Country Standard Volume 14 no 1 Summer 2012

Founded 1935 | Vol.14 No. 1 | Summer 2012

http://country-standard.blogspot.com | FREE @countrystandard

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 “The Country Standard Collective urges you to support the TUC demonstration in London on 20 October”

WE ARE THE MANY

THEY ARE BUT FEW

PIC: Reproduced with kind permission John F French Hands Off Our Forests

In this issue of the Standard we talk about land and forests, food and farming, the People of Britain and resistance.

Compost the new asbestos? see page 10 Mary Creagh on food poverty Page 3 Rebellion by poor men Page 16

Campaign Charter Page 3 and 12 A flaming spirit Page 18

Tolpuddle Supplement Pages 7/14 On the road for climate jobs Page 20

Rural dwellers have a long and honourable history of standing up to despotic rulers. Proudly we hold high the Country Standard against the Tory led class warriors in Downing Street intent on destroying the Welfare State, Public Services, the NHS and Trade Unions as they misrule on behalf of global capitalism.

This issue of CS highlights the ABC of resistance.

A marks the start of our campaign to highlight the dangers of Aspergillosis to protect the health of millions of landworkers and amateur gardeners, B spells out the crying need for the introduction of speedy Broadband to our rural areas, and C is our call to get cracking on the coming May 2013 council elections – to show Cameron and Clegg where they get off.

Turn inside to get started.

2

Summer 2012

Country Standard

Rising Scandal of Food Poverty B

provide the food which they give to their network of local distributors. According to WRAP, food manufacturing creates three million tonnes of food waste a year, although we don’t know how much of it is fit for human consumption. Labour is working with FareShare to encourage the supermarkets and food manufacturers to make more of this food available to people. Defra figures show lower income households are eating 30 per cent less fresh fruit and vegetables compared to before the recession and food price hike in 2008. We also support the call by Which? for clearer food labelling and more transparent pricing in supermarkets to help families make the best buys for their budget.

We will continue to urge the government to support Labour’s plan for jobs and growth but families need a government that is on their side as they struggle with rising living costs and the harsh consequences of the Tories economic policy. When it comes to food poverty, we are most certainly not “all in it together”.

KEEP UP THE PRESSURE: Lobbying and campaigning to retain the AWB as a front rank against rural poverty. Mary is pictured right.

Bamboozled readers Hard luck to all those who tried to answer the last CS photo competition.

Big Bertha the whisky-drinking County Kerry cow lived to the ripe old age of 48 and three quarters.

Pictured with ex-TGWU general secretaries Bill Morris, Moss Evans, Ron Todd and Jack Jones were sculptor Ian Walters, John Cousins, father Frank Cousins (as a bust) and John Prescott.

We’re not surprised nobody got it all right … but who said life was easy!

UNISON EASTERN REGION

ritain is the seventh richest nation in the world yet we face a growing epidemic of hidden hunger, particularly in children. The reality of parents unable to feed their children is one of the starkest examples of the squeeze on living standards faced by many British families.

In February, Asda launched its Mumdex survey of 4,000 women shoppers. The survey revealed that one in four mums put something back at the supermarket checkout as they struggle to cope with higher food prices and falling wages. The previous week, Netmums revealed one in five mums regularly miss meals as they prioritise dinner for the children when food is scarce. This situation is likely to get worse when the tax credit cuts to families working part-time come into force in April; 200,000 families risk losing £74 a week under the government’s plans.

The Tory-led government are out of touch with families feeling the squeeze from higher food prices. The result is a massive growth in families forced to turn to foodbanks for help. Last year, 60,000 people relied on food handouts from the foodbank charity the Trussell Trust, including 20,000 children, and one new foodbank opened every week. This year, they predict they will feed 130,000 people. Another leading food charity, FareShare, feeds over 35,000 people a day through working with the food industry to redistribute unsold or surplus food. FareShare defines food poverty as ‘suffered by people with low or no income with poor access to affordable nutritious food and who lack the knowledge, skills or equipment to ensure food is safe and prepared properly.’

Over recent months, I have visited foodbanks in Harlow, Bradford, Lancashire, Halesowen and Bermondsey who are working to ensure families get the help they need. One mother described shouting at her children when they asked her for a bit of jam to put on their bread at tea-time. “I realised then that I needed to get help, but I sobbed my heart out when I came home from the foodbank,” she told me. On every visit, the message is clear: the situation is getting worse, with demand growing exponentially; and food bank users are no longer the homeless, or people with drug and alcohol problems. The biggest demand is now coming from families facing benefits delays, struggling with debt and unemployment.

Recently, Kerry McCarthy MP presented a Ten Minute Rule Motion to Parliament on food waste.

Reducing food waste is important, both to cut the amount of edible food going to landfill and to help feed people who are hungry. The European Commission estimates that up to 50% of edible food gets wasted across the EU. Food waste in the UK costs families on average £50 a month through uneaten food, past its sell-by date. Kerry’s Food Waste Bill puts the spotlight on supermarkets and large manufacturers to reduce waste and show how they can increase the amount of surplus food they redistribute to charities.

FareShare and others rely on the big retailers to

PIC: Mark Thomas www.markthomasphotos.com

By Mary Creagh, Labour MP for Wakefield and Shadow Environment Secretary.

Living Wage Campaign UNISONs newly launched Living Wage Campaign is being rolled out all over the Eastern Region.

Each year we go to Burston to remember the unfair treatment of teachers. Today UNISON are still fighting against the unfair treatment of school staff such as teaching assistants, mid day supervisors, cleaners, groundskeepers and other low paid workers that provide a valuable service to us and our families and community.

UNISON’s Living Wage Campaign calls for every worker in the country to earn enough to provide their families with the essentials of life. Outside London the Living Wage currently stands at £7.20 (as calculated by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation). UNISON believes that the lack of a state set living wage places the responsibility on to the state to top up low earnings with tax credits.

For employers, paying a Living Wage actually makes good business sense. Employers who have implemented the Living Wage have reported improved retention of staff, lower rates of absenteeism and improved service as a result. The key message to give employers is that the small costs of a wage increase will be absorbed by employers through higher productivity, lower recruiting and training costs, decreased absenteeism and increased worker morale. However, for UNISON the overriding factor is that our members enjoy a wage which properly recognises the work that they do, a wage that provides dignity and gives them the means to provide for their family and in some cases move away from the need to claim in work benefits.

Please join UNISON in working towards a Living Wage for all workers by signing and returning our pledge cards. In doing this you are showing your commitment to improving the wages of workers everywhere.

JOIN UNISON TODAY: www.unison.org.uk/join or CALL US ON: 0845 355 0845

Country Standard

Country Standard Charter

Summer 2012

3

Standard Leader

1. Work to convene a rural convention, involving communities, councils, unions and rural focussed organisations such as Woodcraft, Ramblers and the CPRE to develop a vision for rural living.

2. Create a ‘Rebuild Rural Britain’ bank working with the Coop bank and credit unions - to supply funds to councils and those creating jobs and services through coops in rural areas.

3. Turn DEFRA into a ministry for the promotion and organization of quality rural living and employment, with a focus on environment.

4. DEFRA should coordinate an emergency programme of job creation aimed at youth.

5. DEFRA to work with Departments for Transport and Employment, to establish public rural bus services.

6. Yes to a legally enforcable living wage for every rural worker - support for an Agricultural Wages Board.

7. Councils to be allowed to raise funds to build and provide affordable rural housing to rent and buy.

8. Promote coops as a model for small farms, animal and crop production, construction, food processing, rural tourism and retailing. Coops to be given preference in the allocation of council contracts.

9. Access for all to high-speed rural broadband.

10. Provide proper resourcing for the Gangmasters Licensing Authority to enforce the law against cowboy employers.

11. Support the development of allotments, and urban gardens and food production.

12. Re establish national sovereignty over decision making in farming, fishing and rural affairs.

13. Extend greater decision making in rural affairs to the Scottish Parliament and Wales Assembly. Support the establishment of a parliament for Cornwall.

Now turn to page 12

T

here’s nothing the Government likes more than a good crisis.

How else can they kid people into accepting the systematic destruction of long cherished public services, welfare state and the NHS whilst freezing pay and slashing pensions?

How else than to con people into accepting that ‘we’ve all got to make sacrifices’ ‘we’re all in this together’.

That ignores the fact that the Tory-Liberal blueprint for salvation ensures there will be no economic recovery – and no growth, except in the bank balances of the rich

company owners and wealthy landowners. And it ignores the fact that the private banks and fatcats who caused the crisis contnue to rake in the loot from the pockets of the victims.

YES IT’S AUSTERITY FOR THE MANY – PROSPERITY FOR THE FEW. That’s why they continue to attack workers and their unions as the biggest source of resistance to the profiteers.

It’s the same reason they aim to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board and seek again to flog off our forests.

It’s the same reason they aim to emasculate the Gangmasters Licensing Authority.

And it’s the same reason they back the Beecroft proposals to fire workers at will and cut employment and redundancy rights.

But history tells us that when ‘the many’ organise they make their oppressors look like pygmies.

And rural workers recognise more than anyone that ‘as you sew, so shall you reap’.

Let’s make sure that harvest comes sooner rather than later.

‘We’re all in this together’

By Roger Brockbank, CS Music Correspondent The album title “We’re all in it together’ is a musical robust rebuttal of the infamous words uttered by Dave Cameron, and is a benefit album in support of The Morning Star, Britain’s socialist daily newspaper.

The album compiled by the folk protest singer Michael Weston King, is a who’s who of British folk singers, many of whom have collaborated with him over the years, including Andy White whose song about the ill-fated former Prime Minister includes the line if he called at 6am he would be put on hold, and the late lamented Jackie Leven. With an introduction

by Tony Benn, who notes: it is in this battle for peace and socialism that we are truly all in it together.

