Ex-City youth coach on uncovering gems - and the ones that got away
Robert Green, Rio Ferdinand, Ade Akinbiyi, Craig Bellamy and Darel Russell – household names that trip off the tongue.
https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/sport/23665876.ex-norwich-youth-coach-roy-massey---rio-ferdinand-slipped-net/
This is an excellent article.
Beatrice Green – a socialist, feminist and
prominent activist in the 1926 General Strike Lock out
Taken from a
book by Sue Bruley and written by Keith Jones, son of Tom Jones (1)
The General Strike of 1926 and the six month-long Miners’
Lockout which followed was a hugely important event in Welsh history and was
arguably the most significant labour dispute of 20th-century Britain.
The only comparable event was the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85.
After a nine-day “General Strike” in which engineers and transport workers came
out in support of the miners, the Trades Union Congress caved in and the strike
collapsed.
In this 1920s version of “austerity”, it was only the miners
who stood out bravely in opposition to the Conservative Government led by
Stanley Baldwin.
In the South Wales coalfield, communities rallied together
in an attempt to stave off harsh cuts to wages, increased working hours, and
falling living standards for the miners and their families. Behind the militant
miners were their equally militant wives, mothers and girlfriends. The unsung
heroines of 1926 were these women who rallied their families, their
neighbourhoods and their communities together, and kept everyone going some of
the older women were experienced suffrage campaigners and were still active in
the struggle to achieve absolute parity with men. Women had to reach the age of
30 to vote, at least before 1928.Others joined the Women’s Co-operative Guild
or the Women’s Labour League and joined in campaigns for maternity benefits,
infant welfare clinics, family planning, nursery schools, and even changing the
voting system to proportional representation.
Among those who became activists in the heady days of 1926
was Beatrice Green (née Dykes) of Abertillery.
She emerged as an outstanding leader of women because of the
lockout. Born into a mining family in 1895, she was very active in the local
Ebenezer Baptist church, did well at school and went on to become a teacher She
married Ron Green, a miner, in 1916, and had her first child the following
year. A second child was born eight years later.
Being a miners’ wife was very much a full-time job in those
days, but Beatrice was politically inclined. With amenable in-laws, who were
prepared to keep house in her absence, she was able to throw herself into
Labour Party activism.
She also supported the hospital Linen League, which raised
funds to buy and launder linen for the hospital in Abertillery. And she took an
active interest in Marie Stopes’ campaign for birth control, not then a popular
movement in Wales.
Beatrice soon began to be noticed in Labour Party women’s
circles in Abertillery and in Monmouthshire more generally. Her address “Women
in the State” – delivered to the Abertillery Labour Women’s Section early in
1921 – was published in the local newspaper adding to her growing popularity.
Following that experience, she developed her writing and
speaking skills and, being both internationalist in outlook and proficient in
French, she contributed regular pieces on women’s issues to a French socialist
magazine.
She subsequently wrote for the Labour Woman in Britain.
When the strike broke out in May 1926, Beatrice was
determined that miners and their families would not be starved into submission.
She began an exhausting round of fundraising activities on
behalf of the Women’s Committee for the Relief of Miners’ Wives and Children,
an organisation later described as an “industrial Red Cross”.
She was active on the Abertillery Maternity Relief Committee
which sought to provide food, clothing and blankets for pregnant women in need.
And she was regularly in London speaking at meetings to raise for all of these
committees, becoming very much in demand as a public speaker.
At one open-air meeting in the city, her emotional and
affective plea for aid caused a young boy to tug at her dress and say: “I ain’t got a penny Miss, but I will
sing for you.”
Raising the
plight of Abertillery’s needy
In her articles, she wrote of the distress caused in Abertillery
– declaring in one of her interviews that the whole community had fallen on the
Poor Law.
Like many towns in South Wales, Abertillery had very little
work except for mining so the entire town was plunged into economic misery as a
result of the strike and lockout.
