What Activity Did Fergus O’Connor’s Supporters Engage In Between 1843-1848?

Fergus O'Connor was very much the lead figure in the extremist Chartism movement. He attacked the Complete Suffrage Union (CSU) as too compromising and a "sell out" of Chartist principles because it drew up a new Bill of Rights in place of the Charter. Those involved with the union O'Connor condemned as traitors to the cause. When they organised the first CSU conference in Birmingham in April 1842, O'Connor called a simultaneous rival Chartist conference to force followers to make an open declaration of their loyalties.

O'Connor denounced those who deviated from what he regarded to be the "pure" Chartism represented by the NCA. Yet O'Connor himself was responsible for the Chartist Land Plan, regarded by many as the greatest distraction of all. The Chartist Co-operative Land Society, founded in 1845, aimed to raise funds in the form of shares and subscriptions from Chartist sympathisers and to buy land which could be rented out in allotments of 2-4 acres to some of the shareholders. The first Chartist estate was acquired at Heronsgate near Rickmansworth and became known as O'Connorville. In all, over £100,000 was collected from some 70,000 subscribers, 250 of whom were actually settled on the land – in a variety of estates which included Snig's End in Gloucestershire.

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