Helmshore Mills Textile Museum (The Museum)

 Unpublished article for Landworker magazine 

Helmshore Mills Textile Museum (The Museum) was absolutely buzzing the day we visited during the summer holidays. People of all ages had journeyed from far and wide to take part in the machinery tours, examine the exhibitions, sit and chat and engage in arts and crafts activities at the two mills which separately produced wool and cotton. 

It was all a far cry from the drudgery and horrors experienced by thousands of workers. These had been wrenched from their homes during the industrial revolution. It came after new technology wiped out traditional hand loom family weaving practices. It left local people with no option except to enter the dark satanic mills. Fortunately, visitors today can enjoy a good day out whilst having an opportunity to learn much more about how their descendants struggled to earn, even as recently as just 50 years back, a decent living.

Lying 16 miles north of Manchester, Helmshore is a small rural village in the Lancashire Rossendale Valley. In 1789, the Turner family built two mills, parts of which are still working.  By 1820 the power looms they and other manufacturers had introduced meant a full piece of cloth that had once earned a family 25p in the late 1700s was being manufactured at a fifth of that price.

Poverty levels multiplied. In April 1826 arose open revolt. Over 1,100 power looms across Pennine Lancashire were wrecked. Known today as the Weavers Uprising or, more tragically, the Chatterton Massacre it resulted in the authorities coming down brutally on protestors, killing as many as ten people.  Many more were imprisoned.

It is a tragedy set to be remembered on its bicentennial next year with many diverse events being co-ordinated by seven prominent organisations including the museum and which Unite members might consider participating in.

Unique

In a corner of the cotton mill, Preston’s Sir Richard Arkwright can be viewed as he watches over the only remaining complete water-powered cotton spinning machine of his that he invented with clockmaker John Kay around 1750. This ended the need for skilled operators, resulting in women and, even for many decades, children becoming the main employees.

Visitors can learn more from the experienced tour guides. Plus watch some of the noisy, non-stop machines being brought to life. Deafness was just one of many occupational hazards for workers. Lung diseases from taking in fibres was another. Trade unions, at least, initially were non-existent.

Joining a large group of youngsters aged 8 to 17 years from Woking United Reformed Church (WURC), on holiday locally for a week, it was interesting to witness how guides engaged them by employing textile terms. This included asking  them where the phrases heirloom or tenterhooks or even taking the piss might have originated from.  

The answers are on page……….

According to the WURC’s Phil Ray the museum was, with the group on a tight budget, highly affordable. The visit had been chosen in part on the basis of its connection to local sheep farming, which resulted from the 12^th to 14^th century in wool exports being the largest source of England’s income.

“The children and young people have been fascinated by the old equipment and the building, plus the phrases!” 

One of the guides was Unite member Ann Butcher. After years working with homeless people, Ann joined the museum, which is run by Lancashire County Council, three years ago and “loves it. You share information but you also get visitors who tell their own stories and bring in photographs of family members who not so very long ago worked here. I incorporate some of the stories into my own talks,” The Mill ceased production and closed in 1978.

Another Unite member is assistant manager Michael Whitworth who when he previously worked at the University of Manchester was a TGWU steward.

Whitworth explained that the museum staff are working hard to develop bigger roots within the local community. “We don’t have a local library. So even though the museum is closed in the winter months we open on a Thursday as a warm space for older people. Lots of games get played. New friendships are made.

When we visited the café was busy with local people attending a book club. In another part of the large premises young children were engaging in arts and crafts activities including making woolen dolls.

“On school visits, we incorporate our working machines alongside modern technology by organising science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) where children learn how to make invisible ink and us volcano activities to simplify chemical reactions,” says Whitworth.

On strolling around the exhibitions, the quality of the mannequins – especially the red breasted soldier from 1826 – was highly impressive. The figurines used to highlight the traditional home working practices prior to the industrial revolution are also noteworthy.

At aged 8, Jessie Brandon, joined by his friend Charlie, had enjoyed his visit. “It was fun wandering around.  The best bit was the water mill. I like mills!” The young boys had also been able to have some hands-on experiences by being helped to use a hand loom to do some weaving plus they’d examined 50 Lancashire objects.

Jessie’s mum, a teacher, Helen was pleased to see her son smiling out wide. But she is also keen to make sure he discovers that his great grandad Rob Bennett was a passionate believer in trade unions and health and safety and who from a working class background studied to eventually become an HMI Inspector of Mines in the 1920s. https://www.dmm.org.uk/whoswho/b018.htm

“I was born and bred in Bury. The cotton industry is part of my heritage. I wanted my son to see what a cotton mill looks like and get a glimpse of the heat and noise. It gives an understanding of what people’s lives were previously like,” said Helen.

