2023 in Europe;Simply horrifying!
Origins 1838
The strike was influenced by the
Chartist movement – a mass working class movement from 1838–1848.
[2] After the second Chartist Petition was presented to Parliament in May 1842,
Stalybridge contributed 10,000 signatures. After the rejection of the petition the first general strike began in the coal mines of Staffordshire. The second phase of the strike originated in Stalybridge.
[3]
Civil unrest
A movement of resistance to the imposition of wage cuts in the mills, also known as the "Plug Riots", it spread to involve nearly half a million workers throughout Britain and represented the biggest single exercise of working class strength in nineteenth-century Britain.
On 13 August 1842, there was a strike at Bayley's cotton mill in Stalybridge, and roving groups of workers carried the
stoppagefirst to the whole area of Stalybridge and
Ashton, then to Manchester, and subsequently to towns adjacent to Manchester including Preston, using as much force as was necessary to bring mills to a standstill. The
Preston Strike of 1842 resulted in a riot where four men were shot on 13 August at Lune Street. The West Riding of Yorkshire saw disturbances at
Bradford,
Huddersfield and
Hunslet. At least six people died in a riot at Halifax.
[4]