- John Gast
John Gast (1772-1837) was ashipwright by trade who worked in theDeptford shipyards in south-eastLondon (though he was also associated with neighbouringRotherhithe , where he lived for a time at 14 Lucas Street), and an earlytrade union ist.Having unsuccessfully tried to found a labour organisation during the 1790s, he helped organise the 'Hearts of Oak Benefit Society' during a shipwrights' strike in 1802 and was advocating workers' rights in radical pamphlets such as "'Calumny Defeated, or A Complete Vindication of the Conduct of the Working Shipwrights', during the late Disputes with their Employers" (1802).
Having been involved with regional efforts to build
trade unions (notably the Metropolitan Trades Committee), in 1822 Gast formed a 'Committee of the Useful Classes', sometimes described as an early national trades council, and in 1824 he was the first secretary of the 'Thames Shipwrights Provident Union'. Gast also promoted an inter-union organisation: 'The Philanthropic Hercules'.In 1825, the Combination Acts were repealed. Employers were furious and lobbied for the Acts’ restoration, prompting the emergence of workers' movements to resist such steps; Gast founded the first Trades Newspaper as part of this resistance.
In 1836, Gast was a member of the London Working Men's Association, some of whose members drafted the core six points of the People's Charter (the principles at the heart of the
Chartist movement).He was also a dissenting preacher and ran the King of Prussia
public house at 6 Union Street (now Albury Street), Deptford.
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