In 1834, six farm labourers from the tiny village of Tolpuddle in Dorset, England, were transported to the hellhole that was the Australian penal colonies. Their crime? They had banded together to seek a wage that would fend off starvation for them and their families.
But in fact it was they who were the victims of the crime, a monstrous conspiracy between the British Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne, a corrupt judge and James Frampton, a local landowner who was outraged when the men took a stand against their pitiful wages.
The men were led by George Loveless, a man of high moral principles who had taught himself to read and write and would go on to become a Methodist preacher. His comrades were his brother James, Thomas Stanfield and his son John, James Hammett and Joseph Brine.
Two years earlier, trade unions had become legal in England and in 1833 the men formed the Tolpuddle lodge of the Agricultural Labourers Friendly Society after meeting beneath a giant sycamore in the village. This followed cuts in their wages from a miserable 10 shillings to seven shillings and threats to cut them further if they made trouble. At a meeting in Stanfield's cottage the group held an initiation rite based on a medieval ceremony which involved an oath of brotherhood. They hoped for an affiliation with the fledgling National Consolidated Trades Union.
The oath-taking ceremony was their big mistake. They could no longer be prosecuted for forming a trade union but Frampton and Lord Melbourne found another way. Back in 1797, sailors of the Royal Navy had staged mutinies in protests against wretched conditions and brutal officers. An Act of Parliament had been rushed through, banning secret oaths on pain of seven years transportation to the colonies and it was decided that this little-known law would be ideal to trap Loveless and his comrades.
Frampton found eight fellow magistrates to support him and they posted notices in and around Tolpuddle, warning against the taking of oaths. Two days later, the six men were seized and charged.
The trial, at nearby Dorchester, was a travesty. Judge John Williams knew exactly what was expected of him and he made it clear that the defendants should be found guilty.
As the jury members were all local landowners who were quite happy to continue paying starvation wages, the judge was pushing against an open door. The guilty verdict was a formality, the men were sentenced to seven years transportation and the judge later became a baron.
After spending some time chained up in filthy prison hulks, the men were shipped off to Australia. Loveless ended up in Hobart, Tasmania and the others in Port Jackson, new Sydney.
They were lucky enough to be given jobs as servants, ironically to landowners.
Back in Britain, the trial of the men who were to become the Tolpuddle Martyrs had offended the nation’s innate sense of fair play. Protests at the injustice grew through every level of society until Lord Melbourne’s more liberal successor, Lord John Russell, felt obliged to give all six men free pardons. The men didn’t discover this until George Loveless happened to read the news in an old London newspaper. The state governors hadn’t even bothered to try to find them.
All six returned to England and received rapturous welcomes although only James Hammett remained in the country. His gravestone can still be seen in Tolpuddle’s churchyard. Loveless and the others emigrated to Canada.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs have become trade union icons and every year, the present day movement still pays homage to its six brave pioneers with a rally and march past the tree stump which is all that remains of the sycamore under which they first met.
