4 - Protest and Subversion, 1790–1850

Summary

Introduction

Some followers of Edward Thompson have tried to identify an organised and armed revolutionary underground which erupted into open revolt at various points from the 1790s to the 1840s and which at times tried to infiltrate the forces of the Crown. This was often connected to violent industrial struggle in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Opposing historians argue a Whiggish view, that it was mainly the work of government agents provocateurs. Others claim that these insurrectionary cells were tiny compared with the mainstream working class who were overwhelmingly anti-foreigner and loyalist. Thompson's recent supporters, such as like John Belchem, have pointed out the difficulty in separating the protesting self-defence tactics of the radical ‘Mass Platform’ after Peterloo from the armed groups attempting a coup. Serious armed conflict did however break out in a number of localities where the economic and political strains of industrialising Britain could not be contained, and soldiers (or ex-soldiers) were present on both sides of the barricades. Armed struggle threatened and occurred at various times in the 1790s, 1800–03, 1811–12, 1816–17, 1819–20, 1826, 1830–32, 1839, 1842 and 1848. In Ireland, armed struggle continued in Fenian activities until the late 1860s. It is impossible now to be definitive about the existence and danger of a shadowy revolutionary underground in this period. This chapter will outline the overlapping nature of protest and subversion from the viewpoint of serving and ex-soldiers.

In the absence of an effective police force, soldiers were used in crowd control, a universally disliked service. Lord Mansfield, ruling in 1811 on the Riot Act, made soldiers as citizens responsible and liable for actions in riots: ‘It is therefore, highly important that the mistake should be corrected that an Englishman, by taking upon him the additional character of a Soldier, puts off any of the rights and duties of an Englishman’. Crowd control duty was taken seriously by regiments and enshrined in their Standing Orders:

The duties of a soldier are so distinct from all mob tumults and party feelings or expressions that men are particularly warned against giving the slightest appearance of being concerned therein, or even being seen at the time in the streets.