The judiciary was against the disenfranchised working class and quickly dispatched the “Martyrs” – George and James Loveless, James Brine, James Hammett, Thomas Stansfield and his son, John – to Australia.
Today we have some of the toughest anti-union legislation in Europe and courts that lean too heavily in favour of powerful interests, as unions and their members, such as Unite’s BA cabin crew, will testify.
The 1830s saw Britain at the height of its manufacturing power – the industrial threats from a united Germany and the United States were 40 years away. Those who produced the wealth for the elite were not rewarded: primitive working conditions, ill-health, slum housing and premature death were the fate of the millions that flocked from the countryside to the new industrial cities of Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham in the search of illusory prosperity.
Flash forward nearly 200 years and we have a baron-wannabe, Eric Pickles, scheming to clear the poor from our cities by imposing a “can’t pay, you won’t stay” rule on the low-waged to leave them free to become sterile zones for the rich and big business.
And as unemployment rises and the Chancellor stays deaf to calls for economic growth, consider for a moment what Lord Melbourne and his cabinet of millionaires would have done faced by a Prussian competitor bidding to squash Britain’s then embryonic rail industry.
What words would they give their wealthy contemporaries now exposed as supine and incapable of navigating procurement laws in order to prevent Derby’s Bombardier workers losing out to German train-making firm, Siemens?
The fever of public opinion is not peculiar to the modern day. 1834 was the age of the great Chartist petitions and rallies in pursuit of greater representation, such as a vote for every man (unfortunately not women) over the age of 21 and a secret ballot.
It was public opinion that was responsible for the return of the six Tolpuddle workmen from half way around the world. A quarter of a million people signed a petition and 30,000 marched down Whitehall in support of the labourers, resulting in the sentences being remitted and the six being given free passage home.
In March 2011, some half a million marched down those same Whitehall streets calling for a stop to the cuts to our jobs and services. The Tory-led Government chose to ignore those protests this year but the complacency of ministers will cost them.
As the cuts are set to deepen for another year, the continuous power and strength of public opinion should never be underestimated, today as in the 1830s. What may have seemed abstract some six months ago is now very real. Jobs are going, pay is being cut and services are straining.
As workers in Southampton and Shropshire confront their employers’ plans to make them pay for George Osborne’s cuts, hundreds of thousands of public servants walked out on June 30 over attacks on pensions and cuts to the National Health Service, it reminds us of a time when the ability to pay was the only determinant of health care. It is easy to think that the current Government is propelling us back through time, unravelling progress and spreading inequality.
Rupert Murdoch, brooding like a Victorian mill owner, coming unstuck by the angry revulsion of the public may give a temporary illusion that society is recalibrating. But the real problem thrown up by the News of the World’s downfall is that when elites are unaccountable and the forces of business are allowed to concentrate, then corruption is not far behind. The symptom may have gone but the cause is still very much with us.
While the 1830s were a time of tension for the people of this country, these troubles led us to be a fairer country, they planted the seeds for a social revolution that would span the next
150 years. The vote, mass literacy, education, public housing, the National Health Service, our welfare state, and access to justice can all in some way be traced back to the struggle of the Martyrs.
But for every gain we, as working people, have made, we have had to fight. And now we face the biggest fight for generations. Working people have to fight again, inch by inch, against the privatisation of the NHS, the attack on public services and the job losses generated by a needless austerity programme.
The elite, from the boardroom to the broadcasting studio, the City to Conservative Central Office, are the ones who must think hard about the lessons from 1834. They have connived their way to power, with the permission of those elected supposedly to defend our interests; these parties have abused their places in our lives.
And that’s why we should take inspiration from those six brave men 177 years ago, making a stand against enormous odds and paying a terrible price. Their watchwords were courage and determination.
These are the values that we should hold even closer as we celebrate the annual anniversary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs – values that transcend time and embrace our common humanity.
