Clarion Cycling Club Logo (Transfer)

Clarion Cycling Club transfer for bicycle circa 1940s

Soviet Airmen's Song

Note: Click on music sheets to enlage

Soviet Airmen’s or Red Airmen's Song

Our planes are roaring, roaring for the battle,
High in the air above the clouds we speed,
Our bombs are ready, our machine-guns rattle,
Against the world’s imperialist greed,

Chorus

Flying higher, higher and higher,
Our emblem the Soviet Star,
And ever propeller is roaring,
Defending the USSR,

(shout) Red Front ! or (Shout) Y-C-L

But to the workers and the toiling masses,
A gleam of hope all our propellers whirl,
We drop them leaflets while we bomb their bosses,
The first Red Air Force of the world,

Chorus

Our proud machines obey our every order
There is no flight our pilots do not dare,
We form an iron ring above our border
The workers first squadrons of the air,

Chorus

And should dictators with snouts come rooting
Around the soil of our free Soviet land,
Our guns can sting the jaws that gape for looting,
Our bombs will smash the greedy hand

END

NOTES

other versions of Chorus

Flying higher, higher and higher,
Our emblem the Soviet Star,

And ever propeller is turning,
In defence of the USSR

or below the University Labour Federtation version

And ever propeller is roaring
Red Front ! Defending the USSR

Alternative...........................

Chorus

Flying higher, higher and higher,
Our emblem the Soviet Star
And ever propeller is turning,
In defence of the USSR,

(Shout) Y-C-L

or

And ever blade is turning
in defence of the USSR

This song was very popular amongst Communist Party, Young Communist League (YCL) and Clarion Choirs during and after the war, the Chorus often being sung on its own with great passion. (also with hand movements to replicate propellers turning).

The first version I can trace has words adapted by Randall Swingler of the Workers Music Association in 1939 costing 2d

Kevin Halpin states this chorus is correct

Flying higher, higher and higher,
Our emblem the Soviet Star,
And ever propeller is roaring,
Defending the USSR,

(shout) Red Front ! or (Shout) Y-C-L

Ken Keable states, my parents, Bill & Gladys Keable, taught me to sing the Song of the Soviet Air Force (in Esperanto as well as in English) I used to sing it in the 1970's and 1980's when I was in the political song group "The Partisans". Here are the words I was taught,

We sail the sky as steamers sail the ocean.

We boldly fly where none has flown before.

Our arms are wings of metal swift in motion,

Our beating heart - the mighty engine's roar.

Fly higher, and higher, and higher -

Our emblem, the Soviet star

And every propeller is roaring

Defending the USSR.

Our watchful gaze explores the wide horizon.

Our iron nerves the elements defy.

To every foe, to any fighting challenge

Our mighty air fleet swiftly will reply.

(Chorus)

Our proud machines obey our every order.

There is no flight our pilots do not dare.

We form an iron ring above our border -

The workers' first great squadrons of the air.

(Chorus).

The Randall Swingler version starts with

Our engines roar the frozen air is cleaving
Red Square is darkened
Our guardian shade
And over lands and polar oceans
Weaving our cable lines of peace are laid

CHORUS
Higher and Higher and higher
Our emblem the Soviet star
And every propeller is roaring
Defending the USSR

Soviet or Red Airmen's Song

Michael Walker

Daily Worker - Churchill Obituary 1965

Tory Acclaim of Churchill

By Our Political Correspondent

Daily Worker - Monday January 25^th 1965

As the greatest Englishman only dates from 1940, when he took over as Premier, and Tory leader, from the arch-appeaser, Neville Chamberlain.

It was not always so. Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill had been a Liberal and a sharp critic of the party he was later to lead. He had, never the less, always been an uncompromising anti-Socialist.

Essentially it is as leader of the wartime Coalition, as leader of the Tory Opposition from 1945 to 1951 and as Prime Minister 1951-55, when he resigned, that his admirers wish to remember him.

AT BLENHEIM

Born on November 30, 1874, in Blenheim Palace, the mammoth mansion commemorating the famous victory of his ancestor the soldier of fortune John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, Churchill was a son of Lord Randolph Churchill, himself third son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough.

His mother was an American, daughter of a former owner of the New York Times.

He passed through the normal ruling-class educational establishments, having an undistinguished career at Harrow.

It was said that his father was puzzled what to do with his son until one day when he saw him playing with tin soldiers, it was said he had several thousands of them.

Lord Randolph asked him whether he would like to be a soldier, and as the answer was “Yes” he was sent to Sandhurst to which he was admitted after the third attempt at the entrance examination.

SUDAN WAR

In 1895 he was gazetted in the 4th Hussars and the same year voluntarily attached himself to the Spanish forces fighting the guerrillas in Cuba.

When there was "fighting on the North-West Frontier of India he joined the Malakand Field Force. He got leave from his regiment and became war correspondent for the Allahabad Pioneer. The London Daily Telegraph agreed to publish letters from him at £5 a column.

