ABSTRACT

Any comprehensive explanation of the dynamics of the repudiation of platform radicalism during the chartist period would probably draw in many of the conventional theories of chartist decline. The willingness of working-class radicals to come to terms with the middle classes and seek to work in alliance with them was certainly encouraged by the various manifestations of a more conciliatory stance which have been given the label 'liberalisation'. The search for common ground upon which strategies of alliance were predicated was also eased by the consensus, whether purely linguistic or more fundamental, which existed between middle and working-class versions of radicalism. In particular, notions of respectability enabled those working-class leaders drawn from the more prosperous echelons of the working class to ape some of the manners of the middle classes and thus find acceptance in middle-class circles largely on middle-class terms. And beneath all this, the greater stability and emerging prosperity of the economy did constrict the supply of the large groups of unemployed or underemployed which had been the bedrock of the chartist movement at times of crisis, and blunt the urgency of chartist demands.