ideas positively, but laid more weight on those of William Ladd, who had died in 1841, proposing international institutions to keep the peace. Politics and Chartism Sturge was critical of the role of William Scholefield, the Mayor of Birmingham, in the suppression of a chartist meeting in the Bull Ring, Birmingham. Schofield had arrived with 60 officers of the newly formed Metropolitan Police, on 4 July 1839. After Schofield read the Riot Act, Sturge held the police were responsible for the escalation of violence that led to the Bull Ring Riots, 1838. In addition to his other commitments, Sturge joined the Anti-Corn Law League early in its existence. During 1842 he began a campaign for "complete suffrage", and had the support of the Christian Chartist pastor Arthur George O'Neill in Birmingham. His movement was based squarely on the middle classes. He envisaged a platform that could unite the League and the Chartist movement. The League would have nothing to do with it. Sturge had a measure of further Chartist and nonconformist support, but by the end of the year the Chartist leaders William Lovett and Feargus O'Connor had swung against him. O'Connor had supported Sturge's Complete Suffrage Union earlier in the year, before the industrial conflicts of the Plug Riots had hardened his attitude and he began to see Sturge's broadly middle class support as a threat to his leadership position. Following a dispute over redrafting the People's Charter as a legislative bill, in December 1842 with William Sharman Crawford MP, Sturge walked out of a joint CSU-Chartist delegate conference in Birmingham. Sharman Crawford introduced their reform bill to "a small and bored House" in May 1843. The bill was lost by 101 to 32. In the years 1842–7 Sturge ran three times for Parliament, on his "complete suffrage" platform, without success. In August 1842 he was parliamentary candidate for Nottingham, in a by-election. He was defeated by John Walter, the proprietor of The Times. In Nottingham he visited a Sunday School run by Samuel Fox. The idea of teaching not only scripture, but also basic skills such as reading and writing, was taken up by Sturge, who opened a similar school around 1845. In that year he started an Adult School movement, in Birmingham, and took steps in 1847 to spread Sunday (First-Day) Schools among Quakers. Sturge then contested Birmingham in 1844 as a Chartist candidate, in a by-election