'Chartists' and the coronation of Queen Victoria

The coronation of Queen Victoria on 28 June 1838 came so soon after the launch of the People’s Charter that there were, as yet, no Chartists.

Although the London Working Men’s Association had promised publication of its new pamphlet ‘in a few weeks’ as far back as July 1837, by the time Glasgow’s radicals held a great public meeting on 21 May the following year to adopt the Birmingham Political Union’s latest petition, the Charter was still not yet in print. Only over that summer and into the autumn, as the LWMA and BPU despatched ‘missionary’ speakers around the country, and Feargus O’Connor entered the equation with his Northern Star newspaper, did Charter and petition come together to bring Chartism to life.

Even the word itself had not yet been coined: among its earliest appearances in print is the Leeds Intelligencer’s report on 22 September 1838 of a huge demonstration in Palace Yard, Westminster, the previous Monday which it dismissed as ‘a demonstration of weakness on the part of the noisy leaders of the new political sect calling themselves “Chartists”.’

But if radical opinion still lacked its unifying name and banner at the time of the coronation, then that certainly did not mean it lacked a thoughts about this ‘idle and useless pageant’ or the monarchy itself.

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