The album is strong in melody as well as in word and is divided in to CD1 called Protest and CD2, called Survive. The Protest CD starts with a storming song called where has the money gone (where did it go?) by the Destroyers, doyens of political songs.

As a collaboration of British Isles folk alone, it is a serendipitous exploration of the burgeoning folk form that has found its place in the mainstream, although many of the artists featured will not be familiar to most. Some are; such as Thea Gilmore/Show of Hands, Eddie Reader, Paul Heaton and Robyn Hitchcock who have all enjoyed degrees of recording success.

Devon band Show of Hands melodically spits out the chorus lines on their 2009 title album ‘Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed’ - you shovelled the bonus and

A Benefit album for The Morning Star.

Red Planet Records RPR3 Available from shop.morningstaronline.co.uk expenses down your throat - you’re on your yacht, we are on our knees. Biting commentary it might be, but these are songs with a splash of punk with wit.

Other contributions are Reg Meuross, who has been described as John Betjamin set to music, Vinny Peculiar a sort of Tony Hancock of pop, and with a previous song title ‘Jesus stole my girlfriend’ suggests tongue firmly in cheek.

Some might call the music worthy, but this album strongly emphasises the vast range of folk today, and the music is both a relevant comment on the current political climate as well as being entertaining, funny and at times poignant.

4

Summer 2012

Country Standard

If You Go Down to the The shameful history of the New Forest and its

By Ian McKay Over the past few years I have published several books about the New Forest, an area of southern England that officially became a National Park in April 2006. In writing about that place, the more I have engaged in Forest affairs, the more I have found that access to information has been difficult to obtain; ask the wrong question and the shutters quickly come down.

This is, I have found, an affluent ‘closed community’ where prejudice and hostility toward certain social groups and individuals is the norm, yet at the same time the Forest was (and still is) being marketed as a rural idyll: ‘A Special Place’ as the National Park Authority puts it. bareback, just as was done by his grandparents in the Forest. Where in the leafy lanes of the New Forest you’ll hear the sound of garden machinery on a Saturday morning, on the sink estates of Southampton you’ll find a lone pony keeping the grass down. The New Forest diaspora is alive, and large too. Though the New Forest is today marketed by local officials and estate agents alike as an idyllic rural community, that’s not the whole picture. Far from being excluded from the Forest, could the families I refer to here represent the Forest’s expansion? Surely the Forest is not just made up of trees and heathland but is a community too, however dismembered it has become?

It’s not hard to see what has happened here. Over the course of the 20th century (and into the 21st with the establishment of the National Park) the

PIC: IAN McKAY

I

guess it was inevitable that I would encounter controversy, for while conservationists currently claim that the Forest is at ‘breaking point’, local estate agents are promoting the place as the ideal location for wealthy urbanites to relocate. Under cover of National Park and conservationist protection, very quickly it has become the playground of the wealthy with rising house prices meaning that affordable housing is pitifully scarce (the average house price in the New Forest is 60% higher than elsewhere). What we are now seeing is the closing chapter in a long saga of social engineering to remove the Forest’s poor and ‘undesirables’, making way for the ‘super-rich’ who have a vested interest in the way the Forest is promoted and maintained.

There are many ways of mapping the perimeter of a place, but in the case of the New Forest its border may not stop at the edge of the National Park boundary. It depends on your point of view. As I see it, the New Forest goes far beyond if you include the rural poor and Gypsies who were thrown off the land in the mid-to-late 20th century. While the Forest’s wealthy would consider it ridiculous to hear of the residents of the dismal sink estates around nearby Southampton described as part of the New Forest, it is nonetheless a fact that, many of those who live on those estates are direct descendants of people once socially and geographically excluded from the New Forest just 60 or 70 years ago.

The injustices done to many families is welldocumented, the process being well underway after the Second World War when the Gypsies were forced to carry special ID and live in compounds, described by the Gypsy Lore Society as Concentration Camps. Those who resisted were subjected to unprecedented violence from local officials, while meanwhile the reinvention of the Forest continued with the wealthy outbidding the rural poor for scarce housing. As one local author was to comment in 2007, ‘In the 1960s, a little holding with a few acres of land could be purchased for perhaps £30,000: today the same place is worth over a million.’ While some grieve for locals who, if they haven’t sold out to retired bankers and nouveau riche entrepreneurs, now find their holdings subsidised with EU money so as to enable their Commoning life to continue, who grieves for those thrown off the land many years ago?

To those that live in the affluent Forest of today, the descendants of those former Forest dwellers are now finally invisible, but evidence of a long tradition of Forest life is still there if you do look beyond to those Southampton estates. There you will find the much-stigmatised hooded youth of 21st century Britain, though unlike in other cities, the hoody of Southampton often rides livestock

case of the Gypsies, and more generally for reasons of conservation of what is actually a man made landscape, far from being a natural ‘wilderness’ as it is often promoted.

This history is important as evidence of social engineering, established and maintained in the heart of one of the most beautiful parts of the UK. By 1963, under threat of increasingly brutal and violent attacks from officials, the last of the Gypsy families had taken residence in bricks and mortar housing.

Many of them had been literally hosed off the land

by Hampshire Fire Brigade under the watchful eyes of the police, with extended families then being broken up by housing officers for fear that they would not ‘integrate’. The rural poor followed soon after, priced out of the Forest for good.

There is another side to the Forest that is edited out of the picture too though, for the New Forest’s most hidden parts hide another story. The tranquillity that the wealthy seek to experience their sense of a life fulfilled, is also a tranquillity that is sought by others to end their life. Suicide is something not often associated with this place but it is a fact that latterly economic migrants and those unable to cope with the growing competitiveness of the 21st century workplace have begun to seek out the seclusion of the Forest to put an end to it all.

When a migrant worker from Corby, in the north of England, was found hanging by the neck in the

The New Forest is now branded as A Special Place having been cleansed of its ‘undesirables’ social engineering that lies behind the reinvention of the New Forest followed a well-used pattern. As the late Colin Ward wrote in 2002, ‘The facts about rural Britain are a quiet testimony to the way in which the affluent, pleading the cause of countryside protection have sought to exclude the poor,’ and the National Park with its conservation remit was no exception here. What occurred was a knowing assault on the lifestyle and customs of one social class for the economic and social benefit of another, though it was often shrouded in the language of health, hygiene and sanitation in the

Forest in 2011, the juxtaposition of a report of a nearby helicopter pad on the lawn of a house worth over £1.5 million was simply obscene in the extreme: the helicopter was used by a local parent to ferry his kids to school and, as his wife told The Telegraph of what their luxury lifestyle meant to them, ‘You have this wonderful sense of the world going on somewhere beyond the trees and you are completely cut off from it all.’ Of course, what is going on beyond the trees (sometimes within) is part of the reality of everyday life for the socially excluded – the Forest reinvented as ‘prime real

Country Standard

Summer 2012

5

Woods Today…

National Park

PIC: COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

estate’ offers the space for somebody to end their life while at the same time shielding local residents from such tragedies.

The man who committed suicide, close to a wellknown campsite, was in the area in search of employment (one of Britain’s domestic economic migrants, on his bike and looking for work) but he found none. Unlike so many of the Gypsies who are now dispersed beyond the perimeter, he was visible for a short while (if only via local newspaper reports of his death). He was identified as 33-yearold Paul Willcoxson. A suicide letter and a note to his next of kin expressed his concerns about government cuts to the benefits system from which he was desperately trying to break free.

New Forest Gypsy encampment (late 1800s).

Extended families of New Forest Gypsies would later be forcedly separated in resettlement schemes

Ian McKay is a writer and artist. Dividing his time between the UK and Hungary, he has written several books on the New Forest, the visual arts and culture. He has a website at http://www.ianmckay.net/

A troubling account of the recent social history of the New Forest: For three years, Ian McKay was blogging about the New Forest. What began as a collection of thoughts on whatever was catching his eye, quickly became an examination of the pressures the Forest has been placed under since it became a National Park in 2005.

Backgrounded by the 2011 debate about England’s forestry future, and the factional infighting that emerged within the New Forest itself, here is the story of a long history of social exclusion, engineered by the wealthy and several of the organisations charged with the New Forest’s care. Far from being a rural idyll, here the author argues that the Forest is a place with a dark history of intolerance, self-interest and hostility to those whose faces do not fit -- not least the New Forest Gypsies who were expunged so that the Forest could be reinvented, eventually becoming top of the rich-list’s residential pick-list.

Purchase the book here: www.amazon.co.uk/New-Forest-Gated-Community-Mind/dp/0956837220/

Urban agriculture boosts Cuba

By Mike Pentelow Schools and factories now commonly have gardens attached to them, and most rural homes produce their own staple foods. The organic and traditional agricultural methods used have greatly reduced contamination of soil, air, and water which was previously experienced from synthetic pesticides.

The greater diversity of crops (rather than just sugar and tobacco in exchange for imports) has led to a more varied and healthy diet. Food transportation costs have been reduced, waste is recycled, food security is high, green spaces in cities are increased, and jobs are created.

PIC: COURTESY OF MARK THOMAS

C

uba is now practically self sufficient in food production, helped greatly by the use of “urban agriculture” – an example of which is pictured here in Miramar, a suburb of Havana.

Photographer Mark Thomas took the pictures for Country Standard on a recent trip there. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant Cuba could no longer export sugar there in return for oil, so was forced into more traditional and sustainable methods to produce a wide variety of crops.

In the pictured Miramar urban allotment they grow herbs, carrots, cauliflower, lettuce and tomatoes to name but a few. In the rest of Havana highly productive organic allotments are seen between tower blocks and otherwise unused land, and in Cuba as a whole there are over 7,000 such allotments covering about 100,000 acres in total.

There is a vast network of small gardens, roof top gardens, patios and market gardens throughout urban Cuba, providing low cost food to the local community.

