John Fielden
He also urged repeal of the New Poor Law and pressed for action to be taken to alleviate the 'distress of the country' (in particular the plight of hand-loom weavers), but found little support in Parliament on these issues.
On the failure of the Chartist National Petition he argued for the movement to organise further petitions; when this advice was rejected he ceased to appear at Chartist events: whilst supporting the aims of Chartism, he concentrated on single issues, striving to attract wider support for reform (including those who would be deterred by any linkage to Chartism or its full agenda).
"[9] John began working in the family mill "when I was little more than ten years old"[7]: I:330 and was, therefore, able in later life to speak from personal experience of the unsuitability for children of that age of even a ten-hour day.
When slightly older, he assisted his father with the purchase of raw materials and sale of finished goods – attending market in Manchester involved a round trip of 40 miles on foot, and a twenty-hour day.
[10]: 418 Whilst Todmorden was at some distance from ports and home markets, the firm's main site at Waterside lay in a narrow valley used first by the Rochdale Canal and then by the Manchester and Leeds Railway (which the Fieldens helped establish, John being a member of the company's provisional committee[11][b]) as part of an indirect but relatively low-level route between Manchester and Leeds, and the firms' expansion was helped by the consequent improvement in communications.
[12]In 1811, he married Ann Grindrod of Rochdale,[13] and bought and converted the "Coach and Horses" public house (opposite the Fieldens' Waterside Mill) as a family home named Dawson Weir.
He was a member of the deputation which carried to London a petition calling upon the Commons to refuse to vote supply until the Reform Bill was passed.
[21] On passage of the Reform Act, Fielden Brothers gave a dinner for their entire workforce: Two thousand pounds weight of beef of the choicest cuts... between three and four hundred puddings weighing 7 or 8 lbs each, and a proportionate quantity of other dishes, bread and vegetables.
[26] Cobbett had high hopes of being elected for Manchester (failing that Preston) but allowed his name to go forward as the other Radical candidate for Oldham.
"And is not the honour of being chosen by such a man as Mr John Fielden as his colleague… more than a reward for all that the hellish borough-mongers and their base and bloody press have been able to inflict upon me and upon my family?
Consequently, he found it difficult to command the House's attention: it is not in my power to convey to you the difficulties which an unobtrusive member experiences in the discharge of his parliamentary duties - it must be seen to be believed - groaning, stamping, coughing, shuffling, in fact, a perfect cock-pit; and all this is experienced whilst statements are making as to the deprivations and sufferings of the poor, that would, or ought, to melt a heart of iron.
In 1833 Cobbett sought to provoke debate on currency policy by moving a resolution to remove Sir Robert Peel from the Privy Council.
"[35]: 287 Fielden loyally seconded the motion (in a long speech, quite inaudible in the reporters' gallery because of the low tone in which he spoke and constant interruption[36]).
Fielden joined with others to form a National Regeneration Society which intended to accumulate enough adherent millworkers to insist to mill-owners that adults as well as children should work no more than an eight-hour day.
[43] In 1836 he opposed Poulet Thomson's Bill, speaking against it in Parliament and producing a pamphlet The Curse of the Factory System ("A Short Account of the Origin of Factory Cruelties; of the Attempts to Protect the Children by Law; of Their Present Sufferings; Our Duty Towards Them; Injustice of Mr Thomson's Bill; the Folly of the Political Economists; a Warning Against Sending the Children of the South into the Factories of the North")[i] whose object he summarised as "to show that the workpeople have been and are cruelly treated; that they have not idly asked for protection, but that humanity and justice require it; that we shall do ourselves no harm by granting it to them; but always avowing, that I would cast manufactures to the winds, rather than see the workpeople enslaved, maimed, vitiated, and broken in constitution and in heart, as these pages will but too amply prove they now are.
I well remember being set to work in my father's mill when I was little more than ten years old; my associates, too, in the labour and in recreation are fresh in my memory.
I well know, too, from my own experience, that the labour now undergone in the factories is much greater than it used to be, owing to the greater attention and activity required by the greatly-increased speed which is given to the machinery that the children have to attend to, when we compare it with what it was 30 to 40 years ago; and, therefore, I fully concur with the government commissioners, that a restriction to ten hours per day, is not a sufficient protection to children.
Here, then, is the "curse" of our factory system: as improvements in machinery have gone on, the "avarice of masters" has prompted many to exact more labour from their hands than they were fitted by nature to perform, and those who have wished for the hours of labour to be less for all ages than the legislature would even yet sanction, have had no alternative but to conform more or less to the prevailing practice, or abandon the trade altogether [45]Fielden had voted against the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 at every stage; he then opposed its implementation in Todmorden and in Oldham.
[49] In Parliament, he moved repeatedly for repeal of the 1834 act: "so long as he had a seat in that House, he would by speech and vote resist a law which was based upon the false and wicked assertion that the labouring people of England, or any material part of them, were inclined to idleness and vice"[50] but he was always defeated by overwhelming majorities, most MPs with misgivings about the administration of the New Poor Law thinking its complete repeal too drastic a step.
The course now adopted was calculated to obstruct the progress of legislation, to bring the House into great discredit, and to impair their authority as a deliberative assembly"[52] Fielden attempted to prevent the New Poor Law from being implemented in his area, threatening to close the family firm down unless the Guardians of the Todmorden Poor Law Union resigned.
The constables were surrounded by a mob summoned from two of Fielden's mills (supplemented by navvies building the Manchester & Leeds Railway), roughly treated and made to promise never to return.
The following week a mob again gathered in the belief that another attempt at distraint was to be made; when this did not happen, they attacked the houses of various guardians and supporters of the New Poor Law, causing damage put at over £1000.
[54] The Manchester Guardian thought it significant that a JP in residence (meaning Fielden) had made no effort to quell the riot, even though the rioters had marched past his front door.
Fielden was not a magistrate; he had been nominated in 1836, but made no attempt to qualify as he would 'have to sit in judgement on men driven to crime by poverty' which the Government had refused to relieve;[55] furthermore, he had not been in Todmorden on the day of the riot.
Consequently, he was actively associated with the Chartist movement in 1838–1839, seeing its National Petition as a more hopeful route to reform than his efforts in Parliament: "He was sick of this piecemeal labouring for the last six years to benefit the people.
In all his attempts he had failed…"[56] He was chairman of a monster Chartist meeting at Kersal Moor (Manchester racecourse) in September, at which he warned his hearers against being bought-off by piecemeal reforms.
His advice was rejected as being a slow and uncertain route to success, and the Chartists turned towards 'physical force' methods (a general strike, or the acquisition of arms with the inherent threat of their eventual use, rather than an imminent uprising).
[61] More generally, Fielden publicised cases in which magistrates were reluctant to convict millowners of breaches of the Act, and keen to award costs against those bringing unsuccessful prosecutions.
Soon after his defeat at Oldham, he retired from business and (officially) from politics, moving from Todmorden to Skeynes Park near Edenbridge, Kent.
[m] Skeynes was convenient for London, and when problems emerged with implementation of the Ten-Hour Act and its potential circumvention by adoption of a relay system Fielden became involved in repeated lobbying of the Prime Minister and Home Secretary.
