ON SUNDAY July 17 over 70 people gathered at a sold-out event in Calderdale Industrial Museum in Halifax, to discuss and reflect on the history of the Great Strike of 1842, sometimes referred to as the Plug Plots or Plug Riots.

The event was put on as a partnership between Calderdale Trades Council and Calderdale Industrial Museum, with support from the Society for the Study of Labour History, as well as local and regional trade unions. It follows a previous meeting on the topic in September last year.

Working-class unrest in 1842, which began among colliers in north Staffordshire and would ultimately involve workers and communities in at least 32 counties, was the first general strike in a capitalist country.

Historian Mick Jenkins, in his work the General Strike of 1842, estimates that half a million workers participated in the strike. Nevertheless, the events of that year have been all too easily forgotten. This event, and others taking place in August, are intended to address that.

Catherine Howe, whose book Halifax 1842 provides the impetus for these commemorative events, gave an overview of the terrible conditions facing working-class communities in Halifax in the years leading up to 1842.

She recounted stories of children falling asleep standing up while working in the mills and described the terrible conditions and reputation of the Halifax workhouse.

In such circumstances, it was no wonder that communities rose up and resisted when the opportunity came in 1842.

James Dean, a PhD student at Sheffield Hallam University and union rep, then gave an account of the Great Strike across the wider West Riding region.

He emphasised the important role played by women and girls in both organising and fomenting the unrest, giving an account of one Halifax mill where, when strikers arrived to “turn out” the workers, the women and girls joined the strike while the men remained at work.

Dean also drew attention to the highly organised nature of the strike in the West Riding, suggesting that the events of 1842 were not as spontaneous as some historians have claimed them to be.

He suggested that the convergence of strikers from Rochdale, Bradford and elsewhere in Halifax was likely a co-ordinated attempt to take the town for the strikers.

Katrina Navickas from the University of Hertfordshire then expanded on Dean’s attention to the organisation of the strike by exploring the role of flying pickets in moving the strike from town to town.

Drawing on her book Protest and the Politics of Space and Place 1789-1848, Navickas discussed the mobility and flexibility of the strike, and also discussed the importance of specific protest sites such as Halifax’s Skircoat moor, where strikers camped and held public meetings with thousands of attendees.

Neil Pye, author of the book the Home Office and the Chartists 1838-1848, then discussed the disorganised nature of the British state’s response to the events of 1842, as well as the way that the state reorganised its forces and passed new legislation to ensure that labour unrest could be dealt with more directly in future.

This included introducing a more extensive and professionalised policing network, including secret police elements charged with weeding out protest leaders before events such as a general strike could become as advanced as they had in 1842.

Finally, Matthew Roberts, associate professor of history at Sheffield Hallam University and author of several books, including the recently released Democratic Passions: the Politics of Feeling in British Popular Radicalism 1809-1848, discussed the different ways that Chartism has been remembered.

Roberts drew particular attention to three approaches to the remembering of Chartism: the Fabian view, the militant proletarian view and the view of Chartists as premature liberal democrats.

The first and third of these portray Chartism within broadly progressive narratives whereby British democracy advances politely, via petitioning and mild protest, towards the implementation of the democratic rights we ought now to value.

Both such views, though different in their arguments, tend towards a depoliticised remembering of Chartism, and towards a neglect of the disputatious and conflictual nature of the Chartist struggle.

The militant, proletarian view, though by no means always perfectly articulated, has tended towards an appraisal of Chartism that more fully captured the struggles involved in Chartism and the direct conflict it often mounted with the British state.

Of course, not all Chartists would have seen themselves in the militant proletarian mold, and in her book Navickas has shown that in some towns such as Oldham Chartists even enlisted to suppress the strike of 1842.

Nevertheless, Chartism supplied the wider political horizons for many of those involved in the strike. Halifax was then a stronghold of militant proletarian Chartists like Benjamin Rushton, and it is no wonder this West Yorkshire town became such a prominent site of struggle in 1842.

It was on August 16 that the military, seeking to avenge itself for having come off worse in scuffles with strikers earlier in the day, began to fire indiscriminately into crowds of strikers and their supporters in Halifax, and cavalry-charged and cut at protesters with sabres.

The strikers were ultimately defeated by this extraordinary display of violence, which draws parallels with the events in Peterloo which coincidentally also took place on August 16.

The meeting ended with a full discussion of the events of 1842 and their contemporary significance, at a moment when workers are again exploring their power and using the strike as a tactic to struggle for increased wages and better working conditions.

It was felt by those present that much more should be done to ensure a wider knowledge of the Great Strike of 1842. To that end, several more events are planned.

In August a commemorative beer, to be called Great Strike, brewed by Eagles Crag brewery in collaboration with Calderdale Trades Council, will be available.

Then, on Saturday August 13 Calderdale Trades Council are organising the putting-up of a new information board at Lister Lane cemetery in Halifax, in conjunction with the Friends of Lister Lane, as well as the unveiling of a commemorative plaque on the outside of Calderdale Industrial Museum to those who lost their lives in the events of 1842.

A procession between these two locations will be held, all followed by music and a social event outside the Grayston Unity pub in Halifax that afternoon.

We cordially invite the labour movement to join us in Halifax to commemorate the 180th anniversary of the Great Strike of 1842 on August 13.

For more information, email [email protected].

To enquire about having the Great Strike beer made available in a pub near you, visit www.eaglescragbrewery.co.uk.