SOURCE: "The Chartist Press," in The Chartists, Temple Smith, London, 1984, pp. 37-56.

In this excerpt, from a history of chartism, Thompson describes the development and characteristics of the Chartist press and explains its importance in creating a national movement.

Chartism came about because the people in the different manufacturing districts found themselves agreed on the need for a movement to protect their existing institutions and achievements, to resist the attacks being mounted on them by the newly-enfranchised employing class, and to press forward for more freedoms and a more equitable system of taxation, employment and citizenship than the society of the 1830s offered them. Other beliefs and other programmes were added to the central political demands of the Charter, and there were regional and occupational differences of emphasis. What was new and powerful about the movement, however, was its national character and the speed with which ideas and...