Following Parliament’s rejection of the Chartist petition in 1839, activists in the north of England organized Sunday processions to parish churches. The crowds occupied space in the churches, overturning established hierarchies and “sitting in the ‘wrong’ seats—that is, the paid for pews at the front of the church” (282–283). These church invasions form a mere footnote in the well-mapped history of radical political activity in the first half of the nineteenth century. Yet in analyzing these, and many other, incidents, Navickas deftly illustrates how activists contested control of space, challenged definitions of inclusion and exclusion, and combined tradition and innovation in claiming their place in the political and social life of northern towns and villages. Navickas blends the detailed archival investigation of social history with theoretical approaches drawn from historical geography to rewrite the history of popular protest during the decades before 1850.
Throughout the period under consideration, authorities sought...