Answers

Heirloom – this is where on the death of the father the loom was passed on to the oldest son.

Tenterhooks – these were hooks on the tenter used to hold the cloth in place.

Taking the piss – urine was for decades collected from residents to use the ammonia in it within the textile manufacturing process.

UNITE members support campaign to save emergency services at local hospital in Enniskillen

 Unpublished article from last year. 

Unite members in Fermanagh, a largely rural county in the south-west of Northern Ireland, have passionately supported a campaign to prevent emergency surgical services at their local hospital in Enniskillen being moved over 60 miles away to Derry.

£5,000 has been donated by the Enniskillen Unite branch to help pay for the publicity materials that has been distributed widely. Activists including bus driver rep John McMahon, branch secretary Derek Parton and Sean Rodgers at Liberty Insurance have been at the forefront of the drive for better health care. This work has also encouraged previously non- union members to join UNITE.

Campaigners believe the proposed cuts would impact badly on patient care and could lead to the eventual closure of the hospital, which Unite activists have long argued has been neglected by politicians in Westminster, Belfast and Dublin. Reconstructed in 2012, the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH) is the only public-private finance initiative facility in Northern Ireland.

SWAH is managed by Western Health and Social Care who Jim Quinn, a TGWU/Unite member for 47 years, points out “from the start only ever used three of the five theatres. They would have preferred to force people to travel on poor roads to obtain care at Derry’s Altnaglevin Hospital.”

Large rallies and public meetings over the last three years have forced Northern Ireland’s Health Minister Mike Nesbitt to put on hold till after the summer a proposed consultation exercise that is ultimately designed to close Enniskillen’s emergency surgical services. This would force seriously ill patients to travel to Derry.  Avoidable deaths seem certain. The change of attitude came immediately after the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) passed an emergency resolution at a meeting in Belfast backing hospital campaigners.

“We suffer from being in the south-west of Northern Ireland as we are the furthest County from both Belfast, London and Dublin. Consequently, we don’t even have a railway service,” states locally born Jim, who following his successful book Labouring Alongside Lough Erne: A Study of the Fermanagh Labour Movement, 1826-1932, is currently writing volume 2 on the period up until 1978.

Nesbitt’s pause is allowing campaigners’ time to refocus their efforts. They ultimately hope to pressurise the health authorities, which a few years back failed in their attempts to close the stroke and the neo-natal services, into providing a more comprehensive range of services that people require.  

“The local political reps of all the main parties are supportive of improving patient care,” states Jim and which “which could be made more viable by boosting economies of scale by getting the hospital to serve cross border communities in the south and north.”

To buy Labouring Alongside Lough Erne go to:- https://www.connollybooks.org/product/labouring-beside-lough-erne

Sowing the Seeds for Green Growth - Real Green Jobs

 Unpublished article for Landworker magazine. 

Sowing the Seeds for Green Growth

Real Green Jobs

 

Unite’s very own soil scientist Charlie Clutterbuck is not only co-producing a Grow to Eat documentary film (now done - Feb 2026) and completing (publisher sorted for Winter 2026) a book he’s dreamed about all his life on soil but he is also asking why talk of green jobs never includes agriculture.

He says “we hear about green jobs in the energy sector when they are building massive windfarms in the middle of the countryside, while ignoring the potential to grow more food there.

“ Meanwhile, we import about half our food whilst ignoring the disproportionate environmental impacts on the rest of the planet. “

It means 70% of the land needed to grow our food is abroad, mainly in South America where 40% of the population has experienced moderate or severe food insecurity.

“There is a similar proportion regarding Greenhouse Gases  and as for water to grow the stuff this is hard to measure,” says Charlie. “The late Professor Tony Allen coined the term ‘virtual water’ to describe the water used to grow our food. One estimate put that at 22 River Niles worth in Africa to supply Europe with the fruit and vegetables we are actually good at growing ourselves.”

Charlie, who half a century ago combined with colleagues to kick start the Hazards magazine that revolutionised the trade union health and safety approach away largely from compensation towards prevention, wants to sow the seed for a whole green economy.

Charlie’s new short film, Grow to Eat, due out in the Autumn, shows it’s possible to grow food in the most difficult of places. Adopting such a programme nationally could bring substantial rewards in terms of countryside jobs and a revival of communities left behind.

“We could be sowing the seed for a whole green economy if we invested in real green jobs, mainly in the countryside. Also by encouraging the growth of healthy crops and animals we could save money on dealing with obesity, whilst eating into the £40bn more on imports we spend on food over export costs,” states Charlie.

