Wigan Diggers' Festival gathers strength

The Wigan Diggers’ Festival with its live music, poetry, stalls, visual presentations and a beer tent is quickly becoming a popular event with trade unionists.  It celebrates the life and ideas of Gerrard Winstanley. The Christian Communist was born in Wigan in 1609 and went on lead the Digger movement that took over land to run it as a “common treasury for all.” 

Festival organisers are hoping their work will lead to a permanent memorial in Wigan town centre, where hundreds gathered on 7 September 2013 to see actor John Graham Davies play the role of Winstanley in a symbolic digging re-enactment of events in 1649. This saw Diggers take over common land at St George’s Hill in Surrey and their actions inspired others to do the same in their own localities. 

Winstanley had welcomed Oliver Cromwell’s defeat, and execution, of Charles I in the English Civil War. He had though become increasingly frustrated when a strengthened Parliament refused to introduce radical changes to forever eradicate destitution amongst the poor. He believed everyone had the right to till the earth and wanted labourers to withdraw from working on private estates. His many published writings and programme began to attract increasing support. 

When Winstanley sought to put his ideas into action he quickly attracted violent opposition from landowners that saw Diggers beaten, their houses burnt down and legal restraints applied to their occupation of the land. Defeat meant that for hundreds of years afterwards Gerrard Winstanley was hardly recognised as one of the great English radicals. This changed significantly when following the revolution in Russia in 1917; Lenin named the Wigan man as one of 19 leading revolutionary thinkers. 

In more recent times, Tony Benn has praised the Diggers for having “established the clear outlines of democratic socialism,” while the late Eric Heffer felt they were important in reminding us “that socialism in Britain is not a foreign import.” The twenty-first-century Occupy movement protestors have also referred to the Diggers as one of the inspirations behind their actions. Meanwhile historians are gradually assembling additional facts about Winstanley and one of the talks at the festival this year was given by one of his relatives, Derek Winstanley, who has discovered that in 1621 the people of Wigan had dug up common land in a successful struggle to obtain access. Derek believes this example inspired Gerrard Winstanley when he moved to London to work as an apprentice cloth maker in 1630.

Unite members at the festival welcomed the chance to celebrate Gerrard Winstanley’s life with Steve Turner (Chair of the Unite political committee in the north west) saying, “we can learn lessons from his fight, especially as it highlights that land ownership remains far too concentrated in very few hands.” 

A sentiment echoed by Andy Birchall, the chairman of a local Unite branch and a former coal miner turned trade union lecturer and who said” “I am very proud to come from the same town as Winstanley. Land should be a common treasure and the first thing the Labour government after the war should have done was to nationalise the land as part of socialist programme to own and control the means of production, distribution and exchange. I believe we must have a statue of Winstanley in Wigan.”

Surveying the large number of people enjoying themselves at the Festival, Steve Chik, a Unite printer who is chair of the organising committee, said: “I’d like to see this Festival become as important to the North West as the Tolpuddle Martyr one is to the South West and the Durham Miners’ Gala is to the North East. More people are coming each year and the atmosphere is great.” 

New book

Pluto Press has just published Gerrard WINSTANLEY: The Digger’s Life and Legacy. Written by Dr John Gurney the book is part of the recently launched Revolutionary Lives series that also includes biographies of some of the most inspiring people who have ever lived.  

The Owain Glyndwr Pub review

This review was written for the Landworker magazine of Unite 

Owain Glyndwr Pub and Restaurant, Llanddona, Beaumaris, Anglesey

Photo is copyright Paul Box 

Owain Glyndwr was the last native Welshman to hold the title of the Prince of Wales after he rose against the occupying English at the start of the fifteenth century.

And whilst six centuries later most Welsh people have abandoned any idea of independence he remains a national hero. In 2002 he was the highest Welsh entry in a BBC poll in which the UK public considered the greatest British people in history. Glyndwr came 23^rd in the 100 Greatest Britons.

Directly descended from the princes of Powys and Cyffyliog, Glyndwr was a distinguished soldier of the English King before returning home. This counted for little when he appealed, unsuccessfully, to King Henry IV, after his neighbour, Baron Grey de Ruthyn seized control of some common land. Further injustice was heaped on him when he lost a legal case after he was accused of being a traitor in London court circles.

