unite Life
BY RYAN FLECTHER
Remembering Attlee Land worker George Curtis, 94, recalls the inspiration of Clement Attlee
George Curtis, 76 years after signing up for the union and still going strong, worked on the land during the Second World War and remembers the hope Labour brought to working people after the party’s 1945 landslide election victory.
The 94-year-old retired regional officer joined Unite’s predecessor union the National Union of Agricultural Workers in 1943 and has been a member ever since.
Born in 1925, George was born to itinerant farm workers in Lincolnshire, where the family moved from farm to farm living in tied cottages.
“My father worked seven days a week, either as a waggoner, stockman, milkman or working fireman. During my childhood I became familiar with farming before tractors replaced farm horses,” recalled George, who began working full time as a 14-year-old.
“My father would take a horse drawn drill sowing corn across a field. I followed harrowing in the seed with a horse. When the corn appeared I led a horse that pulled a machine that uprooted the weeds.”
By 1939, tractors began to appear on the farms George was working on and his dad retrained to operate farm machinery, including an early combine harvester shipped from America during the Second World War.
George also learned skills that were essential to feeding the country 38 uniteWORKS Winter 2019
during the war and when he turned 18 in 1943 he was placed in a reserved occupation – the same year that he joined the union.
“What I found outstanding from my early years was the skill, dedication and sheer hard labour of the farm workers. In my experience they made the farming industry and received little in return,” said George.“They worked a 50-hour week in summer and 48-hour in winter but were not regarded as human beings whose comfort, health and home should stand on a par with their immense contribution to the industry and nation.”
After the war, George took up a full time role with the union, from which he retired in 1990, as well as serving as a Labour county councillor.
George fondly remembers Labour’s legendary general election victory in 1945 and the benefits it brought to millions of working people through its wide ranging reforms on health, housing, welfare and inequality.
A favourite memory of George’s is when he arranged as a branch secretary for a bus to take members to a rally with prime minister Clement Attlee at the seaside resort of Skegness in 1948.
He said, “I made my way to the platform on the beach near where the prime minister and his wife were seated. The area between the town and sand dunes seemed completely thronged with people. Eventually Attlee rose to address the vast assembly. He was an inspiration not only to members in Lincolnshire but to members throughout the country.”
Mark Harvey
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