Chartism was one of the world’s first major working-class movements. It got its name from the People’s Charter which demanded radical political reforms and one its leaders was the Irishman Feargus (also spelt Fergus) O’Connor.
Born to a Protestant landed family in Cork in 1794, O’Connor trained as a lawyer and became an MP. He was a nephew of Arthur O’Connor, the United Irishman who travelled to France in 1796 to discuss plans for French assistance in a future rebellion against the political establishment in Ireland.
Feargus O’Connor took part in Whiteboy agrarian protests in northwest Cork in the early 1830s. Elected MP for Co Cork in 1832, he was a supporter of Daniel O’Connell and the Repeal movement but the two men later fell out.
Re-elected in 1835, he was subsequently disqualified as he failed to meet the property qualification for members. To qualify for office, MPs had to receive a certain amount of income from land each year. Despite this setback, he continued the struggle in other ways.
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An imposing figure who stood at about 6ft tall and a gifted orator, he was given the nickname of “the rattler”. He toured Britain advocating for a range of political reforms and improved working conditions for those in the industrial cities and towns of England, Wales and Scotland.
The People’s Charter, published in 1838, was a manifesto drawn up by two self-educated radicals for the London Working Men’s Association (of which O’Connor was a member).
It set out six demands (known as the Six Points) that they hoped would reform a corrupt political system where landowning elites made all the decisions and ordinary working-class citizens did not have a voice.
The demands included universal male suffrage, voting to take place by secret ballot, parliamentary elections to be held every year (not every five years), constituencies to be of equal size, MPs to be paid, and for the property qualification to become an MP to be abolished.
One of the ways in which the movement’s ideals were spread was through a radical weekly newspaper that O’Connor founded. The first edition of the Northern Star was published in Leeds in November 1837.
Mass outdoor meetings were held to inform the population of their aims. Pamphlets, songs and plays were written. Slogans such as “No taxation without representation” and “The Charter and no surrender”, were also used to convey their demands in a clear manner.
In Ireland the movement had its supporters and its detractors. A wool merchant named Patrick O’Higgins founded a Chartist association in Dublin in 1839 but the movement did not manage to win over large numbers of followers.
Perhaps the reason for this was the opposition of both the Catholic clergy and Daniel O’Connell, once O’Connor’s friend and now his firm enemy. O’Connell boasted that he kept Ireland free of what he termed the “pollution” of Chartism and that he led the war against “socialists – rank, arrogant and blasphemous infidels”.
Mass petitioning throughout Britain was used to make the voice of the working classes heard in the corridors of power. More than 1.25 million signatures were collected for the first national Chartist petition to make their charter law. Launched in Glasgow in 1838, it was submitted to the House of Commons in Westminster in June 1839. When parliament rejected it, unrest broke out.
A second petition in 1842 with more than 3 million signatures was rejected by 287 votes to 49, leading to unrest. Between 1839 and 1842, some 2,000 Chartists were arrested, tried and sent to prison.
O’Connor was elected MP for Nottingham in 1847. He was the first and only Chartist MP and one of the more radical voices in the movement. The third and final petition, submitted to Westminster in 1848 with more than 5 million signatures, was similarly rejected. Its rebuttal did not lead to protest, as had been feared.
It seemed as if the movement had run out of steam and it splintered into different factions. Following the rejection of each of the petitions, O’Connor was one of those who believed that physical force was the only real option open to them to gain political rights.
O’Connor’s health declined rapidly and, after displaying signs of serious mental illness, he was declared insane. Placed in an asylum in 1852, he died in 1855.
Figures vary but it has been estimated that anywhere upwards of 50,000 people attended his funeral in London, showing that he was not forgotten despite being out of the public eye for a number of years.
In an oration given at his graveside in Kensal Green Cemetery, he was remembered as “one who had given his life to the cause of liberty and humanity, to the cause of the poor and the oppressed”. Chartism did not achieve its aims during O’Connor’s lifetime but it laid the groundwork for change in future years.