ABSTRACT
The formation of trade unions in Stockport and its district in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries paralleled increasing local interest in 'Jacobin' ideologies and movements. Since Jacobinism has rarely been defined with precision in the English context, it has long remained a rather ambiguous term. On one hand, Jacobinism had ideological links to the Levellers and certain other agitators of the Civil War years, and to their successors of the century after the Restoration. On the other hand, Jacobinism helped to spawn numerous nineteenth-century 'radical' programmes and movements and provided a training ground for many radical leaders and spokesmen prominent from the time of the Westminster Committee of 1807 to the Chartist movement and beyond. Brittner stresses the following characteristics of Jacobinism: Jacobins' democratic and anti-elite beliefs; their small, locally based clubs; their propaganda campaigns; communications between clubs in different localities; and the ability of small groups of activists to mobilise mass support.
