Chartist Great Public Meeting, Carlisle 1839

Chartist Great Public Meeting, May 1839

Chartism, named after the People's Charter of 1838, was a mass working class movement in the UK during the mid-1800s, with six key demands:

- All men over 21 years old to be able to vote in elections
- Voting should be in secret
- No property qualification to be an MP, so people could have representatives from their own background
- Payments to MPs so poor people could afford to be MPs
- Constituencies to be rationalised so that MPs represented similar number of constituents
- Annual elections to Parliament.

The movement evolved out of the reaction to the 1832 Reform Act - which granted voting rights to property owning men - had three significant peaks: 1838, 1842 and 1848 - when massive petitions (including one with over three million signatures) were collected and submitted to Parliament.

The campaign included massive demonstrations, industrial action including strikes, riots and sabotage. It was described by some at the time as an insurrection. The movement was brutally suppressed by the military and police, famously at the Peterloo Massacre and similar violent assaults.

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Radical posters before the 20th century were predominantly text-based, primarily used to advertise events, meetings, and demonstrations rather than relying on colourful graphic imagery to convey ideas. While some did incorporate sketches or cartoons, these were relatively modest compared to the bold visual styles that emerged later.

Although the technology for producing striking graphics existed at the time and was widely used in commercial advertising, such vivid and imaginative designs were less common in political posters. It wasn’t until later that the kind of dynamic, visually arresting imagery often associated with the Russian and Spanish Revolutions blossomed in radical posters.

The posters in our pre-20th century selection reflect this earlier approach – they focus squarely on delivering a direct message, often employing dramatic language and typography to capture attention and provoke thought.