The Real History of Chartism, or Eight Fallacies about the Chartist Movement, by David Goodway
The Real History of Chartism, or Eight Fallacies about the Chartist Movement, by David GoodwayPublished by the Socialist History Society, 30 pages. A5 size booklet (N5423)
From the preface: In 2012, the Socialist History Society held a series of talks at Bishopsgate Institute on 'Aspects of Popular Protest'. They were conceived in part as a response to the outbreak of mass rioting that occurred first in London and then rapidly spread to several towns and cities across the country in early August 2011. The SHS decided that it might be able to make a small contribution to a wider public understanding of the nature of public protest by examining some key aspects of the history of political protest movements over past centuries, including those that were committed to radical reform like Chartism and others campaigning for popular justice at various levels, such as Luddism.
The major outbreak of public unrest in contemporary Britain in August 2011 was initially sparked by the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan by police in Tottenham. The public anger rapidly spiralled out of control into major public disorder with thousands of people involved in looting, arson and civil unrest. More than three thousand people were eventually arrested and over a thousand were charged with various public order offences, many receiving punitive sentences as magistrates sought to make an example of the rioters. Politicians and social commentators engaged in much anxious debates in the media about the causes of the riots. The talks on popular protest were the SHS's way of engaging with these discussions.
Clearly, these riots had many political, social and economic ramifications, but they also seemed to lack any precise political ambitions beyond an expression of anger and, while the events demonstrated a profound sense of alienation among large swathes of the population, particularly the inner city youth, they did not constitute the emergence of a new political movement in any shape or form.
The vast differences and possible parallels between these 21st Century disturbances, which quickly became branded as the 'Face book riots', and the incidences of popular protest in previous centuries were issues well worth subjecting to close scrutiny.
As part of the SHS's series of talks, social historian David Goodway, an authority on the Chartists and a long-term member of the SHS, delivered a talk in the library of Bishopsgate Institute on Chartism as a mass protest movement of the working class. The presentation was extremely well received by a full house and has now resulted in this SHS Occasional Publication.
In this booklet Dr Goodway reminds us that Chartism was an extensive and popular national political movement of the working class unlike any that had occurred in history. In Goodway claims that it is "the high point of the British workingmovement" and as such it is constantly worth re-examining in complexity.
The Socialist History Society believes that this study by Dr. Goodway provides both a succinct and readable introduction to this important mass movement and offers a useful overview of the historiographical approaches that have taken Chartism as their focus of attention in recent years. We are pleased to be able to make it available in print and believe that it deserves to be widely read.
The condition of the booklet is generally very good. The covers are clean and tidy, the staple spine is tight and intact, and all pages are clean, intact, unblemished and tightly bound. Please note their is an old price printed on the rear side cover, as well as a small price sticker
| Condition | New |