The fate of six farm laborers in Dorset and
the huge protest and movement that their brutal transportation to Australia stirred are touchstones to the British labor movement. The Tolpuddle
Martyrs are widely celebrated in England
as well as in the former penal
colony where they were sent and in far off Canada. Most
Americans have never heard of
them. We aim to rectify that.
In 1833 George Loveless, a Methodist
lay preacher, and a respected leader among the farm laborers around the
village of Tolpuddle in southern
England, called a few of his mates
together. Legend has it that six of them met under a sycamore tree. Others say
that they squeezed into the tiny hovel
of Thomas Standfield. They had serious business to attend
to.
Landlords in the area were putting the arm on their laborers and
tenants. Unlike areas closer to London or the grimy cities of the rapidly industrializing
north, farmers in Dorset did not have to keep up wages to compete with the
lure of the cities and factory jobs. In addition,
modest changes to age old farming practices were reducing the
number of laborers needed on the farms and estates. Conditions were ripe for wage cutting.
Local wages had been steady at 10 schillings a week—hardly a fortune,
but enough to barely feed and cloth a family. Landowners had already cut that to 7 and had
announced a second cut to 6 was imminent.
No reductions in the rent demanded for their cottages
were proposed.
Earlier, in 1830, farm workers had
responded to such cuts and the new farm
equipment that made them possible with the Swing Rebellion—a Luddite like
uprising in which laborers rioted,
attacking and burning equipment like threshing machines and menacing
landlords. Frightened farmers suspended
their cuts, or sometimes even gave wage boosts, but waited for authorities to
act.
And act they did. Militia
and Army units swept the county
rounding up hundreds of suspects. At
trial several were sentenced to hang, although in the end only a
handful were swung in public as an object lesson, the rest were torn from their families and
transported to Australia. Conditions returned to what they were
before the protests—or worse.
Loveless and his friends knew that
violence and disorganized riot was not the answer. They had to find new ways of organizing a protest.
They had some reasons for hope.
The Combination Acts, passed
in 1799 at the height of panic about the possible spread of revolution from France to the English working
and agrarian classes and which had
outlawed combinations to obtain
better wages and working conditions, had been repealed in 1824 and’25. A
modest trade union movement was
developing, not without severe opposition, in among skilled tradesmen in cities and in the mines.
Moreover, the Reform Act, passed earlier in 1832, had finally extended the franchise to some without yet granting universal male suffrage. It
was not enough by half, but the Dorset men felt that it might foretell a more liberal age.
Despite these reasons for optimism,
the fate of the Swing Rebellion left them no
illusions about the dangers of their undertaking. So that when they agreed to form the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers
they did so swearing an oath of secrecy.
Local landlords began to hear
certain rumors. As planting
season neared men were refusing to work for less than the old 10 schillings
standard.
One landlord, James Frampton, petitioned to Lord
Melbourne, the Whig Home Minister for relief. It was fast in coming. On February 24, 1834 Loveless and the other
men were arrested as they left their homes.
Their families would not see them for a long time.
In no time at all they were hauled
before an unsympathetic Judge Baron John
Williams. Loveless, Stanfield, James Brine, James Hammett, and James
Loveless, George’s brother were charged under an obscure law also dating to the late 18th Century which made the swearing
of secret oaths to each
other illegal. On March 18, subsequently
celebrated as Tolpuddle Martyrs Day, they
were found guilty and sentenced to 7 years transportation to Australia—a sentence few men ever
returned from.
Despite rising protests from working
people across England, all of the men were quickly bundled off to the ships
that carried them away.
From his cell before being
shipped out George Loveless had scribbled
a note on a scrap of paper
that was soon printed all over England:
God
is our guide! from field, from wave,
From
plough, from anvil, and from loom;
We
come, our country’s rights to save,
And
speak a tyrant faction’s doom:
We
raise the watch-word liberty;
We
will, we will, we will be free!
Tens of thousands rallied on Copenhagen Fields near King's Cross, London organized by the Central Committee of the Metropolitan Trade Unions and marched through London to Kennington Common with a wagon carrying a petition with over 200,000 signatures for the remission of the Tolpuddle Martyrs's sentences.
Inspired by those words an unprecedented protest arose across the
country. More than 80,000 signed petitions to Lord Melbourne himself in
April. And in London more than 25
thousand assembled for the largest
public demonstration of its kind ever held in protest to a government
action. In addition to the labor
movement, the reform press took up the protest as did the liberal wing of Melbourne’s own Whig party.
In 1836 by then Prime Minister Melbourne’s new Home Secretary Lord John Russell commuted the sentences of all but Hammett who had
a previous minor conviction. Four of the men arrived back in England at Plymouth.
A plaque next to the Mayflower Steps commemorates
their return.
Hammett was released a year later
and returned to Tolpuddle, where he lived a long life in poverty and want. He died in the Dorchester workhouse in 1891.
The other men realized they could
not support their families back home where no landlord would hire them. They moved together for a time to Essex and then with the help of funds subscribed for their relief, immigrated together to London, Ontario, Canada. They were greeted in their new home as heroes and are still commemorated there
today with a monument and an affordable housing co-op / trade union
complex named after them.
Back home the Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum preserves their story and their deep
connection to the trade union movement.
A monument was erected to them in 1934 on the centennial of their sentence and a new statue installed before the museum in 2001.
There are also modest monuments in
Australia.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival is held annually in Tolpuddle, usually
in the third week of July, organized by the National Union of Agricultural Workers (recently amalgamated with
the Transport and General Workers Union)
and the Trades Union Congress (TUC)
featuring a parade of banners from many trade unions, a memorial service,
speeches and music. Recent festivals have featured speakers such as Tony Benn
and musicians such as Billy Bragg.
Forgetting for a moment that as a
Methodist, Loveless was likely a teetotaler,
I propose all good working men and women raise
a toast today to the lads from Tolpuddle.
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