Beatrice helped to organise the temporary fostering of
vulnerable children, removing them from the coalfield for the duration of the
dispute and easing the financial burden on their parents.
For those who remained behind, there were soup kitchens and
school dinners. 1,600 people were fed this way every day in Abertillery.
To keep the miners out and to maintain the relief efforts
needed a considerable sum of money.
Much of this was raised through campaigning but some came
from international assistance, from the miners of Canada fresh from their own
strikes the year before and from the Soviet Union where miners voted a small
levy from their wages towards the relief fund.
June 1917: A political protest in Petrograd, one of many
demonstrations that led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and so to the
October revolution
June 1917: A political protest in Petrograd, one of many
demonstrations that led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and so to the
October revolution
As a thank-you and to cement relations between British and
Russian trade unions, a 19-strong delegation was sent to the Soviet Union at
the end of August 1926.
Beatrice Green was one of six miners’ wives who made the
two-month trip, each representing a different coalfield.
The women travelled thousands of miles across the vast
territory of the Soviet Union by rail, using a sleeping carriage for most of
the trip. Part of the train was formed from the former Czarina’s private
carriage.
The British group attracted much interest from Russian
workers in cities as diverse as St Petersburg (then known as Leningrad) and
Tbilisi.
Stopping at stations, the women were greeted with much pomp
and ceremony. Brass bands and banners, many of them offering words of welcome
in English, accompanied the crowds that gathered.
The women held meetings at every place they came to with Beatrice
speaking to large crowds about the situation in Britain. The Russian workers
offered their continued support for the miners in south Wales and the other
coalfields of Britain.
We are fortunate to have two lengthy reports which she sent
back during her trip and which were published in the Labour Woman. She wrote
particularly about women in the Soviet Union and was eager to draw favourable
contrasts between Czarist Russia and what was happening in the workers’ state.
A victim of propaganda?
“One of the greatest marvels accomplished by the Russian
revolution,” she wrote, “Is the complete emancipation of women... Today in
Russia, woman possesses an absolute equality of rights with man. She has
economic independence and equal political, moral and social rights.”
With hindsight these observations appear somewhat naïve.
We should be mindful of the fact that this trip was
carefully stage-managed to show off the best of the newly-formed USSR. At this
time there was much suspicion and hostility in the West towards the Soviet
Union, but for many British socialists, particularly in south Wales, it was a
beacon of hope and optimism.
St Petersburg and Moscow undoubtedly presented the best of
the Soviet Union, but Beatrice did nevertheless concede that there were real
problems in the eastern republics such as Azerbaijan.
There male opposition to the new equality laws created
serious tension and violence, including deaths.
The trip was a remarkable one for all of the women who went.
Miners’ wives in the 1920s rarely travelled beyond their own
district, or at the most to London on special occasions, and so to undertake
such an extensive trip was an incredible experience.
For Beatrice, in particular, it was transformative. Marion
Phillips, the Labour Party’s chief women’s officer and later MP for Sunderland,
https://markwrite.co.uk/dr-marion-phillips-sunderlands-first-female-mp/
wrote that Beatrice blossomed as a great speaker, writer and organiser,
describing her work in the Soviet Union as a “crowning happiness in her life”.
Back home, the lockout was slowly disintegrating, although
the miners of south Wales remained solid giving in only when it was clear that
the cause was lost nationally and they could not hold out on their own.
Determination rises out of defeat
The dispute finally came to an end at the end of November,
little more than a month after Beatrice returned from her trip abroad. The
miners had to accept defeat.
The Women’s Committee the Relief of Miners’ Wives and
Children raised £313,874 over the course of the lockout, a huge sum for the
time and the equivalent of more than £17m today. It did much to alleviate
distress in the coalfields and to sustain the miners in their struggle.
Despite the bitter blow of defeat Beatrice was determined to
maintain her activism.
She wrote regularly for the Labour Woman, offering
sensible and compassionate advice on child care and in September 1927 presided
over a conference of Monmouthshire Labour women which attracted over 800
delegates.
