The workers’ stories of the North East brought to life at Beamish Museum, Stanley, County Durham DH9 0RG

 

HEARTWARMING DAY OUT

The workers’ stories of the North East brought to life

Beamish Museum, Stanley, County Durham DH9 0RG

 Beamish Museum is a unique place with its open-air mixture of town and country stretching across its 350-acre site.

Little wonder it’s enjoyed daily by thousands of visitors who can discover how previous generations worked the land, including in the bowels of it, before the vast majority of rural workers were swept into towns and cities to work in industry.

“Agriculture and pits are central to the North East’s history,” explains locally born Samantha Shotton, Beamish’s Chief Operating Officer, dressed as an appropriate well-to-do Victorian period dress. “Our founder Frank Atkinson in the 1960s could visual the loss of the traditional way of life for ordinary people,” and so he set out to preserve examples of everyday life in urban and rural life.

Just off the A1M and located outside Stanley, midway between Durham City and Newcastle, Beamish, opened in 1972, is a great day out for all ages.

Increasing numbers of Unite members who make an annual pilgrimage to the Durham Miners’ Gala on the second Saturday in July may want to consider taking time out to make the short trip.

The ticket price, which helps pay the wages of up 550 staff in the summer that are engaged on a range of jobs that includes working with animals and maintaining the historic moving trams and buses that younger children particularly love getting on and off, includes multiple visits.

For older visitors the Museum, open all year, also has regular health and wellbeing group sessions. These are located in Clover Cottage, which is packed with sights, sounds, smells and tastes that are familiar to dementia sufferers. This work is based in Beamish’s most recently recreated 1950s town, chosen after research amongst its visitors.

Close by resides both the 1940s and 1900s towns. The latter’s busy main street is packed with shops, including one advertising opportunities to escape poverty by emigrating to Canada and the US, that leads down to Rowley Station. It was the invention of the railways that transformed trade, thus enabling the growth of new industries regionally and worldwide.

One of the most hauled and valuable North East goods was coal, the mining of which in 1913 employed 165,246 men across Durham in 304 mines including the former Mahogany Drift Mine that Beamish visitors can access today before exploring a 1900s pit village.

Beamish’s oldest building, parts dating back to the 1440s, is Pockerley Old Hall, with its beautiful Georgian gardens and view. This was home to Mr. William Morgan, one of 13 local tenant farmers in 1825.

Engager Kevin Carroll explains Morgan “did very well such that we later find him living in Chester-Le-Street as a gentleman. It was a period when the rural landscape was changing dramatically away from strip farming to the larger fields combining agriculture and livestock.”

Those employed by Morgan did not do as well.

“You’d be taken on at a local hiring fair in the spring time, required to work extremely hard from the moment the sun came up till it went down and only get paid after the harvest. If you were not pulling your weight then you were gone as there was plenty of other people out there who needed work.”

Some workers who slept at the Hall would be forced to sleep up to six in a bed which they accessed through a roof top hole as they were not allowed to use the main stairs just in case they dirtied the carpets or disturbed their employer.

“Two apprentice farmers, the sons of nearby farmers, had a separate bedroom next door,” explains Kevin, who has worked at the Museum for 20 years and still really enjoys doing so by describing it “like a giant family.”

Fast forwarding to over a century later, stories of wartime life can be found on the 1940s farm where in front of a blazing hot coal fire, Pam Hudson, one of 300 volunteers, was clearly enjoying herself explaining to visitors about the importance of the Land Girls, reformed at the start of WWII to replace male workers sent off to fight

“Nationally in 1944 there were 80,000 and, despite having no previous agricultural experience, they helped increase food production from a low in 1943 by tackling a big rat problem, milking cows, planting vegetables, sugar beet and wheat for flour.

“We have lots to be thankful for and I like to tell, especially to the children, their stories as otherwise their achievements will be forgotten.”

Visitors can also access a 1950s farm to discover the story of how hard it was to make a living from upland farming and traditional rural skills in the North East just after the war.

Add in the sheer beauty of the location and its animals, wildlife and trees that mean visitors can just sit or stroll around doing little then it’s no wonder visitors enjoy their day out.

