THE
STORY OF WILLIAM CUFFAY
BLACK CHARTIST
William Cuffay, a black tailor who lived in London, was one of the leaders
and martyrs of the Chartist movement, the first mass political movement of
the British working class. His grandfather was an African, sold into slavery
on the island of St Kitts, where his father was born a slave. Cuffay was made
to suffer for his political beliefs and activities. In 1848, Europe's year
of revolutions, he was put on trial for levying war against Queen Victoria.
At the age of 61 he was transported for life to Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania),
where, after being pardoned in 1856, he spent the rest of his days active
in radical causes.
‘a
very delicate constitution’
William Cuffay was born in Chatham in 1788. Soon after coming to Britain his
father, who had evidently been freed, found work as a cook on a warship. William
was brought up in Chatham with his mother and his sister Juliana. As a boy,
though 'of a very delicate constitution' - his spine and shin bones were deformed
- he 'took a great delight in all manly exercises'. He became a journeyman
tailor in his late teens and stayed in that trade all his life. He married
three times but left no children.
Though he initially disapproved of the Owenite Grand National Consolidated
Trades Union, formed in 1834 on the initiative of the London tailors, and
was nearly the last to join the appropriate affiliated lodge, Cuffay came
out on strike with his fellow-members in the Tailors' Strike of 1834 (1).
As a result he was sacked from a job he had held for many years, and found
it very hard to get work afterwards. That was what took him into politics.
In 1839 he joined the great movement in support of the People's Charter drawn
up by the cabinet-maker William Lovett with the help of Francis Place, demanding
universal male suffrage, annual parliaments, vote by secret ballot, payment
of MPs, abolition of property qualifications for MPs, and equal electoral
districts. It was a year when “magistrates trembled and peaceful
citizens felt that they were living on a social volcano” - a year
when one noble general wrote to his brother “It looks as if the
falling of an empire was beginning.” Before long Cuffay, the neat,
mild-mannered black tailor, 4ft 11in. tall, had emerged as one of the dozen
or so most prominent leaders of the Chartist movement in London. Unlike the
movement's more celebrated national leaders, these were artisans, for Chartism
in the capital was “a sustained movement which produced its own
leaders, stuck to its traditional radicalism yet worked out its own class
attitudes”. In the autumn of 1839 Cuffay was helping to set up
the Metropolitan Tailors' Charter Association - about 80 joined on the first
night - and in 1841 the Westminster Chartists sent him to represent them on
the Metropolitan Delegate Council. In February 1842 Cuffay chaired a 'Great
Public Meeting of the Tailors', at which a national petition to the Commons
was adopted. Later the same year the Metropolitan Delegate Council responded
to the arrest of George Julian Harney and other
national leaders by appointing Cuffay (as president) and three others to serve
as an interim executive 'to supply the place of those whom a tyrannic
Government has pounced upon'.
From the begining, the Chartists had been divided over the question of violence;
broadly speaking, the so-called ‘Moral Force’ wing believed campaigning,
pressure & petitions could win political representation for working class
people, while the ‘Physical Force’ Chartists felt the government
and the ruling classes would not give in to moral pressure, and would use
such repressive measures that the workers would have to seize power themselves
by force of arms. While the latter group were proved right about the state’s
response, their attempts to organise an uprising were disorganised and farcical.
