Country Standard Vol 13 No1 July 2011

Founded 1935 | Vol.13 No. 1 | Summer 2011

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Country Standard e F d i e s Foorr Peac Peac e and nttrryysid u o C e and Socialism in the Coun Socialism in the

“We beat Thatcher on AWB and we will again.” page 3

PIC JOHN F FRENCH www.handsoffourforest.org

RURAL REVOLT

Protesters at the Forest of Dean

Save the AWB

McPhun on urban gardens Page 3

Countryside charter Page 12

Giant pig factories

Page 6 Join the rural revolt Page 15

Pages 8/9 Against fascism Page 18

Precisely 630 years after the Poll Tax – provoked Peasants Revolt, the Tory-led coalition attacks on rural standards are stirring a hornets nest of resistance.

The Tolpuddle Rally sees the launch of the Labour Party’s call to arms in defence of the Agricultural Wages Board – joining the Unite union and rural dwellers in a burgeoning campaign (see Standard Leader page 2).

Warning bells are sounding over the future of the Gangmasters Licencing Authority charged with chasing the cowboys out of the countryside (see Paul Whitehouse article page 14). The shock failure to re-appoint Mr Whitehouse has pinpointed a further menace for campaigners to rally around.

The hugely successful campaign to oppose forestry sell-offs has not obscured the real danger that we are not out of the woods yet.

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Summer 2011

Country Standard

Standard Leader W

hat government in it’s right mind would seek to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board and, at one fell swoop put at risk: ● the entire rural economy ● the nation’s food security ● the livelihood of a third of a million farm and horticultural workers in the UK’s most dangerous industry.

“We sow it, we reap it, but we can’t afford to eat it” went the old NUAAW slogan. “Your average farmworker,” says Lincolnshire’s David Benson, “is now extremely skilled and flexible; a welder, fabricator, electrician, mechanic used to working alone and making managerial decisions to keep things going.”

But the aging workforce in agriculture (half over 50, quarter over 60) paid a pittance for long hours augurs a labour shortage around the corner.

Fathers tell their children not to follow them if they want to earn enough to raise a family. The looming labour crisis will become a catastrophe if the AWB goes.

Food riots in Africa/Middle East may seem a long way from home but note the warning from Charlie Clutterbuck; with the UK now relying on 40 per cent food imports and speculators waxing fat whilst others starve.

So it’s good to see the Labour Party joining in the defence of

the AWB; the Gangmasters Licensing Authority as well as the nation’s forests.

With the commitment of Unite, Unison, GMB, RMT and all the other unions covering 5 million rural workers, the Labour branches will be enthused to join the crusade with the churches, Woodcraft Folk and a widespread of political parties, rural and voluntary groups.

As Hilary Benn says: ”Food production is the biggest manufacturing industry in Britain.

The government’s decision to scrap the AWB is ideologically driven.

It was stitched up between the NFU and ex-NFU member David Cameron.”

But with millions of rural workers’ pay levels using AWB rates as a yardstick – it will be a hammer blow to the rural economy requiring the workers’ cash to keep the shops, pubs and services going. That’s why we won’t let it happen.

What kind of society seeks to grow the economy by extending dole queues. And what crazy logic keeps battalions of young people out of work whilst insisting public sector workers burn themselves out into their late 60s. Those whom the gods would destroy...

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Cable Street

Come to Cable Street Commemoration and Rally 2 October 2011 Assemble: 11.30am Aldgate East (junction of Braham Street and Leman Street) Rally: 1.00pm St Georges in the East Park (Cable Street) Come and join the march and rally to remember that historic victory and to send a powerful message of unity against the forces of fascism, racism and anti-semitism today.

Bring your union, trades council, community or Organisation banner.

PIC JOHN F FRENCH www.handsoffourforest.org

Eastern Region www.unisoneastern.org.uk Join Unison 0845 355 0845 Greetings to all those defending our public services and attending the Burston Rally.

Sunday 4 September 2011 Burning issue: A strong message to parliament against selling off the Forest of Dean.

Church Green, Burston, near Diss, Norfolk

Country Standard

Summer 2011

3 Faiz Ahmed Faiz is an acclaimed poet and veteran communist from Pakistan. 2011 is the centenary of his birth. Celebrations of his life and work have been held in London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds and Bradford.

Speak Speak, your lips are free.

Speak, it is your own tongue.

Speak, it is your own body.

Speak, your life is still yours.

See how in the blacksmith’s shop The flame burns wild, the iron glows red; The locks open their jaws, And every chain begins to break.

Speak, this brief hour is long enough Before the death of body and tongue: PIC MARK THOMA

Speak, ‘cause the truth is not dead yet, Speak, speak, whatever you must speak.

Faiz Ahmed Rural workers make their point outside parliament.

Save the AWB!

Community support and sustained campaigning forced a “pause” to government plans to sell-off forestry land in Gloucestershire.

Hundreds expressed outrage at the threatened abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board outside parliament.

Farm workers faced the prospect, not only of having their pay driven down to the minimum wage, but also losing out on sick pay in what is the most dangerous industry in the country, warned Steve Leniec, chair of Unite’s rural and agricultural group.

“We fought and beat Thatcher when she tried to abolish the AWB in the 1990s,” he said, “and we will again.”

Horticultural worker Shaun Jeffery declared: “This is a winnable fight if we all join together. It is inspiring to see so many people supporting rural workers outside parliament today.”

Trades Councils act on Minimum Wage Peter Norfolk from Essex spoke up for the AWB at the annual Trades Council Conference NATIONAL MINIMUM WAGE MOTION This Conference believes that the current crisis is being used as the pretext for an attack on the most vulnerable in society by dismantling the welfare state. By cutting public welfare entitlements, public services, jobs, pay and pensions, the result will be over one million more people on the dole dragging our society into depression.

This conference also recognises the important role played by the introduction of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and applauds the fact that the most vulnerable employees in low paid jobs have benefitted.

This Conference further calls for wages and conditions to be protected for those workers who will be affected by the Con-Dem Government’s pernicious policy of abolishing the Agricultural Wages Council.

ESSEX ASSOCIATION OF TRADES COUNCILS

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hen the Essex Association discussed this Motion we had no doubts about the intention of the Con-Dem government to dismantle workers’ rights. Along with job losses, people are being squeezed by ever increasing financial costs accompanied by a reduction in public services that help underpin or support living standards. Education and healthcare are prime examples of those services now under threat. With increasing living costs and more precarious public service provision, the protection and improvement of jobs and incomes takes on a greater significance.

The Motion refers to the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board which amongst

other things lays down minimum wage levels for workers in that sector and which generally are slightly higher than the National Minimum Wage.

With the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board it is obvious what will happen to agricultural rates of pay. If you follow some of the online discussions and speculation about future prospects for agricultural workers, most of the comments from workers, not surprisingly, show trepidation about the future of wages and other terms and conditions such as hours of work, holidays, sick pay and accommodation.

Dismissiveness about the impact of abolition suggests that employers are confident that there will be a pool of

unskilled or semi-skilled labour from which they can draw while paying the lowest wage possible. This raises another question as to how we end the exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers which the end of the Agricultural Wages Board can only serve to intensify.

On this basis, if the Agricultural Wages Board is abolished, the established rates of pay for workers in that industry should be protected at least until such time as the National Minimum Wage achieves the standard of a Living Wage.

The focus of the Motion is therefore to start a campaign on the principle of a legally established minimum wage by increasing it to the Living Wage level.

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Summer 2011

Country Standard

So many stories yet to be told

Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to an Onion”

By Mike Pentelow

Pablo Neruda wrote “Ode To An Onion” as a way of portraying ‘new life’. In many countries an onion was a staple of poor people’s diet.

Neruda, Chilean writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature was born a century ago this month.

“

sk The Fellows That Cut The Hay” on Radio 4 recently celebrated communist oral historian George Ewart Evans (1909-1988) and the tales he collected of agricultural workers overcoming adversity.

This was often achieved by poaching and smuggling.

Born in the South Wales mining village of Abercynon he experienced hardship himself when his grocer father went bankrupt in the 1920s. George joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and remained in it for the rest of his life.

He became a teacher and moved in the 1950s to the village of Blaxhall on the Suffolk coast, where he was also a tutor for the Workers’ Education Association.

It was there round the fireside in the local pub, the Ship Inn, that he collected memories and stories passed down from previous generations of agricultural and rural workers, including blacksmiths, ploughmen, drovers, and shepherds. One tale was that the pub should have been called the Sheep Inn, but the travelling sign writer had misheard the landlord!

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Resentment Much resentment was expressed at farmers and parsons – who boasted the squires would keep the workers poor and the parsons (who were paid by the farmers) would keep them ignorant.

Such poverty lured many workers into smuggling and poaching in order to feed themselves and their families.

Shepherds would be paid by smugglers on Blaxhall Heath to use their sheep to cover the tracks of the pack horses carrying barrels of brandy, rum, and tobacco.

Poaching could also be lucrative. With wages at just ten shillings a week a hare could be sold for a quarter of that. Evans revelled in the stories of how the poachers got one over the landed gentry and avoided capture.

Those who did not poach would go hungry, eating

just pea soup and Suffolk dumplings, which are fed to pigs nowadays. Many families would have meat just once a year at Christmas.

If a skilled worker sought better paid work elsewhere his employer would tell all the others not to employ him in order to starve him out.

Horsemen risked even worse punishment. Many had been tried as witches in an earlier age because of the control they had over horses, and the potions they used. “Jading” (making a horse stand still as though bewitched or paralysed) needed to attract the horse’s sense of smell with a frog or toad’s bone that had been dried, buried in an ant hill for a month, retrieved under a full moon, and soaked in a stream. “Drawing” (beckoning a horse from afar) relied on the use of herbs and oils, including frog spawn.

Onion, luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal, crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew.

Hardships

Under the earth

Nostalgia did not have to be sentimental or reverential but could be radical by recalling the hardships that were endured, said Evans.

His book, like the recent radio programme, was called “Ask The Fellows That Cut The Hay” and was finally published in 1956 by Faber and Faber after being rejected by several others, and became very popular.

Other books followed (including “The Leaping Hare”) and George produced programmes for the BBC Third Programme (now Radio 3). His technique was always to let the subjects tell their stories as uninterrupted as possible.

In 1980 he visited China to see how peasant agriculture worked under communism.

At home he bought everything through the Co-op (which had taken over his bankrupt father’s shop) including his own funeral.