Described by contemporaries as being “in perpetual motion”,
she seemed destined for a political career. But sadly it was not to be.
Beatrice Green was tragically struck down with ulcerative
colitis and died on October 19, 1927.
She was just 32 years old. She left behind a grieving
husband and two young sons.
The people of Artillery named an ambulance after her, a
fitting tribute who gave so much to her community and who believed passionately
in a health service open to all.
We should remember Beatrice Green today as a socialist, a
feminist, and an outstanding activist.
Above all, we should remember her for the way she attempted
to speak to the world about the dire plight of her community in the momentous
Miners’ Lockout of 1926.
Sue Bruley is a reader in Modern History at the University
of Portsmouth.
She is also author of The Women and Men of 1926, The General
Strike and Miners Lockout in South Wales (University of Wales Press,
1.
TOM JONES – a fighter for freedom and working people;
a booklet written for Unite the union by Mark Metcalf https://markwritecouk.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/tom-jones-booklet11-19899.pdf
‘A PLACE TO TELL OUR STORIES’
Heptonstall Museum, Hebden Bridge
uniteLANDWORKER Summer 2023
Set high up
on a rural hill, Heptonstall Museum was the perfect location for the recent BBC
2 Shane Meadows’ period drama The Gallows Pole. This was based on
the book of the same name by Benjamin Myers, a fictionalised account of
the true story of David Hartley and the Cragg Vale Coiners, a gang of West
Yorkshire landworkers and weavers.
Yet it is
only thanks to the heroic efforts of a dedicated small team of volunteers that
the Museum survived after the 2020 lockdown.
This was
when it became clear that Calderdale Council, strapped for cash due to
unnecessary Government funding cuts for local authorities, intended closing the
50-year-old museum that is housed in a 17th century building, which once
accommodated the village’s grammar school and a branch of the Yorkshire Penny
branch.
“I was on
the Heptonstall Historical Society and when we saw council minutes indicating
they did not intend re-opening the museum we quickly acted and as Friends of
Heptonstall Museum we offered to take on the building under the asset transfer
programme,” said local activist Linda Maynard
She continued:
“We wanted to retain a building to tell our local history. So did local people
as when we surveyed them over 250 overwhelmingly backed our ambitions.” Maynard,
as a historian, is fully aware that the stories of rural hilltop villages
rarely feature in larger museums.
So she took
on the unpaid role of project manager and along with help from seven other
board members put together a successful bid enabling the museum to officially
re-open as a charitable organisation under community managership on May 28th.
A few days
earlier when Landworker visited the museum, which is around 2 miles from
Hebden Bridge’s Fox and Goose pub that featured in Landworker five years ago
when it became community owned, it was hosting a successful poetry reading
event that is likely to become a regular feature in the future. There have also
been many other cultural evenings.
“Our intention
is not only to re-open the building as a museum, which we are convinced we can
make better than previously as it was a bit old fashioned and overcrowded with
large display cabinets that rarely changed, but for it to become more regularly
used outside museum hours,” said Michael Crowley, a writer whose most
recent book Comrades Come Rally tells the history of Manchester
Communist Party between the wars at the heart of which are the International
Brigades and the Jewish Community, including Benny Rothman, who fought Franco’s
fascism in Spain and at home battled with Mosley’s Blackshirts.
“I love
history and Heptonstall has lots. There was, of course, the Coiners led by King
David as he was popularly known by at the time as in an age of poverty, his
endeavours meant a destitute 100 strong gang of landworkers and weavers could
feed their families. When he was executed, we believe the large crowd who
attended would have sung ballad songs in his honour. “
The poet
laureate Ted Hughes also wrote a lot about the village and Sylvia
Plath, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, is, along
with Hartley, buried there.
“The village
was also the heart of the events locally in the 1840s when Chartism, with its
demands for a wider electorate, was popular and led to widespread state
repression, including many deaths in nearby Halifax in August 1842,” explains
Crowley, whose play last year ‘Waiting for Wesley’, which examined the
confluence between politics and religious non conformism at that time, packed
out the museum. It is now set to be performed on larger venues. Calderdale
Trades Council (CTC) is supporting the venture by making a donation.
