all the great towns of Lancashire. On August 15 the same resolution was passed at a meeting on Crown Bank at Hanley, at which Thomas Cooper presided.[1] Despite his exhortations to observe peace and order, serious rioting broke out.
The Chartists' leaders now gathered together at Manchester, where the Executive Council of the National Charter Association was joined by delegates from the Manchester and West Riding areas. It first assembled on August 12, but members came in by slow degrees. It met in Schofield's chapel and was dignified by the Northern Star with the name of a conference.[2] In this MacDouall took the lead, and was not displaced from it even when O'Connor, Campbell the Secretary, and Thomas Cooper, hot from his stormy experiences in the Potteries, joined the gathering. Cooper has left a vivid account of his escape from Hanley by night, and of his vacillation between his desire to stay with his comrades in the Potteries and his wish to be in Manchester, where he rightly felt the real control of the movement lay. He trudged along the dark roads from Hanley to Crewe, a prey to various tumultuous and conflicting thoughts. But he was sustained by the noble confidence that O'Connor would be at Manchester and would tell everybody what to do. At Crewe he took the train and found Campbell the Secretary in it. Campbell, now resident in London, was anxious to be back in his old home and see how things were going there. As soon as "the city of long chimneys" came in sight and every chimney was beheld smokeless, Campbell's face changed, and with an oath he said, "Not a single mill at work! Something must come out of this and something serious too!"[3]
The conference speedily resolved that the strikers should be exhorted to remain out until the Charter became law. To procure this end, MacDouall issued on behalf of the Executive a fierce manifesto appealing to the God of battles and declaring in favour of a general strike as the best weapon for winning the Charter.[4] But divided counsels now once more rent asunder the party and made all decisive action hopeless. Even in the delegates' meeting it had been necessary to negative an amendment denying any connection between the existing strike and Chartism. At Ashton-under-Lyne the strikers declared that they had no concern with any political questions.[5]
