RURAL REBELS AT HEART

 

RURAL REBELS AT HEART

From the Peasants’ Revolt to defending local services, there’s a Unite rural member at the heart of it

Slightly longer version of article from Spring 2024 edition of a Unite Landworker article, which is below. 

 

The National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers (NUAW), which lives on as part of Unite, features prominently in the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) online exhibition on The Evolution of English Rural Life that also incorporates earlier rural protests plus Joseph Arch’s National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU) of the 19^th century.

The countryside has always been marked by class struggle. The 1381 Peasants’ Revolt that had numerous causes was triggered by the ruling class attempting to pay for an expensive war in France by collecting unpaid poll taxes.

Brought on by the prospect of starvation, the Captain Swing riots of 1830 across southern and eastern England saw barns set alight and the smashing of threshing machines that had replaced flails, which feature in the exhibition.

Four years later an attempt by landless labourers at Tolpuddle to form a trade union led to persecution and the deportation of six men that in the aftermath resulted in such massive protests that the men were eventually allowed to return home.

And so it goes on. Rural resentment continued to simmer. Labourers needed a voice. That was found in the figure of Joseph Arch, a hedger and ditcher from Bedford whose natural talent for speaking drew enormous crowds. He was able to form NALU in 1872. Within two years 86,000 labourers – around a tenth of the rural workforce - had joined and wages had been improved.

However, when the farmers imposed a lock out and drove conditions back down it forced some of the best militants to seek work overseas and the union collapsed in 1895, by which time Arch had become a Liberal MP.

With poverty causing real countryside hardship the NUAW saw rural workers re-organise. The new union began in 1906 in Norfolk where major strikes broke out in three villages in 1910-11. Pay was upped and a Saturday half-day won. The NUAW’s first banner from 1913 is displayed online.

Victoria Cross

William Holmes had worked closely with George Edwards to establish the NUAW. He became its General Secretary and later told American trade unionists: "In many of our villages, a man who joins a trade union is worthy of the Victoria Cross that's won on a battlefield. In many villages he dare not be known to be a member of the union. But to be a branch secretary! That is to risk one's livelihood every day in the week".

Which brings us to today. We meet three of our own ‘rural rebels.’

It is a belief echoed decades later by NUAW activists in Tony Gould and Barry Leathwood who alongside Chris Kaufmann also subsequently worked for the union and who together in the mid-80s contributed heavily to the book SKILLED AT ALL TRADES – The History of the farmworkers’ union 1947-1984, at which point the NUAW amalgamated with the Transport and General Workers Union (UNITE) that also had its own agricultural sector.

The only voice of dissent

Tony Gould had gone to grammar school but enjoyed working with animals, so began as a general farm boy before progressing  to becoming a pig herd manager. He was 28 when, unimpressed by the inequalities he witnessed on a large Cornwall estate, he joined the NUAW as they “were the only voice of dissent… I saw farmworkers who lived blameless lives, yet they were very poor”.

As a Labour Party member, Gould was unimpressed by farmers that went around talking about honesty but who were engaging in tax evasive activities.

He knew the NUAW were represented on the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) and would stick up for them if they were sacked and being forced to leave the tied accommodation which came with their job. Around two-thirds of Gould’s fellow workers on a relatively large farm were NUAW members but which, nevertheless, the employer refused to recognise.

His employer, who three months earlier had told him that  his job and trade union activities were incompatible, showed Tony no mercy and sacked him. Fortunately, the NUAW then stepped in with a favourable grant to allow him to study at Ruskin College, Oxford. Just before completing his degree, he became the Kent NUAW District Officer in June 1975. He remained a union official for 30 years and even today is active as the branch secretary of the Tolpuddle Unite branch.

“I was delighted to represent farm and rural workers. One of the major struggles was opposing tied cottages that led to numerous cases of workers who’d lost their jobs, often for no real reason, who were then summarily evicted from their homes. We’d try, occasionally successfully, to stop this by mounting immediate protests, which generally attracted press coverage, or by helping find new accommodation.

“But it also required political action. Thanks, in a large part to the tireless, heroic efforts of Joan Maynard, helped by the fact she subsequently became an MP in 1974. She was from a rural background. We managed to see past the Rent (Agricultural) Act 1977 that meant from then on workers in tied cottages assumed the status of “protected occupants”.

This meant that those in tied cottages had security of tenure until they were re-housed by the local council.

Like Tony, Barry Leathwood was delighted by the passing of the 1977 Act, especially “as it was something the NUAW campaigned for over many decades”.

Leathwood was born on a farm and thrust as a youngster into helping out his dad, a Cheshire NUAW district official, collect members subs by cycling round to local farms. Even after he qualified as a mechanical engineer and became active within the AEU, Barry, with help from his wife Ann, retained his involvement by assisting NUAW members after his father suffered a heart attack.

In October 1973 Barry became the NUAW District Officer in Somerset which had a few large farms that included one large mushroom farm of 1,200 employees. “This meant we could create a traditional bargaining unit of shop stewards and win wages and conditions way above the norm across the industry. It was the forerunner to the TGWU and Unite being able to organise within poultry processing plants”.

Barry was also able to recruit farm workers aware that their bosses would never give them a pay rise except for the AWB’s existence. “And they knew too that the NUAW had managed to establish pay increases for craft workers of 15% plus through the board.

“Later on, when the Tories sought to abolish the board in the 90s a successful campaign by our members forced them to back down”.

Barry subsequently became lead negotiator at the Forestry Commission where he came up against a number of managers who were ex-military. “They sought to treat workers as raw recruits but found themselves on a long learning curve. We had a lot of good able people as members and achieved decent pay, welfare and health and safety conditions”.

 

People’s ban

One highly successful health and safety struggle that won international support was led by Chris Kaufmann, who worked for the NUAW from 1974 onwards and became Landworker editor in 1980.

Employed in industrial agriculture when it was sprayed on fields to kill weeds, the herbicide 245-T, which contained dioxin, was known to be unsafe after it was used by the US military in Vietnam.

“We had many members complaining of the effects of 245-T. We took up their concerns vigorously and discovered we had support worldwide.

We sought to get the product officially banned. Although we did not get that agreed by Parliament here or in New Zealand, where the last factory manufacturing the product was based, the issue had become so toxic that everyone had stopped buying it. It was a People’s Ban and it became uneconomic to manufacture”.

Another successful NUAW safety campaign led to it being compulsory for tractor cabs to contain a heavy bar on the roof to prevent them tipping over.

“Dozens of workers, including farmers, who initially had a remit to ignore the new regulations, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of many of them, owe their lives to the NUAW, who, once again, campaigned for decades, “ explains Chris who also referenced how the establishment of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority in 2004 was a body  that the NUAW had sought as long ago as the 1930s.

All three men also believe the NUAW was key to keeping alive rural services by joining with others, including the Women’s Institute, in defending local bus services, post offices, GP surgeries and village halls. Landworker magazine gave members a means of highlighting rural issues in general.

“NUAW activists also got elected to local Parish Councils where they’d campaign to retain rural schools. They’d try to hold the line,” states Chris.

“Many NUAW members were brave to stand up for their rights and those of their fellow workers. They should be remembered,” states Tony Gould.

By joining in 1983 with the TGWU, NUAW members combined with TWGU agricultural workers in a new NISC trade group, obtained greater access to legal support and TGWU sponsored MPs and were able to call on drivers in the TGWU not to cross picket lines when there was a dispute on.

Today, our ‘rural rebels’ are happy to keep a watching brief and advise the rest of us when asked.