O'Connor, Feargus
The Oxford Companion to British History
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2002
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© The Oxford Companion to British History 2002, originally published by Oxford University Press 2002. (Hide copyright information)
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O'Connor, Feargus (1794–1855). Chartist. An Irish barrister, O'Connor was MP (and follower of Daniel
O'Connell) for Cork in 1832 and for Nottingham (as a chartist) in 1847. He was the greatest of the chartist leaders, the champion, as he said, of the ‘unshorn chins, blistered hands, and fustian jackets’; and for ten years he was at the head of the movement. His influence came from his charismatic, flamboyant style of oratory, and his ownership of the chief chartist newspaper, the
Northern Star. He was imprisoned in 1840 for seditious libel. Contemporaries like
Lovett and some historians later attributed the failure of chartism to O'Connor's demagoguery and his promotion of the National Land Company (1845–51), designed to settle working people on agricultural smallholdings. O'Connor's appearance at the last great chartist demonstration on Kennington Common on 10 April 1848 marked the end of the mass platform as a pattern of popular radicalism.
John F. C. Harrison
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