The Champion

The Champion , which began publication on 18 September 1836, was a radical eight-page newspaper run by two sons - James Paul and R.B.B. - of the famous radical newspaper editor, William Cobbett. In its later years, The Champion became an organ for Chartism, with James Cobbett and its editor, James Whittle, both attending the 1839 Chartist Convention (Cobbett as a delegate for the West Riding and Whittle, who had previously edited the pro-reform Manchester and Salford Advertiser during the reform agitation in the early-1830s, as a delegate for Liverpool). However, both eventually left the Convention - Cobbett resigning on 14 February and Whittle on 14 May - troubled over the drift towards violence. As a result, the paper, which had been providing extensive coverage of the Convention, became quite hostile to both the Convention and Feargus O'Connor. With the decline of the movement in late 1839 and 1840, The Champion started losing subscribers and it was eventually amalgamated with The Northern Liberator in April 1840 (which itself ceased publication at the end of 1840).