A CTC
member, Nigel Smith, a retired teacher who is now active within the local
branch of UNITE Community, was at the poetry reading session and is
volunteering at the Museum. “The museum is set in a beautiful location high up
on a hill. I have previously attended events about Sylvia Plath, the village
ran a festival about her life in 2022, and the fight against fascism in
Manchester. I think the trade union movement locally must support the efforts
to keep history alive and relevant and I’ll be doing my best to make sure that
is so.”
Address: Heptonstall
Museum, The Old Grammar School, Heptonstall, Hebden Bridge HX7 7PG 01422 843738
https://heptonstall.org/heptonstall-museum/
Unite helps boost agricultural workers’ pay in Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland as young
English workers again lose out heavily
Unite remains committed to restoring the Agricultural
Wages Board (AWB) in England and where it was scrapped by the Tory-Liberal
Democratic Coalition Government in 2013.
The move left thousands of workers in England without union
representation over wages and conditions and with no way of knowing when they
might next receive a pay increase.
The result has been that as the only part of the UK where
agricultural workers are not covered by a collective bargaining structure then
English workers, especially younger ones, have lost out badly.
Unite is represented on the AWB in Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland and the reps have done a good job this year in negotiating
greater rewards for agricultural workers.
In Scotland the new rates for the AWB mean the pay
rate is £10.42 for workers of all ages except for employees who have agreed, as
part of the terms of their contract of employment, to study an SCQF Level 4
and/or SCQF Level 5 or equivalent in Agriculture/Horticulture, shall be paid
£6.53 per hour for 18 months. This rate applies to apprentices under 19 years
of age and those of 19 years or over in the first year of their apprenticeship.
Following this period, the minimum hourly rate will be £10.42 until 31 March
2024.
In Wales an agricultural worker aged 16-17 years
earns a minimum of £5.28 an hour, 18-20 years £7.49 an hour, 21-22 years £10.23
and 23 years plus earns £10.74.
In Northern Ireland, where six Unite members sit on
the 15-man board, it has proved possible to negotiate an 8.5% increase all
grades from 1 April. The lowest pay rate per hour is £7.54 for the first 40
weeks and £8.13 after the qualifying period expires. At 23, the minimum pay
rate of £10.92 exceeds the national minimum wage rate of £10.42 by 50 pence.
In England the rates of pay per hour are £5.28 for those
16-17, £7.49 for 18-20-year-olds and £10.18 for those aged 21 to 22 and £10.42
an hour on reaching 23 years of age.
What this translates into is that in Scotland an
agricultural worker aged 16 to 23 will earn £416.80 for a 40-hour week and
£21,673.60 annually.
In England a
20-year-old will get £299.60 a week and £15,579.20 annually. Good on the
Scots. In Northern Ireland a worker aged 23+ will earn £436.80 a week for 40
hours whilst his English counterpart will be paid £416.80 whilst in Wales it
will be £429.60.
Of course, in addition to the existence of the AWB’s helping
to secure incomes for workers well above the bare minimum under the national
minimum wage; there are also additional benefits because AWB’s still exist outside
England. These include guaranteeing overtime pay at 1.5 times the standard
rate of pay and providing enhanced levels of sick and holiday pay and
entitlements.
The drop in living standards for agricultural workers in
England is exactly what UNITE predicted nine years ago.
A UNITE survey in 2014 found that just 56 per cent of those
previously covered by the AWB had had a pay rise. This was despite a third
asking for one. Those that did get a pay rise had received less than the whole
economy average. 82 per cent had any pay rise imposed by their employer,
destroying the government and employers earlier claims that abolishing the AWB
would free employees to conduct individual negotiations with their employer.
The survey also revealed that no sick pay was being paid by
some employers, who had also added an extra hour to the working week before
overtime was paid.
