 Hello everyone and welcome to Marxist Voice, the podcast of Socialist Appeal, the British section of the International Marxist Tendency. My name is Josh Holroyd and I'm joined tonight by Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal and the author of several books including In the Cause of Labour, History of British Trade Unionism and The Chartist Revolution, which he's kindly agreed to discuss with us tonight. So the book Chartist Revolution is coming out this Friday and it focuses on the working class movement for the People's Charter, which we're obviously going to talk about in a moment, centered around the struggle for the vote for working class people. So the first question I wanted to ask really is what made you want to write about this period in the 19th century, this period of working class history today in 2020? What's the relevance for today? Well I would say that when I began to write the book, which was a good year ago, the world economy was slowing down and there was talk of a new crisis. Of course at the present time we see the deepest crisis for 300 years. The working class today is faced with a terrible crisis and there are huge effects on living standards, unemployment and the general conditions of the working class. And similarly in the early 19th century the working class was faced with also a deep crisis in the birth pains of capitalism. As Marx explained that capitalism came into being, dripping with blood and dirt from every pore. And these conditions gave rise to a revolutionary movement at the turn of that century, 100 what nearly 200 years ago. And I think we're entering in a similar way, we're entering a deep profound crisis and revolutionary implications in that crisis in Britain and elsewhere. I think it's quite relevant to deal with this situation and draw out the lessons for the working class today. Sure, so learning about a revolutionary period in order to confront one, which I find interesting because I mean, autism isn't very widely taught anyway, even here in Britain. But even when it is taught, and even in the labour movement itself, it tends not to be presented so much in the way that you just described as a revolutionary period and a revolutionary movement. Certainly the way it's presented tends to be as a movement for the vote, as a democratic movement. I suppose you might say a civil rights movement and perhaps you might say that there's a difference with today in that workers today do have the vote. Do you think that that's a fair characterisation or is that missing the point to an extent? Well, of course, the chart this movement was based on six democratic demands of the chart, obviously. But you have to look much deeper than that and look at the context. And what strikes you really is that the histories of charism, the present time and even in the past really, either they buried charism or they distorted it really as some sort of portrayed it as some sort of liberal movement for just simply for democratic reform, which it was not. What do you have to understand? Was it that this great movement of charism arose? It was the revolutionary awakening of the British working class. That's where you have to look at it. And clearly the fight for the rights of the working class was a fight. It was a means to an end. It wasn't an end in itself. You think that the cotton workers in Lancashire or the miners in Durham, which is simply interesting in risking their lives and transportation and everything else, simply to put across a bit of paper, then you're slowly mistaken. It was always seen as a means of a better life, of the overthrow of the conditions that they faced, which were terrible conditions of capitalism in effect. And the Chartist movement was a class conscious movement fighting for the better life, fighting for a revolutionary change. And that's what inspired millions of work. It's not simply the demands of the Charter. I think a Fraubidge Chartist put it quite equately when he said the Chart is not about fighting for bread, it's about roast beef, plum pudding, plenty of beer and work in three days a week. No, it was bound up to the social conditions of the working class. That's the way it was seen by the mass of people. I think what stands out for me there and something you just said is you have a rank-and-file Chartist, the Chartist worker talking about plum pudding, but also a three-day week. And today, I think it was maybe 2019, this was announced, that the leadership of the TUC announced that their aim was for a four-day working week for British workers within the next 100 years. It seems almost like we've gone backwards compared to what you just mentioned. And by the way, just to clarify something, you mentioned transportation before. It might not be clear to everybody listening what that actually means. That doesn't mean simply getting the train from Manchester to London, does it? No, no, no, no. I mean, the ruling class used vulnerable measures against the working class, which were defenceless. They tried to set up trade unions and they were banned. They tried to set up discussion circles, to discuss reform, democracy, the implications of the French Revolution, you name it. They were banned, they were illegal. And the desperation, you know, the working class chose different means to try and afford its agenda to escape from this nightmare of capitalist crisis. And therefore, that's the reason why it had revolutionary overtones, is because of the complete impasse and the crisis that the working class faced at that time. And it didn't come from nowhere either, because talking about the movement for