Description:
Feargus O'Connor was MP for Nottingham, 1847. Feargus O'Connor, the Chartist Leader, may have been the cause of the Chartist movement's undoing. On the face of it, his dealings with this radical group seem straightforward, but a gentle scraping of the surface shows a man teetering on the brink of insanity. Yet his popularity among the people allowed him to lead the Chartist movement for years. O'Connor's early life was spent on the family's Irish estate. He became involved in local politics, first in the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832. The Irish cause was his, and he often spoke in parliament on the subject. Upon winning the parliamentary seat for county Cork, he took off in a carriage-and-four toward Manchester, with the standard of Roderick O'Connor flying proudly. Roderick O'Connor was a monarch of Ireland he claimed descent from. This period saw the beginning of the Chartist movement, with his writing of the six points of the charter. He created the central committee of radical unions in 1836 and the London Democratic Association in 1837. Shortly after he started a radical newspaper, 'The Northern Star' that would provide him the perfect outlet for his theories and ideas. Immediately popular, it helped to coalesce people around the movement. In 1838 the 'People's Charter' of the Working Men's Association was adopted and Chartism was officially born. While the party was ostensibly led by O'Connor, the group split into two radical factions, those considered the 'moral force' Chartists and those considered the 'physical force' Chartists. O'Connor, famous for his incendiary speeches, became more closely identified with the 'physical force' group. O'Connor's words got him into trouble in 1840, when he was arrested for seditious libel courtesy of articles he published in his newspaper. He spent eighteen months in prison as a result. In 1843 he would be arrested again, and while he was convicted, the courts never meted judgement. In prison he developed a concept that would give land to peasants, and wrote about the idea in a series of 'Letters to Irish Landlords'. This developed into the 'Chartist Co-Operative Land Company,' which became the 'National Land Company' in 1847. The intention was to buy up agricultural land and divide them into small parcels for farmers. All for a cost, of course. By 1848, Europe was in turmoil, and the British government was anxious seeing government after government collapse. The burgeoning Chartist movement (which had increased to millions of supporters) set off fear in the government that a rising in Ireland might develop into more than they could, or wanted to, handle. O'Connor helped to avert a march on the House of Commons. Instead, he presented a Chartist petition complete with 5,706,000 signatures. Unfortunately, a closer look indicated that there were less than 2 million actual signatures-and many of those were made-up names. This was the end of the Chartists. A government investigation of the National Land Company found it nearly bankrupt. O'Connor though, had made no money from the scheme, and the people who had the land refused to give it up. O'Connor began to slide into greater insanity, as he increased his drinking. After an unusually ferocious verbal assault on a member of parliament, he was pronounced insane and shipped off to an asylum in Chiswick. In 1854 he left the asylum of his own volition (and against the wishes of the doctors) and went to his sister's in London where he died. (information from www.bbc.co.uk)