Following Brexit, Britain’s exports sector has struggled. “Much of the push for Brexit came from the Eastern fields where plantation style farming encouraged the use of migrant workers. They soon departed. But instead of  British workers taking their place they soon realised the awful condition and poor wages, especially following the 2010-2015 Coalition government crashing of the Agricultural Wages Board, which even Thatcher had left alone, ” explains Charlie.

Now instead of the original migrant workers from Rumania and Poland, they are recruited from much further afield such as Asia or, even Bolivia. They are badly exploited.

 

There are also the environmental impacts of many thousands of acres in the east of the country being ploughed up - thus compacting the soil – by massive foreign made tractors at over £500,000 each that sow continual monocrops of grain and vegetables.

“We are annually losing 2 million tons of valuable soil that needs much more tender care by people working on the land with more suitable equipment if we are to continue producing food in the future,” explains Charlie. “Then there is the amount of nitrogen fertilisers poured on soil. In terms of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) they contribute according to my calculations, as no organisation appears to want to work this out, between 1 to 2 % of all UK GHGs.”

Charlie laments the absence of talks about soil loss and there is no research along these lines. He wants to see re-opened the 3/4s of our land-based research centres that at one time worked closely with food growers. It would mean restoring highly skilled jobs.

“Also by protecting the soil it will help fend off flooding and drought, There should also be smaller plots with a much wider variety of plants, interspersed with trees to help hold water which helps cooling. Smaller tractor machines would be needed - hence a unique new UK industry - with real green jobs that help the  environment in lots of ways - rather than just counting carbon.”

On the western side of the country, Charlie wants to see more animals outdoors instead of them being locked up indoors and fed on soy from South America and maize from USA. Again, green jobs.

In turn moors could be transformed because as shown by the Pennines Hills Todmorden based hand-built Incredible Farm, established in 2012 and which annually produces over a ton of food whilst also teaching small scale market gardening and farming, even the roughest of terrain can be used to grow food.

Grouse shooting, which even the Moorland Association estimates only create 1,500 full-time jobs, isn’t, it would appear at this moment, subsidised but landowners with over 500 hectares can still obtain subsidies for rewilding and planting carbon offset trees.

Charlie argues instead that the £3bn that was once used largely by the EU to finance large landowners, who in many cases did not produce food, could instead be spent subsidising hundreds of thousands of green jobs rurally.

As growing cannot be replaced by AI then “we need real workers on decent green wages to grow in ways that regenerate the soil, establish links between town and country, help resist climate change and encourage a bigger rural economy with all the corresponding new houses and facilities,” explains Charlie. “And my union is the best situated to create and promote this collection of real green jobs.”

BAN WINDFARMS ON PEAT BOG

 Unpublished article that was written for Autumn 2025 

For over a decade Landworker has reported on destructive developments on Walshaw Moor blanket bog. This comprises part of the 245,000 acres of upland peatlands nationally. These form the UK’s largest carbon land store and which makes them essential for mitigating extreme weather events such as flooding. They are also one of the most diverse habitats worldwide.

In 2014, Natural England handed out on behalf of the coalition government over £2.5 million to landowner Richard Bannister to help him burn the bog. This facilitated grouse shooting for his chums. Over the following years many local residents in Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge were to become convinced that the increased flooding they experienced were the result of the destruction.

Further public monies were spent on increased flood defences. Due to dissolved organic carbon entering the water supply, Yorkshire Water also needed to spend more on increased treatment for pollution. Customers had to foot the bill.

Yet remarkably, Walshaw Moor may now become the first peatland in Britain to have built on it an onshore wind farm, which would dwarf anything to date.

Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd (CWFL), who are disputing claims that it is one of many similar schemes they hope to construct, assert that the electricity generated from the scheme would power 286,000 homes.  

There is strong local opposition to the proposals. Over 2,500 people in the Calder Valley constituency signed a national petition of over 15,000 signatures calling for a ban on wind farms on protected peatland. Although the government has rejected this, campaigners from the long-established Ban the Burn campaign group, who met MPs on a Parliamentary visit, have noted that planning minster Matthew Pennycock mentioned blanket bog during debates on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

This legislation has been criticised by environmental campaigners who contend it will remove protections for important habitat and species.

The Bill is currently being examined in the House of Lords. Ban the Burn, which otherwise supports wind farms, is lobbying Peers and hope some will present amendments blocking wind farms on peat bog.

Jenny Shepherd of Ban the Burn, which also believes CWFL should be required to provide additional information to Calderdale Council’s planning department to enable local residents to properly study the planning application, wants to make contact with people in windy, peaty constituencies.

“These number around 30 across parts of Northumberland, Exmoor, Dartmoor and the Lake District. The outcome of the Walshaw Moor application  will have significant implications for these localities. Some readers might want to alert their MPs,” said Shepherd who claims that work wise it would be far better for the government to back restoring blanket bog “as this will help build a skills base to help with conserving and restoring the source of 5% of the UK’s carbon emissions and which need reducing to tackle global warming.”

