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A POWERFUL STORY WAITING TO BE HOLD
Streetlife Museum, Hull
UniteLANDWORKER Winter 2023/24
More museums (*) are reaching out to the Gypsy Roma
and Traveller community to record their distinctive lives to help their
visitors and the general public at large to understand how these ethnic groups have contributed to British society –
and rural communities particularly - for centuries.
The
historical, economic and cultural contribution of Britain's 300,000 Gypsies and
Travellers is slowly becoming recognised.
When Robin
Diaper, whose work as the Curator of Maritime & Social History at Hull
Museums and Gallery involves overseeing, amongst other sites, the Streetlife
Museum of Transport became aware there were stories about the history of the
gypsy and traveller community in the city and its surrounding areas he sought
help.
“During
COVID we tried doing things remotely. There was man called John Cunningham
in the Hull Pals Battalion who had earned a Victoria Cross for his bravery
during WWI. He was a Romany gypsy. I had seen that Violet Cannon at York
Travellers Trust (YTT) had written a blog on him but as she was having a baby
at the time, she was unable to write a panel on him for the Wilberforce Museum,
which is next door”, explains Diaper, who then was able to get in touch with
Cunningham’s great nephew Charles Newland who was good enough to provide all
the necessary information for a permanent display of a powerful story that was
just waiting to be told.
“That was
great and as we had pockets of unused space at Streetlife and understood that
perhaps we were not covering the heritage of the gypsy and traveller (G&T)
community we asked Violet if she would be willing to help us develop this and
to facilitate contact with communities too,” said Diaper. “What we wanted to do
was make a permanent addition and a meaningful change”.
YTT chief
executive Cannon, who is a Romany Gypsy who spent her childhood roadside at a
time when land was not as scarce as today and legislation, which eventually
forced her family to move into a house, was less restrictive, was inspired by
what she heard to get involved.
“I felt it
would recognise the permanency of Gypsy and Travellers families in Hull where
many families have strong links to York. I have worked in the voluntary sector
from an early age and I am keen to remove the obstacles that I faced for future
generations of my community,” many of whom are no longer travelling round the
country.
Asked to
describe the situation facing today’s G&T community, Cannon said recent
research by Birmingham University exploring Islamophobia and prejudice against
Muslims found that it was exceeded by negative perceptions towards G&T.
Cannon
facilitated workshops with members of the G&T community who decided what
items would go on display to represent them. This includes a life-sized model
of a piebald horse, information boards on diverse subjects and lots of
photographs, many taken by George Norris who is strongly linked with G&T.
 |
In a similar
fashion to the total absence of agricultural workers in paintings from the past
this is a silent testament to a race of people that have lived here for
centuries but who have been largely drowned by deafening silence.
Cannon hopes
the exhibition will be attended by “gypsy and travellers who will feel valued
to see their culture represented. I hope that other communities attend and
learn something new, or at least open their minds a little”.
Diaper has
been heartened that Gypsies and Travellers have visited Streetlife to view the
displays on their culture and social history and “when we did a small opening
there was a couple of families who were passing through locally who came along
and expressed their pleasure afterwards.”
He is
hopeful of developing more exhibition projects with G&T. “Now that we have
gained a bit of trust, we have already had some initial interest and we have
some spaces that could accommodate temporary works.”
Diaper has
also had visitors to Streetlife, which is ostensibly a transport museum, express
their pleasure at seeing the G&T community represented.
Visitor Ian
Atherton felt it was “only right that G&T are represented in a Hull
Museum. If you want to know the true history of a place then every part has to
be represented and my dad worked as a scrap man with many gypsies.”
Atherton,
who has regularly visited Appleby Horse Fair, believes much of the negative
perceptions towards G&T are “generated by the media because once people mix
with one another they soon get along well enough.”
The
Streetlife Museum of Transport is home to over 200 years of transport history
spread across six galleries.
Situated
within Hull’s Museums Quarter, the Streetlife Museum of Transport neighbours
both Wilberforce House and the Hull & East Riding Museum which are also
free to enter.
In recent
times the Wilberforce Museum has been working with the local Black Community to
develop new galleries looking at the legacies of transatlantic slavery. A
temporary exhibition Uncovering Modern Slavery has just opened.