He then managed to get himself an honorary commission in the 21st Lancers and went to the Sudan, acting as war correspondent for the Tory Morning Post at £15 a column. He took part in the cavalry charge the British Army's last at the Battle of Omdurman.

In 1898 he resigned his commission to enter politics but was defeated as Tory candidate for Oldham the next year.

Once more the attraction of war led him to South Africa as war correspondent, again for the. Morning Post at £150 a month salary, with all expenses paid.

Within a fortnight of his arrival he was captured, escaping three week later (by breaking his parole, it is said) to continue his journalistic activities. (photo British concentration camp for Boer civilians)

These journalistic assignments started Churchill on an active writing career, during which he produced about 60 books, starting with "The Story of the Malakand Field Force" and including his version of the Second World War, in several large volumes.

By the age of 26 he scored his first political success, when he won Oldham in 1900; the tide was flowing to the Liberals and in 1905 he crossed the floor to join the Liberals, a deed for which many Tories never forgave him.

This was the period of his famous denunciation of the Tory Party: "A party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable federation; corruption at home, aggression to cover it abroad; the trickery of tariff juggles, the tyranny of a well fed party machine; sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint: the open hand at the public exchequer, the open door at the public house; dear food for the million, cheap labour for the millionaire."

Two years later he entered the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade and from then until 1929 he was rarely out of office and occupied Ministerial offices, either as a Liberal or Tory, on more occasions than any other man in British politics.

Bitter class conflicts marked the period before the First World War, including dockers, miners and railway strikes.

STRIKES SHOT

'It was Churchill, then Home Secretary, who sent the Metropolitan Police in force into South Wales during a miners' s

trike, leading to serious clashes at Tonypandy in the Rhondda and the death of one miner.

"At the instance of Mr.Winston Churchill,"

wrote the Webbs of the 1911 railway strike,

"an overpowering display was made with the troops… without requisition by the civil authorities, at the mere request of the companies."

A strike demonstration was fared on at Llanelly and there were two fatal casualties. ( Leonard Worsell and John John)

At this time he earned the title Napoleon of Sidney Street" for taking part in a sagely flamboyant attack on a house in this East End street where some anarchists were cornered. Enormous publicity was given with photographs of Churchill in top hat and frock coat watching as Guardsmen fired until the house went up in flames.

When the Asquith Government declared war on Germany in 1914 Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, eventually persuaded the Cabinet, against military advice, to try to force the Dardenelles. Then followed the bloody battles of Gallipoli in which tens of thousands of British. Australian and New Zealand soldiers perished.

After the "khaki" election of 1918. won by the Lloyd George Coalition s promises to hang the Kaiser and build homes for heroes, Churchill became Secretary for Air and for War, then one Ministry.

He did his best to form an anti-Bolshevik bloc, arming and equipping counter-revolutionary; White Guard forces.

On him lies the main responsibility for the organisation of this attack by 14 States on the young Socialist Revolution. A British expedition landed a Murmansk, but after spending £100 million (a very large sum in those days) the interventionist were defeated—above all by the stormy "Hands off Russia" agitation in the Labour movement culminating in the Councils of Action threat of a General Strike in 1920.

He often publicly regretted the failure of the attempts, in which he played a leading part, to crush the Russian Revolution. As he put it in 1950 "the failure to strangle Bolshevism at birth lies heavy upon us today."

After the break-up of the Coalition in 1922. Churchill lost the seat in Dundee he had held since 1908, In that election William Gallacher who helped bring about Churchill's well merited defeat, polled 6,682 votes, as Communist; that was the last Dundee saw of its former Liberal M.P.

Churchill soon accepted the fact that the Liberals were in decline and by the 1924 General Election he had worked his passage back to the Tory ranks Elected for Epping he became Baldwin's Chancellor of the Exchequer.

1926 EDITOR

His policy in that office led to the General Strike of May 1926 when the British trade union movement stopped work in aid the miners, whose employers were demanding heavy wage cuts and longer hours.

Churchill became strike breaker in chief, took over the Editorship of the British Gazette, the blackleg Government daily paper published after the printers went on strike.

When the rise of the Indian nationalist movement forced the Government to consider concessions. Churchill opposed, telling an Albert Hall demonstration that "I am against this surrender to Gandhi."

Among a minority of Tories, he saw the menace to British interests of the rise of Hitler in the '30s, and opposed the appeasement policy of Neville Chamberlain.

When the "phoney" war period ended in May 1940, he became Prime Minister of the Coalition Government just a few days before the fall of France and Dunkirk.

SECOND FRONT

When in June 1941 Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, within in a few hours of the attack Churchill announced his support for the Russians, while making plain that he had not abandoned his lifelong opposition to Socialism and Communism.

Conditions were created for an Anglo-Soviet alliance and he took part with Roosevelt and Stalin in the Teheran and Yalta conferences, where the three leaders concerted their plans for defeating the common enemy.

