Based on substantial archival research in private papers, an extensive examination of voluminous contemporary published literature, and a meticulous reading of the national and provincial press, Michael Turner has written an important and welcome book that will make a valuable addition to the library of any student of nineteenth-century radical politics. Contrary to the title, however, the book is not a study of independent radicalism in early Victorian Britain. It is a political biography of an independent radical: Colonel Thomas Peronet Thompson. Thompson's name appears on every page except the one where it was most needed: the title page.

Why Turner (or perhaps his publisher) opted to disguise the nature of the book in this way is difficult to understand. In his opening pages Turner makes an eloquent case for biography—the “prism of history”—as a genre. Quoting Barbara Tuchman he insists that biography is “useful because it encompasses the universal in the particular” (2). Moreover, Turner makes a good case for Thompson as a subject. “Such was the extent of his activism, the breadth of his interests, the number of friendships, and influence of his advice and writings,” he argues, “that to pay closer attention to Thompson is to find out much more about the meaning and reception of reform in early- and mid-nineteenth-century Britain” (3).

Although he has resiled from offering his book as a political biography, it is ironic that Turner falls partly into the trap that lays in wait for all biographers: he exaggerates the importance and influence of his subject. This is particularly acute in relation to the lengthy chapter that examines Thompson's involvement in the campaign against the Corn Laws. Thompson was an early advocate of repeal, and he championed free trade for decades from thousands of platforms and in hundreds of newspapers articles and pamphlets. Published in 1827, Thompson's Catechism on the Corn Laws earned him national fame and captured the imagination of a generation of reformers for its cogent and forceful case for repeal of the hated laws that hampered trade and increased the price of bread. Thompson, however, felt that his services were routinely undervalued by the leaders of the Anti–Corn Law League, the organization that agitated the cause for repeal with ruthless efficiency and transformed the practice and scale of demotic politics after 1839. Turner emphatically agrees with his subject. Modern historians (myself included) have not properly recognized Thompson's contribution to the cause. Thompson, Turner tells us, was hailed as the “Bonaparte of free trade,” a worthy epithet given his services (58). Surely the appellation does not serve Turner's purpose: after all the emperor of the French had ended his public life in defeat and exile. For all his notoriety, Thompson was not central to the campaign. Similarly, in a lengthy chapter entitled “Correcting the Chartists,” Turner examines Thompson's efforts to forge alliances between the Corn Law Repealers and the Chartists. There is much interesting material here, but it is notable that these efforts invariably ended in failure. Turner devotes little space to a consideration of the reasons. The majority of Chartists respected Thompson, but he could lead them nowhere. One episode exemplifies both points. In September 1839 Thompson contested a by-election for the borough of Manchester. He did so against the advice and wishes of the Manchester Leaguers who had resolved to support a Whig-Liberal manufacturer. Although many did not have the vote, the Manchester Chartists sensed an opportunity to add to the discomfiture of their political opponents and backed Thompson to the hilt. The “Chartist Colonel,” as he was dubbed, ran last by a substantial margin. It was an ignominious defeat that is, nevertheless, a useful index of Thompson's standing in relation to the two great movements that dominated the late 1830s and early 1840s.

The last three chapters of the book examine peace and war, Europe and empire. Turner is less concerned here to establish his subject's centrality, and the result makes for excellent reading in which he offers a string of important insights. In relation to Europe, for example, Turner uses Thompson's roles as a “tireless commentator, activist and opinion former” (130) to make the point that many radicals believed that there was a symbiotic relationship between Britain and Europe. Acts of “oppression in Britain and in Europe,” he writes, “were mutually sustaining” (130). In relation to empire, Turner highlights the deep divisions in the radical ranks over a range of issues from financial arrangements to indigenous rights. Thompson believed that imperial relationships were not as they ought to be, and in important respects he anticipated later critics of imperialism by his emphasis on the rights of “dark Englishmen” (180) in the colonies. Thompson “assumed that the British Empire would continue to expand,” Turner writes, “but argued that this should not involve oppression and aggression” (180). Thompson apparently had a view on everything, and in these chapters Turner employs his subject's eyes to examine an impressive range of issues.

At the outset Turner argues that Thompson “ought to be regarded as an exemplar” (3) of independent radicalism but subsequently does little to justify the claim by reference to other independent radicals. In fact there is very little in the book about other independent radicals who only appear when relevant to the discussion of Thompson's long and interesting public life. Independent radicalism went well beyond Thompson and his associates however loosely defined. In short Michael Turner has written a very good political biography of an independent radical, but the long overdue and much-needed study of independent radicalism in the nineteenth-century British world is still to be written.