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“Commons-Stealers”, “Land-Grabbers” and “Jerry-Builders”: Space, Popular Radicalism and the Politics of Public Access in London, 1848–1880

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Antony Taylor
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This article places the campaign for rights of public access in London in context. It provides a structural analysis of the importance of public space in metropolitan radicalism, and in so doing explores prevailing assumptions about the different uses of such space in a provincial and metropolitan setting. Its chief focus is upon opposition to restrictions on rights of public meeting in Hyde Park in 1855 and 1866–1867, but it also charts later radical opposition to the enclosures of common-land on the boundaries of London and at Epping Forest in Essex. In particular it engages with recent debates on the demise of Chartism and the political composition of liberalism in an attempt to explain the persistence of an independent tradition of mass participatory political radicalism in the capital. It also seeks explanations for the weakness of conventional liberalism in London in the issues raised by the open spaces movement itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , December 1995 , pp. 383 - 407
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1995

References

1 There is now a large literature on this subject, but see in particularBiagini, E.F., Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone 1860–1880 (Cambridge, 1992), chs 1–5Google Scholar; Joyce, P., Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 85–136CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Hewitt, M., “Radicalism and the Victorian Working-Class: The Case of Samuel Bamford”, Historical Journal, 34 (1991), pp. 873–892CrossRefGoogle Scholar and for the most recent contribution to the debateFinn, M.C., After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics 1848–1874 (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar, introduction and chs 2, 3 and 4.

2 Jephson, H., The Platform: Its Rise and Progress, vol. 2 (London, 1892Google Scholar; reprinted 1968), pp. 467–468 and 608–609.

3 The phrase is Jephson's, see ibid., p. 607.

4 Vernon, J., Politics and the People: A Study in English Political Culture 1815–1867 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 48–79Google Scholar. For the work of Habermas on associational life in the public sphere, see Habermas, J., The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962; English trans., London, 1989), pp. 181–250Google Scholar.

5 See for a survey of the literature on space and English radicalism, Lawrence, J., “The Decline of English Popular Politics?”, Parliamentary History, 13 (1994), pp. 333–337CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The constraints on the space available for protest and public interaction in London in the later nineteenth century, particularly with reference to issues of gender, is explored in Walkowitz, J.R., City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late Victorian Britain (London, 1992), especially pp. 15–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 There is a full synthesis of the literature on this subject in Chase, M., The People's Farm: English Radical Agrarianism 1775–1840 (London, 1988), chs 3–4Google Scholar.

8 For an overview of the Liberal concern for rural smallholdings in the 1880s seeCollings, J. and Green, J.L., The Life of the Rt. Hon. Jesse Collings (London, 1920), pp. 170–205Google Scholar.

9 The fullest and most recent account of the public parks movement isConway, H., People's Parks: The Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain (Cambridge, 1991), especially pp. 56–75Google Scholar. Also see for details of the movement in Manchester Baldwin, D., “The Establishment of Public Parks in Manchester” (unpublished M.A. thesis, Manchester University, 1981), pp. 43–49Google Scholar.

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11 Hill, O., “Space for the People”, in her Homes of the London Poor (London, 1883Google Scholar; reprinted London, 1970), pp. 89–95. Also see on the theme of the landscape of parks, Keith, W.J., The Rural Tradition (Brighton, 1975), pp. 238–240Google Scholar andTaylor, J., A Dream of England: Landscape Photography and the Tourist's Imagination (Manchester, 1994)Google Scholar.

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14 There is a long accolade to the traditional role of Stevenson Square as a public forum for the free expression of ideas in Manchester in Swindells, T., Manchester Streets and Manchester Men, vol. 2 (Manchester, 1907), p. 159Google Scholar. Similar homage is paid to the equivalent function of the Vicar's Croft in Leeds in the obituary of the West Riding radical, Wakefield, A.B. in The Halifax Courier and Guardian, 30 11 1928, p. 5Google Scholar, whilst the same phenomenon is also noted of the Birmingham Bull Ring in Lansbury, My Life, pp. 90–91.

15 SeeJones, G. Stedman, Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar, especially the introduction and ch 3. There is further discussion of this theme inJ., Saville, 1848: The British State and the Chartist Movement (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 22–29Google Scholar.

16 The statutes governing rights of assembly in Trafalgar Square are summarized inR., Mace, Trafalgar Square: Emblem of Empire (London, 1976), pp. 134–154Google Scholar.

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18 See the sketch of Bradlaugh inDavidson, J. Morrison, Lives of Eminent Radicals In and Out of Parliament (London, 1880), pp. 210–222Google Scholar. George Lansbury also recalled visiting the site to hear the disputes as a boy; see Lansbury, My Life, p. 29.

