 Cymru yn ydych chi'n gweld y bwysig, yn ymweld i ni'n gweld ymweld gweithio'r hefyd ar y chaeddism. Dyna ymddych chi'n mynd i gyd-dyn nhw'n ffynishio'r lleolau gwaith cyfnodol yn gweld y ffynishio'r hefyd. First, I want to touch on the nature of Chartism as a mass revolutionary movement, and then to look at the key phases of Chartism in 1839, 1842 and 1848. I hope this will be enough to wet your appetite at least to encourage you to delve into a bit deeper this subject. Now, to begin with, while Chartism is an extremely important for a British audience, it also has great international significance. As Fiona explained, Chartism was the first working class revolutionary party in the world and is full of valuable lessons, and especially for today. Leon Trotsky, the great Russian revolutionary, described the Chartist period as a period of grand revolutionary insurrection, which never ceases to be amazing. Without any doubt, Chartism is certainly amazing. It was an heroic chapter in the history of the British working class, which deserves a thorough study by every class conscious worker and socialist. Although amazing, Chartism was eventually defeated. And as we are well aware, it is the victors who write the history and Chartism is no exception. We should therefore heed the words of Brontair O'Brien. The father of Chartism, the theoretician of Chartism, when he said about the official histories, I quote, Have no faith in history, look upon it as a mass of fabrications concocted like modern newspapers, not with regard to truth or the interests of humanity, but to deceive the multitude and thus bolster up all the frauds and villainous institutions of the rich. Ever since Victorian times, they've attempted to bury Chartism and what it represented. And if not bury it, then distort it beyond all recognition. Even if it's raised at all, which is very rare, Chartism is portrayed as something, a struggle, a mere struggle over the vote of parliamentary reform and nothing more. That is the established view at the moment. It's even sadly the established view in the Labour movement. After all they say, wasn't it a set of simply democratic demands? That is true in the sense that the charter was made up of six demands. The first being the right to vote for all male adults over the age of 21. Secondly, a secret ballot. Third point, payment of all MPs. Fourthly, no property qualification to standards in MP. The fifth point equal electoral constituencies. In other words, doing away with rotten butters. And lastly, last but not least, of annual parliaments, which was never implemented and meant really because there was too much accountability in such a demand. Where the official histories there mentioned the Charter's belief in revolution, it is to disparage the idea. Revolution was then, according to them, utopian. And by extension, it is utopian today, and that is their general message. But these notions in my opinion are completely wider the mark, to say the least. The Charterism was the first and foremost a revolutionary awakening of the British working class. It was regarded by the ruling class as Bolshevism was in the 20th century and justly so. Both were seen as the embodiment of dangerous revolution and a threat to private property. The aim of my book on Charterism is to uncover really the revolutionary essence of Charterism, the real heritage of the movement and to show its relevance for today. And I say today because after all, do we not face a catastrophe at the present time? Do we not face mass unemployment, a collapse in living standards, destitution for millions, as did the working class at the beginning of the 19th century? The only difference being is that while they faced the horrors of the birth pains of capitalism, we today face the horrors of the death agony of capitalism. The challenges, however, are exactly the same, how to rid ourselves of this system of exploitation, of austerity and deep economic crisis. On three separate occasions, the British working class attempted to seize power in 1839, 1842 and 1844. This may sound quite remarkable, but nevertheless it is a fact. Unfortunately, they did not succeed. And our task is to understand this great movement and why it failed in its mission. Firstly, I would say that the Charters were pioneers in the real sense of the word. Charterism was the first real political awakening of the British working class. And in many ways, they were feeling their way, they were groping their way for solutions. And they had no precedence in order to follow. However, what they were clear about was that the Charter for them and the demands of the Charter were not an end in itself, but a means to an end. And that's of grave significance. According to the annual register of 1839, achieving the Charter was, I quote, not for the purpose of receiving more power and privileges, but for the purpose of producing a hitherto non-existent condition in society in which wage labour and capital do not exist at all. According to the Northern Star, which was the main Charterist newspaper, it said, we seek the most perfect of all revolutions, the revolving of the whole system. And in Wiltshire, a Trowbridge Charterist put the matter more simply. According to him, the aim of Charterism was not simply a struggle over bread, but he promised his audience, I quote, plenty of roast beef, plum pudding and strong beer by working three hours a day. There you are, socialism in a nutshell. But this dream, this idea of a land