CAMPAIGN Unite Wonder Women
A woman ahead of her time
Joan Maynard MP, farmworkers’ champion and passionate socialist
Fifty years ago Joan Maynard started the parliamentary process that abolished the hated tied cottage system in agriculture. It was perhaps the greatest achievement in the career of one of the most remarkable women in trade union and Labour Party history.
Elected as Labour MP for Sheffield Brightside in 1974, she held the seat until retiring in 1987. A lifelong activist in the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers, she ascended from branch secretary to vice president.
Born in 1921 in Easingwold, Yorkshire, Joan left school aged 14, becoming a parish councillor, rural district and county councillor, Justice of the Peace and member of the Labour Party National Executive in 1972 as a lay member.
It was on the NEC that she was able to convince the party to put Tied Cottage
“”
A remarkable woman, who believed in members and never gave up, building NUAAW membership often in unpromising territory
Peter Medhurst, ex-NUAAW officer
Abolition into the 1974 election manifesto for Labour, and then stop them backsliding from this
commitment at any sign of opposition.
A long-held union aim had been won – albeit the Rent Agriculture Act of 1976 could have gone further - with Joan speaking for union members in parliament.
“The significance of Joan’s life is not
position, but steadfastness’ says Kristine Mason O’Connor in her immensely readable biography ‘Joan Maynard, Passionate Socialist’ (Politico’s Publishing; 2003).
Whatever position she attained, it was to promote the moral and political principles that were her very being. Above all she argued for and demanded social justice with a characteristic directness and candour that is unfamiliar and not always admired in political circles.’
This very stance earned her the hatred of the right wing press which dubbed her ‘Stalin’s Granny’. It failed to recognise one of her strengths, the ability to form alliances – which rural workers had to do – like the widespread parliamentary support she received to outlaw the tied cottage system.
Joan was a woman ahead of her time, unafraid to pursue causes, bravely in a male dominated
30 uniteLANDWORKERAutumn 2023
environment, often against hostile ‘class enemies’. Above all she fought for the rural workers she represented in the NUAAW (national union of agricultural and allied workers).
She campaigned against the health and safety hazards which made agriculture the most dangerous industry in the country, calling for roving safety representatives for farmworkers. She highlighted the dangers of farm chemicals like the weedkiller 245T, both to the users and the ecosystem [quote about the soil] which environmentalists now espouse.
A great supporter of animal rights, public ownership of the land (which was NUAAW policy spelt out in the pamphlet ‘Planning or Privilege’) and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Joan endured vilification by the press for visiting Ireland, then in ferment, to seek the unification, civil rights for the Catholics, talking to Gerry Adams, and a just peace for all.
“A remarkable woman, who believed in members and never gave up, building NUAAW membership often in unpromising territory,” says long-
time Yorkshire union colleague Peter Medhurst.
It was Peter and fellow carpenters who crafted the wooden bench, dedicated to Joan (following her death in 1998 aged 76) which now graces the
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