Success not martyrs

Peter Paterson

The unfortunate malaise which overtook Mr Len Murray while marching in pro- cession at Tolpuddle, Dorset, last weekend, cannot possibly be presented as a symbolic event denoting the collapse of trade unionism at the very site of its birth. In the first place, any claims Tolpuddle and its eponymous Martyrs might have in that direction are somewhat spurious. And secondly, any undue rejoicing over the fall of a prominent union man at a time of trade union unpopularity should be quelled by the thought that Mr Murray, a conscien- tious and thoughtful leader of the TUC, is much more a victim of the miners' strike that one of its authors. Even so, annual celebration of the anniversary of the arrest and trial of the Tolpuddle Six remains a curious aberration in the trade union calen- dar. This year being the nice round 150th anniversary, there are tell-tale signs that a professional fund-raiser may be at work, with, for the first time in my recollection, Tolpuddle mugs and other curios on sale at each of the trade union seaside conferences this summer.

Normally, Tolpuddle is a yearly chore for the general secretary of the TUC, plus its current chairman and a second-rank Labour politician, scarcely noticed by press or public. This time, thanks to the round number, the event gained in verbal length from the presence of Mr Neil Kinnock himself, and in column inches thanks to Mr Murray's heat prostration.

What is so odd is that the miserable story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs and its after- math is hardly inspiring. The TUC version is that the poor wretches were transported to Australia for forming a union to resist wage cuts imposed by the farmers who employed them as labourers. A lesson to us all: hang on to your trade union, make sure that it is financially strong and free from government legal restrictions, or the bosses will get you. Mrs Thatcher's mismanage- ment of the Cheltenham exercise only helps to keep such myths and fears alive.

What the average civics class is not taught is that in the year of the arrest of the Dorsetshire yokels, 1834, the organisation of trade unions was already a perfectly legal undertaking in this country. It had been so since 1825 when Parliament abolished all the statutes forbidding workers to combine together to secure wage increases or to oppose wage reductions (the Combination Acts) stretching back to the reign of Edward I.

Indeed parliamentary dithering over trade unions at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries almost parallels the ups and downs which have so confused present-day trade unionists. In the late 17th century, with the collapse of the old system of haphazard parliamentary control over the wages to be paid in various trades and the rise of the trade union idea among skilled workers, Parliament became rather frightened. In particular, the growth of the cotton trade in the northern towns gave some MPs the fear that conditions were about as ripe as they could be for the importation of the ideas of the French Revolution.

So, with two bites at the cherry — in 1799 and in 1800 — the Commons decided to codify the traditional opposition of the state to combinations. Interestingly, the measures were aimed at combinations of employers as well as the nascent unions, and the second Act actually contained though it was never used — provision for the arbitration of disputes between employers and their labour force. The whole thing arose from a petition by the London master wheelwrights, troubled by their employees, but it was that saintly figure from the liberal wing of our history, William Wilberforce, who suggested that a much wider ban would be desirable on all forms of combination.

In the background were the Nore Mutiny of the fleet and the dispatch of French troops to aid the Mayo uprising in 1798, as well as those dangerous Northcountrymen. The Home Secretary, the Duke of Port- land, said of the Lancashire Association of Weavers, 'Associations so formed contain within themselves the means of being con- verted at any time into a most dangerous in- strument to disturb the public tranquillity.' So they were all banned.

But as with the Prior and Tebbit legisla- tion, the Acts of 1799 and 1800, which pro- vided the somewhat mild penalties on sum- mary convictions of a maximum of three months' imprisonment, or two months' hard labour, plus the right of appeal to Quarter Sessions, were almost never invok- ed. They were superfluous.

Once the war with France was over, the notion that less skilled workers might pro- fitably combine to influence their wages and conditions began to spread. Among the early difficulties facing the organisers was the propensity of secretaries to abscond with the funds — a problem not entirely unknown to modern unions, but one which will no doubt disappear, for a while at any rate, with the adoption of the computer linked to head office.

What seems to have worried the mercan- tile classes in the early 18th century, how- ever, was not unions per se, but the more desperate machine-smashing of the Lud- dites in Nottingham and elsewhere, and the

separate but equally annoying activities of `Captain Swing' and his like burning hay ricks and attacking farming machinery in the countryside. A naïve faith in masonic symbols and ceremonies appears to have been a feature of early (legal) trade unions, such as Robert Owen's Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. It was a fatal weakness, enabling the Whig Home Secre- tary, Melbourne, to crack down on the Tolpuddle unionists.

Petitioned by farmers to do something about rick-burning, Melbourne decided to employ against the Tolpuddle men an Act of 1799 remembered only by the Crown's law officers, and passed in the wake of the Nore Mutiny, making illegal the adminis- tering of secret oaths. The six had apparent- ly stood under a sycamore tree and sworn an oath. Before proceeding, the soft- hearted Melbourne asked the local magistrates whether the six were men of good character. Lying, they said they were not. Their harsh sentence, of seven years' transportation to Australia, was not for organising a trade union, though in honesty one would have to concede that it was legal action against a form of trade unionism the kind which led to rick-burning else- where, since nothing like that was ever pro- ved or demonstrated against the men of Tolpuddle — under the rubric of illegal oath-taking.

Two years later, by which time Melbourne was Prime Minister and Lord John Russell, who had been uneasy about the Tolpuddle convictions from the start, was Home Secretary, the six were pardoned. Only one, James Hammett, returned to live in Tolpuddle. The others, having experienc- ed the delights of Australia, chose to settle in Canada — and Hammett, with the help of donations, from a sympathetic public, became a farmer and employer of labour himself.

What all this has to do with the miners' strike, with the antics of Arthur Scargill and the inepitude of Mr Ian MacGregor, is a question best directed to those who organise the annual Tolpuddle pilgrimage. What is true of those events long ago is that while the burgeoning radical classes, soon to be caught up in the Chartist movement, were greatly annoyed with Melbourne, his action was extremely popular with the rest of the country, and trade unionism declined sharply for some years.

Meanwhile, Mr Murray — for the last time, since he is due to retire in September — martyrs himself under the hot Dorset sun in memory of the Tolpuddle victims. He failed to recall, perhaps, the observation of George Bernard Shaw 50 years ago on the centenary celebrations: that the trade union movement really has no need of martyrs. It is success they want, and it is success they should be pursuing. Mr Scargill, please note.