Revolution: a Free Handbook
The Frightful Hobgoblin of 1839
In History Today, January 2022, four historians were asked: When did Britain come closest to Revolution? Katrina Navickas, giving the most recent example - 179 years ago - wrote:
‘The year most likely to result in a revolutionary moment was 1839. Bread prices were at their highest levels since 1819. Peaceful demonstrations built up to the presentation to Parliament of the first Chartist National Petition in May, signed by over 1.2 million people. Even in more moderate centres, such as Birmingham, there was growing support for a National Convention to take ‘ulterior measures’ if the petition was rejected. The South Wales valleys fostered the greatest potential for revolution… ‘
Our book, 1839: the Chartist Insurrection (by David Black and Chris Ford), supports this view. First published in 2012 by the late, lamented (some say murdered) publisher, Unkant Books, it is now back in print, both as a BPC paperback and ebook, revised, copy-edited and with a slightly more descriptive title, 1838: the Chartist Insurrection and the Newport Rising.
As a Yuletide gift, the download of the EBOOK of 1839, is FREE from 19th to 24th of December 2025.
HERE: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FWYY1QC7
REVIEWS OF THE FIRST EDITION
Ben Watson’s blurb-on-the-back: ‘In retrieving the suppressed history of the Chartist Insurrection, David Black and Chris Ford have produced a revolutionary handbook.’
Dan La Botz, New Politics
Black and Ford have written a fast-paced, narrative history of the 1839 Insurrection, filled with thumbnail sketches of the Chartist movement’s major figures, descriptions of the most important Chartist organizations and their politics in brief, excerpts from contemporary speeches, and parliamentary debates, and wonderful descriptions of the movement’s rise, growth, and spread throughout Britain. All of this is based on the most masterful command of the sources: newspapers, parliamentary records, memoirs, private papers, and all of the secondary literature. They tell their story in the most straightforward way but at a breathtaking clip that contributes to the sense of the excitement of the movement and its culmination in the insurrection.”
Stephen Roberts, People’s Charter
I read this book in one sitting as I sheltered from the pouring rain at Bodnant Gardens in North Wales. Based on a wide range of secondary sources and easy to read, it provided a welcome way of spending a few hours whilst waiting for the weather to clear (it didn’t!). The authors tell the story of a year when they assert the conditions for a working class revolution existed... For the authors a hero of the Chartist story emerges... George Julian Harney. And rightly so: Harney should be a hero to us all.
https://thebarbarismofpureculture.co.uk/wp/
'free book' link leads directly to -*surprise*- a commodity advert. for a product, kindle, normalizing empire censorship. am i just so out of it if i remember when free meant a community torrent
how thrilling is the thought of revolution. and why? well, has anyone but the children of empire defined 'revolution'? as satanism is an attempt to ritually-invert a monotheist theology, yet implicitly accepts the apparant truth of hebrew monotheism - so is revolution with regard to the militarization of empire, by means of its unifying commodity, information.
the result of control has elevated a three-faced monotheism, forever and conveniently at war with itself.
the only question of our day is, how can 'revolution' avoid fighting along any of empire's invisible sides, to instead peaceably subvert its notion of control?
anyone here have simple answers?
maybe easier to say - which 'revolution' should we support? leftist tourists all seem to like cuba. granted, fidel didnt leave many mass graves; and maybe cuba did prefer its slaves alive. but how many cubans who actually lived under fidel still voluntarily promote the wisdom of his control?