Alfred Walton

Alfred Armstrong Walton (1816–1883) was one of the lesser-known British Radical politicians of working-class origin in the mid-Victorian era. He was a prolific author of newspaper contributions on most political and social questions of his time, with a particular interest in land and parliamentary reform.

Inheritor of Chartism

Walton became a political activist in the last years of Chartism when he tried to integrate the trade unions into the political campaign and when he started to advocate a scheme for home colonisation (1848–49).

Important Work

He expanded on the latter interest in his most important work, the "History of the Landed Tenures of Great Britain and Ireland from the Norman Conquest to the present time" which was published in 1865. With this book, he emerged as one of the most vocal spokesmen for the issue of land nationalisation.

Welsh Based Protagonist

In the 1860s, he also became a protagonist of the reform campaign. He did so from Brecon in South Wales where he had moved at the beginning of the decade. His radical ideas made him join several important democratic societies, such as the International Working Men's Association (IWMA, First International), the Reform League and several cooperative building schemes.

Latter Years

In the 1870s he moved to London, where he spent his last years less involved in radical campaigns but still writing pamphlets and contributions to newspapers.

Further reading

J. M. Bellamy and John Saville (eds.): Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol. 10, London: Macmillan 2000, 213-218.

D. Mares: A Radical in Wales. Alfred A. Walton and Mid-Victorian Welsh Popular Radicalism, in: Welsh History Review 21 (2002), 271-291.


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