FEATURE Rural rebels


n By Mark Metcalf


RURAL REBELS AT HEART


From the Peasants’ Revolt to defending local services, there’s a Unite rural member at the heart of it


The National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers (NUAW), which lives on in Unite, features prominently


in the Museum of English Rural Life’s (MERL) online exhibition on The Evolution of Rural Protest that also


incorporates earlier rural protests plus Joseph Arch’s National Agricultural


Labourers’ Union (NALU) of the 19th century.


The countryside has always been


marked by class struggle. The 1381 Peasants’ Revolt that had numerous causes was triggered by the ruling class attempting to pay for an expensive war in France by collecting unpaid poll taxes.


Brought on by the prospect of starvation, the Captain Swing riots of 1830 across southern and eastern England saw barns set alight and the smashing of threshing machines that had replaced flails, which feature in the exhibition.


Four years later an attempt by landless labourers at Tolpuddle to form a trade union led to persecution and the


deportation of six men that in the aftermath resulted in such massive protests that the men were eventually allowed to return home.


And so it goes on. Rural resentment continued to simmer. Labourers needed a voice. That was found in the figure of Joseph Arch, a hedger and ditcher from Bedford whose natural talent for speaking drew enormous crowds. He was able to form the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (NALU) in 1872. Within two years 86,000 labourers – around a tenth of the rural workforce – had joined and wages had been improved.


From NALU the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers (NUAW) was born which eventually brings us to today. We meet three of our own ‘rural rebels.’


It is a belief echoed decades later by


NUAW activists in Tony Gould and Barry Leathwood who alongside Chris Kaufmann also subsequently


worked for the union and who together in the mid-80s contributed heavily to


26 uniteLANDWORKER Spring 2024


the book Skilled at all trades – The History of the farmworkers’ union


1947-1984, at which point the NUAW


amalgamated with the Transport and General Workers Union (Unite).


Tony Gould had gone to grammar school but enjoyed working with animals, so began as a general farm boy before progressing to becoming a pig herd manager. He was 28 when, unimpressed by the inequalities he witnessed on a large Cornwall estate, he joined the NUAW as they “were the only voice of dissent… I saw farmworkers who lived blameless lives, yet they were very poor”.


As a Labour Party member, Gould was unimpressed by farmers that went around talking about honesty but who were engaging in tax evasive activities.


He knew the NUAW were represented on the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) and would stick up for them if they were sacked and forced to leave the tied accommodation which came with their job. Around two-thirds of Gould’s fellow workers on a relatively


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