Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

4. Abolition of property qualifications for M. P.’s.
5. Payment of M. P.’s.
6. Equal Electoral Districts.
Chartist Demonstration
In Rochdale one of the prominent figures in the Chartist movement was
Thomas Livsey. Livsey was a local lad, the son of a blacksmith, who was
educated until the age of 15 in Rochdale. Livsey also worked locally
on such issues as shortening working hours in the mills, restricting
child labour and fighting the Poor Laws that introduced the despised
workhouses. Livsey was an affective interlocutor between the middle-class
and the working-class and a strong advocate for the latter. He was also
involved in the development of the local Co-operative movement.
19
The struggle for acceptance of the Charter raised passions and for a
while there were real concerns that it could lead to an armed insurrection.
Plans to organize a period of sustained protest across the country in
1839 collapsed in disarray. By 1842 when the Charter was still a dream,
it began to be apparent to a lot of people that the way forward for
working-class people lay not in electoral reform but in self-improvement,
a decision which in Rochdale led to Co-operation.
The middle-class fought for parliamentary reform because they wanted
to have access to the power that the Tory gentry had by right. The only
way to achieve the change they wanted was to create a ground swell
of discontent and to do this they needed to enlist the support of the
working-class. The working-class joined the frey in a desperate attempt
to give some strength to their demands for improved living and working
October 2016