'the Black man and his Party'
For all his mildness of manner, Cuffay was a left-wing, militant Chartist
from the beginning. He was in favour of heckling at meetings of the middle-class
Complete Suffrage Movement and Anti-Corn Law League. His militancy earned
him recognition in the press of the ruling class. Punch lampooned him savagely
and The Times referred to London's Chartists as “the Black man and
his Party”; (2) as a direct result of this press campaign his wife
Mary Ann was sacked from her job as charwoman. In 1844 Cuffay was a member
of the Masters and Servants Bill Demonstration Committee, opposing a measure
which would have given magistrates power to imprison a neglectful worker for
two months merely on his master's oath. The radical MP Thomas Slingsby Dunscombe
was parliamentary opponent of what he called “one of the most us,
oppressive, arbitrary, iniquitous, and tyrannical attempts the working classes
that had ever been made" and Cuffay was the tailors' delegate at
meetings to arrange a soiree for Dunscombe. A strong supporter of Feargus
O'Connor's Chartist land scheme - the idea was to take the unemployed out
of the slums and give each family two acres of good arable land - Cuffay moved
at the Chartists' 1845 National convention “that the Conference
now draw up a plan to enable the people to purchase land and place the surplus
labourers who subscribe thereto on such land.” In 1846 he was one
of London's three delegates to the land conference, and he and another London
tailor, James Knight, were appointed auditors to the National Land Company
which soon had 600 branches all over the country. (3) In the year Cuffay served
as one of the National Anti-Militia Association's ten directors and was a
member of the Democratic Committee for Poland's Regeneration, of which Ernest
Jones (4), friend of Marx and Engels, was president. In 1847 he was on the
Central Registration and Election Committee, and in 1848 he was on the management
committee for a Metropolitan Democratic Hall.
‘the year of decision’
For
Cuffay, as for so many other working people in western Europe, 1848 was “the
year of decision”. He was one of the three London delegates to
the Chartists' national convention that met in the April. From the start of
the proceedings he made his left-wing position plain. Derby had sent as delegate
a sensational journalist and novelist called George Reynolds (he gave his
name to the radical magazine that eventually became Reynolds News) and Cuffay
challenged the middle-class newcomer, demanding to know if he really was a
Chartist. Cuffay also at first opposed the granting of credentials to Charles
MacCarthy of the Irish Democratic Federation, but the dispute was settled,
and MacCarthy admitted, by a sub-committee of which Cuffay was a member. The
convention's main task was to prepare a mass meeting on Kennington
Common and a procession that was to accompany the Chartist petition, bearing
almost two million signatures, to the Commons. When Reynolds, moved an amendment
declaring 'That in the event of the rejection of the Petition, the Convention
should declare its sitting permanent, and should declare the Charter the law
of the land', Cuffay said he was opposed to a body declaring itself permanent
that represented only a fraction of the people: he was elected by only 2,000
out of the two million inhabitants of London, He moved that the convention
should confine itself to presenting the petition, and that a national assembly
be called - “then come what might, it should declare its sittings
permanent and go on, come weal or come woe.” At length the idea
of a national assembly was accepted. In a later debate Cuffay told his fellow
delegates that “the men of London were up to the mark, and were
eager for the fray”. In a speech sharply critical of the national
leadership, he declared that the Irish patriots, ('confederates'): “were
also in an advanced state of preparation, and if a spark wore laid to the
train in Ireland, they would not wait for Chartists. A deputation from the
two bodies met together on Monday night last, and the result was, that the
confederates were ready to march in procession with them under the green flag
of Erin (cheers). The trades were also coming out,'and amongst the rest the
tailors, to which he belonged (a laugh). Well, if they did not get what they
wanted before a fortnight, he, for one, was ready to fall; and if the petition
was rejected with scorn, he would move at once to form a rifle club (cheers)
... He did think that their leader Feargus O'Connor was not quite up to the
mark, and he suspected one or two more of the executive council strongly,
and if he found that his suspicions were correct, he would move to have them
turned out of office (laughter and cheers). The country had no right to despair
of the men of London ... There were only 5,000 soldiers in London.”
When a moderate speech was made, Cuffay burst out: “This clapping
of hands is all very fine, but will you fight for it?” There were
cries of “Yes, yes” and cheers.
‘the time is now come for work’
Appointed chairman of the committee for managing the procession, Cuffay was
responsible for making sure that “everything… necessary for conducting
an immense procession with order and regularity had been adopted”, and
suggested that stewards wear tricolour sashes and rosettes. Things had now
come to a crisis, he said, and they must he prepared to act with coolness
and determination. It was clear that the executive had shrunk from their responsibility.
They did not show the spirit they ought. He no longer had any confidence in
them, and he hoped the convention would be prepared to take the responsibility
out of their hands and lead the people themselves. At the final meeting, on
the morning of the demonstration, Cuffay opposed endless debate. “The
time is now come for work,” he insisted. An. observer recorded
that, as the convention broke up and delegates took their places on the vehicles,
carrying the petition, Cuffay “appeared perfectly happy and elated”
for the first time since the proceedings opened.