His memory lives on through the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan.

the miracle happened and when your clumsy green stem appeared, and your leaves were born like swords in the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency, and as the remote sea in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite duplicating the magnolia, so did the earth make you, onion clear as a planet and destined to shine, constant constellation, round rose of water, upon the table of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.

I have praised everything that exists, but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers, heavenly globe, platinum goblet,

PIC CHRIS TYLER

unmoving dance of the snowy anemone and the fragrance of the earth lives “I said the sheep inn!”

in your crystalline nature.

Summer 2011

5 PETER ARKELL

Country Standard

Willing and able Mike Pentelow tells of one family’s fight to maintain the rights for all

The loppers sculpted on the entrance to Lopping Hall in Loughton.

firewood and graze their animals. This spurred orkers had to fight to retain public access to Willingale to form the Commons Preservation forests 150 years ago – and like the recent Society and take legal action in 1866. struggle they were also successful.

Willingale was offered considerable amounts of Back in 1860 the rights of commoners to graze their money to drop the case, but rejected it, and, with animals and collect firewood in Epping Forest were considerable public support, went on to win in being threatened by the lord of the manor Rev John court.

Whitaker Maitland. In the previous nine years he had The struggle continued however as more already been allowed by new legislation to build on attempts were made to enclose forest land. In 1871 2,000 acres of woodland. a mass open air meeting was called on Wanstead Next he targeted the ancient “lopping” rights of Flats of working men protesting against further commoners to collect firewood in winter. To enclosures in the forest. maintain this right they had to lop at least one The battle was finally won with the Epping Forest branch each year at midnight on November 11.

Act of 1878 (after On that night in Willingale’s death) 1860 Maitland tried which guaranteed to prevent this the forest be kept happening by unenclosed as an inviting all the open space for loppers to a supper the public and its and free beer at the natural resources King’s Head in protected.

Loughton – to make This included them so drunk they protection of the would be incapable trees, so lopping of of lopping a branch. their branches was He even locked them outlawed. in as well to make Compensation doubly sure. for this loss was But one of the used to construct loppers, Thomas Lopping Hall in Willingale (1798Loughton (between 1870), had kept his High Road and wits about him Station Road) in and used his axe 1883, which has a to break down the sculpture of the door and leave at Thomas Willingale with his lopping tools. loppers over its 11.30pm. He reached entrance. the forest and lopped Willingale, a labouring man who had built off a branch on the stroke of midnight, and returned himself a cottage on the edge of the forest in to present it triumphantly to Maitland and so Loughton, was buried locally in an unmarked preserve the ancient right. grave.

Maitland retalliated by accusing Willingale of But his name lives on through the Thomas injury to forest trees and taking him to court in 1865.

Willingale School in Willingale Road, Loughton.

The charges were dismissed, but three months later And his great-great-granddaughter, Gwendoline similar charges were brought against Willingale’s Gathercloe, lives in Ye Olde Loppers Cottage, in son and two nephews, who were found guilty and Forest Road, Loughton. “He must have been quite a imprisoned for seven days when refusing to pay the guy to stand up to the lord of the manor,” she said. fines.

“But if he had not taken up the fight there would be More land was enclosed by Maitland until there no forest left today.” were just 50 acres left for commoners to cut CLIFF HARPER

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An 1871 poster urging working men to save the forest.

Seeing the woods for the trees – Mike Ward Lets keep our forests fresh and green Where with the birds we are free to roam Where deer and squirrel make their home Where children play and climb the trees Where we exercise pets in pine scented breeze Where under sun dappled canopy We roam and ramble at our ease Where solitude and peace are nature’s pleasure We will fight and keep this nation’s treasure We will bar the way to ideological measure We will never accept defeat We will fight in forest We will fight in street

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Summer 2011

Country Standard

Fresh thoughts for an agrarian revolution

By Laurie McPhun, Cambridge University Gardener

Communal, productive, regenerating. Urban gardens represent a real challenge.

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ritain is a country of many gardens. From sweeping rural estates to fluttering urban window boxes, via village displays and metropolitan ‘spaces’, our ancestors have been turning the soil and honing their craft for at least twenty-seven centuries. This tradition, though changeable, is extremely unlikely to end. We all need food. We also need nature’s calming influence and a place to be ourselves.

The challenge for us, in modern Britain, lies in how we should set about defining, or re-defining, our relationship to the natural world around us. It is a very delicate balance. Huge swathes of Greenfield land are lost to urban development every day and over forty per cent of the food we now consume is imported from outside the UK. Farmers can make huge profits by selling their land to councils or large private corporations.

Grocery chains, both small and extensive, can benefit from buying items that are more cheaply

produced abroad. This is not an ideal situation.

Increased food miles not only generate higher pollution levels, and much less wholesome food but they also contribute to a culture whereby people are further separated from the very process which ensures our survival. A new approach to land management is required. An approach best initiated in the areas where most people live.

Modern towns and cities with their densely packed populations and numerous small-scale plots of land can be the breeding grounds of a future agrarian revolution in Britain and the world. The main tools are already in place. Countless private gardens could be transformed into productive foodgrowing arenas, without losing their beautiful or recreational aspects, while larger plots of urban, i.e., derelict sites, redundant car parks, etc., would benefit from a much more radical overhaul.

New laws may have to play a part.

Local councils could make it easier for

Welcome to the Big Society Fewer 999 operators, fewer bin men, fewer ambulance drivers, fewer paramedics, fewer dinner ladies, fewer life guards, fewer nurses, fewer hospital porters, fewer youth workers, fewer teaching assistants, fewer street cleaners, fewer home helps…

UNISON Labour Link

Stand up for public services Find out more at www.unison.org.uk Unison Direct: 0845 355 0845

community groups or co-operatives to purchase pre-used private land for relatively cheap prices.

This movement would, ultimately, aim towards creating an environment where young and old, rich, poor and vulnerable might work together in helping to change their perception of and, therefore, the reality of the world as it exists around them.

Similar experiments are already flourishing in parts of the western hemisphere. In Cuba, a vast network of urban food gardens, known as Huertas, have sprung up in Havana, Camaguey, Pinar del Rio and various other towns and cities. These are largely community plots rather than individual allotments and everybody reaps the rewards. Workers produce rice, corn, sweet potatoes and beans, not to mention numerous tropical fruits, for themselves, their families and, if there’s anything left over, the public markets.

Of course, such projects would not be nearly so successful without the active encouragement of local government. In Havana, Cuba’s capital, this is especially important. More than sixty horticultural information points have been set up around the town. They provide everything from seeds and light machinery, to advice on how well a particular crop may fare in specific areas and conditions.

This advice is usually much appreciated. Cuba has a warm, tropical climate, generally, but with high mountainous regions alongside long stretches of damp, marshy, flatlands, it is home to various soil types and many different suitable crops.

In Cuba, the urban, co-operative garden culture is still in relative infancy. It has emerged from a society whose recent history – both political and economic, is very different to our own yet, nevertheless, it is still relevant when assessing the needs of a 21st Century European state. We all share the same planet. None of us can survive without the physical, social and environmental bounty that it provides. We have, therefore, a duty of care.

South West Region Unison celebrating our NHS at Tolpuddle.

UNISON South West Region Regional Secretary: Joanne Kaye UNISON House, The Crescent, Taunton, Somerset TA1 4DU Regional switchboard: 0845 355 0845 Website: unisonsouthwest.org.uk Twitter: UNISONSW

Country Standard

Summer 2011

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International appeal – from Sergey Alexanian, vice director of the Vavilov Institute

Save Vavilov Institute The Vavilov Institute in Russia – one of a handful of the most important field seed banks on the planet – recently made the news when it was threatened by property developers.

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cientists at the Vavilov Institute VIR have completed a three year study of berry fruit and potato genetic resources held in the Vavilov genebank in collaboration with scientists from Luxembourg’s Centre for Public Research – Gabriel Lippman and Bioversity International based in Rome. The international team of scientists investigated Russian berry fruits such blue honeysuckle (Lonicera), rowan or mountain ash (Sorbus), raspberry (Rubus) and black currant (Ribes) which contain a rich genetic diversity and a host of nutritional components such as minerals and vitamins and phytochemical compounds (polyphenols). The nutrient and biochemical properties in Russian berries have important potential for addressing the dramatic increase in diet-related chronic diseases in the Russian Federation. Cardiovascular diseases, stroke, diabetes and obesity are estimated by the World Bank to cost US$ 550 billion in lost income to the Russian economy between 2005-2015. In addition Russia faces the added cost of treating a large proportion of the population with chronic diseases related to simplified and nutritionally poor diets.

Fortunately, the genetic resources that could help reverse this trend exist and are available in the Vavilov Institute’s collections in Pavlosk and throughout Russia. The polyphenols contained in these fruits are known to be essential and important compounds to protect the body against chronic diseases as well as conferring benefits in regulating metabolic functions including glycemic control. Vavilov scientists have also documented the distribution of these nutritionally important species in forests, gardens, dachas throughout the country. VIR has recommended types for a range of growing environments and purposes. With this latest genetic and biochemical research, VIR scientists can now say which types are likely to be important tools in the fight against poor nutrition and chronic diseases.

Given the global importance and value of the

Roll of honour ● Named after Nikolai Vavilov (1887-1943) Russia’s greatest botanist and geneticist. ● The Pavlovsk field seed bank and institute was founded in 1924. ● Set in St Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, the VI is Europe’s largest field seed bank and one of the most extensive in the world. ● Ninety per cent of the varieties of crops held there are unique. ● The seed bank survived the terrible 900-day siege of Leningrad in World War II thanks to 12 scientists who chose to starve to death rather than eat the seeds they had promised to protect. ● When developers tried to move in, thousands of scientists around the world forced President Medvedev to step in and halt action pending an enquiry.

berry and fruit collection at VIR, one of the largest and most representative of genetic diversity in northern temperate berries and fruits, the international team of scientists worked to improve the conservation of these genetic resources using biotechnology, and molecular genetic techniques.

The scientists now have information to determine how and which samples are most important for conservation.

The genetic resources held at VIR, including the berries and fruits at the Pavlosk Research Station is a strategic resource of global and national value.

The scientists concluded that their value from a nutritional standpoint is much greater than was previously known. The diversity that is contained in these collections provides a sound scientific basis to identify and promote those cultivars and fruits

that can help reverse a growing threat to the wellbeing of Russian peoples and their economy.

The experience of working across borders and across disciplines including biochemistry, genetics, agronomy, nutrition and anthropology proved to be very productive. The research on VIR genetic resources clearly linked their potential to the goals of agriculture, health, environment and culture.

