Search Results

From 1832 the pilot light burned more fiercely as the Peace Society turned itself into a pressure group. This overtly political role was made possible by a new domestic environment in which governments made concessions and reform campaigns burgeoned. Joseph Sturge became the peace movement’s most representative figure in this period. He optimized pacifism’s declining fear in politics. Until the 1850s, Sturge also kept a certain distance from the Peace Society and encouraged independent activism, thereby symbolizing the fact that in this period a broader peace movement was coming into existence.

During the three years following the Brussels congress, the British peace movement was to glide higher than at any time prior to the 1920s and 1930s, when hopes for a League of Nations and fear of the bomber were to be at their height. The period undoubtedly belonged to Richard Cobden, who not only committed himself to the peace movement in 1849, but later showed himself to be ready to risk his carefully husbanded political capital on its behalf.

After three and a half decades of continuous and accelerating progress, peace thinking faced four setbacks from the autumn of 1851 onwards, caused by both domestic and international factors. The first was Kossuth’s tour of Britain in October and November 1851, which produced an intense disagreement between Cobden and the peace society over the extent to which it was possible to back the Hungarian nationalist leader without compromising the doctrine of non-intervention. The second was Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état of 2 December 1851, which was followed by an invasion scare, the fall of Russell’s government, and eventual passing by his Conservative Successor of a Militia Act. The third was Napoleon’s seemingly ominous adoption of the title Emperor Napoleon III in December 1852, which renewed the defence panic. The fourth was the deterioration of the Eastern Question, which dimmed prospects for a second national peace conference at Edinburgh on 12—13 October 1853 and led the following March to Britain’s involvement in the Crimean War.

This period saw the peace movement take off: lifted by the support of an attentive public, it came to resemble a glider as it exploited the rising currents of anti-war feeling by launching two separate campaigns against attempts to revive the militia: a Friendly International Addresses movement — The League of Universal Brotherhood — and an international peace congress at Brussels, in 20—22 September 1848. A key activist in this period was newly arrived American, Elihu Burritt, whose League of Universal Brotherhood became the first peace association to attract a mass membership.

This chapter chronicles the British peace movement. By the time this appeared during the French revolutionary wars, it had a pre-history going back almost exactly four centuries. Pacifism was first proclaimed in the British Isles by the Lollards, and first achieved a significant following when the Quakers committed themselves to it in 1661, as did some others around the same time. It fell back somewhat during the early 18th century, when Quakerism retreated into sectarian quietism and other sources of pacifism disappeared from view altogether. During that century pacifism began to emerge, though it had to contend with public enthusiasm for certain kinds of war.