The commissioner of police had declared that the proposed procession was illegal.
The queen had been packed off to the Isle of Wight for her safety, and the
royal carriages and horses and other valuables had been removed from the palace.
Tens of thousands of lawyers, shopkeepers, and government clerks had been
enrolled as special constables. All government buildings were prepared for
attack: at the Foreign Office, the ground-floor windows were blocked with
bound volumes of The Times, thought to be thick enough to stop bullets, and
the clerks were issued with brand-new muskets and ball cartridges... The British
Museum was provided with 50 muskets and 100 cutlasses... The Bank of England
was protected with sandbags... Along the Embankment, 7,000 soldiers were distributed
at strategic points. Heavy gun batteries were brought up from Woolwich. The
bridges were sealed off and guarded by over 4,000 police. O'Connor was interviewed
by the Commissioner of police - who said afterwards that he had never seen
a man so frightened - and decided to call off the procession.(5)
'the very chief of the conspiracy'
When the crowd at Kennington Common heard this, many of them were very angry.
There were shouts that the petition should have been carried forward until
actively opposed by the troops then withdrawn altogether on the ground that
such opposition was unlawful. One of the protesters was Cuffay, who spoke
in strong language against the dispersal of the meeting, and contended that
it would be time enough to evince their fear of the military when they met
them face to face! He believed the whole Convention were a set of cowardly
humbugs, and he would have nothing more to do with them, He then left the
van, and got among the crowd, where he said that O'Connor must have known
all this before, and that he ought to have informed them of it, so that they
might have conveyed the petition at once to the House of Commons, without
crossing the bridges. They had been completely caught in a trap.
Cuffay was elected as one of the commissioners to campaign for the Charter
after its rejection by Parliament… Most of our scantyinformation about
his activities comes from police spies, one of whom was actually a member
of the seven-strong 'Ulterior Committee' that was planning an uprising in
London. Cuffay was certainly a late, and almost certainly a reluctant, member
of this body. On 16 August 1848, 11 'luminaries', allegedly plotting to fire
certain buildings as a signal for the rising, were arrested at a Bloomsbury
tavern, the Orange Tree, near Red Lion Square. Cuffay was arrested later at
his lodgings. He had not been a delegate to the committee for more than 12
days, and had not been elected secretary until 13 August. So he was certainly
not, as The Times called him, “the very chief of the conspiracy”.
Indeed it is claimed that, before the police swooped, he had realised that
the plan was premature and hopeless but, from solidarity, had refused to back
out. He could have gone underground, but he chose not to: he “refused
to fly, lest it should be said that he abandoned his associates in the hour
of peril.” (6)
“Cuffey,” sneered The Times, “is half
a "nigger". Some of the others are Irishmen. We doubt if there are
half-a-dozen Englishmen in the whole lot.” Cuffay's bearing in
court soon wiped the smirk off the face of The Times. He pleaded not guilty
in a loud voice and objected to being tried by a middle-class jury. “I
demand trial by my peers,” he said, “according to the
principles of Magna Charta.” Then the prospective jurors were challenged,
and one, asked if he had ever expressed an opinion as to Cuffay's guilt or
innocence, or what ought to be the result of the trial, replied: “Yes,
I have expressed an opinion that they ought ought to be hanged.”
He was told to retire, “and after considerable delay a jury was
at length formed.” Though counsel for the boot cleaver Thomas Fay
and the bootmaker William Lacey - two Chartists who stood in the dock with
Cuffay - said his clients were satisfied, Cuffay made it clear that he himself
was not. “I wish it to be understood”, he exclaimed,
“that I do object, to this jury. They are not my equals - I am only
a journeyman mechanic.”