of plenty was ever present of a classless society where there was no poverty or squalor, but a good life for all. These were the ideas of Robert Owen, the father of British socialism, which captured the imagination of important sections of the working class. Charterism arose in this period out of intense class warfare, class against class in the words of Ernest Jones, the Charterist leader. The ruling class ruthlessly suppressed all working class organisations or any talk of reform. Trade unions were outlawed, democratic societies were banned, and at Peterloo in Manchester in August 1819, workers and their families who rallied for their democratic rights were murdered in cold blood to engage in such subversive subversive activities as to build a union or fight for the vote. You could be imprisoned, transported to the penal colonies of Australia, Tasmania, where the chances of your survival weren't that great, or publicly you could be hanged, drawn and quoted. Out of this struggle emerged a burning class consciousness in the working class. A hatred of the capitalists, a hatred of the rich and a hatred for their system. It was said by Frederick Engels that the Charterist period displayed the most advanced class struggle the world has ever seen. As Marx also said, capitalism came into being, dripping with blood from every poor, and that the conditions the working class faced were truly horrendous. I can just quote one instance from the Children's Employment Commission at 1842, which looked at child labour in the coal mines. This is what it said, chained, belted, harnessed like dogs in a gold cart, black, saturated with wet, and more than half naked, crawling upon their hands and knees, and dragging their heavy loads behind them. They represent an appearance indescribably disgusting and unnatural. But this appearance, yes, disgusting and unnatural, was the lot of the working class at this time, a slave class, an exploited class, regarded as the beasts of burden. But the working class fought back and fought back courageously, creating illegal trade unions, revolutionary trade unions. They also turned to laddism, the smashing of machinery to defend their jobs and their livelihoods. They fought against the new poor law, a law brought in to incarcerate the poor in the work houses with abominable conditions, far, far worse than anything outside. And in the north of England, such was the hatred for these work houses that these institutions in many ways were burnt to the ground on many occasions. In South Wales, there was the terrorist organization known as the Scotch cattle, which were trade unionists who employed terror against the coal and iron masters and any of the scabs who supported them. It should not be forgotten as well that this period, the period of the birth of the British working class, coincided with the French Revolution, of 1789, and also the American War of Independence of 1776, which inspired the workers with democratic feelings in the same way as the Russian Revolution inspired the working class in the 20th century. And it was this seething discontent, which was magnified and intensified after the introduction of the so-called Great Reform Act of 1832, which, as you can guess, wasn't great, and it wasn't really much of a reform. In fact, it didn't give the workers the vote at all. It gave the middle classes the vote and put more power in the hands of the bourgeoisie. The working class were betrayed by the middle class radicals at the time. And it was from this bitter experience, this bitter betrayal, together with this ferment in society that charters emerged. The six points of the charter were publicly launched in 1838, and this really provided the spark that lit the flame that gave rise to a forest fire. It very quickly spread and charters became a mass proletarian movement which adopted revolutionary tactics on a scale not seen ever before. We had the mass petitions of charterism, which was to mobilize millions of people. We had mass rallies of charterism, which encompassed hundreds of thousands of people, monster, torch-lit proceedings and processions in the middle of night. At one point, Fergus O'Connor, who was the main public figure of charterism, the main leader of charterism, stated that over a long weekend he had addressed so many rallies that if you tallied up the audience, the attendance was around one million people. Now, when you consider that the population of England and Wales was no more than 15 million, then you can see the enormous scale of the mass movement of charterism itself. The charters adopted the general strike as a weapon, and last but not least, they came to understand the need even for an insurrection against the old order, the class rule of the capitalists and landlords. Trotsky once said that a revolution was when the masses took destiny into their hands, and he could say that this was one of those occasions. The Chartist movement, however, was divided between two main wings. One was called the Moral Force Chartist section of the movement, and the other, the Physical Force Chartists. The Moral Force Chartists preached and believed that moral persuasion would be enough to convince the ruling class to make concessions, whereas the physical force chartists drew the conclusion that if it need be, then force should be used to overthrow the government and this rotten parliament. These two wings of the movement were fused together with a motto, which was used at all Chartist meetings, and