Agricultural Workers in UK 1955

Black colouring denotes area with over 4 agricultural workers per 100 acres

Sussex, Kent, Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire Norfolk, Lincolnshire

The Harvest of 1919 - Agricutural Labourers

HARVEST OF 1919 IN PERIL

The Daily Graphic 29th January 1919

DEMOBILISATION  OF  AGRICULTURAL

LABOURERS TO BE SPEEDED UP
 
In consequence of the critical situation agriculture during the next few months, owing lately to the abnormal rainfall, it has been decided to give priority to agricultural labourers in demobilisation.                         .
 
For the same reason the Government intends to continue to employ the soldiers now in agricultural companies and the German prisoners on the land until there are a sufficient number of skilled civilians to take their places.
         
Unless the crops are put in within a few weeks the harvest of 1919 will be short.   During the war, farmers in England and Wales have lost more than a third of their skilled men, the number before the war being 717,000, as compared with 431,000 at the present time.

The deficiency, however, has been reduced to the extent of 100,000 by the employment of soldiers and prisoners of war.  

But in this connection it must be borne in mind  that there are now 1,600,000 more acres under cultivation now than there were before the war


Pictures German POW's working on the land at Hainault, Essex circa 1917

 

Discharged WW1 soldiers working the land Cheshire

WW1Woman land worker harrowing Cornwall with horses

Wiltshire County National Union of Agricultural Workers - Banner

Devon County National Union of Agricultural Workers - Banner

Shropshire National Union of Agriculural Workers - Banner

The Other Chipping Norton Set - "Chippy" Comrades

The "Other" Chipping Norton Set


Much has been made in the national media recently of the so called "Chipping Norton Set" which include among others Tory Millionaire Prime Minister David Cameron and former News of the World Editor, Rebekah Brooks.

But Chipping Norton or "Chippy" as it is known by locals also has a long radical history.

Bliss Tweed Mill Strike 1913

In November 1913 workers from Bliss Tweed Mill, Chipping Norton members of the "Workers Union" came out on strike for improved wages and union recognition.
Julia Varley

The mainly female workforce was led by Miss Julia Varley, Workers Union Organiser. Varley was a former Bradford mill worker. At sixteen she joined the Weavers’ and Textile Workers’ Union and became branch secretary at just 16. Her first experience of industrial conflict came during the Manningham Mills strike in 1890/91. Later she helped to organise the historic strike of women chain-makers at Cradley Heath (near Halesowen) in 1910 . She became a Workers union organiser in 1913. (picture below of Julia Varley as a Suffregette prisoner).



During the Bliss Tweed Mill strike the women met at the Fox Hotel.

The workers organised a number of marches, the banner at the front of this strikers march in Chipping Norton (picture above) reads "We fight for Liberty, Down with oppression.

The seven month strike at Bliss Tweed Mill was particularly bitter, with the majority of the town supporting the striking women, while a minority (mainly upper class residents) supported the strike breakers.

A number of members of the strike committee were jailed at Oxford and included at least one women.

A trade union branch at the Mill was finally established in 1945.

The Bliss Tweed Mill closed in 1980.

Even today. Chipping Norton has a strong radical thread, illustrated by the re election of Labour's Eve Coles at the head of the poll at the recent Council and District election's




Additional info and photo Charlie Pottins

Lib Dems 'betray' our rural workers

Lib Dems

'betray'

our

rural workers

Tuesday 09 November 2010

by Roger Bagley in Parliament
Morning Star

Rural workers' union Unite accused treacherous Lib Dems today of plunging more people into poverty by aiding the Tories' "dogma driven destruction" of the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB).

The AWB, which since 1923 has provided a degree of protection for the pay and conditions of hundreds of thousands of rural workers, was one of the shock casualties of the government's "bonfire of the quangos."

Unite national officer Ian Waddell said: "This policy is a betrayal of rural workers and a deception of the communities in which they live."

