{"id":2458,"date":"2017-07-07T09:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T09:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/?p=2458"},"modified":"2017-07-04T14:07:26","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T14:07:26","slug":"feature-union-is-strength-the-language-of-union-in-british-radicalism-c-1815-1850","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/2017\/07\/07\/feature-union-is-strength-the-language-of-union-in-british-radicalism-c-1815-1850\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature: Union is strength: the language of union in British radicalism c.1815 \u2013 1850"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
George Cruikshank\u2019s \u2018The New Union: Club, Being a Representation of what took place at a celebrated Dinner, given by a celebrated \u2013\u2013society,\u2019 published 19 July 1819<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BY JAMES GREGORY\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The recent international conference, \u2018Union and Disunion in the Nineteenth Century\u2019 held at the University of Plymouth (22 \u2013 23 June 2017) looked at union and disunion from the level of families separated by mental health or poverty, through the local history of Union Street and the union of the three towns that became Plymouth in 1914; to the technological agents of union represented by steam-powered maritime transport; state-building systems of union such as postal service and currency; to moments of disunions from the \u2018white\u2019 mutiny after the Indian \u2018rebellion\u2019 of 1857; and the American Civil War (1861 \u2013 1865), to European projects of union such as the Zollverein<\/em> of German states after 1834. Papers brought us insights from the social circles of high diplomacy, from Lancastrian dialect poetry, and the evidence of Victorian novels and Georgian Gothic. Legal history and art history were represented.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

In this blog, James Gregory briefly considers the discourse of union and disunion in early-nineteenth century British politics: noting how union was debated and represented in radicalism in the post-1815 \u2018reform\u2019 era of \u2018political unions\u2019 (such as, most famously, the \u2018Birmingham Political Union\u2019 led by Thomas Attwood), in trade union formation (including large-scale entities such as the \u2018Grand National Consolidated Trade Union\u2019 of 1834) and in the context of concerted anti-radical activities by a State and by political elites in the aftermath of the French Revolution.<\/p>\n

Union wasn\u2019t just debated and organised. In order to propagandise for and against, the idea of union was expressed iconographically<\/em>. We might look for earlier representation of union and disunion in the eighteenth-century imagery of the American Revolution and parallels in the next century in the American Civil War: with lithographic and wood engraved images of serpents or hydras of disunion or secession (being strangled or clubbed by various infant or adult Hercules). These perhaps thematically originate in the famous image of the divided serpent, with the motto \u2018JOIN, or DIE\u2019 of 1754 \u2013 and the variant \u2018UNITE or DIE\u2019 \u2013 to encourage the union of colonies against changing enemies (see Lester C. Olson, Benjamin Franklin’s Vision of American Community: A Study in Rhetorical Iconology<\/em> of 2004, ch.3).<\/p>\n

The British iconography of union is to be found expressed in such obvious places as banners, and in satirical or non-satirical engravings of radical political gatherings (for example, the lithograph \u2018The Gathering of the Unions on New Hall Hill Birmingham\u2019 by Henry Harris, recording the meetings taking place in May 1832. Depictions of the gatherings at New Hall Hill show the detail of a banner with the legend, \u2018Attwood and Union\u2019 among other mottoes). Discussions of union as aspiration and necessity are to be found in texts as varied as the writings and utterances of the pioneer socialist, Robert Owen (1771 \u2013 1858), and his followers (for whom union, combination and extensive social rearrangements were the goal), and in essays and comments in the broader radical press.<\/p>\n

