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Radicalism and the Victorian Working Class: the Case of Samuel Bamford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Martin Hewitt
Martin Hewitt
Affiliation:
University of Hull
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Extract

Samuel Bamford has an ambivalent status in the canon of nineteenth-century labour history. The unparalleled view of working-class life at the turn of the nineteenth century provided by his autobiographical volumes Early days and Passages in the life of a radical, have made him, according to E. P. Thompson, ‘the greatest chronicler of 19th century radicalism’, and ‘essential reading for any Englishman’ These books have been described as two of ‘the minor classics of Victorian literature’ All modern studies of the radicalism of the first two decades of the nineteenth century rely to some degree on his colourful reminiscences of the period. Yet after his prominent role in the events leading up to Peterloo, Bamford's career, not least its virulent anti-chartism, have tainted him with reformism, and left him to be invoked as an example of the weaknesses and limitations of early nineteenth-century working-class political assertion. Hence, in contrast to Thompson, John Belchem has talked about ‘the well-thumbed autobiographies of certain “respectable” and unrepresentative working class radicals’ and the ‘apostasy’ of the ‘renegade Samuel Bamford’. In the context of the 1840s John Walton describes him as a ‘former radical’, and Martha Vicinus has portrayed him as one of a group whose ‘works are largely inoffensive portrayals of established values’.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 873 - 892
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 Thompson, E. P., The making of the English working class (1963), pp. 637, 836Google Scholar.

2 Vincent, David, Testaments of radicalism. Memoirs of working class politicians, 1790–1885 (1977), p.3Google Scholar.

3 Belchem, John, ‘Orator Hunt’, Henry Hunt and English working class radicalism (Oxford, 1985), p. 1Google Scholar (cf. other comments in similar tone, e.g. p. 135).

4 Walton, J. K., Lancashire. A social history, 1558–1939 (Manchester, 1987), pp. 132–3Google Scholar; Vicinus, Martha, The industrial muse (1974), pp. 6, 140–84Google Scholar.

5 See Bamford, S., Passages in the life of a radical (2 vols., Manchester, 1844 edn), II 247–73Google Scholar.

6 Dronsfield, James, Incidents and anecdotes of the late Samuel Bamford (Manchester, 1872), pp. 46–7Google Scholar. A similarly selective middle class reading is revealed in the notes of Gladstone on Passages, see British Museum, Gladstone papers, Add. MSS 44737 fo. 197.

7 Okell, P., ‘Samuel Bamford, his claims to remembrance’, in ‘Odds and Ends’, the manuscript magazine of the St Pauls Literary and Educational Society (1880), p. 335Google Scholar, M38/4/2/130, Manchester Central Library, Archives department (MCLA). Much of this reputation was based on the united verdict of the newspaper obituaries that Bamford had been very much a peaceable moderate who, as the Manchester Guardian expressed it, ‘never lost sight of the truth that all permanent reforms result from moral suasion alone’, 16 April. 1872.

8 ‘Introduction’ in Chaloner, W. H. (ed.), Passages in the life of a radical, by Bamford, Samuel, pp. 9–42Google Scholar; in comparison the introduction by Marshall, J. D. to the 1972 edition of Bamford's, Walks in south LancashireGoogle Scholar, is both slight and derivative. Dunckley's, Henry introduction to the 1893 edition of PassagesGoogle Scholar is interesting for the evolution of the ambivalent reaction to Bamford, but sets the tone for later treatments in dismissing his importance as a thinker. The Biographical dictionary of modern British radicals, eds., Joseph O. Baylen and Norbert J. Gossman, contains an entry for Bamford, which makes no attempt at analysis and is, in any case, marred by a number of glaring inaccuracies.

9 Dunckley, , ‘Introduction’, p. 13Google Scholar. In contrast, much emphasis has been placed on Bamford's character defects, his egotism, his prickly nature, and his tendency to take affront in the most trivial incident. For Chaloner, in later life, Bamford was ‘a difficult, crotchety, jealous and cantankerous old man, always ready to bite the hand which fed him, and on occasion biting before he was fed’,. Chaloner, , ‘Introduction“, p. 10Google Scholar.

10 Hilton, T., ‘Introduction’ to Bamford, , Passages in the life of a radical (London, 1967 edn), p. 8Google Scholar; Marshall, , ‘Introduction’, pp. xiv–xviiGoogle Scholar; Chaloner, , ‘Introduction’, pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Thompson, , Making of the English working class, p. 294Google Scholar.