He added: "Abolition of the wages board was not in the coalition agreement.

"The Lib Dems did not stand for election on this, but they are helping implement a Conservative plan to break the wages of rural workers."

Labour MP Paul Flynn accused the "Tea-Party wing" of the Con-Dem government of setting out to demolish a whole list of quangos out of "political spite and malice."

Mr Flynn spoke out at a session of the Commons public administration committee after trade union leaders had complained to MPs about insulting comments from government ministers and an almost total lack of consultation on quango closures.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles regularly delights in making derisive comments, describing workers at these non-departmental public bodies as "form fillers and pen pushers."

Civil Service union Prospect deputy general secretary Dai Hudd also complained to the committee that junior Communities Minister Bob Neill had accused workers of "taking the taxpayer for a ride" and "living it up at taxpayers' expense."

Warning of the high financial cost of quango closures, Mr Hudd said abolition of the Audit Commission would save £50 million, but costs of redundancy and other resulting costs would probably be £200m.

He added that as many as 4,000 Prospect members faced losing their jobs as a result of quango closures.

Public service union PCS director of bargaining Geoff Lewtas said that thousands of his members also faced the axe, although it was difficult to give a precise figure since some workers would be transferred to other departments, which also faced big job cuts.

To implement its massacre of the quangos, the government is rushing the Public Bodies Bill through Parliament.

Ministers hoped it would receive its second reading in the Lords last night, despite some opposition.

Middlesex Agricultural Workers Union Banner

Banner of Surrey & Middlesex Agricultural Workers Union

Surrey & Sussex banner at Tolpuddle 2009

Soviet Union Agricultural Workers 1956

Fred James - Dorset

Fred James

Fred C James of Dorchester, was born the son of a Dorset Shepherd

A member of the Salvation Army, worked as a foreman in a Coal yard

In 1917 he helped establish a Dorchester branch of the agricultural workers union and became first branch secretary

Helped organise some of the first Tolpuddle celebrations

Dorchester councillor
Fred James was twice Mayor of Dorchester
and a Dorset County Councillor

victimised as a result of his trade union activities

30 years Dorset National Union of Agricultural Workers (NAWU) District Organiser (prior to Arthur Jordan who was appointed in 1945)

Credited with organising (along with Mr A. Hawkins) the 1934 TUC Centenary Commemoration pageant in Dorchester on Saturday 1st September 1934 of village life over the previous 100 years

The pageant composed of 23 tableaux, including the formation of the Grand Lodge at Tolpuddle in 1833-34, The formation by Joseph Arch of the National Agricultural Labourers Union(1872), The rise of the National Union of Agricultural Workers (1906), and a glimpse of the work of the Agricultural wages Committee, and other aspects of trade union service and modern aspects of working class life in the rural area

Bill Holmes - Norfolk

William "Bill" Holmes

Born into a family stepped in radical tradition

Bill Holmes grandfather was the only man in his village to read, and he read Cobbetts Political Register in the village Inn.

Norwich was a Chartist stronghold and his Grandfather was jailed for his Chartist beliefs

His farther was active in organising workers into unions and was a member of the "Cordwainers Union" (shoemakers & cobblers union)

Started work aged 10 at Colemans Mustard factory in Norwich

Many of the workers at Colemans Mustard factory where former members of Joseph Archs "National Union" and according to Holmes "it was them who got me to join a union"

He joined the Norfolk & Norwich Amalgamated Union established in 1890, which was then 1,000 strong

On the collapse of the "Amalgamated" He later in 1904 became branch Secretary of a local branch of Gas & General Labourers Union, but despite his best efforts they refused to organise agricultural labourers

Active in Norwich Social Democratic Federation

Independent Labour Party (later Labour Party) organiser for Norwich at 25s a week

Elected councillor for Coslany ward on Norwich Council in 1905


Was Labour candidate for East Norfolk in 1929 and 1931 (The later when nearly sixty)


