Shout for freedom

Chartism was the first great campaign for democracy in British history. Uniting thousands in speech, shout, and song, the movement, for a time, transformed the Victorian soundscape, foregrounding the voices of working people in political life as never before.

Shout for freedom explores how sounds-from the clank of machinery to the beauty of birdsong, the tramp of marching feet to the exhilaration of a dance, the cheering of crowds to the silence of prison-became central to Chartism. As debates about working-class citizenship intensified, Chartism's championing of the collective voice of working people articulated and contested emerging understandings of democracy.

Bringing together histories of politics, sound, and music, this book offers a radical reassessment of this crucial moment, arguing that the extraordinary eruption and forced silencing of Chartism reveal the nature, and the limits, of democracy in modern Britain. -- .