Frank Lovell (July 24, 1913 – May 1, 1998) was an American
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
politician.
Lovell was born in
Ipava, a town situated in the farming district of
Illinois. Lovell studied psychology at the
University of California in
Berkeley. After he had left the campus, Lovell earned his living as a seaman, chiefly on the West Coast of the United States.
In the 1930s, Lovell came into contact with
Trotskyist movement led by
James P. Cannon
James Patrick Cannon (February 11, 1890 – August 21, 1974) was an American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.
Born on February 11, 1890, in Rosedale, Kansas, the son of Irish immigrants with strong socialist convictio ...
and he became one of the first members of the
Socialist Workers Party, and in 1942 he was elected to its ''National Committee''.
As a seaman, Lovell was active in the ''Sailors Union of the Pacific'' and the leader of many strikes. In 1943, during
World War II, serving in the U.S. merchant marine, Lovell barely survived the blow up of his ship by a
German mine off the coast of
Iceland as the ship came off the
Murmansk run.
In the 1950s, Lovell was one of the SWP's prominent members who had to move to
Detroit the rebuild the party's branch there after the SWP had had to expel a lot of members part of the
Bert Cochran faction group. Lovell run for Governor of Michigan on the SWP ticket in 1954, 1958 and 1964, and as candidate for Mayor of Detroit in 1953 amidst an atmosphere of
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner.
The term origin ...
.
In the early 1980s, Lovell, and several other members of the SWP, got into a sharp conflict with the new, younger party leadership under
Jack Barnes. Eventually, Lovell and many other members of the party were expelled; some of these, Lovell included, went on to establish the
Fourth Internationalist Tendency.
On May 1, 1998, at the age of 84, Lovell died of a heart attack in his
Manhattan apartment.
External links
The Lubitz TrotskyanaNetprovides a biographical sketch and a selective bibliography of Frank Lovell
page at the
Marxist Internet Archive includes a number of writings by Lovell.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lovell, Frank
1913 births
1998 deaths
People from Fulton County, Illinois
United States Merchant Mariners of World War II
Socialist Workers Party (United States) politicians from Michigan
People from Manhattan