The Cato Street Conspirators in New South Wales

Abstract

The failure of the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820 was in reality the end of the 'old Radicalism' in England, and this movement which was an extension of Eighteenth Century Jacobinism is of great importance to the student of labour history, and more particularly to the student of the tradition of physical force insurrectionism.* Although the conspiracy was an unrealistic attempt to seize cannon and arsenals; fire the military barracks; murder the cabinet, especially Sidmouth and Castlereagh; and establish a Provisional Government; placed in its true context Cato Street emerges as a turning-point in English radicalism, because it was the last real stand of British Jacobinism, which died on the scaffold with Thistlewood, Ings and Davidson. Its traditions survived, but they were absorbed by other move ments of a different structure, composition and ideology.