With his life under threat, Glyndwr raised his banner on 16 September 1400 and was proclaimed Prince of Wales by a small band of followers. Henry IV despatched troops to North Wales and their brutal actions, plus the enactment of Penal Laws against Wales, pushed many Welshmen into joining Glyndwr in open revolt. They included Welsh archers in Henry’s army. By 1403 Glyndwr, backed by local Lords, controlled most of Wales.

The following year, Glyndwr called his first Parliament and moved to draw up international treaties with France and Spain. He was crowned and sought alliances with the Earl of Northumberland and Sir Edmund Mortimer to divide up England and Wales.

However in 1406, English forces landed in Anglesey as a bridgehead to defeat Glyndwr’s smaller army. Isolated castles were relieved. Aberystwyth and Harlech fell in 1408/09. Glyndwr’s family was taken prisoner – all were to die in the Tower of London by 1415 - and he was forced to again engage in guerrilla warfare by taking to the woods.

In 1412, Glyndwr led a successful raiding party in an ambush in Brecon. This was the last time he was seen alive by his enemies. Having never been betrayed by his own people he is believed to have died four years later. By which time the new king, Henry V, was adopting a more conciliatory attitude to the Welsh including offering pardons to those involved with Glyndwr.

For hundreds of years Glyndwr lived on in folk memory and during the First World War, the Prime Minister and Welshman David Lloyd-George unveiled a statue to him in Cardiff City Hall. A more recent statue was installed in 2007 in Corwen, Denbighshire. There is also a hotel named after him in the town.

Thanks to Paul Box for this photograph. 

The Owain Glyndwr on Anglesey is a very friendly family run pub in Llanddona. This small village of around 800 residents is known for its magnificent beach that forms part of the beautiful Red Wharf Bay from which the panoramic views are stunning.

The pub, which serves real ale and highly affordable food, is well used by a number of agricultural workers who back when it opened in the 1980s helped choose the pub name.

Owain Glyndwr statue 

Owain Glyndwr Pub and Restaurant, Llanddona, Beaumaris, Anglesey LL58 8UF 01248 810710 

Unplayable Shack - Manchester City 2 Bradford Park Avenue 8

Unplayable Shack 

Manchester City 2 Bradford Park Avenue 8

The following piece is currently on the website of Bradford Park Avenue. 

It is taken from Frank Swift - Manchester City and England legend

£14.99 from DB Books 

Mark Metcalf 

Frank Swift is one of the greatest English goalkeeper’s of all time. A First and Second Division, FA Cup and Charity Shield winner with Manchester City, his only League club, he represented his country on 33 occasions between 1941 and 1949. Only once did Swift, who tragically died in the  Munich air crash, concede eight goals when a Shackleton inspired Avenue overturned a first leg FA cup deficit by winning 8-2 at Maine Road in January 1946. 

The following is taken from Mark Metcalf’s newly published biography on Swift.  Mark is a Sunderland fan based in Halifax who watches eight to ten Avenue matches a season.

Following the end of the war, and with League competition yet to return, it was agreed that the 1945-46 FA Cup would be played over two legs. Having squeezed past Port Vale 3-2 on aggregate, Avenue was drawn against Manchester City, who only weeks earlier they had lost 6-0 to. 

Playing away in the first leg, and before a crowd of 25,014, City, with two late goals, won handsomely 3-1. Swift had a decent match, using his long legs to prevent Bert Knott opening the scoring and then diverting the centre-forward’s splendid shot over for a corner. With the game tied at 1-1 and only seconds of the first period remaining ‘Swift saved City with a save which only he could have made – a magnificent backward leap to turn a header from Shackleton over the bar, when a goal looked a certainty.’ (Manchester Evening News) 

The second leg was sure to be a formality. Avenue, though, had in their side a number of good players and during the war had beaten sides rated their superiors. On his day Len Shackleton – the Clown Prince of Soccer – could be almost unplayable and the match at Maine Road on 30 January 1946 was to be one of those days. 