Any spare urban land has been put to productive use, and to encourage this further the government has distributed hundreds of vacant plots free to anyone willing to cultivate them. The Ministry of Agriculture has set up an urban agriculture department with outreach workers to support these gardeners, and shops to supply seeds and tools.

6

Summer 2012

Country Standard

No Playing in the Fields

By Shaun Jeffrey – Horticultural worker who recently backpacked across Southern India

I

ndia is the home to the largest number of child labourers in the world. There are an estimated 15 million child labourers. In the 5-14 years age group that’s 3.2% of the total work force in India.

And children working in agriculture constitute two thirds of all child labour. A larger number of child labourers is thought to go un-detected.

For decades in India it was even argued that child labour in agriculture was harmless! The work was not seen as hazardous, and along with the majority agricultural tied population, the children were part of nature, working on farms, under the wide blue sky. Recently the M.V. Foundation, a charity that attempts to free children from labour and place them into schooling found nearly 400,000 children, mostly girls between seven and 14 years of age, toiling for 14-16 hours a day in cottonseed production across India. This is hardly a romantic rural existence.

Poverty and lack of social security are the main causes of this child labour. The increasing gap between the rich and the poor, privatization of basic services and the neo-liberal economic policies are causes for major sections of the population to be out of employment and without basic needs. Entry of multi-national corporations into industry without proper accountability has lead to the use of child labour. Lack of quality universal education has also contributed to children dropping out of school and entering the labour force. There are laws to protect children from labour but are ineffective and not implemented with the required force.

The persistence of child labour is in part due to the inefficiency of the law, but more because it benefits employers who can reduce general wage levels.

Various concerns have pushed children out of school and into employment such as forced displacement due to development projects, Special Economic Zones; loss of jobs of parents in a slowdown, farmers’ suicides due to the pressures of debt.

Bonded labour is the employment of a person against a loan or debt or social obligation by the family of the child or the family as a whole. It is a form of slavery. Children who are bonded with their family or inherit a debt from their parents are often found in the agricultural sector or assisting their families in brick kilns, and quarries. Bonded labourers in India are mostly migrant workers, which opens them up to more exploitation. Also they mostly come from low caste groups or marginalised tribal groups. Bonded child labour is a more hidden phenomenon.

So some of the rice and cereals consumed on middle class tables across India is made from the sweat and toil of the children labouring under scorching heat. Children as young as 7-8 years start working for long hours during the day when they should be in school enjoying their right to education. By preventing children joining the work force in agriculture, and making education a right,

the recruitment of children in all other sectors that has been officially prohibited by law would be largely arrested.

By stopping children entering into agricultural labour, children are prevented from being recruited into the general labour market. This is because the major source of recruitment of children in the labour market begins with a rural child. A child may start their participation working on his/her own family farm. And such labour if rendered for ones own family, is acceptable by the law. Then these village children are the ones that get sucked into working in all other activities such as managing of livestock, forestry, fishing, on plantations, mining and quarrying, manufacturing petty commodities, processing, construction, hotel workers, domestic child labour and so on.

As it stands the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, does not prohibit or regulate the conditions of work in agriculture and cultivation except those ‘processes in agriculture where tractors, threshing and harvesting machines are used and chaff cutting’. Although India is developing rapidly, it is said that its heart lies in the villages. It is certainly where the majority of the population still lives. It is also where organised labour has historically been at its weakest. If capitalism was a moral system at its core then the law governing the economic activity of labour would not even have to be written to exclude children as their use would never be needed. It is not a moral system and as a statement of moral intent and economic control, firstly the Indian government should revisit the Child Labour Act (1986) and prohibit all forms of child labour. But ultimately for child agricultural labours in India, as with adult workers in the UK whose protections in the law is being eroded with the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, the best defence against the system is to organise and fight back.

UKIP is no laughing matter

By Brian Denny – Convenor of No2EU – Yes to Democracy Campaign

B

ritain’s membership of the European Union has had a devastating impact on rural economic and social structures and working class communities.

EU directives privatising our post offices, transport networks and other services, the inequities of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the vandalism caused by the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) have all contributed to the devastation.

The ‘free movement’ of capital, goods, services and labour demanded by EU diktat has also seen massive social dumping taking place in the countryside with cheapened imported foreign labour replacing local labour and driving down wages.

Yet all the main political parties including the Greens have joined forces to claim that EU membership is beneficial to Britain without bothering even to justify such politically-weighted assertions.

While criticising some elements of EU rule, much of the left has generally followed this almost mythical orthodoxy that continued EU membership is an immovable fact, which cannot even be discussed let alone questioned.

In this vacuum groups like the British National

Party and UKIP have flourished. The BNP even gained two seats in the fake European ‘parliament’ to gorge on the infamous ‘gravy train’. However its overtly fascist message and internal warfare has mercifully seen this far right party implode for now.

But it is UKIP that has gained working class support in many areas, threatening to become the third biggest party. Through its anti-EU, antipolitically correct rhetoric and anti-immigrant message it has struck a chord by openly discussing issues everyone else in the political elite, left and right, is refusing to even acknowledge.

This silence is money in the bank for Nigel Farage, effectively the proprietor of the UKIP brand.

Despite the fact that many former Labour supporters now vote UKIP in their droves, UKIP rhetoric is, by Farage’s own admission, firmly aimed at Tory Party members.

Largely seen as the Tory Party in exile, UKIP expound the same orthodox message that neoliberal globalisation is a ‘good thing’, free trade and the endless liberalisation of services is the only way out of the crisis of capitalism. The only difference between Cameron and Farage is that the

Tories want to stay in the EU and the UKIP want out.

As the representative-in-waiting for finance capital, a cornerstone of UKIP thought is to defend the complete free movement of capital, goods and services, completely mirroring the demands of the EU itself.

EU court rulings subsuming trade union rights to those of the rights of big business are also applauded to the rafters by these supposed defenders of democracy.

Ultimately the existence of UKIP suits those in the Labour movement that support EU membership as they can dismiss any EU-critical arguments by pointing to UKIP and not doing much else.

However UKIP will continue to gain ground as the Euro crisis deepens and the labour and trade union movement fails to give a clear alternative analysis of how the EU destroys democracy and attacks working people on the altar of corporate globalisation. That means supporting the People’s Pledge and demanding a referendum on EU membership.

Dismissing the Euro crisis and the rise of UKIP as a laugh is not an option, that joke just isn’t funny anymore.

Country Standard:

Festival Supplement Summer 2012

7

The South-West needs a boost

By Nigel Costley – Regional Secretary, South West TUC The South West is a beautiful place, stunning coastlines, glorious countryside and places full of heritage. It is a great place to live, visit and retire to.

Remember Arthur Jordan –

By Michael Walker, UNISON Dorset Agricultural Union District Organiser 1945-1962

M

ost people live pretty well and the rise in unemployment has not been so bad in this corner of the UK. The population in Dorset has the highest life expectancy in the country and on most wellbeing indicators, the region does well.

But here comes the bad news. Regionwide averages hide wide disparities within the South-West. There are pockets of deprivation in the urban centres. Families trapped in poverty in rural seclusion are hidden amongst the affluence that surrounds them. Cornwall and Torbay have some of the lowest wages in the country.

Workers in Cornwall get about £3 an hour less than the national average. They also face some of the highest house prices.

The poorer parts of the South West rely on public services for employment and support.

Without such jobs the economy that depends upon consumer spending will suffer even more. Without such services the support for those in need of care and assistance will slip into acute hardship.

Last year some 37,000 jobs were lost in South West public services, seven per cent of the sector, the largest fall of any region.

Behind every job is a valuable service. The attack on public services has been driven by an ideological approach from national government matched by gung-ho local councillors.

Pay is falling behind inflation as incomes are squeezed and now we have the threat of relegating much of the West Country to the bottom division in a new public sector pay league.

According to opinion polls, most people think that they have to make sacrifices in

order to settle the nation’s finances and restore economic fortunes. Nasty medicine, however, is only worth taking if it works and the current treatment is making the patient even worse. Economic growth has stalled and with less money to spend the home market is struggling to recover. The South West is the poorest exporting region and lacks the strength in manufacturing to build its way out of the crisis.

So is there an alternative?

The factors that make the South West such an attractive place to live offer a range of opportunities for economic success. The region is a peninsula sticking out into the Atlantic. It has the chance to lead the world in wave and tidal renewable energy as well as exploiting the strong but steady winds.

Over the last few years the region has strived to be a beacon for green technologies and jobs based upon environmental protection.

This agenda needs active state intervention to stimulate innovation and new business. It needs a strategic, joined-up approach so that the best university research is linked to pilot projects and new business ventures.

To get the region going and growing again people will need to have money to spend and confidence to invest. That means turning on its head the attack on earnings.

The government has shown its true colours by rewarding the very rich but this will do little to boost the economy. Growth, when it comes, will be led by wages and the sooner we return to pay rises above inflation the better.

Cuts in bus services, cuts to library services, cuts to the facilities for young people, the support for older people, threat to job security and now the threat of Regional Pay!

Enough is enough! It’s time to stand up and be counted!

UNISON defending Public Services Make your vote count in 2013!

North West Region JOIN UNISON TODAY: www.unison.org.uk/join or CALL US ON: 0845 355 0845

If you enjoy the annual Tolpuddle festival in July, you will join us in congratulating the South West TUC in reinvigorating this joyful celebration of trade union unity and solidarity.

But we should also be remembing the efforts of Arthur Jordan of the National Union of Agricultural Workers (NUAW) who almost single handily revived the Tolpuddle celebrations after the Second world war.

Arthur Jordan was born in 1918, not far from the birth place of Joseph Arch the leader of the first national agricultural workers union in 1872.

After a spell organising NUAW branches around his home town of Stratford on Avon, Arthur Jordan was appointed the unions Dorset district organiser in April 1945.

From the unions County headquarters at Blandford, Jordan set out through sheer hard work and determination to organise the agricultural workers of the County.