But Churchill was disturbed by the prospect that a victorious Soviet army would liberate Eastern Europe and the whole of Germany not only from the Nazis but from all Big Business domination.

He was deaf throughout 1942 and 1943 to the popular demand for a Second Front in Europe.

Only in June 1944, after the Soviet army had inflicted crippling defeats on the German armies was the Second Front eventually opened. But it seems that this was mainly because he was alarmed that the Soviet forces would be first to occupy all Germany.

Many commentators have accused him of causing the heavy concentration of Anglo-American efforts in the Mediterranean and the hard battles up the Italian hilly peninsula in the hope of breaking through to restore the Balkan and eventually, all the East European, monarchies and reactionary regimes.

IN GREECE

In Greece he was responsible for the bloody suppression by British forces of the Greek national Resistance movement after fighting in Athens which brought the restoration of the unpopular Greek monarchy and the temporary triumph of reaction.

From his own pen comes confirmation, in his Second World War memoirs, that in March 1945 he was imbued with the desire that "a new front must be immediately created against her [Russia's] onward sweep . . that this front in Europe-should be as far east as possible."

This was soon after he had praised the Soviet army and its heroic soldiers, who had "torn the guts out" of Hitler's armies

When in 1945 President Truman and Stalin met at Potsdam he invited Attlee to attend with him at the time when the 1945 General Election result was awaiting declaration.

Hoping to cash in on his popularity as a war leader, during which his great powers of oratory were skilfully used to stimulate the nation against Hitler. Churchill made a nationwide tour for votes for the Tories.

But nothing could check the Labour landslide; in London a bewildered Churchill was booed by vast crowds.

COLD WAR

Less than a year later, on March 5^th 1946 he made the notorious speech at Fulton, Missouri, which was the declaration of the cold War and a direct rejection of his Praise for the Soviet Union in wartime and the agreements of friendship to which he was party.

Over 100 Labour M.P.s signed a resolution calling on the Government to repudiate the speech, but Premier Attlee and Mr Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, avoided condemning it.

Again at Zurich, 18 months later, Churchill made yet another programme speech directed toward, bringing West Germany into the Anglo-American dominated Western alliance and so started, the process which ended with the formation of NATO.

In 1949 the Atlantic Pact was signed. The Labour leaders' acceptance of Churchill's policy of anti-Soviet war alliance helped to bring their downfall and the Tory victory of 1951Churchill was opposed by Communists in his constituency of Woodford in both 1950 and 1951 – first Bill Brookes, later Daily Worker circulation manager, and then J.R. Campbell then Daily Worker Editor.

At 76 Churchill was again Prime Minister. Adopting then Policy he described as "negotiation from strength" he pursued his cold war aims.

On the other hand he saw the futility of continuing the Korean War and in 1953 was the only Western leader to call on the U.S. to make a truce. He also advocated a Summit meeting with the Soviet leaders for discussions to reduce world tension. None however took place during his Premiership, which ended on April 6, 1955, when he handed over to Sir Anthony Eden (as Lord Avon then was).

After his resignation Churchill never again achieved the dominant role he had played, although in even in his last year as M.P.he did not stand down till 1964 he was a frequent visitor to the Chamber.

While he became a Knight of the Garter in 1953 he did not take the earldom which could have been his as a past Prime Minister In April 1963, by a joint vote of the U.S. Congress, he was awarded the unique title' of Honorary American Citizen. It was an appropriate comment on much in his personality and policies

Daily Worker - Monday January 25^th 1965

EXTRA NOTES

During the 1945 General Election Churchill was heavily booed at Walthamstow Stadium the audiance demanding "We want Attlee". Next day Churchill himself was nearly hurt. On Tooting Bec Common, South London when 17 year old Michael Gloor Le Pelley, tossed a lit firecracker at the Prime Minister. During the War Churchill had been booed when visiting bombed out families and later avoided the East End.

On election eve Churchill felt victory "in his bones," warned that "if there should be a landslide to the left, many countries on the Continent would slide, not into decent socialism, but into the violence of Communism. . . .If we go down, all the ninepins of Europe will fall." Then the Prime Minister breezed off to Hendaye, in the French Basque country, source: Time MagazineJuly 16th 1945.

During the Spanish Civil War, unlike Edward Heath later Tory PM, Churchill backed the fascist Franco.Winston Churchill had stated in the Evening Standard 10th August 1936 that “The Spanish government had no legal or moral claim to support Spain, since it was being subverted and devowed by Communism” he was still supporting Franco as late as December 1938

The Connaught Rangers Mutiny in India For Irish Freedom 1920

The Connaught Rangers
Mutiny in India
For Irish Freedom
1920

The Connaught Rangers was just one of many Irish Regiments in the British Army.


The 88th Foot or Connaught Rangers were raised in 1793 to meet the perceived Napoleonic threat, it later fought in the Peninsular Wars against Napoleon. Crimean War, Sudan, Boer War and many other conflicts.

