1842 general strike

The 1842 general strike, also known as the Plug Plot Riots,[1][2] started among the miners in Staffordshire, England, and soon spread through Britain affecting factories, mills in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and coal mines from Dundee to South Wales and Cornwall.

Although the People's Charter was praised at public meetings, the resolutions that were passed at these were in almost all cases merely for a restoration of the wages of 1820, a ten-hour working day, or reduced rents.

Jenkins also sees the political nature of the strike expressed in the repression of the strikers: "When the meeting had assembled, a party of the Rifle Brigade charged into the crowd, and one man had his hand run through with a bayonet."

John Foster, in his introduction, argues that Jenkins' account of the strike "compels historians to reassess a number of crucial aspects in the country's political development" (p. 13).

In considering universal suffrage, he argues that "historians have tended to emphasize the inevitability of Britain's progress towards majority rule.