19 People's Paper, 3 July 1852, p. 7.

20 The Commonwealth, 30 June 1866, p. 5.

21 J. Toulmin Smith – Holyoake, 29 July 1866 (letter 1681), Holyoake Papers, Co-operative Union Library, Manchester.

22 Northern Star, 8 July 1848, p. 4.

23 SeeMayhew, H., London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 1 (London, 1861Google Scholar; reprinted 1967), pp. 20–25.

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26 People's Paper, 7 July 1855, p. 1. His remarks echo the comments of such contemporaries as J. Toulmin Smith who in the 1850s also continued to see the state as an almost entirely coercive body; seeGreenleaf, W.H., “Toulmin Smith and the British Political Tradition”, Public Administration, 53 (1975), pp. 25–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28 See the British Museum Broadside Collection. Orchestrated attacks on the police in Hyde Park in 1866 are described inRichter, D., Riotous Victorians (Athens, Ohio, 1981), pp. 51–61Google Scholar andSmith, P.T., Policing Victorian London: Political Policing, Public Order and the London Metropolin Police (London, 1985), pp. 161–182.Google Scholar

29 The Commonwealth, 28 July 1866.

30 The SDF articulated strong opposition to the police even before the Trafalgar Square riots; see Justice, 24 May 1884, p. 5. It also campaigned vigorously for rights of access to Primrose Hill in the same year; ibid., 5 July 1884, p. 1.

31 This theme is developed in Reynolds's Newspaper, 24 November 1887, p. 4.

32 Justice, 12 September 1885, p. 2; 10 October 1885, p. 4; and 17 October 1885, p. 2.

33 People's Paper, 3 July 1855, p. 4.

34 Bee-Hive, 11 May 1867.

35 See for the design of the Hyde Park medal the Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Reform League, 18 Augest 1866, in the Howell Collection, Bishopsgate Institute.

36 See ibid., 19 October 1866 and 4 January, 27 March and 12 July 1867. Also see The Commonwealth, 26 January 1867, p. 4, for praise of the metropolitan cabmen's contribution to the fund on behalf of the interned Hyde Park rioters.

37 For the third annual commemoration of the Hyde Park riots see the National Reformer, 25 July 1869, p. 61.

38 See, for example, accounts of the Hyde Park meeting byHowell, G., “People I Have Met: The Fall of the Hyde Park Railings”, Reynolds's Newspaper, 10 06 1906Google Scholar; Broad-hurst, Henry Broadhurst MP, pp. 34–40 andEvans, H., “Battles of English Liberty: 1866–1867”, The English Labourers Chronicle, 27 07 1878, pp. 1–2Google Scholar. Also obituaries of Brighty, Samuel in the Club and Institute Journal, 13 02 1892, p. 25Google Scholar and of Snowden, John in the National Reformer, 7 09 1884, p. 174Google Scholar. Former participants in the Trafalgar Square riots of 1887 also felt a similar pride at having been present at a major confrontation with the police and the authorities. See on this point Walter Southgate's reminiscences of his father inSouthgate, W., That's the Way it Was: A Working-Class Autobiography 1890–1950 (London, 1982), p. 103Google Scholar.

39 SeeSindall, R., Street Violence in the Nineteenth Century: Real Danger or Media Panic? (Leicester, 1990), pp. 73–75Google Scholar.

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41 People's Paper, 3 July 1852, p. 7.

42 See ibid., 22 May 1852, p. 4 and 28 May 1852, p. 4.

43 See for these meetings ibid., 3 July 1852, p. 7 and 19 June 1852, p. 7.

44 SeeTaylor, A.D., “Modes of Political Expression and Working-Class Radicalism 1848–1880: The London and Manchester Examples” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 1992)Google Scholar, chs 2–3 and for attempts t o popularize the Lord Mayor's processions in the City during the 1880s, Smith, T.B., “In Defence of Privilege: The City of London and the Challenge of Municipal Reform 1875–1890”, Journal of Social History, 27 (1993), pp. 59–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 See for this subversive aspect to the Working-Men's Tercentenary Committee the Bee-Hive, 30 January 1864, p. 6; 5 March 1864, p. 4; and 23 April 1864, p. 1.

46 See for the “Chartism in Shakespeare” column the Northern Star, 2 May 1840, p. 7 and 23 May 1840, p. 7 and for Carnegie's reminiscences, Carnegie, A., Autobiography (London, 1920), pp. 9–10Google Scholar.

47 Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, 24 April 1864, p. 1.

48 John Breuilly has detected a similar pattern of events at the Hamburg Schiller commemoration of 1859 when the guilds attempted to set up their own separate ceremony. See his “The Schiller Centenary of 1859 in Hamburg” (paper delivered to the Manchester University Staff Seminar, 1990).