Writing in his autobiography the future West Ham and England manager Ron Greenwood, signed from Chelsea at the end of the war, recalled ‘Our cause seemed hopeless and to rub things in our coach ran into a blizzard right on top of the Pennines on our way to Maine Road for the second leg. The wind howled, the snow swirled and our coach struggled. Len Shackleton said ‘let’s turn back…..we don’t stand a chance anyway.’ That seemed a fair assessment, but we pushed on and eventually got to the ground with less than 20 minutes to spare. Our trouble proved worthwhile, even though the pitch was covered by pools of water and a gale blew across the pitch.’

It was City, though, who were blown away, beaten 8-2, with Jackie Gibbons, the former Spurs amateur centre-forward, scoring four times. It was to be a famous day for the West Yorkshire side. 

Ron Greenwood: ‘The sight of the great Frank Swift picking the ball out of the net eight times is something I shall never forget. Everything went right for us. It was one of those days.’ 

Returning home Len Shackleton’s dad consoled him when he reported the score as 8-2. He didn’t believe his son when he said Avenue had won and it needed the sight of the score in the newspaper the following morning to convince him. City fan Geoff Ireland had seen the first match, and he too couldn’t believe the score even after seeing the result in the paper! 

Earlier in Swift’s career City had on their staff a youngster, Jackie, who had aspired to be a keeper. Drawing on his experience the City keeper told him that ‘after every match in which a goal has been scored against me, I make a practice of sitting down and drawing diagrams to see where I was at fault.’

Leaving Maine Road after Avenue’s success Swift bumped into the same youngster, who was, by now, a very smart sergeant major and after a small chat the pair parted with Jackie informing the beaten keeper that he ‘had plenty of homework to do this evening!’ (Football from the Goalmouth) 

To a lesser man such humour might not have been as well received, but Swift had already seen the funny side of being beaten so heavily. With the papers suggesting he was shortly to be transferred to Anfield, Walter Allison recalls some in the crowd shouting out ‘When are you off to Liverpool then?’ ‘Read it in the papers’ was the reply, accompanied by a broad smile.

Then after Gibbons – who had a record of doing well against City – had fired in the seventh Swift had been reduced to laughter. Lying prostrate in the mud the keeper heard team-mate, the newly married Bert Sproston, telling the scorer to ‘go away, Sonny Boy, there’s plenty of room to play at the other end.’ 

Allison also recalls,  ‘at the end of the game Swift went out of his way to congratulate the Avenue players, to shake their hands. He wasn’t sour or bitter, and this was always a part of his game, he was a genuine sportsman was Frank Swift and that made him a decent man also in my view.’

Still a youngster, Allison should have been at school. When his mother discovered he had bunked off a word with his father saw him reported to Hardwick Central School Headmaster Mr Peake, who was ‘an awesome immaculately well dressed man who caned me and my brother Tom. It was worth it as Shackleton that day was a genius. Totally unplayable.’ 

Crime does pay when you exploit farmworkers

Never believe the saying that crime does not pay when it comes to exploiting farmworkers.

How else can you explain that someone can earn £700,000 from criminal activity and not only remain at liberty but also be ordered to pay less than 10% of the total sum back? 

Then there is the fact that the criminal is currently earning £5,000 a month working abroad plus the NFU support for its members who used the crooked gangmasters services. 

Christopher John Blakeney systematically exploited around 60 Filipino herdsmen. He illegally supplied them to dairy farmers, including former NFU president Gwyn Jones. Jones was one of 15 farmers who earlier this year pleaded guilty to ‘using the services of an unlicensed gangmaster.’ Yet remarkably none were fined even after the judge in the case told the farmers, “What you did by engaging these people enabled their exploitation by others.”

Yet rather than breathe a sign of relief that his members had not faced the full wrath of the law the NFU President Peter Kendall had the audacity to criticise the Gangmasters' Licensing Authority (GLA) for bringing the case to court by saying, “considering the £100,000 legal costs to the taxpayer it’s difficult to see how the public interest has been served.”

Blakeney ignored GLA advice and warnings by supplying the workers illegally for more than three years. He withheld workers’ first two months half-salary, deducted administration and accommodation fees and paid workers under the minimum wage. Any complaints were ignored. In court it was agreed he had made a net profit of £700,000 of which only £12,801 remained in his bank accounts. The crook is now earning £5,000 a month working in Jordan. He was handed 12-months imprisonment suspended for two years for four counts of acting as an unlicensed gangmaster.

