The London Working Men’s Association (LWMA) was established in London, becoming a key organizational seedbed for Chartism and for the political-demands program that would soon be formalized as the People’s Charter.
William Lovett and Francis Place, working with the LWMA, drafted the People’s Charter, setting out six parliamentary-reform demands (including universal manhood suffrage, secret ballot, and paid MPs) that defined Chartism’s core program.
Delegates gathered in London in the General Convention of the Industrious Classes (often called the first Chartist convention), helping coordinate national agitation and organize the first mass petition demanding the Charter.
The first national Chartist petition—about 1.28 million signatures—was presented to the House of Commons by Thomas Attwood. It marked Chartism’s emergence as a mass, petition-driven national reform movement.
After a Commons debate, Attwood’s motion to consider the petition was defeated and the petition was rejected—an outcome that helped trigger unrest and hardened divisions between “moral force” and “physical force” approaches within Chartism.
Chartists in South Wales marched on Newport in an armed confrontation known as the Newport Rising. The clash at the Westgate Hotel left Chartists dead and became the most famous episode of violent confrontation associated with the movement.
Following convictions for high treason, the government commuted the death sentences of Newport Rising leaders (including John Frost) to transportation for life, reflecting both state repression and significant public pressure for clemency.
Chartists created the National Charter Association (NCA) to unify local groups under a membership structure and national leadership, strengthening the movement’s organizational capacity for petitions, elections, and mobilization.
The second national petition—signed by over 3.3 million—was presented to Parliament by Thomas Slingsby Duncombe. It demonstrated Chartism’s continuing mass support after 1839 despite repression and leadership arrests.
After the 1842 petition’s rejection, economic distress and wage cuts helped fuel a major strike wave in industrial districts. In parts of Lancashire and beyond, workers stopped mills by removing boiler plugs—episodes remembered as the “Plug Plot” disturbances.
Feargus O’Connor promoted a cooperative landholding scheme (the Chartist Land Plan) intended to settle working people on small plots and, in some cases, meet county franchise qualifications—an attempt to sustain Chartism through practical economic uplift.
A mass Chartist demonstration assembled at Kennington Common in London. The third great petition was carried (without a mass march) and presented to Parliament amid heavy official security, then discredited by disputed signature counts and allegations of fictitious names.
Parliament passed the National Land Company Dissolving Act 1851, winding up the Chartist land scheme and transferring its affairs to the Court of Chancery—an institutional end to one of Chartism’s most ambitious projects.
Newport Rising leader Zephaniah Williams received a conditional pardon allowing him to live outside the UK, illustrating the slow easing of official punishment against prominent Chartist insurgents.
A full pardon was granted (including to William Jones, and noted for other Newport leaders), marking a formal closure of the state’s legal retaliation against the 1839 rising—though Chartism as a mass movement had already waned.
Chartist Movement (1838–1857)
