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The National Charter Association(NCA) (1840-1958) was formed on July 20, 1840, in a conference chaired by James Leach, of twenty three Chartist delegates in Manchester. [1] [2]
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The National Charter Association(NCA) (1840-1958) was formed on July 20, 1840, in a conference chaired by James Leach, of twenty three Chartist delegates in Manchester. [1] [2]
The NCA was formed in response to the decline of the Chartist position. In 1839, many of the Chartist leadership had been imprisoned or exiled and the formation of the NCA was intended to restructure Chartist groups into one body. [3] The establishment of the NCA and its national executive paved the way for a more structured kind of working-class organisation, one which included membership fees and elected representatives; therefore in historiography it has often been described as one of the world’s first mass political parties to exist that had a large working-class membership. [4] [5]
After the formation of the NCA, each Chartist locality put forward its own nominees for the general council, this allowed the NCA to become an undivided body of several hundred members, which permitted the NCA to stay within the law and effectively bypass the Unlawful Societies Act. [1] Membership of the NCA was open to both men and women [4] who agreed with its objective to obtain radical reform of the House of Commons. [2]
In 1841, a year after its formation, many local Chartist and Working Men's Associations were drawn to the NCA due to its revised and now legal constitution; in conjunction with its formation, a mechanism became available through which these associations could subscribe to the Chartist movement. [6] [1] Furthermore, by December 1841 there were 282 localities with 13,000 members; by April 1842, its membership rose rapidly with 50,000 members and 401 localities. [1]
Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in the United Kingdom that erupted from 1838 to 1857 and was strongest in 1839, 1842 and 1848. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country and the South Wales Valleys. The movement was fiercely opposed by government authorities, who finally suppressed it.
Feargus Edward O'Connor was an Irish Chartist leader and advocate of the Land Plan, which sought to provide smallholdings for the labouring classes. A highly charismatic figure, O'Connor was admired for his energy and oratory, but was criticised for alleged egotism. His newspaper Northern Star (1837–1852) was widely read among workers, becoming the voice of the Chartist movement.
Francis Place was an English social reformer described as "a ubiquitous figure in the machinery of radical London."
Abel Heywood was an English publisher, radical and mayor of Manchester.
Joseph Sturge was an English Quaker, abolitionist and activist. He founded the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. He worked throughout his life in Radical political actions supporting pacifism, working-class rights, and the universal emancipation of slaves. In the late 1830s, he published two books about the apprenticeship system in Jamaica, which helped persuade the British Parliament to adopt an earlier full emancipation date. In Jamaica, Sturge also helped found Free Villages with the Baptists, to provide living quarters for freed slaves; one was named Sturge Town in his memory.
William Lovett was a British activist and leader of the Chartist political movement. He was one of the leading London-based artisan radicals of his generation.
John Goodwyn Barmby was an English Victorian utopian socialist thinker. He and his wife Catherine Barmby (1816/17–1853) were influential supporters of Robert Owen in the late 1830s and early 1840s before moving into the radical Unitarian stream of Christianity in the 1840s. Both had established reputations as staunch feminists and proposed the addition of women's suffrage to the demands of the Chartist movement.
Henry Hetherington was an English printer, bookseller, publisher and newspaper proprietor who campaigned for social justice, a free press, universal suffrage and religious freethought. Together with his close associates, William Lovett, John Cleave and James Watson, he was a leading member of numerous co-operative and radical groups, including the Owenite British Association for the Promotion of Co-operative Knowledge, the National Union of the Working Classes and the London Working Men's Association. As proprietor of The Poor Man's Guardian he played a major role in the "War of the Unstamped" and was imprisoned three times for refusing to pay newspaper stamp duty. He was a leader of the "moral force" wing of the Chartist movement and a supporter of pro-democracy movements in other countries. His name is included on the Reformers' Memorial in Kensal Green Cemetery.
William Cuffay was a Chartist leader in early Victorian London.
The Northern Star and Leeds General Advertiser was a chartist newspaper published in Britain between 1837 and 1852, and best known for advancing the reform issues articulated by proprietor Feargus O'Connor.
Joshua Hobson (1810–1876) was a British Chartist and Tory Radical who was the first publisher of the Book of Murder, a pamphlet attacking the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. In 1838-1844 he was the publisher of the Chartist newspaper Northern Star.
Events from the year 1840 in the United Kingdom.
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.
Richard Spurr (1800–1855) was a Cornish cabinet maker and lay preacher who was imprisoned for his part in leading the political movement Chartism.
The East London Democratic Association (ELDA) was founded in January 1837 by George Julian Harney in opposition to the LWMA, later supported by James Bronterre O'Brien and Feargus O'Connor. In April 1838 ELDA was reconstituted as the London Democratic Association (LDA) with an eight-point resolution covering the Charter and more. Closely allied with the northern Chartists, by the end of 1838, the LDA had branches meeting in public houses within the City, Tower Hamlets and Southwark in addition to the regular meeting held at the Trades Hall, Bethnal Green.
The National Land Company was founded as the Chartist Cooperative Land Company in 1845 by the chartist Feargus O'Connor to help working-class people satisfy the landholding requirement to gain a vote in county seats in Great Britain. It was wound up by Act of Parliament by 1851.
Chartism originated in Wales in Carmarthen under the influence of Hugh Williams, a solicitor and radical reformer. Williams claimed he "got up the first radical meeting in south Wales" in the autumn of 1836 when he founded Carmarthen Working Men's Association. This followed on from the foundation the previous year of the London Working Men's Association by William Lovett and Henry Hetherington, Hetherington was a friend of Hugh Williams and is likely to have influenced his activities in south Wales. The People's Charter, embodying six points, was published in May 1838, with an address by Lovett and Hetherington. It became the focus of widespread meetings in support of its objectives throughout Britain. The People's Charter was later published in Welsh increasing the movement's appeal in Welsh-speaking areas. Chartism in Wales reached its climax in November 1839 with the Newport Rising and subsequent treason trial of Chartist leaders.
Richard Moore (1810–1878) was an English radical politician. He was a moderate Chartist, and heavily involved in the campaign against "taxes on knowledge".
Malcolm Sherwin Chase was a social historian noted especially for his work on Chartism.
Alice Mann was a Leeds-born radical and publisher. Her husband was arrested on suspicion of involvement in an armed uprising and she served a week long and a six month sentence for selling newspapers without paying the required tax.
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