Under Jordan’s inspiring leadership the membership in Dorset doubled and the number of NUAW branches surpassed one hundred, soon Jordan would be able to claim that over ninety percent of all agricultural workers in the County were members of the union (a threshold only matched in Norfolk and Lincolnshire) Jordan wasn’t just interested in recruiting or winning compensation for members. He wanted to organise the agricultural workers, soon he was organising high profile rallies around the County (and in London) for better pay, visits to Unity Theatre and he initiated a pioneering scheme of exchanges between agricultural workers and the miners of South Wales and the Forest of Dean, of car workers from the Midlands in order to secure a “better understanding between town and country”.

Jordan was also responsible for the commissioning of the striking Dorset NUAW banner (unfurled November 1955) which is still today seen to the fore at the Tolpuddle rally.

Dorset agricultural workers led by Jordan and ably assisted by his loyal lieutenant Dorset Committee Chairman Jess Waterman (Spettisbury) soon found themselves at the forefront of numerous campaigns not only on pay and conditions but for world peace and for the boycott of goods from apartheid South Africa in 1960.

It was almost inevitable that the increasingly high profile political activities of the Dorset County would bring it and Arthur Jordan into conflict with the right wing leadership of the NUAW. In December 1962 Arthur Jordan was summoned to London and summarily dismissed by the union for his political pronouncements in a personnel capacity in an obscure publication “Land & Labour”. Yet despite overwhelming backing from his County, Jordan remained sacked.

While bitter about his dismissal Jordan urged the Dorset County Committee to continue in their fight for better pay and conditions and not to desert the union, as some had advocated.

After his victimisation Jordan worked at left wing publishers, Colletts and later as lecturer on history and transport for the WEA and Leicester University. Finally Arthur Jordan died in 2005 aged 88, remaining a committed Communist throughout his life.

I have no doubt, Arthur Jordan would have very much approved of the vastly improved Tolpuddle festival , its youthful, vibrant, friendly nature and the increasing understanding it builds between town and country.

Today, we still have many Squire Framptons eager to use unjust laws against us, eager to cut our wages and take our jobs. Thanks to the efforts of activists like Arthur Jordan we can still take time to contemplate and renew our pledge to continue the fight for liberty and justice.

8

Festival Supplement Summer 2012

Country Standard

Wired-up for ru

By Mitch Howard

L

ike much else that is wrong with Tory-Lib Dem Britain, the digital divide is deepening. A lucky minority of mainly urban “haves” are whizzing on to superfast broadband while the overwhelmingly rural “have-nots” are stuck with snail-pace connections prone to stalling in mid-operation – or no broadband at all.

The average UK broadband speed is 5 Megabytes per second (Mbps) which puts us a lowly 25th in the global league table.

But while the UK as a whole can at least pootle along in the slow lane of the digital superhighway, most of rural Britain is stuck in a muddy field some way off the hard shoulder. Virtually all the estimated 2 million households with very slow broadband – and the 166,000 who can’t get it at all – live in the countryside.

Major problem for farmers This situation is not just an inconvenience, it is a major problem for farmers – and any other rural business – since PAYE, VAT and company annual returns now have to be submitted and paid online.

Nipping down to the “local” library which might be 20 miles away (if it hasn’t closed down) to get on to the internet is not a practical proposition.

Things will be even worse come October 2013 when PAYE returns will have to be made online. Unless the boss is on the internet the workers just won’t get paid.

Broadband is becoming essential for farmers for keeping up to date with market prices, ordering supplies and for banking. Without it, it is virtually impossible for a farm to diversify by renting unused buildings to new businesses, offering holiday accommodation or running an online shop.

Defra recognised lack of broadband as a major barrier to regenerating the rural economy as long as five years ago. A Federation of Small Businesses survey this year found that six in 10 rural businesses are dissatisfied with their slow broadband speed.

What is to be done?

Ministers are making much noise about how by 2017 everyone will have broadband, with 90 per cent on superfast and the other 10 per cent (who nearly all live in the country) on 2 Mbps.

What they do not say is that this is a major retreat from the last Labour government’s promise – everyone on broadband by the end of 2012. Shadow Innovation and Science Minister Chi Onwurah has rightly accused the coalition government of “abandoning the rural economy”.

A reliable connection needs to be around 5 Mbps, so 2 Mbps by 2017, even if it is achieved, is hopelessly inadequate.

What do the figures mean?

Connection speeds are measured in Megabits per second (Mbps). ● 2 Mbps is what you can expect on a mobile phone network but is barely adequate. ● 5 Mbps – the UK average speed – provides a usable connection. ● 2 Mbps and above is defined as superfast broadband, with speeds of up to 50 or even 100 Mbps available in a few places. ● These are download speeds. Upload speeds are much slower. You might have a 6 Mbps download speed but a 0.4 Mbps upload speed. Everything from emailing holiday snaps to filling in an online tax return can be a nightmare with a slow connection. ● Internet service providers (ISPs) generally fail to deliver the speeds they advertise. A Guardian survey last year found respondents were paying for 12 Mbps on average but only got 7 Mbps – a 42 per cent shortfall. ● Sky customers came off worst with a 60 per cent shortfall. ● How can I check my speed? Go to: http://www.speedtest.net/

Country Standard

Festival Supplement Summer 2012

ural jobs

9

John Brown presses home case for broadband Eighteen years ago I traded a fraught job in education and a home off London’s Holloway Road for a more sedate life as a smallholder in a sleepy hamlet in rural Monmouthshire – eight cottages and small farms strung out over a mile of single-track lane.

I raise a couple of dozen chickens, the occasional pig, grow enough vegetables to keep me going and write the odd article for fishing magazines.

It’s less like an Archers’ episode than I’d expected.

Few people are engaged in agricultural work and some of them have now opted to give up rearing livestock or harvesting orchards and are simply living off their Single Farm Payments (SPS is currently paying out £1.5 billion pounds to 100,000 farmers in England each year).

Many are retired, others work as freelances or consultants.

There are three villages within a four-mile radius of my home. All have lost their shops, their pubs and their Post Offices over recent years. Effective rural public transport is a pipe dream.

Collapse of rural infrastructure

Major investment is a must but the government is not only putting way too little into rural broadband, it is exacerbating the problems by going straight for rural superfast broadband instead of first ensuring that everyone has a usable 5 Mbps connection.

It has allocated £530 million to counties for superfast rural broadband, but the counties have to match the government grant and appoint private firms to invest and then install and run the system.

‘Superfast’ has been ‘superslow’ The government grant equates to about £70 a home or business whereas the cost of installing each fibre optic connection is around £1,000. Unsurprisingly,

by May 2012 only two contracts had been awarded – in Lancashire and Rutland – and both went to BT, prompting cries of “foul” from rival Virgin Media.

But where it is available, take-up of superfast has been “superslow”. While 6 million households, mainly in big cities, had access to BT fibre optic technology by November 2011 only 300,000 made the switch.

Most people who can get it don’t yet need it and won’t pay the hike in cost.

Once again, rural communities are being disadvantaged by the Tory-led government as it presses on with super speeds for the super few instead of first ensuring that everyone can get at least 5 Mbps.

By failing to provide a decent if basic internet connection for all – which some have gone as far as describing as “a basic human right” – Tory-Lib Dem policy will actually accelerate rural decline, as the countryside becomes an even less attractive option for new enterprise.

The collapse of rural community infrastructure has given broadband a pivotal role but its introduction to rural telephone exchanges has been slow and erratic. In an area where trees regularly fall over power and phone lines and hedge cutters regularly cut us off, even maintaining a service is problematic.

Denationalisation of the public utilities produced a rash of problems but few more baffling than those created by the break up of British Telecom. Now I rent a broadband service from BT Broadband using lines provided by BT, a separate company.

Maintenance is done by Open Reach, independent sub-contractors who used to be BT engineers before all this playing Find The Lady with our telephone system. Open Reach themselves are now subcontracting to other companies in this area.

It’s hard to imagine life here without broadband. I use it to buy feed for my animals and books, fishing and photographic gear for myself, to email my friends, check the weather, pay bills, reserve library books, order prescriptions and to keep up to date with the fishing forums.

Downloading time-shifted TV and radio programmes via iPlayer and the like allows me to work outside when the weather lets me, while video chatting keeps a relationship going with my partner who lives 60 miles away on the other side of the mountains.

When you live ten miles from a daily paper, fresh meat or the nearest surgery, cutting travel costs is vital.

And the more popular broadband gets, the worse it gets. In 2007 I was getting better speeds than predicted, even though I lived five kilometres from my exchange. This has now dropped by 2 mbps as more houses have gone online and the bandwidth is split.

High-speed broadband packages aren’t available here. A better rural broadband service could be a life-saver but it needs political will that seems at present to be sadly lacking.

10

Festival Supplement Summer 2012

Country Standard

Something nasty in the compost heap?

SPORE WARS!

By Chris Kaufman

E

nvironmental friendly compost may be putting millions of landworkers and gardeners at risk. The tiny spores released when compost is disturbed, may carry aspergiliosis – the disease dubbed by Dr Allison Searle of the Institute of Occupational Medicine ‘a time bomb’ of major respiratory health problems.

Originating in the fungus aspergillus, the condition of aspergillosis, related to Farmers Lung and Mushroom Workers Lung, is sparked by microscopic spores, invisible to the naked eye. They set off an allergic reaction in some people in both skin and lungs.

Breathing the spores can cause coughing, hay fever, longer term chronic disorders, and in certain circumstances (for example, where asthma pre-exists), death.

Most at risk are farm, forestry and horticultural workers and those in the rapidly expanding compost industry – now reaching unprecedented levels of composted green and food waste.

Following targets set by the EU landfill directive to meet recycling targets, 95per cent of local authorities now have some form of green waste

recycling, resulting in 25 million tonnes of green waste compost a year. The nation’s army of amateur gardeners produce another 500,000 tonnes.

