Stroud and the Tolpuddle Martyrs

A draft, uncorrected piece written a few years ago but hastily pasted here in time for the play on Friday March 7th about the Tolpuddle Martyrs: 'We Will Be Free', at the Lansdowne Hall and Gallery.

We glimpse a foreshadowing in Stroud of the events that led to the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union and the Tolpuddle Martyrs at the end of the 1820s and start of the next decade. It might be a good moment now to stress the complete novelty and uniqueness of the industrial capitalism that was evolving in our country at this time. The United Kingdom had been catapulted from an agrarian economy based upon a paternalistic, aristocratic form of control to a laissez-faire world where the middle classes no longer knew their place. The novels of Charles Dickens (I am writing this on the 200^th anniversary of his birth) relentlessly show this class confusion; contemporaries battled with economic confusion. They witnessed a country of constantly increasing wealth – and yet constantly increasing poverty. This phenomenon (that so many of us see around us today, nationally and internationally) was completely astonishing to social and economic observers then, and so, different explanations were duly put forward to unravel the seeming illogicality, paradox and contradiction. Some argued that profits were a deserved and justified reward whilst others presaged Marx by viewing profits as stolen wages; while some thought trade unions would disturb a laissez-faire natural harmony, others saw their existence as necessary to combat exploitation and disharmonious injustice.

Thus, there were several attempts to form a general trade union in the late twenties: a union that, by implication, would foreshadow syndicalist ideas of attempting to paralyse capitalism with a general strike; a union that would seek not sectional wage increases and an accommodation with capitalism but rather one that would seek to confront the intrinsic logic of the accumulation of capital; a combination that would be close, a posteriori, to a revolutionary ideology. No wonder then that 1830 saw the formation of the National Association of Labour; 1834 witnessed the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union and the victimisation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. It is interesting to see how these seismic events were foreshadowed in Stroud in 1825 with strike activity across more than one trade; so having sketched out some national context, let us now return to the 1825 riots.

On the 10^th of June, a person was arrested for selling a journal in the street, “The True British Weavers”; the ‘paper contained a description of the recent, local events and the poor man was put in prison. This propaganda war did not deter support for the weavers’ action, however; there were mass meetings at Break Heart Hill near Dursley and 3,000 gathered on Stinchcombe Hill, whilst Selsley topped that with an estimated gathering of 6,000. This is a quite staggering proportion of the population and indicates how far ordinary people were prepared to go to assert their rights in the face of such varied assertions of the power of law and order. This truly was a Stroud Spring, or Early Summer.

The strike lasted about three months; some strike-breakers were dealt with in a manner suggestive of “rough music”, whereby individuals who broke the code of a community were publically humiliated. This traditional form of community solidarity might involve transgressors being placed backwards on a horse and then led on a parade through a village whilst locals beat pots and pans to create the “rough music”. It was, as E.P. Thompson has shown, a pre-industrial form of action; it is interesting to see how it has been adapted to an industrial-capitalist context in Stroud, however. The practice of taking a beam from a strikebreaking weaver’s loom and then placing him astride it as if on a horse, and then ducking him in the nearest pond or canal is a fascinating example of change and continuity in action. This ritual was especially popular in Chalford. It is interesting to see how change and continuity still interplays in Chalford today; a feature on our area on Country File on BBC 1 two days ago (March 4^th 2012) featured a resident whose lifestyle combines a Dickensian keeping of donkeys with a modernist devotion to croissants. Only in Chalford, I hear you say, but, once more, be that as it may, a troop of Horse was sent in in 1825 to read the Riot Act.

Trouble was also found up at t’mill in Wotton-under-Edge (the leader of the rioting weavers there was an ex-soldier nicknamed “General Wolfe”), Dursley and Minchinhampton, but almost our final word on these events comes from the quill of J.C. Wallington, Captain, Royal Hussars, Stroud, 8^th June, 1825:

“I have the honour to inform you…that the squadron under my command was called out yesterday to disperse a mob collected in the town, which had proceeded to acts of violence. We accomplished this object with some trouble including the slash of sword only.” There was talk of sending another twenty men to Chalford and how “The Masons, Carpenters and Millwrights have also struck for more wages.”

 Enough of the military, however, let us hear from the pulpit – and so we now conclude our record of these turbulent days with John Williams, D.D., Minister of Stroud, Gloucestershire, 31^st. August, 1825: “On the Saturday preceding the arrival of the Cavalry, there were about 2,000 weavers assembled in the Town and a very large concourse of them before the door of the Clerk of the Magistrates, demanding the release of prisoners.” We might then mark these events by reflecting on the symbolism of the dipping in the waters of Stroud and Chalford – the Biblical cleansing of sins – with a coffee in Star Anise and a walk past the brook towards the “’bus station”, followed by a walk along the canal to Chalford and a dipping of the toes at Chalford Park. We will then be almost ready to follow in William Cobbett’s horse hooves.