The statement \u2018union was strength\u2019 was often uttered in the nineteenth century, in many different contexts. Reflections in British radical literature on union were fundamentally about power<\/em>: whether it was to be achieved through a combination by employers or by workers; whether union was in advance of the great social and economic principle of co-operation; or whether it was some effort at creating a mass platform such as the \u2018one bond of brotherly love and unanimity\u2019 that sought to bring together the radicals in \u2018Orator\u2019 Henry Hunt\u2019s \u2018Great Northern Radical Union\u2019 (1821). This was actually designed to raise funds to get Hunt (1773 \u2013 1835) elected as a MP (see the letter he penned, from \u2018Ilchester Bastille,\u2019 in his periodical To the Radical Reformers, Male and Female, of England, Ireland and Scotland<\/em>, 24 September 1821, p.328). The aged Robert Owen would speak of the \u2018Necessity of Union among the Leaders of Progress\u2019 in 1850 (as reported in the freethinking journal, The Reasoner<\/em>, 13 February 1850, p.51).<\/p>\n

Working-class political strength was to be manifest through \u2018grand\u2019 and \u2018firm\u2019 unions. We might think especially of the role of trade unions. The literature of trade unionism, not surprisingly, was saturated with references to union, as it advocated \u2018workmen uniting for the purpose of mutual self-protection on the subject of wages\u2019 (the definition from \u2018Trade Unions \u2013 Part First, The Co-operator<\/em>, 1829).<\/p>\n

The explicitly political unions established in the post-war period included various \u2018Union Clubs\u2019 formed for parliamentary reforms such as annual parliaments and universal (male) suffrage), whose activities had frightened parliamentarians in 1817. There was that famous body which was led by the currency reformer Thomas Attwood during the Great Reform Act crisis. The \u2018General Political Union,\u2019 for redressing \u2018public wrongs and grievances\u2019 was established after a meeting in Beardsworth Repository in Birmingham in 25 January 1830.<\/p>\n

The iconography of political union in this period drew on a common symbolic repertoire: including the fasces<\/em>, that familiar emblem of strength through union in the twentieth century \u2013 thus a \u2018bundle of oak sticks, emblematical of union and strength, was borne on an oak staff before the bearers of the Bristol Petition,\u2019 in 1817 (see Cobbett\u2019s Weekly Political Register<\/em>, 16 August 1817, p.620). One cartoon of 1832, stimulated by the parliamentary reform crisis, and entitled \u2018The Union of the Scotch Greys at Birmingham,\u2019 printed in The Chronologist<\/em> (and published by J. Lewis \u00a0Marks in London: a copy can be seen via the online collection of the British Museum,1868,0808.13367) represents a serpent of corruption coiling around the fasces and cap of liberty while a mounted soldier, representing the supposedly sympathetic Greys, shakes hands with a member of the Birmingham Political Union, their union shown by their hands shaking (with a cloth labelled \u2018UNION\u2019 wrapped around their arms). In 1832 in an engraving by Josiah Allen, W. Green and Scriven, the banker and reformer Thomas Attwood (1783 \u2013 1856) is depicted in one elaborate engraving with a bundle of rods joined by ribbons with the legend \u2018unity, liberty and prosperity\u2019, and elsewhere he is shown holding a scroll emblazoned with the word \u2018Union,\u2019 in a wood engraving in one newspaper. A commemorative medal struck for the Birmingham Political Union in 1830 had a dove atop a fasces bundle, with an olive of peace, under the motto: \u2018unity liberty, prosperity\u2019.<\/p>\n

Our conference keynote speaker Gordon Pentland, has explored, in his study The Spirit of the Union: Popular Politics in Scotland<\/em>, published in 2011, the symbolism of fasces in radical constitutionalism: in the town of Lewes in Sussex there was even a \u2018Bundle of Sticks Society\u2019 formed by local Whigs in 1818 which used the iconography. If the argument for combined strength drew on fables such as Aesop\u2019s bundle of sticks, that detail of hands being shaken, grasped or held, can be seen in many artefacts to do with union: appearing in trade union banners for example (see Annie Ravenhill-Johnson\u2019s The Art and Ideology of the Trade Union Emblem, 1850\u20131925<\/em> published in 2013, p.32, on the symbol of the hands, and on the general topic). In my conference paper, looking at the diplomatic ramifications of the English holiday visit to Paris organized in April 1849, I showed several designs of commemorative medals struck in Paris, displaying the hands clasped in unity. The conference had an accompanying exhibition which showed the symbolic gesture appearing in a range of artefacts from pledge cards for the late-Victorian Gospel Temperance Union, up to the iconography of Marianne and Britannia holding hands for the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908 and the socialist Walter Crane\u2019s design for workers of the world uniting .<\/p>\n