The fact that the production and gathering of berry fruits in dachas, gardens, and forests remains an important element in Russian culture, and that their consumption and preparation in drinks and jams remains part of the national food culture is one more reason to conserve and use these resources to maintain the health and well being of people in Russia. The VIR scientists and their international partners are publishing a series of scientific articles documenting their important findings.

Scientific results of the project proved once again the global importance of plant genetic resources stored at VIR. The world community expects the Russian Federation to ratify the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture to ensure food security in the world and human health. This important step of the Russian Government will stimulate fruitful international cooperation in the sphere of conservation and study of the Vavilov collection.

As for the fruit germplasm collection at the Pavlovsk Station threatened last year by the relocation plans, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development was ordered to summon an interministerial commission where two highly qualified foreign experts will take part.

Besides, following an order of the First Vice Premier of the Russian Government A. Zubkov, the Vavilov Institute in collaboration with the Russian Ministry of Agriculture developed a national law On Plant Genetic Resources. This act will help the Institute’s collection to acquire a sound legal status.

At present, this law is being reviewed by the relevant ministries and government agencies.

Charlie Clutterbuck speculates on

Food price rises Food price inflation is running at very nearly 5%. The government shrugs its shoulders, saying they can do nothing about it as it is ‘external’. What it means is that because we import 40% of our food, and we cannot control world food prices, we have to put up with it.

They see no connection with the Arab Spring which started inpart because of food price rises and their dependence on the world markets. Egypt also imports 40% of its food, having increased wheat imports 10 times over the last 50 years.

There are underlying pressures – middle classes in India and China are eating more meat, 1/3 all US corn now goes into biofuels, oil prices are rising and climate change is affecting production. Yet, £15 billion worth of the UK food imports is for food we could produce ourselves. That invested in our economy would recycle several times, through farms and rural neighbourhoods, and do more to create a green economy than anything else.

And then there are ‘the speculators’.

They are not buying food directly, not even the ‘futures’ in food, but ‘derivatives’ of food. Using the money printed in the US and UK after the bank bail-out, they speculate in these economic ‘instruments’. Some say this does not cause food price rises, but it is difficult to see how they are making money without food price rises – unless they have invented the elusive elixir of capitalism – making money out of nothing.

One thing is sure: we should not be speculating in the City’s Gherkin, but instead investing in our cucumbers – the same species.

Check out www.sustainablefood.com/ speculation.html

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Summer 2011

Country Standard

Mega farms – public concern

Big is not better, or safer

By Mitch Howard Plans to build a giant pig factory in Derbyshire with over 20,000 animals living permanently in giant sheds have sparked protests and fears that if the site gets the go-ahead 250 of the smallest pig producers will go out of business. Country Standard looks at the issues around the proposed US-style mega-farm.

What’s it all about?

Midlands Pig Producers (MPP), one of the country’s biggest pig farming companies, wants to build a 30-acre industrial farm at Foston, Derbyshire.

MPP withdrew its original scheme after 2,800 objections were submitted and demonstrations held outside the district council offices. But now new plans have been submitted – this time to Derbyshire county council.

The proposed pig farm at Foston would produce 52,000 pigs each year – enough pork to make over 56 million sausages each year. The animals would spend all their lives indoors in giant metal sheds.

But a joint report from organic farming group the Soil Association and animal welfare organisation the World Society for the Protection of Animals warns that hundreds of small farms will struggle and go out of business if cheap meat or milk from such massive industrial-scale production systems floods the market.

Plans for the UK’s first mega-dairy housing up to 8,000 cows in Nocton, Lincolnshire, were shelved in February after opposition from local residents, animal welfare groups and the trade union Unite, which also opposes the Foston plans.

Protestors also point to concerns about animal welfare and health and the environmental implications of such a scheme.

In the UK the average pig herd size is about 75 sows – but there are already large-scale intensive farms with 500 to 900 sows where pigs typically live penned up indoors with their tails chopped off and where sows are forced to give birth in crates where they can hardly move.

Pigs are inquisitive animals, and if they are penned in they get bored and bite the ears and tails of other pigs, so most have their tails lopped and their teeth clipped without anaesthetic.

What does MPP say about Foston?

MPP says its plans to house 2,500 sows producing 1,000 pigs a week will create “up to 18 new jobs”.

It is keen to proclaim its environmental credentials, arguing that the latest technology means less smell. A biogas plant will produce power for both the farm and neighbouring Foston Prison.

MPP says animal welfare is its “top priority” and maintains that its farrowing, or birthing, crates will help prevent injury and death to pigs and will allow the sow to turn some of the time.

Martin Barker, managing director of Midland Pig Producers, told the Derby Telegraph: “With this system the pigs are a lot healthier. Pigs kept outdoors are less likely to be healthy – at risk from salmonella for example.

“Under normal circumstances outside, a mother would sit on 10 per cent of her litter.”

MPP advertises itself as “part of the internationally recognised Genesis Quality Assurance scheme, which includes independent quarterly veterinary inspections to aid achievement of the highest animal welfare conditions” – but does not point out that until October 2010 Genesis was owned by … the Leavesley group.

Who are “Midlands Pig Producers”?

The company behind the Foston pig factory is Midlands Pig Producers(MPP), which produces over 100,000 pigs each year from 30 farms in eight counties and employs over 150 people.

In 2008 Leavesley scrapped (or recycled as they say these days) HMS Intrepid (which saw action in the Malvinas) for the Ministry of Defence, while its website advertises everything from three shades of NATO paint to Bofors guns and tracked personnel carriers.

Leavesley has supplied secondhand helicopters to Nepal and “a government in south east Asia” and it has the contract to collect and sell all vehicles seized by Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs.

It recently donated a Deutz diesel generator to the Hashemite Charitable Organisation which is controlled by the Jordanian royal family.

“Leavesley International has been increasing its trading in Jordan in recent years and is keen to

Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director and organic farmer: “Developers claim they’re meeting public demand, but it’s wrong to say the British public are demanding that cows must be kept inside throughout the months they are milked, or that 2,500 mother pigs should spend their entire lives shut up inside a factory.

“These huge factory farms could herald a new phase in the way British farmers keep animals, opening the floodgates to similar developments and changing our farming landscape forever.”

It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Staffordshire-based Leavesley International, whose interests include commercial property and selling on or scrapping used military equipment.

Leavesley set up as an army surplus trader after the First World War in 1919 and today Jim Leavesley and his family are number 45 in the 2011 Sunday Times Rich List and are worth £85m (down from £150m in 2009).

expand its opportunities in this area,” says the company website.

It also sells on old stock from B&Q, LG Electronics and the Littlewood catalogue.

The Leavesley family has a substantial stake in the St Mowden property group which specializes in regenerating brownfield sites. Two divisions of the group – Branston Investments and St Mary’s Investments are involved in management of commercial properties and industrial parks in the UK.

Country Standard

Summer 2011

“These huge factory farms could herald a new phase in the way British farmers keep animals, opening the floodgates to similar developments and changing our farming landscape forever.”

What’s happened in the States?

The number of dairy, pig and beef cattle producers in America has declined sharply over the last 20 years as the meatpacking, processing and dairy industries have pressed farmers to increase in scale.

Most of the pork, beef, poultry, dairy and eggs produced in the United States now comes from large-scale, confined livestock operations. Economies of scale mean big enterprises pay less for feed and seed, chemical fertilizer and increasingly sophisticated and expensive machinery – and employ fewer workers.

Just 3% of farms now generate 62% of that US’s agricultural output.

Mega-farm facilities are often overcrowded and stressful to animals, making it easy for disease to spread. When thousands of beef cattle are packed into feedlots full of manure, bacteria can get on their hides and then into the slaughterhouses. Contamination on even one steer can contaminate thousands of pounds of meat inside a slaughterhouse.

In 2010, the crowded, unsanitary conditions at two Iowa egg companies caused a recall of more than half a billion potentially Salmonella-tainted eggs.

Most farmers barely break even. In 2007, more than half of family farmers lost money on their farming operation and campaigning group Farm Aid says 300 US farmers quit every week.

What do you think?

Are we making a pig’s ear of this debate?

Write to Country Standard Letters http://country-standard.blogspot.com

Simon Pope, WSPA UK Head of External Affairs: “We know from America that the real cost of food produced in factory farms is poor animal welfare, pollution and the economic death knell for thousands of small scale farmers. That cannot be something we sleepwalk into accepting here. If we do, it’s difficult to see how the British countryside and our traditional rural communities will ever be the same again.”

Peter Melchett, Soil Association policy director, and Norfolk organic farmer: “The main grounds on which we oppose this is that it’s taking British farming in the wrong direction.

“It’s the same direction it’s been going since the war but it’s accelerating, which has been to bigger and bigger units, simpler and simpler systems.

“This has led to a dramatic loss of jobs in agriculture and the continuing loss of small and medium sized family farms and loss of diversity.

“Diversity may not give you a higher profit but it gives you resilience, it gives you greater levels of security both in running a business and feeding the country.

“I think these big units are another escalation of the war against an agriculture which has as its goal interesting and diverse jobs. You work in a pig factory you only work with pigs, you’re working indoors all the time, the jobs are repetitive and inevitably have a level of boredom and other associated problems.

“The people who are working with pigs on this traditional farm will be doing three or four different things in a day , some of it on tractors, some of it on foot. It’s healthier and they are working with two or three other people.

“There’s a guy on a neighbouring non-organic farm who comes here at the end of the week sometimes just to see another human being before he goes home. He’s working on 3,000 acres with just one other person.”

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Summer 2011

Country Standard

The British Labour Movement and Land Nationalisation

By Betty Grant, writing in the journal World News & Views

D

iscussion about nationalisation has a long history in the British Labour movement.

The word itself seems to have been used first by “Bronterre” James O’Brien in the Chartist period, and he used it in connection with the land.

But even before that, the idea of public, as distinct from private, ownership of land had been put forward by the Radical, Thomas Spence, who proposed in 1775 that parishes (the units of local government) should simply declare all land within their boundaries to be parish land, the rents to be paid to parish officers and used for all kinds of public purposes.

It was natural that the land should be the first “means of production” to attract the attention of Radical reformers in the early days of industrial capitalism.

For on the one hand the population of Britain still depended mainly on home produced food; while on the other hand, no industry had yet developed to a point where “nationalisation” would have seemed a practical proposition.

