The leaders of this new movement were conspicuous members of a violently revolutionary clique, headed by Neesom, a man of sixty or so; George Julian Harney (born in 1817), who had been Hetherington's shop-boy, had passed several sentences for selling unstamped papers, and had filled his head with the doings of Marat and other Jacobins of '93; Allan Davenport, an old cranky radical, who died not long afterwards, and a few others. Most of these individuals played a part in the Chartist Movement, though not a very reputable one.
The setting up of this agitation was the signal for war between the Bernardites and the Working Men's Association. It arose apparently out of a trade squabble between Hetherington and the Mercury proprietors, as owners of rival papers. Hetherington was accused of smashing up a meeting called by Bernard at Barnsley in May 1837. O'Brien denounced Hetherington and his fellows as "scheming impostors," "bought tools of the Malthusian Party" in the pages of the Mercury. Hetherington retorted in kind by calling his rival newspaper proprietors Tories in disguise.[1] There was a stormy meeting of the Working Men's Association in June, when Bell and O'Brien appeared to answer charges against them.[2] The dispute between these rivals was not improved by the intervention of Augustus Harding Beaumont,[3] a young and fiery politician of exceedingly ill balanced mind.
The Working Men's Association, however, enjoyed an almost complete victory over its rivals. Its worst enemies seem to have collapsed about the summer of 1837. Bernard and Bell quarrelled, the Mercury was sold,[4] and O'Brien left stranded, until he began to write for O'Connor in the Northern Star. O'Connor and Beaumont found a more congenial field for their demagogic activities amongst the half-starved weavers, the factory operatives, and the semi-barbarous colliers of the North of England. Harney, Neesom, and the rest applied for admission to the Working Men's Association, which they obtained only with difficulty.[5] Harney at once began to cause trouble by entering into a controversy with O'Connell on the subject of the Glasgow Cotton Spinners. This was regarded by the Association as a breach of etiquette. Harney was censured. He replied by publishing the correspondence with O'Connell
