I imagine if I had ever gotten around to reading E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, I would have known about the Tolpuddle Martyrs before today, when a friend posted this to Facebook, but alas, I never got around to it:
On this day in 1834, 30,000 marched for the freedom of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, agricultural workers from the Dorset town of Tolpuddle who were transported to Australia as punishment for their trade unionism.
The six were farm laborers who were trying to organize for better working conditions, and the organization they created had a secret oath of allegiance (probably for good reason, given the way the land-owners would have been working against them). The real reason land owners went after them was because they were organizing not just about wages, but about working conditions, which was seen as inherently radical after the French Revolution.
Britain at the time had a law against secret oaths of allegiance, and they were convicted of violating it and shipped off to servitude in Australia, where they had to work the fields of "free settlers" for nothing instead of the pittances they were paid back in England.
But the joke was on the powerful back home, because their supporters collected 800,000 signatures and the organized the first protest march in English history. They were pardoned within a few years and returned from Australia.
There's a monument to them and museum about them in Dorset.
And I knew none of this until today. The world is so big and there's so much to know!
__
On Last Week Tonight earlier this week, John Oliver's main story was about farm labor conditions in the U.S. right this minute. If you didn't see it, this story on the Boston Globe summarizes it and has clips. Same as it ever was, I'm afraid, Tolpuddle martyrs.
No comments:
Post a Comment