The Newport Rising, 1839

The event known as the Newport Rising, which took place on 4^th November 1839, was the last armed rebellion in British history.

The Rising was a by-product of the Chartist movement, which was a protest movement that began in 1838 and would rumble on for more than a decade. Its aim was to take the political reform movement forward from the 1832 Reform Act that had started the process of making Parliament more democratic.

The Chartists hoped to further their cause by gathering huge numbers of signatures to the “People’s Charter” that made a series of demands that would – in effect – have given parliamentary representation to working class people. The government of the day was alarmed by the threat of a mass protest movement and did everything it could to frustrate the Chartists’ ambitions, especially when their activities contravened public order.

In May 1839 one of the leaders of the Chartists, Henry Vincent, was arrested in Monmouth, South Wales, and subsequently imprisoned. His fellow Chartists organised a huge protest march targeted on Newport, a town to the southwest of Monmouth, where it was believed that several Chartist prisoners were being held.

Some 7,000 protestors arrived outside Newport’s Westgate Hotel in the early hours of 4^th November, to be met by a force of 500 special constables who had been sworn in especially for the occasion, plus a number of armed soldiers. Some of the demonstrators also carried muskets and other weapons.

The protest began peacefully enough, with much shouting and cheering, but the net result was that the hotel was under siege from a large crowd of people and the authorities had to take action.

The town’s mayor did what he could to keep order, which consisted of the traditional “reading of the Riot Act”. This was a law, dating from 1715, that forbade the assembly of more than twelve people if there was any likelihood of trouble breaking out. An official had merely to read out the relevant part of the Act to declare such an assembly illegal and order its dispersal.

As this action clearly had no effect, the soldiers and constables were authorized to use force to break up the crowd. With several hotheads in the crowd equally prepared to resort to violence, it is little wonder that people got hurt.

The mayor was among those injured by musket fire, but it was the protestors who came off second best. In all, 22 people were killed and many more were injured. The number of fatalities was the greatest in any civil disturbance in modern British history.

The Chartist ringleaders were arrested and punished, some by hanging and others transported to Australia for life. The Mayor of Newport, however, received a knighthood.

Chartism in Wales never recovered from the aftermath of the Newport Rising, but the movement still had a long way to go in Great Britain as a whole. The People’s Charter continued to attract support, with the 1842 version gaining more than three million signatures. However, it would not be until 1867 before the next step along the road to full democracy took place.

© John Welford