The threat of unrest surely influenced such otherwise unrelated reforms as the Factory act and the repeal of the Corn Laws. The radicalism that surfaced in the agitation for the Charter and a desire for a working-class voice in foreign affairs eventually channeled itself into related areas like the Socialist movement.
The Chartists' six main demands were: votes for all men; equal electoral districts; abolition of the requirement that Members of Parliament be property owners; payment for M. Victorian Web. The Battle of the Westgate was a bloody and not especially brief struggle, but it clearly resulted in the defeat and confusion of the Chartists and discredited the physical force strategy.
The subsequent trial for high treason of the Rising's leaders, their conviction, and the commutation of the sentence to transportation to Australia, went some way towards rescuing the cause in that it highlighted the dignity of John Frost in particular, and mobilised sympathy for those on trial.
It also clouded the historical record in that the defence case sought to deny that the Rising had been a genuine attempt at insurrection. After the Rising the Chartist movement continued in Newport and its hinterland but was never as strong or as threatening again. None of the six points of the Charter were achieved during the lifetime of the movement, but five of the six have come to pass - the exception being annual parliaments - and full political equality for women was attained in two stages, in and in The Chartists were ahead of their time in envisaging a much more democratic political system than the one that existed in nineteenth-century Britain.
There was much more to Chartism than the six points. This was a manifesto, an umbrella under which different campaigns and objectives could shelter. Many Chartists made improving the living standards of working people a priority: a more democratic and representative political system would be the means to achieve such an end.
Some imagined a different economic system involving workers' control of industry. The demonstration was considered a failure and the rejection of this last petition marked the end of Chartism. Some opponents of the movement feared that Chartists were not just interested in changing the way Parliament was elected, but really wanted to turn society upside down by starting a revolution.
They also thought that the Chartists who said they disapproved of violent protest were stirring up a wave of riots around the country. On 4 November , 5, men marched into Newport, in Monmouthshire, and attempted to take control of the town. Led by three well-known Chartists John Frost, William Jones and Zephaniah Williams , they gathered outside the Westgate Hotel, where the local authorities were temporarily holding a number of potential troublemakers.
Troops protecting the hotel opened fire, killing at least 22 people, and brought the uprising to an abrupt end. Preston in Lancashire was the scene of rioting in Support for Chartism peaked at times of economic depression and hunger.
There was rioting in Stockport, due to unemployment and near-starvation, and Manchester, where workers protested against wage cuts, wanting "a fair day's pay for a fair day's labour". The "Plug Plots" were a series of strikes in Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands and parts of Scotland that took place in the summer of
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