The early-nineteenth century critics of radicals were fearful of radical combination. A writer in the periodical Anti-Jacobin Review<\/em> and Protestant Advocate<\/em> in 1820 saw \u2018Union societies\u2019 as a \u2018favourite plan with the advocates of radicalism\u2019 (vol. LVIII, March\u2013August 1820, p.187). The cartoon by the leading cartoonist of the age (and contributor to the Anti-Jacobin<\/em>), James Gillray (1756 \u2013 1815), \u2018The Union Club\u2019 (published in 1801: a copy can be seen via the online collection of the British Museum, 1868,0808.6922), had its satirical comment:<\/p>\n

Thus we\u2019ll Join Heads & Hands all discord shall cease,<\/p>\n

And with Bottles & Glasses the Union increase.<\/p>\n

As Patriots of England we\u2019ll drink down the Sun<\/p>\n

And to dear Friends in Ireland we\u2019ll drink down the Moon<\/p>\n

(Gillray\u2019s famous image was later emulated by George Cruikshank\u2019s racist \u2018The New Union: Club, Being a Representation of what took place at a celebrated Dinner, given by a celebrated \u2013\u2013society,\u2019 published 19 July 1819: a copy can also be seen via the online collection of the British Museum,1859,0316.148<\/p>\n

\u2018Union is strength in all cases and without any exception,\u2019 asserted the Owenite socialist author of \u2018Considerations\u2019 for those who wish to untie under the New System of Union and Mutual Co-operation<\/em>\u00a0 (reprinted in Gregory Claeys, Owenite Socialism: 1823\u20131831, published in 2005<\/em>). In Owenism, not only was the social system to be one of mutual co-operation, with the \u2018principle of union\u2019 (see Owen\u2019s \u2018Report to the County of Lanark\u2019 of 1820; and his autobiographical The Life of Robert Owen<\/em>) rather than a social system established on the basis of individualism, but we see the call for union in thought too, as the reverse of the diversity of opinion about religious beliefs in the old moral world. Universal facts were to be opposed to the \u2018jarring opinions upon abstract subjects,\u2019 in the words of Thomas Macconnell in 1832 (The Signs of the Times. A Lecture Delivered in … Robert Owen\u2019s Institution, Etc<\/em> (London: Eamonson, 1832), p.13), and the \u2018advantages of union in practice\u2019 were extolled. The Owenite future was concerned with the \u2018practice of union\u2019, and contrasted present-day division with the hoped-for \u2018cordial union of interests\u2019. And Owenite writers identified it in many other ideal forms (including the \u2018free unions\u2019 of the sexes), when they employed the language of union. But in order to make any union \u2018consistent,\u2019 in co-operative societies, so the Unitarian Reverend Franklin Baker argued in 1830, these needed to be formed from \u2018equality\u2019 of social condition and experience by restricting membership to the working classes. (See the Reverend F. Baker, \u2018The Universal Pamphleteer. The Second Lecture on Co-operation. Delivered by the Reverend F. Baker, May 3, 1830, At the Sessions\u2019 Room, Bolton’ and also republished in Claeys, Owenite Socialism: 1823\u20131831<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Union requires an antithetical language of division and disunion, of competition and individuality. The exponents of union in radical politics identified weaknesses brought about by radical disunity, of working-class division, isolation and disorganization. Numerous were the essays in which radical politicians complained about the faulty basis for enlarged union; or the splits within radicalism and the failure to unite \u2018the people\u2019. Richard Carlile (1790 \u2013 1843) reflected on this, in his essay, \u2018To the Republicans of the Island of Great Britain\u2019, published in the six-penny paper The Republican<\/em>, 7 and 14 June 1822, from his cell in Dorchester Gaol: reflecting on \u2018Union among Reformers\u2019: \u2018Union upon sound principles is my motto\u2019 (The Republican<\/em>, 1 March 1822, p.287).<\/p>\n

