Halifax 1842: A Year of Crisis

by Catherine Howe, Stephen Roberts (Foreword)

1842 was a year of crisis in Britain, and no more so than in the West Riding town of Halifax. A great strike of all trades took place across England in 1842. It reached its zenith in the industrial towns of the north, starting in the small communities of Lancashire and quickly spreading to the West Riding of Yorkshire as Lancashire marchers poured across the Pennines. In hand with its neighbouring town of Huddersfield, Halifax was noted for its opposition to the New Poor Law which, in 1834, attempted to abolish outdoor relief for the poor, for its support of a maximum ten-hour working day and the Chartists' call for workers' voting rights. When Bradford publican 'Fat Peter' Bussey attended the first Chartist Convention in London in 1839, he took with him the West Riding petition bearing 52,800 signatures, 25 percent of which had been given at Halifax. This book discusses the efforts made by the men and women of Halifax in these early years of organised agitation for social reform, their 'clandestine meetings and nightly drilling', their 'determination, resilience and militancy' to gain a say in the laws under which they lived. It tells of the fight for the legislative rights of workers like seventeen-year-old Patience Kershaw, who dragged loads of coal for twelve hours each day along narrow and dangerous passages under the hills of Halifax. When the Lancashire marchers arrived at Halifax in the hot summer of 1842, the cavalry attempted to clear the streets with their sabres and a violent response was inevitable, arrests quickly followed. The climax came when many hundreds of the men and women of Halifax fought against British soldiers on 16th August 1842, an event which led to the humiliation of a proud platoon of Prince Albert's Own and to the death of at least six men of Halifax.

202 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2014

Reviews

[Tom May · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well researched narrative history of a turbulent time and a necessary reminder of the horrible reality of industrial life in Northern England in the 1800s and an account of the political exclusion of working-class men and women from democracy. There is of course a wider lineage from Peterloo in 1819 to Grunwick in 1976-8, whereby the powerful have kept their entrenched privilege. This added new villains to the roll call, like Jonathan Akroyd, and highlighted the Herculean underdog efforts of so many - including Benjamin Rushton and Ernest Jones - to stop what was notably called "white slavery" in the factories, alongside varied attempts to gain the civic and human right to be able to vote for representatives to decide on the laws which affect your everyday lives.

Catherine Howe places Halifax at the centre of the story of Chartism and notes how doomed insurrection nevertheless laid the groundwork for future slow reform, and also the trade union movement itself. Howe wryly recounts the myopic biases of the Anti-Corn League campaigns and the economic and political elites' defined philosophy of "Political Economy": ironically, very much self-help of the rich, protecting their own unearned power, wealth and assets. There's also a vital attention to how the powerful used painfully familiar divide-and-conquer tactics including bribery, to undermine the Chartist cause.

[Hazel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very readable and compassionate account of the situation in Halifax surrounding the Great Strikes of 1842 and the key players in the area. Howe writes in a manner which makes it easy to conjure up the scenes and consider the mindset of the working people of Halifax.