Radical Bilston – George Barnsby

In relation to the industrial development of the Black Country, Bilston, or to be more precise Bradley which is part of Bilston, is truly unique. It was here in the 1700's that John Wilkinson set up the first furnace to smelt iron with coke and thus began the transformation from a green and pleasant land of craft villages to the industrial inferno of flaming furnaces, smoke belching chimneys of forges and workshops, smouldering mountains of coal being reduced to charcoal and ironstone calcining which became the Black Country. Here, awed visitors said, day was turned into night by smoke, and night into day by the glare of furnaces.

How Wilkinson learned to smelt iron with coal we do not know; this had been discovered by Abraham Darby at Coalbrookdale who did not patent it. John Wilkinson operated furnaces at Broseley during the war period of 1756-73 and must have appropriated this priceless discovery for himself. Wilkinson was the Black Country's great innovator and first radical. He came from the Non-Conformist tradition which had challenged the claim of Charles I to rule by divine right, had beaten him in two Civil Wars, had executed him and set up a Republic. With the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 the Non-Conformists were heavily punished. They were not allowed to hold state or local government office and their ministers were not allowed to live within five miles of any corporate town. This led to an influx of Non-Conformists into non-corporate towns such as Birmingham where the greatest industrialists and innovators of the time such as Priestley, Watt, Boulton, Keir, Wedgwood etc. most of whom came from the same tradition, created the Lunar Society in Birmingham for scientific, and philosophic discussion and exchange of information.

Yet few of these powerful figures pioneering the new industrial society lived in a town which returned MPs to the House of Commons and their natural interests were in democratic Reform of Parliament which would pass legislation for free trade essential to the development of the new society. In this they were at one with their workmen who did not have a vote and also wanted reform of Parliament. An uneasy alliance therefore existed until 1832 when working men did the demonstrating and organising, but only the middle class were given the vote in the Reform Act of that year.

As Industry developed and towns expanded the conditions of life question further divided the so-called masters and their workers. The lack of sanitation and pure water brought the cholera of 1832 which devastated Bilston above all Black Country towns claiming 742 victims in a town of 14,000 people. Cholera returned in 1849 and almost annual epidemics of scarlet fever, whooping cough etc. decimated babies almost as fast as they were born. Slum houses without either sanitation or ventilation kept death rates of both adults and children high.

Conditions of work added to discontents. For the majority of people wages were low and often paid irregularly or in truck. The death rate from accidents in the pits was horrendous and only slightly less at furnaces and forges. Hours were long, twelve hour shifts were the norm at the beginning of the nineteenth century and only slightly less at the end.

Child labour was almost universal. Some children began work at the age of six. In the 1840s workhouse children were apprenticed to the mines at the age of eight and made to serve an 'apprenticeship' of 12 years.

Education was also almost non-existent. In Bilston in 1818 the only schools were Sunday schools. By 1843 the Cholera School, built with contributions from all over Britain was the largest school, and about 23% of children received a two year education, leaving school for work on average at the age of nine.

Social services were non-existent. Only the dreaded Workhouse and a pauper's funeral awaited those who, from poverty or infirmity, could not maintain themselves in old age.

But the greatest cause of poverty was the trade cycle. The Industrial Revolution proceeded in tempestuous cycles of boom when work was plentiful and labour flooded into the Black Country (many being rural workers dispossessed of their rights to common land by the enclosures in agriculture) followed by slump which brought mass unemployment and even starvation.

Such overall conditions were intolerable and working people protested and organised against these evils, despite the fact that from 1799 to 1814 the Combination Acts made it illegal to form either trade unions or working class political parties.

 A key effect of the failure of the Commonwealth and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 was that democratic politics could not develop and protests by working people were necessarily expressed only through violent means. The main cause of violence was bad harvests and the consequent high price of bread. There were Food Riots in the Black Country in 1765, 1766, 1768, 1776 and 1780. In 1800 riots in Walsall spread to Dudley and a letter from a Bilston magistrate stated that the rioters were dispersed by the Dudley cavalry with one man killed and many wounded.

The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 was greeted with great enthusiasm by all democrats. But in 1793 Louis XVI was executed and war declared by France on England whose government had continued to support the ancient regime. The same year Habeas Corpus was suspended and in 1799 the Combination Act outlawed completely trade unions and working class political parties until 1824.

When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 instead of the expected prosperity there was a slump and mass unemployment until 1822. Miners, including those of Bilston, were on strike at the end of 1815. Colliers were said to be 'wandering about the country, begging'. Distress funds were opened in most towns, but in February 1817, the commander of the military forces occupying the Black Country could say that in Bilston 'little gratitude was evinced for the help given' and be was afraid that 'itinerant demagogues would incite the people to tumult'.

Another peak of distress occurred in 1819. By this time political clubs were being formed and working class newspapers circulated widely.  Sidmouth (the Home Secretary) was informed that in Bilston arms were being stored and the commander-in-chief was ordered to 'do what he could'. The same month an address from the Members of the Birmingham Union Society to the People of England was found circulating at the Capponfield Ironworks near Bilston and its author was subsequently prosecuted.

From 1826 to 1833 there was a second Long Depression of mass unemployment and deep poverty. The main political result of this period was the 1832 Reform Act which gave the vote to employers and the middle class but not to working people. Agitation for this Act was organised by local Political Unions based on the model of the

 Birmingham Political Union. The Bilston Political Union was formed in 1831 led by the middle class 'respectable' of the town such as Rev.W.Leigh of St Leonard's, Rev.H.S.Fletcher of St Mary's, chapel wardens, the surveyor of highways etc. but its main core of support was the working class. The decisive event persuading the land-owning dominated government to pass the Reform Act was probably the meeting organised by the Birmingham Political Union in May 1832 when 200,000 people are said to have gathered to demand the vote. Several hundred Bilston people must have marched with the largest contingent, the Great Northern Division of 100,000 Black Country people.

By the 1830s both trade unions and working class parties had won a precarious legal existence and Co-operative societies were soon to join them. All three developments are linked with the name of Robert Owen who was also the pioneer of Socialism. Owen believed that the evils of capitalism at that time could only be overcome by the peaceful transition of society to Socialism. This was to be achieved by collectivist colonies with the necessary factories and workshops adjacent to them. Owen however was a 'rationalist' who did not believe in Christianity and the combination of Socialism with so-called atheism was more than the church and chapel establishment could stomach. Owenism was therefore met with unprecedented hostility and vituperation. Bilston Socialists were more than ready to engage Christians in verbal combat to the detriment of the intended purpose of their existence which was to raise support and funds for the sole Socialist colony then in existence at Queenwood in Hampshire.

Bilston was the Black Country town where Owenite Socialism took deepest root. In 1838 a branch of Owen's Association of all Classes of all Nations was formed and a Social Institution established. Social Missionaries addressed public meetings advocating Socialism and claiming the superiority of rational thought over religious 'superstition'. At first the Socialists prospered, but soon a stained glass window of their premises was broken, 'superstitious fanatics had the Christian charity to pull down our placards advertising meetings', and the Socialists were evicted from their premises, despite a promise by their landlord that they could stay as long as they paid their rent. The Bilston branch survived until 1842, but by then, the most important agitation of the century had begun. This was Chartism.