FORUM: Protest inspiration from the 19th-century ‘slaves of capital’

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Published: 15 April, 2011
by KEITH FLETT

THE activists from UK Uncut, who regularly take action on tax evasion and avoidance issues – some of whom were arrested at Fortnum and Masons on the day of the huge TUC March for the Alternative last month – reportedly sprang from a meeting of friends in an Islington pub. And no doubt many thousands from the area marched to Hyde Park on March 26.

It was just the latest point of protest from an area that has a rich tradition of demanding a better and fairer society.

That can be dated back certainly to the 1840s when Clerkenwell and Islington Greens were regular gathering points for Chartist protests.

I say specifically the 1840s because a glance at a map of London for the period will show you that Islington was then the northern most boundary of the capital. It took the coming of the suburban railways and then the tube after 1850 to allow development further out.

The advantage of Islington and Clerkenwell Greens as gathering points for protesters was that they were both right on the edge of the City. Indeed, the London May Day march often assembles at Clerkenwell today.

The Chartists in the 1840s focused on obtaining the vote but they saw that as a way to get a better society for ordinary working people.

So on May 6, 1839, the London Democratic Association, part of the left wing of Chartism, gathered in Smithfield. They had been banned from marching and when the City police appeared they proceeded to a rally at Islington Green, outside of the control of the City Peelers. Here the radical Chartist leader George Julian Harney, later to collaborate with Marx and Engels, called on those present to “resist oppression and assert their rights”.

August 1842 brought a General Strike in the north of England and solidarity rallies in London. On the evening of Thursday August 18 that year, The Times reported an “immense” gather­ing on Islington Green, which disper­sed and then reconvened at Clerkenwell Green before marching through the City to Lincoln’s Inn Fields where a meeting was held at 10pm.

As the 1840s wore on, Clerkenwell Green became the more favoured of the two Islington assembly points.

The flyer for the great Chartist demonstration of Monday April 10, 1848 (pictured) calls on City and Finsbury Chartists to meet on Clerkenwell Green at 9am and then to march to Kennington Common. The flyer notes: “We are the slaves of capital, we demand protection to our labour.”

The April 10 protest made the mistake of gathering in south London. Police and the army then blocked a return over the Thames bridges to Westminster.

The mistake was not repeated. Indeed, Clerkenwell Green became one of the key gathering points for Chartists in the months that followed, with frequent clashes with the police.

By May 31/June 1 two detachments of troops and two of Horse Guards were stationed by Clerkenwell Green to try and clear the area of Chartist protesters. The result, predictably, was rioting into the early hours, although no Chartist meeting was held.

The historical point is that in the 1840s protests on specific issues like the vote often led to wider complaints about an unequal and unfair society. The range of protests included large meetings and marches certainly, but also defiance of the law when these were banned, and regular confrontations with authority.

The Chartist slogan was: “Peace­ably if we may, forcibly if we must.” 

When we look to the current slash-and-burn policies of the present government, those north Londoners of the 1840s can serve as inspiration on how organise against them.

• Dr Keith Flett is a trade union activist and convener of the London Socialist Historians Group and author of Chartism After 1848:The Working Class and the Politics of Radical Education (Merlin Press)