William Lovett


Lovett, William

 

Born May 8, 1800, near Penzance; died Aug. 8, 1877, in London. Figure in the Chartist movement in Great Britain. Petit bourgeois radical. Joiner and cabinetmaker, bookseller, and teacher.

In the 1820’s, Lovett was active in the cooperative movement and was very interested in the ideas of R. Owen. He was one of the organizers of the London Workingmen’s Association (founded in 1836) and was secretary of the Chartist national convention of 1839. He was a partisan of moderate tactics (“moral force”). After imprisonment (1839–40), Lovett supported a number of attempts by bourgeois radicals to bring the Chartist movement under bourgeois direction. To all intents and purposes, he withdrew from Chartism in the late 1840’s.