49 The Bee-Hive, 30 April 1864, p. 4. There are also accounts of this controversy in Reynolds's Newspaper, 24 April 1864, p. 3 and 1 May 1864, p. 4, and in the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 30 April 1864, p. 4.

50 See on this pointLeventhal, F.M., George Howell and Victorian Working-Class Politics (London, 1971), p. 49Google Scholar.

51 Vie Ttmes, 23 July 1866. Similar sentiments were expressed by George Odger and George Howell on a deputation to the Home Secretary on the eve of the riots. See the Morning Star, 28 July 1866.

52 Hill, ”Space for the People”, p. 94.

53 There is a lament on the decline of the London fairground tradition, particularly ”Glorious Old Stepney Fair”, inSanger, G., Seventy Years a Showman (London, 1910Google Scholar; reprinted 1952), p. 141.

54 See Conway, People's Parks, pp. 24–25.

55 Ibid., pp. 188–191. There are comparatively few accounts of the development and eventual demise of individual meeting grounds, but for one useful survey of the fate of Copenhagen Fields seeQuinault, R., “Outdoor Radicalism: Copenhagen Fields 1795–1851” (paper presented to the Metropolitan History Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, 18 01 1989)Google Scholar.

56 The Radical, 7 May 1881, p. 2; see for the continuing campaign for “freedom of speech” on Rye, Peckham, Liberty, 28 04 1883, p. 2Google Scholar. The issue of access to prohibited open ground in London was also raised in Justice, 7 June 1884, p. 4.

57 See his speech to the council of the Reform League on theBill, Royal Parks in the Morning Star, 25 07 1867Google Scholar.

58 Gaskell, M E., Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life (Manchester, 1848Google Scholar; new eds, London, 1970 and 1979), p. 39.

59 See for the significance of Woodhouse Moor for the reformers of Leeds, Conway, People's Parks, p. 72 and the Leeds Mercury, 18 November 1871, p. 5; for an account of the Reform League demonstration there in 1866 see The Annual Register 1866 (London, 1867), pp. 141–144. There is also an account of the meeting of the Manchester and Salford branches of the SDF in conscious emulation of the Chartists at Blackstone Edge in Justice, 12 May 1888, p. 6.

60 See forrole, Atherley-Jones' in the defence of the Plumstead rioters the Kentish Mercury, 28 10 1876, p. 3Google Scholar.

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63 See Hill, “Space for the People”, p. 89.

64 See on this pointRanlett, J., “Checking Nature's Desecration: Late Victorian Environmental Organisations”, Victorian Studies, 26 (1983), pp. 197–222Google Scholar andSamuel, R., Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London, 1993), pp. 288–312Google Scholar; for the reminiscences of the chief organizer of the Commons Preservation Society seeShaw-Lefevre, G.J., English Commons and Forest: The Story of the Battle During the Last Thirty Years for Public Rights over the Commons and Forests of England and Wales (London, 1894; new ed, 1910), pp. 23–25 and 39–40Google Scholar.

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66 Annual Register 1875 (London, 1876), p. 121. The public meetings that led up to the confrontation atHackney, are described in the East London Observer, 30 10 1875, p. 6Google Scholar and 11 December 1875, p. 7. The riots at the common are lampooned in “A Fytte of Hackney Downs”, in Punch, vol. 69, 25 December 1875, p. 271.

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68 See the Bee-Hive, 12 October 1867, p. 3 and the Kentish Mercury, 8 July 1876, p. 3.

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72 John Buckmaster has left the only full first-hand account of the movement of opposition to enclosure in London in the 1870s in an account of his radical career in the capital. SeeBuckmaster, J., A Village Politician: The Life Story of John Buckley (London, 1897Google Scholar; reprinted 1982), pp. 303–337.

73 See the Kentish Mercury, 13 May 1876, p. 3.

74 De Morgan's Monthly, 15 November 1876, p. 28.

75 See St Clair, Sketch of the Life and Labours of John de Morgan, pp. 7–8.

76 See in particular De Morgan's Monthly, 1 September 1876, p. 3; 1 January 1877, p. 35; and 2 April 1877, pp. 54–55.

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79 See for a report of a mass trespass at Epping the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 5 February 1870, p. 4 and for a public meeting on the issue the Bee-Hive, 8 July 1871, p. 4.

80 See the International Herald, 9 November 1872, p. 6 and The Times, 31 January 1874, p. 7.

81 Annual Register 1875 (London, 1876), p. 95 and Reynolds's Newspaper, 7 May 1882, p. 8.

82 Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 29 July 1871, p. 4. Sir Charles Dilke also referred to this issue in a speech to the inaugural meeting of the Land Tenure Reform Association. See Speeches by Sir Charles Dilke (pamphlet, London, 1872), pp. 32–38.

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84 Buckmaster, A Village Politician, pp. 317–319.

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