Radcliffe Constantine and Bright
Chartism was the first mass working-class movement in Britain. It supported greater working-class rights and representation, economic justice, and freedom for Ireland.
Ancoats was a hotbed of Chartist support. The Griffin Tavern (Great Ancoats Street), the Roundhouse Church (Every Street) and the People’s Institute (Heyrod Street) were all important in the rise of Chartism.
Chartists faced significant police and political repression. For example, a young Scottish Chartist named Peter Murray McDouall was sentenced to 2 years in Kirkdale Gaol, Liverpool, after he addressed a meeting in Ashton in July 1848 at which banners reading ‘Equal Rights – Equal Laws’ were displayed. He was found guilty of making a ‘seditious speech’.
On 13 August 1848 national Chartist leaders gathered at Whittakers Temperance Hotel, Great Ancoats Street. Revolution was sweeping Europe. Rumours spread that there was to be a ‘National Rising’ that night. Many leaders and supporters felt it was the last chance for the movement to achieve its aims.
In Ashton, a Chartist group assembled. They were confronted by a police officer, PC Bright. A scuffle broke out, a shot was fired, and Bright was hit. It was never positively established who fired the gun, or where. As Bright lay dead on the ground, 300 soldiers were ordered to march into the town and raid the Chartist meeting rooms.
89 men were arrested in the wake of this night. 28 went to Liverpool Assizes court as part of a wider trial of 66 Chartists. The only prosecution witness was a one of the accused – an unemployed man ‘on the Chartist fringe’ and ‘noted for his eavesdropping’.
Joe Radcliffe (21) was found guilty of murder ‘with the recommendation of mercy’. The judge himself admitted he was ‘perfectly satisfied’ that Radcliffe had not actually fired the shot. Despite this, astonishingly he was still sentenced to death.
Joseph Constantine (20), Thomas Kenworthy (29), James Stott (24), Thomas Tassaker (34), Jonathan Walker (20) and John Sefton (40) were all found guilty of ‘having feloniously devised war against H.M. Queen in order to change her measures’.
Constantine, Tassaker, Kenworthy and Stott were banished to Australia for life; Walker and Sefton for seven years.
Charles Hindley, Radical MP for Ashton, led a successful campaign to overturn Radcliffe’s sentence, whilst the local press proclaimed his innocence. After four years in prison awaiting execution, Radcliffe was instead sentenced to deportation to Australia.
All of the men received a pardon in 1856. Nevertheless, they remained banned from entering the United Kingdon and lived out their lives abroad.
Overall, 102 Chartists were deported for their political activities between 1839 and 1848.
Joseph Constantine died in 1914. His great, great, great nephew is a trustee of Friends of the Medlock Valley!
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