'a severe sentence, but a most just one’
Cuffay's conviction for levying war on the queen was obtained through the
evidence of two police spies. One, Thomas Powell, widely known as 'Lying Tom',
said in cross-examination that he had told the Chartists how to make grenades:
“I told them that gunpowder must be put into an ink-bottle with
an explosive cap, and I dare say I did say that it would be a capital thing
to throw among the police if it had some nails in it.” The other
spy, George Davis (he wasn’t innocent ok?), a second-hand book and furniture
dealer from Greenwich and a member of the Chartist 'Wat Tyler Brigade' there,
told how he had attended its meetings and 'reported within two hours all that
had occurred at each meeting to the inspector of police. For the past few
weeks the people of Greenwich had suspected him of being a spy, and he had
lost his trade as a result (Shame!). The Metropolitan Police had paid Powell
£1 per week, Davis a lump sum of £150, and had also bought information
from at least two other Chartists.
In his defiant final speech, Cuffay denied the court's right to sentence him.
He had not been tried by his equals, and the press had tried to smother him
with ridicule. He asked neither pity nor mercy, he had expected to be convicted.
He pitied the attorney-general - who ought to be called the spymaster-general
- for using such base characters to get him convicted. The government could
only exist with the support of a regular organised system of police espionage.
Cuffay declared his total innocence of the charge: his locality never sent
any delegates, and he had nothing to do with the 'luminaries'. He was not
anxious for martyrdom, but he felt that he could bear any punishment proudly,
even to the scaffold. He was proud to be among the first victims of the Act
of Parliament making the new political crime of 'felony' punishable by transportation.
Every proposal that was likely to benefit the working classes had been thrown
out or set aside in Parliament, but a measure to restrain their liberties
had been passed in a few hours.
Cuffay and his two comrades were sentenced to transportation “for the
term of your natural lives”. “A severe sentence, but a most just
one,” commented The Times. The radical press praised the tailor's
steadfastness and courage. The Northern Star, most influential of
Chartist newspapers, said:
“The conduct of Cuffay throughout his trial was that of a man. A
somewhat singular appearance, certain eccentricities of manner, and a habit
of unregulated speech, afforded an opportunity to the 'suckmug' reporters,
unprincipled editors, and buffoons of the press to make him the subject of
their ridicule. The 'fast men' of the press ... did their best to smother
their victim beneath the weight of their heavy wit ... In a great measure,
Cuffay owes his destruction to the Press gang. But his manly and admirable
conduct on his trial affords his enemies no opportunity either to sneer at
or abuse him ... His protest from first to last against the mockery of being
tried by a Jury animated by class resentments and party-hatred, showed him
to be a much better respecter of 'the constitution' than either the Attorney-General
or the judges on the bench. Cuffay's last words should be treasured up by
the people.”
‘banished by a government that feared him’
The author of ‘A word in defence of Cuffey' in the Reasoner
had this to say:
“When hundreds of working men elected this man to audit the accounts
of their benefit society, they did so in the full belief of his trustworthiness,
and he never gave them reason to repent of their choice. Cuffay's sobriety
and ever active spirit marked him for a very useful man; he cheerfully fulfilled
the arduous duties devolved upon him.”
And the Reasoner added: “He was a clever, industrious, honest, sober
and frugal man.” A profile of Cuffay in Reynold's Political
Instructor said he was“loved by his own order, who knew him
and appreciated his virtues, ridiculed and denounced by a press that knew
him not, and had no sympathy with his class, and banished by a government
that feared him... Whilst integrity in the midst of poverty, whilst honour
in the midst of temptation are admired and venerated, so long will the name
of William Cuffay, a scion of Affric's oppressed race, be preserved from oblivion.”
After a voyage lasting 103 days on the prison ship Adelaide, Cuffay landed
in Tasmania in November 1849. He was permitted to work at his trade for wages
-which he did until the last year of his life - and after much delay his wife
was allowed to join him in April 1853. Cuffay was unique among veteran Chartists
in exile in that he continued his radical activities after his free pardon
on 19 May 1856. In particular, he was active in the successful agitation for
the amendment of the colony's Masters and Servants Act. He was described as
“a fluent and an effective speaker”, who was “always popular
with the working classes” and who “took a prominent part in
election matters, and went in strongly for the individual rights of working
men.” At one of his last public appearances he called his working-class
audience “Fellow Slaves” and told them: “I'm
old, I'm poor. I'm out of work, I'm in debt, and therefore I have cause to
complain.”