So, thanks Nick Clegg and David Cameron for making English
agricultural workers a whole lot better off than those in other parts of the
United Kingdom.
uniteLANDWORKER Summer 2023
MORE TRUCKS FOR PEACE
Help Colombian worker co-ops build a road to peace and prosperity
Building worker and lifelong trade unionist Ken Routledge is appealing for other Unite
branches to join with the Everton NW/UD088 Unite Branch, of which he is
secretary, in donating towards TRUCKS FOR PEACE – raising funds for
Colombian Co-ops.
The
co-ops are organised by former FARC guerrillas in the South American Republic
south west region around the city of Cali and are essential to helping build
peace and co-operativism and in raising living standards amongst poor rural
communities.
It is
seven years since a Peace Agreement was signed by FARC insurgents who in 1964,
a time when democratic change appeared impossible, took up arms and over the
next 52 years about 260,000 people were killed and millions displaced by the
conflict with the Colombian government.
One of
those involved with the Peace negotiations - in which the Unite backed London
based Justice for Columbia organisation played a key role - with the government
was Alexandra Nariño, a Dutch former guerrilla fighter and English
teacher who joined FARC, then 20,000 strong, in 2002 and became one of FARC’s
leading public figures from 2007 onwards.
Narino,
plus an indigenous former FARC fighter, feature in a short ‘TRUCKS FOR
PEACE’ Fundraising Campaign video launched by TRADEMARK, an anti-sectarian
Belfast based organisation which has a strong UNITE membership.
“The
agreement we signed was a good one but the government then changed and we are
battling to have it implemented,” explains Narino. Dozens of former guerrillas
have been killed in mysterious circumstances by forces loyal to the state
whilst Columbia also remains the most dangerous place in the world for trade
unionists who are the targets for paramilitary forces.
When they
gave up their arms and settled for peace, insurgents were awarded $2,000 each
to help finance and find work and build a future for the communities they live
in. Some have pooled these monies to set up worker cooperatives, whose members
also include indigenous people who were never armed fighters, producing coffee,
clothes and beer, among many other products. However, the bottleneck for most
of them is to bring their products to the market and sell them for a fair
price.
De Mano
en Mano (From
Hand to Hand) has been
established to help the 27 former FARC members newly formed coops and those
from surrounding rural communities in Southwest Columbia to commercialise their
products. Marketing will be key but, in addition, transporting products is
difficult because “the roads are poor……….so we need a truck,” states Narino.
The
vehicle will cost around £25,000. As we go to press around a third of this has
been raised including £100 from the UNITE English Language Teachers’ Branch and
Unite LE128 - Trade Union Staff Branch and £75 from Everton NW/UD088 Unite
Branch.
“Our
members regularly donate to good causes,” explains Ken, who back in 1973 was
involved in helping two Chilean exiles, who had escaped South America when
General Pinochet took power in a coup and began a period of totalitarianism in
which tens of thousands of trade unionists were disappeared, to find work at
the Vauxhall car factory, where Ken himself was a steward for over a
decade.
“I am
full of admiration for South American people who have stood up for their rights
for decades as whilst we often lose battles here that usually means we lose our
jobs. In Colombia it might mean losing your life. I think Narino’s bravery is
also an inspiration.
“The
monies are needed to help people with the rebuilding of their lives and the
communities they live in. I’d urge other branches to show support and also
support the invaluable work of Justice for Colombia.”
https://justiceforcolombia.org/about-jfc/
Book review - uniteLANDWORKER Summer 2023
Net Zero, Food and Farming
Climate Change and the UK Agri-Food System
Neil Ward
This is an important book that examines the complex
implications of the proposed net zero transition by 2050 for UK food and
farming and how these can be managed to avoid catastrophic climate change in
the crucial decades ahead.
Revolutionary change is needed. Fortunately, revolutions in
food and farming have happened before; beginning with the historical transition
thousands of years ago from hunter gatherers to farmers. There was then in
Britain from 1750 to 1850 seismic productivity improvements resulting from crop
rotation, plant and animal breeding and improved farming techniques.