Jenny can be contacted on 07309 388887

changingmorethanlightbulbs@gmail.com

Review of GROUND DOWN BY GROWTH – TRIBE, CASTE, CLASS AND INEQUALITY IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY INDIA

 

GROUND DOWN BY GROWTH – TRIBE, CASTE, CLASS AND INEQUALITY IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY INDIA

Pluto Press

Based on in-depth field research this work about the massed ranks of poverty witnessed across diverse Indian regions makes for deeply unpleasant reading.

That is particularly so for those stuck at base level who are descended from the country’s lowest castes, the Adivasis and Dalits. These constitute 1 in 25 of the world’s population. Less educated than other Indian social groups they were previously termed the ‘Untouchables’ and forced to live in segregated areas. This arose after British colonial powers abolished slavery in India in 1843 only to transform it into bondage through debt relations.

Indian independence and the expansion of capitalism was supposed to bring about economic growth and modernity to eliminate caste and tribes.

However, despite the Indian economy being one of the fastest growing this century the future is bleak. Not only for the Adivasis and Dalits but the vast majority in a country where agriculture employs half the workforce and where around 700 million are affected by internal seasonal labour migration, which blocks many from accessing social welfare benefits.  

That is unless the masses organise effectively to oppose the predominant neo-liberal economics, combining privatisation of public services and reduced rights, that never does produce the trickle-down benefits that its proponents claim is one of its biggest benefits. The statistics in the book demonstrates this clearly, percentage reductions in poverty in an economy rising by 6% annually between 1999 and 2010 were miniscule.

Meanwhile in the Western Ghats, Kerala on tea estates such as Hill Valley, the plantation association was successful in increasing the plucking rate from 14kg to 21kg in 2011, and to 25kg in 2016.

Furthermore, the numbers employed permanently, bringing with it access to housing, medical care and sick leave, had declined from two-thirds to under a quarter.

Eventually, 800 tea workers, mainly women, took strike action in the Munnar tea belt. This inspired action elsewhere that included rubber plantation workers. All of which forced the corrupt trade union and political representatives into extending support.

The strikes, which were widely publicised including on the BBC, shoved the government into opening a substantial relief fund for improvements in labour conditions of tea plantation workers. It was a wonderful victory.

More are needed and the book shows there exists a willingness to struggle. In the Bhadrachalam Scheduled Area, Telangana, workers have raised problems with their health, particularly lung concerns, in the villages surrounding the Indian Tobacco Company paper factory that was built by a dominant farming caste group on Adivasi land that should been legally protected from such developments.

Yet, as the final chapter ‘The Struggles Ahead’ shows the most vulnerable and exploited of the Indian workforce amongst the Adivasis and Dalits face a bleak future as they have almost no protection or social security of any kind.  

Review of THIRST – The Global Quest to solve the Water Crisis

Written for the Landworker magazine.  Yet to be published. 

THIRST – The Global Quest to solve the Water Crisis

Filippo Menga

Menga reveals there is no global water crisis. Instead, it’s a matter of distribution and ownership, now increasingly in private investors hands such that in late 2020 it became possible to trade water on Wall Street through the futures market. In Robert Tressell’s classic novel ‘The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists’ air is sold. It may yet happen.

Britain is the only European nation whose water supply is completely controlled by private companies. Investment has plummeted. Yet, half the water used for our food production is employed overseas, leading to shortages there and a loss of nature.

Being kind hearted characters these profit guzzling water companies have established charities to help the half of the world that lacks basic sanitation, resulting in one child dying every 15 seconds.

Well-meaning celebrities persuade followers to donate. But they remain silent about a capitalist system where 2,500 billionaires own so much wealth. Thus, they ignore that access to safe water, denied to two billion people, increases with income.

The book proposes solutions so that the abundant water we possess is better used including turning bottled water companies into public utilities.

Better still to restore the public sector and for water to be managed by democratically elected governments.

38 steps in support of Betty Tebbs

 38 persons attended the Premiere of the Who's Betty Tebbs film at the Bolton Socialist Club on 31 January, 2026. 

This can now be viewed at:- https://youtu.be/gK1n2Z3gxDY 

The Bury Times published details in advance. https://www.burytimes.co.uk/news/25804514.film-premiere-bury-born-activist-betty-tebbs/

Thank you to Lisa Valentine for this. 

38 persons were present including a nephew of Betty who afterwards spoke highly of the film which had left him very proud of Betty's achievements. 

The film was produced by Francesca Platt, seen hear answering questions following the showing, and Mark Metcalf.

Please watch the film and share it as well.