Benjamin Lucraft - Political Reform League

Political Reform League

The last Chartist conference opened in London on Monday 8 February 1858, and Lucraft shared the chair with Alderman Thomas Livesey of Rochdale. The outcome was the formation of the Political Reform League (or Union) with a programme of:

• manhood suffrage
• the ballot
• triennial parliaments
• equal electoral districts
• abolish property qualifications

The league was active throughout 1859 and its work encouraged the establishment of Manhood Suffrage Associations throughout the country, of which the North London Union was one.

Lucraft came to prominence in London working-class politics with former Chartists like himself – Robert Hartwell and J.B. Leno among them – he was an important bridge figure between the radical movements of the Chartist period and the Reform League of the eighteen sixties. One political commentator says that "as much as anyone in these early years of the revival of the political reform movement, Benjamin helped to impress upon the craft unions the recognition of the desirability of political initiatives and change".

His attitude was summarised in a letter he wrote to Reynold's Newspaper on 28 July 1861 about a prolonged strike of builders:

"I should hope that the operative builders are by this time convinced that political power has something to do with the social conditions of the people."

Lucraft joined the Land and Labour League as the most advanced radical organisation in England and served on the Council. He was a founder member of John Stuart Mill's Land Tenure Reform Association, urging the state control of land and served on the General Council of the Association.