From 1911 Executive member of the National Agricultural & Rural workers Union and President from 1923-1928

General Secretary 1928 until he retired in 1944

William Codling - Norfolk

William G Codling

Of Briston, Norfolk

Around 1907 William Codling was appointed "Walking delegete" organiser at 2s a day for the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers & Small Holders Union established in 1906 (later National Union of Agricltural labourers & rural Workers Union)

Parish and District Councillor

Lost job as a farm worker because he became a councillor

later full time organiser for the National Union of Agricltural Labourers & Rural Workers Union

James "Jim" Coe - Norfolk

James "Jim" Coe

Born Castle Acre, Norfolk

His father was involved in "The National" Josephs Arch original union

began work aged 11 as a "crow starvin", at nineteen he became a cater

Joined the union in 1906 when George Edwards of the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers Union when he spoke in the Castle Acre village

became the Unions first organiser for the National Agricultural labourers & Rural workers Union in 1910

parish and district Councillor

Primitive Methodist

"Jim is of middle height, looks shrewdly at you out of blue grey eyes, that are never short of a twinkle and he has a way of pushing his hat back on his head and taking a few puffs of his pipe before giving his opinion"
James Coelived all his life in Castle Acre, born in a red brick house, which once housed the National school

1901 census states he was aged 15 in 1901 and a cattle man

Walter Smith - Norfolk

Walter Robert Smith

Born Norwich in 1872

He was a printers boy at the age of 12, and thereafter an apprentice to the "clicking" in a boot factory

Smith served from 1916-1924 as national organiser in the Boot & Shoe Operative Union which

also held office in the National Federation of Women Workers (Branch Hon Secretary) and Typographical union

President of Norwich Trades Council

President of the National Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers Union 1911-1923, formally Eastern Counties Agricultural & Small holders Union established, North Walsham, July 1906


Elected as a "Socialist & trade unionist" candidate to Norwich City Council` in 1906


Election agent to Mr G.H. Roberts (Norwich) "So long as Mr Roberts was a Labour man, Mr smith put him in;at the last election he put him out"


Labour Member of Parliament for Wellingborough from 1918 to 1922
and Norwich for 1923 and 1929-1931

Labour Spokesman on Agricultural affairs

Chair Labour Party 1933-1934

President of the International Land Workers Union from 1920

died 1942

DORSET NUAW BANNER 1955

Dorset National Union of Agricultural Workers Banner 1955

The “New and striking banner” of the Dorset NUAW was unveiled during luncheon, by Harold Collinson General Secretary of the NUAW at the Dorsett conference of the NUAW held in Poole on Saturday 29^th October 1955

The banner cost over £100, the sum being donated by members in Dorset

Dorset NUAW banner was designed by Mr E. Brooks and was considered to be revolutionary in design“ and a “departure from traditional trade union banner” (according to the Dorset County Chronicle)

The design has two figurers depicting a farm labourer of the period of the Tolpuddle martyrs in shackles and a hand sickle and a modern farm worker spanner in hand stepping forward with his modern tractor in the background

The figurers were to intended in portraying both the social and technical progress of the farming industry

Its determination to continue the struggle for better conditions is conveyed by a quotation from the letter of one of the Tolpuddle martyrs…..”We will be free…”

Mr Harold Collinson said the banner was “a symbol of the union determination to march forwards”

Mr Brooks who designed the banner was unable to attend due to illness

Dorset NUAW

120 delegates

4,200 members (460 new member in 1955)

104 branches

Arthur Jordan - Dorset County Organiser

Jesse Waterman - County Chairman

The conference went onto to pass a resolution calling for Land nationalisation, £7 a week minimum wage and a 44hr week