democracy, as I suppose as a means to end, but also repression, obviously, there's the heritage of Peterloo as well, where demonstrators calling for the vote, maybe not the six-part points of the charter, but certainly the vote for working people were murdered in the streets. Are there other strands that you can discover in kind of the early 19th century lead up to this point of the, what was it called, propagation of the people's charter in the 30s? It's just to supplement the point about the repression against the working class. Again, it was, this was the norm, you know, the brutal repression of the working class and in any attempt to raise its voice or organize independently, you know, not just jailings, transpordation. It means you be sent to the penal colonies in Tasmania for several years. Many people didn't get there, because I think about 20% died on the journey of such an arduous journey, the rationing, the terrible conditions. And of course, the threat of capital punishment, people were hanged. They'd be hanged drawn and quartered, was still on the books. And the ruling classes, it wasn't a very nice, not the British ruling class, it was a very vicious ruling class and were prepared to use any measures in order to defend their privileges and defend their class rule. Of course, charters were born out of struggles of the working class. It means there was a struggle for trade unionism and they became revolutionary trade unions. They didn't make no bones about it. They were revolutionary trade unions in the early days. They had the Luddites who broke the machines because they were through desperation, trying to prevent unemployment and the cuts in wages and they lashed out, if you like, in that way to try and to protect themselves and their families. It was a turn to democratic reforms and trying to win the vote to find a way out in that way. And of course, at Peter Lozier, the workers were cut down in cold blood. But you had different movements arising, you know, your impact of the French Revolution, it was like an impact of the Russian Revolution in the 20th century. The American War of Independence, all these things fed into the democratic, if you like, rights of the working class, what they needed to seize power, to take power with. And of course, the ideas of socialism were born in this country. The ideas of Robert Owen, who was the first British socialist, were ideas which filled the charters movement as well. First of all, Owen's great service was a condemnation of capitalism and the ills of capitalism and offering a new way forward of a cooperative form of society where there was no private ownership. He was against private ownership. And these ideas of socialist ideas and the minds, particularly the advanced workers in Britain, everything fed in the fight against the new poor law, you know, the attempts of the government to force those that were in dire need and poverty into the workhouses. It's the only way they could get any form of relief was to work in a workhouse or breaking up stones and goodness as well, making soil and oak and on the treadmills and so on of these horrendous places. And there were movements against mass movements burnt down in the Midlands, in the North, they burnt down the workhouses. These were mass movements, not like harbours and people, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people were involved in a struggle at this stage or with different things which began to coalesce in these ideas of charters. And to be honest, the struggle against the workhouse reminds me a lot of the struggle against austerity today. In many ways, the austerity cuts against the working class are trying to make kind of being out of work and having to turn to benefits or any kind of support actually a fate worse than death in some respects and you see the desperation. So in that respect, there's a great deal of relevance in this period. You have this Victorian idea of the deserving poor then the un-derving poor, that's the whole point. And the measures they took were, well, you read Oliver Trist long character Dickens and you could see in there the monstrous conditions that they're working class and the poor sections live under lived under at that time and that's what produced the revolt in the working class. That's produced the changing consciousness of the working class. And I wanted to talk a bit more about the petition itself and well the charter itself mentioned six points to the charter. And do you mention in the book that Engels said that behind these six points, kind of as purely democratic as they seem on the surface, would be sufficient to overthrow the monarchy, the house of laws, basically an entire British state. So I think it would be good to maybe spend a bit more time on these. First of all, what were the six points? So one of them was a vote for all men over 21 of sound mind and non-punishment for a crime. So in some ways actually relatively backwards to what we have now, but by the stands of the time, a revolutionary demand. So the right to vote. He had the question of a secret ballot of payment of MPs, abolition of the property qualification for MPs, electoral districts or constituencies and also annual parliaments. That's the one they never, they refused to implement. That was the most dangerous in their point of view. They could live with the others because they had a means of manipulating public opinion. That was later on. But of course they fought against these demands. Why? Because of the pressures that exerted behind them. What stood behind them? And the ruling class knew. They feared charism like they feared