Reviews

Papers For The People: a study of the Chartist press (2005)
Edited by Joan Allen and Owen R Ashton

London: Merlin Press.( 225 pages. ISBN 0-8503-6540-6. £15.95 paperback.)

I visited the reference library in Leeds a couple of years ago to examine its collection of Northern Stars, the Chartist newspaper published in the city from the late 1830s into the 1840s. It was hard work because the papers are on microfiche, and reading large quantities of closely typed grey text on a slightly less grey background is not easy on either the eye or the brain. But one passage shone out and I copied it down. Written in 1838, it described the political atmosphere of the previous year, when the Northern Star had been created by a group of agitators for social change:

'Democracy presented a darksome and gloomy hemisphere… In the midst of this darksome hemisphere, the Northern Star, shining not so much by its own light, as by its reflection of the virtue, and intelligence, and honest manliness of the people by whom it was established, has continued from that period to disseminate, steadily and consistently, the light of truth… Its conductors have had no private or personal ends to obtain; no commercial speculation to subserve, by the prostitution of its columns. Their only end was the advancement of public liberty'.

Apart from all that honest manliness stuff, you can't say fairer than that.

So it was no great surprise to see the same passage quoted in the first of this collection of essays exploring the impact of Chartist newspapers, of which the Northern Star was one of more than 120 titles. In 'Chartist journalism and print culture in Britain 1830-1855', Aled Jones traces the twin orientations of Chartist journalists: towards the political movement itself as well as towards wider, more commercial, forms of journalism. For Jones, Chartism had a 'transformative presence' both politically and journalistically, helping to bring into being a radical, specifically working class public sphere.

This was achieved in part by the phenomenon of Chartist newspapers being read out aloud in public, or 'hear read', explains Owen Ashton in his discussion of the Bristol-based unstamped Western Vindicator. He shows how the newspaper's articles - many of which were contributed by Chartist branch activists - used 'emphatic devices' including capital letters, italics, large fonts and parentheses to help those reading them aloud in pubs and other social gatherings to bring them to life. This link between a traditional oral culture and an emergent print culture was further emphasised by the diverse content of the Vindicator which, in common with much of the Chartist press, included poems, songs and short stories in addition to news, reports and polemic. For Ashton, 'Being "read aloud" or "hear read" linked an oral and literary culture together in communities across south Wales and the West Country in a way which rendered illiteracy amongst workers no barrier to understanding or appreciating the text'. Little wonder, then, that one of the region's leading magistrates should bemoan the paper's role in fermenting 'sedition and discontent among the operatives of the district'. Little wonder, either, that the Vindicator was suppressed by the state after the Newport Rising of 1839.

The Western Vindicator lasted just ten months. If that seems like rather a short time in which to make an impact, consider the case of the Cause of the People, which is the subject of Edward Royle's contribution. A weekly paper, it lasted only from May 20th to July 15th 1848. Yet in this time, as Royle puts it, the Cause of the People helped to establish an 'optimism concerning the improvability and intelligence of the human race'. This optimism underpinned the concept of active citizenship that was inherent in Chartism, argues Royle; a sense of citizenship as 'a positive, participatory concept in which civic virtue was founded on the active contributions of all citizens to the public good - the commonwheal'.

The Chartist period was, as the editors of Papers for the People note, one of 'almost feverish radical publishing activity', in which the availability of relatively cheap new printing technology combined with a growing class consciousness to produce 'an energetic, propagandist press [that] was of crucial importance to the first great working class movement in the world'. Although many Chartist publications were short-lived, their influence was far more long lasting. All the more reason, therefore, to bring the history of the Chartist press back from the margins, which is what this welcome volume seeks to do.

In addition to the contributions discussed above, Malcolm Chase discusses the curiously formal portraits given away with copies of the Northern Star (a precursor of today's DVD giveaways); Glenn Airey explores the guiding principle of The Labourer ('enlightenment as entertainment, entertainment as enlightenment'); and Joan Allen traces the late flowering of Chartist newspapers in the North-East of England. Beyond England and Wales, there are also illuminating chapters detailing the role of the Chartist press in Scotland (Hamish Fraser), Ireland (Michael Huggins), and among the 'Chartist diaspora' in Australia and New Zealand (Paul Pickering).

A common thread throughout this collection is that the Chartist press cannot be understood in isolation from the Chartist movement: the two were inseparable, sharing the same ebbs, flows, egos and disagreements. This is well argued and well illustrated. Another theme - that the development of journalism cannot be understood in isolation from the Chartist press - is touched upon, but for this reader at least, was not explored in sufficient depth. Also, the inclusion of more, and more substantial, extracts from the newspapers under discussion would have helped convey the flavour of the times. Despite these gripes, this book will certainly be a worthy addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in press history. And it has even inspired me to return to the darksome hemisphere of the microfiche machine to explore the originals in greater depth.

Tony Harcup, University of Sheffield.