11 Samuel Bamford diary, MS 923.2 B99, MCLA; the central library also holds a small group of Bamford's letters, relating mainly to publishing affairs, at M 146, and a few of his letters to Edwin Waugh are held by the Edwin Waugh Society, Rochdale.

12 Vincent, David, Bread, knowledge and freedom. A study of nineteenth century working class autobiography (1981), pp. 1–12Google Scholar. Working class autobiography is at present exciting considerable attention, see for example the special issue of Literature and History, XIV (1988)Google Scholar entitled ‘Autobiography and working class writing’, and Steedman, C., The radical soldier's tale (1988)Google Scholar.

13 Particularly they were designed to propagate his own more gradualist version of radicalism in the face of what he saw as the excesses of the chartist, as he makes explicit in a note to the revised 1859 edition of Passages, where he says that his tales of his journey to imprisonment ‘were chiefly intended to influence the chartists, who, with “national holidays”, “plug drawings”, and other corresponding excesses, were, about that time, making sad havoc with the cause of parliamentary reform, and of all amelioration in the condition of the working classes’ (1859 edn), p. 221.

14 The extent of the neglect of Bamford as a source for the study of the dynamics of mid-nineteenth century working class consciousness is surprising: although both tap Manchester sources extensively, and propose arguments for which Bamford's works would appear to provide useful support, neither Tholfsen, Trygve, Working class radicalism in mid-Victorian England (1976)Google Scholar, nor Kirk's, NevilleThe growth of working class reformism in mid-Victorian England (1985)Google Scholar, cites Bamford at all.

15 Homely rhymes, pp. 7–9, also see account of a case of wrongful arrest which Bamford brought against a local doctor at the Lancashire assizes in 1833, Wheelers Manchester Chronicle, 24 Aug. 1833. Bamford seems to have served tory and liberal press indiscriminately, and was occasionally accused of inconsistency for so doing, see Manchester and Salford Advertiser, 30 Jan. 1836. For details of the various newspapers he contributed to, see also diary, 8 April., II Aug., 15 Sept., 1859.

16 Manchester Courier, 8, 15 May 1847.

17 For example the £25 from Lord Ashburton forwarded to him by Thomas Carlyle, see Bamford to Carlyle, 22 April 1849, National Library of Scotland, Carlyle papers, Add. MSS 1796, fos. 72–3.

18 Bamford had never been a natural platform figure, and despite the help of the popular poet, Ben Brierley, his appearances were largely unsuccessful. As Brierley recalled, ‘His antiquated style of delivery often provoked merriment when it was not intended, and a peculiar stammer which he could not overcome was another source of fun’, Brierley, , Home memories and recollections of a life (Manchester, 1887), pp. 63–4Google Scholar.

19 Walks, pp. 216–27; Homely rhymes, p. 10.

20 The last of these (Manchester, 1864 edn), as the fullest collection of Bamford's poetry, is the edition used for the rest of this article. Although few of the poems can be dated precisely, context and internal evidence suggest that even many of those not in the 1821 volume but in later editions were written in the years around 1819.

21 Passages in the life of a radical and Early days were initially published in weekly numbers, the first 1839–41 and the second 1848–9. Passages was subsequently published in two volumes in 1842 and 1844, and Early days in one volume in 1849. The 1844 and 1849 volumes used for the Chaloner reprint are those cited here. In addition, Bamford also supervised the publication of revised versions in 1857 and 1859, to which he added a number of footnotes, both correcting the earlier text and providing further commentary; these are cited as Passages (1857 edn) and Early days (1859 edn).

22 No copy of Bamford's poetical version of La Lyonnaise has been located, but it was reviewed in several papers. The Manchester Courier considered the preface addressed to the chartists (later reprinted in Homely rhymes), as ‘characterized by good sense’, but thought that ‘Mr Bamford's poetry stultifies his prose’, Manchester Courier, 18 May 1839.

23 The pieces in the Illustrated Family Paper are not identified as Bamford's, but a reference to them in a letter to James Kay-Shuttleworth (n.d. but c. 3 Nov. 1860) in the diary, which talks of ‘several articles for Cassell's Weekly Newspaper’ written at the time of the Preston strike, allows them to be identified with reasonable confidence. As well, Chaloner lists an uncompleted novel, published in parts, of which only the first now appears to be extant.

