Feargus O'Connor and the Chartist Land Company, 1845-1851

The Chartist Land Plan represented a significant phase in later Chartist history and served to illustrate the poignancy of the agrarian impulse among the working class. The Land Plan is important because it attempted to modify capitalism to include the working class as small farmers. Therefore, the Land Plan represented a path that socialism could have taken but did not, a path that would have included the working class in a wider definition of capitalism rather than the path that was taken which opposed capitalism. In the past the Land Plan has been viewed as a step in the wrong direction because of its marriage with capitalism. Historians interpret socialism in the light of what has happened in the twentieth century and apply this measuring stick to the Land Plan. However, in 1842 socialism did not mean what it has come to mean now, so the Land Plan must be reexamined in the context of its times and not judged a failure for goals it never espoused. Furthermore, the Land Plan is important as much for the hopes it inspired as for the forces that shaped it. The conclusion of this paper is that the Land Plan represents a continuation of long-term radical ideas coupled with an acceptance of capitalism in an attempt to move the working class into a more vital productive role in British society.