1837- 38: The People’s Charter (see below) called for electoral reform, including the vote for every working man. Hitherto only property owners and the wealthy were entitled to vote. It was drafted by the London Working Men’s Association, formed in London the year before. The Reform movement had advocated 4 of its points since the 1790s, but had met with scant success. The violent suppression of a large but peaceful meeting at Peterloo in 1819 had roused increasing resentment and unrest. This was only exacerbated by the 1832 Reform Act which failed to meet expectations, emancipating middle class employers, but not workers, (who accounted for 6 out of 7 of the male population.)

Living and working conditions continued to deteriorate in the harsh years of the 1830s. The misery of the working classes was intensified by their fear and hatred of the New Poor Law , raised food prices caused by the Corn Laws, the deportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrsf for forming a trades union lodge, unemployment and the lowering of wages, and continuing high rates of taxation. The situation brought the working class campaign for a voice in law-making to a head, and agitation for political reform passed naturally into Chartism.

With the formal adoption of the People’s Charter in 1838 the Chartist movement was formed, uniting the various strands of radicalism under its banner.

Many of the people who joined the Chartist movement had campaigned previously for other radical causes.
Ben Rushton’s record reached back to the years of Luddism. He ‘had suffered at the hands of authorities in earlier struggles for reform. Perhaps he had known the old Painite, Baines, who was transported to Botany Bay for ‘twisting in’ Luddites. Certainly he reminds us that Luddite prisoners sang hymns on the scaffold while awaiting execution; and that there were riots in Halifax when the Methodist minister refused the victims sacred burial.’*

Rushton was first noticed among the leaders of a march from Skircoat to Huddersfield to protest the Peterloo massacre in 1819. (eyewitness accounts). He became spokesman for the local handloom weavers in the 1830s, during the hard years of their struggle in the face of mechanisation, wage reductions and food shortages. He later spoke out in favour of reduction of factory working hours, against the new Poor Law and Union Workhouses, and was active in meetings of the Halifax Radical Union. In January 1838 Ben spoke out in support of the charter, and declared that “until they had universal suffrage the aristocracy would continue to rob them. (Hx Guardian 23.1.38)

Though radical speakers and political leaders were liable to arrest and could even be hung or deported, Ben was to chair some of the greatest meetings ever seen. Marching thousands of miles around the countryside to officiate at demonstrations, he became a well known and leading member of the West Yorkshire Chartists, chairing many of the great meetings at Skircoat, Blackstone Edge and Hartshead Moor. He was later to become Treasurer, and Alternate Representative to the Convention for the West Riding. He remained a loyal and active Chartist until his death.

* D. Thompson. Halifax as a Chartist Centre.p13.

The Six Points

OF THE

PEOPLE’S

CHARTER

1837

1. A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, or sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for crime.

2. The ballot.- to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.

3. No property qualifications for members of parliament- this enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.

4. Payment of members, thus enabling an honest trades-man, 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 twelvemonth; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now.