Lady Gardeners

I found this picture on Twitter, shared by Kew Gardens. It's how the first young women who worked as gardeners at Kew dressed (so as not to "distract" anyone!) in 1896.

Mrs Pankhurst's Statue

A Manchester councillor has started a project to have a statue of a famous woman associated with Manchester erected in the city. At the moment, the only statue of a woman in the city centre is Queen Victoria in Albert Square.
Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst won the nomination, from a shortlist of 6 women, with 56% of the vote. The statue will cost £200,000, from private funds, and should be ready by 2019.
The other women on the shortlist were:
Ellen Wilkinson, who helped to organise the Jarrow March in 1935, and was a Labour MP.
Elizabeth Gaskell, the Victorian novelist.
Louise Da-Cocodia, the first black senior nursing officer in Manchester - she came from Jamaica in 1955 and also campaigned against racism.
Elizabeth Rafald, author of The Experienced English Housekeeper, who was born in 1733 and was the housekeeper at Arley Hall in Cheshire.
and Margaret Ashton, the first woman city councillor in Manchester, who also campaigned for votes for women.
Mrs Pankhurst's home, at Chorlton-cum-Medlock, is now a museum and community centre - the manager there said she was "thrilled to bits".

"Let Paul Robeson Sing!"

The other night, I was at a poetry evening in honour of the singer/songwriter Nick Drake, part of a series of readings and concerts. During the evening it was suggested that another singer who should have a similar commemoration in Wales was Paul Robeson.
Paul Robeson was a black American singer - what connection could he have with Wales?

It started in 1928, when he was starring in Show Boat on the West End in London. That's where he sang the song he is most famous for - "Ole Man River". A group of unemployed Welsh miners had walked to London to bring attention to their hardship - a smaller version of the Jarrow March, and Paul Robeson met them and marched along with them.
Paul Robeson was not only a singer - he was what we would call now a human rights activist (and what MI5 later called "a fanatical communist" in their file on him - he had close links with Soviet Russia). Not only did he meet the miners and support their campaign for better treatment, but he also sang in concerts all around Wales right up until 1960 - for the 1957 Miners' Eisteddfod he performed via transatlantic phone line, because his passport had been revoked.
The CIA had a thick file on him, too, and considered him a dangerous subversive who said inappropriate things about race relations in the US and colonial rule in the British Empire. When he got his passport back in 1958, Welsh miners had been part of the campaign to allow him freedom to travel again, using the slogan "Let Paul Robeson Sing!". In later years, Welsh miners were part of the movement to free Nelson Mandela, partly because of their associations with Paul Robeson.
In 1939, he lived in Wales while filming Proud Valley, the story of a black American who became a miner in Wales. It was based on a true story, and was the film Paul Robeson was most proud of, because it showed the struggles of working class people honestly, and because he was portraying a man who happened to be black, rather than a stereotype.
He only took part in three more films in the rest of his life, Native Land and Tales of Manhattan in 1942, and The Song of the River in 1954. Native Land was a documentary about trade unions, which he narrated, and Tales of Manhattan is an anthology film about a tail-coat passing from hand to hand and changing the lives of the people who wear it, with the tattered jacket being put on a scarecrow at the end. The Song of the River was an East German film about six great rivers of the world and the international workers' movements along them.
All of which is a far cry from the 1935 film Sanders of the River, which is the other famous Paul Robeson film, where he played a native chief in Nigeria, and sang while paddling a canoe. That was not a film he was proud to be part of in later life, though initially he thought it might be a good way of looking at colonial life in the British Empire.
He died in 1976, after a long period of retirement and ill health, though he supported the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
Paul Robeson's son, Paul Jr., continued his father's associations with Wales, inviting the Onllwyn Male Voice Choir to Carnegie Hall in 1998 to sing at a concert commemorating the centenary of Paul Robeson's birth, and travelling to Wales to talk to school children. He also spoke at the Senedd in Cardiff in 2008 on the 60th anniversary of the start of the NHS.
Paul Robeson's grand-daughter Susan came to Wales to the Eisteddfod in 2010, where Swansea University were launching a new "learning resource" based on a successful exhibition called "Let Paul Robeson Sing!" It can be found at People's Collection Wales online and the South Wales Miners' Library. Susan Robeson was keen to meet anyone who remembered her grandfather while she was at the Eisteddfod.