"It's a long way to Tipperary"

At the beginning of World War One, the Regiment arrived in Boulogue, France in August 1914, as part of the British Expeditionary Force. It was here that a British national newspaper recorded the Regiment marching while they sang the musical hit "It's a long way to Tipperary", a song that would forever be associated with the Connaught Rangers and World War One.

The Regiment saw service at the Somme and at Gallipoli, losing over 2,500 during the Great War.

But events at home were changing rapidly. The Easter Rising in 1916, its ruthless crushing and subsequent execution of it's leaders fuelled the demand for Irish nationhood.

A bloody War for independence ensued, begining in January 1919,

The British Government responded to the escalating violence in Ireland with increasing use of force. Reluctant to deploy more regular British Army troops, it set up two paramilitary police units to aid the Royal Irish Constabalry (Police).

These "Auxiliaries" some seven thousand strong, were mainly ex-British soldiers demobilised after the Great War. First deployed to Ireland in March 1920, most came from English and Scottish cities. the "Black and Tans" soon won a reputation for drunkenness and indiscipline, burning down the houses and killing those suspected of aiding Irish Republican's.

By the summer of 1920, the atrocities of the Black and Tans in Ireland (especially in Galway, Kerry and Cork) were becoming widely known. The Irish soldiers serving in the Connaught Rangers in India were receiving letters from relatives at home describing what was happening. In many cases, British atrocities visited their own families.

THE PUNJAB PLAINS, INDIA 1920

It was at the British military barracks at Jullundur, on the plains of the Punjab, that the mutiny began. Here was based the 1st Battallion of the Connaught Rangers.

On the 27th June 1920, Private Joseph Hawes of Kilrush, County Clare, asked his companions what they were going to do about the situation in Ireland.

While on leave in Kilrush in 1919, Hawes had witnessed the beginning of the War of Independance and the banning of all public meetings and GAA games, including a hurling match prevented at bayonet point in Kilrush. Hawes learned later that his brother had joined the IRA.

"We’ll soldier no more for England,”

The Irishmen in Jullundur decided to refuse to obey the orders of their officers. “We’ll soldier no more for England,” Hawes told them.

The men’s protest was passive at first "sit in", they volunteered to be locked up in the guard-room. But the mutiny spread quickly and Hawes and his comrades were joined by 400 others at Jullundur.

When the colonel addressed the men and recounted all the battle honours of the regiment, Joseph Hawes replied:

“All the honours on the colours of the Connaught Rangers are for England. There is none for Ireland, but there is going to be one today, and it will be the greatest honour of them all.”

The mutineers elected a committee, took over the barracks and hauled down the Union Jack. The Irish Tricolour was raised the tall flag mast of the regimental quarter guard by Private Frank Geraghty of Castleblayney, County Monaghan. The Irish tricolour also flew on every single barrack. Most of the Irish soldiers were singing patriotic ballads in the barracks.

SOLAN HILL STATION

Two hundred miles away, another part of the regiment was based at the hill station of Solan. There the mutiny was led by Private James Daly (22), of Tyrellspass, County Westmeath.

Daly led a company of men who paraded outside the officers’ mess and he addressed the officers saying the parade was a protest at British atrocities in Ireland. Daly is alleged to have stated "If you want to know who the leader is, I am"

The men refused to obey the officers’ orders and demanded the release of two soldiers who has been arrested after bringing the news of the mutiny from Jullundur.

More men joined and, on 30 June, after an attempt to capture the fort’s magazine, the men were fired on and Privates Patrick Smythe of Drogheda and Peter Sears of Neale, County Mayo, were killed, another, Private Egan although getting a bullet through his lung survived.

The shootings at Solan marked the end of the mutiny

It had never had a definite objective but was a spontaneous protest by Irishmen sick of soldiering for England and desperate to show their support for the Irish people.

Seventy-five of the mutineers were rounded up and held in harsh conditions at Dagshai Prison. This resulted in the death of Private John Miranda of Liverpool. In September, the mutineers were court-martialled in Dagshai in August 1920.

The court-martial sentenced 14 men to death and the remainder to terms of 10 to 20 years in prison; 13 of the death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.

JAMES DALY - IRISH MARTYR

The one death sentence confirmed was that of James Daly.

On the morning of November 2nd 1920 Private James Daly was led out into the prison yard and executed by a firing squad.

“It is all for Ireland. I am not afraid to die,” he wrote in his last letter to his mother.

Apart from dying for his country he also made history by becoming the last member of the British Army to be executed for a military offence.

The British Army tried to hush-up the mutiny and news of the execution of James Daly was naturally eclipsed by the death of Terence MacSwiney on hunger strike a week before and the execution of Kevin Barry a day before. But, like them, Daly gave his life for Ireland.


REPUBLICAN PLOT

The mutineers were transferred to jails in England and the last of them was released in 1923 and returned to Ireland.

