Those Who Labor Must Rule!

(Quote of the Week)

Emerging in the first half of the 19th century as a mass independent workers movement, the British Chartists advanced revolutionary republican principles while leading the workers in class struggle. James Bronterre O’Brien, an Irish-born leader of the movement, gave voice to the need for the working class to fight in its own interests instead of begging its oppressors.

I hate long discussions and disquisitions upon the rights and privileges of the oppressed. I hate such arguments as go to prove that hawks should not prey upon doves; wolves on lambs; or the idlers of society upon the productive classes; I hate all appeals to the morality of monsters....

We have had enough of moral and learned strictures upon abstract rights and duties, which have left the respective parties in statu quo—the one plundering, the other being plundered....

My motto is...“What you take you may have.” I will not attempt to deal with the abstract question of right, but will proceed to show that it is POWER, solid, substantial POWER, that the millions must obtain and retain, if they would enjoy the produce of their own labour and the privileges of freemen.

—James Bronterre O’Brien (1837), quoted in Dorothy Thompson, The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution (1984)