this was peaceably if we may, forcibly if we must, but of course the Moral Force Chartists tended to stress the peaceably, whereas the Physical Force Chartists tended to concentrate on the forcibly angle. As the movement grew into a mass proletarian organisation, the physical force tendency became the dominant feature, led by, as I said, Fergus O'Connor, the main public figure of Chartism. With the mass petition that was launched in 1839 came the idea of a convention a Chartist convention. Obviously there were parallels drawn with the French Revolution and the French Convention, and this now became, this idea became really a centre point, a focal point for a worker's parliament, an alternative to the House of Commons. Even that elements, if you like, of the Congress of Soviets in Russia of 1917, the delegates to this convention were elected by mass meetings that were held up and down the country. The character of these meetings, when they took place, was certainly very, very revolutionary. Hundreds of thousands came, walked for miles from the factories, from the mills, with their families to attend these torch-lit meetings on hillsides and mountainsides. At Peeps Green in the west riding of Yorkshire, for example, 200,000 attended the meeting. At Curselmore near Manchester, 500,000 people attended the rally. This was a mass rally of banners, of flags, of pikes, of guns and of burning torches. These were armed meetings with revolutionary language from every speaker, the language, as they called it, of blood and thunder. It was the greatest agitation you could imagine amongst the British working class. These meetings were a spectacle to be seen. No one had seen anything like it in their lives before. 20 minutes. And it gathered to them an enormous feeling of strength and of class consciousness. And these affected, above all, the leaders of the movement. People like Fergus O'Connor or Brontair O'Brien. Brontair wasn't his real name. He adopted the name from the French Revolution. So taken was he with the idea of a need for a French Revolution in Britain. Also another character, the Reverend Stevens. He was a nonconformist minister who had been thrown out of the church for his violent language, particularly his campaigning against the poor law in the north of England. Gamwich, who was the earliest author of charitism, describes him as the apostle of terrorism. And I quote the words of the Reverend Stevens. I am a revolutionist, he said. He called for the burning down of work houses, the burning down of factories, the hanging of hated employers, and of course, the need to obtain arms for the working class. He said, I am a revolutionist by fire. Was a revolutionist by blood to the knife, to the death. And this man was extremely popular and his speeches were extremely popular. Amongst the revolutionary people who attended these huge chartis rallies. He captured the imagination of the workers and the people who came to these meetings. Arm, arm, arm is what he called for. It was the continuous call of these meetings for workers to get weapons, to workers to arm themselves ready for the final showdown. Of course, the middle class radicals who originally came towards charitism were horrified with this language and horrified with these mass meetings on the hillsides full of revolutionary further. The first convention of charitism met in early 1839 and debated the tactics and strategy of the movement. Now you can see the divisions opening up between the left wing, the right wing, and also there was a kind of centre ground as well. The chartis petition attracted mass support. In fact, it gained 1,300,000 signatures, which was absolutely unheard of before. But of course, given the corrupt nature of this bourgeois parliament, it was overwhelmingly rejected by 46 votes to 235 votes. As a result, the chartis leadership looked towards the idea of a general strike in order to bring the country to its knees. The convention discussed the question and promoted the ideas of the strike. Others wanted to go much further. William Harney, who was the leader of the left wing of the chartis movement, and the editor of the chartis paper, The Northern Star, wanted to organise a march led by, as he called them, the Saint Coulotte of the Chartis Movement, where a million people should march and surround parliament, and if they refused to give in, then they should be arrested and thrown into the River Thames. This was the language which went down well in the masses. It reflected the mood in the masses, a revolutionary mood that was sweeping the country. In fact, you could say that there was a revolutionary developing mood within society. The date for the general strike was given as the 12th of August. As plans began to be made for it, the closer they came to it, the more waverings they were in the leadership of the chartis. Questions were raised. Was there enough time to organise it? Was there enough support for the strike? Was the situation ripe enough? If you like, the same arguments were used a time and again about whether or not to call a strike. These doubts affected also O'Connor, the leader, and also O'Brien. They managed to convince the convention to abandon the idea of the general strike. Of course, this had certain ramifications which led to certain divisions in the leadership, where one layer of the chartis leadership now looked at the idea of an insurrection. This opened up the way for what is known as the Newport Uprising, which was the biggest