Until Marxism could find a foothold in Britain – which did not seriously happen until the 1880’s – it was not to be expected that any specific schemes for nationalisation of an industry would be put forward by the working class.

All through the 19th century, opposition to landlordism and to aristocratic power based on land ownership was one of the main planks of Radical reformers.

Dating from a time when the landed aristocracy really was the ruling power in Britain, this attitude was fortified by a deeply-felt conviction that the very institution of private land ownership was a robbery of the common people.

Sometimes this was expressed in “historical” terms: the Anglo-Saxons, it was thought, had farmed the land communally – or alternatively, had all been freeholders – until the Normans had imposed their “yoke” of landlordism.

Often the Bible was quoted: “The Earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness there of”; and “The Earth He hath given to the children of men.” Memories of injustices caused by enclosure of common lands added to the indignation with which the typical Radical regarded the landed aristocracy.

Bronterre O’Brien Yet, apart from Thomas Spence and his immediate followers, the Radicals had not developed any theory of public land ownership until Bronterre O’Brien began to advocate the nationalisation of the land. By 1841 he was advocating the “gradual resumption by the state” of all the land in the country, by purchase as and when a landowner died. In his speeches about land nationalisation, O’Brien never failed to remind his audience that first of all political power must be won for the working classes via the Charter.

The highest peak was reached at the Chartist Convention of 1851, when a social programme which included land nationalisation was adopted.

But by 1851 the economic basis for a mass movement was dwindling away, and the demand for nationalisation of land, like the other demands in the social programme, failed to take root in the working class.

The main practical importance of O’Brien’s clearcut theory on land nationalisation was perhaps that it served as a bridge between Radicals and Marxists. O’Brien’s little organisation of devoted followers, the National Reform League, persisted

for many years after his own death in 1864 and continued to propagate the idea of land nationalisation.

So, when the International Working Men’s Association (the First International) at its Congress in 1864 adopted as part of its policy “the abolition of private property in land”, it was possible to set up in London a Land and Labour League in which O’Brienites and supporters of the International combined on a nine-point programme in which land nationalisation stood first.

TUC policy This time the idea of land nationalisation began to take root. It was brought into the TUC by Radical trade unionists and, after a temporary victory in 1882, became official TUC policy in 1886. In a different sphere, a Land Nationalisation Society was established in 1881 by a little group of Radical intellectuals led by Dr. A. Russell Wallace.

Two years later, some of its members broke away to form the Land Restoration League, which propagated the land nationalisation theory of the American Henry George, namely, that landlordism could be destroyed by a single heavy tax upon land which would make landowning so unprofitable that owners would eventually be willing to transfer their rights to the state.

Michael Davitt (Irish Land League) was also convinced that state ownership rather that peasant proprietorship was the true solution to the Irish land problem. He became a popular propagandist in Britain in the early 1880’s for the general idea of land nationalisation.

Meanwhile, a federation of London Radical clubs under Henry Hyndman’s leadership included land nationalisation in its programme, and this demand was maintained when the organisation took on a definitely socialist character and became the SocialDemocratic Federation.

The I.L.P. programme of 1895, for example, states the Object of the Party to be: “An Industrial.

Commonwealth founded upon the socialisation of land and capital.”

A productive industry This programme also elaborates a policy for agriculture, including the establishment of a “state land department for agriculture”, with agricultural colleges and model farms, and state organised marketing of farm produce.

Whereas Radicals had seen only the problems of landlordism. Socialists were beginning to see agriculture as a productive industry which could be regulated by the state on the basis of the public ownership of the land.

On the other hand, the very fact that public ownership of the land was now part and parcel of the general aim of socialism, coupled with the fact that the Fabians were advocating piecemeal municipal ownership, rather than total state ownership of the land, might have resulted in the aim of nationalisation being lost, had it not been for the two specific societies formed in the 1880’s.

Red vans and Yellow vans In the 1890’s both these organisations, with the help of speakers from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and Independent Labour Party (ILP) blossomed out with propaganda campaigns in the countryside.

The yellow vans of the Land Nationalisation Society and the red vans of the English Land Restoration League were now seen on village greens, and at hundreds of meetings farmlabourers were urged to support land nationalisation.

Parliamentary Bill At the end of the war, in the general upsurge of militancy, the demand for land nationalisation was included in the Labour Party’s programme. Labour and the New Social Order, at the same time as the Labour Party adopted a definitely socialist aim. And in 1921 a Bill for nationalisation of the land was presented in Parliament by Labour M.P’s This article was first published 14th June 1958 in the Communist Party Journal World News & Views.

Save our Libraries?

By Francis Beckett Cuts in library services will make everyone’s life poorer, but will hit rural communities hardest. For older people especially, the local library – or more often, the once or twice a week visit of the mobile library - is a cultural lifeline.

For rural members of the University of the Third Age (U3A), which organises learning in retirement, libraries are a crucial resource.

They may seem like a soft target to a hard-pressed local authority which is faced with having to cut down on schools, or rubbish collection. But learning in later life has been shown to have enormous health benefits, putting off the time when we become dependent upon others.

One of the country’s biggest library culls is happening in Gloucestershire, where councillors plan to close 23

libraries out of 43 – more than half, including taking all five mobile libraries off the road – to save £500,000.

There are many others – less dramatic than Gloucestershire perhaps, but distressing nonetheless. The U3A asked its members to report on local library closures and their effect, and the letters flooded in.

Here’s just one of them. Mike and Susie Holden, Malhamdale, North Yorkshire wrote: “Our library van service , which was superb, is being abolished. The nearest library in Gargrave which is about 8 miles away is closing. So now we shall have to go all the way to Skipton.

There the nearest car park is about quarter of a mile away from the library.

We are not on a bus route. It is going to be very difficult for many people and almost impossible for those who don’t have a car or are disabled in any way.”

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Summer 2011

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India – grass roots acts of resistance grow

The Tigers in the Fields Shaun Jeffrey is a horticulture worker and union activist recently returned from India India is a tiger economy, with many sectors over the past decade roaring away, but its not all cheap manufacturing, out-souring and call centres.

Although its share of GDP has steadily declined, agriculture is the single largest contributor to GDP. In a country of 1.2 billion people, agriculture is still the means of livelihood for almost two thirds of its workforce.

W

ith a country so large and as diverse, it is easy to get lost in numbers, but one worth highlighting is 17,368. This is the official number of suicides in farming for the past year, or nearly 47 deaths a day. Farming is never an easy occupation anywhere but the numbers are truly shocking.

From 2002 the trend in suicides worsened, and despite a massive loan waiver given to farmers in 2008, there were still 16,196 farm suicides in that year. The devastation is concentrated in what is called the ‘Big Five’ cotton growing states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which account for two-thirds of all farm suicides. Since 1991 an estimated 1620 million people have quit farming, which means that farm suicides are rising with a declining farm population.

Since 1997 there have been 182,936 recorded suicides.

The statistics could be piled on but you cannot fail to see how hard life as a farmer in India must be. Issues such as the use of child or bonded labour do the same, but the level of suicides starkly demonstrates the pressures on workers in farming like no other.

Suicides can have a multiplicity of causes but when you have nearly 200,000 recorded among farmers, it must be a symptom of common factors within that group of workers.

The number of deaths finally became a story of national concern and the government began to ask; why so bad? Despatched to rural communities, where a majority of Indians still live, researchers observed that the suicides are concentrated in regions of high commercialisation and very high peasant debt. Just as you find in the ‘Big Five’ states. Cash crop farmers seem far more vulnerable to suicides than those growing food crops.

The numbers have continued at the high level they have been for a decade or so because the basic underlying causes remain untouched.

Commercialisation of the countryside

Since 1997, there have been 182,936 recorded suicides of farmers

continues; investment in agriculture declines, banks have withdrawn credit at a time of soaring input prices. Farm incomes decline whilst cultivation costs increase. And key to all this; corporations have been allowed to increasingly take over every major sector of agriculture moving towards privatisation of resources such as seed provision and fertiliser.

The Indian government attempt to deal with the crisis was with its oneoff waiver; leaving in place all its causes. The loan waiver came a few months prior to the 2009 general election.

But it is not all despair in rural communities. Where-ever you find exploitation people stand up in opposition to it. They organize and fight back.

One particular area where the progressing corporate takeover of agriculture in India has been most obvious has been the pushing of GM crops onto farmers. In the past few years Indian farmers have experienced the stark realities of GM crop cultivation in the form of Bt Cotton. Through cash incentives, debt pressures and false promises, this stain of cotton found itself being grown. For farmers in some areas wishing to remain GM-free, they were beginning to find it almost impossible to get non-GM seeds. But as the full consequences and ramifications of the technology became clear resistance began to grow. Over the past two of three years, grass-roots actions, unions and coalitions of resistance have organized and fought against GM-crops, In Andhra Pradesh, more than 250 people took part in a protest meeting in Hyderabad organized by the Coalition for GMFree Andhra Pradesh. In Madhya Pradesh, around one thousand farmers took out a “death procession” of Bt Brinjal in Jhabua.

A large protest took place in Bhubaneswar, the state capital of Orissa, organized by Orissa Nari Samaj, a tribal women’s collective.

In Chittoor, the APVVU (an agricultural workers’ union) organized

rallies in the district headquarters against GM crops. The opposition has lead to a moratorium on the use of the seed until its long-term impacts have been established.

It’ll be no surprise that the lack of employment rights is the daily reality for most agricultural workers in India, despite there being legislation in place to protect workers. No different to the UK there we can cry! But trade unions are out there trying to organise and campaign for workers welfare. One is Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (Association of West Bengal Agricultural Farm Workers.

In West Bengal there now have 67,000 members, half of which are women. They promote the rights of agricultural workers to decent wages and are part of the broader movement against forcible land seizures by the state to set up large industries. Trade unions are still needed to protect workers rights in a state with a ‘left wing’ government.

There are also numerous NGOs and charities working in the countryside to assist in the empowerment of the rural poor. One, the Association for Sarva Seva Farms is now spread across eight states, and works with close to a million rural families.

It aims to make villages a viable option for those who do not want to migrate to the cities.

It has been involved with setting up a milk marketing organisations and encouraging women to start smallscale dairies in Tamil Nadu, and has provided micro-finance to assist women to start their own rural based businesses.

The most inspiring and encouraging actions are not lead by unions and charities but are the grass-root acts of resistance lead by the rural poor themselves. The traditional ‘farmers movement’ has been losing its voice as India’s economy has expanded. Business and government have taken land for infrastructure projects or factories. Tribal rights and the concerns of traditional communities are ignored in the name of development. India’s rural poor have had it hard, and are treated increasingly with contempt.

