Chartism was a British working-class movement for political reform that took its name from the People's Charter of 1838, a document setting out six demands: a vote for every man, a secret ballot, no property qualification for members of Parliament, payment of members of Parliament, equal-sized constituencies and annual parliaments.
The movement submitted mass petitions to Parliament in 1839, 1842 and 1848, each rejected, and drew its support chiefly from an industrial working class hurt by repeated economic downturns and excluded from a franchise still limited by property. Chartism was never a single unified strategy: a "moral force" wing pursued petitioning and peaceful persuasion, while a "physical force" wing was prepared to back the demand with confrontation, most consequentially at the Newport Rising of November 1839 in Wales, where an armed march on the town was put down by troops.
Chartism as an organised movement faded after 1848, its mass petitions rejected and its leadership divided, but nearly all six of its original demands were eventually enacted through later reform, the property qualification for MPs abolished in 1858, the secret ballot introduced in 1872, payment of MPs begun in 1911, and near-universal male suffrage achieved in 1918. Only annual parliaments were never adopted, which makes Chartism a rare case of a movement that failed in its own lifetime and won almost everything it asked for after it had ended.