Laurence Turner

Laurence Turner

Labour — Birmingham Northfield

Speaking in the House of Commons on 4 November 2024

Debate

Newport Chartist Commemorations: Strengthening Democracy

Contribution

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. With her permission, I would also like to commemorate for the record the events in Birmingham in 1839, when reaction and the gathering radicalism that first found expression in the Birmingham Political Union—which did so much to shape the “People’s Charter”—combined and ignited into the Bull Ring riots, which led to soldiers patrolling the streets as far south as my constituency, such was the fear that the contagion would spread. One hundred and eight-five years later, when people are still protesting and dying for their political rights from Ukraine to Iran, does she agree that the spirit that motivated Chartism remains living, immediate and essential?

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