Potter, who figures largely in the newspapers of this time, was in fact endeavouring to work up a formidable opposition to the policy of the Junta. After the building trades disputes of 1859-60, in which he had taken a leading part, he had started the _Beehive_, a weekly organ of the Trade Union world. Himself a member of a tiny trade club of London carpenters, he was bitterly opposed to Applegarth and the Amalgamated Society, and from 1864 onward we find him at the head of every outbreak of disaffection. An expert in the arts of agitation and of advertisement, Potter occasionally cut a remarkable figure, so that the unwary reader, not of the _Beehive_ only, but also of the _Times_, might easily believe him to have been the most influential leader of the working-class movement. As a matter of fact, he at no time represented any genuine trade organisation, the “Working Men’s Association,” of which he was president, being an unimportant society of nondescript persons. However, from 1864 to 1867 we find him calling frequent meetings of delegates of the London trades to denounce the Junta, and their instrument, the London Trades Council. The minutes of the latter body contain abundant evidence of the bitter feelings caused by these attacks, and make clear the essential difference between the two policies. At a special meeting called to condemn Potter’s action, Howell, Allan, Coulson, and Applegarth enlarged upon the evil consequences of irresponsible agitation in trade disputes; and Danter, the outspoken president of the Amalgamated Engineers, emphatically declared that Potter “had become the aider and abettor of strikes. He thought of nothing else; he followed no other business; strikes were his bread-and-cheese; in short, he was a strike-jobber, and he made the _Beehive_ newspaper his instrument for pushing his nose into every unfortunate dispute that sprang up.”[390]