10th April 1848. Did the Chartists make an historic mistake in meeting in South rather than North London?
Their official aim after a rally was to march to Parliament over Blackfriars Bridge to present a monster petition for the vote. Never mind right-wing historiography that many of the signatures were fake. It had around 2 million genuine ones which even today with a much greater population would be huge.
The Government lived, just about, with the meeting but would not countenance the demonstration. The Chartist leadership went along with this preferring to take the petition by carriage. Numbers of rank and file Chartists did not and on the afternoon of 10th April there was fighting on the south of Blackfriars Bridge, with the army involved.
So why Kennington Common? Surely anyone with sense knows that meeting in Sarf London will end badly? It’s true that the 1990 anti-poll tax demonstration made it across the Thames to Trafalgar Square but unlike in 1848 the Government did not try to stop it. With such things as tubes, bikes and so on trying to keep a very large protest confined in South London is problematic in the modern era.
In any case the reasons why the Chartists met at Kennington Common, although not discussed by historians who don’t have experience of organising demos, are perhaps clear enough.
The number expected at Kennington were very large for 1848. How big the protest was remains the subject of dispute. But the reality was that Kennington Common was perhaps the only sizeable enough space in central-ish London available that was near enough to Parliament to march there. The Royal Parks were of course nearer but these were not available to the Chartists. Rather they were used by the Government to organise its policing operation.
However Copenhagen Fields, which had seen a huge rally in support of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1834 and stretched from what is now Caledonian Rd down to Kings Cross was possibly also still available. It became a market in the 1850s
Perhaps the Chartists made an historic mistake by meeting on Kennington Common, when a North London alternative with no bridges to cross might have been available.
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