Bolshevism in the 20th century. Why? Because they feared revolution. Because they knew that the charter's movement wasn't a movement that was going to be placated with a few reforms here and there. It was a building up of millions of workers who were demanding a fundamental change to their working conditions into their lives. And that posed a direct threat to the ruling class. And that's what they were terrified of, quite rightly so. Because that's how the working class learned through these events and through these struggles and this experience. They came to the realization then that capitalism, that the existence of that form of society they lived under, was the problem that had to be done away with and a rational form of society created in its place. And so, yeah, you see these six demands. But all the context that you've just talked about briefly is swelling behind it. And so you see this kind of mass power of the movement. In terms of one thing that I wanted to clear up is another thing that's very famous about charism that we're talking about, if we're talking about anything to do with charism, is that it took the form of a series of petitions to parliament, roles of signature, signatures petitioning for the charter, people's charter, the six points to become the law of the land. Now, those methods in themselves don't necessarily scream revolution. And of course the parliament rejected those petitions. What, you know, in what way can you call this movement of presenting big petitions revolutionary? Of course, the idea of a petition has been there for a long time in British history as in other countries. But the charists adopted this tactic and applied it in such a way as they'd never been applied before. The other petitions were generally local petitions about this or that problem, this or that issue. Now they took up, if like, the demands of power in a sense posing political power. And this petition wouldn't be a local petition. It would be the first time we have a national petition. So it was used as a means of going into every town, every village, every hamlet involving millions of workers, if like using this as a propaganda weapon to stir up and to galvanize the working class into struggle. So the petition was very, the means, if you like, was very advanced, very revolutionary, brought into being, I would say, brought into activity, millions of workers as a result. And of course, they looked to this idea, well, here's the voice of the people, this is the voice of the masses. And yet, you saw the way in which they were treated here, but it was contempt for a rotten parliament, a rotten regime, a rotten system. That's the way they looked upon it. And therefore, this petition was very valuable in mobilizing public opinion, the opinion of the working class against the system of society itself and a focal point in which to galvanize the strength of this movement, which was quite incredible, the very heroic revolutionary movement, in my opinion. And one point you draw out in the book is it wasn't just a petition. It wasn't a passive thing, almost like you sign up to a change.org petition online, which has its purposes, but it wasn't quite like that. We're talking about mass assemblies of workers and also the election of delegates who actually assembled in what they called a convention to kind of oversee the presentation of the petition. Would you tell us a bit more about that? Yeah, so look, this period was burning with class struggle, should we say. I think the Hammond said it was, when you read this period, it's like you're reading a period about civil war. That's the kind of class battles and struggle, class against class, they used the words of Ernest Jones, the charges to leader. And we have to see the struggle in this kind of context. This movement actually, the charges movement, it arose in the small meeting in London. And yet from this very tiny meeting, it was like the spark that let the flame, which caused a massive blaze, if you like. That was the whole thing. And they, yeah, they become a mass movement, they needed to mobilize the masses. And therefore they called these mass rallies, mass movements everywhere. And you're not talking about 10,000 or 50, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of workers being mobilized into these demonstrations. I know we look at the Corbyn movement in the past period and even that, I think they would put the Corbyn movement into the shade. I mean in Cursal Moore, in the Manchester, I believe this, the meeting they had was 500, half a million workers who came from the factories after work, women, children, their families, turned out, of course, there's no microphones in those days, but these are held on hillsides, the site of these hillsides. And the auditory was such as to win the masses to this revolutionary overturning society. And through these mass meetings, they elected delegates to the convention, the Chartres convention. Of course, the word convention has a very revolutionary flavor to it, you know, as with the French Revolution and the French convention. And it was purposely chosen for that point of view. And delegates were elected from these mass meetings to this assembly, this, I call it, describe it as a, like a labor parliament or a workers parliament. It was an alternative government in that fact, which debated and discussed out the tactics and strategy of how to win the charter and how to change society. So, yes, it was a mass movement involved in this central focal point of a convention, a leadership, if you like, of the working class, which debated the way forward to secure the