The Connaught Rangers had been disbanded the year before (1922).


A Connaught Rangers Cenotaph was unveiled in Glasnevin cemetery in 1949.

In October 1970, the remains of Daly, Smythe and Sears were re-interred in Ireland; Smythe and Sears in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery and Daly in his native Tyrellspass.

The Connaught Rangers were disbaned on the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, many of the Irish officers and men of the Connaught Rangers helped form the Western Command of the new Irish (National) Army.

HONOUR ENGLISHMAN - JOHN MIRANDA

John Miranda , A fourth mutineer, an Englishmen, died in prison in India, he was born in in Liverpool to a Spanish mother and Irish father. His remains are still in India. Surely he deserves honouring in the same way the brave Irishmen were.

Joseph Hawes the aged 77, was present at Daly's reinterrment and pronounced him to be "as brave a man as ever stood before a firing party."

Reuters Report on the Connaught rangers Mutiny
from Simla, stated


The men “refused to do duty on the ground of the alleged wrongs inflicted on Ireland.” “The situation is happily well in hand, and only a section of the regiment is affected. The trouble (Reuter adds) began at Junllundur, where half a battalion is stationed, forming the British garrison.

The men involved represented to their commanding officer that they were no longer able to serve, but they were quite prepared to draw their pay. They appear to have been respectful and intimated their willingness to give up their arms to any British troops sent to relieve them.

They have since been disarmed, and over 200 are under guard. The Seaforths and the Welsh Regiment are now at Junllundur.

A company of the Connaught Rangers is stationed at Solan on the Kalka-Simla railway (Punjab) and, Reuter proceeds, two emissaries were arrested, where upon a small number of the Connaught Rangers tried to rush the armoury.

They were promptly fired upon by their comrades two being killed one wounded. The others were at once arrested.
END

Based on an article in Irish Sunday Tribune, History Ireland and Republican News by Michael Mac Donncha

Connaught Ranger Song

To the tiny homesteads of the West
The recruiting sergeant came
He promised all a future bright
So the brave young men went off to fight
For the empire and her might
And many's the victory they had won
Many the hardships they had seen
They fought and died, side by side
Their enemies they had defied and for a foreign king

And the drums they were a beating time
While the pipes did loudly play
When Daly died, the drums did beat
That morning in the Dagshai heat
Now we'll beat the drums no more

While serving in a far off land
The news had come from home
Of a peoples' fate it did relate
Of the tans and their campaign of hate
And we're fighting on their side
Arise Arise young Daly cried
Come join along with me
We'll strike a blow for Liberty
Our regiment will mutiny and support our friends at home

And the drums they were a beating time
While the pipes did loudly play
When Daly died, the drums did beat
That morning in the Dagshai heat
Now we'll beat the drums no more

And the Colonel stood before his troops
Those men who mutineed
He told them of those honours won
But the men stood in the blazing sun
Saying we'll fight your wars no more
For cannon fodder we had been
For the French at Waterloo at Suvla and Sud Elbar
We fought your every bloody war
And we'll fight you wars to more

And the drums they were a beating time
While the pipes did loudly play
When Daly died, the drums did beat
That morning in the Dagshai heat
Now we'll beat the drums no more

Those men got penal servitude
And Daly's condemned to die
Far from his home in Tyrellpass
This young man's died in Ireland's cause
Far from his native land

And the drums they were a beating time
While the pipes did loudly play
When Daly died, the drums did beat
That morning in the Dagshai heat
Now we'll beat the drums no more

Burston School Strike 2009

The Burston School
Strike Rally 2009

The Burston School Strike, at Burston, Norfolk lasted from 1914 to 1939 and was the longest strike in British labour history. It began when teachers Kitty Higdon and her husband, Tom Higdon, were sacked. Soon the school's children went out on strike in support of their teachers. An alternative school was built, financed by donations from the labour movement, which continued to teach pupils until 1939.

An estimated two thousand trade unionists, socialists and progressives (including a group of Woodcraft Folk Children from their Suffolk holiday hostel) joined the parade led by the Paseo Malanga Carnival Band. A large YCL and CP contingent marched, red flags flying through the Norfolk countryside behind a brass band from the Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers (RMT),

Speakers at the annual Burston Strike School Rally 2009 celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution and expressed solidarity with the people of Honduras. Luis Marron, political counsellor from the Cuban embassy, gave a rousing speech that prompted a rush of people to the Cuba Solidarity campaign’s stall, where many signed up to become members.

Luis said that as his own parents were teachers, he knew the terrible state that Cuban education was in before the revolution and that if it had not been for the revolution, Cuba would have needed many of their own Burston strike schools. Luis reminded the crowd that with the continued existence of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the illegal blockade, and the incarceration of the Miami five, we cannot rush to thank the Obama administration for a change in its policies towards Cuba that it has yet to undertake.