But the farmers of India are organizing for alternatives in all parts of the country. The first Green Revolution in India helped feed the masses, the next may take the power back.

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Summer 2011

Country Standard

A People’s Charter for the countryside?

By Bill Greenshields, National Commission of People’s Charter campaign “

ritain needs to wake up to the scale and extent of rural poverty. It is basically hidden poverty – it’s not in your face as much as it is in urban areas. They are, if you like, the forgotten people.” The words of Dr Stuart Burgess, the Government’s “Rural Advocate” – the Chair of the Commission for Rural Communities – in January 2010.

The incoming ConDem Coalition in June 2010 gave the Commission for Rural Communities an urgent response – they abolished it. And on April 1st of 2011, CRC was forced to substantially reduce its staffing and scale of operation, winding down towards full abolition.

In its place, Defra established the “Rural Communities Policy Unit”, with Richard Beynon, Defra Under-Secretary of State, making clear in Parliament that, “Much of the activity which helps rural communities to thrive takes place at a remove from central Government, often undertaken directly by people within the communities themselves. It is our intention that the RCPU’s evidence will promote the Government’s drive to decentralisation by supporting bodies operating sub-nationally better to understand and take proper account of rural needs and opportunities.”

In other words…”you’re on your own”. Richard Beynon is one of the wealthiest MPs in the House, and recently received £2 million in EU CAP subsidies to his family-trust run £125 million, 20,000 acre Englefield House estate.

Unlike him, many will not recognise rural communities as “thriving”. Lack of agricultural planning, development and sustainability, together with the decline of other types of work in the countryside and dependence on short term seasonal work has produced both unemployment for many, and long hours with low pay for others – including super-exploited imported workers – the chaotic and ruthless conditions of the “free market” The CRC will continue for a while longer in its much reduced form, and will focus on just two issues. Firstly, how the lack of training and jobs impacts on the lives of young people. Secondly, the depth and severe implications of rural isolation.

These build on its October 2010 report that one in five of the rural population live in poverty – 1.7 million people – and a quarter of rural children live below the poverty line, with all the known negative effects of this on their educational achievement.

The teaching union ATL estimates a total of 900,000 rural children throughout Britain have their lives blighted by economic and social deprivation, often not fully recognised in comparison to the 2.9 million poverty children in our towns and cities.

Three quarters of teachers in rural schools in a recent survey reported frequent pupil absences as a result of family poverty and inadequate public transport. Only 10% of children live within 3 miles of school, as against 80% in towns. They are not the source of sufficient money to attract decent service in the world of privatised transport, and are often let down by it – reflecting the general crisis of public transport in the countryside.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies now predicts an increase of 300,000 children in poverty by 2014 as a result of the government’s “austerity measures” Their research pre-dated the imposition of the huge cuts to services, which are now closing or heavily restricting access to play groups, libraries, village halls, community centres, leisure centres, post offices, youth centres etc. Gary Craig, Professor of Social Justice at Hull University, says, “As well as income, one of the key measures of rural poverty is access to key services, things like bus services, a village hall and post offices” He predicts that further decline in public service spending, provision and quality will create a “spiral of decline effect” Against all this stands the growing voice of those who not only want to halt the decline and unemployment in the countryside, and the cuts which will accelerate this, but who want to develop

Recent research for the Scottish Government on rural life shows that such deprivation for individuals and families is compounded by:

• social housing provision is even worse in the country than it is in our towns – both in terms of quantity, availability and quality • Benefits – under threat for all – do not stretch as far in rural areas due to the higher costs of basic items and transport • Public transport is expensive, infrequent, unreliable or nonexistent as bus companies limit routes to the most profitable • Centralisation of public and voluntary sector services – part of the cost cutting exercise – has meant the moving of vital services such as hospitals, schools and childcare centres to locations a considerable distance from home

B

• the escalating costs of food, fuel and transport – quantifiably much higher in rural locations • the cost of private housing – often unaffordable to long established families • “second homes” and “holiday lets” limiting the supply of private rental property, with short rental periods and high rents.

• privately owned and rented houses – particularly in remote areas – often in poor condition with high fuel costs.

“There is no need for unemployment or cuts to public services, pay, pensions or benefits. There is an alternative, meeting the needs of millions, rather than feeding the greed of millionaires” The People’s Charter – How It Can Work

a coherent plan for rural development, and for the well being of the people who live and work there.

The People’s Charter is part of that growing voice.

The Charter is a 6 point program that states that, “There is no need for unemployment or cuts to public services, pay, pensions or benefits. There is an alternative, meeting the needs of millions, rather than feeding the greed of millionaires”. It provides a careful, detailed and costed alternative – progressive taxation, productive investment, protection and expansion of jobs, development of green sustainable technologies etc. The Charter is fully supported by the TUC as a result of unanimous vote at Congress in 2009, and it has 16 trade unions directly affiliated.

But, though the revival and development of our countryside is implicit in the Charter, it needs to be explicit! Who out there would bring your expertise to work in helping to develop a new section of The People’s Charter – “A Countryside Charter”? Please get in touch – http://country-standard.blogspot.com

People’s Charter • The escalating programme of closure of post offices – and repeated privatisation and cuts threaten to accelerate this further • Limited availability of education, training, employment and social activities, coupled with high transport costs • Being tied to the home, particularly for the elderly and infirm, leads to physical and social isolation, and even higher fuel usage • Many service providers assume their clients have access to the internet.

Many of the rural poor cannot afford this, and there is often no local access points – libraries etc – without the need for transport.

Country Standard

Summer 2011

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Review of ‘Skilled in all Trades’ The history of the Farmworkers’ Union: 1947-1984 We reproduce here a review of this important history of agricultural trade unionism by Mick McGahey, the great leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. Copies of the book will be available for sale at County Standard stalls at Tolpuddle and Burston.

B

ob Wynn’s history of the agricultural workers is a welcome addition to trade union literature. The title ‘Skilled in all Trades’ is particularly wisely and well chosen.

I firmly believe there is no greater misnomer than to talk of ‘unskilled labour’. All workers in the course of their working lives acquire multi-faceted skills, no matter the character of the job. Agriculture is now a modern industry and those who are employed in it are no exception to this basic fact.

Bob Wynn’s comprehensive volume is well written and well documented. I’ve no doubt it will be received well in the rural areas and is a ‘gift’ to city folk untutored in knowledge of the countryside.

Bob’s book brings us down to the Terra Firma of the country life and its problems. Who amongst us city dwellers has not yearned at some time or other for a quiet day in the country, a day or period away from the grind and stress of the pace of modern city life. An escape from the modern ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ of Capitalism, to view the beauty of the countryside in all its changing seasons and to ‘sniff the cooler air’.

Yet, under ‘Natures Green Mantle’, some of the fiercest and historic struggles were waged by contending class forces for the people’s social and democratic advance. Gains won by centuries of struggle are now under threat and erosion by the policies of the present Government.

What Labour Movement activist has not been inspired by the events of the great Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler and John Ball? The Revolt by the agricultural workers of that period was against the privations and poverty of serfdom.

A major part of the cause of the penury and Revolt was a Poll Tax being levied by the authorities.

Who is not stirred by John Ball’s ‘Wee Jingle of that Struggle?’

‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?’

advance the working people’s living standards.

In 1934, the centenary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs was celebrated by the British trade union movement and internationally.

The British Trade Union Congress published a book on the centenary and asked George Bernard Shaw, the great Irish dramatist, for comment on the book. He wrote in typical Shavian satirical vein, and I paraphrase its essence: “I’ve no time for Martyrs, its not our job to suffer, its our job to make the ruling class suffer till we get what we want”.

A simplistic comment or a complex, subtle call to arms?

focus of a mighty campaign. While statistics published in the book expose the tied cottage system, even more powerful than statistics in demonstration of this iniquitous system, is the inclusion in the book of the victims of the tied cottage and the harrowing stories they tell of evictions.

The same method is used to illustrate its membership. There is no mere cursory mention of the rank and file, but a series of pen portraits is included, showing the selfless and devoted contributions to the Union.

Similarly, biographies of the leaders are included and such a combination of leadership and rank and

Bob Wynn records the Union’s considerable scale of contribution to that Centenary, the 150 anniversary and annual celebrations. What was most important was what the Landworker, newspaper of the Union which spoke of the spirit of Tolpuddle and there is no doubt that spirit emerges from the pages of this history.

file makes a union strong in pursuit of its policies.

It would be strange indeed, in the light of the history of the Farmworkers’ Union and the affection it was held in by its members, if there had been immediate unanimity when the question of a merger with the T&GWU (now Unite) was mooted, a merger that went ahead on 1st May 2007.

A fine history has been written and published. It is, of course, easier to record history than to make it.

Meanwhile, we are misgoverned by a group of apostles of the unfettered free market where the cash nexus reigns supreme.

However, it is not the laissez faire of 19th century capitalism but the capitalism of monopoly and the trans-continentals operating across national frontiers with powerful organisation: to meet that challenge we need strong organisation in the trade unions and Labour Movement to function effectively in changing times.

Mick McGahey (May 1925-January 1999) Former Vice-President of NUM

Tolpuddle The 1834 Tolpuddle case had as its background a general movement among working people for an increase in wages in which the agricultural labourers took part winning the promise of an advance in wages, a promise which was broken.

Although the Anti-Combination Acts had been repealed 8 years previously in fact, the sentence of 7 years transportation was for the crime of being members of a trade union.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs, members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers, are now enshrined in the heart and history of the Agricultural Workers’ Union and the British trade union movement.

Regretfully for the Tories, the option of transportation to Van Dieman’s Land for trade unionists no longer exists. That was changed. What has not changed is the anti-trade union mentality of the Tory Government.

The evidence of that is the series of anti-trade union acts in the last 14 years placed on the statute book by the Tories, all the acts designed to weaken trade unions and their ability to defend and

Sharpen the sickle As Barry Leathwood, National Secretary – Rural Agricultural and Allied Workers – says in a foreword, “Wynn’s book continues the excellent work of Reg Grove’s ‘Sharpen the Sickle’ and the Hammond’s classic study ‘The Village Labourer’ and makes an invaluable contribution to the history of the Labour Movement’.

A picture emerges of a union active on the major social concerns facing its members and the people in the rural communities.