Composting may have many beneficial effects, like improving soil structure, but many people may be paying the price without their

What is aspergillus?

By A Redman, CS Horticulture Correspondent Aspergillus is a group of several hundred fungal mould species which produce microscopic particles invisible to the naked eye. They can remain airborne for long periods leading to infection or allergic reactions.

We all react to what are called bioaerosols in different ways. People may have been working with compost for years without apparent effect, but that does not rule out long-term health problems - we simply do not know, and with increased use of composted materials we may well expect rising health conditions.

People with compromised immune systems, like cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, leukemia, cystic fibrosis, HIV or AIDS, tuberculosis and severe asthma are most at risk.

An extreme reaction to aspergillus has caused fatalities. In 2008 an ex-welder (and smoker) died from complications related to aspergillosis. A doctor at Wycombe hospital, David Wagoner reported ‘He’d been opening bags of compost and

mulch which had been left to rot. The fungus spores had grown in perfect conditions. He wes extremely unlucky – there must have been a very large number of spores which he inhaled. It’s a very unusual thing to happen but if people are dealing with big bags of mulch, there is a potential danger. I don’t know if he could have been saved had we known about the spores but we could have given the antifungal drugs sooner’.

We need a huge programme of public awareness to get the public and medical profession informed about the potential hazards of aspergillus. Some scientists have called aspergillus the new asbestos, others that it is as harmful as a walk in the autumnal woods But we are facing an ever increasing rise in the number of people suffering from allergies.

Perhaps another ten years will see scientists able to answer these questions, but some of us may have already found out at our own personal cost to our health.

knowledge. Aspergillus, which has been labelled ‘the new asbestos’, grows in compost, plant debris, bedding bark, garden and kitchen waste where it helps recycle organic compounds.

But boffin, Dr Charles Clutterbuck observes ‘we may be saving the world, but some people are getting infected…. And as more people turn to composting, numbers being affected is likely to rise.

That’s why the Country Standard is launching its Spore Wars Campaign – and we need the help of you, the readers.

The aim is to: ● Protect the millions of rural workers and amateur gardeners ● Prime doctors and the public about symptoms to watch for ● Gather case studies of CS readers, family and friends ● Win recognition of aspergilliosis as a Prescribed Compensatable Disease, as championed by the Rural and Agricultural Sector of Unite There will be no Score Draw in the Spore War. This is a battle we’re going to win!

What you can do ● Tell Country Standard if you know of any cases. Contact michaelm.walker@btopenworld.com ● Join the campaign to make aspergillosis a prescribed disease (compensatable by the state) ● Get your employer to report your symptoms to the HSE (as extrinsic allergic alveolitis) under RIDDOR ● Avoid opening compost bags in confined spaces ● Water compost before turning ● Wear dust masks for small particles ● Spread the information to doctors, family and workmates

Country Standard

Festival Supplement Summer 2012

11

Music at the festival TOLPUDDLE – JULY The programme for this year’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival (13-15th July) looks set to be busier than ever.

The mix of politics, music, kids’ entertainment, poetry, stalls and good food and drink has proved a triumph in recent years and has established the Festival as a key date in the labour movement calendar.

The organising team works hard to get the balance right. It is a family event and there has to be something for all tastes so the music covers a wide range from R&B to traditional folk; from reggae to Latin. There is a boom in good radical music and Tolpuddle is able to provide a showcase for the best in new talent.

This year will see a menu of discussion sessions in what is being called the Tolpuddle Fringe. Subjects including pay, the media, schools under attack, women fighting back, protest, the money trick and lots more will be options for people coming on the Saturday. We are keen to reflect the experiences of rural workers and remember the importance of Tolpuddle for agricultural workers.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs are honoured for the price they paid in 1834 for forming a union. The Festival remembers them and the protest that erupted after the sentence of transportation into slavery under the obscure law about taking secret oaths. The success of the mass campaign, led by the fledgling unions, established the right of workers to organise themselves into a trade union.

The events of the 1830s, sparked by the six farm labourers, lit a torch for liberty that has become a key episode in Britain’s history and has been a beacon for trade unionism around the world.

BURSTON – SEPTEMBER Visit the popular Country Standard stall at this year’s Burston School Strike Festival.

The Festival will be held 11am – 4.30pm on Sunday 2 September on Church Green, Burston, near Diss, Norfolk.

If you want to lend a hand distributing the Standard please get in contact via our website.

Which cider you on

By Keith Hatch

A

nyone visiting the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival over recent years will have probably come across The Skimmity Hitchers and their unique brand of Dorset nationalism and cider songs. Though usually spotted in pubs across the South West as well as entertaining the crowds at the birthplace of rural trade unionism the band have played at May Day events, outside Parliament supporting the campaign to retain the AWB and even on a trade union float at the Weymouth Carnival.

So what makes a band, seen by many as just a great excuse to have a dance down the pub and “fill up thy cider jar”, so keen to get involved in supporting rural workers. The Country Standard spoke to lead singer Tatty Smart, aka mild mannered housing adviser Kevin (Kev) Smith to find out.

Kev said about the band members and their outlook: “We’re quite a mixed bunch job-wise, from scientist to house husband via vehicle valeting and homelessness advice. Homelessness advice is mine, for a local authority.

“As with our jobs and backgrounds, there isn’t a fixed political agenda within the band although there might be strong individual opinions. What we do share very strongly is an outlook on life, and politics cannot help but be intertwined with this.

“There is a popular romanticism to the West Country, and we love to celebrate that in our music.

But you can’t ignore issues like unemployment, low wages, gentrification, housing, etc – or at least I can’t.

For me it would be dishonest to write songs with no political content, not to mention a missed opportunity to stimulate some debate!

“The countryside is very divided in terms of wealth and opportunity, and there is no real question as to which side the Tories will be looking out for. Although I don’t live there myself, it is clear that cuts in benefits, educational support, etc are likely to hit people in rural communities very hard. People who are already isolated due to geography, transport and low incomes will be further marginalised, and I doubt they will have many people fighting for them compared to urbanised areas. The unions can obviously play a big role in this, as they have shown with their opposition to the Agricultural Wages Board cuts for example.”

Kev feels the band can get the message across to people that wouldn’t normally be interested in politics.

“A lot of people automatically see politics as something ‘they don’t do’, or associate it with people and things they don’t understand. By presenting things in a way that makes people laugh and dance I think people drop their defences a bit and engage with the ideas, even if they don’t necessarily agree with them.

“In simple terms we do what a lot of ‘proper’ folk bands fail to do – identify with real people and issues, and not take ourselves too seriously. And we try not to labour the point either, cos people have a right to mess about as well.”

The Skimmity Hitchers describe themselves as Scrumpy & Western, and though many may see this as a joke, Kev is keen to point out it is a real genre with plenty of heritage in the West Country. “Adge Cutler coined the phrase in the 1960s and was the title of his and the Wurzel’s 1966 EP. Primarily parody songs but also original material, the focus is on humorous songs about the people and places of the West Country. We have also tried to keep alive the audience banter and spontaneity that Adge was famed for, so each gig is unique.”

The band’s name itself comes from the old tradition of skimmity or skimmington, which was a way of protesting or pillorying misdeeds by members of the community.

“The skimmity was characterised by dressing up, rudeness, heavy drinking and ‘rough music’, which perfectly sums up what the band is all about! We’re keen to bring back the skimmity as a tool for fighting the good fight.”

Kevin said that the last couple of years for the band have been really busy playing everything from pubs and social clubs to wedding and christenings. There are high points at every turn, though there can be downsides.

“Every week seems to bring a high point to be honest – our popularity seems to be gaining and as a result we play some great events and meet really interesting people. A recent four night tour with the Wurzels was really good fun – to get the respect of the Scrumpy & Western kings and sell out the Fleece in Bristol was pretty important to us. But we get just as much enjoyment from playing the secret cider sheds scattered around the region – that’s the place where you find the best characters, stories and of course cider. Low points are thankfully rare, probably the worst thing is missing out on a bit of family time or other social events.”

Outside his day job and Skimmity alter ego Kev finds time to be a Unite rep at work, something he feels is important, and challenging.

“It boils down to taking a bit of responsibility – if you believe in something then sometimes you need to step up and do it. It’s vital to have a unionised workplace but even better if there are dedicated stewards who people know they can approach and trust. The role still feels totally new and a bit daunting to me after a few years, but the support you get from other reps and officials is priceless. If anyone is thinking about doing it I would say give it a go, there’s so much to be gained from it.”

So what next for The Skimmity Hitchers? Well they released their first album last August, and will no doubt be at Tolpuddle again as well as entertaining crowds in pubs across the South West.

Kev is positive about the future: “Things seem to be progressing pretty naturally, hopefully that’s because we rely on what we do rather than arse-kissing promoters or blagging favours. Another album should be on the cards soon, plus an attempt to hijack the Olympics in Weymouth and Portland in August. One thing we are hoping to crack soon is some of the bigger festivals, so we can spread the West Country love a bit further afield.

“The main thing is we are really enjoying playing and meeting people, so it’s good to enjoy the moment.”

12

Festival Supplement Summer 2012

Country Standard

Why fighting County elections is crucial

By Grace Brookman and Phil Katz UNITE rate of pay for agricultural workers and benchmarks for other rural jobs is threatened with abolition. Affordable housing is all but nonexistent, fuel poverty is endemic and the necessity to have a car means high petrol/diesel prices have a devastating impact on the lives and environment in rural communities. There is in some areas, a collapse of bus and postal services. Youth unemployment may not be on the catastrophic scale of Spain or Greece, Italy or Portugal, but it is surely bad enough for Britain.

G

rowing anger in rural communities against the ConDem coalition government throws a challenge to the Left to reengage with rural communities and to prove that it is capable of offering leadership and hope. The Country Standard will play a key part in the process.

