London Working Men's Association
London Working Men’s Association
the first Chartist organization; founded on June 16, 1836. Its organizers included the cabinet-maker W. Lovett and the printer H. Hetherington. In 1837 a group of revolutionary workers, headed by G. Harney, split from the association. The following year the association published the Chartist program “People’s Charter.”
Craftsmen predominated in the association. Its leaders opposed revolutionary methods of struggle and were inclined to hand over leadership of the movement to bourgeois radicals. Representatives of the London Working Men’s Association constituted the core of the right wing at the Chartist convention of 1839. The majority of its members joined the reformist London Charter Association, which was created in 1840.
REFERENCES
Marx, K., and F. Engels. Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 2, pp. 451-53.Kunina, V. E. Chartistskoe dvizhenie v Anglii. Moscow, 1959.
Kolpakov, A. D. “Iz istorii Natsional’noi chartistskoi assotsiatsii.” In the collection Chartizm. Moscow, 1961.