"Rouse, Ye Women" - Chainmakers Strike of 1910

Chainmaking is a job that's usually thought of as heavy labour, and the biggest chains were made by men in factories - the sort of chain that would hold a big anchor for a ship, for instance. But smaller chains were made by women at home, in little forges in the back yard, and the short lengths they made were joined together into longer chains.
I remember reading about a typical woman's day in one of the areas where chains were made, where she got up in the morning, stoked the fire, made a yard of chain, and took it down to the foreman who gave her the money for it - and then she could go and buy enough food for breakfast for the family.
In 1910, 800 women chainmakers went on strike in Cradley Heath in the Black Country, after a minimum wage was set for chain making which their employers refused to pay. This was the princely sum of tuppence ha'penny an hour, which was about double what some of the women were getting. The strike lasted for ten weeks, and in the end all the employers agreed to the new wages. Twelve of the women strikers were over 70 years old and one of them, Patience Round, was 79. She combined chain making with caring for her crippled husband, and was quoted in a newspaper article saying "these are wonderful times - I never thought that I should live to assert the rights of women."
There was even a song "Rouse, Ye Women!" to the tune of Men of Harlech, and there is an annual Festival in the Black Country celebrating the women chainmakers.

Dic Penderyn

When I was in Cardiff earlier this week, I went into the Indoor Market, and noticed a blue plaque by the door:

(Click to make bigger)

The Merthyr Rising was more than just a riot - the coal miners who were protesting about low wages, high unemployment and the price of bread took over the town for about eight days, setting up road blocks and forming their own paramilitary organisation. They even managed to ambush the baggage train of the 93rd and beat off a hundred cavalry, while the coal mine owners and other members of the ruling elite were trapped in Penydarren House, guarded by members of the 93rd Highland Regiment, who had been forced to retreat there, leaving the rest of the town to the rioters. The authorities must have been having nightmares about the French Revolution starting again in Wales.

It seems that poor Dic was a scapegoat - the authorities wanted to hang someone after the riots in Merthyr Tydfil, and it didn't matter who. 11,000 people signed a petition pleading for his release, and there were appeals for clemency from members of the Welsh establishment, all of which was ignored by Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary. He was hanged outside the gaol on St Mary's Street in Cardiff, not far from the plaque. He was only 23. Thousands turned out for his funeral, and he was widely regarded as a martyr.

Peterloo and The Manchester Man

I grew up knowing about the massacre of Peterloo. It's part of the history of Manchester. All I really knew as a child, though, was that ten people had been killed when cavalry charged a crowd that had gathered to hear a speaker on St Peter's Fields - which became known as Peterloo as a reference to the battle of Waterloo.
It was much later that I read Mrs Linneus Banks' novel The Manchester Man, which went into far more detail about the massacre, pieced together from eye witness accounts from her own friends and family.
There was no doubting whose side Mrs Banks was on - and it wasn't the one wielding the sabres and firing cannons down the streets of Manchester at unarmed men and women.
The time was 1819, and the country was still in economic difficulties following the end of the Napoleonic wars. Food was scarce, and there were protests about the Corn Laws, which kept bread prices artificially high. Protesters were also concerned about parliamentary representation - most working men were not allowed to vote (and no women could vote, of course). One of the leading radicals was Henry Hunt, who was going to speak at the meeting on St Peter's Fields.
Newspapers reporting on previous meetings had poured scorn on the scruffy appearance of the working men who had attended, so for this meeting there was a concerted effort to wear Sunday best, and many women there wore white dresses. They wanted to look respectable, and they wanted a peaceful rally. They carried banners, and groups were led by bands.
Meanwhile, the magistrates of Manchester were horrified by such a large gathering - some estimates say 80,000 - and they wanted to arrest Henry Hunt. So they called in the military. There were 600 men of the 15th Hussars; several hundred infantrymen; a Royal Horse Artillery unit with two six-pounder (2.7 kg) guns; 400 men of the Cheshire Yeomanry; 400 special constables; and 120 cavalry of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, relatively inexperienced militia recruited from among local shopkeepers and tradesmen. It was the Yeomanry who started the charge with drawn sabres against an unarmed crowd - and the first casualty was a two year old boy who was being held in his mother's arms as she crossed the street, just as the Yeomanry galloped along it. She wasn't even involved in the meeting.
On occasions such as these, the Riot Act was supposed to be read to a crowd before any action was taken, to give them the opportunity to disperse - in this case, as Mrs Banks says, the Riot Act was read "in an inaudible voice" from a house in Mount Street where the magistrates were directing events, and not on the Field itself.
She goes on: "Thus Nadin [one of the magistrates], the cowardly bully, having a warrant to apprehend the ringleaders - although he had a line of constables thence to the hustings - declared he dared not serve it without the support of the military.
His plea was heard; and thus, through the blindness, the incapacity, the cowardice, or the self-importance of this one man, soldiery hardened on the battlefield, yeomanry fired with drink, were let loose like barbarians on a closely-wedged mass of unarmed people, and one of the most atrocious massacres in history was the result."
Henry Hunt was, indeed, arrested, but at the cost of between ten and fifteen lives, and between 400 and 700 wounded.
The authorities arrested several journalists who had reported on the massacre, and the Manchester Observer was closed down after several police raids - leading to the formation of the Manchester Guardian. By the end of 1820 every significant working class radical reformer was in jail. Four members of the Manchester Yeomanry were also taken to court, but were all acquitted on the grounds that they were dispersing an illegal gathering.
In due course, the Free Trade Hall was built, partly on the site of St Peter's Fields, and there used to be a blue plaque commemorating Peterloo. However, it didn't mention any of the deaths. In 2007, a new plaque, with the following wording, was put up instead:
"On 16 August 1819 a peaceful rally of 60,000 pro-democracy reformers, men, women and children, was attacked by armed cavalry resulting in 15 deaths and over 600 injuries."

