The annual conference on Chartism took place this year in Dodford, near Bromsgrove, where the National Trust recently bought one of the Chartist cottages. The settlement was established by Feargus O’Connor 150 years ago and, as well as the conference on 10 July 1999, there were other celebrations, including the performance of a play entitled “O’Connor’s Dream”.

The conference was attended by a hundred and twenty people, among them researchers, local people and inhabitants of another Chartist settlement, Heronsgate, near Watford.

There were four papers. Peter Searby, who in 1968 first drew scholarly attention to the existence of Dodford, Malcolm Chase of the University of Leeds, and Hideo Koga, of Kyoto Women’s University in Japan, dealt with different aspects of the Land Plan. Tim Randall’s paper was concerned with the poetry and songs of Chartism, a subject he has recently written about in a new collection of essays, The Chartist Legacy (1999). At intervals during his paper Roy and Pat Palmer performed Chartist songs.

The day concluded with the unveiling of a commemorative stone by Simon Penn of Avoncroft museum of Historic Buildings, and a walk, in perfect weather, around the Chartist village.

In 2000 Chartism Day returns to the University of Birmingham; the precise date and details of papers will be made known early next year.