Chartist Studies. Edited by Asa Briggs. MacMillan. 1959. 42s.
Between the wars there was little new writing on the Chartist movement. The standard texts—Dolleans, Beer, Rosenblatt, Slosson, West and Hovell—had all appeared before 1920. They were mostly written, putting the matter in broad terms, within the Fabian tradition; with, that is, a good deal of of sympathy for the movement as a whole, a marked tendency to applaud Lovett and denigrate O’Connor, a too-simple economic framework for the political story, and a lack of comprehension of its radical-revolutionary implications.
In recent years, some notable advances have been made, not least in the local history of the movement. The older histories were mostly written from the national standpoint and from the national press, and the considerable regional diversities were largely smothered. To the growing appreciation of the importance of the local and regional histories of Chartism, this present volume is a most useful addition. It comprises a general introductory essay by the editor, a series of town and area studies—Manchester, Leeds, Leicester, Glasgow, Suffolk, Somerset and Wiltshire, Wales; then a second general essay by Asa Briggs, which serves to introduce three essays on national themes: the Chartist Land Plan, the Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law Leaguers, and the Government and the Chartists. The whole volume represents a substantial enlargement of our knowledge, and what we now want—without seeming ungrateful for what we have been given—is a companion volume which deals with the other major urban areas so far excluded: London, Birmingham Bradford, Halifax, Bristol and Lancashire outside Manchester; and in Scotland, at least Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.
Like all volumes of essays by different hands, the quality of individual contributions varies a good deal; and this is a matter over which an editor has rather less control than is often believed. Among the town studies in this present book, Mr. J. F. C. Harrison’s essays on Leeds and Leicester seem to me outstanding, and his study of Leicester in particular the best short account of a local movement yet published. Apart from the editor’s own contributions, which are as lively as usual, Miss Brown’s essay on the relationships between the Chartists and the Leaguers is a model—lucid, well argued and well written.