aims of the charter itself. And these delegates had to go back to the mass meetings as well. They had this democracy that was there in the movement. And they could be changed to say, if they were out the line or they weren't, you know, expressing the viewpoints of the masses sufficiently. So it was very democratic movement, you know, in that sense. And a very advanced movement, because within these conventions, they discussed, you know, revolutionary tactics, revolutionary strategy that they never discussed before in British history. You know, the question of power for the working class was posed for the first time ever, because they are the young, this is a young virgin working class in Britain. They haven't got the conservative ideas, you know, and baggage of the past. And they were prepared to look for any means that would secure their particular objectives. Of course, the ruling class would agree or opposed to that. And they did everything that they could do to know to defend their privileges. So it was a, that's why I give it, it's revolutionary overtones and its character. And it questions things that things had never been questioned before. And these are the, this is the change in consciousness is taking place in the masses and in the leadership of the chartist movement. And how they become, well, you know, there's debate between different trans trends within charitism itself between physical forced charitism and moral forced charitism as the way forward. So it was a, yeah, a workers parliament to find the way forward. I think this is really significant because just to try and picture it, I mean, if you're saying that there were 500,000 people listening to a single speech at Kersham or that's basic, that's roughly the entire membership of the Labour Party in a single place listening to one person talking about class against class, against class war effectively electing delegates to what you've described as a workers parliament. With kind of the delegates actually being accountable to the masses as well. I mean, this sounds, this sounds like the beginnings of workers power, really, of dual power in the country, even. And do you think that there is an analogy that can be drawn with, I mean, 1917, basically in the old Russian Congress of Soviets? Yes, within charitism, it's like an embryo of different movements, you know, of the working class, and they're feeling their way forward. And of course, that's why you get different parallels and similarities within other revolutionary tendencies and movements. But I mean, to give you the scale of it, you know, there's a quote by Fergus O'Connor, who was considered the main leader of charitism. And he said he addressed about a million people in the space of a week or so in relation to the mass meetings that he had addressed, a million people, given the fact that the population as a whole was about 15 million. You can imagine the scope of charitism that went, you know, everywhere, its tentacles everywhere, it affected everyone. And that's why it became a real mass movement. Yes, the convention, well, the convention itself, it met its first time in the beginning of 1839, was certainly parallel, it got parallels with like a Soviet in so far as, is the working class tendencies are there present, debating and discussing out the key questions of the day and how they can be achieved. And it's a remark where you listen to the, if you read the debates that took place there, they're on extremely high level. And people joined the movement, you know, they weren't careerists, you know, they weren't play seekers. People who joined the movement were dedicated to fight for the interests of working people. They were prepared to make the greatest sacrifices ever. And they connected with the working class, that's the point about it. And the more they connected, the more militant they became, the more they spoke to the workers, the more militant the workers became, it was like a dialectical process going on here changing the chart is leaders urged the masses to be armed to get arms. This is not going to be a tea party. They said you need arms to confront the British state. And they did arm and the arms even in the mass meetings. I know that the Reverend who led Stevenson, who led the main demonstration towards Kershal Moore and spoke there. He called not just for the arming of the working class, but appealed to everybody there to fire their arms to discharge what they had. You know, what kind of arms have you got? He raised their hand, they fight a few shots. And then they said, well, is that all you got? And then more. This was stirring up the ferment in the masses. They were responding to him. He was responding to them. And all the chart challenges were leaders were doing this. They were connecting with the real movement of the working class, a militant revolutionary movement in the working class, which is quite an important point, I think you mentioned earlier about moral force and physical force. Obviously, what you're describing here is part of the physical force wing. But what I think is so important is that today in Britain, a picture of British workers, in this case, English workers, further firing arms into the sky and basically threatening the government with, you know, forceable overthrow. It's completely alien to the picture of the British and particularly English working class that's painted. And something I've encountered, you know, friends, comrades in the movement, who felt a certain like demoralisation, following the 2019 election results saying, Oh, is it, is it something about, you know, that the French have this