William Lovett
William Lovett (born May 8, 1800 in Penzance ( Cornwall ), † August 8, 1877 ) was a leader of English Chartism .
Lovett worked as a rope maker and carpenter in London and was involved in the emerging labor movement of his time. As a functionary of the cooperative system , which was also at the beginning , he worked as a speaker and agitator . In the context of the controversy over the reform legislation of 1832 Lovett was first politically active on a larger scale. At that time he was one of the supporters of arming the workers in order to defend himself against the feared violent crackdown by the state power.
In 1836 Lovett and some friends founded the London Working Men's Association , initially as a workers' education association , but increasingly as a politically agitating group.
From 1832 on, disappointment with the extensive disregard for the workers in the reform legislation and the low influence of the young unions, the Chartist movement began to form, which relied on signature lists and demonstrations as a means of exerting political influence. Lovett was one of the founders of this movement and was elected secretary at a Chartist convention in February 1839. He became the most important representative of the moderate wing of the movement, which relied on convincing the rulers with moral arguments and opposed the use of physical violence. His attempts to win support from the bourgeois camp and the founding of workers' education associations by Lovett brought him increasingly into conflict with the soon-to-be-dominant violent tendency of the Chartists around Feargus O'Connor .
His "New Move" workers' education movement fell far short of Lovett's own expectations. The membership never rose above 5000. Classes were limited to Sunday schools. From the mid-1840s, Lovett had little influence on the Chartist movement, which largely collapsed from 1848 onwards. He spent the remaining years of his life as a natural history teacher at the school he founded in 1849.
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lovett, William |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British leader of Chartism |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 8, 1800 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Penzance , Cornwall |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 8, 1877 |