Between 1780 and 1840 methods and types of popular political protest underwent enormous changes and developments. The period begins with the Gordon Riots in which the London crowd displayed little independent political thought and awareness and ends with the first major independent working-class movement the world has ever seen – Chartism. Those historians inclined to interpret these developments as progressive and modernising would be overlooking certain complexities and subtleties. Violent mob-like actions were still evident in the 1830s as indeed were manifestations of the vital but secret insurrectionary tradition that dated back to the 1790s. Indeed Chartism can trace its heritage back to the many reformist and radical traditions, not least the ‘mass platform’ built up by Hunt and others after 1815. It would be true, however, to observe that the English masses increasingly utilised new political techniques and actions, which suggested that the ‘moral economy’ and defence of custom were being replaced by more ambitious and ultimately more threatening activities which went beyond narrow economic demands. This would explain why the authorities became more apprehensive of popular protest. It possessed the language and the potential to be revolutionary.

The reactionary crowd

The term ‘mob’, indicating a mindless and irrational group, would seem at first sight to be an appropriate description for the London crowd which took control for nearly a week in June 1780. The Gordon Riots were not only the most violent episode of the eighteenth century in the capital, they have also never since been equalled in terms of people killed or executed in an episode of civil disorder. Likewise, the destruction of property was extensive, amounting to £100,000, which probably only twentieth-century bombing campaigns have surpassed.

Early studies of the riots, particularly by de Castro (1926) and the more popular account by Hibbert (1958), provide detailed narratives which describe the behaviour of the ‘reckless’, ‘drunken and desperate’ mobs in what has come to be regarded as the most complex and in some ways the most puzzling examples of civil commotion. The actual events surrounding their origins and the progress of the riots are not in dispute.