Printed Page 349-0(cont.)

Sources for Western Society: Printed Page 349

21-6 | Workers Demand the Vote
The People’s Charter (1838)

In 1832 a major reform of Britain’s Parliament took place. Although working-class agitation was a significant factor in pressuring the government to act, the newly created uniform borough (town) voting franchise excluded almost the entire working class from the electorate. One response to this outcome was Chartism, an explicitly working-class political movement based on “The People’s Charter,” a list of demands embodied in a petition to Parliament. The charter was drawn up by six members of Parliament—Daniel O’Connell, John Arthur Roebuck, John Temple Leader, Charles Hindley, Thomas Perronet Thompson, and William Sharman Crawford—and six working-class radicals—Henry Hetherington, John Cleave, James Watson, Richard Moore, William Lovett, and Henry Vincent. Although overwhelmingly rejected when it was presented to Parliament in 1839, 1842, and 1848, five of the charter’s six demands (annual Parliamentary elections being the exception) became law by 1918.

  1. A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for crime.
  2. The ballot1—To protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
  3. No property qualification for Members of Parliament2—thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.
  4. Payment of members, thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the Country.
  5. Equal constituencies securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of large ones.
  6. Annual Parliaments, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since though a constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each ensuing twelve-month; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now.

London Working Men’s Association, “Six Points of the People’s Charter,” www.chartists.net/The-six-points.htm, accessed March 11, 2013.

READING QUESTIONS

  1. Question

    Given that roughly 80 percent of Great Britain’s population was working class, what would have been the political consequences of the first point of the Charter’s enactment?

  2. Question

    The Charter calls for an end to property qualifications for members of Parliament and also for payment of MPs. What do these two demands suggest about the nature of Parliamentary representation in early- and mid-nineteenth-century Britain? Who was running the country?