revolutionary tradition? Why is it the English are, you know, I don't know, so passive? I think one thing that I found so inspiring about the book and about what you're explaining here is that just completely, it does away with that it exposes it as a complete fiction, because this is our history, isn't it, as British workers? And well, as workers generally, but there's British British workers, this is our history. What one thing that I wanted to ask about in particular, as you've talked about, you mentioned moral force and physical force. Could you briefly explain what the two different positions were? So presumably what united them was both wanted the people's charter to become law of the land. That's why they were in the same movement. What divided them? And what was the balance of, you know, the relationship of forces between those two camps? Well, originally, as I said, the Charter's movement started off in a very small way. And those who dominated it at that time, you could consider were moral force Charters. So they believed that they could persuade, you know, people and persuade the government through tomorrow persuasion, you know, through argument and so on and so forth. And if you like it, there were a bit of, if you want to put it that way, a bit of a reformist way, you know, that, you know, gradually, although I would say they are far great, they had more courage than the days of reformists. I think they're on a different level. But nevertheless, that's the kind of idea, the idea of persuading people to change their minds and so on and so forth and cool down the language. You don't need all this rhetoric and so on and so forth. And they hope that they could, through that, those means they could persuade the ruling class in order to introduce these particular measures. On the other hand, you had the physical force Charter which grew in number with the growth of the movement itself. As the movement grew into a mass movement of working class people in the North Wales, everywhere else, then it took on a far more revolutionary connotation and with it, the domination of the physical force Charter swing. And they had very, their language is very violent. They didn't believe in, in, of course, their, their argument was to the working class, their argument was to persuade the working class to challenge for power. You know, they would present the petition, but they didn't have much faith that the ruling class of Britain were going to grant those concessions. And therefore they said, well, if they don't grant, then what are we going to do? Are we just going to sit back and just talk about it? And they said, no, we need to challenge them even with force of arms, if need be, in order to ensure that the Charter is successful. But the, these two wings, if you like, the Charter, this physical force Charter became much, much, much more powerful as events, you know, within a couple, within a relatively short period of time, they became the dominant force of the movement. But they did unite the movement under the slogan of, you know, peaceably, if we may, forcibly, if we must. And that kind of, you could read into that whatever you wanted to, you know, and, and that's what happened. But there's clearly the more the proletarian base of the party grew, of Charterism grew, the more physical force Charterism dominated the whole scene. In other words, the revolutionary side, if you like, as opposed to Reformism, it was a revolutionary side, a proletarian side that dominated Charterism. And that's the thing that's buried completely, the histories, the so-called histories, which I don't want to mention this. And when they talk about revolution, well, it didn't happen. You know, it was, it was utopian then, and, and, and by reference, it's utopian now. That's the basic idea. Rather than understanding, there was a revolutionary movement. Why did it fail? And there are lessons to be learned in order to be successful revolution for the future. That's the way you should look at it. But over there, it's out to the question. But you mentioned, you mentioned lessons, and you mentioned that, although, by the summer of 1839, the physical force Charters were basically in charge. And this is a movement of certainly over a million people who signed this petition. And yet you don't see, the Charter doesn't become law over the land, and you don't see the successful overturn of the British state. And I suppose it's a bit of a big question as to why did all this happen. But what, with the convention specifically, the petition was, of course, rejected by Parliament, which probably came as a surprise to nobody. What, briefly, what happened next? Did they, did they try to launch an attempt to overturn the government or what? Well, at this time, they discussed what should be done. And if you like, the left wing of the movement, but for the idea that there needed to be an insurrection against the government, you couldn't, there was no way out. They weren't going to grant anything. You had to be an armed insurrection against the British government and the overthrow of the British state, the only way of securing the Charter. And so very quickly, the moral force Charter, as many from Birmingham resigned at this stage, not all of them, but a large proportion of them resigned. And the debate in the convention was about the means. A general strike was the first one. And it's idea was a, I'd been born in Britain in 1830s. It arose particularly from a man, I called Benbo, William Benbo, who for the first time raised this idea of, because it's like capitalism, it's emerged in Britain for the first