Mr E Brooks could not attend due to illness

below old banner

Jack Boddy MP

HE NATIONAL Union of Agricultural Workers found some of its leaders in Norfolk - Alderman Edwin Gooch was President from 1928 to 1967, and Bert Hazell from 1966 to 1978 - and, like Gooch, later MP for the same constituency of North Norfolk. But, by the late 1970s, the NUAW (now the NUAAW) had dwindling membership and had got into deep financial difficulty, from which it was rescued by another Norfolk man, Jack Boddy. Jack Jones, former General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, says:

Jack Boddy, with progressive ideas, realised that, in order to become an effective force representing agricultural workers, the rural poor and their families, his members would benefit themselves by becoming the rural and agricultural section of the Transport and General Workers' Union. He proved a good and progressive comrade after the merger, which he handled extremely well in view of the resistance in certain reactionary areas.

Boddy was born into a Quaker family; his mother, Lucy, was one of the first left-wing women to be made a Justice of the Peace. Leaving City of Norwich School, to the distress of his teachers, who saw wasted talent, to work on a farm as a cowman, he became a farm foreman at 21 and was chosen at 31 for the key position of NUAW Lincolnshire District Organiser in 1953. He returned to Norfolk in 1960 as District Secretary.

Gillian Shephard, later to be John Major's Secretary of State for Education, was Boddy's contemporary as a Norfolk county councillor and knew his work in her capacity then as an inspector of schools in Norfolk:
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For 40 years Jack was a champion of children in rural schools having equal chances. He was a giant of a man in the old tradition of the NUAW. We were extremely personally close. Until weeks before his death he took a keen interest in public affairs and I sent him Hansards of the debates on gangmasters and Jim Sheridan's Bill going through the House of Commons. Jack was about public service.

In 1978, Boddy emerged victorious in a closely contested election to be General Secretary of the NUAW against Ross Pierson and three other candidates: Arthur Leary, Len Pike and Jim Watts. The authoritarian right lost control for the first time. As leader of the workers' side of the Agricultural Wages Board, Boddy realised more muscle was needed, so he battled within the union and got his way to link up with the TGWU. He had been a valued member of the General Council of the TUC from 1978 to 1983.

The last time I telephoned, tearfully he told me that he had allowed his Labour Party membership of more than 60 years to lapse. The television pictures of the bombing of Baghdad were more than he could take:

My Quaker Mum and Dad, members of the party from its earliest days, would be revolving in their graves at the behaviour of the Labour government.

Jack Boddy was wonderfully supported by his wife, Merle, like him a former Mayor of Swaffham, who died in 1987, and then by Merle's best friend, the widowed Joan Laws, whom he had first known in Lincolnshire days and who had been the head of a home for delinquent children in Essex, and who was to nurse Jack throughout his final illness.

Shortly before Christmas, the Mayor of Swaffham, Ian Sherwood, went to Boddy's home to confer honorary citizenship of Norwich, to add to his cherished Freedom of the City.

Jack Richard Boddy, trade unionist: born Norwich 23 August 1922; MBE 1973; General Secretary, National Union of Agricultural Workers 1978-82; Group Secretary, Agricultural and Allied Workers Trade Group, Transport and General Workers' Union 1982-87; married 1943 Merle Webb (died 1987; three sons, one daughter), 1990 Joan Laws (nee Britton); died Swaffham, Norfolk 9 March 2004.

Edwin Gooch MP - Norfolk

Edwin George Gooch 15th January 1889 – 2 August 1964.

born in Wymondham, Norfolk

County Alderman
In 1935 Wymondham Urban District Council was created. Edwin Gooch became the first Chairman of the new UDC and held the office for most of the period up to 1946. His wife, Ethel Gooch, became the council's first lady member in 1935 and its first lady Chairman in 1951.

Elected President of the National Union of Agricultural Workers in 1928 to 1967

At the 1931 general election, he was an unsuccessful candidate in the Conservative-held South Norfolk constituency.

Gooch did not contest the 1935 general election, but at the 1945 general election, he was elected as Member of Parliament for North Norfolk, He held the seat until his death shortly before the 1964 general election.