But first we must make a detour to Wotton-Under-Edge and see how events transpired there, with “General Wolfe” directing affairs. A number of open air meetings were held and were also held at the Swann, before cloth and loom beams were set ablaze. Then property was attacked in North Nibley before an orderly march of some 300 weavers through Wotton led to further attacks on cloth and beams before Thomas Neale protected his mill with muskets against the stone-throwing rioting weavers. Thirteen were injured; the magistrates bailed the gunmen; the weavers smashed windows until special constables arrived; military force was then requested.

Five years later came the agricultural riots nicknamed the “Captain Swing Riots”. There was a break down in law and order across the farming counties of the South, with machine breaking, the burning of hay ricks, other forms of arson, the sending of threatening letters to farmers etc. The riots were caused by low wages, high bread prices, poor relief and threshing machines that took away crucial winter work. The neighbouring county of Wiltshire with its arable farming was a key area. We have to imagine village labourers passing information and ideas across fields, through dark lanes and between parishes, knowing that Justices of the Peace were keen to transport to Van Diemen’s Land (in effect, a life sentence; Magwitch’s case in Great Expectations is unusual) or sentence workers to hang. Eastern Gloucestershire was affected by the riots, especially around Fairford. Our nearest site is at Horsley, where machine breaking took place on the 26^th November, 1831. You could visit the community shop in Horsley on November 26^th each year or lean on a five bar gate and reflect on the beneficence of Lord Sherborne and his fellow Cirencester J.P.s. A return to work would result in a “just” response to labourers’ complaints, they said. The eventual response? A wave of arrests, with nearly 100 peasants incarcerated in the Gloucester Prison.

New site for Stroud and WW1

I have started a new blog at http://radicalstroudww1.wordpress.com. The intention is to run it as a site that will accommodate a wide diversity of community memory, reflection and analysis.

This current site will still continue but will be for posts about local history outside of the Great War memorialization discussions.

The website www.radicalstroud.org.uk is being updated. I’m really pleased with the way it is developing.

The below is our ‘mission statement’ for http://radicalstroudww1.wordpress.com.

It strikes me that there are as many narratives about WW1 as there are people who think about it today, and as there were soldiers and non-combatants way back then.  This multi-narrative includes, of course, perspectives from all over Europe and the world. The centenary commemoration might be characteristically British in tone, but we shall seek to be cosmopolitan in content.

That is the purpose of this blog: not to be all trendily post-modernist, but to compile an anthology of diverse reflections on, and memories of, the conflict. The approach is radical, in the sense that it is collaborative, both within the varied communities of Stroud and the 5 Valleys, and hopefully across the European continent and beyond. 

Our locality contains more diversity than many of us imagine – we need the views of descendants from the vast polyglot Central Powers, as well as from the Middle East, Africa, the old British Empire, Asia and the Americas. It was, of course, a world war, even though the Western Front dominates our memorialization.

Polly Toynbee’s commented in February 2014: ‘Every family has memories of war… History is there to be mined or undermined, renewed or debunked, as each generation ferrets out illumination for their times.’ The Great War ‘is this year’s crucible for re-examining ourselves’; we aim to contribute to this meta-narrative: this dialogue between commemoration and memorialization.

‘Oh What a Lovely War’

‘Oh What a Lovely War’

I grew up with war: my father fought in WW2 and my granddad (with whom we lived for a while in my childhood) fought in WW1. I still have my first history book, slipped beneath my pillow by my dad when he returned late from Lossiemouth. ‘A Picture History For Boys and Girls’ has additions from a youthful me, drawn in pencil and described with a fountain-pen: there is a smiling soldier advancing through No Man’s Land; a tank smashing through barbed wire; a dog fight between two bi-planes; explosions all around the title ‘WEST FRONT’.

How did I know all this at the age of seven?

Dad only talked about his Chindit war after the pub; this early foray into the depiction of WW1 happened at least eight years before the BBC Great War series and ITV’s All Our Yesterdays. I don’t remember grampy talking about it (even though we all knew that his hair had ‘turned white overnight’ in France), nor even when gran used to poke the fire and watch the sparks fly up the chimney, saying that the glowing spots of soot were like soldiers: ‘Old soldiers never die, they only fade away.’ Mum would say that, ‘Big soldiers don’t cry’ when you grazed your knee, but that’s about it, I reckon.

Did I listen in and eavesdrop conversations between my father and his father? Did the gathering of the men in our house after a Sunday session at the Wheatsheaf lead to the recollection of memories that were usually suppressed? Did I hear it all without realizing because it was all so normal? Did it all happen unconsciously and osmotically?

I really don’t know – but I do know that I grew up with a love for history and with a typically 1950s-60s WW2 Battle of Britain/Dunkirk war film consciousness. My generation’s interest in WW1 came later, however, despite the BBC Great War series. It came, for me, almost as a delayed reaction to the discovery of the War Poets and the ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ zeitgeist; but it was particularly influenced by ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ – but a good few years after its launch in 1963 (I had football and the Beatles to think about).