In the 20th century the US pioneered a dramatic
uptake, which eventually swept across the world and took in Britain after WWII,
of chemical and mechanical technologies that boosted agricultural productivity
whilst reducing the need for farm labour.
For Ward, a fourth 21st
century revolution is “required, and the urgency of climate change means this revolution
will need to be swift … embracing technologies of farming practice… patterns of
land use for agriculture and forestry and energy crops … and the way food is
processed, distributed and sold.’ For this to happen it will be healthy and
instructive to see the world through food.
UK emissions from the food system accounts for 23% of our
gashouse emissions and whilst those from agriculture fell between 1990 to 2009,
they have not fallen since. The 2020 Climate Change Committee identified
changes where the agri-food and land-use system can help dramatically cut
transmission levels.
They include everyone reducing their demand for meat and
diary products; reducing food waste; changing land-use to grow more trees and
bioenergy crops; restoring peatlands and adopting a range of low-carbon farming
practices to ensure agriculture remains food productive on less land – the
Climate Change Committee that just 77% of today’s agricultural land will be
used for food production in 2050 - whilst contributing to cutting greenhouse
gas emissions.
There are chapters in the book on all these subjects. This
brief review concentrates on the continuing need for planting more trees,
stopping deforestation, soil carbon sequestration and restoring peatlands with
the UK having 15% of Europe’s total peatland area. 80% are in poor condition
and Ward tentatively proposes that the damaging practice of grouse shooting on
them should be banned.
The UK has an annual target for planting 30,000-50,000
hectares of new trees, which, of course, capture CO2, until 2050. As trees
mature the uptake of carbon capture declines but when chopped down, they can
also be used as an alternative source to fossil fuels for biomass electricity
generation with the emissions captured using carbon capture and storage
facilities that are being developed internationally and need much greater
government backing here. Of the 23 large-scale Carbon Capture and Storage (CC&S)
projects worldwide, none are in the UK.
Woodland cover across the UK has grown from 11.7% to 13.3%
between 2008 and 2021. Forests are popular with almost 70% of people having
visited one in recent years. People enjoy the habitat including hedgerows, many
of which have been lost since WWII. Restoring them and planting bioenergy crops
such as miscanthus, short rotation coppice and forestry will when gathered deliver
massive emission reduction when used alongside CC&S practices.
Ward makes various proposals on how to encourage more
landowners to plant trees. It is an issue that has, thanks especially to all
Unite reps in the forestry sector and soil scientist Charlie Clutterbuck, been
regularly aired in this magazine and it is an issue of vital concern because as
Ward states in his conclusions ‘in the short term, afforestation looks to be
the most straightforward way to reduce net emissions, and the Climate Change
Committee assumes afforestation to be the UK’s most significant contributor to
net emission reductions.’
This is a book rammed with ideas and Unite branches
everywhere should buy a copy, debate the issues raised and consider inviting
Ward along to one of their branch and/or stewards meetings.
The continuing carnage affecting workers in the
agricultural sector was brought to life at the 2023 Workers’ Memorial Day event
in Chorley, Lancashire. Organised annually since 2005 by Unite activist Steve
Turner of Chorley Trades Council, it was attended by 35 people and all of
whom were pleased to take away a copy of Landworker.
Landworker contributor Mark Metcalf told the audience that whilst construction
topped the workplace deaths chart in 2019/20 at 37 workers, agriculture, with
around a tenth of the numbers employed in construction, remained the most
dangerous sector to work in with 13 deaths, mostly as a result of moving
vehicles.
Deaths from moving vehicles
doubled last year to 25 people killed. These included 3 members of the public, a
child aged nine and ten labourers. The figures are likely to be higher as fatal
tractor accidents on public roads involving the police will not be reported to
the HSE.
To highlight why the
green killing fields continue to exist, Mark highlighted the article An
Endless Uphill Struggle in the Spring 2023 Landworker edition in
which retired farmworker Matthew Belsey appealed for safety on farms to be
taken seriously by the next generation.
