Veneration and Mockery: Images of Gentlemen Leaders within the Material Culture of Scottish Radical Procession 1832–1884

Abstract

Drawing on extensive newspaper accounts of reform processions this article seeks to analyse the portraits, caricatures and other representations of political leaders carried on such occasions. By emphasising the respectability of their leaders through formal portraits, radicals lent a respectable air to proceedings, as if their public actions were sanctioned by these respected men. These portraits also created connections between the marchers and parliament, with captions below portraits cementing the national focus of these local activities. Equally, though, these formal portrayals of political leaders were drawn into wider ideologies of freedom, unity, and resistance to tyranny. Consistent through each of these representations was an attempt to draw upon the gentleman leader for legitimacy, relating local acts to a unified national political movement. Less formal images in the form of cartoons also drew political leaders into these ideologies, placing them in sometimes quite elaborate and highly symbolic situations.