Francis Place and the Working-Men’s Association which gave Chartism its name and programme never had any considerable voice in its direction.[132]
Feargus O’Connor, who had sat in parliament from 1832 to 1835 for an Irish constituency, was from the first the real leader of the movement. His personality and his rhetorical powers roused the manufacturing districts in the North and the Midlands to form political unions for the Charter in 1838, and his presence dominated the first Convention, held in London, with Lovett for its secretary. Later, O’Connor’s obvious weaknesses, his vanity and egotism, his want of self-control and that “one fatal disqualification for a leader of revolt—the fear of the police”[133]—left leadership in his hands, but left him a leader without followers.
Next to O’Connor stood another Irish orator, James Bronterre O’Brien, a man of finer character, and clearer head, but smaller gifts of command.
South Wales, the manufacturing districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and towns like Birmingham, Leicester, and Northampton, were the strongholds of Chartism, and “in the dark days of the late thirties and early forties it was a real and dangerous power.”[134] Feargus O’Connor never advocated an armed rising, and advised the abandonment of the huge torchlight processions; but pikes were being fashioned and men were being drilled in preparation for a revolution that was to end the Whig rule, and give the working classes the reins of government. The circulation of the Northern Star, O’Connor’s weekly paper, stood at 50,000 in those days.
Riots at Newport (Monmouth) and Birmingham in 1839, followed by several arrests and imprisonments of the Chartist leaders the following year, ended for the time all notions of a successful revolution. Lord John Russell declared strongly against manhood suffrage when the question was raised in the House of Commons, and on a division in the House the petition for the Charter was rejected by 237 to 48 votes.
The outbreak at Birmingham, provoked, in the first place, by the interference of a body of London police with an orderly meeting in the Bull Ring, was put down in two days by the soldiers; but not till many houses had been attacked and a considerable amount of property destroyed. No robberies or petty thefts accompanied the riot.
At Newport the harsh prison treatment of Vincent, a Chartist advocate, convicted for what was held to be a political offence, brought a crowd of 10,000 men, led by Frost, William, and Jones, to demand his release. The insurgents had a few rifles and pikes, but were generally unarmed, and the fire of the military soon overpowered them. But lives were lost on both sides, and Frost and his two lieutenants were sentenced to death, though the sentence was at once reduced to transportation for life, and some years later to simple banishment from British dominions.
Feargus O’Connor, Bronterre O’Brien, and all the chief speakers of the movement were brought to trial for seditious utterance in 1840, and in most cases sent to prison either for twelve months or two years.
With these imprisonments and the general election of 1841 came the first serious disintegration of the Chartist movement.[135] O’Brien and O’Connor differed vigorously on the question of election policy, and before they were released from prison were expressing their opinions in the Northern Star. O’Connor, full of wrath at the repressive treatment meted out to Chartists by the Whig Government, was for attacking the Whigs at the election, and O’Brien objected to this as a pro-Tory policy.[136]
The decision to run independent Chartist candidates for parliament in certain constituencies, and the failure of these candidates to get returned on the limited franchise of 1832, increased disunion in the Chartist ranks and brought demoralisation.