He was chairman of the Labour Party's NEC from 1955 to 1956

The Country Standard of Autumn 1964 stated

Death of Edwin Gooch

Generous tributes have appeared to the memory of the man who was the N.U.A.W. President; the first farm workers' M.P., in the modern age; Chairman of the
Labour Party and one who throughout his long life was in close and intimate touch with the workers he represented in so many ways.

There is no need to add to these in the "Country Standard" which in any case is of necessity very late with its appreciation.

We recall how in the very early days of this paper,before even the very first number had appeared, the Editor to be, who is the Editor still, went to get the
advice of Edwin Gooch and, if it might be, his blessing.

He got both and will never forget the friendly reception he received from Edwin and his first wife; followed by articles in the early days of the paper.

Brother Gooch must have violently disagreed with us on many occasions since; I hardly suppose he expected anything else for he was not a man who stood out conspicuously on the side of the Left any more than he committed himself to the right.

But I like to think, and I do believe, that he never regretted the existence of the paper to which he had been so generous in its beginning.

Jack Dunman County Standard Autumn 1964

Joan Maynard MP

Joan Maynard MP

Vera Joan Maynard known as Joan Maynard 5th July 1921 - 27 March 1998.

Dubbed "Stalin's Granny" due to her left-wing views, Maynard was a leading activist in the National Union of Agricultural Workers becoming vice-president of the union and being narrowly beaten to its presidency.

Regular contributor to Country Standard

She joined the Labour Party in 1946 and served as a councillor on North Yorkshire County Council and on the Labour Party NEC 1972-82, 1983-87.

Having acted as Labour agent in Thirsk, North Yorkshire Maynard was elected in 1974 as MP for Sheffield Brightside and held the seat until 1987. Throughout her political career Maynard advocated policies on the left of the Labour Party and chaired the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group.

She served with distinction on the Agriculture Select Committee. Maynard died in Sowerby, North Yorkshire on 27th March 1998

Vera Joan Maynard known as Joan Maynard 5th July 1921 - 27 March 1998.

Dubbed "Stalin's Granny" due to her left-wing views, Maynard was a leading activist in the National Union of Agricultural Workers becoming vice-president of the union and being narrowly beaten to its presidency.

Regular contributor to Country Standard

She joined the Labour Party in 1946 and served as a councillor on North Yorkshire County Council and on the Labour Party NEC 1972-82, 1983-87.

Having acted as Labour agent in Thirsk, North Yorkshire Maynard was elected in 1974 as MP for Sheffield Brightside and held the seat until 1987. Throughout her political career Maynard advocated policies on the left of the Labour Party and chaired the left-wing Socialist Campaign Group.

She served with distinction on the Agriculture Select Committee. Maynard died in Sowerby, North Yorkshire on 27th March 1998

Ruth Uzzell - Oxfordshire

First Women Labour Councillor – Oxford

Ruth Uzzell was one of the many gifted working-class women who found in the Labour Movement a way to Ruth Uzzell was a Warwickshire woman

She joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1903, together with her husband she was prominent in the Labour and Co-operative Movements in Oxfordshire ;

Ruth Uzzell was the first woman to be elected to the Oxford City Council. Yet the cause of the farm workers was dearest and nearest to her, both her father and grand-father had been members of Joseph Arch's, National Agricultural Labourers Union formed in 1872

When a young girl she had worked as a servant in a farm house ; and her first meeting with George Edwards she afterwards spoke of as a red-letter day in her life.

Ruth Uzzell became a National Union of Agricultural Workers branch secretary, district and county committee secretary as well as a union National Executive Committee member for twenty-two years (1933-1945),

Her lively speeches were welcomed on Labour Party and N.U.A.W. platforms all over England and Wales. Ill health caused her to stand down from the union executive committee in 1945 and that same year she died, mourned by Labour folk all over the country,

Ruth Uzell was selfless and unswerving service to their class.

