This view states that weak leadership is the one main reason why Chartism failed during years 1838-48, however I will prove it was not only down to one thing reason of why O’Connor, Lovett and Attwood, the Chartists did not succeed in bringing all of the six points to the people – such as economic and political reasons.

Source 4 is a letter written by William Lovett so therefore will be biased towards his own views against Feargus O’Connor and the fact he undermines his college though argument just shows the lack of respect they had for each other, proving there was weak leadership. “His constant appeals to the selfishness and vanity of man […] a spirit of hate, intolerance and brute feeling” It agrees with the view that the failure was down to weak leadership as it proposes the idea that not all leaders were united and therefore was the failure, I know from my own knowledge that Lovett himself resigned due to outrage from O’Connor’s behaviour. Source 5 also says that “the vast number of arrests, prosecutions and imprisonments” this suggests that the leadership was again weak due to division of views, physical force and moral force – if people were getting arrested etc. then the leaders must not have been good ones in the first place. Source 6 says “failure can be explained by the divergence of these attitudes once the Chartist message had proved ineffective and untrue” which again like the other two sources shows the division of views from each leader which meant they could never have the same view on one thing – the movement would never succeed if they weren’t ever willing to unite.

Due to the fact Feargus O’Connor kept a personal profit of £13,000 also gives evidence to say the trust within the movement was at a low and whilst corruption was happening, nothing would succeed – in order to do so, all the leaders would have had to work together not against. Kennington Common was another event which showed the lack of leadership during the Chartist years – at one point Feargus stated he was “willing to die for the cause” and he was going to “lead people to death or glory”, and when faced with such a situation when Wellington lined London with cannons and snipers, O’Connor sent the protesters home – this could be a sign of weak leadership as it portrayed the image that he wasn’t too bothered about getting the 6 points the Chartists proposed. Along with this, Lovett himself said it was “driving them to suicide”, weak leadership was definitely a big factor of why the Chartists failed because of such a big division of views. Lastly, even though they managed to gather 1,003,000 signatures for the movement a lot where made up (Queen Victoria’s name was on there) because they just couldn’t get as much support as needed, therefore making it obvious that leadership was definitely weak, and a problem.

However, it is apparent to me and any other historians that weak leadership was not the only limiting factor to the success, as source 4 proposes it was due to Feargus O’Connor being “politically and morally dishonest”, along with source 6 which states “the Chartist leaders unable to implement their political solution” which can be backed up and supported with the fact that due to the personal profit kept by O’Connor, this allowed dishonesty which would never be good for the movement. On the other hand, it states in the same source that “conditions did begin to improve even without the Charter” which suggests that the movement itself was improving, even if there was corruption and a divided leadership. Source 5 proposes that there was strong leadership “certainly effective in both the short term sense of obstructive Chartist activity” which again disagrees with the view stated in the question.

Additionally to this, I know that the Northern Star, a Chartist newspaper founded by O’Connor did in fact support the movement as it got people thinking in the same way which would in turn gain them more support – the Chartist meetings were big social events which showed that there was support from some constituents. Furthermore, weak leadership was not the only limiting factor for the Chartists as even the Queen herself proposed that women and the working class should never have the vote which would have been a huge problem for this movement – nobody would want to proudly go against the crown of England. The fact that some Chartists were fired from Mill’s shows that the lack of support from middle class was evidently a problem, the fact that there was weak leadership has nothing to do with the fact that some people didn’t want to support them. Finally, the Chartists did not gain the support of the middle class which could be considered to be a very big problem – the Anti Corn Law League was a middle class movement which allowed them to get further in what the movement wanted – laws were repealed, if they did get this support from the beginning then Chartism may have been a lot more successful.

Overall, my opinion is that even though all three sources do mention the leadership element of why the Chartist movement failed, two out of the three sources disagree with the statement because it allows a broader view of why things failed and not just keep it to one cause. The view stated is wrong because it would be inevitable that the Chartists would have failed if it was a number of things acting equally against it, other than if weak leadership was the only main problem because it could have been overcome. Chartism was the first mass world labour movement and could be considered to have started the reform in Britian, so there must have been good leadership in aspects because 5 points were achieved at the end of the century – Chartism was the beginning.