Mrs Banks said that she remembered marches in commemoration of the massacre, but that they had been discontinued by the time she wrote The Manchester Man. Looking around the internet, I saw a picture of a modern march, with banners that were copies of the originals - but as soon as I clicked on the page I was informed that the Police had blocked the site and if I carried on I'd be liable to a £100 fine!!!! (it's called deathtotyranny). So I didn't.

Kersal Moor, Salford

Kersal Moor is a scrubby bit of moorland, with the occasional rare heathland flower, where I used to play as a child. In the middle of the moor there is St Paul's Church (where my sister was baptised) and the old junior school was next door. There were the remains of wooden steps and laid out paths, where the people of Salford and the surrounding area used to walk on Sundays. I knew that it used to be the site of the original racecourse, for horse racing, but that was the sum total of my knowledge.

Here's a picture of the moor by William Wyld in 1852, looking out towards the chimneys of Manchester. Queen Victoria commissioned the painting, and it is now in the Royal collection. The moor was bigger then, running right down to the River Irwell in one direction, and spreading across Moor Lane to what is now the rugby ground - the race track encircled the rugby ground as well as most of the present moorland.

What I didn't know, until I got into a conversation on Facebook with an old school friend, is that a huge Chartist meeting took place there in 1838. According to the Morning Advertiser at the time "the meeting then was certainly the largest that has ever taken place in the British Empire. – not less than 300,000 people could have been present."
The movement was named for the People's Charter and the Chartists were protesting about the state of democracy in their time, and campaigning for various measures to make things fairer - such as extending voting rights to every man over the age of 21, rather than limiting the vote only to property owners, and equalising the size of constituencies so that each MP represented about the same number of voters - Manchester was particularly poorly served here, as the population had increased hugely because of the Industrial Revolution, but the representation in Parliament hadn't changed.
They also wanted MPs to be paid, so that poor men could stand for Parliament as well as rich men, the secret ballot and annual elections "the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since as the constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each ensuing twelvemonth; and since member, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now."
This made them dangerous radicals in the eyes of the ruling classes.

As well as being a handy place to hold open air meetings (in 1818 a group of coal miners assembled there to protest about their pay and dangerous conditions - Agecroft Colliery isn't far away) the moor was used by the military for exercises and reviews. This was another bit of history I knew about, because of the disaster of Broughton Suspension Bridge. As the troops marched across the bridge back to their barracks, it began to vibrate in time with the marching feet, and the bridge collapsed before they reached the other side. No-one was killed, but 20 men were injured, and since that incident troops in the British Army have always broken step when they cross a bridge.

There have also been duels, and in 1790 a burglar and highwayman called MacNamara was hanged there, though it didn't seem to do much to lower the crime rate. Archery clubs have met there, and there was a golf course built in 1818, only the second to be built outside Scotland. There were also, in the eighteenth century, races where the men competed naked, so that women could eye them up and choose a husband!

A Free Man on Sunday

Here's another of the byways of history that is easily passed by - the mass trespass of Kinder Scout.
It seems strange now to think of the Ramblers' Association as a radical communist movement! Yet in the late 1920s and 1930s a walk in the countryside could be met by hostile farmers and gamekeepers with shotguns, and there was a militant left wing group of ramblers calling themselves Red Grouse. The working people from the industrial towns of the north wanted to get out on their days off to fresh air and countryside, and the landowners wanted to keep the walkers off their land, even where public footpaths existed.
The differences between the two culminated in the mass trespass on the moorland around Kinder Scout in the Peak District in 1932. Trespass was not a criminal offence (and still isn't), but half a dozen men were sent to prison for between two and six months after violent scuffles with the gamekeepers who were trying to keep the walkers off the mountain. The moors were kept for grouse shooting at the time, and were owned by the Duke of Devonshire. Undeterred by the threat of prison sentences, ten thousand ramblers gathered a few weeks later for a walk up Winnat's Pass, nearby.

