*

Australians are not taught about Chartism. In order to counter this neglect and understanding that many people prefer history not in a plain brown paper wrapping but encased in a ‘silvered wrapping of entertainment’, events and facts were researched, then supplemented with relevant art forms and arranged in a form suitable for a staged show. By utilising format and content akin to Chartist meetings held in 1838-48, material has been assembled for a show comprised of scripted facts, songs, dances, images and cartoons using a format labelled ‘Folk Doco’ and named ‘When Democracy Danced in Workers’ Boots’.

Next year ‘Magda Productions‘, a performing Arts group based in Brisbane will be staging the show. Magda’s Productions have given many successful performances of my earlier show,  ‘Dames & Dare-devils for Democracy’ in Brisbane. COVID permitting, the two shows linked by the real-life character of Emma Miller, the suffragist whose life story introduced me to Chartism may undertake a short tour. 

This is the song I wrote as an overture for ‘When Democracy Danced in Workers’ Boots’ with booted tap dance interludes instead of a chorus: 

WHEN DEMOCRACY DANCED IN WORKERS’ BOOTS  ©  Phyl Lobl 2020 

Workers wearing working boots, trodden down through centuries,         

Rebels wearing working boots stepping up through time,                               

Fired by Tom Paine’s ‘Commonsense’ and the works of Thomas Spence,

Tommy Muir caused offence in the name of Justice. 

Stepped up to dance, stepped up to dance, stepped up to dance for Justice.

                     ( Booted Tap- Dance Interlude ) 

Need for action in their bones, for a changing century. 

Call of freedom in their tones, echoing through time. 

Asked of woman and of man ‘Pass the torch on when y’ can’,

Leading to a Chartist Plan in the name of Justice. 

Stepped up to dance, stepped up to dance, stepped up to dance for Justice. 

                     ( Booted Tap- Dance Interlude) 

In the convict boats and chains, victims of the century,  

Radicals and Chartists came, serving years of time, 

Starry skies Down-under blazed where William Cuffay’s work was praised,  

Where Eureka’s flag was raised, raised by Chartist Justice.  

Raised up to dance, raised up to dance, raised up to dance for justice.                 

( Booted Tap- Dance Interlude)

CONCLUSION  

After a long journey of research and creation, some questions remain: 

Why is there a paucity of documentation and discourse on Chartism in Australia? 

For how long will our history curriculums continue to be short-changed on reality? 

This missing Chartist history is linked to another missed history, the history of the 

Australian indigenous peoples and the effect of colonisation on their lives and their rights.  

These two missed histories are linked, because without the growth of democracy in Australia, recognition of the gross injustice inflicted on, and negligence of indigenous people could not have begun to be addressed, even though there is still a long way to go. The ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’ could lead us. 

There is a fragile fabric of pseudo civilisation that covers shaky spines, mediocre minds, and hardened hearts. It could be shed, and instead, wearing workers’ boots and stepping in the path of Chartists, knowing that they gave us a strong foundation for Democracy, we could see their heritage valued as part of our national identity. Hopefully the Australian community can repay the Chartists by electing people who share and practise such ideals.

The closing song in the new show is John Warner’s fine song ‘Bring Out the Banners’; a suitable line to end this article is:

                             ’How dare we lose what they have won?’

SOURCES USED

In pursuing this research towards the creation of her ‘folk doco’, Phyl consulted a wide variety of standard and other sources. She also spoke with many people across the country.

Australian

E-books

Tony Moore, Death or Liberty: rebels and radicals transported 1788 -1868

Peter Fitzsimons, Eureka: the unfinished revolution

Anne Henderson, Joseph Lyons: the peoples Prime Minister

Judith Brett, The enigmatic Mr Deakin

Judith Brett, From secret ballot to democracy sausage

K S Inglis, This is the ABC

Hard copies

Isobel Downing, Ballarat Reform League inc. (computer printout)

John Molony, Eureka and the prerogative of the people

Martin Hoyle, William Cuffay: the life and times of a Chartist leader  

Bob O’Brien, Massacre at Eureka: the untold story

Elizabeth Morrison, David Syme: a man of the Age

Other Media

Tasmanian Grassroots Union Choir, Cuffay and the brother slaves – CD

Internet searches on Chartist convicts, eight-hour day, shearers strike, Labor movement, miller, Federation, Henry Parkes …

British 

E-books

Edward Boyle, Roger Lockyer, ‘Chartism’ (seminar studies) 

Thomas Carlyle, Chartism

Julius West, A history of the chartist movement

Thomas Paine, The rights of man (illustrated)

Hard copies

James Epstein, The lion of freedom: Feargus O’Connor and the Chartist Movement

Mike Leigh, Peterloo

Other Media 

Radical Tea Towel Co (UK), Tea towel – Six points of the people’s charter

The life and struggles of William Lovett, facsmile of original, British Library DVD

Numerous internet searches

To Henry Hunt, Esq., as chairman of the meeting assembled in St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, sixteenth day of August, 1819, and to the female Reformers of Manchester and the adjacent towns who were exposed to and suffered from the wanton and fiendish attack made on them by that brutal armed force, the Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry, this plate is dedicated by their fellow labourer, Richard Carlile. Manchester Libraries.

*

Ten links to Chartism reveal how the movement developed in England from 1774 and how its ideas percolated through the Australian population from 1850 to positively influence the political development of democracy in this country.  

LINK 1 COTTON MILLS  

A black beginning from slave -picked cotton which was shipped from America, woven and spun in the ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ of Manchester. There, adults and children as young as twelve slaved for 12-14 hours a day in factories filled with flying fragments of cotton that choked their lungs and brought death. 