time, there was a new working class, the first working class in the world. And therefore, these ideas were new, a general strike was new. And it came, it was raising a sort of peculiar way, the idea of a holy month, you know, let's, let's go on strike for a whole month, and that should be sufficient to collapse the regime. And these ideas were vividly discussed and supported. And that's the point, they were supported. The idea of a general strike in 1839 was supported by the assembly, by the convention. And the others on the left wing, like a man called Julian Harney, believed, you know, that, you know, there should be a strategy, you know, they could use democratic means, they could even stand in general, the general election, general elections were called in Britain. Of course, they were, they were a side show because they were, it was, it's a handful of people voted for a handful, a handful of people. But in the, in the, in the actual general election itself, where there was hustings and meetings and so on, you were able to put forward your own candidates. And the chartists, they said that the charter should put forward our candidates. And everywhere they did this, they won by, by show of hands. But the thing is, then people who came, they didn't have the vote. They came and you're not talking about 10 people or 15 people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people came to these meetings. And they had, they could vote that with their hands, a show of hands. But of course, it didn't come because they didn't have the real vote. And therefore, you know, the, those who were defeated, that is the Liberals and the Tory candidates would say, we want the official vote. Now we don't, yes, we want to, and they would get the official vote. They would get elected. But the idea was they should have, they should win their votes all over the country. And they should march on London. There should be a million people in London marching on London. They, they, they compared it like the Saint-Culottes in, in, in, in the French Revolution, in order to be led by the, by an armed force of, of chartists involved in a million people marching on parliament. And if parliament didn't disperse then, they should be caught and thrown into the Thames. That was their, their, their idea. But these are the vivid ideas, but they supported a general strike. But unfortunately it didn't work out in practice, you know, they, they, there was confusion in, in, in, in the chart as leadership. And those who, you know, some people opposed it, that there, there was a lot of twin and froing and so on. And as a result, 1939, there was supposed to be a general strike, but for the 12th of August, it was called for, but this was basically called off and, and, and made into a two day strike, which, which, you know, didn't affect anything really. It didn't make any, any difference. But, and it was a bit of a letdown. And people started to draw radical conclusions. In fact, if a general strike is not going to be called, then we got to take things into our own hands. And the idea of an insurrection was born under those circumstances. Right. And of course, there was an attempted insurrection in 1839 as well in, in November approaching another anniversary of the new, famous Newport Rising. And so was this, sometimes it's difficult looking at it to see whether this was the, the kind of the thwarted beginning of a nationwide insurrection or just an expression of frustration after a defeat. Do you, do you think it's possible to choose between those things or do you think it's a combination of both? And I mean, first of all, what happened in Newport for people who aren't familiar very briefly? Well, in Newport on the 3rd of November, there was an attempt, an attempted insurrection. Well, there was an insurrection. It involved about 20, 30,000 colliers and steel workers, iron workers, who marched to take, to, to seize the town of Newport. And Newport was a very important sort of hub, if you like, for industry and trade and so on at that time. But the main aim was to secure the release of a Chartist leader of Henry Vincent, who was, who had been arrested. He was a key leader of the, of the Welsh Chartists. And he was arrested and imprisoned in Newport Prison. And therefore the plan was that, I get the, I would, the plan was to, to, to seize the town, release him, but it would be, it would be the spark for a, for a will, for a, for a national insurrection to overthrow the government. That's the, that's the essence of it. And there were plans afoot in other areas in, in, in, in Derbyshire, in, in Yorkshire, in, in order to carry through a revolutionary insurrection in these, in these particular areas too. But the plans obviously were kept secret because the, the movement was, was penetrated by all sorts of informers and spies and so on and so forth. And the government was prepared to use these kinds of methods to arrest people and imprison them. So they tried to keep it as much as possible under, under wraps, but at the same time, yes, I mean, this was the first major confrontation, armed confrontation with the British state, the biggest confrontation, I would say, on, on, on home soil of any of the British government is incredible movement. It was defeated. There was tactics that they employed. Well, I don't go the ins and outs. It's very difficult to ins and outs, given the, given the time we've got, but they tried to release certain charters who've been arrested in the, in the Westgate Hotel in the centre of Newport. But the, the troops, their troops waiting on, and they, they opened fire, fire on, on