For many Labour and progressives living in rural areas the Coalition Government’s vicious onslaught will have come as little or no surprise.

However, many rural Tory voters will have been doubly shocked. First, at their Government’s willingness to inflict cuts which have disproportionately affected rural areas.

Second, at the lack of effectiveness of the vast majority of Conservative members of parliament and councillors. Each has systematically failed to speak up for their constituents.

Liberal Democrat voters are reeling from one broken election pledge after another. In some shires, Liberal Democrats saw themselves as a genuine opposition to Conservative indifference and dictat. Indeed, in recent elections, many Labour voters have voted Lib Dem in rural areas to try to keep the Tories out. At Country Standard we believe this no longer is an option.

It was swept away in an orange counterrevolution, which saw the Lib Dems hitched to the slash and burn Tory wagon.

Gather all the forces

Back in 1945 rural elections were also key.

Tories breaking AWB The one ministry passed over by the Liberal Democrats and therefore run totally by Conservative ministers is DEFRA the ministry dealing with rural affairs. Liberals who once championed minimum wage setting through the Agricultural Wages Board are saddled with backing a Tory attempt to break up the AWB and across the board reduce protective legislation for rural workers and services for rural communities. That’s a reason why many who in the past voted Lib Dem will now vote Labour in the all important County Council elections next year.

The elections are important for a number of reasons. So important that the Country Standard Editorial Collective decided to make it a major theme for this issue. The Conservatives want to do more than cut housing, public services and jobs.

They want to cut the very means of delivering public services in rural communities – the councils themselves. That is why the CS calls on all progressive forces; Labour, Green, Communists and those Liberal Democrats disgusted at their own party’s performance, to campaign and take as many seats as possible. In this way the people will be better protected from the Government and the ruling class strategy can be frustrated.

In these elections the open fascist vote will collapse. And it will be a much-reduced force at the 2014 election to the Euro parliament. But this vote, much of it cast by ordinary working people will go somewhere and there is the danger that the probanker UKIP peddling its fantastical myths about migrant workers might fill the void. UKIP oppose the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy. But are they against austerity? In this issue on page 6, CS – for the first time on the

left – start to analyse what UKIP really stand for.

Today, 1 in 6 rural inhabitants live in poverty. On average rural workers are paid £4,000 a year less than their work colleagues in urban towns and cities. The Agricultural Wages Board which sets the

What you can do: ● Select a candidate as soon as possible ● Establish a web site and other forms of social media ● Use the Village Web site ● Hold meet the candidate sessions for local electors ● Champion local issues ● Try to win over key individuals like Parish councillors, teachers, doctors, nurses, vets and rural engineers/mechanics ● Produce a regular community newsletter ● Find out trade union members/ activists and get them involved ● Hold a fundraising social event ● Maximise postal votes especially in isolated areas ● Get active in/with your local Trades Council

Step forward the tens of thousands of community and environmental activists, trade union representatives, pensioner campaigners and political activists who keep our rural communities ticking. We need to gather all the forces – even those active at the base of the Countryside Alliance, which once promised to represent rural people but was hijacked at the top by the class force that has wreaked havoc in our rural areas.

How much stronger would this force be if it could link-up with strong honest voices found in local parish council meetings, in the columns of local newspapers and on community radio, with diverse faith, women and youth groups. If you read our feature on rural broadband (page 8) some might even be encouraged to use social networks.

We cannot just fight against the cuts – we need to offer vision and support to rural communities.

Councillors could start by supporting the principle of offering small or matching “Bread & Roses” Grants to local villages and towns to help organise community cultural events from painting and writing to food production. It could include the funding of a new pitch, or kit for the village football or rugby team.

Clear issues run through rural deprivation. But to be against what the government do is not enough.

The Country Standard has had a progressive vision for rural Britain that has run like a thread of steel through its pages since it first appeared in 1935.

There have been good and bad times, war and peace covered in our pages. Our CS activists became standard bearers of rural and food trade unionism. There has been days of hope too. It is tempting to think that, with a severe economic crisis and cuts everywhere, now is not the time to advance a set of affirmative and progress demands.

We do not agree. We urge you to read our Charter on page 3.

So we throw our hat into the ring yet again. The Charter is not prescriptive, how can it be in such a culturally and politically diverse set of communities.

Rather we hope the Charter will enthuse the young and embolden the veterans, influence political party policy and give shape even to the voting preferences of independent councillors. If you are not yet in a union or political party we ask you to consider joining one. Do not hold back, put yourself forward for local office. Rural communities need to survive and thrive – you can play your part to make this happen. We hope you sign up to the Charter in total.

If you do not, do not recede in to inactivity, take the bits of it you agree with and start campaigning!

Unite for rural workers and help save the AWB

Campaigning union Unite can protect rural workers, offering health and safety advice, accident at work cover, legal help and specialist advice from our rural work issues experts. You need not feel isolated – help from Unite is at hand.

Now is the time to join Unite For more information please contact Kim Meadows on 0207 611 2613 or to join Unite please contact 0800 587 1222 or visit www.unitetheunion.org (JN4652) 210312

Dear friend UNISON has always been really proud of being part of the Tolpuddle festival – a fantastic opportunity to gather together to celebrate our movement and our achievements. As well as uniting to fight the attacks on our class, this is a time to remember that we are more than just workers in any sector – music, comedy, poetry and debate about the state of our world show the breadth of our talents and imagination.

Our members in the South West face the double whammy of poverty pay combined with unaffordable housing, poor transport and a Government that is determined to widen the North South divide, forgetting that the poorest area of the country is in fact Cornwall. The public sector has often provided the sole access to decent jobs and pensions and the drive to regional pay, especially by many NHS employers in the region is a desperate race to the bottom which we must resist. Please find the time to visit our Big Sister style video booth and record your thoughts on what the trade unions have done for us or how austerity affects you and your family. We will be able to use your views in our campaigning work throughout the year.

Most of all, relax, enjoy everything Tolpuddle has to offer – fighting this Government is exhausting and we need time to be re-invigorated before renewing the struggle. Thanks to Country Standard for their excellent work in highlighting the problems of workers in rural communities – we look forward to working with you for another year to come.

Joanne Kaye Regional Secretary, UNISON South West

Contact us on 0845 355 0845 or visit www.unisonsouthwest.org.uk Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/UNISONSW

Country Standard

Summer 2012

15

Italian farm workers join popular revolt

By Tom Gill reproduced from website Revolting Europe ITALY: Agricultural workers have joined a popular rebellion in Italy against the unelected Government of premier Mario Monti.

Over 100,000 farm labourers went on strike for 8 hours across Italy on Friday 27 April over the loss of welfare and pension rights resulting from Monti’s anti-working class policies.

Already 90% of agricultural workers are on fixed term contracts with low wages and the government’s measures will lead to further casualisation of the workforce, say unions. Up to a million workers are affected by the planned changes to employment laws and modifications to the pension system passed late last year.

Agricultural workers will lose pension contributions, unemployment benefits, maternity rights and sick pay, reducing them ‘to the most complete precarity and denying them, at the end of their working lives, even the meanest pension,’ say unions. Migrant workers, who make up the majority of farm labourers, will be hit the hardest.

The action – called by the three main confederations CGIL, CISL and UIL in what will be the first ever co-ordinated strikes in the agricultural sector – included demonstrations in Naples, Catania, Catanzaro and Bari, in the south, and Perugia, in the north.

Monti’s technocrat government replaced billionaire Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing administration in November with a mandate from the EU, IMF and European Central Bank to implement crushing austerity measures and neo-liberal reforms to ‘reassure’ speculators in the financial markets.

Thanks also to an austerity budget in August last year and spending cuts and tax rises across the Continent, the economy has sunk into recession.

Italy’s unemployment is now at 10.2%, its highest level since January 2004, while youth joblessness for the first three months of the year was 35.9%, the highest since 1993.

Strikes, from finance to manufacturing and retail, have added to popular local protests over privatisations and cuts to public services occurring almost daily since March.

The CGIL and the other confederations argue that labour reforms making it easier and cheaper for employers to fire workers will not create jobs. What is needed, they say, is an end to austerity and a boost to public spending.

The labour reforms are currently going through a slow parliamentary process and although popular opposition to them has secured some improvements to the original proposals, the changes remain deeply regressive.

Revolting Europe Revolting Europe is a radical left blog with news, analysis and comment on the politics and social issues on the Continent.

The blog reports on industrial struggles and popular protest ignored by the corporate media and highlights alternative solutions to the bankers’ crisis currently being addressed by self-reinforcing austerity for the majority – and unlimited generosity for the banks.

Revolting Europe is also a great resource for facts and figures on the misery and inequality caused by policies designed uniquely for the privileged few.

And as well as hundreds of articles that give voice to unions, social movement organisations and radical left campaigners, you’ll find a fresh perspective on the Eurozone crisis in a range of videos selected from the web.

Check it out at www.revolting-europe.com or follow blog editor Tom Gill @tomgilltweets

The Archers

Trade unions were not always excluded from the Archers, as shown by this Landworker article in 1958.

By Mike Pentelow

T

he BBC’s much proclaimed “balance” is little in evidence currently in its radio soap, the Archers, “an everyday story of country folk.”

Ambridge representatives of the employers National Farmers’ Union are central characters in it, but there has not been a union representative for some time.

It was not always thus. Two of the existing characters were branch secretaries in the past – pigman Neil Carter, and dairy worker Mike Tucker.

Brian Hewlett, who has played Neil Carter since 1973, prepared for the part by actually going on a real course organised by the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers (now part of Unite) at Eastbourne.

Before him the Ambridge branch secretary was Mike Tucker, who also came into the show in 1973, as unit manager of a dairy unit.