Some found the reasons for mid-century radical disunion in leadership:<\/p>\n

Each and all preach union, declare it to be the prime essential of success, make it the exordium and the climax of their speeches, and then go to their closets and sow discord broad cast<\/p>\n

(\u2018The Political Reviewer. I. Politics and Socialism\u2019, The Freethinker\u2019s Magazine and Review of Theology, Politics<\/em>, 1851, p.199.)<\/p>\n

If there was more space here, it would be interesting to look at how the language of union appears in the journalism of the mass working-class Chartist movement. In the latter phase of Chartism, the leader George Julian Harney (1817 \u2013 1890), writing in The Democratic Review<\/em>, argued:<\/p>\n

The first and most important step to be taken is, that we should become thoroughly united. We may behold in that talismanic word \u2013 Union! The lever by which the sons of labour may acquire the gigantic strength which will raise them to their legitimate position in the social scale.<\/p>\n

(To the Trades of Great Britain and Ireland\u2019, in The Democratic Review<\/em>, June 1849, p.7)<\/p>\n

Efforts to unite the democratic and socialist reformers were repeated on several occasions in the era of Chartism, with a latter-day effort in the \u2018National Charter and Social Reform Union\u2019 in October 1850. But read this splendid denunciation of the political failure to unite these parties, again from the pen of Harney, disillusioned:<\/p>\n

We knew that \u2018leaders\u2019, one and all, had preached \u2018union\u2019 from the platform and through the press, and we believed them! We had heard them deplore the evils of disunion, and the foolishness of sectional agitation; we had heard them tell the people, times without number, that the disunion of the millions was the principal reason why they continued slaves; and we were foolish enough to believe that these men were in earnest in their appeals for \u2018union.\u2019 Hence the hope we cherished that a brighter day was about to dawn, that the \u2018leaders\u2019 were ready to sacrifice their jealousies and hatreds on the altar of the public good. We were deceived. The majority of these union preachers<\/em> held aloof, some to see if the projected union would succeed before they patronised it; others to see if the Conference would commit itself to measures which would afford a pretext for patriotic<\/em> denunciation.<\/p>\n

(The Red Republican and the Friend of the People<\/em>, 16 November 1850, p.173.)<\/p>\n

Forging union, as political leaders in contemporary national politics know well, requires constant attention, with tangible rewards offered rather than merely rhetorical and symbolic gestures.<\/p>\n

About the Author\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Dr James R.T.E. Gregory<\/a> is\u00a0Programme Leader for the\u00a0MA<\/a>\u00a0&\u00a0ResM<\/a> in History, and\u00a0Lecturer in British History since 1800 at Plymouth University. He is the author of\u00a0The Poetry and the Politics: Radical Reform in Victorian England<\/a><\/em> (2014) and\u00a0Victorians Against the Gallows: Capital Punishment and the Abolitionist Movement in Nineteenth Century Britain<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2011).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY JAMES GREGORY\u00a0 The recent international conference, \u2018Union and Disunion in the Nineteenth Century\u2019 held at the University of Plymouth (22 \u2013 23 June 2017) looked at union and disunion from the level of families separated by mental health or poverty, through the local history of Union Street and the union of the three towns… Continue reading Feature: Union is strength: the language of union in British radicalism c.1815 \u2013 1850<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":2462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,137],"tags":[800,33,295,299],"class_list":["post-2458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-histories-memory-memorialisation","tag-british-history","tag-history","tag-james-gregory","tag-puncs","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2458"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2468,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458\/revisions\/2468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.plymouth.ac.uk\/artsinstitute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}