The Chartist movement, Britain's first mass working-class political movement, continued its campaign through 1839 for the six points of the People's Charter, including universal male suffrage, secret ballots, and annual parliaments. Petitions bearing over a million signatures were organized for presentation to Parliament, reflecting deep working-class frustration after the 1832 Reform Act had expanded voting rights only for the middle class.
The People's Charter of 1838 crystallized decades of working-class political frustration into six clear demands, universal manhood suffrage, vote by secret ballot, equal electoral districts, abolition of property qualifications for MPs, payment of MPs so working men could serve, and annual general elections. It emerged from bitter disappointment that the Great Reform Act of 1832 had extended the vote only to middle-class property owners, leaving the industrial working class as voiceless as before.
Throughout 1839, Chartist organizers crisscrossed Britain collecting signatures and holding mass meetings, some drawing tens of thousands of workers, coal miners, and mill hands who saw the Charter as their path to genuine political voice. The movement split between 'moral force' advocates who believed in peaceful persuasion and 'physical force' Chartists willing to countenance armed insurrection if petitions were ignored.
Parliament rejected the first great petition in July 1839 by an overwhelming vote, triggering unrest including the Newport Rising in Wales that November, where armed Chartists attempted an uprising that was swiftly crushed. Though the Chartists never won their charter outright during the movement's lifetime, nearly every one of their six demands, except annual elections, eventually became law in Britain over the following century.