Bricklayer who ran the Reform League in the 1867 reform campaign and later sat as a Lib-Lab MP
Born at Wrington in Somerset in 1833, he worked as a bricklayer and a shoemaker and joined the Chartist movement in 1848. Moving to London in 1854, he joined the Operative Bricklayers' Society in 1859 and helped lead the London builders' strike for a nine-hour day, after which employers blacklisted him for five years. With Applegarth and Potter he was elected to the executive of the London Trades Council in 1861 and became its secretary, and he sat on the General Council of the International. As full-time secretary of the Reform League from 1865 he organised the London demonstrations of 1866 and 1867 and played an important part in the campaign behind the Reform Act of 1867. He became secretary of the Trades Union Congress in 1871 and was Lib-Lab MP for Bethnal Green North East from 1885 to 1895. He wrote The History of the International Working Men's Association (1878). He died in 1910.
Activities and affiliations
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1848–
Social movements and organizing
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1859–1875
Trade unionsMain
Social movements and organizing -
1864–
International Workingmen's Association (First International)
Social movements and organizing -
1865–1869
Social movements and organizing
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1885–1895
United Kingdom state institutionsMember of Parliament
Legislature and state representation
Career Timeline
- 1861Executive member and secretary of the London Trades Council
- 1865Full-time secretary of the Reform League
- 1871Secretary of the Trades Union Congress
- 1885–1895MP for Bethnal Green North East