Of necessity, there are priorities in such a welter of issues and what is described as the greatest evil of the countryside, ie, the tied cottage was the

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Summer 2011

Country Standard

Chasing cowboys out of the countryside It took the tragedy at Morecambe Bay to finally drive home the message that gangmasters needed regulating.

By Paul Whitehouse chairman of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority 2005-2011 writes

Coalition is not a popular word in 2011, but it was a very broad coalition, formed right across the food and agricultural sector, which led to the formation of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. This was not a political grouping, but one which comprised all who had an interest in stopping the exploitation of those who help to put food on our tables.

There were farmers, growers, food processors, workers’ support groups, the major retailers, gangmasters themselves, and of course Trade Unions, led by Unite (then the T&G). Mark Simmonds, Conservative MP for Boston, introduced a private member’s bill in 2003, but that failed and then Jim Sheridan, Labour MP for Paisley had another in Parliament, which looked as though it would also fall, when the tragedy at Morecambe Bay occurred in February 2004. The GLA was set up on 1 April 2005 and issued its first licences in mid-2006.

The GLA has made that difference which the original coalition wanted. It has brought better conditions of employment to thousands, more revenue for the Exchequer, and order to a sector which had been lawless. The best example of this was the application from the firm in Lincolnshire late last year for a licence because it wanted to get back into this sector. It had withdrawn from supplying labour into the farming sector before 2004 because it could not supply labour within the law and obtain contracts. It could now see that it wouldn’t be undercut by rogues.

So where is the GLA today? It has about 1,200 licensees, of which 1,000 give it no cause for concern, and a further hundred which are trying to do the right thing but need to be educated and encouraged. There is still though a rump of about 100 which need to be carefully watched, and an unknown number, probably no more than 150, which need to be tracked down and prosecuted. And it’s working hard on these last two groups.

How has it done that? By concentrating on obtaining and developing intelligence so that the worst firms can be dealt with first. At every weekly tasking meeting those packages which include a reference to threats to life or health are at the top of the agenda. There are still people out there who will not hesitate to threaten and if necessary carry their threats into action in order to exploit workers. Last year the GLA provided the evidence which persuaded the government to add the new Forced Labour offence to the statute book.

When the TLWG was formed the problems seemed to be in horticulture, soft fruit and other labour intensive crops, so that’s where the GLA put most of its effort. Then the emphasis switched to dairy, and now to meat, poultry, eggs and bakery. There are still firms out there which have not realised that the game is up. Help is available to those who want to do the right thing but the really bad guys are being brought to book.

EU pushes bonded labour ‘Mode 4’ is coming your way – Brian Denny of the No2EU – Yes to Democracy campaign investigates

T

he European Union is currently involved in secret negotiations to agree an EU/India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) designed to allow European capital to take over Indian financial and other services through the ‘liberalisation’ of these markets.

In return, India is demanding ‘Mode 4’ access to EU markets, a trade concession that allows transnational corporations to bring temporary workers from outside the EU into the EU on lower rates of pay – a new form of bonded labour.

Such a FTA will mean mass privatisation and opening up of Indian markets in return for importing a huge ‘reserve army of labour’ into the EU to batter down wages and conditions to increase corporate profits. Moreover, if agreed, such trade commitments are effectively permanent and irreversible under law despite the fact that no electorate has voted for it.

Mode 4 explained Under Mode 4 a firm with a contract in another member state can bring its ‘own’ workers and covers a huge number of professions (see table).

The main Mode 4 categories are ‘Intracorporate Transferees’(ICTs), workers brought in to work in the same company across borders – for which there are no limits – and Contractual Service Suppliers(CSSs), workers brought in by a transnational and supplied as agency workers into other firms from inside or even outside of the EU. This will lead to huge levels of social dumping as free movement of both services and workers within the EU continues to undermine trade union strength and pay rates, with considerable downward pressure on wages among the most vulnerable workers in the UK. All workers in rural areas should be on the alert. Mode 4 arrangements will have even greater impact if the Government manages to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board.

Reckless and wrong

Who voted for this?

The TUC believes that it would be “reckless” for the UK government to sign-up to the proposed Mode 4 request without carrying out a careful impact assessment on the UK economy and resident labour market. However the TUC believes that, despite repeated requests, “it seems unlikely to happen”.

At EU level European Court of Justice decisions, such as the Laval and Viking cases, have already supported attacks on trade union rights, trumping the rights of business over those of workers’ and unions and leading to increased social dumping.

The Lisbon Treaty also further advances EU ‘liberalisation’ enshrined in the Services Directive and greatly increases the powers of the Commission to enforce such policies.

EU structures designed to promote corporate takeover and dominance are well-organised. The major lobbying mechanism on ‘services’ is the European Services Forum (ESF), closely connected to the powerful International Financial Services London (IFSL), now merged with the Corporation of London and UK Trade and Industry, into ‘TheCityUK’.

The broader structure for affecting EU policy is BusinessEurope, formerly UNICE, which has even shared offices with the European Commission.

‘BusinessEurope’ includes global firms such as US oil giant Exxon, and wields strong influence over EU internal and external trade policy.

These corporate bodies are driving EU trade and immigration policies, not elected governments.

The following trades and sectors common to rural areas are affected directly by Mode 4 Taxation advisory services Architectural services, urban and rural planning and landscape architectural services Engineering services, integrated engineering services Computer and related services Research and development services Technical testing and analysis services Related scientific and technical consulting services Maintenance and repair of equipment in the context of an after-sales or after-lease services contract Construction services Site investigation work Environmental services Services related to the sale of equipment or to the assignment of a patent.

Veterinary services Education Services Hospital services

Resistance in India In India resistance to this East India Company-style re-colonisation exercise is growing. On May Day this year, C H Venkatachalam, the general secretary of India’s largest bank workers union, AIBEA, appealed to workers to come together to oppose the privatisation of the banking sector as demanded as part of the FTA. He warned that “allowing full voting rights for Foreign Direct Investors in banks, increased FDI/Foreign Institutional Investors investment limit in banking sector, higher FDI limit in insurance sector are some of the major challenges which the bank employees cannot afford to ignore”. It is time organised workers here stopped believing in euro fairy tales of ‘social partnership’ with their antidemocratic corporate executioners and started to defend themselves by following the example set by Indian workers. Mode 4 must be blocked.

Country Standard

Summer 2011

15

Wanted – countryside movement for AWB and against cuts Y

ou can tell a lot about the political situation in a country by the popularity of certain words.

Take the word “austerity” for example – a word barely used or understood by the mass of the British population up until 2009.

Yet with the unfolding economic crisis taking its toll on thousands of families, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary named the word “austerity” as its “Word of the Year” for 2010 because of the number of web searches this word generated.

According to the president and publisher of the dictionary, “austerity had more than 250,000 searches on the dictionary’s free online [website] tool” and the surge in searches “came with more coverage of the debt crisis.”

Although Chancellor Osborne and other ministers within the EU use the word as a neutral to implement their ‘necessary deficit reduction plan” much of the public appears wise to the devastating impact the cuts will have on their lives.

With the Morning Star the only national daily newspaper giving a voice to the victims of the cuts agenda, there is still a problem in communicating the positives of community campaigning, not least in rural Britain – an often-neglected part of the working class that is not being heard.

New research by the Scottish Agricultural College’s Rural Policy Centre, found that the Western Isles, Argyll and Bute, Dumfries and Galloway, Moray and the Orkney Islands are the rural areas that are likely to be some of the hardest hit places in Britain.

The hegemonic media is unable to ignore city dwellers mounting anti cuts campaigns in the big cities with the FT and the Guardian giving some coverage.

But despite rural Britain arguably facing a disproportionate attack of austerity, the unfolding situation is still not considered “news worthy.”

This is a challenge for trade unionists and anti cuts groups alike to improve media communications. However as history shows it is the strength and depth in numbers that forces progressive events into the news agenda.

Recent mobilisations against the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board in the so-called “bonfire of the quangos” – a term invented by Sky News in order to undermine the importance of such bodies – have attracted some media coverage and brought rural workers on to the streets of the capital.

Unite who represent many agricultural workers in

PIC MARK THOMA

By John Tyler

A ditch digger from Buckinghamshire makes his protest. rural Britain has spearheaded the campaign to protect the vital service which ensures that rural workers have a professional grading structure, improved health and safety and are paid significantly above the national minimum wage.

With the bill on the abolition of the AWB about to go through the commons, Unite is stepping up the pressure on MP’s to vote the bill down.

Unite National Officer for Agricultural workers Cath Speight insists the union “will continue to campaign against the abolition of the AWB, which protects the incomes of over 150,000 agricultural workers.

“Unite will be contacting every MP to make the case for retaining the AWB which survived when all other wages boards were abolished by Thatcher.”

Accusing the government of giving a “green light” to gangmasters and landowners to slash wages and conditions, Ms Speight adds: “This move will only lead to a de-skilling of agricultural workers which will have a knock on effect on Health & Safety.”

Unite executive member Ian Monckton whose job isn’t directly covered by the AWB argues that its abolition will mean thousands like him will have their pay and conditions eroded as part of general

depression of wages in favour of higher profits for rural employers.

Agricultural work itself is the most dangerous in terms of deaths and injuries – even eclipsing the construction industry.

Official figures show the rate of fatal injuries in the sector was 8.2 per 100,000 workers, making it the most dangerous industry in which to work in Britain today. With the abolition of the AWB, this is likely to get worse.

Recently a farming company was fined after a man was electrocuted while working on farmland near Ludgershall in Wiltshire.

Salisbury Crown Court heard Edward Pybus, 21, from Northallerton in Yorkshire, was harvesting crops at Chute Farm, Upper Chute when he received the fatal shock on 6 August 2007.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecuted farm managers Velcourt Ltd as the firm was responsible for both the recruitment of casual farm workers, including Mr Pybus, and for managing health and safety on site.

Of course health and safety although already not good will only get worse if the bill is passed.

Other unions who represent members providing services in remote parts of rural Britain such as job centres, schools, hospitals and post offices have been active in highlighting their plight.

The PCS has said job centre closures on top of a lack of opportunities for the unemployed will leave people in rural areas particularly exposed.

Cuts to services in countryside towns and villages where communities are small and close-knit leaves deep scars that are not easily healed.

Closing a post office or shop in the high street might be a nuisance to people in the city meaning they have to walk a little further for the next one.

In rural communities, it can be one step towards the death knell of that area. However, resistance, if properly directed by the trade union movement locally in conjunction with the local community, in these areas maybe more forthcoming precisely because of the closeness of people in rural communities.