“We have been in the cafe” explains Janice, whose daughter Jessie, pushing her son Arthur in his wheelchair, said “she especially liked looking round the old houses and admiring the wallpaper.”

For Oliver, a regular visitor, his favourite parts of the museum are the “trams, park, picnic and pigs,” whilst according to his nan Alison the four-year old has also developed a “real love in the growth of the animals. He learns lots coming here.”

That’s heartwarming for Samantha Shotton to hear. “If children come with their families and they start a conversation with another generation that can be really important for both. Also because of our approach then learning can be fun as well. All of which combines to keep the history of the North East going.” Which was, of course, Frank Atkinson’s aim.

 

 

Northern Ireland farm workers receive pay boost thanks to Agricultural Wages Board

 UNITE the union Landworker magazine Summer 2025 article 

Unite reps on the Northern Ireland Agricultural Wages Board have helped push up the minimum wage rates for Northern Ireland agricultural workers from 1 April.

Standard grade 2 workers have been the biggest beneficiaries with their hourly rate rising from £8.62 to £12.50, just 10 pence an hour below the real Living Wage to which thanks to union pressure, the department of agriculture, environment and rural affairs (DAERA) has been forced to announce they are working towards adopting.

 “This is a good move as the Living Wage Foundation’s norms standards is the only UK wage rate independently calculated, based on the cost of living, ensuring that workers receive a fair wage that meets their everyday needs,” says Unite regional officer Joanne McWilliams .

Grade 3 lead workers have had rises from £10.77 to £12.73 an hour with grade 6 farm management hourly wages now at £13.90.

County Tyrone’s Ronnie Corbett, an employee at Moy Park Chickens for over 25 years, is one of six Unite reps who annually face a struggle to convince six Ulster Farmers Union (UFU) reps on the AWB to reward their employees more favourably.

In 2024, the UFU hoped to pay nothing extra but thanks to backing from the board’s independents a 6% increase was awarded. This followed rises of over 8% in 2023.

“The UFU always plead poverty, but they need these short-term workers who are actually skilled as picking lettuce and cabbages at the necessary pace is a real task. And you saw what happened in England following Brexit when they could not recruit workers. Fields did not get picked and food rotted,” said Ronnie.

“I’d like to see better pay and conditions but fact is that farmers are struggling to put pressure on the supermarkets to increase farm gate prices. Farmers fear speaking up but Unite through Joanne McWilliams is doing so,” explains Ronnie, who is also concerned that NI family farms will be bought out by the likes of venture capitalists Blackrock in the near future.

According to Ronnie, the NI AWB’s continued existence - which was only made possible by Unite leading a united campaign in 2021-22 that involved rural councils helping to defeat plans by the Northern Ireland Assembly Rural Affairs Minister, Edwin Poots to scrap it - means workers do not need to rely on casual, cash in hand work as there is a framework of terms and conditions.

“It stops abuse and helps unify an isolated,  fragmented workforce. Migrant workers whose English is their second language get the same rights.”

At the same time, Unite aims to maintain pressure for further improvements throughout 2025. “We expect some horse trading at future meetings as their appears to be an understanding that the skills base should be better rewarded.

“That the AWB exists means we can put our concerns to the farmers regularly and negotiate ongoing improvements.”

All NI reps like Ronnie hope to see the restoration of the AWB in England. “I am glad that Unite is putting pressure on the Labour government as an English AWB can help rebuild terms and conditions and encourage more people to work in agriculture and horticulture.”

This article is dedicated to Jimmy Bradley, a Northern Ireland Unite steward who died last year.

Book review - Fight for it Now – John Dower and the Struggle for National Parks in Britain.

 

Fight for it Now – John Dower and the Struggle for National Parks in Britain.

David Wilkinson – Signal Books

 As reviewed in Landworker magazine 

National Parks are the jewels in the crown of the countryside. They didn’t though grow themselves; they had to be fought for. One man who did was trade unionist Benny Rothman whose leadership of the 1932 Kinder Scout Trespass led to his and four fellow ramblers’ imprisonment. That sparked such public outrage that it brought to the fore the issue of countryside access. This thereafter refused to dampen down and encouraged those already campaigning for passage to the hills to push on with their proposals even during WWII.

