.
For John Lock and Edward Legg, the sight increased the fears already fostered by the atmosphere of secrecy, and the solemn, white-robed figures of George Loveless and his brother James.
“Remember your fate!” James warned them, pointing to the picture, and it was in trembling awareness of exactly that, that Legg and Lock then took an oath never to reveal to outsiders anything of the agricultural workers’ union they were about to join.
Scenes like this deliberately designed to appeal to primitive fears and stir deep-rooted superstition, were not uncommon in the forming of trade unions. Intelligent men like George Loveless, founder of the Tolpuddle union in December 1833, disliked such ritual, but in the circumstances there was little alternative.
It was virtually the only way to impress illiterate workers, whose spirits had been withered into apathy by endless labour and absolute poverty.
As far as rural England was concerned, the myth persisted of the sturdy industrious peasant happily labouring in fresh fields and unpolluted air. This was indeed a myth, as George Loveless and his fellow unionists knew only too well, for a wage that never exceeded nine shillings a week offered nothing but despair.
There was little health or happiness to be found in the wretched insanitary hovels most employers grudgingly provided, nor in the constant presence of children, hollow-eyed and gaunt from lack of food. There could be nothing industrious about men who knew that however hard and long they worked, they could never earn enough to give their families any hope of anything better.
It was little wonder that in such circumstances, many were tempted into crime and some into violence. A few, like George Loveless, turned to the idea of forming trades unions to bargain with employers for better conditions.
Though this seems the most intelligent reaction, it was, apart from violent revolution, the most dangerous.
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Posted in Cars, Historical articles, History, Industry, World War 1, World War 2 on Friday, 21 February 2014
This edited article about Louis Renault first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 561 published on 14 October 1972.
the Paris to Madrid race of 1903, which had cost Louis his brother's life by Graham Coton
Louis Renault hadn’t a hope. Accusing fingers were pointing at this wealthy French motor car manufacturer.
He was a collaborationist, they said. He made tanks and aeroplane engines for the Nazis, they cried. He had grown fat and rich in the Second World War while most of occupied France starved under German rule, they screamed.
Louis Renault must die.
It was a hate campaign against war profiteers, among whom Louis Renault was classed. His punishment had begun when his great sprawling factory had crumbled under the bombs of the R.A.F. because they were working for the German army.
But he had rebuilt it with the rugged tenacity that had brought him through a life of shattering disasters.
He had made the name of Renault famous throughout the world with a succession of fine cars for the family motorist and fast models for the racing track. He had perfected devices like a special gearbox that earned him royalties for many years from all the other motor manufacturers. Renault had given the car to the people.
And now he was going to pay the price. His arrest was inevitable. The sentence of the court beyond doubt.
Renault had worked for the Germans. Renault would pay the penalty.
As he looked back over his life in the anxious days before the police called to arrest him, he must have wondered what had changed him from the shy, stuttering youth whose main joy was in tinkering with machinery, to the single-minded autocratic employer whose sole interest was in keeping his vast factory in production, whether it was making cars for the French people or tanks for the Germans.
Renault was in love with his factory. And he had to keep its heart throbbing, whatever the cost.
Part of that cost had been paid during the frightful bloodbath of the Paris to Madrid race of 1903, which had seared a burning scar i