In October 1869 Cuffay was admitted to Tasmania's workhouse, the Brickfields
invalid depot, in whose sick ward he died in July 1870, aged 82. The workhouse
superintendent described him as 'a quiet man, and an inveterate reader. His
grave was specially marked “in case friendly sympathisers should
hereafter desire to place a memorial on the spot.”
Cuffay makes fleeting appearances in three mid-nineteenth-century works of
literature. Thackeray, in The Three Christmas Waits (1848), poked
fun at him as “the bold Cuffee” and a “pore
old blackymore rogue”. A character in Charles Kingsley's novel
Alton Locke, tailor and poet (1850) praises Cuffay's “earnestness”;
in the same novel the police spy Powell is described as a “shameless
wretch” and Cuffay is patronisingly called “the honestest,
if not the wisest speaker” at Kennington Common.(7)
A fuller, more faithful portrait was painted by Cuffay's friend admirer, and
fellow-Chartist Thomas Martin Wheeler, whose semi-autobiographical Sunshine
and Shadow was serialised in the Northern Star in 1849. Wheeler recalled
how, at a Chartist meeting in the early 1840s, he first
“gazed with unfeigned admiration upon the high intellectual forehead
and animated features of this diminutive Son of Africa's despised and injured
race. Though the son of a West Indian and the grandson of an African slave,
he spoke the English tongue pure and grammatical, and with a degree of ease
and facility which would shame many who boast of the purity of their Saxon
or Norman descent. Possessed of attainments superior to the majority of working
men, he had filled, with honour, the highest offices of his trade society...
In the hour of danger no man could be more depended on than William Cuffay
- a strict disciplinarian, and a lover of order - he was firm in the discharge
of his duty, even to obstinacy; yet in his social circle no man was more polite,
good-humoured, and affable, which caused his company to be much admired and
earnestly sought for - honoured and respected by ad who knew him ... Yes,
Cuffay, should these lines ever meet thine eyes in thy far-distant home, yes,
my friend, though thou hast fallen - thou hast fallen with the great and noble
of the earth ... Faint not, mine old companion, the darkness of the present
time will but render more intense the glowing light of the future.”
NOTES
1. 1834 Tailors strike: the London tailors had a long tradition of organisation
and struggle. The 'Knights of the Needle' had an organisation that could be
fairly described as 'all but a military system'. But it was weak due to its
division into two classes, called Flints and Dungs - “the Flints
have upwards of thirty houses of call, and the Dungs about nine or ten; the
Flints work by day, the Dungs by day or piece. Great animosity formerly existed
between them, the Dungs generally working for less wages, but of late years
there has not been much difference in the wages… and at some of the
latest strikes both parties have usually made common cause.” (Francis
Place)
In 1824 Place estimated a proportion of one 'Dung' to three 'Flints'; but
the 'Dungs' 'work a great many hours, and their families assist them.' The
upsurge in tailors union activity, after the repeal of the Combination Acts,
led to the founding of a Grand National Union of Tailors in Nov 1832. It was
a general union, containing skilled & unskilled tailors and tailoresses.
It affiliated to Robert Owen's Grand National Consolidated Trade Union.
By the early 1830s the tide of the cheap and ready-made trade could be held
back no longer. In 1834 the 'Knights' were finally degraded only after a tremendous
conflict, when 20,000 were said to be on strike under the slogan of 'equalisation'.
But the 1834 strike was unsuccessful, which led to the collapse of the Union
and reductions in wages.
2 . William Cuffay was by no means the only black radical who played an active
part in the London Chartist movement. Two of the leaders of a riotous demonstration
in Camberwell on 13 March 1848 were 'men of colour': David Anthony Duffy (or
Duffey), a 21-year-old out-of-work seaman, described as 'a determined looking
and powerful fellow' and known to the police as a beggar in the Mint, where
he was said to go without shirt, shoe, or stocking`; and another seaman, an
'active fellow' called Benjamin Prophitt (or Prophet), known as 'Black Ben',
aged 29. After the March riot in Camberwell, Duffy was transported for seven
years, Prophitt for fourteen.
