James Watson (1766–1838)

by William Holl, pubd 1817 (after George Scharf) [Spa Field Rioters [left to right]: James Watson (1766–1838), Arthur Thistlewood (bap. 1774, d.1820), Thomas Preston (1774-1850), and John Hooper]

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Watson, James (1766–1838), radical, was born on 15 May 1766 at Kirton, near Boston, Lincolnshire. He claimed to be a surgeon by profession, but financial security seems to have eluded him in a succession of surgeon-apothecary shops in London and the provinces. He married Ann Milner on 4 February 1790 in London and had ten children, born in London, Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Staffordshire. Family circumstances deteriorated when the Watsons finally settled in London around 1808, having quit an ailing business in Cheadle, Staffordshire. In 1810 one of Watson's daughters died 'for want of nourishment … while ill, the bed that was under her was seized for rent … This was too much when the affluent were wallowing in riches' (TNA: PRO, TS11/200/869). Then his wife departed, taking the four youngest, and allegedly mistreated, children. Abandoning sobriety and political conservatism, Watson formed a ‘connection’ with his neighbour Thomas Evans, founder of the Society of Spencean Philanthropists. As expounded by Evans in the London taverns, Thomas Spence's 'plan' for political equality and social welfare through parish ownership of land held out the promise of respectability and independent self-sufficiency for marginal middle-class professionals such as Watson. As war with Napoleonic France gave way to peace without plenty, Watson sought to carry the message beyond tavern debating clubs, to transform popular discontent into mass political insurgency. Through his efforts to mobilize what he called 'ragged radicals', Watson emerged as the leader of London ultra-radicalism.

Having joined Thomas Preston and Arthur Thistlewood in insurrectionary planning in autumn 1816, Watson combed alehouses to enlist navvies, demobilized soldiers, dock workers, gangs of roughs, the unemployed, and other physically intimidating groups, while his eldest son, also called James, put his recent seafaring experience to good use in recruiting discharged sailors. As a well-attended public meeting was regarded as the best springboard for action, all the leading reform celebrities were invited to a meeting of 'Distressed Manufacturers, Mariners, Artisans and others' at Spa Fields on 15 November 1816. Henry Hunt alone accepted, having satisfied himself that he was not being drawn into a revolutionary Spencean plot to abolish private property in land.

In a private interview with Watson, Hunt dictated terms: no reference to Spencean principles and no incitement to riot. The meeting would be strictly 'constitutional', enrolling the distressed masses in an extra-parliamentary campaign for universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and the ballot. In acceding, Watson formed a working agreement with Hunt which was to facilitate the remarkable expansion of political agitation in the post-war years. The establishment of this radical mass platform, however, revealed ideological, tactical, social, and cultural tensions in metropolitan ultra-radicalism. While Evans withdrew into refined and respectable circles to uphold the ideological integrity of the Spencean formulary, other ultra-radicals, heirs to the traditional putsch strategy of Colonel Despard and the wartime underground, wanted immediate action. Denied this opportunity on 15 November, Thistlewood and the young Watson ensured that a second meeting was called so that they could go ahead with their original plan to inflame the assembled crowd and then storm the Bank of England and Tower of London. Unable to control his son, who had been treated in Bath for insanity, Watson was drawn into the scheme. To Thistlewood's fury, however, Watson was not to the fore in the actual attempt, on 2 December 1816. He took off in a separate direction as the small section of the crowd, detached by Thistlewood and the young Watson before Hunt had arrived at Spa Fields, looted its way across London until fleeing in the face of troops at the Tower. The ignominious failure of precipitate insurrectionism reinforced Watson's commitment to cumulative mass platform agitation to mobilize the people before decisive confrontation.

Watson's son escaped to the United States, leaving his father to face a charge of high treason. Aided by recent press revelations about Oliver the spy, Watson was acquitted in June 1817, when one of his own recruits, John Castle, was revealed as a government informer with a previous unsavoury record of brothel-keeping, bigamy, forgery, and blood money. Thereafter Watson's position was consolidated by close co-operation with Hunt in the Westminster election of 1818, and in the absence of Thistlewood, who was imprisoned for challenging Lord Sidmouth to a duel. As undisputed leader of the ultra-radicals, Watson channelled his energies into the Universal Union Fund of the Non-Represented People of Great Britain and Ireland, a penny-a-week subscription scheme to provide the necessary means—funds, organization, and rapid communication—to mobilize the labouring poor in readiness for confrontation and a national convention. Important links were forged with provincial radicals, trade unionists, and Irish immigrants, but the promotion of the scheme in pamphlets and in the short-lived Shamrock, Thistle and Rose, a twopenny monthly, overstretched Watson's limited resources, leading to his brief imprisonment for debt in December 1818.

On release, Watson worked closely with Hunt in the great platform campaign of 1819, an attempt to overawe the government by an overwhelming but orderly display of popular support. He organized mass meetings, introduced a new parish-based system of organization among the non-represented, strengthened links with the Irish immigrant community, drafted resolutions for meetings in the north, and even prevailed upon Thistlewood, on his release, to abandon armed conspiracy in favour of the forcible intimidation of the mass platform. The success of Hunt's August meeting in Manchester, planned as the climax of provincial support, was essential to the strategy. After Hunt set off for Lancashire, Watson kept him informed by post of traps and rumours, but most of his time was spent on plans for a monster 'final meeting' in London on Hunt's return. When news reached London of the Peterloo massacre, Watson was briefly drawn towards a broad reform alliance, joining ‘respectable’ radicals in planning a suitable reception for Hunt on his return to London. In a mixture of vanity and political calculation, however, Hunt used the dinner after his triumphal entry to dissociate himself from any suggestion of Spenceanism or levelling. Outraged by this deliberate snub, Watson engaged in an unseemly polemic with Hunt, a sorry end to their working alliance.

Beneath the obloquy there was a fundamental disagreement. Looking to the courts and public opinion, Hunt wanted to rest the radical case on Peterloo itself, eschewing any further platform agitation which might sully the moral victory gained at Manchester. Watson, by contrast, sought to exploit popular anger at the massacre through immediate escalation of platform agitation, combining the various tactics of ultra-radicalism, armed simultaneous meetings, tax refusal, and a national convention. Undermined by Hunt, these proposals were abandoned in favour of traditional conspiratorial ways and means. Soon after the introduction of the repressive Six Acts, Thistlewood was entrapped by an agent provocateur in the Cato Street conspiracy, a plot to assassinate the cabinet at dinner [see Cato Street conspirators (1820)]. Watson was not involved, as he was again imprisoned for debt, this time for non-payment of Hunt's dinner bill! However, he drew up an address to soldiers and a proclamation to the people to be issued once the blow was struck.

Thereafter little is known of Watson's political career, although he briefly returned to prominence in the later stages of the Queen Caroline affair, by heading the funeral procession for the two workmen killed by troops escorting the queen's cortège. In the late 1820s he was a regular speaker at the ‘Liberals’, a debating-cum-literary group which attracted old Jacobins, Spenceans, and ultra-radicals. Some time afterwards he left for America, possibly to join his son. Watson died a pauper in New York on 12 February 1838.