Dbq Chartism

The other piece of legislation with the most intense resistance was the New Poor Law introduced in 1834. That policy was criticised because of its dire consequences on poor relief and the people identified with Chartism when they all condemned the injustice carried by this act. Politicians were called untrustworthy, since the New Poor Law was accepted without controversy by Members of Parliament, even if it was at odds with the people’s interests. Indeed, the workhouse system led to the separation of families, the humiliation of the poor and their stigmatisation as people who did not embrace the Victorian virtues of self-help praised by the Liberals and did not deserve respectability. The clauses of the Poor Law encouraged infanticide, threatened

the traditional family unit, and the Chartists often appealed to feelings and dramatic images to persuade the less politically educated people to question the unrepresentative political system. The lack of humanitarianism of the Whigs embodied by the workhouses was widely resented by the vulnerable working class alongside the Chartists, and was described “as damnable, infernal, detestable, despotic, unchristian, unconstitutional, and unnatural.” In order to prove the necessity for political reforms, Chartism emphasised on the dehumanising nature of the laws passed by the government, which caused hunger and jeopardised the conservative way of life experienced by the working-class.

Associated with the New Poor Laws, the 1832 Anatomy Act also raised protests because it was seen as a utilitarian measure opposed to the dignity of the most disadvantaged even as regards death. According to the latter and the Chartists, this act highlighted the wish of the Whigs to degrade the poor by putting their bodies on “a level with the bodies of beasts.” The mass then allied with the Chartist movement to gain emancipation from the Whigs’ oppression: since the government proved to be insensitive to the people’s pain, they had to ask for political

empowerment.
What’s more, the Chartists often criticised the Whigs’ belief in repressive social ideas such as those put forward by Thomas Malthus, which emphasised on the necessity to contain the demographic growth to guarantee the well-being of the nation. Chartism stressed the dreadful consequences of this ideology on the labouring people, especially on their private life and their family. As a matter of fact, Malthusianism was a discriminatory measure because its aim was to contain the population increase by limiting marriages and births. The people along with the Chartists denounced the Liberals’ wish to deny the people’s right to start a family. They condemned that “moral restrain” imposed on the working people whose happiness was undermined by the lack of sexual relationships and the impossibility to celebrate their love. Drawing links between Malthusianism and the New Poor Laws , the Chartists rose fear amongst the people who would fiercely condemn the Whigs to avoid a mass murder and protect their freedom. To reveal the dangers of the Liberals’ ideology was a means for the Chartists to discredit the legitimacy of the elite monopolising power without carrying about the interests of the majority. The Whigs, like the Tories who defended a class of natural leaders superior to the mass, were then to be described as harmful to the body politic by the people convinced by the Chartists.
Eventually, the influence of free-trade economics on the traditional values of the labouring people could be a feature of the radicals’ speech. The British industrialisation and the absence of new factory legislation to protect the workers led to the dissemination of a growing distress within the working-class. The ideal of domesticity was threatened by economic duties because men, women and children alike were compelled to work to ensure the subsistence of the household. Chartist discourse generally relied on an idealised conception of rurality and domesticity in contrast with the sufferings and dehumanisation experienced by the working people exploited in factories. Therefore, the people considered that the laissez-faire principles supported by the Whigs endangered the traditional family unit and had deleterious effects on the prosperity of the majority of the population. Workers faced degradation since their natural family model could not be preserve any longer, and their living conditions were appalling and unhealthy. All these features of everyday life were discussed by the Chartists, throughout debates, references to popular culture and melodramatic stories with a plain language, and stimulated the people to get involve in Chartism to overthrow a political system that did not intend to protect the working-class and its needs.
To conclude, the Chartist movement managed to politicise the everyday concerns of the working-class and to link them to the principles of the Charter in order to include people who did not have any political knowledge into their fight for reforms.

Chartist campaigners thus criticised the Whigs government and the repressive measures it endorsed to raise a sense of political awareness amongst the people. Thanks to the issues tackled, the accessibility of the discourses, and the attractive popular gatherings organised, the movement searched to mobilise even the lowest class of the population. It focused on the problems of the poor, which were predominantly caused by the economic and social policies voted by the Liberals. The Whigs thus threatened the traditions and lives of the working people, and Chartism encouraged massive political engagement to bring reform to a decaying and unrepresentative political system, especially through the extension of franchise. Joining both political and social issues, “the Charter was a means to an end – the means was their political rights and the end was social

equality.”