Under the Proceeds of Crime Act a confiscation order for £12,801 was issued. Blakeney has also been ordered to pay compensation to the workers of £45,000 over the next three years. That’s right, make £700,000, pay back £57,801 and stay out of prison! Little wonder that the GLA Chief Executive Paul Broadbent remarked afterwards, “In this case I honestly do not believe the punishment fits the crime.”

Broadbent can take heart by knowing the GLA’s work on a highly complex case has raised the diary migrant workers wages to the legal national minimum wage and they now earn as much as £400 to £600 more a month. Other workers in similar situations will also feel more confident about coming forward. 

Yet despite this - and many other successes - the GLA appears to have few friends in government. Unite fought a vigorous campaign to have it established in 2005 and along with the TUC is opposed to recent cuts in the GLA’s powers to regulate the forestry sector, shellfish industry, land agents and cleaning contractors operating in the food processing industry.

“During a recession people are desperate for work and at greater risk of exploitation from employers – making it even tougher for legitimate employers to survive. The government should respect and protect the law abiding, not make it easier for those who seek to operate outwith the law to do so,’ said Julia Long, the Unite national officer for rural workers. 

Battle to open police spy database

Battle to open police spy database

Campaigners’ attempts to discover what personal information is held about them on police intelligence databases are drawing a blank.

In the wake of revelations about police spies and the undercover surveillance of activist groups dating back decades, individuals who believe they may have been targeted have submitted Data Protection Act requests to the Metropolitan Police.

But despite a requirement that police reply within 40 days, some have yet to hear back
from them several months later – while others are dissatisfied with their response.

Still waiting

The campaigners want to learn what details were gathered about them by the now-defunct Special Demonstration Squad – later replaced by the National Domestic Extremism Unit – and some have asked for information which may be held about campaigns they participated in. Each request costs £10.

Kevin Blowe, a miscarriage of justice campaigner with Newham Monitoring Project since the late 1980s, is still waiting for a basic acknowledgement of his request more than 12 weeks on. He says he is in contact with others who have similar experiences.

Standard response

Those who have received a response were sent a standard letter from the Metropolitan Police, reading: “From the personal details supplied in this request, there is no information the Commissioner is required to supply you. Please note this letter should not be used as a certificate of good character.”

Among those to have received this letter is former social worker Celia Stubbs, whose partner Blair Peach died in 1979 after an unidentified police officer struck him during a demonstration in Southall against the National Front. For the next 20 years, Stubbs was an active member of Hackney’s Colin Roach Centre, which was targeted by the Special Demonstration Squad, whose undercover officer Mark Jenner infiltrated the organisation for around three years in the mid 1990s.

Mary Pimm received a similar letter after asking police if they had records about whether her telephone was tapped duringa civil service strike that she participated in.

She said: “In 1981, I picked up my phone to hear a previous conversation being replayed. I also wanted to know if the police had collected information on the Harry Stanley Campaign that was formed after Harry was shot dead by the police on 22 September 1999.”

Ethics panel

Concerned by the brush-off, Pimm contacted her Greater London Assembly (GLA) member, Jeanette Arnold. The Labour councillor also sits on the GLA police and crime committee. She took up Pimm’s case with mayor Boris Johnson – whose responsibilities include oversight for the Metropolitan Police. He replied he was “not in a position to respond to your request to confirm there was no infiltration to the Stanley campaign”.

Johnson supported home secretary Theresa May’s decision not to hold a public inquiry into undercover policing and instead backed three ongoing investigations.

The mayor is, however, pressing ahead with the establishment of a legacy and ethics panel attached to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC). He recently appointed Lord Carlile, a former Liberal Democrat MP and reviewer of terrorism legislation, to chair the panel.

Carlile’s appointment and his announcement that he wants to look at undercover policing has been cautiously welcomed by Jenny Jones, leader of the Green Party group on the GLA and deputy chair of the police and crime committee.

