‘The Old Chartist’: Radical Veterans on the Late Nineteenth‐ and Early Twentieth‐Century Political Platform

Abstract

AbstractFormer and veteran Chartists were a feature of the late nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century political platform in Britain. This article argues that their function was about more than mere adornment. Through their presence, lineages of political longevity were established and memories of the radical past invoked. This article considers the totemic role of the ‘old Chartists’. It locates their significance for successor movements, and scrutinizes their importance in augmenting and modifying the historiography of Chartism. It argues that the personal stories of veteran Chartists were formative for later depictions of the movement, and remain integral to the creation of a radical historiography mediated through the lived experience of struggle, and the historical memory of reform. By engaging with recent ‘continuity’ debates in the historiography of nineteenth‐century popular politics, this article argues that the role of the veteran Chartist contributed to a radical inter‐generational history of reform that frequently remained independent of both liberalism and Toryism.