This is perhaps the only likeness of William Cuffey that exists
today. It is taken from an 1850 edition of a radical weekly journal,
Reynolds’s Political Instructor, owned and largely
written by another Chartist, George Reynolds.
Both Cuffey and Reynolds had spoken at the huge Chartist demonstration
on Kennington Common in April 1848, at which plans to march on Westminster
with the third Chartist petition had been abandoned after government
pressure. The two men represented different aspects of Chartist methodology.
Reynolds was a ‘moral force Chartist’ who did not believe
in using violence, whereas Cuffey was a prominent ‘physical
force Chartist’ and leader of the militant London Chartists
- a group described by The Times as ‘the Black man
and his party’.
Reynolds’s Political Instructor (13 April 1850)
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