Tarquin O’Flaherty, man of lettuce, continues his cycle here.  Yesterday we left him saying that the poor were grizzling (again) – “The poor didn’t like this one bit” is how he forcefully put it.

John Doherty, a cotton spinner, moved to Lancashire from Ireland in 1817. For the next twenty years his work in the Trade Union movement flourished.  He was undoubtedly the leading Union figure in the North of England during the twenties, where he attempted to drag all of the Northern cotton spinners into a single powerful unit.  By 1829, Doherty had persuaded leading cotton spinners and trades union advocates from all over the British Isles to attend a major conference in the Isle of Man where they created the Grand General Union of all the Spinners of the United Kingdom.

Doherty had only just begun.  In 1830 he started the  ‘United Trades Co-Operative Journal’ to promote the advantages of both Unionism and the ideas of Robert Owen.  In June of that year he launched his most ambitious idea to date: The National Association for the Protection of Labour.  Every union, society, and representative body in the country, no matter what the trade, was invited to join.

A slump in trade (1830), a series of failed strikes, lockouts etc caused massive rifts in the Spinners Union, and in the end, Doherty lost the Scots and the Irish branches.  Even within the  English representative body there was massive dissension.  Doherty, with great difficulty held the English group together.

Astonishingly, Doherty’s National Association for the Protection of Labour was building support massively.  Potters, miners, textile workers, hosiery and silk workers all joined.  Other groups formed their own societies and were ‘associated with’ or ‘affiliated to’ Doherty’s Association.  In London, and separately, various trades got together to form the Metropolitan Trades Union which maintained important contact with Doherty’s Association.

All over the country there was a great revival of trade unionism.  The Northumberland and Durham Colliers’ Union in 1830 won a remarkable victory after an extended strike.  This victory was the more remarkable as it occurred during a considerable slump in trade.  Victories like this in the midst of huge agitation for Reform of the Parliament lifted peoples’ spirits and gave real hope for change.

This was also the tragic period where non-unionised farm labourers, caught up in the spirit of  the time, ducked nasty employers in the village pond, gave ‘cheek’ to their ‘superiors’ and demanded remission of tithes paid to the church.  They also burned the hayricks of some of the nastier employers.  Throughout this period of agitation not one farmer or landowner was killed, wounded or harmed in any way.  This made no difference whatever.  For their presumption, nine men were hanged, 457 were transported, and nearly as many went to jail for considerable periods.

TO BE CONTINUED.