The Tolpuddle Martyrs: A Case of Human Rights
Among the traditional heroes of Trades Unionism, writes Stephen Usherwood, are the six Dorset labourers who were sentenced to transportation for ‘administering illegal oaths’.
The year 1968 is to be celebrated as the International Year of Human Rights. It marks the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. This was, in essence, an elaboration of President Roosevelt’s four freedoms—freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
The Tolpuddle Case, though it occurred as long ago as 1834, is an illustration of what happens when human rights are denied.
Six farm workers of the village of Tolpuddle in Dorset—George Loveless and his brother James, Thomas Standfield and his son John, James Brine and James Hammett—were sentenced at Dorchester Assizes to seven years’ transportation to Australia—of which they served three before they were pardoned—for administering an illegal oath with the intention of forming a trade union.
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