24 The classic early formulation is Rothstein, T., From chartism to labourism (1927)Google Scholar – although now dated, much of its interpretations can be found in a modified form in N. Kirk, Working class reformism; Hobsbawm's, Eric ‘The labour aristocracy’, in his Labouring men: studies in the history of labour (1964)Google Scholar marks the integration of the labour aristocracy theory into empirical history, and ignoring the wide body of literature which had utilized the concept since that time, the current thinking of those still willing to ascribe to this formulation is perhaps best epitomised by his later essays in Worlds of work: further studies in the history of labour (1984).

25 On the common heritage of working and middle class radicalism see Tholfsen, Tygryve, ‘The intellectual origins of mid-Victorian stability’, Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVI (1971), pp. 59–71Google Scholar, and idem, Working class radicalism in mid-Victorian England; Harrison, B. and Hollis, P., ‘Chartism, liberalism and the life of Robert Lowery’, English Historical Review, LXXXII, (1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laqueur, T. W., Religion and respectability. Sunday schools and working class culture 1780–1850 (1976)Google Scholar. The concept of the liberalization of the state in the 1840s is most clearly developed in Foster, J., Class struggle in the industrial revolution. Early industrial capitalism in three English towns (1974)Google Scholar, also Stedman-Jones, Gareth, Languages of class. Studies in English working class history 1832–1983 (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar; a critical summary of this interpretation can be found in Musson, A. E., ‘Class struggle and the labour aristocracy, 1830–60’, Social History, III, 3 (1976), 335–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 As illustrated by the reliance on them of Richard, Price in his Labour in British society (1986), pp. 29–92Google Scholar.

27 Gray, R., ‘Styles of life – the “labour aristocracy” and class relations in later nineteenth century Edinburgh’, International Review of Social History, XVII, (1973), 428–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, idem, The labour aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976), Crossick, Geoffrey, ‘The labour aristocracy and its values: a study of mid-Victorian Kentish London’, Victorian Studies, XIX, 3 (1976), 301–28Google Scholar, idem, An artisan elite in Victorian society: Kentish London, 1840–80 (1978).

28 Saville, J., 1848. The British state and the chartist movement (Cambridge, 1987), p. 220Google Scholar; for the extensive use of the concept of hegemony see also Cooter, Roger, The cultural meaning of popular science: phrenology and the organisation of consent in nineteenth century Britain (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar, and Graff, Harvey J., The legacies of literacy. Continuities and contradictions in Western culture and society (1987)Google Scholar.

29 Homely rhymes, pp. 67, 57, 104–6, 195–7, 85; see also poems in The weaver boy, especially ‘Waterloo’ and ‘The patriots' Hymn’.

30 Walks, pp. 244–9; Passages, 1, 11.

31 Manchester Examiner and Times, 5 May 1849.

32 Passages, 1, 166, 240–42.

33 Early days, pp. 113–14, Dronsfield, , Incidents and anecdotes, pp. 15–16, 30–1Google Scholar.

34 Homely rhymes, ‘Lines on a plotting parson’, pp. 229–30; Passages, II, 238, Walks, pp. 77–80, 142, Early days, pp. 106–7.

35 Early days, pp. 129–30, viz. ibid. 32–3.

36 In 1864 he described his 1819 sentence as ‘another instance of abhorrent oppression of simple truthful right being trampled on by brutal wrong’, Homely rhymes, p. 7.

37 Passages, II, 12–13.

38 Early days, pp. 48–9; cf. Passages, II, 12–13.

39 Passages, II, 90, Early days, p. 49; also Walks, pp. 142–5.

40 Early days, p. 117.

41 [Bamford, S.], ‘Scenes in north Lancashire’, Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper, 28 01 1854Google Scholar; for his ambivalent attitude to machinery.

42 Middleton Albion, 13 Oct., 1860.

43 Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper, 25 Mar. 1854.

44 Diary, 24 Mar. 1861.

45 As he wrote in 1856, ‘I have lived to know…that the way to abate grievances, to confront injustice, to repay neglect, is not by endeavouring…to set class against class, employed against employers, community against community’, Manchester Spectator, 20 Dec. 1856.

46 Early days, pp. 123–4; Passages, 1, 114.

47 Poems, (1843 edn), p. 149.

48 Cf. his comments on the operative anti-corn law banquets in Passages, 1, 234.

49 Passages, 11, 19. Cf. the comments in his circular ‘Right against wrong’, printed in Manchester Examiner and Times, 24 Feb. 1860.