It must have been the eventual showing of the film version on TV that led to my eventually buying the vinyl LP (still upstairs), the DVD (back room) and the CD (back room). A decade later, I bought CDs of the original songs from the Imperial War Museum; then saw a performance at the Cotswold Theatre in Stroud, but how disappointed I am today, to find that the revival of the show at Stratford has sold out and I cannot gain a seat anywhere, anytime.

So let’s look at Michael Billington’s review of the 1963 show instead, in the Guardian, February 17^th, 2014, as a substitute. He says that what made the show original was that ‘it viewed the first world war from the perspective of the common soldier’; it was also original in that ‘it counterpointed’ period songs ‘with grim battle statistics that appeared in a running newsreel tape above the stage.’ Michael Billington goes on to say that Michael Gove’s recent assertion that the production was ‘unpatriotic…because it adopted a critical stance is to offer an insultingly narrow definition of love of country.’

What was also original was the collaborative approach to the production; its genesis was also collaborative: ‘The idea…was sparked by a BBC radio programme of first world war songs put together by presenter Charles Chilton, who lost his father to the conflict at the age of six’; by chance, Gerry Raffles heard this 1962 Armistice Day Home Programme production and Joan Littlewood ‘saw its theatrical potential, devised a rough scenario, and a script was commissioned.’ Murray Melvin remembered how Littlewood declared the script to be rubbish ‘and we never looked at it again.’ Instead, the actors were given an eclectic reading list, including Barbara Tuchman, General Haig, Siegried Sassooon, Robert Graves, Alan Clark, and so on.

What can be so unpatriotic about such a collectivist and scholarly approach, I wonder?

THE WIPERS TIMES: Our Volume 3

Spring is coming, watch the whizz-bang

As it shrieks with mad delight,

All the how’zers howl the message

As they break the still of night,

Through the winter, long and weary,

Cold and dreary, we have passed,

Lived and slept in Hell’s own muddle,

Fed and worked in filth and puddle,

But here’s end to all our worries,

Spring and sun have come at last.

Things We Want to Know

?   ?   ?

Whether it is a fact that a notice board at the foot of Kemmel Hill reads – ‘Anyone proceeding up the Hill will please go by main road, as a patrol is established there to enforce the stringent regulations re passes etc. Persons going by other routes might miss patrol.’

ARE YOU A VICTIM TO

OPTIMISM?

YOU DON’T KNOW?

THEN ASK YOURSELF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS

1.     DO YOU SUFFER FROM CHEERFULNESS?

2.     DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING AND FEEL THAT ALL IS GOING WELL FOR THE ALLIES?

3.     DO YOU SOMETIMES THINK THAT THE WAR WILL END IN THE NEXT TWELVE MONTHS?

4.     DO YOU BELIEVE GOOD NEWS IN PREFERENCE TO BAD?

5.     DO YOU CONSIDER OUR LEADERS COMPETENT TO CONDUCT THE WAR TO A SUCCESSFUL ISSUE?

IF YOUR ANSWER IS “YES” TO ANYONE OF THESE QUESTIONS THEN YOU ARE IN THE  

CLUTCHES OF THAT DREAD DISEASE.

WE CAN CURE YOU

THE WIPERS TIMES: Our Volume Two

A DWELLER IN WIPERS’ ELEGY TO THAT TOWN

(With apologies to Grey)

A six-inch tolls the knell of parting day.

The transport cart winds slowly o’er the lea.

A sapper homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to Wipers and to me.

Now fades the glimmering star shell from the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds;

Save where a whizz-bang howls its rapid flight,

And “five pounds rapid” fill the distant folds.

Beneath the Ramparts old and grim and grey,

In earthy sap, and casement cool and deep;

Each in his canvas cubicle and bay,

The men condemned to Wipers soundly sleep.

Full many a men would venture out by day,

Deceived by what he thinks a quiet spell;

Till to a crump he nearly falls a prey,

And into neighbouring cellar bolts like hell.

A burning mountain belching forth its fire,

A sandstorm in the desert in full fling;

Or Hades with its lid prised off entire,

Is naught to dear old Wipers in the Spring.

TO MY CHUM

No more we’ll share the same old barn,

The same old dug-out, same old yarn,

No more a tin of bully share,

Nor share our rum by a star –shell’s flare,

So long old lad.

What times we’ve had both good and bad,

We’ve shared what shelter could be had,

The same crump-hole when the whizz -bangs shrieked,

The same old billet that always leaked,

And now – you’ve 'stopped one.'

We’d weathered the storm two winters long,

We’d managed to grin when all went wrong,

Because we fought and fed,

Our hearts were light; but now – you’re dead

And I am Mateless.

Well, old lad, here’s peace to you,

And for me, well, there’s my job to do,

For you and the others who lie at rest,

Assured may be that we’ll do our best

In vengeance.

Just one more cross by a strafed road-side,

With its G.R.C.; and a name for guide,

But it’s only myself who has lost a friend,

And though I may fight through to the end,

No dug-out or billet will be the same,

All pals can only be pals in name,

But we’ll all carry on till the end of the game

Because you lie there.