the demonstrate this on the, on the, on the charters, and they killed I think 2022, the most probably like to have died. And they should have waited really and prepared the ground more probably if you were from a tactical point of view. But they rushed us to release their, their, their comrades would have been arrested. I suppose you say that this was the basically the first time this had been tried. They had nothing to go on. They were, they were pioneers, weren't they? They were trying to overthrow the first capitalist state in history the first time ever. So I guess in hindsight, we can see the mistakes, but it must have been really impossible to penetrate that fog at the time and give them that credit. Yes. I mean, look, you could see the charters were giants. And so far as they, they were, they were the pioneers. They, they did, they had little to go on. Of course, behind them, they had the French Revolution and the American Revolution. But as far as the workers revolution was concerned, there was no, no precedent at all. And they were, they were feeling their way forward. And they took very bold steps. That's the point about it. They were, they did get quite close, I would say. And you look at the, the writings of the ruling class of the period, they were terrified that there would be a successful revolution in Britain at that time. And they, they, they, they mobilized the, the military against the workers, you know, and they mobilized the state apparatus, particularly against the workers at every point. But the workers fought back in an extremely courageous fashion. And there were, you know, the leaders, yeah, they may have, they had faults, I could say that, but good God, they had courage, they had the land, they had the guts to carry through, through the measures of this nature. It's a pity that some of the, you know, I would say there's some of the present daily beliefs that could do with a bit of the, the fire, if you like, of the, of the chartists. And clearly they, they, they meant business, but unfortunately they didn't have a completely worked out strategy or idea. They didn't know how fully how to, to, to use the potential they had in their hands to carry through to a conclusion. That was the sad point about it. But they tried, they tried and tried. Yeah. And they, they tried again, there was, we don't really have time to go into in detail, but we, you already brought up this question, the general strike. Okay, it didn't happen in 1839, but effectively a national, political general strike did take place in 1842, didn't it, that it became known as the plug plot. And I, sometimes the way people treat this when it is talked about is it was kind of just an accident really, or that it was about wages. Would you agree with that assessment, or do you, do you see this as, as a strike for the charter? Well, look, there's a very important episode in the history of charters and, you know, and what happened was that the charters were conducting a lot of propaganda in the factory areas and so on as before, particularly in Manchester, around the Manchester area. And many word charters, isn't it? It was a mass movement. But of course, the initial, if I spark for the movement was a cut of 25% in wages of the cotton workers. And that, and that, if like was the first, the first outbreak of the strike. But very quickly, when they, you know, very, very quickly, I mean, literally, as they marched out of the gates, they cheered for the charter, for Fergus Tokona, the leader of charters, of the Northern Star, the Charter's paper. It was a Charter's general strike. There's no two ways about it, but it did come from below, but it had been also fed into by the Charter's propaganda itself of the time. And of all the main speakers, I think the recorded speakers, about 45, 46 recorded speeches at the time, every single one of them, apart from two, were given by charters. And when the workers came together in these mass strike meetings, they pledged themselves to the Charter. When there was a workers trade union conference called by the, in Manchester of the trades, they debated what was the real aim of the strike. And the vast majority, the vast majority, there was a strike to bring about the Charter. Of course, they're in favour of wages, wage increases as well, but the Charter, the Charter, that was it. It's worth pointing out, isn't it, as you've already explained, that to say we're going out on strike indefinitely for the Charter doesn't simply mean we'd like to vote. This is basically a strike for workers' power, isn't it? This is a strike to change the state and basically introduce workers' democracy and workers' control over society. Well, you know, workers learn through experience. And the strike itself is an embryo revolution. In fact, you know, workers don't go to work. This is not the normal situation. And not only that, it was a strike that spread. It spread throughout the whole of Manchester, Lancashire, Lancashire, went up to Scotland, down into Wales, down into Cornwall. It was a political strike. This was an incredible event. The first general strike in the history of the working class, a political general strike. And they learned, as you would find, in the base, every single day, the workers were learning and learning and feeling their power. And they set up committees. And the committees were able to decide what work was going to be done, what wasn't going to be done. Employers that had come to the committee to ask what rights they had and what they didn't have and what they could do or what they couldn't do. This is workers' power in action. And as a