In 1839, a worker’s rights group called the Chartists began meeting on a large scale in the city of Birmingham. Officials were concerned that these meetings were encouraging radical views and that they would eventually lead to disorder, so a large task force of policemen were deployed to arrest the Chartists. They fought back against them, and eventually drove them away, but this small victory was to no avail as all of the measures they were involved in proposing to Parliament were later rejected. This rejection coupled with the government’s attempt to mass-arrest the Chartists resulted in widespread rioting, most notably in Birmingham where officials sent a second task force of policemen to once again attempt to arrest Chartists. This incident was even more devestating than the first and resulted in several buildings being burned down and destroyed.
Carlyle sympathized with the Chartists, and shares some of their views; for instance, the establishment of unions and workplace regulations. Simultaneously, according to “Carlyle’s Chartism and the Politics of the (In)Articulate,” he seems to hold some sort of judgement and sense of pity towards them. Carlyle describes them as “wild inarticulate souls, struggling
there, with inarticulate uproar, like dumb creatures in pain, unable
to speak what is in them!” (71). His view is that the masses are too unintelligent and inarticulate to speak for themselves, so their cause must be paraded by the educated (such as Carlyle himself). According to him, this is the only way the masses can have a voice, even if the voice is “not their own” (69).
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