|
Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in Britain which existed from 1838 to 1858. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country, and the South Wales Valleys. Support for the movement was at its highest in 1839, 1842, and 1848, when petitions signed by millions of working people were presented to the House of Commons. The strategy employed was to use the scale of support which these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings demonstrated to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on constitutional methods to secure its aims, though there were some who became involved in insurrectionary activities, notably in south Wales and Yorkshire. The People's Charter called for six reforms to make the political system more democratic: # A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime. # The Secret Ballot – To protect the elector in the exercise of his vote. # No Property Qualification for Members of Parliament – thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor. # Payment of Members, thus enabling an honest trades-man, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency; when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the country. # Equal Constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of large ones. # Annual Parliament Elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since as the constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each ensuing twelvemonth; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now. Chartism can be interpreted as a continuation of the 19th century fight against corruption and for democracy in an industrial society, but attracted considerably more support than the radical groups for economic reasons including wage cuts and unemployment.〔Malcolm Chase, ''Chartism: A New History'' (Manchester UP, 2007)〕〔Boyd Hilton, ''A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?: England 1783–1846'' (2006) pp 612–21〕 ==Origin== After the passing of the Reform Act 1832, which failed to extend the vote beyond those owning property, the political leaders of the working class made speeches claiming that there had been a great act of betrayal. This sense that the working class had been betrayed by the middle class was strengthened by the actions of the Whig governments of the 1830s. Notably, the hated new Poor Law Amendment was passed in 1834, depriving working people of outdoor relief and driving the poor into workhouses, where families were separated. It was the massive wave of opposition to this measure in the north of England in the late 1830s that gave Chartism the numbers that made it a mass movement. It seemed that only securing the vote for working men would change things, and indeed Dorothy Thompson, the pre-eminent historian of Chartism, defined the movement as the time when "thousands of working people considered that their problems could be solved by the political organization of the country."〔Dorothy Thompson, ''The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution'' (1984)〕 In 1836 the London Working Men's Association was founded by William Lovett and Henry Hetherington,〔(Minute Book of the London Working Men’s Association. ) British Library 2011. Retrieved 19 July 2011.〕 providing a platform for Chartists in the south east. The origins of Chartism in Wales can be traced to the foundation in the autumn of 1836 of Carmarthen Working Men's Association. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chartism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|