The Chartists, Exclusive Dealing & Sunak’s Brewery visit

From the late 1830s through to the early 1850s one of the many tactics employed by the Chartists in their campaign for the vote was Exclusive Dealing. This focused on supporters of Chartism only using businesses that supported the People’s Charter. Partly it was about promoting Chartist owned co-operative businesses. Partly it was about boycotting shops and pubs that refused to back the call for the vote.

The boycott tactic has survived into modern times, that of the campaign against South African apartheid and now the BDS movement on Israel.

At the start of the Tories 2024 Election campaign Sunak paid a visit to the Vale of Glamorgan Brewery in South Wales. A social media picture posted by Sky suggested that the brewery workers were less than delighted to see Sunak. The brewery owner may reflect that not all publicity is actually good publicity.

While it may surprise those reading this who are not in Wales the country has a large number of mostly small-ish breweries. VOG is one of the larger ones. Very few of the breweries make it out of Wales. Partly because many are small producers. Partly also because the beer is often not that good. There are some decent breweries in South, West, Mid and North Wales and a few that are very good indeed. In that sense the picture is not that different to the rest of the UK.

When it comes to VOG then, there are many other breweries to try. We will shortly be marking the 185th anniversary of the moment when Chartists in Newport almost managed to start a revolution. That was all part of the tactics and strategies designed to win the vote just as Exclusive Dealing was.