An annual festival is held in Tolpuddle, organised by the Trades Union Congress(TUC) featuring a parade of banners from many trade unions, a memorial service, speeches and music. The festival began with a call to the Kurdish youth, to take action against the imprisonment of the Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The youth spoke to many people at the event, distributing informative leaflets and carrying the flag of the Leader.
Freedom For Ocalan
Every year thousands of political activists, trade unionists and members of the Labour Party joined the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in the town of Tolpuddle, Dorset, on 19, 20 and 21 July.
This year’s festival was dedicated to the campaign, ‘Freedom For Ocalan’ launched by millions of Kurdish People as an initiative to fight for the freedom of imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
The initiative, which gained a new dimension with the Durham Miners Festival, which was dedicated to the Freedom for Öcalan Campaign; has reached a new stage this year with the support of the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in Southern England.
The friendly society
The Tolpuddle Martyrs were a group of 19th-century British labourers who were arrested for and convicted of swearing a secret oath as members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers. The rules of the society show it was clearly structured as a friendly society and operated as a trade-specific benefit society. At the time, friendly societies had strong elements of what we now consider is the predominant role of trade unions.
The Reform Act of 1832 made unions legal, and that year six men from the Tolpuddle society protested against the gradual lowering of wages in the 1830s. They refused to work for less than 10 shillings a week, although by this time wages were as low as 6 shillings a week.
The society, led by George Loveless, a Methodist local preacher, met in the house of Thomas Standfield.
In 1834 a local landowner wrote to the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, to complain about the union, invoking an obscure law from 1797 prohibiting people from swearing oaths to each other, which the Friendly Society had done. James Brine, James Hammett, George Loveless, George’s brother James, George’s brother-in-law Thomas Standfield, and Thomas’ son John Standfield were arrested, found guilty, and deported to Australia.
They became popular heroes and were released in 1836, with the support of Lord John Russell who had recently become Home Secretary. George Loveless was later involved in the Chartist Movement, while the others moved to London, Ontario, Canada, where there is now a monument in their honour. There was also a monument erected in their honour in Tolpuddle in 1934, and a sculpture of the martyrs made in 2001 stands in the village in front of the Martyrs Museum there.
