voted for the Liberal Party, mistaking the habits of voting as a zodiac sign which determined the character of the party.

Looking back at this history of the Liberal Party, which by its policies and ideology supported the interests of capitalism, you might wonder how little has changed today. We see the Labour government and Labour-controlled councils acting like ruthless employers, affecting millions of public sector workers, who have endured low pay, significant pay cuts through below-inflation pay awards, alongside real and threatened job losses. Labour stands by as employers close down businesses and sack workers. Yet at the same time Labour gives away billions of pounds to prop up the banks. Their stated intent is restoring the profits of firms, and they ask the working class to pick up the bill. It is this context that poses once again the need for a party which can represent the interests of working people. In an irony of history the Labour Party, originally set-up to replace the Liberal Party, never a commited socialist party of revolutionary change, but only at times that of reform. It has now, some one-hundred years later itself become a Liberal-Capitalist party. Conscious socialists should now be looking to work with and build a party of the working-class, and look to achieve this achieve this objective.