Steve Hart, a speaker from the South East Region Trade Union Council (South East Region TUC), urged the US government to end the illegal blockade of Cuba and declared his solidarity with the people of Honduras and its elected president “who are showing such tremendous courage when facing the guns of the junta." The Latin American feel of the event was enhanced by children dancing to the rhythms of Cuban salsa in carnival outfits.

Speakers also addressed issues around the recession as G20 finance ministers gathered in London to prepare for the main summit in the US later this month.

Union Assistant General Secretary Diana Holland said: "At times of depression like this, we need more than ever the principles of solidarity shown at the Burston Strike school."

She rejected government suggestions that, in time of recession, Britain could not afford workers' rights or equal rights.

"None of these people were responsible for the recession, so why should they pay the price? It was the financiers and those at the top who are responsible and should pay the price," she added.

Mike Pentelow former editor of the "Landworker" (the agricultural unions journal) and contributor to Country Standard also spoke at the rally.

The crowd wished veteran socialist Tony Benn, who had been due to address the rally, a speedy recovery from the operation which prevented him from attending.

Good weather and a fantastic response from the crowd ensured that Burston 2009 marked another successful YCL intervention at a labour movement festival this summer.

For Peace & Socialism in the Countryside

From Challenge - September 2009

Talking Country - Morning Star

Talking Country

Morning Star

Nick Matthews warns that the left has ignored the decline of Rural Britain for far too long.

Every summer I like spend some time visiting delightful rural spots to listen to fiery radical speeches on the labour struggles of the past.

It's a pilgrimage to thank those who came before us in building our movement.

Many of you will also have travelled to places such as Tolpuddle in Dorset, Burston in Norfolk - home of the famous strike school - or Burford in the Cotswolds to mark Levellers Day.

There was a time when the left held its own in rural areas and had something to say to rural communities. The Country Standard informed people of the struggles of working-class rural dwellers.

With the collapse in house prices and economic changes generating huge increases in food prices, it is time for us on the left to think again about rural life and the agricultural sector.

The government has yielded too much ground to the Countryside Alliance. We have been led on a huge wild fox chase over country sports while missing out on the real debate over the future of the land over which the chases take place.

Agricultural policy may be the property of the European Union, but this does not mean that we have to give up thinking about the shape and type of agriculture we should have in Britain.

Despite being true blue on the electoral map, ironically rural Britain is a bastion of the co-operative movement. The erosion of the co-operative sector in the cities has not been matched in agriculture, where co-operation seems to have gone from strength to strength.

Each year, Co-operatives UK publish an overview of the co-operative economy and a table of the top 100 co-operatives. At least half of them are agricultural co-ops.

The retail Co-op itself began farming in 1896, when it bought its first farm to grow spuds for its stores. A big expansion took place between the wars when food was scarce, so it should be no surprise to find that the Co-op is Britain's largest farmer. It works a total of 70,000 acres across England and Scotland.

Today, at least 10 agricultural co-ops have a turnover of more than £100 million. There are some real giants, such as the Dairy Farmers of Britain Co-operative with 2,000 farmer members and a half-a-billion pound turnover.

This in some way reflects the consolidation of the sector due to the severe challenges the agricultural economy has faced over the last few years. Poor prices and terrible weather have put farm incomes under massive strain.

The collapse in rural farm work has contributed to pressure to close rural schools and post offices. But there are still around 135,000 workers employed in agriculture in the UK.

In fact, the Unite union's Rural and Allied Workers Trade Group continues to represent workers with the Agricultural Wages Board as well as in the growing sectors of horticulture and forestry. They have their work cut out in some areas, dealing with issues such as migrant labour and gangmasters which would have been familiar to Thomas Hardy and the Tolpuddle Martyrs well over a century ago.

In the face of all these problems, co-ops and social enterprises could play a massive role in protecting the rural economy. The Plunkett Foundation, which provides seed corn finance and advice to support the start-up and development of rural co-ops and social enterprises, shows how this can be done. Its support helps the growth of small-scale businesses such as community shops which big business is simply not interested in.

Successive British governments have pursued a policy of managed decline, reflecting their attitude towards the manufacturing and agricultural sectors in Britain.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs seems to believe that Britain will be able to import huge quantities of food from the mouths of the developing world forever.

However, with global warming affecting production, the issue of food security will soon become a real one.

We will soon face having to put more land under cultivation and tackle issues such as low-carbon agriculture, organic farming and animal welfare, as well as the impact of climate change on soil quality.

British agriculture is a vitally important asset to our country and it needs to be expanded and developed, not sentenced to lingering death under the EU common agricultural policy.