No one did more than ensure we have National Parks than Ilkley born John Dower whose life long battle for their creation, was only finally won two years after he lost his life to tuberculosis (TB) in October 1947.

The story is powerfully captured by David Wilkinson in his biography that charts the long journey between conception and realisation of a dream that many others were also happy to make a reality.

Civil servant and architect Dower had a blue plaque unveiled in his honour at Malham YHA late last year on the 75^th anniversary of the December 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act.

Building on the (Dr Christopher) Addison Committee report of 1931 that proposed Britain designated National Parks, but which was overlooked during a period of great economic crisis, Dower, already involved in discussions about national planning, conducted extensive surveys of SW England on behalf of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and Somerset County Council.

Forty thousand copies of his The Case for National Parks in Great Britain, 1938 pamphlet were well received and was a significant boost to the Standing Committee on National Parks, established in 1935 by numerous open-air groups.

When war was declared, Dower volunteered but a year later he was declared permanently unfit for active service with what was eventually diagnosed as TB. It meant that in March 1941 he joined what later became the Ministry of Works and Planning.

With the coalition government containing trade unionists, all determined amidst the horrors of war to offer a vision of the future better than in 1920s and 1930s, he was charged with writing a White Paper. This established the key National Park principles of agricultural and recreational development, retention of characteristic landscapes and protection of wildlife and buildings in extensive areas of beautiful and relatively wild country.

Over the following years these aims and how to implement them had to be negotiated with local and national government departments and countryside interest groups such as the NFU. Although the final legislation would not have been exactly what Dower wanted the 1949 Countryside Act was a massive improvement on what had gone before. Much later the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 strengthened the right to roam across some of the most beautiful countryside in England and Wales.

To read more on Rothman download for free Unite’s booklet on him by Mark Metcalf at:- https://bit.ly/4k7sCnn

 

Watch also Mass Trespass https://bit.ly/4mcH4N0 

 

 

 

NET ZERO WON'T SOLVE GLOBAL WARMING

 Unpublished article from 2024 

MORE THAN HOT AIR

Are surface temperatures being overlooked in the battle to tackle global warming?

Charlie Clutterbuck thinks so and it's bad news for the environment 

Coal, oil and gas, the exploitation of which took mankind out of the Dark Ages, took millions of years to mature. But unless we create some way of swiftly controlling their poisonous side effect’s they might just finish us off instantaneously. 

Which is why Unite is contributing towards the campaign for Net Zero emissions by backing plans to increase carbon, capture and storage (CCS) , in which Britain led the world until Thatcher took her axe to tests at Grimethorpe Colliery just prior to the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike.

 But might the rural sector be able to help out in tackling global warming? Unite’s own soil scientist Charlie Clutterbuck, who as Landworker readers will know constantly explores possible solutions to what are regarded as intractable problems, believes so.

“The most reliable global warming data since 1880 comes from NASA. In the next 100 years this reveals there were as many cold years as warm. Global temperature rose 0.3C,” explains Charlie.

“Yet from 1980 - 2020 it warmed 1.6C. That is the equivalent of 13x faster than the previous century. Every decade since the 1980s has been warmer than the previous one.

“The Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI) compares the warming effect of the main human-produced greenhouse gases to conditions in 1990. In 2022, the AGGI was 1.49, a 49% increase in 32 years when over the same period temperatures rose extra-ordinarily.”

Seeking explanations, Charlie is convinced of the need “to examine surface heat exchange where the sun’s rays hit the earth.” This complex equation (based on 2 aspects - albedo capacity and conductivity) happens before any GHG involvement.

Statistics reveal that solar radiation received from the sun totals 342 watts per cubic metre with 339 watts going back out.  The remaining 3 watts - 1% of the total - is energy. Its absorption by the earth warms it up. Altering that could be key.

Albedo is a key parameter widely used in land surface energy balance studies, mid-to-long-term weather prediction, and global climate change investigation. 

