Title: Why did Chartism fail?
Word count: 1,412
Why did Chartism fail?
Language of class
At the time of the industrial revolution British society was completely restructured; economic, social and cultural changes leading to the chartist movement’s fight for political change. Historically, the term ‘Chartist’ has been used to refer to the political pressure group. To assess failure, we must first look at aims of the chartist movement. The Six Points of the People's Charter was the foundation of Chartist beliefs and aspirations. These aims encompassed universal suffrage for men using a secret ballot system. Allowing representatives that weren’t part of the property owning middle class or aristocracy to become MPs by getting rid of property …show more content…
Some chartist to go further outside the agreed upon charter for example improving education and working conditions. One of the main reasons the Chartists failed was because they were divided in their methods. William Lovett, Francis Place and Thomas Attwood all believed in peaceful protest; they rejected violet methods. On the other side, were two members Fergus O’Connor and John Frost who believed violence would have to be used if the wanted to catch the attention of the upper classes and get their demands met by the rich and powerful men who controlled parliament. At the beginning chartist bought petitions to parliament a diplomatic method. In July 1839 they bought their first petition had 1.2 million signatures on it. Unfortunately, a large majority of Parliament rejected it by 235 votes to 46. Frost responded with violence leading the Newport Rising of 1000 armed people with clubs. The tragic results of the soldiers opening fire on citizens lead to the death of 22 men were leaving a further 50 were injured. The rest of the supporters fled. All the support they were steadily gathering for the last few years was lost. Many were repelled by the danger of losing their jobs or even possibly their lives were too great a …show more content…
They faced a massive consequence as they lost a lot of public support, and the support of their founding members as they tried to distance themselves from the chaos. People became fearful of thee violence associated with charism they were too scared to get involved by showing support for the Chartists. If they had not participated in violent acts, they may have had more supporters but instead they lost William Lovett who was disgusted by the killings of so many as a repercussion for attempting violence against the state, dividing the chartist effort and weaken in their progression. The middle class especially were fearful of this behaviour as it showed massive disruption to society and threat to the status quo. The chartist was made up of both middle and working-class people so there were many clashes of perspective. The Chartists did not all belong to the same class and this meant that many middle-class supporters withdrew as signs of violence appeared. The movement was greatly affected by this and began showing signs of failure to as middle-class members left was less money to fund chartist