· * In 2022, Landworker revealed how Worcestershire
County Museum (WCM) at Hartlebury Castle was transforming the experiences of
visitors to its beautiful Gypsy Roma and Traveller (GRT) Vardo (the Romany word
for a horse drawn gypsy caravan) collection. This followed the appointment of Vardo Project Officer of Georgie
Stevens, part Romany herself.
Members of
the Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller community are featured in many of the
photographs in the Gordon Shennan collection at Inverness Museum and Art
Gallery. Many museums held special events during June which is Gypsy, Roma, and
Traveller History Month. The historical, economic and cultural contribution of
Britain's 300,000 Gypsies and Travellers is slowly becoming recognised.
Milking
It
Just as
environmental subsidies are allowing money to grow on trees for big companies
who are buying up large amounts of land for carbon trading projects then so too
are our public funds being misused in a case of missing cows helping to boost
supermarket profits.
From the
towns where you buy your packaged milk from the supermarket, you will not have
noticed the radical changes in the fields that are taking place to provide that
carton.
Yet if you
are lucky enough to have the time to roam round the countryside, you will not
see many cows grazing anymore. There are being replaced by black plastic bags
stuffed with grass cuttings ready for storage nearer the farm for use as feed
for cattle, whose pats are washed out and collected in slurry tanks, all ready
to be transported by road to the fields.
Locked
away
The cattle
still exist and many farms now house several thousand cows - or beef cattle.
They are out of sight in big barns. They stay indoors throughout the year as
the drag of taking them out to fields and bringing them back, twice a day in
all sorts of weathers, is several steps too far for most producers these
days. Quite simply that is ‘inefficient’ in terms of energy and time consumed. The
cattle are there 24 hours a day in sparse conditions. While we rightly hear
about chickens indoors, we hear much less about these cattle, yet they are
sentient creatures.
So, the
animals stay indoors, in the dry, and eat mainly grass from the fields. But
they also eat a lot of ‘concentrate’. This is usually soy beans, £800million annually
imported from Brazil, and maize (about the same amount in money) mainly
imported from USA. The tax/tariff on this maize has been removed by this
government in June this year, only the second tariff change since Brexit, in
order to keep feed prices low.
The change
from field to factory production has gone on in the last 5-10 years out of
sight and with few controls on conditions.
Banks and
supermarket pressures
Banks have shoved
dairy farmers, caught by supermarkets pushing them to produce milk ever
cheaper, into major investment. They need massive tractors and mowers to cut
the grass as quickly as possible, often 4 times a year, and then shift the cuttings
into silage bags. Farmers also need slurry tanks to hold the waste washed from
the barns plus slurry tankers to cart the stuff to deposit on the fields, often
along busy roads at high speed. They also need to improve their own
infrastructure to carry this frequently used heavyweight. No wonder 1 in
20 dairy farmers went to the (albeit dry stone) wall last year.
Diary
workers quit over working conditions
Many dairy
workers have been replaced by ever more accurate machines to feed, precisely
measured amounts, and to milk and measure the production of the beasts. There
are not now enough dairy workers. A survey for ‘The Cattle Site’ found
that four fifths of all respondents were worried by staff recruitment with almost
a third considering leaving the industry due to a lack of dairy labour. 28%
reported staff were leaving due to unsociable working hours. It may also have
something to do with working inside all day. Clearly, they need a union.
River
damage to be paid for by the public purse
The environmental
impacts of these changes are poorly understood, as they are poorly studied. One
big issue are excessive phosphates going into rivers, causing ‘nutrient growth’
of algae taking oxygen and thus killing other river life. Half comes from yards
and half from fields. The slurry is rich in phosphates which are not held in
the ground well, and so washes off. It may also be that the slurry soil
works more anaerobically, so not as efficient as old-fashioned aerobic cow manure
in holding the phosphate. But I cannot find any UK Land based research looking
into this issue.
