Stalybridge : Holy Trinity and Christ Church

Image: © Ken Bagnall Taken: 22 Aug 2009

The second Chartist petition was presented to Parliament in April 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. A movement of resistance to the imposition of wage cuts in the mills, also known as the Plug Riots, it spread to involve nearly 500,000 workers throughout Britain and represented the biggest single exercise of working class strength in 19th century Britain. On 13 August 1842 there was a strike at Bayley's Cotton Mill, and roving cohorts of operatives carried the stoppage first to the whole area of Stalybridge and Ashton under Lyne, then to Manchester, and subsequently to surrounding towns, using as much force as was necessary to bring mills to a standstill. The movement remained, to outward appearances, largely non-political. Although the People's Charter was praised at public meetings, the resolutions that were passed at these were in almost all cases merely for a restoration of the wages of 1820, a ten-hour working day, or reduced rents. In writing The Condition of The Working Class in England (1844), Friedrich Engels used Stalybridge as an example: "... multitudes of courts, back lanes, and remote nooks arise out of [the] confused way of building ... Add to this the shocking filth, and the repulsive effect of Stalybridge, in spite of its pretty surroundings, may be readily imagined."

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