Description

The six Chartist leaders profiled in this historical study reveal the texture and class dimensions of this push for democracy and social progress in the United Kingdom. From Richard Bagnall Reed, a blacksmith who managed the Newcastle Chronicle and ran guns to Garibaldi, and Reverend Henry Solly, a pamphleteer and Unitarian minister who campaigned for cooperatives and the abolition of slavery, to William Villiers Sankey, an aristocrat and member of Parliament, the social backgrounds of such champions of the Chartist movement are used to explore the role of the middle class in campaigns for working-class rights. Comparative analyses provide insights into the development of dissent and the nature of radicalism in the nineteenth century.