Coordinated strike action involving a multitude of unions and workers across the country and different industries, will need to involve workers in the countryside.

If we are to make the government truly back down by making the country economically and industrially ungovernable, the countryside will be a key organising battleground to rid us of this big business government.

The first union The first national agricultural workers’ union became the largest in the country with over 86,000 members. It was founded by Joseph Arch (1826-1919) of Barford in Warwickshire, where a pub is named after him with his portrait on its sign.

On the evening of February 7, 1872, he stood on a pig stool under a chestnut tree on nearby Wellesbourne Green and persuaded 300 to sign up on the spot to the union.

Just over a month later 200 of them were called out on strike and won a 33 per cent rise!

The union also played a significant role in getting rural workers the vote in 1884 (17 years after town workers). The year after that Arch became the first agricultural worker to be elected an MP (a Liberal, before the birth of the Labour Party), and he campaigned for reform of land ownership.

Picture by Peter Arkell (from “A Pub Crawl Through History”

by Mike Pentelow and Peter Arkell, published by Janus).

SAVE Rural Britain Len McCluskey, General Secretary

www.unitetheunion.org (JN3852) HB170611 Picture: Howard Betts

Country Standard

Summer 2011

17

Not welcome in Essex

By Mitch Howard

T

PIC MITCH HOWARD

his year marks the 175th anniversary of the release in 1836 of five of the Tolpuddle Martyrs from imprisonment in Australia – and in July thousands of trade unionists will gather for the annual Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and Rally to commemorate the Dorset farm labourers who were transported in 1834 for the crime of forming a trade union.

But 150 miles away in the hamlet of Greensted Green, near Chipping Ongar in Essex, is a more modest memorial – a plaque on a farmhouse wall that records the martyrs’ unsuccessful attempt to rebuild their lives on their return to England after mass protests had won them free pardons.

The plaque, unveiled by the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers general secretary Reg Bottini on September 19th 1976, reads: “On their return from transportation the Tolpuddle Martyrs, George Loveless, James Loveless and James Brine lived here from 1838 to 1844.”

In May 1838 a public appeal was launched to buy short tenancies of two small farms for the men and their families. Such was the response that in August George Loveless and his brother James and their families and James Brine moved in to the 80-acre New House Farm in Greensted.

Two more of the Six – George Loveless’s brother-in-law Thomas Standfield and his son John Standfield – went to the smaller Fenners Farm, four miles away in Tilegate Green, High Laver, along with Thomas’s wife and six children.

James Hammett, the sixth martyr, also lived at Greensted for a some months after his return in 1839 but then went back to Tolpuddle, where he worked as a building labourer until his death in Dorchester workhouse in 1891.

Little is known about the martyrs’ lives on the farms, but James Loveless and Thomas Standfield were too busy working to attend a benefit night at a London Theatre in October 1839 to raise the rest of the money to complete the purchase of the farm leases.

They sent a letter of apology, but the other four attended and received what was described as “one of the most enthusiastic bursts of approbation ever heard within these walls”. However, the worthies of Essex greeted them with less enthusiasm.

Although James Brine walked down the aisle of Greensted’s wooden church, which dates back to the 7th century, to marry Thomas Standfield’s daughter Elizabeth on June 20th 1839, it was the rector, Philip Ray, who led the local opposition which was to drive the martyrs out of the village.

Ray preached sermons objecting to having convicts in the village and wrote to the Chelmsford magistrates and the Lord Lieutenant of Essex complaining about Chartists descending on his parish from all over Essex and Hertfordshire.

At the time, Chartism, the popular movement for radical democratic reforms, was spreading like wildfire among rural and town labourers – much to the consternation of the ruling class who feared the agitation would herald revolution.

In December 1839 the Morning Post newspaper highlighted the “extraordinary” purchase of the Essex farms and spoke of “countercolonisation from Botany Bay to the rural parishes of Essex”. The “hitherto quiet and well-conducted population of these parishes” had been stirred into agitation by the Dorchester labourers.

Later in the month the paper published a letter from “a conservative magistrate for the county of Essex” who claimed that the eyes of the honest Essex peasantry had been opened to “the pernicious designs of the evilminded fomenters of sedition.

“Those firebrands, the dreaded Dorchester Labourers, are four poor ignorant creatures, who literally do not even know how to plough the land they occupy.”

The ignorance was the magistrate’s: George Loveless was said to have been the best ploughman in the Tolpuddle area.

It seems that the martyrs realised that, even as farmers rather than mere labourers, they were no more welcome to the powers-that-be in Essex than they had been in Tolpuddle.

Having been denounced from the pulpit for holding Chartist meetings, they feared that they would be blamed if there was rural unrest – and perhaps arrested again.

They sought a place to raise their families in peace and did not renew their leases. In 1844 they emigrated to Canada – swearing their families not to speak of the past.

Greensted remains a peaceful little village with its beautifully restored wooden church, which is worth a visit and where you can buy a short booklet about its association with the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Fenners Farm still exists while the New House Farm house has been renamed Tudor Cottage. Only the plaque on its wall bears witness to a brief but emotional episode in the annals of trade unionism.

PROUD TO PRINT Ruskin Press is proud to print Country Standard PRINTERS TO THE LABOUR MOVEMENT (We are trade union throughout.)

www.ruskinpress.co.uk

18

Summer 2011

Country Standard

75 years ago

‘They shall not pass’ Jim Jump, secretary of International Brigade Memorial Trust

T

his year marks the 75th anniversary of the start of organised mass resistance to fascism by the British people.

It was in 1936 when hundreds of men and women began making the journey to Spain to join the International Brigades to oppose General Franco’s fascist-backed rebellion.

And in that same year the people of London’s East End stopped Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts from marching through their streets – adopting the slogan used by the defenders of Madrid: “They shall not pass” – “No pasarán”.

Many of those who took part in the Battle of Cable Street on 4 October 1936 went on to fight for the Spanish Republic’s democratically elected government during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39.

Created on 22 October 1936, the International Brigades rallied over 35,000 people from more than 50 countries to the anti-fascist cause. Some 2,500 of them came from Britain and Ireland, of whom 527 died in Spain.

Who were these volunteers? Most were ordinary working people: dockers, clerks, miners, print workers, doctors, building workers, seafarers, teachers, factory workers and nurses. And some came from rural and farming communities.

There were those who had taken part in the Battle of Cable Street: young Jewish East Enders such as mechanic Lou Kenton and textile worker David Lomon, who are today two of the very few surviving veterans of the International Brigades.

Some later rose to prominence in the trade union movement, among them Liverpool docker Jack Jones and Thora Silverthorne, the Welsh-born nurse who was working in Reading when the civil war began.

Others, such as the brilliant Cambridge student John Cornford, who died aged 21 in fighting near Córdoba, and Laurie Lee, were poets and writers. A few became military experts: Tom Wintringham, one of the commanders of the British Battalion, and former journalist Hugh Slater were the instigators of the Home Guard during the Second World War. What they all shared was a conviction that the spread of fascism must be stopped – as did the East Enders who knew that the anti-semitic Blackshirts had to be prevented from marching though the heart of London’s Jewish community. A large proportion of the volunteers were communists, as their party was at that time in the vanguard of the anti-fascist fight, though many were Labour Party members or had no political affiliation.

As Jack Jones, who was a Labour local councillor when he travelled to Spain, later wrote: “The march had started with Mussolini and had gained terrible momentum with Hitler and was being carried forward

by Franco. For most young people there was a feeling of frustration, but some determined to do anything that seemed possible, even if it meant death, to try to stop the spread of fascism… This was fascist progression.

It was real and it had to be stopped.”

Meanwhile Britain’s Conservative-led government was eager to appease Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Indeed a large part of the ruling class admired Hitler and Mussolini for the way they dealt with their opponents on the left. Those same people detested Spain’s left-of-centre government and its modest programme of social and economic reform.

So the British government supported a hypocritical policy of “non-intervention” in the Spanish Civil War, which meant enforcing an arms embargo on the Spanish Republic and turning a blind eye to the huge military assistance given to Franco by the fascist dictators after he launched his coup attempt on 17 July 1936.

But just as the people of the East End forcibly prevented the police from clearing the way for the Blackshirts to march through their streets, so the International Brigade volunteers defied government threats to prosecute them for enlisting in a foreign war.

For every International Brigade volunteer who clandestinely crossed the Pyrenees there were hundreds of people in Britain who gave money to help the Spanish Republic, who marched in favour of arms for Spain or who cared for the thousands of refugee children who arrived in Britain fleeing Hitler’s and Mussolini’s bombs on Guernica and other Basque towns.

The International Brigaders and their supporters warned that the bombing of Guernica, Barcelona and Madrid would soon mean Nazi bombers over Britain unless fascism was crushed in Spain. They were proved right: five months after the Spanish Civil War ended on 1 April 1939 with victory for the fascists, Britain and Germany were at war.

With only the distant Soviet Union and Mexico willing to supply it with arms, the Spanish Republic was doomed. The cause of freedom in Spain was lost – democracy was not restored until after Franco’s death in 1975 – but the resistance of the Spanish people and the International Brigades crucially checked the advance of fascism in Europe for more than two-and-ahalf years.

The International Brigades also showed the world an unprecedented example of international solidarity and selfless commitment to anti-fascism. That is why we remember them today.

Inspired by the International Brigaders who took the road to Spain via Cable Street, a new generation must say once again: “No pasarán”.

A weekend of events to mark the 75th anniversary of the creation of the International Brigades is being organised in London on 30 September-2 October, coinciding with the commemoration of the Battle of Cable Street – see page 2 for details. For more details contact: secretary @internationalbrigades.org.uk

In this historic year the CS collective salute the memory of Wogan Phillips, farmer and former editor of the Standard who went to Spain as an ambulance driver and to fight against fascism.

Country Standard

Summer 2011

East of Eden

19

How Now?

Gardening in the heritage landscape

By A. Redman

T

hat appearances are deceptive was never more apt than when applied to that created paradise on Earth, the English Country Garden. Since Adam, and the fall of man, the Serpent has found a new domain, those who toil in the garden are troubled, all is not as it seems.

Perhaps you may be young and considering finding paid employment in this English vision, a kin to Abel, work the land, cultivate the very flowers of the field, a gardeners lot seems a happy lot. Herein lies the rub.

Those who manage or own these Arcadian landscapes believe that the work you will do for them, in their pleasant grounds is reward enough. You will enter a different, privileged land where a low salary and poor conditions of employment are a price you have willingly paid upon entry. “You are lucky”, to work here will be your new platitude, often the well meaning visiting public will echo this “Lucky to work here”.