The
government announced in August this year - as part of unlocking the old EU’s
‘nutrient neutrality’ law- that £280m is going to be invested directly to
rivers to improve slurry damage with 4000 farm inspections being carried out by
50 new inspectors. There is also a £25m innovative research programme to
improve nutrient (phosphate) holding in soil. Are the supermarkets going
to fund these government costs, rather than coming out of taxpayer’s money, to
make up for their cheap milk policy?
The really big environmental issue concerns global warming.
Cows are often blamed for their methane burps, yet the cow contribution to this
major problem is much more complex. Cows in fields burp across the grass, where
chemicals called ‘hydroxyl radicals’ (charged OH molecules), produced in
sunlight by water on grass, break the methane up into less harmful water and
carbon dioxide.
In the barns there are no radicals keeping things the
methane down. Also, there are all those imported feed concentrates - £1.5
billion in imports from land that would be better left for trees or ranching.
The two dairy footprints - one from grazing and the other from barns are wildly
different. Our food carbon footprint makes its impression all over the world,
when we could be using our grass better.
New approach needed
Imagine if we used the £1.5b worth of cattle feed going to
people abroad to regenerate our soils, move the cows more easily, pay dairy
workers living wages, and utilise our land to grow grass without polluting the
rivers. And we’d have cows back in the fields to show off our countryside.
Ex-PM Johnson promised in June 2016 at Gisburn market that
the existing farming subsidies would stay. He lied. They are going. Dairy farms
will be hit by the losses. Yet new
‘environmentally friendly’ farm subsidies are doing little to address the
environmental issues of barn-bred cattle. Much money is going to consultants on
unworkable schemes to attract inward investors, rather than the farmers
themselves. 2,000 farmers signed up to the sustainable
farming incentive (SFI) scheme. By
August this year, it had paid out £10,692,415– less than 0.5% of the overall
£2.4bn farming budget.
Following the unveiling of a statue by Belfast City Council
to former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Unite in Ireland wants his
legacy and those of other enslaved persons such as Oloudah Equiano, born in
Nigeria, to inspire today’s trade union movement.
Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland around 1818. He
worked on a plantation. When he was sent to live in Baltimore as a house slave
his mistress, not knowing it was illegal to educate slaves began teaching him
to read. When though the slave master ended this the experience, Douglass continued
his education by swapping food scraps to poor white children in exchange of
knowledge.
At 18, Douglas was reading about the abolitionist movement.
In 1838 he escaped, using faked papers, to New Bedford, Mass. In 1841 he gave
his first anti-slavery oration speaking boldly and honestly about life as a
slave and the traumas it leaves behind. He thereafter became a national leader
of the abolitionist movement.
Chattel slavery was to be outlawed on 6 December 1865.
Douglass, who wrote three autobiographies, died in 1895. Six years earlier he
became the United States ambassador to Haiti where slaves, on what was then
known as Saint-Domingue, waged between 1791-1804 the first successful
revolution under the leadership of former slave and first black general
Toussaint Louverture and by defeating Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces achieved
freedom.
August 23rd is the International Day for
Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition which Unite marked by its
regional equalities officer Taryn Trainor stating “Today commemorates the
insurrection in Saint-Domingue by self-liberated slaves – an event which played
a crucial role in the eventual abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and
reminds us that abolition was driven and eventually won by enslaved and formerly
enslaved persons.
“Earlier this year, we welcomed the unveiling of a statue to
former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, funded by Belfast City
Council. Douglass, like Oloudah Equiano in the previous century, travelled
throughout Ireland, and was supported by a network of determined anti-slavery
activists, women and men, from Cork to Belfast. They knew that, as
Frederick Douglass pointed out, there can be no progress without
struggle.
“As trade unionists, the fight for abolition reminds us
that struggle must always be informed and directed by those most directly
affected.”
When Douglass travelled to Britain and Ireland in the 1840s
his lectures excited great interest and now that Belfast has become the first
in Europe to honour Frederick Douglass there are plans in places such as
Halifax to erect plaques at some of the locations he spoke at.
The life-sized bronze statue in Belfast is located at
Rosemary Street, close to where Douglass addressed crowds in 1845.
Ms Trainor concluded:
“The impact of chattel slavery continues to resonate today –
not just in monuments and the names of public buildings and spaces, but also in
the ongoing discrimination faced by people of African descent.
