Local History & Art

Title: Radical History Walk: Don't liberate me: I'll do it myself
Client: Nottingham Contemporary 'Remember Revolution' exhibition.
Brief: Travel 20 or 30 miles from home and the people have generally in store for you some pity when they know you’re from Nottingham - Nottingham Journal, 1835. How was Nottingham Radical?
Materials: Walk and Historiography
Images: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 (Courtesy Jennie Syson)

A still from Look & Find - The Meadow Club.

A still from Look & Find - The Meadow Club.

Framework Knitting Workshops: The home of Luddism and Chartism. It was primarily the framework knitters in Nottingham who turned to radical movements in Luddism (1812 - 1817) and Chartism (1830s & 40s). During the early nineteenth century Nottingham's economy was yet to diversify and was unfortuantly reliant on hosiery. In c. 1800 there had been a great change in fashion which no longer required fancy knitted goods. Luddism was a militant trade protest against machine owners who were creating basic hosiery and was not a protest against technology - an unfortuanate misconception perhaps. The Chartists meanwhile, were far more political and - a testament to the social deprivation of the age - called for the following radical ideas:

Votes for all men
Equal sized electoral districts
Voting by secret ballot
An end to the need for a property qualification for Parliament
Pay for Members of Parliament

Despite the decline of the Chartists during the more favourable economic weather of the 1850s, these aims eventually came to fruition by the end of the century.

R. A. Church, Econmic & Social Change in a Midland Town, (London, 1967).
M. I. Thomis, Nottingham radicalism 1785-1835 (Nottingham, 1966). http://www.thorotonsociety.org.uk/gateway/themes/riot/riotp1.htm