50 A footnote in Passages, (1857 edn), called upon the ‘self-gratulating reformers’ of the time to ponder on the determination of the persecuted of the Peterloo period, ‘They are represented now, however, according to parliamentary fashion; but who suffered to obtain their representation?’, p. 154.

51 Dronsfield, Incidents and anecdotes, p. 6Google Scholar.

52 Passages, II, 19. In 1850 he asserted that ‘our present and future course must be a continuation of the past’, and that ‘…if reason and right are on your side they will prevail’: Tawk o' Seauth Lankeshur: or Tim Bobbin, Tummus and Meary (1850 edn), p. xi.

53 As he put it in Passages, ‘One evening spent in the acquirement of useful knowledge, – in rational conversation, – in the promotion of kindly feelings, – in the restraints of sobriety, – in the comforting of families, in the blessing of children, and the improvement of their hearts and understandings, – in the feeling of mercy towards all God's creatures, and love of all goodness for his sake; one evening so spent were to thyself and thy country, worth more than all thou has seen, heard, or done, at Radical or Chartist meetings, since sun-light or torch-light first illuminated them’, Passages, 1, 279, viz, Passages, II, 262–3.

54 Passages, II, 138, Passages, 1, 13–14; whole poems, such as his violently pro-Hunt ‘Touch him’, were dropped by Bamford in later editions of his poems, as were perhaps more significantly, parts of others, such as a republican stanza to ‘The patriots hymn’, present in The weaver boy, in 1817 but expunged from later versions.

55 Vicinus, , The industrial muse, especially, pp. 158–84Google Scholar; also Maidment, B. E., ‘Essayists and artisans – the making of Victorian self-taught poets’, Literature and Society, IX 1 (1983)Google Scholar, and idem, ‘Class and cultural production in the industrial city: poetry in Victorian Manchester’;, in Kidd, A.J. and Roberts, K. W., eds., City doss and culture. Studies of social policy and cultural production in Victorian Manchester (Manchester, 1984), pp. 148–66Google Scholar.

56 Early days, pp. 228–9. For further consideration of this element of consistency in working clas political attitudes see Vincent, , Bread, knowledge and freedom, pp. 195Google Scholar.

57 Diary, 10 June 1859.

58 Diary, 9 Oct. 1859; see also diary, 2 July 1859 and Bamford to James Dronsfield, 28 January 1856, printed in Dronsfield, , Incidents and anecdotes, pp. 15Google Scholar.

59 Diary, 15 May 1860.

60 Examiner and Times, 10 Oct. 1858, 27 Nov. 1858; diary, 10 Nov. 1858, see also Bamford to editor of Examiner and Times, M146/1/ 1 MCLA.

61 Oldham Chronicle, 12 Feb. 1859; diary, 19 April 1859, Ashton and Stalybridge Reporter, 23 July 1859, and account in diary, 19 July 1859.

62 His account of one such committee meeting runs thus: ‘Attended council of the Institutional Association, David Morris, full of self-appreciation, after a long ramble moved to withdraw a motion he had once before made. A long, twaddling discussion, and after all it was found that there was not any motion to withdraw. So came home, not very well’, diary, 3 Mar. 1859.

63 Diary, 3 Jan. 1859, 17 Mar. 1859, 8 April. 1859. Throughout 1859 his diary reveals his increasing disenchantment with the Newall Buildings clique of middle class Manchester Liberalism.

64 Dronsfield, , Incidents and anecdotes, p. 6Google Scholar.

65 Newspaper cutting in copy of Passages in G. D. H. Cole Collection, Nuffield College.

66 He makes this clear in his introduction to Homely rhymes, p. 10.

67 The strong undercurrent of violence is apparent in many of the poems written in the Peterloo years. See for example, Bamford's response to the threat to Hunt in Manchester immediately prior to Peterloo: ‘Touch him – and by the eternal power, / That very day, that very hour, / Is curst oppression' last: / Then, vengeance shall no longer stay, / The mighty flood shall break away; / Our purse-proud tyrants' vanity / Shall to the earth be cast.’, The weaver boy, p. 7. His response to his sentencing after Peterloo was that ‘I solemnly and firmly assure your lordships that I never again will advise my countrymen to exercise that degree of patience which I here did, until every drop of blood shed on that day had been amply and deeply atoned for. Never again will I recommend forbearance, until the perpetrators of all the horrid murders which I witnessed, and from which I miraculously escaped, have been brought to condign punishment’, reported in The trial of Henry Hunt [et al] for an alleged conspiracy to alter the law by force and threats, and for convening and attending an illegal, riotous and tumultuous meeting at Manchester…(1820), pp. 215–16.