Oversight responsibilities

She said: “Until I see the detail of what its powers will be and what access to information it will be granted, I remain sceptical about its ability to change Met Police behaviour. This panel must not allow MOPAC to dodge its oversight responsibilities on undercover policing.”

Chartist sculpture in Newport

A sculpture which commemorates the Chartist uprising in Newport is positioned outside the Westgate Hotel, where at least twenty demonstrators were killed and fifty wounded on 4 November 1839.

The Newport Rising was the last armed rebellion in Britain when led by John Frost more than 3,000 marched to Westgate Hotel in the town to demand the release of several Chartists held there. Twenty-eight soldiers inside the hotel were ordered to open fire on the crowd.  Frost and the other leaders of the march were subsequently found guilty of high treason and transported for life. 

Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform that existed between 1838 and 1848 and which took its name from the People’s  Charter of 1838. This had six basic reforms to make the political system more democratic:

1) A vote for every man over the age of 21 

2) A secret ballot for elections

3) No property qualification for members of Parliament

4) Payment for MPs (so poor men could become one)

5) Constituencies of equal size 6) Annual elections for Parliament

Today all but one of the Charter’s six points are enshrined in law as the right of every citizen. 

The artwork was created by Christopher Kelly in 1991 and there are three groups of statues depicting Chartist ideals of ‘Union, Prudence and Energy’. 

Ten of those who were shot dead were buried in unmarked graves in St Woolos Churchyard in Newport. 

Thomas Spence, 1750 - 1814, 'dare to be free'.

Thomas Spence - “Dare to be Free”.  

The life of land reformer and political activist Thomas Spence is  commemorated in his home city of Newcastle with a plaque on the Quayside where he was born, in 1750, and later ran a school. Its mounting in 2010 ended a 10-year campaign by the trust established in Spence’s name. 

One of net maker Jeremiah Spence’s nineteen children, Thomas Spence entered the world in turbulent times with land clearances and industrialisation pushing people off the land and into the factories. 

After initially working alongside his father, Spence became a teacher. Disturbed by the poverty he saw all around him it wasn’t long before he began to agitate for improvements. At aged 15 he published and sold his pamphlet, The Real Rights of Man. This was inspired by a lawsuit between the freemen (a person who enjoys political and civil liberties)  and Newcastle Corporation over the use of common land. It was to be the first of many pamphlets Spence was to be involved with until his death in 1814. 

He agitated for all land to be held in common ownership by each parish. People were to be given their own plots on which to grow the necessities of life with profits from the rents to be employed to support local services such as libraries and schools. 

Having secured the vast majority of land for themselves in 1066 and during Henry the VIII’s reign with the dissolution of the monasteries, then the large landowners were not going to allow Spence’s idea’s to gain the converts he needed to turn theory into practice. By 1794 he was facing high treason charges in court. There he took up Thomas Paine’s arguments against hereditary aristocracy by following it to a natural conclusion in arguing for the end of private property in land. He was given seven months at his majesty’s pleasure, but imprisonment failed to curb a man whose favourite slogan was “dare to be free”. 

Further spells in prison followed as Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger sought to eradicate radical ideas in Britain by suspending Habeas Corpus on many occasions. Nothing though failed to dampen Spence’s enthusiasm to improve the lot of the workingman, leading him to publish the Grand Repository of the English Language. In this he outlined a new phonetic system of learning under which the written word resembled that of the spoken. 

“He wanted to give the working man a chance to read as he was convinced that once they were able to do so they would want to overthrow the tyranny under which they toiled” says Joan Beal, a Sheffield University professor. 

Newcastle born poet Keith Armstrong and founder of the Spence Trust said he was “delighted to see a plaque on the spot where this great man of principle lived and worked. Hopefully it will mean that those who pass it and who have never previously heard of Spence will take the time in the future to find out more about him”. 

According to Newcastle Labour Councillor Nigel Todd it would be great if more people did find out about Spence as the “issues he tried to resolve over two hundred years ago remain in place today with the vast majority of land still owned by very few people, who are the descendants of the major landowners from back then.”  A fact which means that today Britain has the most imbalanced land ownership package in the world, with 64% of all land owned by just 0.28% of the population. To make matters worse, most are beneficiaries of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy programme of farming subsidies.