In the county of Dorset, where the B3390 meets the A35, is a small village. Here, at 3 pm on Sunday, 16th July, "Martyrs’ Sunday", a service will be held in the small Methodist chapel to commemorate the sufferings and sacrifices of George and James Loveless, James Hammett, Thomas and John Standfield and James Brine. These men are collectively known to all students of social and economic history as the Tolpuddle Martyrs. They were sentenced to seven years transportation to an Australian penal colony - a sentence which, bearing in mind the terrible conditions of both the transportation ships and the colony, could very easily have meant one of death!

Tolpuddle was a small agricultural village and in the 1830s conditions were very hard. Labourers were paid one shilling per day and women six pence for common husbandry. The average agricultural wage was about nine shillings a week but in Dorset, and in particularly in villages such as Tolpuddle, wages were extremely low. The cost of living, however, was high and it was becoming increasingly difficult for men to feed their families - most lived on bread and potatoes if they were lucky!

The labourers in Tolpuddle were getting desperate. Their requests for "equal pay" with other areas fell on deaf ears. They decided to form a "Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers". In 1833-34 trade unionism was growing and spreading as the working conditions were bad and unemployment was rife. The leader of this new society was George Loveless, a much respected man and a Methodist lay preacher. He had taught himself to read in the evenings after working in the fields, and had quite a reputation in the Dorset circuit as a fine speaker. George was conscious of the need to conduct their affairs in a lawful manner. Advice was sought from two union delegates from London and from the Rev Thomas Warren, the Vicar of Tolpuddle. Tradition tells us that they held their meetings under a large tree in the centre of the village, now known as the "Martyr’s Tree". George Loveless publicly stated that their intentions were peaceful and their only purpose was to improve conditions for their families, who were living at starvation level.

The Whig government and local landowners were concerned about the spread of trade unionism. Many of the members of the new unions were also Methodists. The combination of working class aspirations and Methodism was not one that the establishment viewed with equanimity. On 24th February 1834, the six men were arrested, and under the Mutiny Act of 1797 they were charged with administering and taking an illegal oath. The vicar, who knew that the men’s intentions were non-violent and legal and who originally had agreed to help them negotiate with their employers, withdrew his support. In March 1834 they were sentenced to transportation. As they were taken from court, George Loveless called out to the crowd "We raise the watchword liberty. We will, we will, we will be free!"

There were many protests from all over the country in which several leaders of the Chartist movement took part. Public opinion eventually prevailed and the Tolpuddle Martyrs were all eventually pardoned and returned home. Only James Hammett stayed in the village (the others eventually all emigrated to Canada). He lies in the churchyard of the parish church and his grave is marked by a headstone carved by Eric Gill in 1934. The Martyrs are well commemorated in Tolpuddle - there is a "Martyrs’ Inn" which is on the site of the "Crown Inn". It was re-named and the opening ceremony was performed by Vic Feather of the TUC. The "Martyrs’ Tree," with a seat and thatched shelter, was erected by Sir Ernest Debenham on land given by the National Trust. Six cottages were built by the TUC in 1934 for retired agricultural workers, each one bears the name of one of the martyrs. A museum is incorporated within the cottage block. The Methodist Chapel, complete with memorial arch, was built in their memory to replace the barn at the side of " Standfield’s Cottage" where George and his fellow Methodists worshipped. There are plans to restore this barn in the future.

In the Methodist Recorder last February, the Vice-President of Conference, Brian Thornton, likened the protests of the Agricultural Labourers Friendly Society to the Aldermaston Marches of the 60s and 70s and the current campaign of Jubilee 2000. He said, "I hate to think, if the law was as corrupt today as it was in the time of George Loveless, where would we be now!" He plans to attend the service in Tolpuddle on July 16th "to honour the memory of those brave men and to affirm a pride in our past, a past which ought to dictate the present and the future also". It is unlikely that many of us will get to Tolpuddle on Martyrs’ Sunday, but we can all remember in our prayers that day the courage and the sacrifice made by six ordinary Methodists, who took on the might of the Establishment, on behalf of their village in the name of God.

With acknowledgements to:- Audrey Wirdnam. Pidela: an account of the village of Tolpuddle.

Methodist Recorder. Brian Thornton. Meeting the challenges facing us.