TOLPUDDLE 1834 PENTONVILLE 1972

On March 19, 1834 •six farm workers were found guilty of taking an oath of allegiance to a branch of the union they had founded in Tolpuddle, Dorset.

By March 27, five of the men had been hurried, chained and manacled, to the convict ships at Portsmouth and were soon on their way to the penal settlements in New South Wales. The sixth, Loveless, ( who had been was taken to Portsmouth on April 5 and was sent to Tasmania.

For forming a branch of the union, to advance their wages and conditions, farmworkers were exiled for seven Just as today the ruling class with its laws, its courts, private detectives, jails five trade unionists and prepares to take on and smash the trade union and working class movement, so it was then. 1n Tolpuddle also infiltrated by spies of the bourgeoisie who provided the key evidence against brought forward its capitalist laws and faithful judges to carry the 'law' through.

And the forces of law and order were ready and waiting take the six farmworkers away-not to Pentonville, but degradation and misery in Australia.

The period of Tolpuddle was towards the end of the period of the Enclosure movement in agriculture, the continuation the Industrial Revolution. It had driven thousands off the land into the towns to become the new proletariat.

Yet in the countryside the the agricultural labourers was desperate beyond words. The villager had been robbed of the strip he tilled, of the cow he kept on the village pasture, of the fuel he picked up in the woods and of the turf he tore from the commons.

At same time, growth of factory production in the towns destroyed or cut down the small cottage industries at which the wife and children worked, adding their earnings to the family income.

The villager-deprived of all means of independent subsistence-was now proletarianized: he had become an agricultural labourer.

The labourers revolted in 1830. It spread like wildfire through Kent, Sussex, Hants, Wiltshire, hires Essex Surrey, Buckinghamshire, and other counties. The ruling class, the big landlords and landowners, struck back with terror.

For gathering together to ask for bread and for work, for escorting a few brutal Poor Law Overseers out of the villages, for breaking a few of the newly introduced threshing machines, they were executed, imprisoned and deported tó penal colonies. Four hundred were imprisoned for 'riots' that cost one life-that of one of the labourers. Some 500 •were transported. And before they went, the 500 had to watch fellow labourers being hanged.

One of the nine hanged was a lad of 19 named Henry Cook. He could neither read nor write, and was a ploughboy who had worked since he was ten years old.

His 'crime': to knock off the hat of a landowner and Justice of the Peace in a scuffle. For this he was hanged.

Declared "The Times': Justice has seldom met with a more appropriate sacrifice.' 'The Times' never changes.

Others sentenced were forced to watch the execution of Cook and another. A reporter at the execution described the scene: 'At that moment (as the trap was sprung) I cast my eyes down into the felons' yard and saw many of the convicts weeping bitterly, some burying their faces in their frocks, others wringing their hands convulsively, and the others leaning for support against the walls of the yard and unable to cast their eyes upwards' Hampshire during the early months of 1831 the labourers won a wage increase from 7s 8d to 10s a week. The agitation spread to neighbouring Dorset where the men banded together to present their demands to farmers and landowners.

In Tolpuddle, several meetings were held and spokesmen chosen to meet the farmers in conference. The vicar of Tolpuddle, Dr Warren, presided over the conference.

The farmers agreed to the 10s wage and the vicar pledged himself as deal. But the the agreement and paid only 9s, then cutting wages down to 8s.

The men took their case to the Justices of the Peace, in the mistaken belief they still had the power to fix wages. And the vicar—in his true role as a representative of the ruling class - denied he saw any agreement made.

The farmers took this as the signal to reduce wages to 7s threatening a level of 6s if agitation continued The men, undeterred, decided to take the historic step and form a union. George Loveless, their leader, takes up the story: "The men consulted together what had better be done, as they knew it was impossible to live honestly on such scants means. I had seen at different times accounts of trade societies; I told them of this, and they willingly consented among the labourers, that to form a Friendly Society sufficiently learned it would be vain to seek redress either of employers, magistrates or parsons. I inquired of a brother to get information how to proceed, and shortly after, two delegates from a Trade Society paid us a visit, formed a Friendly Society among the labourers and gave us directions how to proceed.' The delegates came from the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. Thousands of workers in the towns, inspired by the ideas of Robert Owen, the founder of English socialism, had swelled the ranks of the union, until the numbers reached a million.

So the Tolpuddle Lodge of The Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers was formed Besides rules advice, the London trade unionists brought details of the customary ceremonial swearing-in of members, done with regalia and an oath of loyalty to the union. Although the labourers were worried about the oath they eventually agreed The union was formed in October 1833, and some 40 or more labourers enrolled in the 12d 1:

first few weeks. The employers and the government moved in to crush it.

It was no longer illegal for workers to combine for trade purposes. The Combination Acts had been repealed in 1824.

Lord Melbourne, Whig Home Secretary, with the local authorities decided to proceed against the men on the charge administering and being bound by secret and unlawtul oaths under an Act passed in been passed specifically to deal with the widespread naval mutiny at Nore and Spithead of that year.

The conspiracy against the was also a local preacher. labourers was carefully planned.

Spies were planted in the Tolpuddle Lodge of the Union; legal opinion was sounded; warning was duly posted in the neighbourhood, but only on the eve of the arrests; and at dawn on February 24, 1834, six of the leading Tolpuddle trade unionists were arrested and taken to nearby chester jail.

six presumably small child. regarded as ringleaders, but no evidence exists to show why they were singled out from the larger number of members Five of the six were practising Wesleyan Methodists, words might have freed him. them being local preachers. As such they werein those days —subject to frequent persecution. And five of the men were related to each other in some waLeader and spokesman was George Loveless, noted locally for his eloquence as a lay preacher.

Loveless was 37 years old when arrested, was married mistake that had been made. and had three small children. His brother James (25), who 12255-00 CAUTION.

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