arm clash between workers in the British state in the whole of the 19th century. Wales was already in a state of deep unrest. They were mainly based on the workers of the Colliers and the Iron Workers, and they came out forcefully for physical force chartism. Their leader Henry Vincent, who started out on the moral force wing, soon changed over to the physical force argument while he was in Wales, but he was arrested. As a result of this arrest, they were talked amongst the chartis to release him. The way they were going to release him was to stage an insurrection in league with other areas of the country. The first protocol was to move on Newport, then on Monmouth Prison to release Vincent from prison. The leaders were involved in this particular discussions in South Wales. One was called John Frost. He's important because he was the chairman of the Chartis Convention. Others then were Zephania Williams and William Jones. They were the main leaders. They agitated and organised 20,000 to 30,000 chartists, again coal miners and iron workers, to converge on Newport, take Newport and stage a march then on Monmouth. The authorities, unfortunately, got wind of these plans and they decided to arrest chartists in Newport and called in the troops which were billeted at the Westgate Hotel where the other chartist prisoners were held. And when the contingents or the advance guards of the contingents met in Newport, instead of waiting for the rest to arrive, they decided to march on the hotel to rescue their comrades. And this led to an engagement with the troops of firing or shooting and 22 chartists were shot dead. It was carnage and this put an end to the insurrection and resulted in the arrests of the leaders by the authorities. Other uprisings which were planned in Sheffield and Bradford and in the north, then peated out because of this failure in Newport. But Newport was a proletarian uprising, part of a broader plan. In January 1840, the leaders John Frost, Zephania Williams and William Jones were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. But there was a massive campaign of chartism throughout the country and these sentences were commuted to transportation for life, which again was very, very serious, but nevertheless they managed to escape death. The mayor of Newport, of course, who led the troops of counter-revolution, was awarded 2000 sovereigns, was awarded the keys to the city of London and knighted by Queen Victoria for bravery, shows what they do with their own. The government clamped down forward soon afterwards and widespread arrests in late 1839 and early 1840, including O'Connor, O'Brien, Stevens, in fact 38, 380 rather, chartist leaders and local leaders were imprisoned and all the chartist newspapers were closed down at this time. So the failed insurrection in Newport really put an end to the first phase of chartism. The second phase opened in 1842, although a couple of years before that in 1840, the chartists decided to transform themselves, not from a loosened organisation, into a national political revolutionary party called the National Charter Association. And that, if you like, stood on class independence and that prepared to mobilise the working class for the taking of power in Britain. They organised in 1842 a new petition. This was a time of depression, of growing unemployment. And the thing that differed with this petition is that it now contained, different from 1839, economic and social demands which showed the growing class consciousness of the movement. And it had quite a wider reach. 3,300,000 signed the petition, double that of 1839. And when you laid it end to end, apparently it stretched for six miles. It was exported rather by 50,000 people to Parliament and presented to Parliament at that time. When you consider that the English, that the population of England and Wales at this time, of the adult population was only 8.5 million, then of course the petition of 3.3 million was quite an incredible achievement and showed again the mass character of charters. Also if you compare it to the 1841 general election, the electorate, the numbers voted during in the election was less than 600,000. Complete indication of where the real power laid. Parliament was a bourgeois corrupt Parliament and of course again rejected the petition by 49 votes to 287. So blocked on the political front, you see a shift towards the industrial front. And as I explained, it was growing unemployment and the employers were attempting to impose a 25% wage cut on the workers, starting with the cotton workers. And this provoked a strike near Manchester. And this strike developed into a strike over the charter. It was the first general strike I think in history. And above all, it was a political general strike, which is even more incredible. Of course they had been considerable propaganda and agitation by the charters in the factories of Manchester, in Lancashire and elsewhere. According to a framework knitter from Leicestershire, Dave Daniel Mayrick, he said that in most workshops politics were discussed in conversations generally. That the Charters newspaper was taken on a weekly basis and discussed by the workers. The Charters newspaper was the northern star. It had a circulation of 40,000. But for every paper that they printed, 10 others would read the paper. In reality, it was more like 400,000 was the circulation. Again, it shows the growth of a political consciousness in the working class. The strike began near