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Seven Dials in 2025

16^th August 1848. The Chartist plan for an insurrection in central London

Below are the two final meetings that took place before a Chartist attempt at insurrection in central London on 16^th August 1848

Monday 14 August. Orange Tree, Orange Street, Red Lion Square 

25 or 30 present. Allnutt, Bligh, Brewster, Cruikshank, Cuffay, Fay, Fleming, Ford, the two Granshaws, Gurney, Hayman, Mullins, Nash, Payne, Pearce, Ritchie, Scurrey (or Scurry), Simmonds, Warry, Davis, Powell.

Tuesday 15 August. Lord Denman, Great Suffolk Street. 

30 or 40 present. Allnutt, Brewster, Cruikshank, Cuffay, Donaldson, Dowling, Fay, Ferdinando, Fleming, the two Granshaws, Gurney, Lacey, Mullins, Page, Payne, Pedley, Ritchie, Simmonds, Davis, Powell.

William Cuffay was the black leader of London Chartism, Powell and Davis were police spies who alerted the police to what was planned.

The events of August 1848 were the culmination of a strategy that developed after the frustration of the mass Chartist protest for the vote on Kennington Common on 10^th April 1848. Most of the Chartist Executive including the left leader Ernest Jones had been jailed by August, leaving local leaders to pursue matters.

The plan for insurrection in London was well supported by Irish repealers and a range of radical trades. It was also meant to be part of a national English plan to seize power which had echoes for example in the north-west of England.

What was the plan?

Chartist forces were to gather in four locations:

Seven Dials in the West End

Strutton Ground in Westminster

Clerkenwell Green

Tower Hamlets

The strategy was to set fire to police stations and warehouses and in doing so to create chaos in central London that would allow Chartist forces to take control

It didn’t happen because the police were forewarned and moved in and arrested key figures including Cuffay. As David Goodway notes it was the last instance of a conspiratorial tradition which became supplanted by the mass democracy of the labour movement over time. Notably the Reform League protest for the vote in Hyde Park on 6^th May 1867 that was banned by the Government and troops mobilised to stop it, succeeded not by conspiracy but by open organisation and sheer weight of numbers.