Video Blog: Unions 21 at Tolpuddle 2009 - Paul Routledge and Jim Knight
Submitted by Unions21 on 20 July 2009 - 10:01am.
Tolpuddle Festival commemorates the arrest of six farm labourers who dared to form a trade union to defend their livelihood in 1834.
The Festival, held in Dorset, hosted a Unions 21 event on the union response to the recession.
Employment Minister Jim Knight described how unions and the government are working together to help people through the recession:
Journalist Paul Routledge paid tribute to the workers at the Lindsey oil refinery for their successful wildcat strikes:
The speakers responded to questions from the audience about the repeal of anti-trade union laws, public sector pay and other issues:
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WHAT MAKES TOLPUDDLE SO SPECIAL ??
Despite the threat of more rain, Saturday remained mostly dry & the hardy veterans who'd survived the previous weekdays & Friday's downpour were again cheerful & laughed as they told me their weathery tales.
"Every stranger I met was my friend,
the food tasted wholesome & good;
Ale, spirits & wine were never so fine;
and effectively did what they should.
May workers in union stand,
nor ever more quarrelsome be.
Let 'em take each his woman in hand
and thank God for his brothers - and she."
A tad chauvinistic but allow for the times it was penned. It's still a fitting song for Tolpuddle, is it not? Sorry, the tunes have been lost.
A TOLPUDDLE VIRGIN CONFESSES
Ashamed that on Saturday just gone, aged 67, I made my first pilgimage to the Dorset heartland of the agricultural arm of the union movement. I, who aged 17, was secretary for the Chertsey branch of the NUAW (now merged into T&GWU, is it not?).
Ashamed that forty years ago (having switched to the entertainment union, Equity) I researched the Swing Riots in the British Library Reading Room where Marx had read; resurrected protest songs out of Cecil Sharp House and wrote lyrics for the play my friend Paul Thompson wrote, "Captain Swing At The Penny Gaff". Aye, and performed and sang in it too, at the Unity Theatre in Camden Town, London, yet never had I come to Tolpuddle 'til this Summer, despite 'tho' for nigh 20 years I have lived in nearby Somerset.
"No more ashamed, brother, shall I ever be.
I'll stand up, my brother, for Right, wi' thee."
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