3 . The Chartist Land scheme: Feargus O' Connor was undoubtedly themost influential
Chartist leader in the 1840s. His grand scheme to settle poor families on
the land as peasant smallholders. After some years of propaganda the Chartist
Co-operative Land Society (later the National Land Company) was founded in
1845. O'Connor's vigourous propaganda work collected a mass of subscribers
and donations, and in 1846 “O'Connorville” was founded at Heronsgate,
near Chorleywood, northwest of London. Other estates were bought and let out
in smallholding to subscribers picked by ballot. But by the end of 1847, the
financial difficulties facing the scheme and the incompetence of its directors,
became obvious. In 1848 a House of Commons Committee reported that the Company
was illegal, its finances in a state of chaos, and its promises impossible
to fulfill. The Company was eventually wound up with O'Connor out of pocket.
It was in many ways a futile sidetracking from the Chartists main political
struggle, and heavily embittered many Chartists against O'Connor, who had
already come under suspicion as a vacillating demagogue, who bottled it when
the chips were down.
O'Connorville at Heronsgate collapsed a few years later, but interestingly
a beer shop from those times survives as a very fine pub with the Chartist-inspired
name of the 'Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty', worth visiting for good beer,
fine food, and you can read a copy of Heronsgate: Freedom Happiness and Contentment,
by local historian Ian Foster, the fine book about O'Connorville and the subsequent
history of the area. (Published by Manticore Europe Ltd, Silver Birches, Heronsgate,
Rickmansworth, WD3 5DN)
4 . Ernest Jones was one of the leaders of Chartism in its later phase, he
attempted to move Chartism towards socialism. He later fell out with George
Julian Harney and Marx, coming to dominate Chartism in the 1850s, but was
powerless to stop the movement’s decline.
5 . O’Connor and other Chartist leaders certainly called off the procession,
afraid of the power ranged against them, (and possibly afraid of the true
power of the working class?); and also aware that the numbers of demonstrators
was much less than expected. But there was some fighting in Blackfriars and
Southwark, as large crowds of Chartists tried to fight their way to Parliament.
6 . In 1848, some Chartists clearly were planning an uprising or revolution,
at a time when barricades were going up in much of Europe. Heavy fighting
took place in London between Chartists and cops in Camberwell (March), Clerkenwell
(May), Bethnal Green (June), but government spies had totally infiltrated
the plotting. On 16 August 18 members of the ‘luminaries’ or ‘Ulterior
Committee’ were busted at the Orange Tree Tavern, Red Lion Passage,
Holborn, and at the Angel tavern, Southwark, and elsewhere. At the Orange
Tree, a regular Chartist meeting point, a meeting was raided; cops found “a
number of loaded pistols, pikes, daggers, spearheads, and swords, and some
of the prisoners wore iron breast plates, while oters had gun powder, shot
and tow-balls.”
Cuffay, Fay, W. Dowling, W. Lacey, William Ritchie were transported; 15 others
were jailed for 18 months to 2 years.
7 . Kingsley, author of The Water Babies and Westward Ho!, was of course not
averse to a bit of racism himself. He wrote of the slaughter of Native Americans:
“One tribe exterminated...to save a whole continent. Sacrifice of
human life? Prove that it is human life. It is beast life.” And
touring the West Indies he wrote of his dislike of black people “especially
the women”. The Irish he called “human chimpanzees.”
He joined a committee to defend Governor Eyre of Jamaica when the latter
massacred hundreds of black farmers putting down a rebellion, not only protesting
possible charges but proposing Eyre be given a seat in the Lords; it was only
through such men as the Governor that the English could fulfill their destiny
to rule the “savage races” of the world. On this committee
he was joined by such enlightened folk as Tennyson, Dickens, Carlyle; on the
other hand a Committee including Darwin & John Stuart Mill demanded Eyre’s
prosecution and a working class meeting burnt the Governor in effigy.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
this text was largely nicked from
‘STAYING POWER: THE HISTORY OF BLACK PEOPLE IN BRITAIN”
by Peter Fryer.
Some Australian folk have set up a brilliant site about William Cuffay's
life:
www.cuffay.com
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