Lucky and privileged indeed.

Your position has been noted by others and they are envious, their number is legion. They tell the Guardians they will work for no wage.

The National Trust, the RHS, English Heritage, RBG Kew, all “employ” this group. The National Trust last year made use of 55,000 volunteers. Any volunteer, is taking the opportunity of paid employment away from another. Not of course, from those further up the chain.

In the world where rent, bills and the general cost of life has to be met, what sort of financial rewards are on offer for the fortunate paid land worker. Typical salaries range from £12,000 to £18,000 per annum (If you are lucky).

Each of the organisations (The National Trust, RHS etc..) looks to each other to gauge the level of pay so they can offer what they term “a competitive salary”.

None of course daring to raise the standard. Tim Smit, of the Eden Project, wrote “The National Trust wage structure for Horticulturalists doesn’t reflect the importance The National Trust say they give to landscapes and gardens. This is an unfortunate hypocrisy shared with the RHS whose patrician attitude towards its gardeners has always famously been a disgrace”. So, how are things in Eden Mr Smit, paying your Horticulturalists above the mean?

At one time accommodation was offered, rent and rates free. This was offered to supplement a gardeners low wage, but the Shepherds have been evicted from their huts.

Tied accommodation is an anachronism, although in a modified form still exists, there is now a rent to pay, £60-£100 per week, for a tenancy that is not secure, your rights and protection as a tenant are very limited, and of course, the introduction of the Poll tax offered a golden opportunity to savvy property managers and owners. You may now find yourself living in a ‘tied’ cottage banded well above your income, and yet still be liable to pay in full.

The visitor to the stately homes is often exposed to the most insidious aspect of all, the way that property managers, such as The National Trust, somehow instill a respect for attitudes and values that are no longer relevant, a portrait of the past through a rosy veil, a selected history is given. Yet a darker vision of the past exists, an often forgotten time of exploitation, a time when young children laboured in “dark satanic mills”, when adults worked long laborious hours for little reward, a time when money was to be made by those in power.

A time when land use was taken, the Enclosure Acts of the 18th and 19th centuries saw Common land incorporated into estates by the landed Gentry, and the

rural poor migrated to the cities in a mass exodus from the countryside.

Today, 0.6% of the British population own 69% of the land, and they are mostly the same families who owned it in the 18th and 19th centuries. Just 103 people own 30% of the country. Look in vain for many Commons today, a glimpse of the past use may be seen in many local roads leading up to the Great Estates, the Common road you may well see as two rhymes from the time say it well: They hang the man, and flog the woman, that steals the Goose from the common, but let the greater villain loose, that steals the common from the Goose The man of wealth and pride Takes up the space that many poor supplied; space for this lake, his park and extended bounds, space for his horses, equipage and hounds A heritage worth keeping? The Aristocracy hang on, propped up by organisations such as The National Trust, they still inhabit their stately homes, now of course they have condescended to admitting the great general public on a limited access, they need to do this to retain something of their Aristocratic lifestyle. Their estates are still managed by the Upper middle class, a Public school education, and time served as Officer in the Guards are seen as desirable backgrounds.

Thirty years ago I worked on a large estate. In one corner of a yard, there was an attractive cottage, ‘Bothy Cottage’. A ‘Bothy’ was where itinerant gardeners lived a communal life in sparse surroundings, a dormitory, a shared living space. A few years later I met an old gardener who had worked on the same estate in the 1920s, “Not a bad place to live” I naïvely said thinking the Bothy Cottage was where they lived “what do you mean, that wasn’t the bothy, that was opposite underneath that old concrete chimney” – A brick outbuilding, that, during my time on the estate, was used to store rusting paint tins and other residues from the mansion maintenance team. A sanctuary indeed!, a place to return to after working twelve hours a day for five days a week, with luck, maybe having a few hours off on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and for what?

So, the owner could indulge in Strawberries out of season for tea!

So if you are young and considering working in this particular branch of horticulture, think carefully !

You may be lucky and have been born with a Silver spoon in your mouth, then you may be OK. You could always rely on your parents to provide say, a house, a car?

If you were born with a spade in your mouth, a good way to earn a living is through being a self-employed gardener. In some parts of the country you can earn up to £45.00 per hour, earn a living wage.

There are undoubtedly pleasures to be had from gardening, growing your own food, having a passion for plants, an enjoyment of the natural world around you of course. These are best enjoyed in your own garden.

As for me, well, after 35 years working as a gardener, I’m looking forward to hanging up my boots. My children, I haven’t encouraged into horticulture, though they do have a respect and love for the natural world around them.

The world carries on, there is nothing new under the sun and it is seldom as it seems.

“I am cast out of the garden, I am sitting here East of Eden, weeping and lamenting.”

Big Bertha, born on St Patrick’s Day became the world’s oldest cow. From County Kerry, she raised money for cancer relief, fortified by whisky to calm her nerves, she also liked the froth on a pint of Guinness. How old was she when Big Bertha breathed her last?

Answers to www.country-standard. blogspot.com

Who Then?

Four ex TGWU general secretaries, Bill Morris, Moss Evans, Ron Todd and Jack Jones [left to right] admire the bust of Frank Cousins. But who are these characters [first left, fourth left and second right] in the line up?

Answers to www.country-standard. blogspot.com First winner pulled out of a hat wins ‘Skilled At All Trades’, the Bob Wynn history of the farmworkers’ union.

Your progressive window on the rural world. Read the Morning Star.

20

Summer 2011

Country Standard

Join the rural revolt By the Country Standard Editorial Collective

Last year, tentatively, the Editorial Collective, produced a special issue of the Country Standard.

We were unsure if the audience was still there [though we had a good hunch they were], or if we were just part of the glorious history of struggle for socialism in the countryside.

We did not have to wait long for the answer.

Thousands of copies of the Standard were distributed through unions and community organisations in rural areas throughout Britain.

But the biggest surprise came when it was distributed at the Tolpuddle and Burston School Strike Festivals.

CS was greeted by some as one would an old friend. We were a re assurance that honest Labour Movement principles still held true. Others thought it ‘high time’ that campaigners for socialism took the countryside seriously. Others delighted in discovering a journal that spoke up for them. Especially those in areas dominated by the squirocracy and Con Dem councils.

There were tractor drivers from Norfolk and food process workers from Kent, Somerset and Yorkshire, a community nurse and librarian from Cornwall and a rail worker from Gloucestershire who wrote in to applaud our

How The East Was Won (Almost)

coverage of wages, rural services and the environment. We did not tell them that we had so much that we wanted to write about that it could not all be fitted in to one issue – even though the last issue was, at twelve colour pages the biggest in the history since we began in 1935.

So here we are. With plans this time, not to go away for another year, before we publish again.

The question we heard most often after “well done!’ and to which we did not have an answer at the time, was “what can we do if we want to get involved?”. To this we answer, as follows: ● Order copies from us to distribute at work, for your union branch, or in your rural community ● Consider forming a local group of friends of Country Standard which can take part in campaigning on the whole range of issues covered in the journal ● You can keep in touch via our website When CS was established in 1935, our founders wrote about their aims: peace, socialism and unity of town and country workers. These are the principles that continue to inspire us today.

We won’t stop writing or campaigning “till the wrong is put right”. We invite you to join with us.

Country Standard History

By councillor Julian Swainson Labour Group Leader Waveney DC Waveney District Council serves a number of distinct areas and communities in the Easternmost part of England. A large coastal town, Lowestoft, some country market towns and villages including Beccles, Bungay and Halesworth, and many smaller parishes and settlements. And Southwold.

The parliamentary constituency is slightly smaller than the district, and in 2010 turned from Labour to Conservative.

The District Council had been Tory controlled since mid-term Blair, with mostly a comfortable majority of seats.

2011 promised the possibility of change. The Tories had changed the election cycle from thirds to all-out every fourth year, and 2011 was to be the first test. Labour, having lost all Norfolk and Suffolk MPs in 2010, was regrouping and recruiting new members. The Party invested in a Waveney campaign as never before, with a dedicated agent, new office and refocused local structure. Younger and newer members brought their enthusiasm to what seemed to me to be the liveliest campaign for a decade.

The campaign focused effort on the seats deemed most winnable. Safer seats were still carefully leafletted and canvassed.

The final seat count was 23 Labour, 23 Tory,

Kingston Hospital

1 Independent and 1 Green, with majorities as close as just seven votes. Labour was the big winner of the night, gaining 8 seats. LibDems were wiped out and the Tories lost many seats, but the result was a hung council with an impossibly fine balance.

Negotiations made it clear that Labour and Green parties would face Tory and Independent across the chamber. The casting vote of the outgoing chairman, a Tory no longer on the council, was used to secure a Tory administration at an unusually dramatic AGM. The Conservatives appear now to think that this is a return to ‘business as normal’, but they will soon find that not only do they need to find cross-party concensus, but they will also need to keep on board every maverick member of a diverse group.

Interesting times ahead. And of course, any byelection could change control overnight.

As Leader of the Labour Group I am disappointed that we did not quite reach the 24 seat threshold, but I know that the result will energise our politics and campaigning in the months ahead. In opposition, we will have the time and motivation to take the campaign to the heart of the Conservative areas of Waveney. There are very few places in Waveney that have not had a Labour councillor at some point since 1990, so we know there is support to be encouraged.

The Conservatives currently running Suffolk

Wandsworth Health

South West London Community Health

“The man in the tank and the man on the tractor fight side by side as the Second Front looms ahead.”

County Council are frankly helping us campaign. The threats to libraries, recycling centres and school safety patrols in rural areas are deeply unpopular.

The future of schools and care homes matter deeply to many people in Waveney, who are losing trust in the County Council rapidly.

Labour members in Waveney have an enthusiasm and drive that I have not seen since the mid-90s. We have a bright and capable group ready to run the council better right now.

Barking, Havering & Brentwood Health

Blood Service Branches

No profits from Blood Defending our NHS Join the Resistance

Branch Sec: Allen Reilly

Defending our NHS Join the Resistance

East Anglian Branch – Christine Flack (Essex, Cambs, Suffolk, Norfolk) South East Branch – Debbie Jones (Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, IoW) North London Blood – Fran Fenn (Herts, Beds, Bucks)

Published by the Country Standard Editorial Collective. Design by Polyptych Design. Typeset by Paragraphics www.paragraphics.co.uk [Union throughout].