“As attempts are made by far-right actors to stir up
hatred, fear and anger against migrants and refugees, many fleeing war and
oppression, trade unions must draw inspiration from the movement to end slavery
and work side-by-side with those being targeted by these messages of hate to
build an inclusive society.”
Belfast historian and tour guide Dr Tom Thorpe said the
statue was appropriate as the statue "takes us into a history which united
us rather than divides us.
"The anti-slavery cause was followed by people from
across the political divide, unionists and nationalists, but also from the
Catholic and Presbyterian communities.”
Whilst
migrant workers are protected by the same laws that protect other workers in
the UK and should receive equal pay to British workers doing the same work the
problem is that many don’t know their rights. As they are also often invisible from
other workers then this makes it easier for them to be exploited.
Seeking to
organise workers of all nationalities, UNITEtheUnion across Ireland, North and South has thus produced a series
of Know Your Rights leaflets in 12 community languages: Bulgarian, Czech,
Hungarian, Latvian, Polish, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Romanian, Russian, Slovak,
Ukrainian and Tetum.
The leaflets
point out that workers ‘are entitled to the following statutory rights and protections
from the day you start work. It does not matter how many hours you work.’ They
arose following the exposure of chronic mistreatment in the meat industry with
some workers involved in packing up to 20,000 chicken breasts a day.
They explain
rights on:-
Ø Equal pay
/ equal value
Ø Sex
discrimination / harassment
Ø
Discrimination on the grounds of religion / belief
Ø Age
discrimination
Ø Racial
discrimination / harassment
Ø Disability
discrimination / harassment
Ø
Victimisation for trade union membership / activity
Ø
Victimisation for Health & Safety activity
Ø Itemised
pay statement
Ø Unlawful
deduction from wages
Ø Dismissal
because of pregnancy
Ø Written
reasons for dismissal during pregnancy / maternity leave
Ø Time off
for ante-natal visits
Ø 52 weeks’
maternity leave for all women
Ø Sunday
working rights
Ø Dismissal
/ victimisation for enforcing a statutory right
Ø National
Minimum Wage
Ø Time off
for holiday and breaks
Ø Dismissal
/ victimisation for whistleblowing
Ø Time off
for family emergencies
The
information is not intended to be exhaustive and, of course, in situations
where there is union organisation then workers should check with their Unite
rep, official or organiser, if something isn’t covered in the leaflet.
A recent
report shows how distributing such information everywhere is vital.
Some
Nepalese workers have been pressurised into paying extortionate, illegal broker
fees of around £4,300 to third-party recruitment agencies in their home
countries to secure a visa.
The report provides
a breakdown of the work process for a fruit picker, and shows how workers
endured debt bondage, long hours, abuse by supervisors, and systematic wage
theft. Meanwhile, the government has yet, despite its promises to do so,
undertaken a full review of the SWS in the agricultural sector in this decade.
Little wonder then that a number of NGOs have written to the Immigration
Minister Robert Jenrick MP asking him to act.
Now with the
passing of the Illegal Migration Bill it is going to be even easier for
employers to exploit migrant workers with the research and policy organisation
FLEX (Focus on Labour Exploitation) stating: ‘The Bill is devastating and will
have far reaching consequences for people both directly and indirectly
affected. It will drive large numbers of people underground, creating fear of
authorities and public services. People in exploitation will fear seeking help.
The Bill has been described as a ‘Traffickers Charter’ as it provides
traffickers with the ultimate coercion tool.’
To download
the Unite leaflets go to:- https://unitetheunionireland.org/know-your-rights/
Read “Debt.
Migration and Exploitation”
Northern Ireland rural workers land less in their pay
Not only are Northern Ireland workers being paid less and
also continuing to fall further behind their UK counterparts but those in rural
parts of the country are even worse off.
Median
gross monthly pay in the wider UK was £2,274 in July but for Northern Ireland
workers it was only £2,103. This represented a 7.5% increase on the year and
which was behind both the increase in UK median pay (7.8%) and the Retail Price
Index (RPI) of 10.7%.
