scot-free, while other Chartist leaders languished in gaol or in exile, still further increased his hold over the party. It was another reason why O'Connorism henceforth meant Chartism.
(2) O'Connor's Land Scheme and the Chartist Revival (1843–1847)
We have now seen the process by which O'Connor was established as the autocrat of Chartism. But the desperate struggle for supremacy had not only eliminated O'Connor's enemies; it had almost destroyed the Chartist movement itself. It was not only that the Complete Suffragists had been ejected from the movement, that Lovett was permanently alienated and O'Brien brutally silenced; that Cooper and scores of the rank and file were in prison and MacDouall in dishonourable exile. Even within the depleted ranks of the Chartist remnant there was now a deplorable lack of interest and activity.
The sluggishness, which sapped the prosperity of the whole movement, extended even to the inner circle of agitators and organisers who stood round O'Connor's solitary throne. It is best evidenced in the postponement of the Chartist Convention, which, first summoned for April 1843, did not assemble until September 5, when it met at Birmingham. The list of delegates present contained but few of the famous names of earlier Chartist history, but O'Connor himself represented the London Society, while of the rest Harney was perhaps the best-known of the delegates.[1] During the months of waiting, O'Connor had been thinking out plans of reorganisation which, while professing to give a much-needed stimulus to the decaying cause, aimed grossly and obviously at the promotion of the interests of the autocrat. Accordingly the object of the Convention was pompously given out as "to consider and devise a plan for the organisation of a society to enforce upon public attention the principles of the People's Charter and to devise means for their practical accomplishment."[2] With this motive two schemes were laid before the assembly. One was a device for the stiffening up and centralisation of the existing machinery of the National Charter Association. The other was the enunciation of a new policy of Land Reform with which all the future history of Chartism is closely bound up.
