An alliance of radical groups in Britain in the late 1830s and 1840s, united in their support of the Peoples' Charter. Chartists advocated universal manhood suffrage, annual parliaments, equal electoral districts and the payment of members of parliament. The movement flared up at times of crisis in the 1840s, culminating in the open-air meetings of 1848, which provoked great nervousness in Whitehall. Chartism was virtually extinguished as a political force after its failure in 1848, but the ideals of the Charter were influential in grassroots politics for many decades.