Newport Chartist Convention – 2023

Time & Location: 04 Nov, 10:00 – 16:00, Newport Cathedral, St Woolos, 105 Stow Hill, Newport NP20 4ED, UK

About the Event

The annual Newport Chartist Convention will take place on Saturday November 4th at St Woolos Cathedral, beginning at 10 o’clock.

Tickets are now available, price £15.00 including tea, coffee and lunch.

Confirmed speakers to include:

Poor Negroes and White Slaves: Chartism and Abolition

Join writer and curator S.I. Martin for a nuanced look at the dynamics underpinning the Chartist movement’s varying attitudes to race, enslavement and its abolition.

‘Very bad feeling was shown by the lower orders’: The Newport incident of November 1831

Dr Roger Ball and Steve Poole (University of the West of England)

In October 1831, after the defeat of the Second Reform Bill in the House of Lords, a wave of protests and riots swept across Britain and Ireland. Major unrest in Derby and Nottingham were followed at the end of the month, in Bristol, by the most serious riot of the nineteenth century. British army units, stationed in Wales in the aftermath of the Merthyr rising, were called upon to suppress the rioters in Bristol. On Monday 1st November after marching from Cardiff, a unit of infantry arrived in Newport and were confronted by a hostile crowd of the ‘lower orders’. This presentation will explore the context and details of the ‘Newport incident’ and try to identify who the protesters were and their motivations in opposing the British Army. It will also consider whether the Newport event represents a particular form of the spread of ‘riots’. The presentation is part of the ESRC funded project Intergroup Dynamics within the 1831 reform riots led by the Regional History Centre at the University of West of England.

Six Points Update

Les James of Six Points will give an update on their publishing plans for the next two years, including forthcoming books on Zephaniah Williams and on the Chartist Scarecrows, and invite prospective authors to submit their work for consideration for publication. Six Points’ most recent book, Representing the Rising, a catalogue of the exhibition of the same name at Newport Art Gallery, will be on sale.

Mapping Chartists and the importance of locality.

Katrina Navickas

This paper is about the potential of digital tools for examining Chartism. It maps the locations of Chartist activists, nominations to the National Convention, and subscribers to the Land Plan using Geographic Information Systems software. It argues for using such digital tools to map networks of activism, the long history of political activity in particular districts of towns, and the material and spatial elements of protest and procession routes. In so doing, digital tools can help illuminate the significance of locality and place in Chartist activism on a day-to-day level.

Representing the Rising: Chartism and Art in Newport

David Osmond and Ray Stroud

A new exhibition opened at Newport Museum and Art Gallery recently and will continue until mid-January 2024. It is based on items held in the collection which relate to the Newport Rising augmented by some works on loan. There are three sections: The Scene; Portraits; and Commemoration, and in this presentation the curators will highlight six of the most interesting items from the display. The full colour exhibition catalogue will be available for purchase at the Convention.

Music from Kevin Brennan and Jon Langford

The Convention will close with some music from Kevin Brennan, MP for Cardiff West, and Jon Langford, formerly of The Mekons.