Hampden Clubs

Last updated

The Hampden Clubs were political campaigning and debating societies formed in England in the early 19th century as part of the Radical Movement. They were particularly concentrated in the Midlands and the northern counties, and were closely associated with the popular movements for social and political reform that arose in the years following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. They were forced underground, and eventually disbanded in the face of legislation and pressure from the authorities.

Contents

Origins

John Cartwright is usually regarded as the founder of the Hampden Clubs Cartwrightjohn.jpg
John Cartwright is usually regarded as the founder of the Hampden Clubs

The original Hampden Club was formed in London in 1812. John Cartwright is generally regarded as the originator and founder although evidence has been offered [1] that Cartwright's friend Thomas Northmore actually initiated the clubs. Edward Blount was another founder member. Cartwright certainly dominated the movement from 1813 onwards. A former naval and militia officer with a long record of political activism, he toured northwest England to promote the idea of a forum for political debate among ordinary people. There had been no similar institutions since the London Corresponding Society, which had disbanded in 1794. [2] The clubs were intended to bring together middle-class moderates and lower-class Radicals in the reform cause and were named for John Hampden, an English Civil War Parliamentary leader.

In 1813, Cartwright was arrested in Huddersfield while promoting the clubs. He made a further promotional tour in 1815.

The first Hampden Club outside London was formed in 1816 by William Fitton at Royton. Other clubs in the North-West soon followed; in Middleton the radical weaver-poet Samuel Bamford started one. Other clubs were formed in Oldham, Manchester, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Lyne and Stockport.

Activities

Club members paid a penny per week subscription and usually met weekly for political discussion and debate. Radical pamphlets were read, and newspaper articles by prominent reformers like William Cobbett. Samuel Bamford describes the activities of club members in positive terms, emphasising them as a peaceful alternative to riot and destruction of property.

Hampden clubs were now established in many of our large towns, and the villages and districts around them. Cobbett's books were printed in a cheap form; the labourers read them, and thenceforward became deliberate and systematic in their proceedings. Nor were there wanting men of their own class, to encourage and direct the new converts. The Sunday Schools of the preceding thirty years had produced many working men of sufficient talent to become readers, writers, and speakers in the village meetings for parliamentary reform. Some also were found to possess a rude poetic talent, which rendered their effusions popular, and bestowed an additional charm on their assemblages; and by such various means, anxious listeners at first, and then zealous proselytes, were drawn from the cottages of quiet nooks and dingles, to the weekly readings and discussions of the Hampden clubs. [3]

In January 1817, regional Hampden Clubs and similar political debating societies sent 70 delegates to a convention at the Crown & Anchor tavern in Strand, London, well known as a meeting-place of radicals. The assembly was called by Cartwright and Jones Burdett, brother of Sir Francis Burdett. To avoid falling foul of the Seditious Societies Act, the convention met in public session and described itself as a gathering of deputies from petitioning communities, discussing how to achieve constitutional reform. [4] The wording proposed by the Hampden Clubs' leadership included votes for all householders, electoral boundary reform and annual elections. However, the moderates were outvoted by those who favoured more radical reforms, and there were angry words from those who felt the Clubs' plans had been hijacked by others. The final resolutions of the meeting carried no reference to the Hampden Clubs. Reports of the meeting in The Times criticised both the meeting and its outcome and accused the delegates of attempting to overthrow the Constitution. [5]

Suppression and dissolution

The clubs were regarded with suspicion by the authorities, which saw them as breeding grounds for the growing radicalism of the times. On 9 February 1817 a secret Parliamentary Committee report concluded that the real object of the Hampden Clubs and similar institutions was to foment "an insurrection, so formidable from numbers, as by dint of physical strength to overpower all resistance". [6] The government began to introduce legislation such as the Seditious Meetings Act 1817, and it became more difficult for political clubs to meet. For example, the Birmingham Hampden Club, founded in September 1816 and boasting 300 regular attendees by the following January, had a moderate ethos and publicly condemned violence after a local riot but struggled to find venues as publicans were pressured not to permit club meetings on their premises. Private rooms were found, but by April 1817, in an atmosphere of suspicion and with the government spy and agent provocateur William J. Oliver active in the city, regular club meetings were suspended. [7] In Manchester, the movement's leaders were targeted by the city's deputy constable, Joseph Nadin, who arrested many of them, including Samuel Bamford, after the unrest of March 1817 and sent them to London in irons, where some spent months in prison before their release without charge. With the Hampden clubs stifled, the Lancashire leadership formed the Patriotic Union Society, the body that called the 1819 public meeting for political reform that became the Peterloo Massacre.

Related Research Articles

Edward Baines (1774–1848) British politician

Edward Baines (1774–1848) was the editor and proprietor of the Leeds Mercury,, politician, and author of historical and geographic works of reference. On his death in 1848, the Leeds Intelligencer described his as "one who has earned for himself an indisputable title to be numbered among the notable men of Leeds"

Samuel Bamford English radical and writer

Samuel Bamford, was an English radical reformer and writer born in Middleton, Lancashire. He wrote in and on the subject of northern English dialect.

