Before Chartism: Exclusion and Resistance, Richard Brown, Authoring History, 2014, vii + 287, £9.15, paper, ISBN 13: 978-1492200598; 10: 149220059X

This is Richard Brown’s sixth excursion into Chartism and reflects his acquaintance over three decades of writing about British economic and social history not only with the wide range of sources available for the study of Britain’s first working-class political movement, but also with the historiographical debates about the interpretation of the popular campaign for the franchise, which show no signs of abating. As a retired history teacher in secondary and tertiary education he is also experienced in the challenges of helping successive generations of students to understand the movement’s complexities and nuances. Brown’s new synthesis – a curtain raiser for four sequel volumes - aims to combine a narrative and analytical approach, recognising both the value of Dorothy Thompson’s illuminating thematic approach of the mid-1980s and Malcolm Chase’s more recent return to a traditionally structured analytical narrative within a revisionist framework. In this introductory volume Brown seeks to give greater attention to the radical context in which Chartism developed and explaining why it emerged as a widespread political movement in the late 1830s.

For over a decade, Chartists, with branches ranging from the Scottish highlands to northern France and from Dublin to Colchester led a campaign for the franchise that has never been surpassed in terms of the extent of its popular engagement and support. Indeed, its influence was more pervasive than that of a mere political campaign since it also embodied ‘a new and dynamic form of working-class culture’. The intensity of Chartist activity across the country reflected a sense of exclusion from the levers of local, regional and national political power’ which extended back into the late-eighteenth century. Brown is particularly strong in exploring local and regional as well as the national dimensions of radical culture before Chartism. His discussion on class is informed by a detailed focus on Dunstable. He recognises that Luddism was not a uniform movement but that it exhibited distinctly different characteristics in the midlands and the north. His analysis of the emerging co-operative movement is informed by a variety of sources including, references to Batley, Bingley, Castleford and Keighley as well as Rochdale. He draws on Stokesley’s experience of a paper war between 1822 and 1824, fuelled by issues of belief and non-belief, to explain how elements of radicalism developed in the 1820s and compares distinctive features of the anti-poor law movement in northern England and Wales.

The book is well structured and clearly signposted by freshly formulated headings and sub-headings, for example the ‘Politics of the Excluded’, ‘Rebellions of the Belly’ and ‘Restricting Radical Rhetoric’. It is a highly accessible and illuminating study, based on an impressive range of reading, with footnotes, which provide a critical bibliographical guide to the most relevant sources. It thereby enhances the utility of the book for students at all levels seeking to engage with the vast literature on Chartism and its radical antecedents, which shows no signs of diminishing. It concludes that unrest and agitation, though they appeared to contemporaries to be part of a national movement ‘are better seen in terms of responses to particular local conditions’. It is most refreshing to see such a strong emphasis on regional and local studies in a work of synthesis of this kind.

John A. Hargreaves from The Historical Association website

Richard Brown, Coping with Change: British Society 1780-1914 (Authoring History, 2013); and Before Chartism: Exclusion and Resistance (Authoring History, 2014).

Those who study, write and teach about Chartism will be familiar with the name of Richard Brown. His Chartism (1998) is one of a clutch of short histories of the movement; but, alongside that by Edward Royle, is the book that would top anyone's recommendations of where to begin when starting out on a study of the Chartists. Brown's contribution to our understanding of Chartism would be useful enough if he had written only that one book ... but he hasn't. Brown is in fact a prodigious writer. He does not, as a rule, delve deeply into primary sources in his writing. What Brown does is immerse himself in the relevant secondary sources; and 'immerse' is the correct verb because the range of Brown's reading takes in almost everything written on a subject and is truly astonishing.

Coping with Change is a door-stopper of a book. At 746 pages, it leaves no gaps - there are chapters devoted to industry, agriculture, transport, public health, education, crime, leisure, religion and so on. All that Brown has to say is thoroughly footnoted, ensuring the reader does not have to check library catalogues for further reading. Brown writes both authoritatively and clearly. With a detailed index, this is an easy book to use. I can pay it no greater tribute than by saying that I shall keep my copy within easy reach of my desk when I am writing.

Before Chartism offers a comprehensive examination of the radical movements and protests that came before the late 1830s. Chartism cannot be understood without knowing what immediately preceded it - the popular unrest that followed the end of the French wars in 1815, the great 'betrayal' of the 1832 Reform Act, the hated Poor Law of 1834, the agitation over the press in 1830s London and so on. I always thought that the introductory chapters of J.T. Ward's Chartism (1973) were useful, if not particularly sympathetic to the leaders of the people. But that book is long out-of-print and the reader seeking up-to-date and reflective writing on these themes needs to consult a range of different books. That is no longer the case. Brown provides, in a well-researched, sympathetic and readable volume, the stories of the campaigns that fed into Chartism. It is another valuable volume from the Brown writing factory.

I am most grateful to Stephen Roberts for writing a review of these two books. They are printed on his excellent Chartism & The Chartists website: http://www.thepeoplescharter.co.uk/index.htm

Five Star review from Amazon UK by Huw Griffiths

For those interested in the genus of Chartism this is an accessible volume demonstrating a breadth of research of the period, as well as providing a refreshingly balanced narrative and overview of the subsequent histories and scholarship. Despite the typos, which as a Guardian reader of old had a certain nostalgic appeal, this book is informative and readable; the decades before Chartism were repressive, sometimes brutally so, and a time of social and economic change which the author relates to a burgeoning political and educational consciousness within the working classes.

To newer but serious students or scholars of Chartism or early working class movements, this book will give you the background, balance, and a certain insight that will make Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class or Steadman Jones's The Language of Class easier to appreciate for the great, but difficult, works of scholarship they undoubtedly remain - if I had read this first I am certain I would have enjoyed them more!!

I look forward to the rest of the series.