The only way most people get to hear about this now is through Ewan McColl's song The Manchester Rambler, which has the refrain: "I may be a wage slave on Monday, but I am a free man on Sunday" and includes a verse where a walker argues with a gamekeeper:
"well, he called me a louse, and said 'Think of the grouse'". Most of the ramblers who went on the mass trespass came from Manchester.
There's also an excellent children's book about the mass trespass by Fay Sampson called A Free Man on Sunday - she also wrote the Pangur Ban series for children, a Celtic fantasy involving a white cat, an Irish monk and an Irish princess - and a magical dolphin. She's also written Arthurian fantasy and (more unusually) Sumerian fantasy based around the goddess Inanna.
The mass trespass was the first event in the struggle to open up the countryside to the public, and paved the way for the first National Parks, which were created after the Second World War. The Right to Roam is now enshrined in law, in the 2000 Countryside and Rights of Way Act. On the 70th anniversary of the mass trespass, a commemorative walk was held, and the present Duke of Devonshire apologised for the actions of his grandfather in 1932. Benny Rothman, who was one of the leaders of the mass trespass and was sentenced to six months imprisonment for his part in it, lived to see the Right to Roam legislation - he died in 2002 at the age of 90.

The Tolpuddle Martyrs

I first heard about the Tolpuddle Martyrs on Blue Peter. In the days of Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and Peter Purves, Blue Peter was a source of all sorts of interesting information which I still remember today.
It was 1834, just after the Captain Swing riots, and a group of men in Dorset decided to form a trade union to protest about their low wages - they were getting 6/- a week at that time. It was called the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. Forming a trade union was legal - but they were arrested for swearing an illegal oath when they joined. The law that was used had actually been passed to deal with the naval mutiny of 1797, and had never been repealed. The jury at the trial was packed with landowners and magistrates who opposed the rights of working men to band together to negotiate a fair wage, and the six men were transported to Australia.
And then there was a public backlash against the severity of the sentence. Petitions were signed (with 800,000 signatures), there was a protest march - 30,000 people marching up Whitehall, and most of the men were freed and were able to return home.
There's now a Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum, and there's a festival in the village every year to commemorate the men, usually the third week in July - so just around now. People like Tony Benn and Billy Bragg have attended, because of the importance of the Martyrs to the history of the trades union movement. The website is www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk

Captain Swing

Last night I was over at a local musical evening (it's an 'open mic night' without any microphones) and a local poet performed a poem about the last men to be executed in England at the scene of their crime. The poem started a discussion about the forgotten history of working people in this country, like the Captain Swing riots.
In 1830, three men burned the hay ricks of a farmer, in protest at low agricultural wages (7/6 a week, which was low even by the standards of the time, and caused great hardship among the working poor) and were hanged for it.
This was part of the Captain Swing protests - they were campaigning for higher wages, higher levels of parish relief (the benefit system of the time) and against the new threshing machines which were taking away their jobs. Agricultural wages were so low that families depended on the parish relief to survive. The situation was not dis-similar to today, where the bulk of the benefit bill is paid to people who are in employment but who cannot survive on the low wages they receive.
Captain Swing was probably not a real person, but the name was used by the protesters when they sent threatening letters to farmers who owned threshing machines or paid low wages, usually before the farmer's hay ricks or barns were burned down, or their threshing machine destroyed.
William Cobbett, who wrote about agricultural reform, among other things, observed the change in agricultural practice. Large farms originally employed farm servants, who lived at the farm and got bed and board, on year long contracts. This was changing to the hiring of casual day labourers, who came in to do the work but lived elsewhere, and were only paid for the days they worked rather than for the whole year.
Cobbett said that the farmers preferred this, as it was cheaper for them than having live-in farm servants. It was, of course, worse for the labourers, especially when there was a surplus of people looking for work.
The authorities cracked down on the protests brutally, sentencing 500 people across England to transportation to Van Diemen's Land, as Tasmania was then known. Around 19 people were executed.
However, agricultural wages did rise a little, for a while, to as much as 10/- a week
and threshing machines fell out of general use.

The next stage for the labourers was unionisation....