matter of fact, the basis, if it had been pulled together, yes, of a workers' state. But that's the end. If everything is in embryo, the embryo is the development. What it needed is to be linked up nationally. And the chart is leaders needed to play a key role. But they didn't fully understand. They didn't call the strike. They didn't fully appreciate it. They give it support. It is true. But they didn't really fully understand what was in their hands, the potential in their hands. And therefore, without the, you know, it can't go on forever. People are going to be starved back for work, to work. And an opportunity which could have been there, it was there for the taking, was missed, unfortunately. Again, it's because of the naivety. I mean, Marxism wasn't around then, scientific socialism wasn't around then. They were feeling their way. They did very well, but they didn't go far enough. We have to understand that. But it showed the potential that was there and the potential movement of the British working class to carry out a revolution was certainly there in 1842. There's no two ways about that. Now, you mentioned Marxism wasn't there. And yeah, as you've already said, Chartism predates Marxism, at least to the most part. So just briefly, and this is that we're already running out of time. So just this is kind of the last kind of thought that I'd like us to explore before we sadly have to end the podcast. What is the relationship between Chartism and Marxism? Are they basically just two discrete blocks in the movement? Or is there an interconnection between the two? Well, firstly, Marxism is a science. And you could say that Marxism was a combination of the best ideas, the most brilliant ideas of the time. It came from German philosophy, British bourgeois economics, classical economics, and French socialism. Those are the three routes, if you like, of Marxism. But on top of that, you must say that Marxism is a development from the experience of the working class itself. Marx developed his ideas on the state, for instance, with an understanding of what happened in France and the French in the commune of 1871. Engels was a Chartist. Engels was here in 1843, met with the Chartist leaders. He joined the Chartist movement. He wrote a book on the conditions of the working class in England in 1844. He observed how the working class moved, how it developed, consciousness changed in the working class. And then with those things, you drew lessons from that, which is Marxism. Marxism draws out the lessons into theory and understanding, not just one episode, but from all over, but nevertheless, Chartism, at that stage, was a school for the working class. And therefore, it was a very rich experience for Marx and Engels, who gave support to the Chartist movement and hope to guide the chart, which he did through their connections with Julian Hani and Ernest Jones, which would be the leaders of the movement. They gave it a very revolutionary socialist outlook. Unfortunately, this was about 1850, where you had the decline of Chartism. That's the point in the emergence and development of British capitalism, which cut across the entire process. But nevertheless, it just showed that Marxism was able to connect with the key layers of the Chartist movement. They learned from it. After all, Julian Hani published the Communist Manifesto in his paper, The Red Republican in 1850. Many conversations and it was in solidarity with the international and so on and so forth. And therefore, there are lessons to be learned that the British workers instinctively came very close to Marxism, the labour theory of the valley, the class struggle, the nature of the state, and so on. All these things were being drawn in Britain at this particular time. It was about a call done for these ideas, a school for these ideas. And therefore, this helped, of course, Marx and Engels to refine and develop their ideas as well. There's no doubt about it. So rather than saying, Marxism is alien to Britain and foreign creed and all the rest is just not the nonsense. It actually, merely the elements were born in the British experience as a matter of fact. And therefore, you know, and what we should understand, it says that Chartism was a tremendous revolutionary movement. But what it really lacked was that, was that scientific, if like, program of Marxism to guide you through to its logical conclusion that came too late. And therefore, we could say that we stand on the shoulders of the great pioneers of the Chartist movement, no doubt about it, all their revolutionary traditions and initiatives. But Marxism gives us that extra edge in which to learn the lessons and be able to understand how to carry through and bring about the fundamental chance changes society that the Chartist wanted. In other words, socialism in Britain and socialism internationally. Thanks very much, Rob. I think that this is an appropriate and inspiring place to finish. Sadly, we have to finish anyway for lack of time. But it sounds to me like there are a lot of lessons contained in this experience of Chartism and in the book itself. And I would certainly urge I've had the opportunity to read and I certainly recommend any Labour movement activist in this country, certainly any Marxist in this country and abroad, get a copy, you can get a copy for £12 now from Wellread and give it a read, because I think there's a lot of experiences and lessons buried in that we need to, we need to unearth and reintroduce into the Labour movement. So I hope you've all enjoyed the podcast. We're going to have to leave you now. But until next time, see you later.