“A union man of strong convictions, he set about reviving the local branch of the NUAAW and became the local branch secretary,” states The Archers Encyclopaedia, published by the BBC. “When Jethro Larkin fell through the loft over the Brookfield calf-pens, he persuaded him to claim compensation and

presented him with the resultant cheque at a meeting at The Bull.”

An earlier branch secretary was the shepherd Len Thomas who was in the show from 1953 to 1966 and played by Arnold Peters (who has since acted Jack Woolley from 1979 to the present). Thomas was sacked for his sullen manner and absconded with the branch funds.

The fact that the union was once seen as part of rural life by the show’s producers is evident from the celebrations of its 2,000th episode in 1958. The editor of the union’s newspaper The Landworker, Dennis Hodsdon, was invited to a Harvest Supper with all the cast, by Godfrey Baseley, the creator and editor of the programme (pictured top).

There he was delighted to discover that Bill Payne, who played Ned Larkin, was a member of the union in real life, having started work on a farm at the age of 13. There he learned how to milk a cow and follow a plough, and was proud of it. He even produced his paid up card of the Paxford branch of the NUAW in Gloucestershire.

The Ned Larkin character was in the show from 1956 to 1967, and his grand daughter Clarrie Grundy remains.

16

Summer 2012

Country Standard

Rebellion by poor men The recently published novel about the 1549 Norfolk rebellion against enclosures has been nominated for the East Anglian Book Awards.

Mike Pentelow interviews the author.

We have three copies of the novel to give away kindly donated by the publisher.

Answers to this question should be sent, along with name and address to michaelm.walker@btopenworld.com

Robert Kett, a tanner, was executed in 1549 for leading the revolt against enclosures (see Rebellious Oak).

Two other Norfolk rebels were executed – Geoffrey Litster, a dyer, in 1381, and Richard Nockolds, a hand-loom weaver, in 1831. Which uprisings were they leading?

A

Rebellious Oak by Margaret Callow (published

by Running Hare Press, price £8.99) is all about how Robert Kett led an army of 20,000 farm labourers against landowners who had fenced off common land, on which the smallholders grazed their animals.

They demanded the return of the land, and freedom from bondage, successfully taking over Norwich, where they administered justice from under the Oak of Reformation. They held out for seven weeks before being crushed by a much larger professional army including hundreds of foreign mercenaries. Despite being offered an amnesty if they surrendered the vast majority were slaughtered.

The novel is part of a trilogy on rural revolts being planned by the author – she has already written the draft for one on the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, entitled “Wheat of War”, and is working on another about the Kentish revolt led by Jack Cade in 1450.

“The theme of them all is rebellion by poor men against governments when there were no unions to protect them,” Margaret told Country Standard.

Now aged 70 she did not start writing in earnest until retiring after 50 years as a qualified nurse three years ago (which might explain some of the clinical descriptions of wounds in the novel).

“While tracing my family history I discovered many were agricultural labourers and my greatgreat-grandmother was a pauper in a workhouse in 1900, staying there for seven years until she died at the age of 77,” she recalled.

“This set me thinking that there are so many stories waiting to be told about people for whom no blue plaques are put up ... people who fought and died for what they believed in. I wanted to write from their perspective.

“Norfolk describes itself as ‘Nelson’s county’ but if he did not have a crew he could not have sailed anywhere. Too much school history is about kings and queens.”

Having lived in Norfolk for over 30 years she was familiar with the Kett rebellion and was inspired to write the novel about him. “Nowadays it is what they call faction, but I prefer to say it is a factual skeleton with fictional flesh on it,” she explained.

“I did a lot of research to get everything chronologically correct, but after that the story was there and the writing came easily.”

She also visited Wymondham, where the revolt started and where Robert Kett and his brother William lived.

“A service is held on December 7 every year at Wymondham abbey to commemorate their deaths,” said Margaret. William was hanged at the abbey while Robert was executed in Norwich Castle.

A tree marked “Kett’s Oak” on the B1172 between Wymondham and Hethersett is said to be where the first meeting of the rebels took place (pictured above behind Margaret with her book).

Wymondham is also the home of a group called “1549” consisting of Andy Walker and Rob Duhig who released a CD in 2007 entitled Rebellion, The Story of Robert Kett (which comes with the book).

The village also has a pub, a junior school, a society, and roads all named after Robert Kett.

Margaret has written poetry since childhood and her writing skills are entirely self taught.

“Rebellious Oak” is her first book to be published.

But she has written one (by hand) called “Spirit of Butterflies” set in 1840 about a Norfolk girl abducted to Wapping and forced into prostitution.

“It is about people who live just under the surface of society and their fight for respectability.”

As mentioned Margaret has also completed (on a computer) Wheat of War about the Peasants’ Revolt against the Poll Tax. “Like today they were making the poor pay for what the rich had done, after the 30 years’ war,” declared Margaret.

“A lesser known fact about this revolt is how the Norfolk contingent, led by Geoffrey Litster, returned from London and were slaughtered by Bishop Despenser at the Battle of North Walsham. Litster escaped to a wheatfield, but the wheat was not tall enough to conceal him, so he was dragged off to be hung, drawn and quartered.

“There were three memorials to this battle but two have gone and just one, a stump cross, remains outside the water tower.”

A Rebellious Oak’s ISBN is 978-0-9555478-36 and it can be ordered online from www.runningharepress.co.uk/bookshop.

A Rebellious Oak

By Margaret Callow An exciting first novel.

Set in 1549 it is a peasant’s view of the rebellion against common land enclosures.

Available at all good bookshops or from www.runningharepress.co.uk (not for profit publisher)

£8.99 ISBN: 09780955547836

Country Standard

Summer 2012

17

The Standard looks back: Working the land in common 50 years ago

73 years ago

A visit to Cuba chronicled the benefits to agricultural workers of the then recent revolution. Six workers milking cows in a new Production Society, were interviewed. They revealed that before the revolution they had to turn over 50 per cent of their harvest to the landlord.

With the coming of the revolution they had been given land to till and on which to live.

The National Association of Small Farmers was set up and granted credits to them to enable them to start sowing and pay when the harvest came in. It also afforded them the opportunity to pool their land together so that they now owned 140 acres in common.

They were also granted a monthly advance for living expenses and been able to buy a new fodder threshing machine and a new stable.

In Britain, the union successfully prevented the eviction of a farmworker and his wife and three children from a tied cottage – after proving that the farmer already had another empty house on his farm.

“This evidence shows that farmers are not now even proving need to obtain possession of our members’ homes,” said union official Jack Brocklebank. “This clearly illustrates the union has always been right on this, that the main reason for the farmers wanting tied houses is because of the power and hold they have over the occupants of them.”

At the union’s conference in Bournemouth, Joan Maynard (Yorkshire) spoke against entering the Common Market as it would subordinate elected government to a Common Market Authority; and Tom Potter (Norfolk) successfully moved opposition to foreign bases and training German troops in Britain.

(Country Standard, 1962)

A L Morton wrote about “The War Against The People” and how the wartime reactionary laws were threatening British liberties.

Propaganda posters in villages were urging: “Freedom is in peril – defend it with all your might,” he observed, but added: “Country people living in tied cottages, dependent for job and home on the whim of a squire or farmer ... are not likely to have too many grand ideas about their freedom.”

Local elections had been suspended, and the Emergency Powers Act had brought in arrests without charge, prison without trial, and the prohibition of meetings and publications against the war.

“The Government pretends to fight for freedom, but denies it to the people of India,” he concluded.

Herbert Morrison, who not long ago as Minister of Agriculture had opposed the expansion of home agricultural production, was now back as Minister of Food.

The new Minister of Agriculture, Sir R Dorman-Smith, regularly met with and consulted the trade unions, reported Edwin Gooch, president of the National Union of Agricultural Workers. Gooch hoped that, as the government was about to purchase all agricultural produce, “it will have the effect of avoiding unstable conditions” and “produce prices will everywhere be the same, and there will be no excuse for any area paying a lower wage than in any other.”

A Land Army woman, however, reported she was paid 13 shillings a week plus board and lodging for a 60-hour week, while female farm workers received the same for a 48-hour week. “I would be interested to know if I was the victim of an individual piece of swindling, or if land girls are not entitled to overtime pay. If the latter is the case it looks as though the Land Army is to be used as so much cheap labour.”

(Country Standard, 1939)

FOR A

PEOPLE’S BRITAIN 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…

NOT A

BANKERS’ BRITAIN The Voice of workers in town and countryside since 1930

UNISON Labour Link

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

£1 daily from your newsagent or online at

www.morningstaronline.co.uk

18

Summer 2012

Country Standard

A flaming spirit I

saac Newton (1642-1727) is widely known for transforming the world with his discoveries about the universe, but less well known for being a farm worker.

He was born in a stone farmhouse in Woolsthorpe near Grantham, Lincolnshire, after his father, an illiterate smallholder, had died leaving his widow a few sheep and some barley in a will signed with an “X”.

The farmhouse nestled into a hill near the River Witham, and had bare floors of ash and linden laid on reeds. At the back stood some apple trees, later to become famous though Newton’s theories of gravity.

At the age of three he was abandoned by his mother (to marry a wealthy man twice her age) and was left on the farm with his grandmother. When he was ten, however, his mother returned, a widow for the second time.

She sent him to school in Grantham, where his master taught extra arithmetic geared to surveying fields for farm work. And arithmetic later proved to be crucial to Newton’s groundbreaking discoveries.

At the age of 16 he was put to work on the farm, but was not the most dutiful of workers. While he spent most of his time gathering herbs or building water wheels in streams his sheep and pigs strayed all over the place. He was fined for allowing his swine to trespass on his neighbour’s land, and for allowing his fences to fall into disrepair.

His theory of gravity was inspired by sitting in the orchard by his farmhouse watching the apples dangling from their stems. As they were flying through space with the rest of the world’s contents across 25,000 miles a day, he wondered, why did they hang gently downwards instead of being flung outward like a stone whirled around on a string? It was this, rather than an apple falling to the ground, which started his reasoning and experiments.

