to get themselves arrested. They wanted to keep their forces together if there was to be an outbreak, and the seizure of the delegates would either provoke a leaderless insurrection or put a stop to the whole agitation, at least for the time being. Neither of these alternatives was pleasant to contemplate. The delegates, therefore, felt themselves unsafe in London, almost under the eyes of Government and the already efficient Metropolitan Police. The debates in the Convention had not escaped the notice of the Home Secretary, who especially asked for reports of the proceedings there.[1]
In the Metropolis the Chartists had totally failed to get together a real following. An effort to organise agitation in London had been made by the Convention, but it did not accomplish much. Long and loud were the complaints about the apathy of the Londoners "because they had more wages than the men of the North."[2] A meeting addressed by Pitkeithly and Smart at Rotherhithe on March 28 drew only fifty or sixty persons, and Pitkeithly complained that he had only to call a meeting in the North and he would crowd a room six times as large as the present one.[3] The notion that the populace of London would play in a Chartist Revolution the part of the Paris folk in the French Revolution, if it were ever entertained, was hopelessly impossible. In London the Convention, in spite of its exertions, was never more than an interesting phenomenon.
The thought was natural, therefore, to withdraw from London to some place where there was a greater following and a greater immunity from arrest. Birmingham was the town selected. The delegates believed that the Convention could combine preparation with propaganda, and Birmingham, the half-way house to the North and to South Wales, was naturally the first stopping-place for a movable People's Parliament.
Birmingham Chartism had undergone a change since the collapse of the Attwood party. The moderate middle-class element had seceded and left the leadership in the hands of working men. Collins still preserved a tolerable following,[4] but he was overshadowed by a noisier party led by Brown, Powell, Donaldson, and Fussell. Brown, Powell, and Donaldson were elected delegates in the place of Douglas, Hadley, and
- ↑ Home Office, 40 (44), Metropolis. Pencil note on back of letter, date May 3: "I wish to have account of proceedings of the Convention itself."
- ↑ Home Office, 40 (44), Metropolis.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ A strong protest was received by the Committee against the election of Brown and his colleagues. Charter, April 28, 1839.