By Nick Matthews

Morning Star

4th May 2009

NOTE

Other important places/dates in rural history

Tolpuddle Martyrs - Tolpuddle (Dorset)

Burston School Strke - Burston (Norfolk)

Levellers Day - Burford (Oxfordshire)

Joseph Arch - Wellesbourne and Burford (Warwickshire)

Pesants Revolt (Kett - Norwich)

Swing Riots (various)

Peterloo (Manchester)

Leiston Leader and Paxton Chadwick - Leiston - Suffolk

George Mitchell ( National Agricultural Labourers Union) - Ham Hill - Montacute- Sommerset

Clarion first van tour Lancashire & Yorkshire

Land Nationalisation Society (Alfred Russel Wallace) born Llanbadoc,Usk , Wales - died, buried Broadstone, Dorset

Lancashire Agricultural strike 1913 - Ormskirk

The Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers & Small Holders Union was established at a conference at the Angel Hotel, North Walsham, Norfolk on 20 July 1906.

In 1910 major strikes and disputes broke out in the Norfolk villages of Trunch, Knapton, and St Faith's (Norfolk)

Communist Party Rural Propaganda Work 1938-39

Campaigning

in the Rural Areas

Maurice Cornforth

Party Organiser August 1938

The Eastern Counties District Communist Party organised a week’s campaign in the agricultural area of Norfolk at the end of June 1938. When planning the campaign, we regarded it as experimental, and we had some doubts in our minds as to the results.

How would the agricultural workers receive the Communist Party? Would they be scared of us, or suspicious? Would they greet us with indifference?

These were questions which worried us before the campaign began.

The actual experience of the campaign proved conclusively to us that there was no cause to be worried with questions of this sort. Our propaganda met with a very warm response from the workers. We met with suspicion and sour looks from only a very few people; the majority of the people, both men and women, were eager to hear what we had to say, and to buy our literature.

The countryside of Norfolk, which we selected as our campaign area, represents the best organised rural district in Britain.

Camp as Headquarters

The campaign organised by our Party was modelled on the Clarion Campaign. We set up a camp in a central place, whence we sallied forth into the villages every morning, afternoon and evening.

We worked most days from 11 to 12.30 in the morning, and then from 3.30 to 9 in the afternoon and evening. We had with us a loud-speaker van, and three cars.

It was our original intention to hold a meeting every evening in one of the small market towns. But we quickly gave up this idea, as we found it much better to concen- living all sorts of odd-job people, to whom it is much harder to make any definite appeal.

Meetings in market towns during the actual market are not a good idea. Everyone is very busy, and you tend to interfere with the real business of the day. As soon as we arrived in a village we played a tune on the loud-speaker, and then addressed the people. We made it our main aim to sell the Party’s new pamphlet, “ A Plan for Britain’s Agriculture,” and distribute the leaflet.

The meeting we regarded mainly as a publicity medium for drawing people’s attention to our literature.

In our one week’s work we sold 1,077 copies of the pamphlet in 50 villages. That is an average of 20 copies per village—and 20 copies of our pamphlet in a small village means a very great deal.

House-to-House Canvass

The literature was sold by house-to-house canvass. The people displayed great interest, and we had some very valuable conversations on the doorstep. It is worth reporting that at several houses we were mistaken for fascists, and told, very roughly, to clear off. As soon as we explained that we were Communists, we met with a very different reception, and often sold a pamphlet at such houses.

Immediate quick results from Such a campaign are hardly to be expected, especially as this was the first time any of the people had come in contact with our Party.

However, we have had one or two instances since the campaign, showing that an impression had been made by our work.

One farmer came up to us and said that our pamphlet was the best thing he had read. He had not bought it himself, but a friend had given it to him—showing how a pamphlet sold will travel about in a village. Then one of the Norfolk Labour Party officials was stopped on the road by a worker who was waving a copy of our pamphlet in his hands and talking enthusiastically about it.

Finally, it seems that in one small village two or three farmers had a little conflab together about our leaflet, and gave their judgment that it was “ nine-tenths correct.” of course they would not agree to say “ ten-tenths correct,” since farmers hate to commit themselves to anything.

During the rest of the summer we are organizing Saturday expeditions into the villages from Norwich and other centres in the Eastern Counties in order to continue the same type of work as was begun in our week’s campaign. In this way we reckon to have over 2,000 copies of our pamphlet circulating in the Eastern Counties by the end of the summer.

This type of work is tremendously important. And with the existing mass discontent in the countryside against the National Government, exacerbated as it has been by Chamberlain’s speech at Kettering, we must drive our work hard into the rural areas, because the basis is there to smash once and for all the Tory grip upon agriculture.

We must build our Party membership and influence in the countryside. But in order to do this the Districts and Branches in the towns must carry on campaigns from the towns into the villages.

Maurice Cornforth

Party Organiser August 1938

END

Propaganda

in Rural Lancashire

Party Organiser October 1938

By C. Carter

“The report by Maurice Cornforth of experiences in the Eastern Counties of England (published in the August 1938 issue of Party organiser) shows us what can be done by a large contingent possessing the equipment for a large campaign. His final paragraph reads:

“ We must build our Party membership and influence in the countryside.