He also wondered about the movement of the moon and what drew it towards the earth just like an apple. Using a weight hanging on a cord (and later dropping lead weights and inflated hogs’ bladders from a church tower) he worked out that a

body on the earth’s surface is drawn downwards by gravity 350 times stronger than the tendency of the earth’s rotation to fling it outwards.

He also estimated that the earth attracted an apple 4,000 times as powerfully as it attracted the moon, and the earth’s gravity would be 3,600 times weaker on the moon than on the earth’s surface.

His conclusion that all planets have their own gravity and are attracted to each other in proportion to their mass led to explanations of the universe with huge practical results. One was to explain how tides were created by the combined gravity of the moon and sun pulling the seas, and how to predict tides. The other was to be able to predict where the planets would be in relation to each other, which was of great assistance to navigators relying on the stars.

His theories were able to be tested and were to be proved correct, such as the shape of the world or predicted times of comets and solar eclipses. One of his less significant inventions was the cat flap.

At the age of 18 he was admitted to the “College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Cambridge University” (the name of which was to cause him problems). Because of his poverty he had to earn his keep by performing menial services for other students, and relying on their leftover food to eat.

At the age of 24 he was elected as a fellow of Trinity with a wage of £2 a year on condition that he took a vow of chastity and, after seven years, would take holy orders. Because he could not accept the validity of the Holy Trinity (mainly that Christ could be both divine and human), which was considered heresy at the time, he felt he could not take holy orders. Had his heretical views been known it could have lost him his professorship which he gained at the age of 26. Luckily he was released from the obligation to take holy orders which he felt he would have been unable to do.

His dabbling in alchemy could also have landed him in trouble with the university, as it was considered to be a charlatan practice. He used the pseudonym of Jeova sanctus unus (an anagram of Isaacus Neuutonus) to disguise this work.

PIC: PETER ARKELL

By Mike Pentelow

The Sir Isaac Newton, pub sign at 84 Castle Street, Cambridge.

After his design of a telescope led to him being made a Fellow of the Royal Society he made his famous remark: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

When he was elected as an MP to represent Cambridge University his only contribution in the House of Commons recorded by Hansard was to ask for the windows to be open as it was rather hot.

His days at Cambridge ended in 1696 when he was given work at the Royal Mint designing coins that were more difficult to counterfeit. This he did, and oversaw prosecutions of counterfeiters, demanding that they be hanged. A sufferer of gout he died from a stone in his bladder, having refused to take the sacraments.

In 1936 fellow Cambridge University student John Maynard Keynes bought his papers (which revealed his alchemy and heresy) plus his death mask. After reading them Keynes concluded that Newton was more than a cold rationalist, but an “intense and flaming spirit.”

Bring down the ConDems – Britain needs Socialism

Woodcraft folk The Woodcraft Folk is a movement for children and young people, which stands for equality and co-operation Our aim is to have great fun, but also to try and develop children’s self-confidence and build their awareness of society around them.

Through our activities, outings and camps we help our members understand important issues like the environment, world debt and global conflict and, in recent years, we have focused on sustainable development.

By encouraging children to think, we hope they will help build a peaceful, fairer world.

Woodcraft Folk 9/10, 83 Crampton Street, London SE17 3BQ Phone: 020 7703 4173

Communist Party Speaking Tour September 20th October 2nd October 11th October 11th October 18th October 22nd Octobet 23rd October 25th November 3rd November 9th

7.30 pm 2.00 pm 7.00 pm 7.30 pm 7.30 pm 7.30 pm 7.00 pm 7.30 pm 2.00 pm 7.45 pm

Deptford, London Derby Nottingham Glasgow Merthyr Tydfil Manchester Brixton, London Cardiff Worcester Cambridge

Plus meetings in Barrow-in-Furness; Plymouth; Middlesborough; Edinburgh and a dozen other towns, cities and villages across England, Scotland and Wales.

For details go to www.communist-party.org.uk

Country Standard

Summer 2012

19

Kinder Pass Trespass – an achievement for all

By Peter Owen – Manchester Morning Star Readers’ and Supporters’ Group o mark the eightieth anniversary of the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass a group of socialist ramblers took to the hills to follow in the footsteps of Manchester communist and trespass leader Benny Rothman. Sponsorship was soon offered and it was decided to collect the funds for The Morning Star, the socialist newspaper, which Benny read and the successor to The Daily Worker which was sold on the Trespass itself.

So on April 22nd, on a wet Sunday morning, about thirty-five of us met at Bowden Bridge Quarry near Hayfield in the Peak District. Benny and a few hundred of his young comrades had gathered in the same place eighty years earlier. They planned to use direct action and the force of numbers to gain access to Kinder Scout, then the exclusive moorland playground of the rich.

After admiring the bronze commemorative plaque dedicated to the Trespass we headed off in the direction of the moors. Making good progress along a wooded valley it struck me just how much easier our walk would be to theirs. We often take for granted the enormous improvements to countryside access that have been won over the years.

It’s easy to forget that ramblers haven’t always been able to rely on well-marked public-footpaths, sign-posts, gates and stiles. The tracks and paths that we were walking along led us quickly and easily up onto the moors surrounding Kinder Reservoir; moors on which we now have the right to roam. Back in the thirties ramblers would have had to deal with barbed wire, locked gates, hostile game-keepers and signs warning them to keep off the best open moor-land.

From the reservoir we took a path along to William Clough, the narrow valley at the base of Kinder Scout. Thick grey clouds obscured the summit above as curlews called eerily through the mist. It’s a wild and beautiful spot and it’s no wonder that people have fought so hard to gain access.

It was from William Clough that the 1932

T

Young, enthusiastic and combative. The tresspass achieved access for us all.

trespassers made a break for the summit of Kinder Scout and the Duke of Devonshire’s game-keepers tried to stop them. Rothman, interviewed in the 1980s, said of the incident, “Of course, we just ignored them or pushed them aside until we got to the top”. Once up on the plateau they celebrated with another group of trespassers who had rambled over from Edale.

Over thirty of our group eventually made it up the steep slopes from William Clough, passing through thick mist to reach the top of the plateau. Whilst resting on the flattened boulders which litter the peaty summit the rain finally eased off and then stopped. The clouds slowly lifted to reveal fine views of the reservoir below and then the wooded

valleys beyond. Finally, in the distance, Manchester was revealed; the city from which so many of the young, predominantly working-class trespassers came.

Five of the 1932 trespassers were eventually sent to prison in a notorious case on trumped up charges. However, their actions are now widely acknowledged as the spark which ultimately led to the creation of our National Parks and to our right to roam. As an editorial in the Morning Star put it on the eightieth anniversary, “If you go out walking then tip a glass to Benny Rothman and the radical ramblers who won you that freedom”. Sage advice.

And that’s exactly what we did at The Sportsman pub in Hayfield once safely back down off the hill.

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

20

Summer 2012

Country Standard

On the road for climate jobs

By Suzanne Jeffery, Chair of the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group

D

uring two weeks in May this year the “Climate Jobs Caravan” visited 25 towns and cities around Britain, travelling nearly 3000 miles. The message of the Caravan was simple: we face two major crises with one obvious solution.

The first crisis is the economic recession, with 2.63 million people unemployed and one in five young workers unable to find jobs. The other crisis is environmental, the terrible prospect of catastrophic climate change caused by the unrestricted burning of fossil fuels.

A few weeks before the Caravan set off, the International Energy Agency warned that on current performance, emissions of carbon dioxide would double by 2050 and that the world is on track for a long-term temperature increase of an unthinkable six degrees centigrade. So serious is the threat that the deputy director of the IEA, Richard Jones, urged the world’s energy ministers: “Please take our warning seriously.”

Those of us who organised and supported the Caravan do take the warning seriously, even if the world’s political leaders are so obsessed with propping up an unsustainable economic system which seem only to serve the interests of the 1%, that they seem incapable of doing so. No doubt a failure which was be repeated at the recent Rio plus 20 conference about to start as I write.

The solution to both these crises is set out in the One Million Climate Jobs report produced by the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group with contributions from academic specialists and the sponsorship of four national trade unions, CWU, PCS, TSSA and UCU. In the report we argue that this cannot be achieved through the private sector alone but calls for the creation of a co-ordinated National Climate Service along the lines of the National Health Service. “All this can be done for a fraction of the amount the Government has put into keeping the banks afloat.”

The Campaign gathers outside Parliament to press the case for climate jobs. union conferences of the PCS, TSSA and the Annual Conference of Trades Councils.

Climate Jobs are not the whole answer but they must form part of a real alternative to the twin crises that are threatening any prospect of a positive and hopeful future for the majority of people of the planet. It is crucial that the campaign for climate jobs continues to build and that it finds a response beyond the 25 towns and cities which hosted this first Climate Jobs Caravan.

With the aim of turning the report into real campaigning focus in cities and towns across the UK the Climate Jobs Caravan, although initiated by the CCC Trade Union Group, quickly attracted support from other organisations and individual activists in different localities. Requests for visits by the Caravan were being received right up to the final weeks of planning and we did our best to accommodate these. This explains the erratic, zizzag route of the tour, which also resulted from our meeting pre-arranged events, especially trade

Join the rural revolt Last year again, tentatively, the Editorial Collective, produced a Summer edition 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.

them. Especially those in areas dominated by the squirocracy and Con Dem councils.

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.

● Order copies from us to distribute at work, for your union branch, or in your rural community

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

● Keep in touch via our website or contact michaelm.walker@btopenworld.com.

These are the principles that continue to inspire us today.

When CS was established in 1935, our founders wrote about their aims: peace, socialism and unity of town and country workers.

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

So here we are again in 2012. With plans this time, not to go away for another year, before we publish again.

We ask you to:

● 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 Charter on page 3

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