Talk:Richard Oastler

Misleading Introduction

Richard Oastler is famous for two things 1. Campaigner for factory/child labour reform 2 Opposition to the new poor laws

Why then does the introduction,the first line of the whole article, begin? Richard Oastler (20 December 1789 - 22 August 1861) "the Factory King" was a "Tory radical",[2] an active opponent of Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform and a lifelong admirer of the Duke of Wellington; but...' — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peepgreen (talk • contribs) 20:51, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Hard to see how a correct statement of facts about the article subject can be described as 'misleading'. As to what he is 'famous for', the subtitle of the standard modern biography notes him to be a Tory radical and there is clearly some need to explain the attitudes that made him that, rather than one of the more normal (and more easily understood) flavours of Radical. The lede does discuss his activities on the two issues mentioned, so the objection seems to be that having called him a 'Tory radical', the text then explains what shows him to have been a Tory before going on to discuss the causes which were supposed to show him a radical. His own view was that he was simply a Tory, and that it was his Toryism that led him to take up the causes he did; how the poor should be looked after had been specified by God and Queen Elizabeth (who in their different ways were authorities of unimpeachable standing) and (as with Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, and free trade) it was dangerous nonsense to change the existing order of things. Rjccumbria (talk) 03:05, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Quotes in lead

@Rjccumbria: regarding the quotes in the lead, I don’t think they should be in the lead section per se. The lead needs to become a summary of the rest of the article. What I propose is that the quotes could be moved to either the “After prison” section or a renamed “Memorials” section. Green Giant (talk) 18:49, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

@Green Giant: I put the quotes in precisely because I thought them a convenient ready-made summary of his claim to fame, which I had hoped the article text supported. That isn't quite the same as 'a summary of the rest of the article', which on my reading of WP:Lead is not quite what that asks for. If the quotes were to be moved, what would you intend to put in their place? Rjccumbria (talk) 19:08, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

@Rjccumbria: I'm happy for the quotes to be left there for the moment on the proviso they would be moved eventually. It’s why I didn’t move them straight away. In terms of replacing them, I don’t think we can rewrite the lead properly until the rest of article is ready for an assessment. Perhaps if we put in a hidden comment to note this for a later day? Green Giant (talk) 19:16, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

@Green Giant: Sounds reasonable; I won't start asking Qs about your planned implementation stategy (or should that be transitional arrangements?) If you are thinking of working the article up to candidacy for GA, I wish you well in principle, but (as the current state of the article probably reveals) I'm a devotee of the 80/20 principle and in trying to roughly fill the gap where an article on Oastler should have been I have found many surrounding gaps. Rjccumbria (talk) 20:04, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Cheers. Please feel free to ask questions and challenge things. This article has been on my to-do list for a few years) but I keep getting distracted. My strategy (if it can be called that) is to aim for GA in the interim, and in no particular order, is to add an infobox (done but may need more info), add more images (I’ve added a couple of related ones), copyedit section by section, fix the appendices (done the external links), and add as much sourced details as possible. On the side I wanted to fill in the gaps around the article (such as the scant details of his trial). Green Giant (talk) 20:48, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Challenge number 1 would be that Oastler never faced a criminal charge; imprisonment for debt was civil imprisonment.

There are scant details of the trial (an action heard in the Court of Common Pleas, so probably strictly speaking a hearing) because it was over almost as soon as it began. The Leeds Mercury article referenced would appear to give a near verbatim account of proceedings and the full text of the four letters exchanged in 1835 read out in court (establishing O was indebted to T). Thornhill's counsel did not go into subsequent developments, and requested O to do the same; so whatever dirty linen was around was not washed in court. I found that most unsatisfactory, and only partly compensated for by the Yorkshire Post in the 1930s giving chapter and verse on Thornhill's domestic arrangements. I would be very interested to see if (and how) you fare better.

One item for the 'After prison' section which I thought I had put in, and obviously haven't is that in a couple of his speeches O was reported to have talked about the eventual attitude of his opponents:

• when staying with his brother-in-law at Bowdon, he was sought out by Richard Cobden (staying with his brother-in-law) who wanted to shake his hand and congratulate him (Bradford Observer 13 October 1859). On reflection I think I doubted that tale, because there was no direct quotation of Oastler to support the anecdote, nor any obvious sign of brothers-in-law of either party at Bowdon in the 1861 census, and it looked like an 'improvement' on the following
• he visited Manchester Exchange, and was introduced by his companion to 'two 'cotton lords' as 'the agitator for the Ten Hour Act' : both shook him by the hand and congratulated him - you were right, we were wrong, it has been a great benefit both to the working people and to the cotton trade . This is direct reporting of a speech by Oastler "The Early Closing Association" Huddersfield Chronicle 26 September 1857 p8

Rjccumbria (talk) 22:25, 28 January 2018 (UTC)