London Corresponding Society body concentrating on reform of the Parliament of Great Britain

The London Corresponding Society (LCS) was a British Radical organisation, with a membership consisting primarily of artisans, tradesmen, and shopkeepers. At its peak, the society boasted roughly 3,000 dues-paying members who shared the goal of reforming the political system. Formed in 1792 by Thomas Hardy, the society's key mission was to ensure universal suffrage for British men and annual parliaments. Due to the perceived French revolutionary influence on the society and its calls for radical political change, the government of William Pitt the Younger, bitterly opposed it, accusing it on two occasions of plotting to assassinate the King, and putting its key leaders on trial in 1794 for treason. However, due to the transparent falsity of the government's claims, those leaders, including Hardy, John Thelwall, and John Horne Tooke, were all acquitted. After exerting "undue influence" on the European political climate in the last decade of the 18th century, the LCS and other organisations like it were outlawed by a 1799 Parliamentary Act, and efforts to maintain an underground organisation were stymied by their outlaw status and financial troubles and mismanagement. 

William Cobbett English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

William Cobbett was an English pamphleteer, farmer, journalist and member of parliament born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament, including abolishing "rotten boroughs", would ease the poverty of farm labourers. Relentlessly he sought an end to borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters". He opposed the Corn Laws, which imposed a tax on imported grain. Early in life he was a loyal devotee of King and Country, but he later pushed for radicalism, which helped the Reform Act 1832 and his election that year as one of two MPs for the newly enfranchised borough of Oldham. He strongly advocated of Catholic Emancipation. His polemics cover subjects from political reform to religion. His best known book is Rural Rides.

Henry Hunt (politician) British politician

Henry "Orator" Hunt was a British radical speaker and agitator remembered as a pioneer of working-class radicalism and an important influence on the later Chartist movement. He advocated parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Corn Laws.

Radicals (UK) parliamentary political grouping in the United Kingdom

The Radicals were a loose parliamentary political grouping in Great Britain and Ireland in the early to mid-19th century, who drew on earlier ideas of radicalism and helped to transform the Whigs into the Liberal Party.

Francis Burdett British politician

Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Baronet was an English reformist politician, the son of Francis Burdett and his wife Eleanor, daughter of William Jones of Ramsbury Manor, Wiltshire, and grandson of Sir Robert Burdett, Bart. From 1820 until his death he lived at 25 St James's Place.

John Cartwright (political reformer) English naval officer and political reformer

John Cartwright was an English naval officer, Nottinghamshire militia major and prominent campaigner for parliamentary reform. He subsequently became known as the Father of Reform. His younger brother Edmund Cartwright became famous as the inventor of the power loom.

The term "Radical", during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, identified proponents of democratic reform, in what subsequently became the parliamentary Radical Movement.

Richard Carlile British social reformer

Richard Carlile was an important agitator for the establishment of universal suffrage and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom.

The publisher Thomas Jonathan Wooler was active in the Radical movement of early 19th century Britain, best known for his satirical journal The Black Dwarf.

The Blanketeers or Blanket March was a demonstration organised in Manchester in March 1817. The intention was for the participants, who were mainly Lancashire weavers, to march to London and petition the Prince Regent over the desperate state of the textile industry in Lancashire, and to protest over the recent suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The march was broken up violently and its leaders imprisoned. The Blanketeers formed part of a series of protests and calls for reform that culminated in the Peterloo massacre and the Six Acts.

Maurice Margarot British activist

Maurice Margarot (1745–1815) is most notable for being one of the founding members of the London Corresponding Society, a radical society demanding parliamentary reform in the late eighteenth century.

John Fielden British politician

John Fielden was a British industrialist and Radical Member of Parliament for Oldham (1832–1847).

John Thelwall British writer

John Thelwall was a radical British orator, writer, political reformer, journalist, poet, elocutionist and speech therapist.

1794 Treason Trials

The 1794 Treason Trials, arranged by the administration of William Pitt, were intended to cripple the British radical movement of the 1790s. Over thirty radicals were initially arrested; three were tried for high treason: Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke and John Thelwall. In a repudiation of the government's policies, they were acquitted by three separate juries in November 1794 to great public rejoicing. The treason trials were an extension of the sedition trials of 1792 and 1793 against parliamentary reformers in both England and Scotland.

William Benbow English nonconformist preacher and publisher

William Benbow was a nonconformist preacher, pamphleteer, pornographer and publisher, and a prominent figure of the Reform Movement in Manchester and London. He worked with William Cobbett on the radical newspaper Political Register, and spent time in prison as a consequence of his writing, publishing and campaigning activities. He has been credited with formulating and popularising the idea of a general strike for the purpose of political reform.

Edward Smith (1839–1919) was an English biographer. A Fellow of the Statistical Society, Smith was awarded its Howard Medal in 1875, for an essay on "The State of the Dwellings of the Poor [...]", then published as The Peasant's Home.

Reform movement (Upper Canada) political movement in British Canada in the early 19th century

The Reform movement was a political movement in British Canada in the early 19th century.

Seditious Meetings Act 1817 United Kingdom legislation

The Seditious Meetings Act 1817 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which made it illegal to hold a meeting of more than 50 people.

References

  1. ↑ Miller, Naomi C. (1974). "Communications: Major John Cartwright and the founding of the Hampden Club". The Historical Journal. XVII (3): 615–619. doi:10.1017/s0018246x00005318 . Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  2. ↑ "Empire and sea power". British history timeline. BBC. Retrieved 3 September 2012.
  3. ↑ Bamford, Samuel. Passages in the Life of a Radical.
  4. ↑ Thompson, E. P. (2002). The making of the English Working Class. Penguin Uk.
  5. ↑ Parolin, Christina (2010). Radical Spaces: Venues of popular politics in London, 1790–c. 1845. Canberra: Australian National University E-Press.
  6. ↑ Quoted in Lee, Christopher (1998). This Sceptred Isle. London, Penguin.
  7. ↑ W.B. Stephens (Editor) (1964). "Political and Administrative History: Political History to 1832". A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 7: The City of Birmingham. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 31 August 2012.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.