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Sign in with your library card Please enter your library card number. Lovett's victory brought him a great deal of attention and he was now a national political figure. Lovett decided that parliamentary reform was now the most important issue facing working people.
It proposed universal male suffrage, annual parliaments, votes by secret ballot and the removal of property qualifications for MPs. Iain McCalman has claimed that it became the "most effective working-class radical organisation in the early s. In March Lovett was arrested by the police during a peaceful demonstration. However, he was released without charge. Although it only ever had a few hundred members, the LMWA became a very influential organisation.
When supporters of parliamentary reform held a convention the following year, Lovett was chosen as the leader of the group that were now known as the Chartists. Gammage , the author of History of the Chartist Movement later recalled: "This gentleman Lovett was a native of Cornwall, and sprang from the poorest class.
Lovett was secretary to the Association, and, without exaggeration, it may be affirmed that he was the life and soul of that body. Possessed of a clear and masterly intellect and great powers of application, everything that he attempted was certain of accomplishment; and, though not by any means an orator, he was in matters of business more useful to the movement than those who were gifted with finer powers of speech.
In Lovett was arrested for making a speech in Birmingham. The authorities claimed that his description of the Metropolitan police as a "blood thirsty and unconstitutional force" was seditious libel. Lovett was found guilty and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment in Warwick Gaol. He described the experience in his autobiography, Life and Struggles : "I was locked up in a dark cell, about nine feet square, the only air admitted into it being through a small grating over the floor, and in one corner of it was a pailful of filth left by the last occupants, the smell of which was almost overpowering.
There was a bench fixed against the wall on which to sit down, but the walls were literally covered with water, and the place so damp and cold, even at that season of the year, that I was obliged to keep walking round and round, like a horse in an apple-mill, to keep anything like life within me. After nine months Lovett refused to accept three months remission for good behaviour because, he argued, it implied admission of guilt.
Twelve months in Warwick Gaol severely damaged Lovett's health and he was forced to spend time recuperating in Cornwall. Lovett was still seen as the leader of the Chartist movement but he was under constant attack from people like Fergus O'Connor and James Bronterre O'Brien who raised doubts about his Moral Force campaign.
Upset by these criticisms, Lovett decided in to retire from politics and devoted the rest of his life to the development of working class education. Financed by workers' subscriptions, the association provided circulating libraries and employed educational "missionaries". Lovett continued to run his bookshop, wrote school textbooks and taught evening classes. His bookshop failed to make money and William Lovett died in extreme poverty on 8th August, Robert Taylor, Richard Carlile, and others.
I commenced also about this time the collection of a small library of my own, the shelves of which were often supplied by cheating the stomach with bread and cheese dinners. I think it was about the close of the year that the first of these trading associations was established at Brighton, by the name of Bryan; and its success was such that between four and five hundred similar associations were very soon established in different parts of the country.
Some few months after I had given up my shop in May's Buildings, I was induced to accept the situation of store-keeper to the "First London Association", the late store-keeper, Mr. James Watson, having resigned. Much good resulted from the formation of those co-operative trading associations, notwithstanding their failure.
Their being able to purchase pure and unadulterated articles of food. I was locked up in a dark cell, about nine feet square, the only air admitted into it being through a small grating over the floor, and in one corner of it was a pailful of filth left by the last occupants, the smell of which was almost overpowering.
The London Working Men's association had several men possessing very considerable talents: some as men of practical business, others as writers, and as orators on the platform. The ablest as a writer and a man of business was undoubtedly William Lovett. This gentleman was a native of Cornwall, and sprang from the poorest class.
Many supporters gathered in the city's Bull Ring where the local authority had prohibited assembly, which was broken up with much violence by police drafted in from London for the occasion. The Convention condemned the police violence in breaking up what have become known as "The Bull Ring riots", and posted placards which described them as a "bloodthirsty and unconstitutional force". Lovett, as secretary, accepted responsibility for the placards, and was arrested with James Watson, who had taken the placards to be printed.
He was held in custody for nine days before he could secure bail, during which time he was treated as a convicted felon. I was accordingly locked up in a dark cell, about nine feet square, the only air admitted into it being through a small grating over the door, and in one corner of it was a pailful of filth left by the last occupants, the smell of which was almost overpowering. There was a bench fixed against the wall on which to sit down, but the walls were literally covered with water, and the place so damp and cold, even at that season of the year, that I was obliged to keep walking round and round, like a horse in an apple-mill, to keep anything like life within me.
Lovett was tried on 6 August at the Warwick assizes for "seditious libel" in fact, for insulting the police. He defended himself, was convicted and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment.
That said, in May they refused a government offer of early release if they would be bound over to good behaviour for the remainder of the term; Lovett and Collins believed to have accepted this offer would have constituted an admission of guilt where none in fact lay. On 25th July, , the pair were released and were entertained at a banquet at the White Conduit House by the combination committee and the Working Men's Association.
In the brief sketch I have given of our treatment in Warwick Gaol, most persons must be struck with the immense power for evil which our unpaid magistracy possess—a power to obstruct all mitigation of suffering, and to give, if they choose, a two-fold severity to the law.
For let two persons, in two different counties, be tried for similar offences before the same judge, and condemned under the same Act to suffer similar penalties, owing to the power possessed by the magistracy, the punishment of the one person may be two-fold more severe than that of the other. William Lovett, from Life and Struggles. We justly complain of your utter disregard and seeming contempt of the wants and wishes of the people, as expressed in the prayers and petitions they have been humbly addressing to you for a number of years past.
For, while they have been complaining of the unequal, unjust, and cruel laws you have enacted—which, in their operation, have reduced millions to poverty, and punished them because they were poor—you have been either increasing the catalogue, or mocking their expensive and fruitless commissions, or telling them that 'their poverty was beyond the reach of legislative enactment'.
From a Remonstrance to the Commons House of Parliament Following his release, Lovett retired from politics and in formed the "National Association for Promoting the Political and Social Improvement of the People", an educational body that was to implement his "New Move" educational initiative through which he hoped poor workers and their children would be able to better themselves.
The New Move was to be funded through a 1 penny per week subscription paid by those Chartists who had signed the national petition. Hetherington and Place supported the move, but O'Connor opposed the scheme in the Northern Star , believing that it would distract Chartists from the main aim of having the petition implemented. The New Move was unable to generate the popular support that Lovett had hoped for. Membership was small and education was limited to Sunday schools.
The National Association Hall was opened in Many lectures were given there over the years by W. Fox, J. Parry, Thomas Cooper , and others, and secular schools also carried on, but this Hall closed in when the lease was forcibly acquired by the wealthy proprietor of the adjoining "gin-palace.
Linton , "Lovett was impracticable; and his new association, after obtaining a few hundred members, dwindled into a debating club, and their hall became a dancing academy, let occasionally for unobjectionable public meetings.
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