Belsey highlighted the
unwillingness of the authorities to take robust action with the HSE having very
few resources to enable them to do so and whereas there used to be full health
and safety meetings annually organised for safety reps by the HSE these have
dwindled substantially. Little changes as a result.
HSE inspections have
fallen dramatically and, in addition, the inspectors rarely have a safety
background.
In the 90s the HSE
worked with Unite to develop a safety rep scheme that visited southern farms in
a pilot in 2002. It was jointly funded by HSE, NFU and UNITE’s predecessor
union. Around 75% of employers
afterwards said they’d changed their safety practices as a result of the pilot.
Lack of funding ended the scheme.
There has also been
the ending of the AWB in England with its sharp reduction in dedicated
agricultural courses such that if an agricultural worker went on specific
courses on hedge cutting or any number of occasional courses then they got an
increase in their pay.
According to Unite
activist Charlie Clutterbuck, Unite’s predecessor union, the TGWU, was also
instrumental in creating vocational qualifications for agricultural health and
safety levels.
“As the union rep on
the HSE executive I pushed for and they responded together with the NFU and 3
awarding bodies such as the Skills Councils to create sets of vocational qualifications
on health and safety for agricultural workers.
“Out then national
officer Chris Kaufmann he got them into the AWB agreements so for a few years
if you did one of these qualifications then you got a rise in pay. There was
thus a real incentive to go on and get properly trained and work more safely.”
Mark reported how
Landworker had backed Littleborough shepherd Brenda Sutcliffe, who died in
2016, and her husband Harold, a Unite member, who became the unofficial
spokeswoman for thousands of farmers and agricultural labourers who were
poisoned, often with fatal consequences, by organophosphate (OP) sheep dip.
Brenda calculated
that between 1995 and 2005 more than 1,000 shepherds ended their own lives
because of OP sheep dip. Brenda fought tirelessly for families to be
compensated.
Brenda's booklet 'Cause
and effect — the search for truth' was first published in 2005. It became
widely read right across the globe.
Brenda and other
campaigners forced the HSE to issue health warnings and instructions on the use
of OPs and bring to an end the compulsory order on sheep dipping. But the
products — used to tackle sheep scab — remain on the market with the added
requirement that anyone purchasing the dip must attend a course — costing in
total £150 — to achieve the necessary 'Safe Use of Sheep Dip' licence.
Brenda was rightly
proud of her considerable efforts and achievements but Mark told the audience
that when she last spoke to him before her death she was, as always, forthright
in expressing her views and had said "Justice has been denied to the likes
of myself whose health was badly affected by OPs.
“We, with the help
of people like Landworker, showed these were dangerous, deadly products and we never hesitated to criticise
the chemical companies who manufactured them.
“We damaged their
sales but they have never sued us because our research backed up what we said
publicly.
"The
government, whether Labour or Tory, public health bodies and solicitors who
were supposed to help us ran away from the battle. People still need
prosecuting for their roles. We have won a number of battles but OPs are still
deadly, too widely used and many products containing them need banning.”
OPs are
present in many products and have created multiple health problems for soldiers
who served in the Second Gulf War and commercial airline pilots, many of whom
are with UNITE’s assistance taking legal action against their employers.
The talk proved
popular and Mark, who appealed to the audience to encourage any farm workers
they know to join Unite, has now agreed to speak to a local union branch about
the issues he raised. Similar invitations from across Yorkshire and Lancashire
would be welcome.
Amongst the
other speakers were Janet Newsham of Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK),
who said that “to be bereaved by work is to be a victim of crime. But to be
made to feel like a lesser class of victim. One where you’re not placed at the
heart of the justice process, but left to feel you exist somewhere on the
periphery” and are constantly let down by the authorities.
“We FACKers
pledge to you that we will continue to live the International Workers’ Memorial
Day mantra each and every day, as we forever remember our dead, and do our damnedest
to fight like hell for the living.”