Commenting,
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said: “The battle to push up pay has been
hard fought and it’s certainly far from over. Our economy is broken. Everyday
people are still suffering. These statistics are clear – workers in Northern
Ireland continue to be paid even less than workers elsewhere in the UK. This is
simply unacceptable. Trade unions remain especially vital during a
cost-of-living crisis that government is doing little to solve.”
Rurally,
things are even worse. The lowest pay is to be found in the southwest, in
Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, where median pay is only £1,958 a month
(7% below the Northern Ireland average). The next lowest is the unemployment
hotspot of Derry City and Strabane where median pay is only £1,981.
The labour market in these areas have fewer public sector
workers and a largely rural, non-unionised economy. Employers’ attitudes towards
trade unions are often hostile and union-busting normal.
Unite has led efforts to unionise new workforces in both
council areas – with the aim of reversing the pay disadvantage –
including at Seagate, one of the largest, advanced manufacturers in the
northwest, where a high profile and energetic membership drive has despite
union-busting tactics, resulted in an application for union recognition being
submitted to the labour courts.
Unite has also led the successful opposition to the
scrapping of the Agricultural Wages Board that covers 11,000 agricultural
workers including many migrant workers. The AWB is the final NI collective bargaining mechanism with
a responsibility for private sector workers.
Commenting,
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said: “The battle to push up pay has been
hard fought and it’s certainly far from over. Our economy is broken. Everyday
people are still suffering. These statistics are clear – workers in Northern
Ireland continue to be paid even less than workers elsewhere in the UK. This is
simply unacceptable. Trade unions remain especially vital during a
cost-of-living crisis that government is doing little to solve.”
NOTHING BEATS THE THE VALUE OF VEG - GROWN IN YOUR OWN BACK YARD
Landworker magazine of Unite the union
A Bolton community food growing permaculture project that aims to address food and resource poverty in social deprived areas by helping people to grow food in their yards and gardens has created hundreds of online YouTube short documentaries to help provide advice on growing your own fruit and veg.
This is good
news as a recent University of Sheffield study has found that household fruit
and vegetable production, in allotments and gardens, could be key to a healthy
and food-secure population.
It discovered
those who grow their own can produce more than half of the vegetables (51%) and
20% of the fruit they consume annually.
The Community
Roots Permaculture Project is run by former Ruskin College student and food
sovereignty advocate, Steve Jones with Ben Blackburn. The pair share a food
growing site in Southfields Pub, Great Lever with local food activists Bolton
Diggers.
Their
YouTube channel "combines Community food growing, permaculture, outdoor skills
and activities as a means of moving away from the destructive way of doing
things towards a world more in tune with nature and each other."
Currently
many people are really struggling amidst the cost-of-living crisis that is
resulting in fresh fruit and vegetable prices rocketing.
The 5-minute
documentary Grow Your Own Food shows how a stretch of garden 18’ long
has been turned into a veritable feast that has cost virtually nothing in cash
terms with most things scavenged or borrowed or, in the case of some pots,
donated via former cannabis growers from the police!
Happily growing Staples,
despite the Greater Manchester weather, are carrots, beetroot,
salad crops, sweetcorn, courgettes, radish, sage, beans of different varieties,
chives, rosemary, mint, strawberries, garlics, seed potatoes, pink
gooseberries, celery, red cabbage, cherries, squash and even grapevine. Many of
the products can be harvested two or three times a year.
“All of the
food is nutritious. People are rightly using foodbanks but most of products
there are highly processed foods. It will keep you alive,” explains Steve, “but
it is not healthy. Someone in a flat who can grow something on a windowsill
could then eat something nourishing that is better for their health.”
Other videos
can be viewed at: -https://www.youtube.com/@URBANPERMACULTURE/videos
Meanwhile,
Community Roots has started a Community Fruit Trees Project as it will give
access to fruit that would likely be out of the price range of people on low
and no incomes. The proliferation of trees into an urban area will additionally
attract pollinators and other beneficial insects, and thirdly trees could help
by absorbing carbon and releasing Oxygen. To find out more then watch a short
film at:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_Rf0f8u-3c
@BoltonUrban
Steve Jones is on 07821 847092 sj1j1@hotmail.com