LINK 2 THE BATTLE OF PETERLOO  

Years of exploitation of workers by the new middle-class of mill owners saw thousands of workers and their families led by Henry Hunt gather for a picnic protest in 1819 on St Peters’ Field in Manchester. Cut down by sword wielding Hussars on horseback supported by armed infantry in hundreds and bombarded by cannon-fire. Several people were killed and 600 injured including women and children. Also called the ‘Massacre of Peterloo’. 

LINK 3 THE CHARTIST MOVEMENT

By 1838 the writings of Thomas Paine found a readership willing to support reform, willing to ‘dance in workers boots’ and create a nationwide movement of millions of British people which became the Chartist Movement. Various flags were used, including the Peterloo Skelmanthorpe Flag of brown and the Chartist Welsh Tricolour.

 LINK 4 TRANSPORTATION TO AUSTRALIA  

By 1850 at least 103 Chartists, now labelled seditionists, had been transported to Australia. Among them was Thomas Muir, a Scottish radical with a hankering for democratic reform. In 1793 he was sentenced for sedition and transported to New South Wales for 14 years. 

William Cuffay was the son of a slave and an early stand-up comic who gained fame for reforms made, especially in Tasmania. With other Chartists he was transported in 1850 on the ship Adelaide. 

Zephaniah Williams, Welsh coal miner and Chartist campaigner, was one of the leaders of the Newport Rising of 1839. Found guilty of high treason, he was condemned to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Tasmania. Eventually he was pardoned, and his discovery of coal on that island earned him a fortune 

In his book Death or Liberty: Rebels and Radicals Transported to Australia 1788 – 1868, Anthony (Tony) Moore says Australia is often called a Chartist’s democracy because many Chartist leaders were transported here.

LINK 5 GOLDFIELDS AGITATION 

Gold fever lured free settler Chartists to join convicted Chartists in Australia. Moral and Physical Chartists combined with miners, and in their tens of thousands protested the harsh licensing Laws in ‘Monster Meetings’ along the Gold Route from Melbourne to Bendigo, the bloodless Bendigo Agitation of 1853  and eventually the bloody battle at Eureka Stockade in 1854. Peter FitzSimons in his book Eureka – The Unfinished Rebellion, wrote of Chartism in Britain, and pointed out that the same ideas were present on the goldfields, with a republican slant through ‘The Ballarat Reform League’. As members of the Reform League, George Black and Henry Holyoake had both been involved with Chartism in England. They promoted radical ideas through two newspapers which were circulated on the goldfields, The Gold-Diggers’ Advocate owned by George Black and The Diggers’ Advocate printed by Ebenezer Syme, who later owned The Age. Such men as these and Ebenezer’s brother David, who also later owned The Age, did not just want to chronicle history they wanted to help make it.

LINK 6 THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY 

John Stuart Mill described Chartism as ‘the victory of the vanquished’. A saying that could be applied as well to the cause won at Eureka. The spirit of solidarity and the desire for justice was carried over from Eureka to strikes by stonemasons in a major effort to gain an Eight-Hour Day which, when won in 1856, was the first such legislation in the world. Galloway and Steven, masons who led the push were once Chartists. A further boost to trade unions came in 1891 when striking shearers in Queensland flew the Eureka flag. Such action led eventually to the formation of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in 1927. 

LINK 7 FEDERATION 

Henry  Parkes, known to history as ‘The Father of Federation’, was once a Chartist sympathiser, ‘a people’s man ‘ who believed that ‘in Australia men would not be treated like brutes while alive, nor buried like dogs when dead.’ He knew that ‘Unity Is Strength.’ He did not live to see it, but in 1901 the colonies of Australia federated as the Commonwealth of Australia’. The Federation Referendum launched in 1898-1900 had support in Western Australia from Chartist influenced  women who already had the vote there. As many others in WA were reluctant to join the Federation it is likely the women’s vote influenced the result. In 1902 all white women in Australia were awarded the right to vote and stand for Federal Parliament. Achieved without use of violence or use of the term ‘suffragette’, they came with big hearts and big hats. Regretfully, Indigenous people had to wait until 1962 for their vote. 

LINK 8 THE LABOR PARTY  

By 1848 Chartism, disunited by differences between Lovett and O’Connor, was gone as a movement, but not as an idea. Chartist ideas found new life in Fabianism, the political belief that socialism can be introduced by gradual reform rather than by revolution. By 1901 various state groups of people aligned to Fabian Societies had called themselves Labour parties. By 1910 the world first for such parties in power was a Labor Party, spelt so by King O’Malley an American/Canadian immigrant MP and spelling reformer. Another world -first. 

LINK 9 COMPULSORY VOTING

In 1924 Alfred Deakin, our second Prime Minister, and his colleague Digby Denham united to have a law passed that made voting compulsory. This added one of the most stabilising factors of our constitutional democracy. They were influenced and supported by brothers Ebenezer and David Syme who had helped launch and edit the Diggers Advocate in Ballarat, who had stood by the miners and who both, at different times, became owners of The Age in Melbourne. 

LINK 10 THE NATIONAL BROADCASTER 

The last link, born of radio waves and electrons, is our national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a link that aims to provide clearly stated information through accurate and unbiased journalism. It was established in 1929 and first advocated by Joseph Lyons, who was a Fabian sympathiser and Prime minister of Australia from 1932 to 1939. Joseph had given his wife, Dame Enid Lyons, our first woman elected to Federal Parliament, a book by Fabian instigators and historians Beatrice & Sydney Webb. 

Not as direct a link as being a Chartist, but still a Chartist link. A link to a stable democracy that right-wing media and conservative politicians are trying to break today. If this link is lost Australia will be deprived of a stabilising national treasure that supplies quality journalism, nationwide emergency assistance, educational material for all ages, and support for Arts of multiple shades. 

In the next post find out the results of this quest and the range of sources used …