Source: Reg Groves: Sharpen the Sickle, the history of the Farm Workers Union

George Edwards MP - Norfolk

George Edwards MP

George Edwards was born 5th October 1850 in Marsham Norfolk, the son of a Crimea War solider who had later become a Norfolk farm labourer,

The man had a wife and seven children to keep, and, as he had fought in one of his country's wars and had had spoken up for the “half-starved unemployed of Marsham”, he was refused work and deemed by the farmers " inefficient," and when he did secure work his wages were just 7s. a week.

His father forced through hunger and grinding poverty, had been caught in the act of carrying away five turnips from a field.

Thomas Edwards was fined 5s. and sacked. He and his family had to go into the workhouse, and "it was from within its walls that little George Edwards was born 1850" according to one account or another account has him born in a two room red brick cottage in the village

Aged five he was forced to work in the fields to scare the crows for a shilling a week. There were no Sundays in those weeks, and the hours were from sunrise to sunset.

He became an active lay preacher for the local Primitive Church

If the child was caught sleeping at the post of duty, he was thrashed and fined. These were the beginnings of the man who, when earlier movements had died down, made Trade Unionism again a power among the rural workers,

He never went to school, and did not learn to read and write until he was taught by the devoted wife Charlotte Corke, who he married in 1872.

As a farm labourer George Edwards knew the bitterness of poverty and oppression, in 1872 he had joined Joseph Arch’s National Agricultural Labourers Union in 1872 Union and was victimized for doing so.

Again in 1889, he was approached to become the secretary of a new union the Federal Union, Cromer District, later known as the Norfolk & Norwich Agricultural Labourers Union. Despite his strenuous work, this union, like many others of the kind, went under in 1896.

Ten years later, on the labourers again asking him to lead them, he founded the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers Union, later the National Agricultural Workers' Union (now part of the TGWU).

The Provisional Committee included George Nicholls MP (President) Councillor W.B. Harris (Vice President) Richard Winfrey MP (treasurer) and George Edwards (General Secretary). The other Committee members were J. Binder, J.Savage, W.G. Codling, Herbert Day, J. Bly, C. Holman and J. Stibbins

Throwing all his energies into the work," he cycled 6,000 miles in the first year to obtain members, and enrolled by his own efforts 3,000 men. His salary was 13s. a week, and after the first year 23s. and expenses. On resigning the secretaryship in 1913, he was made a life member of the executive.

Tom Higdon a village school teacher (later made famous as School master at Burston) recalled attending a meeting at which Edwards spoke in 1907 (then nearly sixty) in the Plough public house, Wood Dalling

“He was a little man…. His chin clean shaven, leaving a line of thin whiskers round his neck. He had a bit of a boyish moustache, though his original and interesting face bore many and deep traces of the hardships he had undergone all his life, while his frail bent form told the same tale”

Higdon not only joined the union but become the local branch secretary,

Since early manhood he has been a Primitive Methodist Lay Preacher. He was elected as a Liberal Councillor to Norfolk County Council in 1906, and to the local Poor Law Guardian, a County Council Alderman from 1918 and a Magistrate from 1914. His First world war work on committees won him an O.B.E

George Edwards first contested the Parliamentary seat of Norfolk South in 1918 as a Labour candidate, and was then elected as Member of Parliament for Norfolk South in 1922 he had to borrow a suit (from his Tory opponent) to enter the House, he lost the seat in 1923 but regained the seat in 1924. His election agent being Edwin Gooch later NAWU President.

He oversaw the great Norfolk Agricultural workers strike of April 1923, which at its peak saw 10,000 men on strike. The strike headquarters being at Kier Hardie Hall, Norwich.

George Edwards was Knighted in 1930

His autobiography written in 1922 , " From Crow-Scaring to Westminster," is a human and social document of real importance.

When he died aged 83 on 6^th December 1933, large crowds lined the route of his precession to the grave