68 Passages, 1, 168.

69 Passages, 1, 45.

70 ‘May our gold-exalted great ones, whether of the land or manufacture, also come forward as liberators, ere the pent-up souls, and down-bended bodies of their toiling ones, rise up, and rush forth with the mad joy of cage-broken wolves’, Walks, pp. 6–7, viz. 15–16. For his acceptance of the futility of armed struggle see Passages, 11, 157, 218.

71 Walks, pp. 216–27; ‘To the Hand-loom Weavers of Lancashire, and the persons styled Chartists’, printed in Homely Rhymes, pp. 205–9.

72 Passages, 1, 111–12.

73 For an account of the tensions of platform agitation, see Belchem, Orator Hunt, and idem, ‘1848: Feargus O'Connor and the collapse of the mass platform’, Epstein, J. and Thompson, D., eds., The Chartist experience (London, 1982), pp. 269–310Google Scholar.

74 Passages, 1, 153–4.

75 Cf. the comments in the advertisement in Early days, p. i.

76 Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper, 28 Jan. 1854. Cf. his comments that Cartwright had forgotten that ‘the people were ignorant and corrupt, and the source must be purified before a pure and free government could be maintained’, Passages, 1, 154.

77 Some account of Amos Ogden of Middleton, pp. 10–11.

78 Diary, 15 Nov. 1859.

79 Middleton Albion, 2 Nov. 1858. In this sense Bamford clearly fell on the ‘really useful knowledge’ side of the distinction developed by Johnson, Richard, ‘“Really useful knowledge”: radical education and working class culture, 1790–1848’, in Clarke, John et al. , eds., Working class culture: studies in history and theory (1979), pp. 75–102Google Scholar.

80 Cf. conversation with Jacob Bright recorded in the diary, 15 Nov. 1859.

81 Bamford, to ‘President and fellow workers in the cause of mutual improvement [of Chadderton and Tonge Mutual Improvement Association]’, diary, 28 10 1859Google Scholar.

82 Walks, p. 20. See the account of Bamford campaigning for Sunday opening for the Blackley Mechanics' Institute, Manchester Guardian, 24 05 1848Google Scholar; cf. comments in diary, 23 Oct. 1859.

83 Walks, pp. 105–6, 107–8.

84 Diary, 2 Nov. 1859.

85 Passages, II, 130–1, viz, ibid. 118–20; Bamford, , Some account of Amos Ogden of Middleton (Manchester, 1856), pp. 13–14Google Scholar.

86 Passages, I, 153; see also Passages, 1, 277.

87 They were far from unusual, however, see comments in Vicinus, Martha, Edwin Waugh: the ambiguities of self-help (Littleborough, 1984), pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

88 Diary, 17 Feb. 1861.

89 In this he provides a useful counterweight to previous studies which have been forced to concentrate on a small band of working class leaders, including Harrison's, RoydenBefore the Socialists. Studies in labour and politics, 1861–81 (1965)Google Scholar, Leventhal, F. M., Respectable radical: George Howell and Victorian working class politics (1971)Google Scholar, and Kirk's Working class reformism.

90 Reid, Neither Donald, ‘Chartism in Manchester’, in Briggs, Asa, ed., Chartist studies (1959), pp. 29–64Google Scholar, nor the more recent Sykes, R. A., ‘Physical force chartism: the cotton districts and the chartist crisis of 1839’, International Review of Social History, XXX, 2 (1985), 207–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar gives due weight to the extent of the divisions within Manchester chartism.

91 For example, his poems ‘Hymm to spring’ and ‘God help the poor’ were published in Northern Star, 22 Apr. and 25 Nov. 1843 respectively. For the later approaches of the chartists see diary 18 Sept. 1858.

92 Oddfellows Magazine, October (1843), p. 438; diary, 25 Sept. 1858. For a good example of the congruence of Bamford's thought with other working class figures compare the tone and sentiments in Teer, John, Silent musings (Manchester, 1869)Google Scholar; Teer was a Manchester factory worker and warehouseman who was secretary of the Dyers Union from 1848 to 62.

93 Manchester City News, 27 Apr. 1872.

94 The importance of force, as opposed to consent, in the maintenance of mid-Victorian political calm is increasingly being acknowledged; see for example, Saville, 1848.