181 years ago today. 22 Chartists shot dead in Newport as they marched for the vote

It is 181 years on 4th November since a key battle for democracy in Newport

The events of that day may have had a revolutionary character but the specific aim was clear. The Chartists were after the kind of political democracy- adult suffrage and secret ballots- that we take for granted now. They had tried petitioning Parliament, they had tried a General Strike in August 1839 (National Holiday]. They had been ignored. The resort to arms was a last attempt.

The traditional histories note that male (and some female] Chartists marched from a number of mining areas outside of Newport such as Merthyr and Pontypool with the aim of rallying in the town itself.

As many as 9,000 Chartists gathered on the Saturday and Sunday 2nd and 3rd November 1839 before marching into Newport early on the Monday morning of 4th November. In the days before the telephone let alone social media, to co-ordinate a series of marches, some miles in distance, to arrive at the same time was problematic. Probably around 5,000 Chartists had rallied near Tredegar House on the outskirts of Newport on the Monday morning ready for the final push on the town centre.

Many were armed, some with guns other with pikes and clubs. Certainly numbers had visited pubs on the march in- hardly surprisingly given the time taken and the weather- and it hardly amounted to a revolutionary army. Even so their thousands far outnumbered anything the authorities could muster.

What exactly the plan was is disputed. It may have been to liberate the occupants of the Workhouse on Stow Hill and some Chartists that were held there and then to move on to Monmouth to free the jailed Chartist leader Henry Vincent.

In practice they marched to the bottom of Stow Hill and encountered the British Army at the Westgate Hotel in the centre of Newport. There was a confrontation and numbers of Chartists were left dead, 22 is the most recent estimate, with many more seriously wounded. Numbers were arrested and sentenced to prison. A few leaders such as John Frost, originally sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered were despatched to Australia. They were later pardoned. A few escaped altogether.

The perspective is that the Chartists were no match for the forces of the British State and that the whole thing was a disaster.

Well, not quite.

In fact the Chartists were much better organised and led than the traditional histories suggest. They were shot down too not by a regular army unit but by a detachment of the crack regiment of the British Army at the time, the 45th, sent to do a particular job. Soldiers from the same regiment had shot down rebels at the Battle of Bossenden Wood in Kent in 1838.

Amongst the Chartist leaders on the day was someone known as Jack the Fifer [John Rees] who had fought at the Alamo with the Free Texan Army in 1835 and so had revolutionary military experience.

Moreover the Newport Chartists did not act alone. Their rising was to be the signal for other Chartists around the UK to do the same.

Clearly tactical mistakes were made. Leaving aside whether many of those who participated in the march in Newport understood exactly what was planned and what opposition they might meet, it must be questioned why it was necessary to confront the 45th Regiment in the Westgate Hotel when they did.

The Chartists easily had the numbers to occupy and control Newport in the face of which a small number of even crack troops could have done little.

It was not to be, but the problem lay with tactics and strategy not support.

The impact of defeat on Welsh Chartism and Chartism more generally is perhaps worthy of further research. The late Malcolm Chase has picked up some themes.

Certainly it was to be almost 10 years-in the summer of 1848 and in the Year of Revolutions that further attempts at armed revolt were to take place, for example in Bradford in June and London in August.

Again however the conspiratorial model of organisation was foremost and the results arguably all too predictable.

My wider thoughts on models of revolution and Newport 1839 are here:

Newport 4th November 1839: could revolution have worked?