But in order to do this the Districts and Branches in the towns must carry on campaigns from the towns into the villages.”

A short stay in agricultural Lancashire during August convinced me of the truth of this conclusion. Here we had no loudspeaker van, and only the occasional use of a car, which made a door-to-door canvass the only means of approaching the village people.

The Ormskirk division of Lancashire offers a different agricultural problem from the Eastern Counties. There are many market gardeners, rather individualistic in out-look, and the living conditions of the agricultural labourers are somewhat better than in the South. Hence it was necessary to concentrate on a national agricultural policy, and issues of local government.

Obstacles To Propaganda

But the greatest obstacle to propaganda is the lack of political consciousness, aggravated by the past experience of a “ Labour “ M.P. who is now to be found in the (National Labour “ camp.

Led by our Rufford comrade—a woman comrade—our little group, never more than four strong, went about from village to village armed with the “ Country Standard,” (Communist Party Monthly Rural Journal), the Labour Party’s “ Your Britain,” Strachey’s 2d. pamphlet, and the 1d. “ A.R.P.”(Air Raid Precautions)

This varied literature made it possible to approach every sort of house with a lively appeal; for as Maurice Cornforth pointed out, there exist in the larger villages all sorts

of odd-job people for whom an agricultural pamphlet has little personal interest.

And interest was not lacking.

There can usually be found, in village and hamlet alike, sufficient support to form the beginnings of good active groups—but until they are well entrenched in village life they need all the guidance and assistance that our district Parties can offer.

We know that we can interest village folk in political events if the approach is made properly. Our sales results show it.

The Rufford comrade, over a period of months, has sold hundreds of Strachey alone, quite apart from other matter of agricultural interest. For country people who have read Strachey, what is most needed now is real activity to draw them into the open, and the Party ought to make this activity its main task.

On the negative side what was brought home to me was the frequency of replies like this: “ Oh, they’re all the same; they promise anything now, but as soon as they get into Parliament. . . .! “

This attitude arises, apart from their M.P.’s political acrobatics, from the narrowness of Labour’s appeal in the past, and can only be removed once again by continuous activity—as distinct from mere election activity.

And then there is the position of the country woman. We have all met the housewife who treats us like carpet salesmen. This is understandable, but we also received several answers in this style: “ Well, there are no menfolk about, and I’m not concerned with suchlike,” or “ No, I don’t interest myself in politics at all.” This creates a special problem for women’s work in rural areas, and needs very careful consideration in their activity.

But how can we obtain this all-round activity? In Rufford there has been formed a discussion circle, but mass propaganda remains impossible without the aid of our town Branches.

In Lancashire, where the agricultural areas are rarely more than 20 miles from the industrial towns we have unequalled opportunity for this work. Can we make our aim for next year a mass campaign on the lines of the Eastern Counties’ District?

End

In the Country

Rural Notes

Jack Dunman

Party Organiser December 1939

“It is all the old man can do”

This was said of an old age pensioner of 79 years who lives in a Wiltshire village near Salisbury. “ All he can do “ is to deliver, every day, rain or shine, five copies of the Daily Worker which come into the village for the agricultural workers.

We hope we shall be doing as much when we reach that age.

These readers will be meeting together shortly for the first time to hear a statement by Jack Dunman, Hampshire and Dorset District Organiser, and it is confidently expected that a new group of the Party will be the result.

At any rate, the “ Tom Mann of the countryside” has promised to be the first recruit.

Some days ago in a Dorset village 10 miles from any town, a meeting was held to celebrate the 22nd Anniversary of the Revolution, composed of rural workers and their wives.

A statement on the lessons of the Revolution was listened to with great attention, and a decision taken to hold fortnightly meetings in future.

Here also there will be a rural group of the Party in a very short time.

END

Harry Pollitt

Rural Campaign

Meetings 1939

8 July Eastern Counties

9 July Biggleswade

14-15 July South Midlands

16 July Bath

17 July Bristol

Communist Party
Campaigning in Rural Campaign
Summer 1939

Fresh Air, bathing, recreation and campaigning amongst the farm workers and farmers.

25/- one week

Eastern Counties
July - Eccles on Sea - Norfolk
July - Hallesworth - Suffolk
August - Boxford - Suffolk

South Midlands
July - Moulsford - Berkshire

Hampshire & Dorset
July - St Helen's - Isle of Wight (Cyclist only)
August - Kingwood - New Forest
August - Hayling Island
September - Whitwell - Isle of Wight (Cyclist only)



NOTE:

What is intresting in these articles is how much the Communist Party based its campaigning on the early Clarion movement's attempts to spread socialism into rural areas. This would have been based on the experiences of some of those who would have undoubetdly heard, if not participated in those original Clarion "propaganda tours".

The Youth section (Young Labour) of the New Zealand Labour Party used similar tatics in its 12 day "Clarion Road Tour" during the General Election of 2005. During which they carried a12 metre long banner headed “Your future, your call".