Manchester and led by Richard Pilling, who was a charterist. And when the workers left the factories, they shouted slogans in support of the charter, in support of O'Connor, and also in support of the northern star. It was a spontaneous strike, but it had been prepared, if you could say, by the charterist agitation themselves. Close every mill was the cry. And of the 43 recorded speeches at the time, only two were not given by charters. It was a rolling strike where pickets marched from one factory to the other, calling workers to strike. It didn't take much to get them to strike, but where there was resistance, workers, strikers would enter the factories. This is the steam age where the boilers worked the steam engines and drove the machinery. He took out the plugs from the boilers and paralysed the machinery. That's why it became known as the plug plot strike of 1842. The charter's leader, Peter McDowall, believed that the charter should join up with the trade unions and for them to have a joint struggle. He was also great enthusiasm at the time. In fact, he could say there was a growing revolutionary mood as the strike developed. A mass meeting in Manchester on 11 August pledged that the strike would continue until the charter became the law of the land. The Home Secretary, his attention was drawn to this particular body of workers and he ordered the arrest of all the leaders, but he was too late for that because the strike was developing from below. Mass meetings were taking place all over the factories. All my committees were being established to coordinate picketing, supplies, issuing of permits. They were becoming a ruling power in these industrial areas. In effect, the strike had produced a state of dual power in many areas. The strike spread from Manchester Lancashire up to the north of Scotland and further down to the Midlands, Wales and even into Cornwell. Fortunately, there was a national charter meeting taking place in Manchester at that particular time and they had to discuss what action they would take to support the strike. And the majority, well, there was a layer of them who said that this should become the basis for an insurrection. But the majority felt that that was not possible and all they would do was support the strike. In other words, they failed to appreciate what was taking place in front of them. That this was a general strike, which is not any ordinary strike. It posed a question of power, of working-cast power. And certainly a strike of this nature could not last indefinitely, either lead to defeat or lead to a victory in that sense. And the strike, because it was rather leaderless, the Charis gave it support, but it didn't give it leadership, which was required that the strike started to wane on the 20th of August. And by the end of the month, it really had come to an end, although workers did hold out until the 26th of September. Eventually the government recovered its nerve and used its force to suppress the movement and wholesale arrests were carried out at that point. You'll recall earlier on that the demands of the Charter did not include the vote for women, although there was an attempt to bring that clause in. But it was kept out by William Lovett and the Moral Force Charters, as a matter of fact. Nevertheless, working-class women participated in huge numbers in its activities, including the establishment of women charter associations. They also went on strike and fought with the police. And the strike of 1842 was no exception. It brought women into the battle in large numbers, and they, like they meant for, became very politicised as a result. In reviewing these events, the Home Secretary said, and I quote, for three months, that would be July, August and September of 1842, the anxiety which I and my colleagues experienced was greater than ever felt before. And it is true, they were terrified of this revolutionary movement. But now it had subsided, they needed to teach the workers a lesson, and that's exactly what they did. A repression followed, arrests, court proceedings were held throughout the country, which melted out imprisonment and transportations. 1500 arrests were carried out in the north west of England alone. 200 men and women were transported in terms between seven years in life. The leader, Richard Pilling, faced the death penalty. But despite all this repression, despite this attack, the spirit of rebellion was not broken, as many observers noticed. But of course, with an end of the strike like this, it was inevitable there would be a lull in the situation. And that's really what happened until another movement took off, that is in 1848, the stirring of the European Revolution above all else, which had a big effect in Britain. The Revolution in France, especially, captured the imagination of the popular movement in Britain and rekindled charitism at this particular moment. A third charitist petition was launched. Once again across Britain, the workers were obtaining arms, they were drilling on a scale that had not seen before. And the signatures to the petition now amounted to a massive five million. Now this is just incredible and it reflects the mood in society, reflects the politicisation and the eagerness in which the charitist cause was gripped by the masses themselves. But unfortunately, although a convention was called by the charitists, they thought that they could repeat what they did in 1839 and 1842. They'd have a procession going to Parliament and they would have a movement around this particular question. But the ruling class had other ideas. They had learnt from the last experience and they were going to see that be repeated. 