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Chartism Remembered: William Aitken, Liberalism, and the Politics of Memory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Robert G. Hall
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Extract

Early one Sunday morning, in August 1839, “a very authoritative knock" on the door awoke the young Chartist William Aitken and his family. After a thorough search of his house for “revolutionary and seditious documents,” the chief constable and his men placed Aitken under arrest and marched him through the silent streets of Ashton-under-Lyne. Recalling his sense of distress and anguish some thirty years later, Aitken tried to find solace in the ultimate triumph of his principles, in his conviction that “the cause of liberty is eternal, and that the principles of democracy, which are now becoming universal, must be right and must in the end prevail.” This optimistic reaffirmation of his life's struggle for “bread and liberty” appeared in the fifth installment of his autobiography in the Ashton News, a Liberal newspaper. Unfortunately, the tone of quiet confidence and hope that pervaded his autobiography apparently masked a growing sense of private despair and ever deepening bouts of depression. Some two weeks before the publication of this installment, his wife, Mary, had found Aitken lying on the bedroom floor, “with a fearful gash in his throat.”

That many thousands of working men and women “thronged the streets” on the day of his funeral was hardly surprising. The son of a Scottish cordwainer and later sergeant-major, Aitken came from, as the Ashton News put it, “the people” and “knew intimately their feelings and their wishes, and could express what the many felt with fullness and point.” His own identification with the working class came through clearly in the title of his autobiography, “Remembrances and Struggles of A Working Man for Bread and Liberty.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , October 1999 , pp. 445 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1999

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References

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25 For his use of the terms “working men” and “the working-classes,” see William Aitken, pp. 14, 19–22, 26, 28. In the last two installments, which deal with Chartism, he avoided both constructions, with one exception, in favor of the term “the people.” He twice referred, however, to “middle classes” on pp. 28 and 43.

26 Ibid., pp. 14, 19, 30, 39–40, 42–43.

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30 Ashton Reporter (2 October 1869). During his imprisonment in 1840 and flight to the United States during 1842–43, she had to manage on her own; the 1851 census listed her as a schoolmistress. See Northern Star (15 July 1843); and PRO, HO 107/2233.

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42 Ibid., p. 14.

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48 Ashton Reporter (3 October 1868). See also Ashton Reporter (16 and 30 January 1869).

49 Ashton Reporter (8 September 1860). For an overview of the Hobson family's involvement in radical publishing, see Ashton Reporter (17 August 1867).

50 Ashton Reporter (26 December 1857). Note the similarities to Aitken's October 1868 speech. For the war of the unstamped as part of the struggle for “Liberal principles,” see Ashton Reporter (5 October 1861).

51 Ashton Reporter (30 January 1869).

52 For explicit attempts to come to terms with Chartism in this way, see Ashton Reporter (19 March 1859 and 20 September 1856).

53 Founded in January 1868, the Ashton News apparently received crucial financial backing from Hugh Mason, red hot Dissenter (Independent) and Liberal; a former mayor of Ashton, the wealthy mill owner later served as M.P. for Ashton, 1880–85. Williams, Philip Martin and Williams, David L., Extra, Extra, Read All about It: A Brief History of the Newspapers of Ashton-under-Lyne, 1847–1990 (Ashton-under-Lyne, 1991)Google Scholar.

54 In the original text of his “letters,” obvious typographical errors and strange, erratic punctuation were common. The News only infrequently broke up the text into paragraphs. For instance, the 16 October installment contained only two paragraph breaks. In the 1996 edition, the obvious errors have been corrected, and the text has been broken up into more frequent paragraphs. See William Aitken, p. 56.

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58 Ibid., p. 24; and Ashton Reporter (16 and 30 January 1869).

59 William Aitken, p. 36.

60 Ashton Reporter (14 November 1857, and 5 February and 20 August 1859); and National Reformer (13 February 1864). For radical dining during the 1820s and 1830s, see Epstein, James, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790–1850 (New York, 1994), pp. 147–65Google Scholar.

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63 Ibid., p. 35.

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68 Ashton Reporter (30 January 1869).

69 William Aitken, pp. 15, 34, 16, 19.

70 Ibid., p. 19.

71 Ibid., pp. 24, 23. For the tendency of the Ten Hours movement to portray women as dependents and to use “the language of patriarchal protection,” see Gray, Robert, The Factory Question and Industrial England, 1830–1860 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 29–31, 36–37Google Scholar. See also Clark, Anna, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (Berkeley, 1995), pp. 243–44Google Scholar; and Malone, Carolyn, “Gendered Discourses and the Making of Protective Labor Legislation in England, 1830–1914,” Journal of British Studies 37 (April 1998): 166–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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73 Ibid., p. 27. For this same point, see Aitken, , “A Story of the First French Revolution,” Oddfellows' Magazine (July 1869): 204Google Scholar.

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75 Ibid., p. 38; Jowett to Your Lordship, 3 July 1839, PRO, HO 40/37; and Hall, “Work, Class, and Politics,” pp. 153–56.

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78 Northern Star (17 November 1838).

79 Aitken, William, “To the Non-Electors and Electors of the Borough of Ashton-under-Lyne” (Ashton-under-Lyne, 1841)Google Scholar, Tameside Local Studies Library, L322. For a copy, see William Aitken, p. 33.

80 William Aitken, p. 36.

81 Manchester and Salford Advertiser (22 June 1839); and Manchester Chronicle (10 August 1839). See also, Deegan to Fletcher, 6 August 1839, British Library, Francis Place Papers, Additional MSS 34,245B.

82 Hall, , “Work, Class, and Politics,” pp. 155–57Google Scholar; and Returns of Every Person Confined for Charges for Printing and Publishing Seditious or Blasphemous Libels, 1840, BPP, [600] XXXVIII”: 10, 12, 8. The day after the general strike of 1842 had begun, an Ashton meeting of striking factory workers appointed six delegates to spread the strike for a fair day's wages and the Charter: William Aitken, Alexander Challenger, Richard Pilling, Thomas Storer, George Johnson, and James Taylor. See Treasury Solicitor's Papers, PRO, TS 11/813/2677; and Deposition of Joseph Armitage, Records of the Palatine of Lancaster, PRO, PL 27/11, part 2.

83 William Aitken, p. 28.

84 Ibid., pp. 28, 42–43.

85 Wright, Thomas, Our New Masters (London, 1873; reprint ed., New York, 1969), p. 62Google Scholar.

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87 Ibid., pp. 28–29.

88 Mill to Kinnear, 19 August and 25 September 1865, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. Mineka, Francis E. and Lindley, Dwight N., vol. 16, The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill (Toronto, 1963), pp. 1093–94 and 1103–4Google Scholar.

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90 Ashton News (2 October 1869).

91 Ashton Reporter (30 January 1869).

92 William Aitken, p. 34.

93 Northern Star (18 May 1839). For other accounts of this event, see Mott to Poor Law Commissioners, 9 May 1839, PRO, HO 73/55; Manchester Guardian (8 May 1839).

94 Manchester Examiner (11 April 1848).

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