After Tolpuddle, the left and rain
This year’s Tolpuddle festival was unfortunately cancelled at the last moment due to heavy rain and strong winds. We can of course point to the impact of climate change and rightly so, although bad summer weather is not entirely unknown in Britain.
The Chartist Ancestors site has posted an interesting piece on how wet the Chartists got in the 1830s and 1840s
https://chartist-ancestors.blogspot.com/2016/08/and-rain-came-down-in-torrents-chartism.html
The Chartist demonstration on Kennington Common on Monday 10th April 1848 concluded with some Chartists trying to cross Blackfriars Bridge to march to Parliament and fighting with police and soldiers. Then there were April showers..
Before the 1860s working class radicals tended to favour outdoor meetings for several reasons. Firstly it was more difficult for the authorities to keep an intrusive eye on them (though not impossible). Secondly because the meetings were often too large for an indoor venue. Thirdly because the tradition of indoor ticketed meetings where who was allowed in could be controlled was not favoured by the open democratic politics of the Chartists. Ticketed indoor meetings became more common from the 1860s as radical politics changed.
The Chartists of course wore hats as did many others to keep the rain off, where in the modern day umbrellas might be flourished.
That said rain and protests and demonstrations don’t go all that well together in 2023 even with modern water proof clothing.
The late Tom Nairn and Perry Anderson might remind us that they do things differently in Other Countries. After all the Bolsheviks managed a revolution amidst cold and snow in late 1917
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