“As open ocean water has a moderate albedo of around 0.06 it absorbs a lot of sunlight, thus contributing to ocean warming, The sea though has high capacity to absorb heat without temperature increasing, and then conductivity to move it around. Again, we see it heating lots faster since 1980. Much more than GHGs alone could cause this,” states Charlie who first appeared in Landworker magazine over 50 years ago and who played a key role in the setting up of the Hazards Campaign and Magazine that has saved the lives of many thousands.

On land the albedo is, depending on the surface, more variable. Snow has high albedo (reflectivity) but when it melts the brown earth has low albedo, thus absorbing more heat. Forest and grassland are cooler than ploughed soil because of a mixture of albedo and capacity. It means that on hot days it’s pleasurable to lie on the grass but not on the soil,

Currently, ‘global’ temperatures measure just air temperatures and although water transfers 90% of our heat we do not even measure its effects. Land too is not measured and so there exists few worldwide comparisons of variation of warmth over different land practices.

“If we could alter that it could make a massive analytical difference,” states Charlie. “Because I feel it can help establish that soil surface temperature rises have played a major role in the rapid global heat increase.”

At Davos in 2023, delegates at the World Economic Forum were saying ‘soil is the solution’ because of its carbon content.

“But this shows how ‘reductionist’ carbon counting is. The soil is a living entity not lumps of carbon. Soil holds moisture that keeps the planet cool; thus pasture is better than arable land,” argues Charlie who is convinced that the soil in our cities that is now concreted and tarmacked over had previously held temperatures down by retaining water.  “Increasing numbers and the size of cities must have had an impact on global warming.”

Meanwhile, the ‘green revolution’ expanded dramatically in Asia & Africa after 1980 to produce grain and vegetables in monocultures. “That warms up land considerably more than grazed grassland. Previous civilisations – for example, Greek, Roman & Mayan -  have been eroded due to similar agricultural practices.”

Trees are even cooler than grazed grassland and so “the continuing chopping down of many forests increases surface temperatures by releasing moisture.”

Baking hot

Furthermore, an area half the size of Europe is degraded annually from ‘dryland ‘to desert.

“The impact of desertification on global warming must be enormous, with no trees, grass, clouds, water holding, life support and surface temperatures bouncing around. Re-growing the trees, grass and improved soil would help cool the planet and improve rural economies.”

In turn this should reduce emigration by millions of desperate people seeking to survive an ever-heating world.

Soilution?

“Some of the £1.5 trillion being earmarked towards ‘net zero’, where GHG emissions are, at around £40 a ton of carbon, balanced by increasing carbon absorption somewhere else, should be invested in paying attention to the earths’ surface temperatures.”

Rural road to ruin

Nationally, Charlie also fears that net zero plans encourage less food production and damage rural employment opportunities.

“Like other organisations, The National Trust have pledged to become net zero by 2030. In addition to increasing tree planting and restoring peat bogs they are now getting rid of sheep from their farms around Malham Tarn so they can ‘rewild’  the land.  Such policies will increase food imports, using other peoples' land, water and labour and increasing their soil temperatures. These new measures also take time and reduce jobs. Land for food production should be prioritised.”

Halifax and the 1925 textile workers strike public meeting on 18 July

 

STITCHED UP - Bradford's early textile unions

 Watch Professor Keith Laybourn explain more about the struggles by Bradford's textile workers up until 1926. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e58Hfhboes&t=44s

For more on Bradford's textile workers read also my booklet on Julia Varley:- 

https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/6328-julia-varley-booklet.pdf

Also available is this booklet on Bradford TUC's first 100 years 1872: 1972 

https://markwrite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/100th-btuc-booklet-pdf-1.pdf

Come along and hear Keith speak in Halifax on 18th of July. 

Calderdale TUC passes resolution opposing Israel's attack on Iran

 Emergency Motion concerning Israel’s attack on Iran:

Calderdale Trades Union Council denounces Israel's attack on Iran and calls on Kier Starmer to ensure that Britain plays no part in supporting politically or militarily as the action marks another step towards a regional conflict across the Middle East.

Passed last night (19-06-2025)

Delegates at the meeting included 2 comrades - I am one - who over many decades have supported struggles by the Iranian people to free themselves from its current leaders but who are aware that the ongoing attack by Israel has nothing to do with improving the situation for the Iranian people.