From insurrection to the ‘little republic of the home’

The third chapter will look at the impact of repression and imprisonment between 1839 and 1843 on Chartist leaders, and argues that this experience was the impetus for moral improvement to increasingly come to the forefront of the movement, as many imprisoned activists turned away from violence towards a longer-term strategy of movement building. A consequence of this was sexuality, satire, and violent acts and language losing their prominence, and a new counter-culture taking their place.

A ‘Radical Underworld’? The infidel roots of Chartist culture

This chapter focusses on the Radical print culture of the 1820s and 1830s and revises the notion that the early Chartists were austere and moralistic, highlighting instead the populist elements of their moral politics, which was heterodox, libertarian, and incorporated amusement and humour. It was at this point that the moral critique of capitalism became incorporated into working-class Radicalism, and the impact on society on individual character (and vice versa) cemented within Radical thought. This critique was largely expounded to a popular audience through humour and crime reportage.

Communal self-improvement after the ‘disasters of the Strike’

The fifth chapter will expand upon chapter four by investigating how this politicisation of health and the body was allied to the desire within working-class movements during the 1840s to establish new communities that would be organised according to the supposed laws of nature, rather than the artifice represented by the aristocracy and industrial capitalism. In particular, it investigates how Chartist militancy collapsed after 1842, to be replaced by the reactionary, moralistic socialism of the ‘Land Plan’.

Conclusion

Chartism’s moral politics and improvement culture were strategic interventions rather than dilutions of the movement’s objectives and aspirations. Those Chartist leaders who turned to the politics of improvement did so to build the movement towards a position of Radical working-class hegemony. In the process, this moral politics and its associated culture would grapple with and thereby alleviate social grievances in a way that did not incorporate the plotting and revolutionary violence which had failed in 1839. However, this approach proved to be problematic. It abandoned much of an established Radical culture that clearly was capable of enticing mass support (including, significantly, many women, not just as wives and mothers but as wage labourers), turned to regressive ideas about sexuality and the family, and opened up the dangerous possibility that the working class could be divided along lines of moral entitlement or intellectual attainment. It also possessed a degree of intellectual and strategic incoherence and circularity. Advocates of improvement in the 1840s were clear that it did ...

Politics and everyday life in early Chartism

This chapter will use the itinerant activism of Henry Vincent in the west of England in the formative years of Chartism between 1837 and 1839 to establish how early Chartist activists integrated plebeian culture and everyday life into the movement. Through festivity, drinking, and often coarse humour these men found success and built up a revolutionary movement attuned to both political and economic grievances. However, these tours also revealing problematic attitudes towards sexuality and women.

Introduction

On 24 August 1849 the prominent Chartist publisher Henry Hetherington died aged fifty-seven, another victim of the cholera epidemic sweeping London. As the eulogy by his friend Thomas Cooper suggested, this was more likely worsened than prevented by his years of teetotalism and vegetarianism and his preference for homeopathic and botanical medicines:...

The fragmented legacies of Chartist moral politics

The final chapter will discuss the legacy of this moral politics, arguing that the post-Chartist period shows no neat continuity within working-class culture and politics. While the late Chartist movement turned towards socialism and abandoned individual moral improvement in favour of political revolutionary and economic nationalisation, many other Chartists turned to co-operation, trade unionism, and self-help.

Medicine, popular science, and Chartism’s improvement culture

The fourth chapter will study in detail the intellectual, political and cultural shifts within the Chartist press after 1840, in which individual moral improvement allied to a critique of capitalism became increasingly prominent. It will then outline how this led to a vibrant ideology and culture of improvement, which was particular pursued through dietary reform and quack healthcare.