40 minutes. And therefore they banned the charitist procession to Parliament and the charitist leaders were taken by surprise. They had already announced the date of the 10th of April for the rally and for escorting the petition to Parliament. But the government's refusal shocked them and the government itself began to turn the situation into a show of strength. As far as they were concerned, they turned London into an arm camp. They flooded it with police and police specials which were specially sworn in and the army was held in reserve. Faith was such a force. The charitist leaders were forced to retreat and simply hold a rally at Kennington Common. And a lot is made of this is that this retreat really made the end result in the end of charitism but that's not the case at all. Because if you look who was happening in the rest of the country then what happened in London had no effect whatsoever in the rest of the country. On the contrary, the mood in the rest of the country was extremely radical. Military drilling was taking place. Armin went on at a feverish pace. A charitist national guard, an armed defence force was being formed in Scotland and in the north of England in preparation for a showdown. In the words of the Times newspaper, charitism is scotched but it is not dead. Well that was clear. The charitists nationally were now looking to the convention for a lead. But unfortunately this lead did not come. There was no clear strategy. There was no clear idea how the movement was going to be taken forward and the initiative was slipping from their fingers. Plans had been made for insurrections on two occasions in 1848 but nothing had come of them. An attempt of an insurrection in London was actually foiled by Spice. The captives known as the orange tree conspirators were arrested and put on trial. Plans elsewhere were also scabbored because of this. Once again, the opportunities to move towards a revolutionary situation were lost and mass arrests soon followed including that of Ernest Jones who was the leader of left wing charitism. And with the defeat of the Irish insurrection because there was, we had famine in Ireland and a revolutionary movement took place but it was defeated. And also the defeat of the European revolution shifted the entire balance of forces. There was an attempt to re-coop and re-goop the charitist movement in 1850 where the charitists at that time, or the socialists rather, had won a majority of the charitist movement. Julian Harnie and Ernest Jones, the key charitists and socialists had won a majority but unfortunately charitism was in deep decline at this time. I mean the charitist leaders were in touch with Marx and Engels and they give them a lot of advice on what to do, how to sustain the movement, but how to prepare for the future as well. But the problem was that the objective situation was changing radically. Capitalism was now experiencing an upswing. The domination of Britain on a world scale meant that it was able to grant concessions particularly to the skilled workers. And therefore the pendulum began to swing in the other direction away from revolution. And this was to open up a prolonged period then of class collaboration of liberal politics or what they called New Unions. And unions which were full of compromise, if you like, were the employers. In conclusion, despite its demise, charitism is left behind a rich legacy. But there was a conspiracy of silence against it. Very little was heard of charitism for the next 70 or 80 years. It was either twisted or distorted. Today, unprecedented challenges are being faced before the working class. The world is being turned upside down. And yes, we are ending revolutionary times in which power again will be posed in front of the working class. Our charitist ancestors, whatever their shortcomings and their were shortcomings, nevertheless displayed revolutionary courage, audacity and enormous self-sacrifice. Quality is sorely missed and lacking in today's labour and trade union leadership. And we need to regain those qualities. Charitism is rich and teaches us so much. In that sense, wrote Trotsky, the British working class can see and must see in charitism, not only its past but also its future. What the charitist lacked was clear revolutionary strategy. They had no real precedence to follow. In that sense, they were an anticipation. The advantage we have over the charitists is that we have the benefit of scientific socialism of Marxism, which was not available to the charitist leaders. But now we've come full circle. We are looking in effect at the rebirth of charitism but on a higher level. We stand on the shoulders of the great charitists. We claim charitism's revolutionary heritage but strengthened with the ideas of Marxism. With this understanding, the way opens up for a real victory of the working class. There is a victory for socialism, which will allow us to realise the dreams of the charitists. Particularly our old friend, the Trowbridge charitist who said red was not enough. Apologies to our vegetarian comrades. We want plenty of roast beef, or nut roast if you prefer, plenty of plum pudding and strong beer or fruit juice if you like, by working three hours a day. And I say, why not? It is about time the working class had the full fruits of its labour. Thank you.