The National Petition 1839
The original text of the People’s Charter, published 8th May 1838 by the London Working Men’s Association (LWMA) was written in the tedious language required of a parliamentary Bill. It’s author, William Lovett, Secretary of the Association, attempted to raise the document’s public profile, when he chose the title ‘People’s Charter’ just before the printing press rolled.
April 1837, the Association set up a joint committee with ‘radical’ MPs to draft a Parliamentary Bill for reform of Parliament, comprising 6 members of the LWMA and 6 ‘Radical’ MPs. This attempt to build an electoral platform for ‘Reform’ fell apart that summer, when the number of ‘radicals’ sitting in the Commons was halved in the June General Election. It was the determination of Lovett that ensured the Six Points survived and were accepted by the understandably very cautious ‘radical’ MPs. Lovett appreciated the need to compromise and agreed that the right for women to vote, included in his original draft, should be put aside, until the male franchise had been settled. He also realised that Parliament was unlikely to take notice of the ’Six Points’ unless a mass movement was created across the country.
Few members of the general public noticed the London launch on 8 May 1838. Eleven days later (19 May) the Birmingham Journal advocated the need for a uniformly organised National Petition requesting implementation of the Six Points. The editor, Robert Kellie Douglas, who was also secretary of the recently revived Birmingham Political Union, included the Preamble he had written, a requirement for a Petition to Parliament. Two days later (21 May), a crowd of some 200,000 women, men and children gathered on Glasgow Green in support of the striking Cotton Spinners of the City, and Douglas’s biblically cadenced Preamble, was given its first public airing:
"We, your petitioners, dwell in a land whose merchants are noted for enterprise, whose manufacturers are very skilful, and whose workmen are proverbial for their industry. The land itself is goodly, the soil rich, and the temperature wholesome; it is abundantly furnished with the materials of commerce and trade; it has numerous and convenient harbours; in facility of internal communication it exceeds all others. Yet, with all these elements of national prosperity, and with every disposition and capacity to take advantage of them, we find ourselves overwhelmed with public and private suffering.
We are bowed down under a load of taxes; which notwithstanding, fall greatly short of the wants of our rulers; our traders are trembling on the verge of bankruptcy; our workmen are starving; capital brings no profit, labour no remuneration; the home of the artificer is desolate, and the warehouse of the pawnbroker is full; the workhouse is crowded, and the manufactory is deserted.
The energies of a mighty kingdom have been wasted in building up the power of selfish and ignorant men, and its resources squandered for their aggrandisement. Required, as we are universally to support and obey the laws, nature and reason entitle us to demand that in the making of the laws, the universal voice shall be implicitly listened to. We perform the duties of freemen; we must have the privileges of freemen. Therefore, we demand universal suffrage. The suffrage, to be exempt from the corruption of the wealthy and the violence of the powerful, must be secret."
Read out loud at meetings, particularly those held indoors, the words of Douglas flowed through the veins of readers/listeners of the King James Bible. The language touched the nerves of the four nations – the Six Points found followers en masse in Scotland, England, Wales and to some extent in Ireland, too. It set people alight and as designed, stirred them to sign the National Petition. And they did.
1¼ million signed in 1839, delivered to Parliament July 12th 1839; mass petitioning continued in 1842 (3m) and 1848 (6m).
Each Petition was rejected without debate and none of the sheets with signatures have survived; apparently, they were burned in the boiler furnaces of the Houses of Parliament. This was more than just a great loss of historical memory; it was a deliberate act of symbolic mass extermination. Millions of people who sought to act as citizens, by declaring their name with signature or mark, were cast into oblivion.
The National Petition was circulated in Welsh, as well as English, but not Irish. Hugh Williams of Carmarthen, an honorary member of the LWMA, produced the Welsh translation.
