, and exploited, and with seemingly no opportunity of having their wrongs redressed.
But for the Match Girls, at least, help was at hand in the formidable shape of one Mrs Annie Besant, a woman of forty, who had already made herself unpopular in many circles for her fight for women’s rights, which were practically non-existent at the time.
Among other things, Annie Besant was a member of the Fabian Society, a small group of people who had named their society after the Roman, Quintus Fabius Maximus, known as the Delayer, because he had harrassed Hannibal’s army for three years without once entering into a major encounter on the battlefield. The Fabians, who were all Socialists, hoped to use similar tactics to bring about a number of social and economic reforms. Using the slogan “Evolution not Revolution,” they hoped to break down the prejudices of their Establishment with reasoned argument. But reason, alas, does not always prevail, and already it was beginning to dawn on the Fabians that militancy was sometimes necessary. Mrs Annie Besant was perhaps rather different to the other members of the society inasmuch as that she had always been a militant. Aggressive, determined and totally devoted to the cause of women’s emancipation, she was the ideal person to fight for the cause of the Match Girls. Her efforts on their behalf were to have far wider ramifications than she could have ever realised.
Read the rest of this article »
Posted in Farming, Historical articles, History, Industry, Institutions, Law, Politics on Friday, 21 February 2014
This edited article about the Tolpuddle Martyrs first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 562 published on 21 October 1972.
Even when the Tolpuddle Martyrs were pardoned, their neighbours regarded them as convicts and avoided them, by Ken Petts
The picture of death, with its grim, gaunt features, was six feet high and awesome, terrifying. It seemed to fill the cramped room of the cottage at Tolpuddle, Dorset, glowering down upon the two initiates who knelt cringing before it.
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.
Read the rest of this article »
Posted in Cars, Historical articles, History, Industry, World War 1, World War 2 on Frida