UNDER THE spreading
CHESTNUT TREE
The memorial plaque on Joseph Arch’s cottage
with the law and he had realised early on that the only way to beat the oppressors was never to resort to violence or to break the law.
During the next two decades he became more and more interested in politics, kept sympathy with the agricultural labourers that he worked alongside and in his words ‘bided his time’. He cultivated his plot of land, looked after his wife and children and fulfilled contracts for large scale agricultural projects of all kinds including forestry. This brought him into widespread contact with working men in rural areas and he took the opportunity to sound them out with regard to their treatment at the hands of the ruling classes. His name became well known on both sides of the social divide.
Meanwhile he had many a tussle with the parson in Barford and he appeared several times before the Bench at Warwick on issues which he saw as illegal infringements of his personal liberty. He used his acquired legal knowledge to defend himself successfully on each occasion. These experiences helped to develop his skills in oratory and persuasive argument and in modern terms Joseph Arch became a celebrity.
When the time came then that he was asked to speak to the men at Wellesbourne about forming a union, he was ready. He expected a group of thirty or forty to attend the meeting but labourers had turned up in their hundreds from all the surrounding villages, such that a crowd of about two thousand thronged the green.
It must have been an awesome sight. Being February it was dark by the time the proceedings started, so by the light of hundreds of flickering lanterns strung up on bean poles, Joseph climbed on a stool under the chestnut tree and made a rousing speech to the crowd.
28 FOUR SHIRES v MARCH 2012
Joseph Arch’s political life had only just begun, for he later became an MP, but it was perhaps that night in Wellesbourne in February 1872 that marked his most significant achievement. It heralded the formation of the Agricultural Workers Union that radically changed the lives of those who had previously toiled on the land and barely subsisted.
Standing on the green in Wellesbourne today in the aptly named Chestnut Square it’s hard to imagine the charged atmosphere that must have prevailed that winter night. Now the road is busy with traffic and people go about their daily business, chat outside the pub, or walk the dog. The original chestnut tree is long gone and a stone marks its position but Joseph Arch hasn’t been forgotten. A new tree has been planted nearby in his memory and a brick built bus shelter with a commemorative plaque occupies the very spot on which he made his historic speech.
He’s remembered in Barford too. Joseph went on to achieve a great deal throughout the rest of his life and travelled widely, but in February 1919 almost forty seven years to the day since he’d made his momentous speech in Wellesbourne, he died in the house he’d been born in, just opposite the church which was the site of so many run-ins with the clergy.
A stone tablet on the wall of the cottage wall marks the fact and it still has the porch that Joseph himself built. He is buried in the churchyard and the Agricultural Workers Union placed a memorial obelisk near his grave.
To the casual visitor to Barford, however, the most noticeable tribute to the village’s famous son is the Joseph Arch pub, whose sign depicts him as he appeared in a caricature in Vanity Fair in 1886. What would a Methodist preacher have thought of that?
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