ABSTRACT
Neither the change in the material circumstances of the working classes nor the attempts at moral imperialism of the middle classes appear to provide sufficient cause for the sort of political demobilisation which took place in the 1840s and 1850s. Part of the explanation may lie in the fact that working-class consciousness in the chartist period was never as 'revolutionary' as has often been suggested, and that as a result the contrasts between the chartist and the post-chartist periods have been overdrawn, and the continuities of working-class norms and values underestimated. By invoking the notion of strategic consciousness, this argument can be taken one stage further: while the continuities in much working-class thought were strong, what the period did see was a progressive collapse of the fragile and partial strategic consensus which was the primary achievement of O'Connorite Chartism.
