Chartists in a riot to have their cause heard.
Chartism
Chartists were significant contributors to the change in reform during the times of the Industrial Revolution.
‘Chartism’ was the name given to a working class movement from 1839 to 1848. It involved six political changes to be introduced, which were:
-Men over the age of 21 should be entitled to place a vote.
-Anonymous voting, so that the people’s voting choices went unknown.
-If someone wanted to become a Member of Parliament, they were no longer obliged to own any property whatsoever.
-Members of Parliament were payed, so that they did not have to have other jobs to earn money.
-Yearly elections, to ensure that all of the Members of Parliament were listening to the problems of people, and doing their best to solve them, and if not they would not be re-elected.
-All constituencies should have approximately the same number of people living there.
The leaders of the Chartists had different opinions on how to treat the situation, some people like John Frost and Feargus O’Connor wanted to travel on the more violent path, while others like William Lovett wanted to act in a more civilised manner by going on the calmer route to convince the Parliament. Since the leaders were split on the decision, their leadership was weakened.
A technique used to persuade the government was to accumulate a large number of petitions. Their goal in doing this was to astonish the Parliament by the number of people that backed them. Petitions were collected in 1939, 1842 and also 1848. The petition that was collected in 1848 had 5 million signatures. However, this number was not seen as being impressive because many of the signatures were not valid, and was fake; this was made clear when the final signature presented was Queen Victoria’s, this event made the cause go unnoticed for a while.
Eventually five of the six requests were passed by Parliament. The only demand that was not passed was the demand on a yearly re-election. This demand has never been passed, because Parliament belies that a government/Member of Parliament cannot prove themselves in one year, instead they need a longer period of time to demonstrate the good that they can do.
Therefore, not only did trade unions have an impact on reforms, but Chartists had a influential role during the industrial revolution as well.
Websites on Chartism:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/chartism.htm
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist3.html
‘Chartism’ was the name given to a working class movement from 1839 to 1848. It involved six political changes to be introduced, which were:
-Men over the age of 21 should be entitled to place a vote.
-Anonymous voting, so that the people’s voting choices went unknown.
-If someone wanted to become a Member of Parliament, they were no longer obliged to own any property whatsoever.
-Members of Parliament were payed, so that they did not have to have other jobs to earn money.
-Yearly elections, to ensure that all of the Members of Parliament were listening to the problems of people, and doing their best to solve them, and if not they would not be re-elected.
-All constituencies should have approximately the same number of people living there.
The leaders of the Chartists had different opinions on how to treat the situation, some people like John Frost and Feargus O’Connor wanted to travel on the more violent path, while others like William Lovett wanted to act in a more civilised manner by going on the calmer route to convince the Parliament. Since the leaders were split on the decision, their leadership was weakened.
A technique used to persuade the government was to accumulate a large number of petitions. Their goal in doing this was to astonish the Parliament by the number of people that backed them. Petitions were collected in 1939, 1842 and also 1848. The petition that was collected in 1848 had 5 million signatures. However, this number was not seen as being impressive because many of the signatures were not valid, and was fake; this was made clear when the final signature presented was Queen Victoria’s, this event made the cause go unnoticed for a while.
Eventually five of the six requests were passed by Parliament. The only demand that was not passed was the demand on a yearly re-election. This demand has never been passed, because Parliament belies that a government/Member of Parliament cannot prove themselves in one year, instead they need a longer period of time to demonstrate the good that they can do.
Therefore, not only did trade unions have an impact on reforms, but Chartists had a influential role during the industrial revolution as well.
Websites on Chartism:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/chartism.htm
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist3.html